My feet may be small but my path is wide

In teaching philosophy I have the opportunity to teach the great social and ethical ideas that have survived through the ages. We read about different systems of government and varying theories of duty and rights and I give each one equal weight in my classes. When we read about utilitarianism it always presents itself so simply and as something that should be easy to follow. It makes sense that we would act in a way that promotes our greatest happiness and be allowed to do so as long as we do not harm others. The very basic principle of utility seems utterly doable.

Why couldn't we apply this greatest happiness principle to government, as the utilitarians would have us do? If we were to follow the dictates of the basic governmental function, as outlined by the natural philosophers (and plagiarized in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence!), then we would have an easy time of understanding the confines of government and law. Right? Seems simple enough. But where does harm begin and end? Aren't there harmful consequences from indirect action? Truthfully, how does utility translate to reality?*

I've been thinking about this a great deal lately as we hear about the evils of this "socialist" stimulus plan. So many people seem to think that anything related to money or economic policy in any government is only about taxes, nothing else; I suppose I am just having a hard time wrapping my mind around that idea because I do not have the luxury of having more money to be taxed in the first place. I am, once again, going to attempt to sell the piano that has been in my family for over 100 years to help make ends meet. I am also going to attempt to find a second job, something that will destroy any leisure I ever hoped to have. Just as I don't have the luxury of the money to be taxed, I also don't have the luxury of good health or reserves of energy. A second job will be very hard on me, physically. Of course, not having a life outside of work will be very hard on me mentally. But what other choice do I have? I don't want to lose my home and I want to be able to afford the thousands of dollars of co-pays I must pay every year to keep myself alive. Anything else is a luxury I cannot possibly afford.

I think there's more of a cost to this than others might realize, though. I was thinking about my ethical footprint in this world yesterday, and I would estimate that it is pretty high. I don't always act in a way that is ethically correct, but I do a pretty good job of keeping my integrity in the face of some fairly burdensome issues. So, I'd like to outline what I think my ethical footprint looks like. I'm not doing this to toot my own horn or make myself feel better; I am genuinely hoping this sheds some light on the greater issues that face people like me for the people who don't have these worries. Indulge me.

Whenever I am admitted to the hospital they admit me into the teaching service. That means that I have daily visits from medical students, interns and residents who ask me questions, read my chart and look at my body. One of the things I make sure they see is the Livedo Reticularis on my legs. I have had this condition for probably 20 years, yet it was never diagnosed and therefore never recognized as a sign of a more serious disease, APS. I went to the Mayo Clinic, M.D. Anderson, U.C.L.A. and everywhere in between before finally finding a doctor who took one look at it and knew immediately what the dangers where for a person who is complaining of horrific headaches and has this weird vascular condition. So, all of those students learn from my admittedly rare case; they learn about diseases that can kill or greatly reduce quality of life and they learn about a hopeful case of someone who has had these dread things happen and has still come out the other side with a meaningful life. They learn that a stroke patient doesn't have to be old and that strokes do not have to indicate a full stop. They learn, in short, how to save someone else's life.

You know, of course, that I teach philosophy at a community college. This semester there are three full time faculty and seven adjunct faculty teaching the philosophy classes at my school. The reason this is the case is because there simply is not enough funding to hire more full time faculty. I know I've harped on this a lot, but it is relevant to this post. As an adjunct I do not have guaranteed classes and could have my classes canceled at any time. After taxes and student loan payments, I made $9,044.60 for teaching last year. That's $10,000 less than my mortgage payments. I am lucky to have a trust payment every quarter that brings my total take home to around $23,000, plus we have Jon's paycheck. But he just had his already puny salary decreased, so that isn't helping us much lately. He works in the automotive industry, you see. After taxes, student loans and insurance deductions, our total take home pay is around $35,000 a year. After paying our mortgage co-pays for medications, co-pays and deductibles for medical care, we will have about $5,000 left over for food, utilities, gas, insurance, and car care. It's doable as long as nothing unexpected comes up. But we all know how likely that is when you have autoimmune diseases in one person and diabetes in the other.

I'm sure you're wondering why I continue to teach when it is so financially unrewarding. It is not an exaggeration to say that I have lost track of how many students have told me I changed their lives or that my class saved their life or kept them in school or my encouragement was the first they had ever received from a teacher. My students usually have not had the easiest road to education and have often spent their lives unacknowledged and unappreciated; I change that as much as I can in as many ways open to me. I've visited students in jail and I've sat with them in emergency rooms. I have listened to their troubles and talked them down from a bottle of pills and a slow sleep to death. I've helped them get out of abusive relationships and I've given them all the cash I had on me when I knew they had not eaten in days. I am and always will be their advocate in life.

I don't do all of this because I want recognition or a full time position; I do it because I believe it is part of the duty I agreed to when I agreed to teach. A couple of years ago I had a devastating and eye opening experience; I thought I lost a great deal in that experience, but I was wrong about that. Even though it was enormously painful and it ripped apart relationships in my life that I thought were important, it also led me to the discovery of true importance, true meaning and purpose. I temporarily believed that I was without the foundation I erroneously thought I had which forced me to evaluate my life in fundamental ways, ways that I had not considered for a long, long time. If a thing is important to me but can easily be taken away, is it a thing that can create meaning or value in my life? The confrontation of what actually existed with what I thought existed created the necessary space in my life to fill with honest reflection. For some reason, I hadn't realized before that experience that I do have a higher power to which I am accountable and anything that transgresses what I would have this power know of me is not something I should be doing or saying. That power, of course, is the collective of my students. They are my Other, the form that gently but adamantly counter-weighs my worst qualities. It isn't just because of them that I act in ways that are ethical, but they are the surest guideposts I know of to point me in the right directions. When I realized that my duty to people who are present and watching is also present and minded, life got a lot clearer and a lot happier. It freed me from the ambiguity of particulars and allowed me to live in the universal acknowledgment of that sweet spot of interaction.

What all of that means is that I do all I can to make sure my actions, even my private actions, conform to a strict ethical standard. I almost always give people the benefit of doubt, though it is at times more difficult than anything else I do or have done. I have become far, far less judgmental than I used to be, knowing that we all struggle in ways too infinite to measure. I am conscious of the choices I make when I buy things and do all I can to save resources and money. I have a tub full of rocks I have picked out of the soil by hand that I plan to use in our front yard for pathways; I did this and continue to do it because I not only can't afford gravel, but because I want to use what I already have and save the resources to be used by someone else. It is painstaking work, but it is worth it. I am going to plant a vegetable garden in a part of the backyard where I had planned on planting bulbs. If I can grow healthy vegetables I can give a large portion away to people who would not otherwise have fresh vegetables.

I feed the birds and squirrels, even though they dig in my plants. I compost everything, even dryer lint, so that I have less waste. I freecycle things rather than throwing them away. I would not ever pass a child or animal in need without doing all I could to help, as evidenced by our three dogs and five cats in our 1300 square foot home. I am going to be taking care of my elderly father when he moves in with us this summer. I try to smile and say hello to every person I pass, though I am often lost in my own thoughts and fail at this one miserably. This is evidenced by my rheumatologist telling me just yesterday that I looked right at her at Walgreens and didn't recognize her. If I had actually seen her I would have recognized her; as usual, my head was in the clouds. I give each of my students a personal card at the end of the semester telling them how much I value them as a student and person. I write pages of comments on their papers so that they can learn to write better papers and I allow them to rewrite their papers as many times as they wish until they (hopefully) get the grade they want and deserve. I am odd about insisting that they learn something in my classes. Finally, and this is one no one knows, I leave strangers notes telling them they're more valuable than they know and that someone loves them. I've been doing it for years and not even my husband or mother know about it. I'm reluctant to give that secret away, but I am attempting to find complete transparency.

That is my ethical footprint. Now, why have I decided to lay it all out for all to see? Because I think I offer the world something of value. I think I am worth more than the money I earn or the taxes I pay. Yet, there are many people who don't agree. They may not know they don't agree, but they do not think I am valuable if they think that our measure in society is based on our financial contribution, or that someone like me does not deserve the benefit of a caring society. What this means, realistically and practically, is that if we do away with things like medicare and medicaid, or if we do not fix the way corporate insurance runs our healthcare, I will be one of the thousands of people who will either be put out onto the street to die or will be euthanized by people who have embraced the idea that if you cannot produce something worth bartering for money, then you do not deserve to live. Don't kid yourself, people: Your theory would destroy my reality because it would, quite literally, kill me. But not just me, many, many people will die of hunger, of exposure, of lack of medical care, of crime, of neglect. Do you know people who are perfect? Do you know people who are able to do and be everything necessary to care for themselves, utterly alone, for the entirety of their lives? I don't.

I'm going to give you the benefit of doubt and assume you hadn't realized just how entirely destructive libertarian theory, or what is being called conservative politics, is to people like me. I am going to assume that you assumed that the people who would be left behind are the ones who refuse to work or are too lazy to do their part. I still don't understand why you'd throw any human being away, but I will at least allow for the fact that an ethical footprint as large as mine gives me a bit more consideration in this equation. Now, give all of us the benefit of doubt. Allow us to be human, to be unlucky, and to be a part of a community, not just a money powered economy. Give yourself a larger ethical footprint by embracing the idea that all people have value and are more important than that new car you don't think you will ever have or the second home, or that vacation in Mexico. When all is said and done, would you rather have sipped margarita's by the pool or shared the burden of frailty we all are heir to by allowing me and people like me to live in your world? If you chose the latter, take that first step into a larger future and just say no to libertarian economic theory. Your future self will thank you for it.

*Utilitarianism is the womb that birthed our modern day libertarian movement.

Picture credit
I doubt that the picture was taken by that blogger, but I chose it because I liked his post. I guarantee you that the man who writes that blog and I would disagree on many things; but we can and do live in the same world and we will continue to do so successfully as long there are people like him, people who would rather hand out warm coats to the homeless than stand on a street corner protesting homosexuality.