Excuse Me, I Am A Bourgeois Polymath

Well, yes, I guess it's finally time admit it. I am unabashadly and now unashamadly bourgeois. If it weren't for the free market system and capitalism, I wouldn't have a roof over my head. I sell things. Things I believe in. Books. Movies. Music. My passion for all three enables me to traffic my favorites flagrantly, all to make a buck. But before you condemn me, dear reader, know that I take my job seriously. I read the books I sell, listen to the c.d.'s I recommend, and watch the movies I exchange for a profit, which provides me, along with the artists who create all of this, with a living. And yes, virtue is to be found in the bourgeois. When I'm at work, I'm not drinking, carousing, cursing, or hurting anyone. I am sober, temperate, considerate of others including my staff as well as my other external customers (the ones who pay the bills). One ammenity to being bourgeois is you're not tied up with society and social trappings of the upper classes. You work hard, do your best, and when you go home, your time is your own (and your family's). You may be lacking in upward mobility, and may always be threatened with downward mobility, but for the present, the bills are up to date and you can afford your leisure. This leisure allows you time to ruminate over not one, but many different subjects modern man wrestles with. Spirituality, History, Mathematics, Humanities, Technology, the Seven Liberal Arts or whatever else catches your eye. And to the bourgeois, much can catch the eye as you get a glimpse of the finer things the upper echelon enjoys, while remembering the basic things you enjoyed when you were poor. Yes, poor. Living downtown with five other broke people in a house you could literally see through when standing on the street, the cold wind whistling through the rooms during the winter because you couldn't afford such luxuries as heat. The manna from heaven was ramen noodles and the ambrosia was Blatz beer. So having tended to the middlin', you are one who's had the ups and had the downs that cumulatively, provide one with a rich, interwoven existence.

So it's just as desperate here in the middle as it is anywhere I suppose. And at times, the desperation becomes vulgar where it is not silent, where a voice is raised here, or a displeasure expressed there, with the way things are going, but it's desperation all the same.

But in the long run, you feel like though you lack a career, you will always have a job. If you keep a strong back. And don't upset the wrong people.