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The uniqueness of my work, my experience in teaching is that I’m constantly training in things that allow me to see the world and its’ peoples differently.I bought the above magazine earlier this year. I have a thing that I try and do, which is buy 2–4 magazines a months, different magazines than I have bought before. Sometimes they’re in a different language, or about a domain that I know nothing about—-this time I bought the above because it went into detail about Kanye and his shoe/sneaker work. I don’t know much about him, 1 song on my IPod for years then I bought a CD in a mass Goodwill sale then downloaded another song. I’m not a deep consumer of entertainment so over a decade—-14 songs for me from him is a deluge.It’s a very good article and I got a deep insight into him, his process, his thinking and yes, even how sneakers (an item I’ve never spent more than $25 on as of 2019) is an amazing, creative, diverse artistic venue. I put the magazine in my laptop bag and go on about my life of skiffing through several venues for work, teaching, learning, writing.At one space, the Gossip Mill is tingling with info about a security guard named John. I’d seen John around, he’d been at the facility for about 8 months, but I really didn’t talk to him at length. The scuttlebutt on him from other supervisors was that he was unique, different, troublesome, he’d been in fights years before when he’d first worked for the company, had been fired from his last job, had recently been offered voluntary separation from the company.The scuttlebutt comes that John is now actively homeless though he makes about $36k a year. John has three children, two teens/adults and one infant.John stays in the building overnight, not his shift, through a weekend and it all starts to make active sense as well. The building/campus is large enough that it’s not unusual, sporadically, for someone, a student or an employee, to snooze through the night. If one is responsible, careful, clean and such, it’s one of those things that a billion dollar entity ignores. Most people who snooze do it so infrequently that it doesn’t register.John is not a discreet kind of person.His staycation sets off the other shifting guards and they begin complaining—-amongst each other and the Gossip Train—-but they’re trying to give him some leeway to pull his life together.He appears at my office floor one day, all dressed and prompt and security alert though there’s no reason to be. The Security Supervisor says John was approved for the day so he’ll be on our floor. John is chatty, too chatty, annoying even but the whole floor is put in the position of we know personal stuff about John but he doesn’t know we know so we all pretend not to know. (I notice bullshit like this in offices which is why I’ve designed my career to not be in a singular office for too long.) Turns out days later, he wasn't approved to work but was wheedling to get overtime…because he’s homeless.John inevitably wanders over to my office where I’m typing away and strikes up a conversation, after several gentle rebuffs. I’m working on revisions and edits for Multiple Orgasm Training for Men and the subtitle includes the word omnisexual which John must look up on his phone. As a teacher, I’m sort of happy that he does, turning off not just rap music (which I don’t have a genre issue with) but the rap is also videos and he constantly has to engage people with it, press them to look at it.John then meanders into discussing his family, growing up, trying to bond with me and reveals though he might not understand it as significant abuse as a child. We were discussing my Pepsi drinking, he said that as a child his mother liked it but wouldn’t share it with the children. One time at about 9, he drank some and when she asked him if he’d drank it, he said no. So she stabbed her child in the arm with a fork until he was bleeding. He offered to show me the scar. He’s about 35 now.He wanders away.I mention to one of the other supervisors, Bob a day or so later that there’s a room/board/sublet agency that is near Columbia University which I regularly refer students to. The great thing about this agency, it’s been there for about a decade, is that they have rooms to apartments at all financial levels—-from $100 a week to $1000 a month, in any borough, neighborhood, you want/can afford. I tell Bob I’ll get him the business card and he can forward it on to John whom he knows much better than I do (or will) as his supervisor. I don’t have their business card on me but when I get home I’ll find it, snap a pic of it, text it to Bob and Bob can give it to John, he doesn’t have to include my name in the process, just hand it off. I say this last part because I don’t want John to feel exposed. I do as I say and a Bob forwards it on and orbits converge again.A few weeks later, John approaches my office thrilled because he has a pair of the new Kanye sneakers, he proudly shows them to me, he’d just wandered with a coworker to buy them. Apparently sneakers have very specific release dates—-actually having read the Forbes article, Adidas is being very parsimonious with shoe releases, like only 40,000 at a time, sometimes a year to drive up prices/interest.John, the article, and such all converge to me, so that I can actually have a cogent conversation about the sneakers and have a reasonable guess at what they cost. ($300-$800 a pair, the ones John bought.)I’m thinking, okay, there are times when you make it through a fire personally, a rough patch, and you splurge a little to reward yourself for the survival. He worked out his homeless thing last month so he’s feeling good.John is…unique…actually by that I mean now in our second discussion and the clinical psycho-social I’ve unintentionally gathered on him from previous encounters and scuttlebutt, he’s presenting with signs of Borderline Personality Disorder, Depression and Bi-polarity.But, you, a lot of my students, and coworkers do too.I don’t mean that I work with crazy people, I mean that people display lots of crazy signs and signals but that doesn’t make them crazy. I also, though trained to recognize and document psychological abnormalities, don’t believe that just because it has a label means that it’s bad or detrimental or something I should judge others on or that even the labels are helpful, good or even real.I have ways, tactics, screening questions and discussions I can casually lead folk through to tick off what they might be going through from a clinical perspective and John is ticking away. I ask him a very specific set of questions:Did buying the sneakers make you feel happy?Yes.Can you afford them? Is it an easy purchase that has no impact on the rest of your financial life? (The measurement for this is a 1:1 ratio—-do you have the same amount of money in savings? Then the purchase has less impact.)No, he can’t afford them.Does shopping make you happy?Yes.Are you unhappy when you’re not shopping?Yes, extremely so.I leave it there—-I’m not his counselor, teacher, therapist or think he’s remotely attractive—-I’m just an INTJ swinging his psychological microscope at one of the passing oddities. He also scores high on Narcissism Spectrum in his extreme extroversion, constant sexualization, compulsive eating, lying, fabricating reality wholesale, he’s out of control.He’s so out of control, people with no psychological training, genuinely share that they believe he’s mentally ill. When laymen start secretly doing this around you, you need help.However as a Venn Diagram into Poverty, Poor people often display PTSD, BPD, and a host of other anxieties in some of the programs I work but resources and aid are food, housing and direct medical care—-rarely mental—which if serviced might obviate the need for extended care with the other resources.Weeks go by. More scuttlebutt. John is still homeless.WTF?I confront Bob: Did you give him the room info?Yes.In fact, another Supervisor hooked him up to a guy who has a line of Manhattan apartments and offered to speed rush his application based upon John’s work presence, all he had to do was get up the cash for the rent/deposit in a couple of months. John meandered and didn’t turn in the paperwork.John on Fridays goes to stay at a shelter on weekends but gets turned away because of the expensive clothing, sneakers and jewelry he’s wearing. The shelter security explains they have enough problems without Richie Rich coming in to spend the night. John is asking for a robbery/beat down.John has gone to the upper management for…wait for it………a raise.Now you can probably suss out from John so far that he’s not an A+ employee—-more of a strong C+. The manager…laughs. The manager, a former police officer, puts his gun on the desk between him and John and offers it to John. He tells John he can use it to rob a bank, that’s the only help he can give him.Yeah, that was some cold shit. that shit was so cold, I gasped.No, no, me, an INTJ GASPED. It sounded like the kind of shit I would say to someone.I didn’t know the manager had it in him. Respect.John then complains to the Gossip Train that his teenage daughter is making more than him. (I helpfully try to explain about tax rates, brackets and how it’s not how much you make but how much you keep that matters but the Gossip Train in the cafeteria is chugging so loudly they miss my tax tips.)But as this train chugs along—-I’m steadily getting more and more pissed.Finally, as the Gods knew would happen, John approaches me one day with chips and blaring cartoons on his phone and I curse him the fuck out. I then tell him as the office is under my supervisory purview, get the fuck out. He’s banned. He goes to the manager who supports me and has since been banned.I was pissed because I’d passed on the card to Bob for John. When asked why I was so loudly pissed, I explain that I also called the rooming agency, whom I’ve known for years (having passed on dozens of domestic and foreign students to them for short and long-term stays; teachers, coworkers, etc.—-yes, I even have a business owner with a moving truck fleet on call for small and big jobs. My work with multiple levels of populations has given me an extensive Rolodex of resources.) I called the agency the Wednesday after giving the card to Bob for John on Monday and put in the good word for John; they promised they would help him out once he contacted them. They had several safe rooms throughout the boroughs that they could provide him in secure apartments, with several of their longstanding apartment owners.Kanye’s Piece in ThisI rarely explosively curse people out from simmering frustration and anger at them. I try to diffuse it early or I delete it (or them). I was rattled at how angry I was for weeks afterwards, I even considered had I been too harsh and should I magnanimously apologize as a man for cursing him out (in front of one of his coworkers—-who immediately punched that ticket and got it onto the Gossip Train.)I had to break down internally why I was so upset—-so many people had extended themselves, their resources, their contacts, not just me—-to try and help. It was like one of those Hallmark heartwarming small town (campus/building) secret Santa rescue operations. Yes, John is an asshole but the entire community came together through the Gossip Train’s alert to try and help him. It’s not the first time—we had a coworker drown in Mexico and everyone chipped in to have him shipped back and buried ($5000! Yes, I waited a good 6 months before I INTJ remarked we could’ve had him cremated there in Mexico for like $100 and FedEx-ed the ashes for at least $50, Air Service. :P)I don’t think I would’ve been as upset but I had the Kanye article and therefore deeper sneaker knowledge so when he showed me the sneakers that day, a couple of days later, I went online and looked the price up.I was expecting $200.They were $700.Now I’ll throw a boomerang into this whole thing, several coworkers and students tried to come at me with excusing John and blaming Kanye.I don’t blame Kanye. I do believe he is operating at a genius level but then again I’m often around hundreds, if not thousands of people doing so, so genius isn’t that huge a leap for me to see, evaluate and appreciate. (I’m totally doing the parking lot thing with my books!)At his level, he’s genuinely studying design and art and designing sneakers. I can’t not recognize a true artist, even if their medium is not my own. I read the article and watched the below video and I “got it”. I got Kanye and what he’s doing, saying, creating and his intention.And Kanye (and Kim and yes, even Kylie) (Hey, her name is Kylie! That’s so cool. But I, Kyle, digress…:P) has the right to create.The problem me, supervisors, a lawyer and students chewed over at my desk was that the Poor didn’t used to have access to luxury items in the same way. Capitalism is neutral but Social Class acted as sort of a force field or better a Rubicon, one had to traverse in order to get the Kanye sneakers of yesteryear.The internet has changed this (I have a bigger treatise and thoughts about the internet that I think are actually forming into a book…again a Kyle digression…but I say this to point out that I’ve been noticing the psychological effects of the internet for decades now. I can remember as a child, the time before the internet.)The poor used to have a force field not from seeing but from obtaining luxury items that were financial poison.(John keeps his collection of expensive sneakers in his locker at work. You can’t make this shit up.)The group around my desk asked me for solutions because I always press back in conversations for solutions and I said that Kanye and Kim (and Kylie!) are in a unique position—-they have the ear, the minds, the quantifiable actions and financial allegiance of people. Not just people but when you sift through their demographic (which at some point someone must do this—-probably about 40% of their combined, overlapping fan/buying base—-fans no longer being well, just fan(atics) but being turned into fan-sumers who the origin star can steer to buy…anything)——are Poor.Again, I don’t think this is Kanye’s fault, he’s fine in his efforts, and much more thoughtful and articulate in interviews-videos than he quite comes across in print. I think this has to do a lot with interviews of living Black artists who are learned throughout several mediums.(Go ahead I’ll wait while you list your Top Twenty Black artists in design, fashion, architecture and science. Notice I left out entertainment because this sneaker empire is outside of that arena, sort of. Ancillary but outside of which is why I think the video shows the interviewer having such a difficulty in interviewing Kanye. Yes, the grandmother cake metaphor made sense to me the first time he explained it. The fact that a writer didn’t understand his analogy/metaphor, says something about the interviewer. Even looking at them together I wondered if the wrong person was talking to the wrong person.)The Poor have no force field against their own impulses.There was a time when they did. But the internet has democratized access and awareness.Capitalism is neutral but it can be used and manipulated negatively.Kanye, Kim and Kylie could somehow insert into their product lines the financial education, the advanced financial education, they all possess now, to their fan-sumers.But their fan-sumers, the Poor ones, would need a basis to activate that knowledge—which I think answers Kanye’s question of why more Black people can’t use him as an example to pull themselves out of poverty, as he did. He had a greater training in Middle Class and Higher social class than some of his Black counterparts, and potentially 40% of his fan base, who are Poor, Lower Class (under Middle). He was also friends with the Kardashians for years and years before marrying into the family. The closer you are to the rich, the easier it is to become rich yourself.Of course Jay-Z tried this with the The OJ Story song—-to explain graduating financial education/advancement. I believe it’s the only Jay-Z video and song on my IPod. I think it’s that good.But it would take someone of Kanye’s stature launching an educational program through their work that would stagnate any form of sales to turn the Johns of the world to sensibility.People come to be Republican, cut social programs, from these experiences and perspectives. Trust me I can see conservatism’s appeal and sensible ideology. I just read some things and saw some videos about how the problem with poor people, Blacks in particular, is we spend so much time and effort trying to help the Poor that the slightly better than Poor but unstable, don’t get appropriate help.From my example consider how the campus/community rallied to help John discreetly, overtly. Imagine if we instead got Bob into college level classes? If we focused all of our energy to mentoring Bob to change and let John fall where he may? John’s children, by 3 different women, are being cared for by those 3 different women, we erroneously have paid attention to a (Poor) fool, when we could be helping the hundreds of Bobs around us who are hanging on but underemployed, underpaid.I was also pissed at John because of the above—-because we could’ve been helping those who would utilize our help better.I was pissed because sometimes I could use help or resources or the community rallying around me on a given Wednesday and because I’m “better off”, a notch higher, I don’t get the pity-help we lauded at John. My notch doesn’t mean I don’t need help sometimes, that I might not have questions or confusions that it would be nice to have the community sweep in for without the assumption that Kyle will work it out. I often wonder what would happen to me if Kyle didn’t work it out one day?The poor stay poor because they opt out of our help systems which would be uncomfortable, take away impulsivity and short term pleasures. Their opting out to those of us who try to help is a slap in the face so less and less of us opt to help them. The poor’s resistance creates a vicious cycle of slow (as I watch social programs being slashed) death.And no, even if he drowns in Mexico and everyone agrees to my FedEx/cremation plan, will I ever help John again. See, the Poor burn bridges to those of us who are watching and can help, invisibly, silently, dramatically. The good news though is the mother of his toddler was the one who threw him out and got a new boyfriend—-so maybe his son has a chance.#KylePhoenix#TheKylePhoenixShow