The Haves and the Havents: Part 2

By the magic of the havent, he makes the have feel foolish, gets an edge over him. However, this domain, the employment of ingenuity, though one the poor has a natural aptitude in, he has no monopoly of. The rich promptly adopts the poor's invention, appropriates it. The poor is not disadvantaged by said appropriation; his method emphasizes the ingenuity of use rather than the superfluity of materials, and in the game of survival, each playing to his exclusive strength, the playing field is so leveled.

In relation to their material situations, the difference in the strategy of the two is shaped by attitudes developed, by necessity, in experience. The pressure to exploit materials to extremes is put upon the poor externally, by his environment, and often beyond his control, which he is forced to respond to desperately. On the other hand, the rich one's compelling factor is internal, under his control, and he imposes himself on his environment in a process taken on deliberately. Under these different conditions, the poor asks, "can I tease out life out of this?" and the rich, spying out the solution of the poor, asks "to what extent can I continue teasing out the potentials of this till I exhaust it, where is the line between its ultimate utility and utter ruin. The poor's interest is in the outcome of the process, while that of the rich is in the process itself.

The poor does not esteem his faculty of novel exploitation in itself; only for its usefulness in keeping him alive longer does he value it. It is doubtful if he is even aware of it as a thing. Because the materials necessary for his survival are seldom sufficient, their supply uncertain, and must be filled continually, he has to keep in an eye out for such opportunities. Almost anything counts towards plenitude, because almost anything is good enough. Parched and trekking along unfamiliar desert, you don't scoff at foul water. Conversely, the rich, applying the sense of the poor to his significant endowment, suddenly discovers that what he has grows by a large factor, plenitude becoming surplus. He faces an urgent crisis: he has to deal with the increase in material, increased beyond capacity.

Let's sketch this out with, for instance, color as our material of focus. The rich, working on a project needing color, may have in his cache the full ROYGBIV range of colors while his poor counterpart might have to do with just a cup of blue. Should the genius of the havent discover that adding black and white and gray to different samples in varying degrees produces shades and tints and tones of blue, he enriches his palette to match his better-off rival's. His eye opened by the poor's discovery and inspired to further experiment, the rich's large supply will likely give him a vast variety of colors, limited only by the extent to which he will apply himself.

On finding the resources needed for survival, the senses of the poor experience relief so intense it floods all his other senses except that appreciating his renewed lease on life. He does not notice the shades and play of taste on his tongue. Too flush with relief he doesn't notice the dried fish he wolfs down is tinged with fungus. The have, with access to plenty, cannot access this feeling open to the havent. He starts on a plateau in a process that for the deprived starts with tension, ramps uphill to a dramatic climax and slides down into a soothing resolution. He begins to pick at his materials, pick them apart, turn it over and over. I suppose he aims for the tension and release, available cheaply to the less fortunate havent. So he turns his material into a lode for some quality of his choosing. It becomes ore that must be refined and he too pursues something in his food as food, and his choice material gains artificial scarcity.

Of the poor, the rich says, "This one fine, that one fine, na him make madman property dey plenty." To which the poor in defence, responds with the proverb, "The madman and his mind are in functional accord." A handy and large, diversely-furnished and motley storage (or, at least, capacity and tendency to store) is essential for the poor's survival, because his problem of lack is real and visceral and must be addressed directly. The sight of this offends the sensibilities of the rich. At the increased plenty that results from applying the ingenious sense, the rich is over saturated. To keep sane, to keep from going bonkers in the tide that threatens to swamp him, his sense must be converted into a discriminating one, a very critical one. He hasn't world and time enough to examine an abundant lot. He must pick from the lot the most ideal, in the most ideal state, under the most ideal conditions. This is jumping the gun; the very question of what is ideal comes up when he selects a quality in his materials, making it prime among others, and selects for that quality, discounting what's left over. His process is quite wasteful, scandalous to the poor, but quite a blessing. The refuse heap of the rich is a treasure trove for the poor. Isn't that what the dog says about why he tags behind the big bellied man, that he looks likely to deposit goodies, if not by pooping, then by puking.

To return to the color illustration used above, the poor will save color samples as they become available and use indiscriminately (not in the sense of a spendthrift, only lacking judgment), but the rich will come up with color theory. The rich will present bright red together with washed out or darkened green and thrash almost all other color choices. The only thing that will compel the poor to consider thinning his green paint is if his stock has run too low to do for the task at hand. Color to the poor adds value in a general way to objects, but this value is valid, for the rich, only when color is applied according to a particular principle. The poor will manage concrete objects, items that are as real as the hazards to which is life is often exposed. The rich will manage concepts principles and processes, abstract rules to govern the management of materials.