Too many archaeologists focus on scarcity. There isn’t enough grant money. Not enough cultural resource management archaeology contracts. Not enough hours in the budget to get this project done. Focusing on what don’t have blinds us to opportunities for archaeology to make an impact beyond academia and consulting. It also makes CRM archaeology a miserable job.
Archaeology is a dream job but the disconnect between dreaming about archaeology and actually doing it as a CRMer can be a disappointment to many. Turning your dream into a job can be shocking. The low wages, frequent unemployment, job-hopping, overall lack of stability that many field techs, crew chiefs, and mid-level managers can fuel disappointment. Principal investigators and company owners know a different type of stress. From the moment they wake until they sleep these guys are catering to clients, dealing with workplace issues and scrambling for the next contract. If archaeology is not for everybody, cultural resource management archaeology is built for an even smaller demographic.
The result can be malaise. Negativity can grow throughout company. This can get even more compounded at the lower ranks where the issues of poverty and working class blues are prevalent. Before you know it, more thought is spent on money than historic preservation and archaeology.
Bandwidth, Archaeology, and Poverty Mentality
A few weeks ago I listened to NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast episode “Too Little, Too Much” (10/26/2018). It featured research that proves you will become what you think about most.
Researchers are proving that the human mind can only keep track of so many things before it gets overloaded. Likening our mind’s mental capacity to a Wi-Fi router, psychologists have come to call our mind’s capacity to think about more than one process at a given time “bandwidth.” The human mind only has so much bandwidth before it begins to suffer degradation that impacts our cognitive abilities. Give us too many things to think about and we will start forgetting, making mistakes, or operating with reduced response times. This is why multi-tasking doesn’t work (Although, if my wife is reading this, multi-tasking can only be done by a select few…specifically overworked moms like her. For the rest of us [Hint: dads or university students], multi-tasking doesn’t work.) The overtaxed mind cannot see the trees because it’s focused on the whole forest at once.
On the other side of the coin, the mind can fixate on a single topic so much that all other things fall away. This can be a good thing if most of your mind’s bandwidth is laser focused when you need to be productive. For example, when you are so focused on work tasks that you enter the extremely desirable “flow state” that helps your work move effortlessly towards completion. You lack focus on the broader context of your work but, if you’re working productively, this can be an great means of getting stuff done. In this situation, the mind is focusing so hard on a single tree it cannot see the forest.
Bandwidth can become a problem when one aspect of your life is so all encompassing that it prevents you from addressing the other aspects of your life. Poverty is one of those issues that can color your entire perception of reality. A few years ago, I wrote a blog post called “6 Steps for Ending the Poverty Mentality in Archaeology” where I urged archaeologists to change their mindset, take up side hustles, embrace frugality, and start investing. Some archaeologists welcomed this call, but larger number of readers did not enjoy my recommendations. They felt like employers needed to start doing a better job of bringing in contracts and improving business management so project archaeologists could receive better pay. These individuals felt like my recommendations were so deeply rooted in neoliberalism that they weren’t going to help CRMers in general. Also, many felt like my suggestions placed the onus of earning a living on the archaeologists rather than the employers who drive the CRM industry.
Those who didn’t like the post felt like I was siding with management. My suggestions of making money on the side to supplement archaeology only facilitated poor wage conditions throughout the industry. And, suggesting archaeologists start a side hustle would also prove difficult as this would require us to trade our sparse free time for more labor.
I understand the counterpoint to my argument but remain a cheerleader for workers emancipating themselves from being salarypeople. Companies will always squeeze us for more work. They will always give us a but a small sliver of their profits while most of the profits, if there are any, will always go into the pockets of company owners. Almost every cultural resource management company was started by an archaeologiss who was sick of working for somebody else and felt like they could do better on their own. It was this spirit that I was trying to rouse in the hundreds who read the Poverty Mentality post.
While I still believe archaeologists and every employee should be working towards financial independence, I think the way archaeologists relate to the wages they are paid is connected to the way the human mind can be consumed with negative thoughts that prevent us from being able to see a different perspectives. In the case of entry-level archaeological technicians, crew chiefs, and other CRMers in unstable employment states, the poverty mentality can be so pervasive that the believe in emancipation from wage labor simply isn’t possible. This inability to perceive a different outcome also prevents archaeologists from realizing the impact we could have on American society if we were able to see beyond our own poverty.
When thinking about money sucks up all your mental bandwidth
The Hidden Brain Podcast episode discussed how poverty can change human mindsets to the point where poor people are almost unable to see beyond current needs. The podcast episode explains that, when an individual is among the millions of America’s working poor, providing for today can overtake all thought of tomorrow. When you don’t have money, all you think about is all the things in your life that you need money to do.
Need food? Gotta have money. Don’t want to live in your car? Gonna need money. No toilet paper, health insurance, gas in your gas tank? Then you’re gonna need to get some money. Let’s not start with credit card debt, student loans, rent, car payments, and the other daily essentials. When struggling to make ends meet takes over all your concentration, it becomes hard to think about any of the recommendations in the Poverty Mentality post.
Most of us earn money through our professions. Most of us have a single stream of income with which we are supposed to provide for all of our needs. When we lose our jobs, as almost every CRMer will experience, the tunnel vision of our minds fixates on how we’re going to get the next job so we can simply keep on living.
Living with unemployment or unsteady employment forces most cultural resource management archaeologists to obsess on money in a way that is commonplace throughout America’s working and middle classes. Like it or not, we all live in a gig economy. From the White House to your house, everything is temporary. This has always been a fact of human life but the Baby Boom-era made us forget about it for decades (That is, unless you were part of the massive American underclass of poor white, black, brown, Native, Indigenous, Asian, immigrant, LGBTQ, ect. If this is your heritage, you have a different relationship to the American Dream and know that all things financial are temporary.) Following World War II, the United States reaped the benefits of a booming economy, powerful trade unions, solid social services, and high tax rates on the uber-wealthy. This created a generation where retirement was possible, Social Security could provide a poverty-level sustenance, Medicare/Medicaid could provide prescriptions and basic healthcare, and employees could expect pensions.
That world is almost entirely gone. We are living through another Gilded Age, complete with robber barons and all. Most of us cannot expect a retirement from our employers. We cannot depend on our government to provide social welfare or basic health care. We should expect our government and employers to let us down. It does not have to be this way but, without a change in worker’s mindsets and intra-racial collaboration between middle and working class Americans, this is only going to get worse.
The thing is: Many of us cannot see a better future because so much of our mental bandwidth is fixated on how we can provide for our own necessities today. I’m an associate professor living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I also used to be a CRMer for over a decade. I know what it’s like to spend a lot of time thinking about how I’m going to pay the bills.
I also know something has got to give. A better way is possible and I know how it can be achieved. There are millions of Americans who live without worrying about retirement, healthcare, rent, or how they’re going to put food on the table. We’ve all heard of these folks. In fact, many of us know people like this. They’re called the 10%.
How the New American Aristocracy Shapes American Society
In his article in The Atlantic “The 9.9 percent is the New American Aristocracy,” Matthew Stewart argues that growing inequality in our country has led to a situation where the wealthier Americans are able to consolidate their control over wealth, guide regulatory constructs, and live separate from the rest of the citizenry. Americans with at least $1.2 million net worth qualify to be members of the upper 10% of American society and, at that economic level, people enjoy better healthcare, education, and environments than the remaining 90% of society. The upper 10th live segregated from the rest of us, which means they don’t know any of us, understand what we’re going through, and cannot relate to what it’s like to be part of the 90%. Increasingly, they’re even unable to communicate with us. While things get better for the upper 10th, things are getting harder for the remaining 90%, especially the underclass and working classes.
This is not good for our society. Those of us in the 90% know it. It’s likely many in the upper 10% know it too. It is never good when 30 million people in a society dictate what happens to the other 300 million. What has this done to our country? Well, one of the reasons why you suffer under a crushing debt load is because the 10% are greedy and not enough of the other 90% have changed their mindset to refuse to settle for table scraps. Here’s a brief synopsis of the American economy for the entire time you’ve been alive:
Class matters. Class is the unspoken untruth behind the American Dream. It’s one reason why, no matter how hard you work for somebody else, you never seem to get ahead. It is the reason why you spend so much time thinking about how little money you have while the upper 10% spend time thinking about how they can use their money to stay in the upper 10%. This is our reality. The question is: What are we going to do about it?
What the 10% does that CRM archaeologists don’t do [yet]
I’m not rich and I don’t know very many millionaires so I’m just kinda spit-balling for the next few paragraphs. I do know one particular guy who is a self-made millionaire. He isn’t an archaeologist. He was my mom’s ex-boyfriend and has become a millionaire since I’ve known him. I will tell you how he did it because many of the things he did could help us CRMers:
Multiple Streams of Income and Frugality: He used to work full time for an electronics company as a programmer. He earned enough money to pay half of the family’s bills. His wife covered the rest. He had always dreamed of owning horses and having a small ranch. The only problem was his wife at the time wasn’t interested in living in the country. The only way he could make this happen is to buy a property with enough pasture that was close enough to the city. As a young professional with a family, he couldn’t afford the land or the horses at the time.
So, after working 40 hrs./week at his full time job (plus commute), he became a part-time little league umpire. He spent weekends umpiring little league baseball games during the summer and fall, saving every dollar he was paid. In time, he was able to work up to doing high school games in addition to youth ones. He even got to umpire games for the Little League World Series a few times. While traveling to and from baseball games, he took time out to look at properties—zeroing in on parcels in locations where subdivisions were likely to be built.
It took him about 5 years of working youth baseball games before he’d squirreled away enough $ for a down-payment on a few acres with a three-bedroom house on it. There was enough land to grow alfalfa to feed a couple horses. Because he was frugal, he kept on doing the higher paying high school baseball games to make extra payments on the property. He also started breeding show horses that eventually won prizes at horse shows.
Buying investments that provide for the future: He paid off the property in less time than the 30 years on his mortgage. The house that was once a liability became an asset. This was a good thing because, soon after paying off the house, he got a divorce and had to buy out his wife’s half of the property’s value. Not long after that, he was forced into taking an early retirement from his job. He took the buy-out package, went back to school for another degree (courtesy his old employer), and kept showing horses. His wife should have stayed with him a few years longer because he also sold his small ranch to a property developer for a small fortune. This was how he made his first million dollars.
After selling his first property, he bought a larger ranch even further out into the range. He also kept making investments in properties throughout the state. Not long after moving to the bigger ranch, a parcel he’d purchased with a group of investors was bought by an energy conglomerate for resource exploration. His cut was more than a million, making him a multi-millionaire.
Actively shape rules, regulations, and social landscapes to perpetuate their own lifestyle: With enough money to live comfortably, a pseudo-Spartan lifestyle, and few liabilities, my money mentor has started advocating for hunter’s rights and to preserve open spaces because he is an avid hunter. He spends most of his time hunting and volunteering, but still does some work on his ranch like harvesting alfalfa for sale and freelance computer programming work.
We can do better than the 10%
When he started out, my mom’s ex-bf had no more skills, experience, or abilities than anyone reading this post. He’s actually part of a large family that grew up in a working class household but took advantage of the reality that the world owes us nothing but the chance to achieve our dreams through hard work and dedication. He’s a smart guy and a hard worker, but I’m sure you know some archaeologists who fit that same profile. The thing that makes him different is that he wasn’t willing to take “no” for an answer. And, he wasn’t afraid of going for his dreams. His wife said he couldn’t have horses and a ranch. For half of a decade, he worked towards that goal. In the process, he learned a lot about himself and what he was capable of doing. Now he’s living a life he never thought could happen. He is part of the 10% and is actively trying to make sure the rules and regulations of this world enable him to keep doing what he’d always wanted to do.
Of course, we could also say this was all luck. His real estate investments were lucky. Who could have predicted that a multinational conglomerate would want his property? It was even luck that helped his horses win at shows. You’re only partially right. Luck only comes to those who are in the right place at the right time. In order to get there, you have to start maneuvering. His property wouldn’t have gotten bought had he not put in dozens of weekends as a baseball umpire to own it in the first place. His horses wouldn’t have won shows had he not selected his show horses for particular qualities. He wouldn’t have made that second million if he had not kept investing in real estate. Luck is winning the lottery, but every lotto winner has one thing in common: They bought a lottery ticket. Benefiting from hard work and dedication is not the same as buying a lottery ticket, but it still requires that first step.
The story about my mom’s ex sounds like a fairy tale but the few wealthy CRM company owners I’ve met have the same thing in common: They busted their a$$es to build profitable companies. Each of their companies have almost gone out of business more than once, but were able to survive recessions, downturns, and financial mistakes. These successful owners now advocate on behalf of historic preservation and heritage conservation in addition to taking a role in managing their companies. These founders all started doing archaeological consulting as a side hustle and grew their businesses, employing other archaeologists all the while. The reason why you have a job is because somebody took that first step.
These exemplars also had one thing in common: Their bandwidth never gave way to the poverty mindset. Their bandwidth remained focused on a single goal but never gave way to despair due to lack of money.
While capitalism is ravaging us, there is a better way. Seeking this better way is why Millennials are “hard to manage,” because they want to make an impact on the world and are not willing to work for companies that do not feel the same. Few speak about class in the United States, but it is one of the most powerful forces keeping us from realizing the society in which we would all like to live. Achieving a plenitude economy is possible. We don’t have to work for uncaring employers 40+ hours/week. We don’t have to live in crumbling ecologies where animals are going extinct. If you don’t know what this economy would look like, watch this short video:
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” Eleanor Roosevelt
We do not need to live in a world of scarcity, fear, and lack. There are many ways we can achieve this future but it will require each of us to overcome the poverty mentality. We need to start doing some of the things the upper 10% have been doing for the last 50,000 years, but in such a way that more of us are able to achieve our dreams. Following your passion is okay. Every archaeologist knows what that’s all about. In addition to following passion, we all need to pay attention to what captures our attention. What makes us excited? If we had all our bills paid, what would we do with our time? The intersection between passion and interest is where you will find a compelling, exciting career. That is where you should invest your mental bandwidth.
What do you think? How can we expand our bandwidth to move towards a different economy? Write a comment below or send me an email.
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