In what sense do you think that the mind of poor people differ from the mind of rich people, and why is that? by Kyle Phoenix

 

For years I’ve worked with teens and adults and gotten a deeper insight into social class, poverty and poor vs. successful/working (rich) thinking. I try to answer these questions with new observations or insights.

Recently an insubordinate employee got fired.

He initially presented well………ok, I thought a grown man carrying a Louis Vuitton bag was suspicious but I just watched. I normally didn’t have much contact with him so it was mainly through others I got a picture of him. He made it a point to access lots of buildings on campus, to use his position to access way too much. This lead to a video of him going into offices. For candy. It was silly and he got a talking to and sent home for the day. He was security after all.

Then word got around the office that he was “pushy”, demanding, commanding, directing—-from the lowest rung on the totem pole. Educated, experienced, older people were not amused.

He made a pushy move on my department and I was like—-No. He was pissed at the No. And in talking to him, he was younger, I tried to explain why I was saying No and also suggest that he think about his motivations. His way wasn’t working, he was garnering a reputation, a bad one amongst people who are clannish about their departments and such.

He would speak over me to the pint, where I directly asked him: May I speak now?

Oddly, I remember looking at his mouth because he couldn’t stop talking as I was talking calmly to him. It was like talking was set to Reply in him but not absorb and consider.

Finally, I suggested to him that others had run through the company with much the same attitude, the ones who’d been fired. But I encouraged him not to listen to my suggestion of change, to continue his methodology because I enjoyed being proven right after I told someone/observed someone doing something incorrectly. It’s a predictive analysis game I play with myself, less about ego and more about seeing, observing actions and such cleanly, closely, dispassionately.

That was a Monday. He gets into a huge fight with another Supervisor on Saturday. I and yet a third Supervisor have to get involved to separate them and send the guy home, again for public, rank, horrid insubordination.

He’s fired that Monday.

6 Days!—-the scoring of my predictive analysis.

He, however, lives in the Bronx, his wife is unemployed, they’re half on Welfare and though he got another job soon afterward, they are constantly experiencing one of the tsunamis of poverty—-chronic, intermittent employment and firing. A longer, probing discussion with him would surely illicit that some of his egotistical pushings was from trying to get ahead and never feeling like he/they do. He’s running in place though he might have just enough extra smarts to see/know it doesn’t have to be that way. He hasn’t learned the behavioral amendments and adjustments that those of us in Middle Class or Higher have mastered.

What Are COGNITIVE STRATEGIES?

Three categories:

1.     INPUT-Quantity and quality of data gathered (PreK to 6th Grade)

·        Use planning behaviors.

·        Focus perception on a specific stimuli.

·        Control impulsivity.

·        Explore data systematically.

·        Use appropriate and accurate labels.

·        Organize space using stable systems of reference.

·        Orient data in time.

·        Identify constancies across variations.

·        Gather precise and accurate data.

·        Consider two sources of information at once.

·        Organize data (parts of a whole.)

·        Visually transport data.

2. ELABORATION-Efficient use of the data (5th Grade to 9th Grade)

·        Identify and define the problem.

·        Select relevant cues.

·        Compare data.

·        Select appropriate categories of time. .

·        Summarize data.

·        Project relationship of data.

·        Use logical data.

·        Test hypothesis.

·        Build inferences.

·        Make a plan using the data.

·        Use appropriate labels.

·        Use data systematically.

3. OUTPUT-Communication of Elaboration and Input (&th Grade Through 12 grade/college)

·        Communicate clearly the labels and processes.

·        Visually transport data correctly.

·        Use precise and accurate language.

·        Control impulsive behavior.

The Cognitive Strategies of The Poor

Folk are like what happened? And I thought about him—-what I noticed, which is why I went beyond just a supervisory-level No to his demand/request was that he exampled higher cognitive capabilities than his station in work/life. We’re all intelligent—-possessing consciousness. But some people are also smart. Smart being a measurement of cognitive speed, ability, capability, potentiality. That’s a lot of where I focus my work now in education and teaching: development, high performance. I make this point because of the emotional draining I felt in trying to help “poor people”.

One of the ways people in poverty operate in their community context—-is through relationships. Relationships are paramount in poverty because resources are scarce. One of the few ways to develop relationships is through sexual attractiveness, sexual prowess, ability to fight and —-extreme verbiage.

The smartest poor people I’ve met, literally won’t/can’t shut the fuck up. All you want to scream at them is to shut the fuck up.

Because relationships in poverty are built on communication but there isn’t a robust intellectual gymnasium of concepts, ideas, books, theories—-that Smart Ability has nowhere to develop but in the spaces of language, communication, to relationships

The poor and potentially smart become verbal delugers. Also because in poverty this tends to work.

Imagine a scene where our Smart Guy is in his poor neighborhood and trying to get something—-attention, affection, food, money—-and he has this underdeveloped but overly expansive verbiage ability that he can use to overwhelm the others around him with. Because they might not be as smart and therefore haven’t developed verbiage, they are overwhelmed and he wins whatever it is he’s trying to gain. This happens from childhood to adulthood. He then gets a job where he’s alongside but not within corporate (Middle Class, Upper, Rich, Wealthy) structures. As a human, he will use his Strengths, resources, potentiality but it’s not refined.

And it’s focused at people of higher capacity (smarts) so all that verbiage is understood but deflectable. In poverty, it might not be completely understood nor deflectable by the target.

What many (verbiage) smart poor people run into in the real (multi-classed) world is that their superpowers are annoying, useless or even detrimental because they aren’t refined (which is what education does—-it refines human beings, while also filling them with information and it also passively, teaches structure—-I’ll get to that in a minute....)

He couldn’t hear me because he couldn’t shut off his superpower because he’d never worked with Professor X to become a refined X-Man. What I was thinking of him, he’d mentioned reading books, was to gently inquire about his educational interests and perhaps steer him successfully (as I have several other security guards) towards college.

But he wouldn’t shut the fuck up.

In not shutting up he pushed away absorbing anything of relevance to his environment. He was operating solely on his impressions, motivations and when someone (me) suggested he was driving towards a cliff edge—-he dismissed me and…went over the cliff’s edge.

Listening I would offer you, is a form of structure. You have to segment yourself, your thoughts from verbalization—-set them aside and then ingest, consider the new, perhaps contrary information coming in. I think the fact that it’s contrary is where poverty thinking rebels. If we seek like and patterns and such then if you’re not taught that reality also contains differences, changes, and challenges, you will only internalize like/agreement.

Amazingly enough a few weeks later a maintenance lady came into the cafeteria and asked me what had happened to him, she’d heard he’d been fired. She then relayed that he had approached her a few weeks into working, trying to get work info to help his wife get employed. She explained what she was trying to explain to him about the hiring process—-and then she pointed out how he wouldn’t listen to her, she explained how she’d tried several times, and ways, but he rebuffed hearing what she was trying to explain. It didn’t surprise me that she so clearly defined what I’d seen because of her education level but because of it so paralleling what I thought and felt in communicating with him. She’d distinctly experienced it to and could articulate it.

Which spiraled me into thinking and asking how she was seeing this/experiencing this from him. Now curiously she presented that it was because he was Dominican. (She’s Panamanian.) That sort of sullied her mental waters to my analysis because of bias/soft racism but I allowed that perhaps there is a cultural propensity that age and cultural perspective has allowed her to see that I have not.

Like I said before I’ve moved in my Generalist work in Education to more Specialist in how to identify and develop Gifted Students, I’m no longer interested, as I joke, in being the $35k a year social worker who dies in the church basement teaching people how to write their names. I see not only the need but am now working on the means/developmental materials to accelerate adults who have Cognitive Deficiencies, some created by poverty.

Where does the Guard who was fired fall/fail?

Here’s where I heard his lack.

INPUT-Quantity and quality of data gathered

·        Use planning behaviors.

·        Focus perception on specific stimulus.

ELABORATION-Efficient use of the data

·        Compare data.

·        Summarize data.

·        Project relationship of data.

·        Use logical data.

·        Test hypothesis.

·        Build inferences.

·        Make a plan using the data.

OUTPUT-Communication of Elaboration and Input

·        Control impulsive behavior.

I would surmise that he missed out on Focusing perception on specific stimuli in PreK to 5th Grade. When I teach this to students to either do evaluations or to evaluate themselves and see what we’re trying to fill in—-I explain each Strategy/Functionality as a Bucket.

The guard’s Bucket of Focus perception on specific stimulus was not properly “filled” therefore the next levels of supportive reactive buckets have not been properly “filled”.

That’s what the mentality/mindset difference is between the Poor and the Rich. The Rich get all of their Cognitive buckets well filled and even work on further developing them. Poverty then intellectually is a result of deprivation and teaching of these Strategies. There’s, of course, systemic and resource-based reasons for poverty, at least 12 dimensions, 11 besides money.

Does My Work Work?

As an aside to how do results shake out when someone like me has classes, students and can infuse to specific buckets or fix them? The national statistic of Poverty to Middle class or higher movement is 18% of poor people will shift in their lifetimes. In my classes and work, I would say I’m batting a strong 80% shift. But one, it’s a voluntary class system that people come into where I’ve been—-so those are the people who want change—-and two, I’m able to distinctly and deliberately identify where what and how to change them.

Sometimes my students call me Professor X so I’ve run with the analogy with them but it’s not far off—-it is like trying to reform someone or refine them because you can see their raw potential has greater possibilities. The challenge to 100% success is the person and their surrounding reality may not see that possibility as possible or desirable.

#KylePhoenix

#TheKylePhoenixShow

https://amzn.to/47HYHgl

 

Mark Howe Comment

 

 · 3y

Some people don't seem to have any listening skills. I’ve a friend who tends to yammer at people 24/7. Recently she's started adult education and now that she's seen a glimpse of all the stuff she's been missing she's gone into overdrive and lectures people about the stuff she's learned even though we knew it 20 years ago. I’m proud of her but it's painful at times and I can't decide whether the her ‘preaching to the choir’ lectures are worse than the non-sensical yammering . . .:)

 

Why do poor people have many children even though they cannot afford to raise them well? by Kyle Phoenix

• One: Everyone thinks they’re a genius. Which is why geniuses often eschew being called a genius, unless there’s cash involved like a MacArthur Fellowship. Being the biggest, the smartest (for awhile) can feel good.
• Two: Sex feels good but nobody talks about it to children as much as we should. Like at 4 years old before the machinery starts working, an ongoing conversation. There aren’t many productive things to do in poverty, work can feel like a trap or a prison. Luxuries are non-existent or so generalized that they become normalized—-smart phones, giant screen TVs, digital music and TV, clothing. And your hormones are pressing for sex. Sex becomes akin to entertainment because it is a place to lose one’s conscious self for a period of time. Unfortunately all that loss time generally means birth control is lost too. Or you’re in a social setting where birth control is not discussed. A few years ago teaching a GED Biology class, I stapled varying sizes of condoms, dental dams, a female condom, a cut out of an IUD, a picture of a pill to a piece of cardboard and passed it around the class as I talked about HIV and handed out pictures of male/female genitalia-reproductive diagrams. Was I teaching Sex Ed? Maybe. Was I teaching Biology? Kinda. Was I teaching something they already knew? No. It was the most giggly, chatty class and there were dozens of questions about bodies, safe sex, positions, etc.. Poor people are not taught about their bodies, especially the males. One young lady, about 27, who was a studious student and already had one child, said that she was going through a list in her head of things she didn't know that I had explained in that 2 hours. She knew that her life would’ve been different if she had known this before 18. She wasn’t happy with that realization and she said she was also a little miffed that it was a man who told her about her body, more than her family had.
• Three: Poverty does not feel good. Children are a joy, until they’re not. There is a lot of energy and parties and such around having a baby. That generally wears off about a year after the baby is born.
• Four: Children attend to you, pay attention to you, idolize you…for awhile.. and that can feel good.
• Fifth: If you’re poor there’s very little that you may create in your life that will go on past your lifetime, except for children. That can give you a good feeling…in poverty.
• Sixth: There are very few ways to validate Womanhood and Manhood. How do you know when you’ve crossed the line? We have artificial, arbitrary age and licensing lines but not necessarily socially conferred spaces where the whole of society now views you as an adult. Children confer this even if society judges you on a sliding scale, it still stamps you an adult—-a woman, a man. Motherhood is venerated in poverty. You’re a real man when your “seed” is born….now apply for Welfare and Food Stamps, momma. That real seeding man left 75% of single mothers. Without organized rites of passage, how is a person to know or manage afterwards?
• Seventh: No one thinks that their children do it. They do it about 14x more than you think they do. They’re doing it right now. Go look at some kids, start at about 9 years old. They’re fucking and sucking and Frenching and licking and mastering oral skills that they’ll deem passe by 16. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I worked at a Middle School, 6–8th grades. That’s about 11–13 years old. The children would leave every day and a group of them, a significant percentage of the 100 entering student body, say a dozen a day, would congregate at a latchkey kids house and they’d have a sex party. An orgy. They’d bang lovely for hours. Another boy was 13 but held back a grade and sexually active with the boys and the girls of the school. He would watch the incoming class and choose who he was going to seduce. He didn’t mean it in a bad predatory way, he was just very healthy sexually without boundaries that comes with informed knowledge. Another girl, her mother came up to school one morning and asked where she was? We assumed she was with her. The girl would regularly go out at night, all dolled up at 13, looking like a woman, to meet her date, a 30+ year old man. They had extreme issues yes but they were the students in a highly attentive charter school that had the resources to address the issues that was rapidly slipping by parents. Imagine all of the schools, all of the places across the country, that don’t have those kinds of resources and patience to actively re-mold the children’s identity/sexuality?

Now bundle all of this mentality together, pick and choose which is predominant and it becomes more evident why “poor” people continue an act that doesn’t make sense. Validation and entertainment, basically.

#KylePhoenix

#TheKylePhoenixShow

Is it more difficult for poor people to succeed because they are constantly in survival mode? by Kyle Phoenix

Yes. Emphatically so. I have to remember this when counseling students, pointing out things even explaining taxes/withholding. I've learned to stop mental cpr on the walking dead.

Recently I was talking to a grad student who was lamenting bills, low pay. I suggested in exchange for a lower return he raise his exemptions and itemize rather than EZ 1040. He freaked out, then shutdown and then turned on law & order on his phone. He then repeated "I'm not going to change my mind." I then pointed out I wasn't trying to change his mind, I was just explaining a legal way to get $200 more in his weekly check. $800 every two weeks not enough for his bills. This would be another $800 plus and still a couple of thousand back from taxes. Its not what you make, its what you keep. There was a moment, true cognitive dissonance where I realized we both realized the opposite idea. He realized I wasn't trying to change his mind about anything.

I realized I was trying to fundamentally change his mind about everything.
I was suggesting that the modality he was operating from geared questioning that an HR person saying put 0 or 1 was only saying that because they had been told so too. No one who didn't do some thinking and investigation engaged money like that. But if you've just got the job, under $40k a year, you're happy.....and scared.

My suggestion of asking why and even taking agency to do differently blew his mind.

The tyranny of poverty is it forces people away from critical thinking.
A construction contractor mentioned taxes and that his preparer hasn't gotten him back a return in over 20 years. But costs $200 to prepare the taxes and last year the IRS took another $500 on top of the 38% fed and 15% state and 9.7% fica. I suggested he stop treating the preparer like an oracle and go to somewhere like hr block and treat them like a partner, even better a knowledgeable but directed employee. He froze.

I saw the same cognitive dissonance brain jerk in him.

A third employee (its a big campus/building) felt he was paying too much but was scared of questioning his tax guy. Scared! When I asked him whose money it was he hesitated then said his----and got my point.

All three examples make between $30-75k a year but have a poverty mindset. It can feel like being in the bottom of a slave ship if I get into conversations. Honestly I find myself being selective about company at work or just disappearing to go out for lunch.

Harsh reality that I realized a decade ago: Not everyone will make it. Some people are grist for the mill, chum for the rapacious hunger of capitalism through consumerism.

I estimate 50% of blacks over the next 100 years and 25-50% of whites and Latinos based on family histories. 10% of Asians. 50% of native Americans.
The real hot entrepreneurial business of the future is poverty management----real estate, job centers, food supply, entertainment sources----oh, wait that's kinda true now.

The first coworker is job-hunting but has had no success in 3 months because he's chasing a number. So say he's offered $40k a year. He leaps from $32k to $40k without understanding that he's just gone from the 30% tax.bracket to 38%. So his net before was around $19k, it would then be an extra $100 a week. $200 biweekly. Or a real gain of only $4k. A year later, maybe two until he's dancing with the credit devil to make the $40k feel like more. Because he's only getting $25k in cash, taxes, not counting sales tax and financial fees, another 20% "invisible tax".

He would leave $32k for $40k to ultimately make maybe $1k more. But he'll look at the salary number and mentally boast he's making $10k more! And in order to validate himself---a Black reaction to social discrimination, he'll lease or car loan buy a vehicle and the $25k car will make him feel like he's making/worth $65k a year. Then you know loan servicers sell your info to banks right? So here comes the Chase, Citi, TD Bank $5000 Visa....because you deserve it. Actually its because you have been flagged as a sucker.

Now your girlfriend or boyfriend becomes a financial necessity....so you shack up . Hetero world you spend enough no married time sexing, there will be a baby/babies. A child is now a flat $12,000 cost per year if you stay together, 17% of your adjusted gross WORTH not simply salary, courts have seen men get McDonald's jobs . Courts have amended how they measure income/worth.

The bonus of LGBT relationships is generally a planning for children and a lack of legal marriage. Dudes I've, shacked up, just child support, married and divorcing, alimony.

The child support Armageddon is real, keeping people in poverty.

Two other coworkers, 1 has one daughter, finished paying $400 a month after 21 years, in August.

Another was a grandfather by the time he'd paid off out of arrears for three adult children.

Back to Dude at $40k and inevitable breeding.
. $30k in car, credit and another $10k plus in miscellaneous added to your salary is $100k, and 17% is $17k.

Without the ability, skill to recognize financial management and how money works, money itself will keep him in poverty.

And he desperately is seeking a girlfriend, he'll have a couple of kids before 35. Probably broken up by 40. Paying child support until he's 50. Another 17% tax.

Which means he'd have to realize a 20% salary increase yearly to meet childcare cost for 18 years plus 3% in inflation.

Focusing on survival and using sex and entertainment as distractions and then sleep, I realized talking to him he was one of the Future 50, the direct opposite of the Talented Tenth. But by the time he realizes it, if ever consciously it will be too late.

But the unconscious mind speaks first and what did he say after my discussion with him.....?
"I won't change my mind...."
I heard him.
I'll never interrupt that feedback loop with anything above 6th grade conversational drivel again.
He announced that fundamentally the infection of poverty has consumed the host rendering him powerless.

Ramon Gonzalez

 · 5y

It’s the “now” mindset. People don’t think long term but paycheck to paycheck.

I was raised this way. I worked at Walmart and was not happy. MY parents told me I should be happy to have a job. I bought into this up until I turned 26 and had a WTF moment.

12 years later, a lot of reading and learning and I am at $85k. No longer trying to get a large return at the end of the year because that is just an interest free loan to the government. Instead, I try to break even in order to be able to put more money into 401k and get even more tax breaks.

Now I am trying to learn short term investing to create a 2nd stream of passive income. Money should work for you not the other way around.