Last update: 01/08/00

For me, the question I always ask is "will there always be prostitution"? This is a shorthand question for the metaphorical "will the rich always get richer"? It is easy to say that this is a natural law.

Hunger, plague, pestilence. All time, and of all time conditions like rape, plunder and pillage. I grew up with all of the songs that bemoaned man's inhumanity to man. I think we live in an enlightened era. I do not know if there are fewer hungry people now than there were 150 years ago, even by percentage. Certainly more people can read, more live longer.

But I have some friends who are stuck. They call themselves "rats in a cage". On a treadmill; trapped with no way to get out.

There are institutions, bureaucracies and procedures that are completely unmanageable to them. They fall in every trap door. There is a confluence of circumstance that evokes their "worst story you ever heard".

I believe their plight to be daunting and very real. Normally it is difficult for me to hear a long tale of woe. A well-developed activity in our culture is the assignation of an underlying conspiracy. These theories abound. Mostly just fanciful descriptions of the motives of others as motives of others as so much more than the primitive "I gotta save my ass!". The vindictiveness and plotting for revenge eats mostly a meal of the individual who harbors it, and feeds it.

My brother says that they have to change their view of themselves. We both agree about how hard this is and about the time frame. He deems this his "first square".

My feeling of inadequacy is acute. The person describing their situation is close to me. I want the best for them and all of their activities. The remedies that I would think of or how I approached a similar situation seem remote. Not completely, but almost, inappropriate.

So I listen, try to analyze the situation, and give my characteristically logical conclusion and the next step to take in a given area. They mostly do not make the same mistake twice. Things get better, things get worse. Their nose stays just above the water line. Is this, must this be, the way it was, is and always will be? And more powerlessness for me??

02/11/99