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< | | | | The Politics of Home | |
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< | -- By MarcusStrong - 15 May 2012
I’ve always wanted a big house, with big windows that let in a ton of light, hardwood floors, a study with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and a few acres of land surrounding it (not for a lawn and shrubbery but for a small farm). It’s probably because my family moved a lot when I was a kid, well into my teenage years, and no place ever felt like mine. But the desire for a home of my own is also part of my inheritance as an American.
The Modern Home
For much of American history, the home has been an important piece of citizens’ lives and goals and identity.
Why "much of"? When
wasn't it? And why "American history"? From who else's history are
we distinguishing it, where "home" wasn't "an important piece of
... lives and goals and identity"?
They were places of freedom but also cultivated objects in which their owners could take pride.
Surely those are the
homes of wealthy people, not all people? Is the log cabin, the
clapboard shack, the prairie farmhouse a "cultivated object"?
Today, citizens still work for them, but most buy them instead of build them. The home has also been a lever upon which several legal and political battles have turned in this country. Emigrants from England came to this country to freely practice religion in their homes.
Some did, some did not. Almost all of them actually practiced their
religions in churches and meeting houses. And there were many other
kinds of people here, who weren't English. Because you haven't told
us where you're going with this, we don't know which words in these
sentences are important, or whether to worry about the possible
difficulties your factual assertions are introducing. That's one of
the many reasons you want to get your central idea articulated as
early as possible. | >
> | -- By MarcusStrong - 15 May 2012 (edited July 2012) | | | | |
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> | Is a House Just a Home? | | | | |
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< | White residents in early suburban neighborhoods created racial covenants to keep black citizens from having homes next to them. | >
> | As Americans struggle over domestic issues of immigration, gay marriage, healthcare, and the economy, I often ask myself: Is a house just a home? Since the recession, many finance experts would say that if even if you’re lucky enough to own your house, an unstable economy and slowly recovering housing market make it just a place to live in comfort with little extra value. In financial terms, I would agree, but what if we viewed a home’s value from a political and intellectual viewpoint? Though the home can be a place of comfort or family solidarity, it can also be a place of political ideas, where different ideas and viewpoints are developed, confronted, and even used to enact social change. That point is most salient for people whose home has also become their workplace in the new economy. As Americans engage in an increasingly polarized political process, they possess a vehicle for social interaction and change, where families can engage each other’s views but also where neighbors or strangers can share their opinion. The ends and means of the interactions I’m suggesting are not purely political, but rather ways in which communities can grow stronger in the wake of this nation’s difficulties. In my opinion, how we use our homes, who we invite in them, and the human values we foster in them will decide America’s future. | | | | |
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Some residents in some neighborhoods. Sometimes it was Jews,
sometimes both.
Even now, the home is important for how Americans see themselves and judge wealth in this country. The mortgage crisis was as much about a home to come back to as it was about jobs and finances.
Given our history and changes in technology, thinking about the place of the home in our lives will be important as citizens and families recover. Given those changes though, is the home still important? The modern home, like many parts of today’s commercial world, is marked by convenience. The goal isn’t just a home to call your own, but one with all the comforts of automation: automated coffee machines, automated washers and dryers, and constant temperature control. Oh, let’s not forgot DVR. To me, these qualities reinforce complacency, about our own lives and the complex politics of the world outside. As someone constantly thinking about my future, the dichotomy between the lives we build for work and the lives we build for home seems strange. Why can’t the home be a creative space as well as a place of rest? Personally, I’m worried that as my commitments to school and to career deepen, I won’t have any gateway for knowledge and self-exploration. When I’m not relaxing, I want my future home to be as constructive a workplace as my future office. Every citizen doesn’t share the same feelings. Especially in today’s economy, people want to take a break after struggling to keep their job or maintain their family financial status quo. But I think the struggle of today’s economy is an exact reason to create a constructive home. Without any opportunity elsewhere, many people are forced to work from home to create opportunities, especially young people. My classmates and I are fortunate enough to be in New York for law school, but many of our generation have returned home to their parents and were already there in the first place. As good entry-level jobs become harder to procure and education costs rise, there’s a need to able to learn outside of the classroom and the office.
What was the outline for
this paragraph? It seems to wander. Let's figure out what the
central idea is here, and express it tightly, developing it clearly
through a series of connected sentences.
To take one particular point, I don't understand the idea that
"convenience" is somehow in tension with "the constructive home."
Homes are becoming workplaces again, one might say, after the two
centuries in which industrialization separated the workplace from the
residence. The "labor-saving" materials and devices of the American
post-war home marked it as a place of less "domestic employment,"
with fewer or no servants. The production occurring at home is now
mostly information, not woven cloth or eggs and milk for market.
Home Is Where the Heart Is
That may be an argument for leaving the home behind completely. I have friends for whom location has never been important, and for whom being able to function in a globalized economy is more important. But that’s a naïve proposition considering our current political climate. The most intense political debates in the news cycle are domestic, both in terms of the nation and the home. Whatever side of the political aisle, people care less about global work competency and more about who will live next door. Debates over gay marriage and illegal immigration show that many people’s true political values stem from the home. As a child, it’s where you learn and develop your own political and moral views. As an adult or parent, it’s often where you exercise those views or protect them. But even though I value home as a personal workplace, valuing the home as a bastion of political ideas scares me. When I first conceived of this essay, I thought of my future home as my own ideological bunker, where I could freely consider my thoughts and act upon my moral and political values without hindrance. I could cook and eat only whole grains and locally sourced produce, and not consume more than I needed. I could raise kids who believe that gay, straight, bisexual, or transgender doesn’t matter and that all should be equally respected and loved as people. I could invite all my friends, poor, middle-class, or wealthy, to my home together, no matter how big or small. But does that prevent me from experiencing a part of the world? I think back to high school kids I mentored in college, whose goals were to be rappers or athletes because they hadn’t seen other models for them to aspire to. But even though I’ve seen more models of life than them, maybe I’m putting up the walls of a future ideology and forgetting the doors.
Again, I don't
understand the sequence of the sentences. What is the central idea
of this paragraph, and how do the sentences that follow express
aspects or developments of that idea? Maybe exposing the headings of
the outline would help. | >
> | Even though I’ve moved a lot since I was a kid, I’ve often argued with my parents about our home, and those arguments helped evolve my political stance, and theirs as well. Our debates weren’t centered around the cost of a mortgage or the rising interest on a loan, but on issues of race, religion, nationality or sexuality. Essentially, we argued about the people we did or did not bring into our home. But why is what we argue behind closed doors, at BBQs, particularly our own, so important to me? To people who seek peaceful homes, those arguments may seem counterproductive. But to me, those arguments exemplify the larger, albeit more complex debates that politicians debate in Congress or lawyers argue before the Supreme Court. Though the issue of jobs is very important in today’s political climate, politicians use the home and who lives near it, both to forward and hinder social debates over immigration, same-sex marriage, and affirmative action. The question of who lives next door isn’t very far from the question of who’s taking my job, or what’s being taught in my child’s school. Conversely, the results of those national debates often decide the answer to question of just who will live next door. That’s not to discount people’s actions and the larger social movements that push for change in our nation’s laws. The small arguments we have at home, with a spouse, with our parents, with friends, or with our children, can be the ones that solidify or reshape our political views. The conflict that starts the course of social change is just as important as the end result. | | | | |
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> | The Modern Home | | | | |
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< | A House Is Not a Home | >
> | The political effect of homes is also shaped by how we use them. Up until recently, the modern home, like many parts of today’s commercial world, was a place of convenience. The goal wasn’t just a home to call your own, but one with all the comforts of automation: automated coffee machines, automated washers and dryers, and constant temperature control. To me, these qualities reinforced complacency, about both our own lives and the complex politics of the world outside. Unless we’re making a consistent effort, comfort and convenience become much higher priorities than reevaluating our own political views. For a time, the home’s legacy, instead of as a potential place of action, was a place of rest. However, that static characteristic of many in the middle-class was turned on its head after the recent economic recession. For the first time since industrialization separated the two, the home has become a workplace again, where men and women produce information instead of the domestic products of previous centuries. | | | | |
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< | Neither type of home, global and wide reaching or reflective and constrained, is right or wrong. Within and between each one is a myriad of ways to live and to build a home. But any home can be limiting if taken to an extreme. As we recover from the economic crisis and find a path out of our current political crisis, I still want to concern myself with building a home where hard work is valued over convenience. I still want a place for constructive reflection of my work, my ideas, and my desires for the world. But should I procure and maintain that space at the expense of anyone else, or their ideas? My house might be mine, but maybe my home is the place to share. | >
> | But does the reintegration of the workplace into the home make for a location more or less likely for political interaction? Because the domestic workplace is more information based than past domestic employment, citizens have fewer interactions across classes, and therefore have fewer opportunities to exchange political and social views. If an employee is working from home, any customer he serves will be online, so there are fewer skin colors, classes, genders and sexualities with which to interact. Face to face interaction isn’t an indicator of social harmony, but rather one type of social interaction exempt from an online economy. The opportunity for inward and family political growth exists, but, in a world of celebrity driven media, is under threat from the entertainment meant to give our minds a break. The current situation isn’t new. It has existed since the postwar era, when time-saving appliances and new recreational devices gave Americans more time, for work outside the home but also entertainment within it. The difference now is that we’re currently at war, the economy is in bad shape, citizens are increasingly divided over what to do, and our education system is preparing fewer leaders than it needs to turn it all around. | | | | |
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> | The Home's Place in the Future | | | | |
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< | I understand why you say you want to keep editing this. It's a fine
first draft, but it needs tightening in the large and the small
scale. It doesn't have to be an "argument," but it does need to
discipline the ideas it presents, showing their relationship more
clearly. Let's see if we can identify the most important idea, the
two or maybe it's three subordinate ideas that flow out of it, and
the specific instances, illustrations, or implications of each that
the essay can express. Let's get those in an outline that puts the
structure forward clearly, and then order the pieces so that the
reader will know at each paragraph break where she has been and where
she's going next. | >
> | So is the home’s value as a place of political and social growth as low as its financial value? I don’t think so. Despite my reservations about the new domestic workplace, working at home gives parents the possibility to spend more time with their kids or get more involved in their community. It also can inspire professionals or activists to network and find resources they may have not sought before. The home is also a potential bastion of education, where both kids and adults can learn more about this country and the world. As we recover from the recession, I think whether we shape our homes as bastions of constructive action or convenience, will shape their political power, as talking points or sites of social change. | | | | |
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