The Urge to Give...

Today, when coming in from lunch, a good friend and co-worker came in, visibly crying, and distressed.

Concerned, I failed to notice a bandage around the forearm near their elbow.

Walking back to my desk (which is on the way to her desk), they began to tell me about how their first attempt to give blood resulted in the discovery that they can't due to small veins. This distressed them to the point of emotional breakdown.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am renowned far and wide for my inability to summon compassion for my fellow faceless man. My friends are my friends, and I will be there for them in any way I can. But otherwise, I have always felt that people in their natural form are cruel, mean, selfish animals.

My form of giving to people has been to help the ones that are trying to get extract themselves out of a given situation. "Teach a man to fish" rather than "Give a man a fish", if you will.

So to have someone in my office/cubicle crying because they were unable to help random faceless people was an odd and enlightening experience. It expressed an intense desire to better their surroundings, and not in a focused, visible way.

I suppose it is in matching with this person's giving nature. I tend to want to invest in people, to see my time spent well and things to come to fruition.

In Santa Barbara, people give in such dispassionate ways: recycling, volunteering for animal causes, putting political bumper stickers on their car, etc.

I guess this is my first collision with someone who genuinely cares about such things with passion up here.

It actually stopped me and gave me a moment of introspection. How odd.

Now I want demographics...

Well, I finally read an article that describes how I feel towards people in Santa Barbara.

Just to set the scene, when it comes to housing, EVERYONE here rents. Engineers for 25 years rent. Pastors rent. Newlyweds rent. Homeless people, had they the money to set aside for non-homelessness, would be renting.

And yet, the vanity that permeates this place dictates that they should not be left without fashionable wheels.

Enter this article. Basically, people are overspending for their rides. They are getting too much car.

This quote REALLY applies to Santa Barbara:

Treating cars as a status symbol. You can't watch television for long without being bombarded by car commercials, and many of us have absorbed the idea that we are what we drive. It's complete BS, of course, but some people have been so brainwashed that they literally drive themselves into bankruptcy.

And yet, they rent.

The real reason, I think, is that people fail to see the big picture. A car drops by a quarter of its value the instant you turn it over for the first time.

Historically, over a 10 year span, houses have always gone up in value.

So why?

Three reasons:

1. You are seen out and about in your car. Being the vain place it is, Santa Barbarians must be seen in the latest/greatest/coolest. Anything less would lessen their social status.

2. People don't visit much here. I thought LA was flaky until I moved up here. People here in SB will say "oh, sure! We'll be down!" All the time. It rarely happens.

3. A house anchors you. People here take pride in their ability to pick up at a moment's notice. Making deep roots means that you have to invest in your community. People here are wary to make any kind of social commitment to one another. It interferes with their free spirit-ed-ness. In my opinion, it also detracts from building a sense of community.