nurture v. nature in the class wars and the baby chronicles

I've always had a difficult relationship with money. Virtually nothing can tie me in more knots than injustices that come from having or not having money. I'm even uncomfortable with the physical reality of it. Being near the stuff leaves me hyper-aware of its psychological and social implications. It can smell my fear.

My husband and I took a trip once to some little Gold Rush towns in the mountains of California. One of our activities was to spend a morning at a silent Zen retreat. (Yes, a little known fact of Buddha's life was his stint panning for those elusive yellow nuggets in the hills of California.)

It was me who had chosen this stop. Out of curiosity about the practice. Out of the need for contemplative moments in my days. For the beauty of the place. For the yummy vegetarian food. The silent part was strangely more disturbing to my naturally quiet husband than to me. We were awkward visitors trying hard to learn the rules of our host culture. People who had chosen this as a life's vocation glided here and there in robes, reminders that we were temporary intruders, observers at best.

For several hours, we had been silently meditating, silently pacing over rocks and streams, and we would now silently eat. As we entered the dining hall, slowly, mindfully, a small basket for donations hung on the wall to the left of the lunch line. In what I hoped would be a fluid and unobtrusive gesture, I attempted to drop a bill into the basket. As I did so, it fell from its perch, its contents of checks, coins, and dollars clattering in all directions. The silence was broken even more by my feeble squeak of "Sorry!"

As the stories of Bush's military record unfold, disappear, unfold again and the liberal side of things cast snide remarks about a "senator daddy" and the privilege that wealth can bring, I grow anxious. I can't wait for his sorry ass to be pinned to the ground and pray it'll happen in the minds of the average American before the election. But there is more. I worry just slightly about stretching the divide of class wider, about feeding my own bias that money is bad and people with money are bad people. Of course what Bush did and does was and is wrong. Of course he is a lying hypocritical bastard with innocent blood on his hands and as much good will and understanding for humanity and the natural world as…well, he doesn’t have any good will or understanding. But there's a tiny part of me thinking that the class divide doesn't need any more crow bars.

While I'm sorry there are any examples of exceptionally rich people at all, there are examples of exceptionally rich people who do good. Take George Soros. And in a necessarily controversial move, Soros has more recently poured his fortune into direct efforts to unseat Bush and the War Machine.

Right away, I notice the major difference between these Georges. Bushy inherited his money, while Soros earned it. Nature v. Nurture again? And in this example, nurture is winning. It gives me hope in a way (the way that says I'm desperate for hope here). Hope that I can teach my child things. That he or she won't be needled and prodded by our genes alone in the struggle to make sense of the world. Can I teach her to stand taller even though the genetic odds are that she'll be rather short? Can I teach him away from depression when all the elements for a struggle against his own brain as the enemy will lie within his dna? And despite a history of hearts that give out too young, can I massage that heart to beat longer and with love for people even as screwed up as Bush?