Empathy in Development

November 8, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags:

I came across the phrase “empathy in development” while reading an article by nonprofit leader Molly Melching entitled To change society, first change minds. Although the article is mainly about efforts to achieve sustainable development and social change in Africa, the author’s wise observations can be applied much more generally to the process of bringing about systemic change. She describes empathy in development as involving four key elements, as set out below:

First, begin with human rights — empower people to claim their rights to health and well-being with confidence. Two, start where people are — have empathy and respect while you understand their history, their language and culture and their priorities. Three, do not try to force change — lay the groundwork for dialogue, introduce people to ideas, identify shared values and allow them to decide what the change will be and when they will make it. If you start by just fighting what they are doing, you’re going to get resistance. Finally, and perhaps most crucially, remember the solutions already exist within the communities with which you work.

I believe these insights are equally valuable in the context of bringing about social change in one’s own country. It’s not just those working abroad who need to take a respectful approach when dealing with differences of culture and perspective. Especially in today’s rancorous political climate, it has become all too easy to dismiss other points of view. When we treat our own beliefs as obvious facts, then surely there must be something wrong with anyone who disagrees. Maybe they’re ignorant, corrupt, lazy, immoral, or otherwise deficient in some way. Wholly oblivious to the irony, we may claim they lack empathy or suffer from black-and-white thinking. After all, there’s got to be some reason why they aren’t behaving like sensible people.

How we respond to others’ differences is itself culturally determined in many ways. Even when we see ourselves as respectful and open-minded, we may not be fully aware of the underlying narratives that frame our worldviews. In any society, the words commonly used to express an idea tend to shape how people think about that idea. I’m not just referring to political buzzwords aimed at provoking emotional responses. On a much more basic level, our vocabulary reflects the structure of our society, whether or not there is any conscious intent involved. As we go through life, we routinely make assumptions and take actions based on this familiar structure.

In modern-day Western culture, development connotes a distinction between the complete and the incomplete. Nations are either developed (suggesting a past-tense, finished process) or developing (they’re not yet like us, but they’re working on it). Although today’s development narrative avoids the obvious biases of language used in the past to describe other cultures, such as “backward” and “savage,” it still describes a linear scale that puts us at the top, with others striving to reach our level. It further suggests that development should proceed along the same trajectory, rather than having many possible paths.

A similar dichotomy can be found in the language our culture uses to describe individual development. People are seen as either normal (that is, fully and properly developed) or struggling to overcome their challenges (not like the normal folks, but trying to be). And of course, it goes much deeper than just choosing one word over another. Changing an occasional word or phrase doesn’t do much if the underlying narrative stays the same. Our language is full of terms that started out as politically correct euphemisms and ended up being used as insults, just like the words they replaced.

I believe this cultural framework is a large part of why empathy in development can be so hard to attain, whether we’re aiming to change other nations or to change the behavior of people within our own society. As soon as we decide they need to be changed, we subconsciously start to think of ourselves as superior. We’re developed, they’re not. We’re normal, they’re not. We’re enlightened, they’re not. So naturally we should tell them what to do, since we know and they don’t. Eventually they’ll come to understand it was for their own good…

This mindset has become so ingrained in our culture that sometimes we’re not even aware of it. Thoughtful reminders such as Molly Melching’s four principles of empathy in development are much needed. And I suggest another point on which reflection would be helpful: Remember that we, ourselves, are still developing. There is nothing shameful about acknowledging this simple fact. The opposite of development is not perfection—it is stagnation. As we interact with others and explore our world, we continue to learn, both on a collective and an individual level. This necessarily means that when we seek to change others, we are also being changed. So when we find our views in conflict with those of other people and cultures, it may be useful to consider not only how we can change their minds, but also what we can learn from the situation.

Marriage: Some Assembly Required

October 28, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: , ,

Even in a time of tremendous cultural flux, when many of the historical reasons for marriage have become outdated, there are still people getting married. One might wonder why, given the advantages of staying single in today’s world. Children are very expensive, unlike in the past when they worked on their parents’ farm. Having a family restricts the career opportunities available to modern parents, both because of the time involved in caring for children and because of the expectation that a responsible parent should bring home a steady paycheck, rather than being free to take chances and follow passions when building a career. Marriage has economic pitfalls even for childless couples, who may not want to pursue promising job opportunities in other cities because it would be hard for the tag-along spouse to find a good position. And there’s always the risk of divorce, which can be messy both emotionally and financially, even when a couple has no children.

Some people simply dismiss the whole idea of marriage as an antiquated relic of primitive times, which continues to exist only because traditional society has conditioned us to want it. But I think those who opt for marriage often do so based on the perception that it is a promise of stability in a rapidly changing world. Even when we don’t feel confident about navigating the huge cultural shifts going on around us, marriage (if all goes well) gives us a constant, predictable home environment. The family unit becomes a micro-culture with its own comforting traditions and rituals.

I recently had a dream that dealt with these themes. Although dream interpretation based on cultural archetypes mostly fell out of fashion along with psychoanalysis a few decades ago, it can sometimes prove interesting. In this particular dream, I was assembling a four-poster bed by putting on the posts. After that, I was on a dock at the river, putting oars in a boat (a double scull) that my husband and I had rowed over the summer.

In dream interpretation, the number four can represent symmetry and stability. Both pairs of oars must be rowed in a synchronized motion to make forward progress along a river, which is a symbol often interpreted to mean the river of life. Losing one’s grip on the oar handles, or bumping an oar into a submerged log or other hazard, can easily cause a scull to tip over—it’s a very narrow boat that needs the oars for balance.

When not in use, oars are stored separately from the boat. They must be put into the oarlocks each time the boat is rowed, and the rowers must carefully check to make sure the oars are fastened securely. This can be seen as an assembly process, much as the four-poster bed in my dream had to be assembled. Both a double scull and a bed are places where a couple would be. So I would interpret the dream as referring to the stability provided by marriage, which requires careful assembly.

Of course, not everyone looks upon marriage as a source of stability. Some take a very different view and consider marriage a luxury reserved for those who already are financially stable. Even though today’s families are much smaller than in the past and women usually work outside the home, raising children in the modern world can be very costly. With so much uncertainty in the global economy, some young adults feel that they should wait until they have well-established careers and substantial savings before they even consider marriage. Depending on the extent of their financial anxiety, they may never reach a point where they feel comfortable with it.

There’s no disputing the fact that it is stressful to get married and start a family while living paycheck to paycheck. But it’s important to keep things in perspective, rather than letting financial anxiety take over one’s life to the extent that everything seems too much of a risk. Way back when our ancestors were raising their families in tiny villages, they had very few material possessions, and their lives were far more perilous than ours. Children often died in infancy, women often died in childbirth, and men often died in war. Still, our ancestors did their best to cope with whatever happened to come their way. Because nothing in their society ever seemed to change much, they didn’t have our worries about living in an unstable world.

Unlike our ancestors, we can’t reasonably expect to lead simple and unchanging lives. Some degree of anxiety about the unknown is inevitable. We deal with it by seeking stability in our relationships, our finances, our daily habits and rituals, and whatever else we may feel gives us more control over our environment. Choices that work well for some people, such as marriage, are not necessarily going to suit others. And with all the options available in today’s society, it may take some time to discover what works and what doesn’t. In any event, when pursuing our goals, I believe it’s helpful to keep in mind both that we have more personal power than we may realize and that, as we go through life, some assembly is required.

Life’s Too Long for Worrying

October 13, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags:

Every culture has its folk sayings that help people to get through their days. We rely on them to give our problems a familiar, manageable feeling. Don’t worry about the small stuff, we’re often told. Life’s too short for that.

Back when our ancestors’ lives were indeed short and perilous, this was a very useful way to remind people not to get overly dramatic about small annoyances or disagreements. Why complain today when you might easily die tomorrow from an outbreak of plague, find yourself in the path of an invading army putting your village to the torch, or get eaten by a hungry lion or bear when you went out to gather firewood?

In today’s more civilized world, however, we are far more likely to die of some lingering old-age ailment than of plague or warfare. Our communities have lost many of the close ties that once came from defending against shared perils. It’s hard to imagine what the future will look like, or how we’ll deal with it. Although modern-day humans no longer have to worry about our children dying of smallpox or being captured by an enemy raiding party and sold as slaves, there’s plenty of space in our minds for lesser anxieties to take up residence. Workplace worries, family spats, and political disputes get blown way out of proportion. Perhaps we try to tell ourselves life’s too short for that—but it isn’t. Not anymore.

The primitive parts of our brains still are hard-wired to be on the lookout for anything that might want to eat us. Far below the level of conscious thought, we search for patterns in whatever surrounds us. If it doesn’t all fit neatly together into something recognizable, then we get anxious. Mix that primitive reaction with the massive complexity of today’s society, and it’s no wonder modern humans have sky-high stress levels. Subconsciously, we feel as if there might be unseen predators crouching nearby at any moment, poised to spring. Because we know there really aren’t any, we find other ways to explain our fears. Maybe that lurking enemy becomes our neighbor who votes for a different political party.

How can we convince ourselves that these anxieties are just small stuff and that we’re not in fact on the brink of catastrophe? “Life is short” doesn’t seem to be useful advice in the context of reassuring ourselves that there are no monsters under society’s bed. Such advice might instead make us worry more because it reinforces the subconscious feeling that we could get killed at any moment by something we never even saw coming.

The main challenge for modern humans is learning to deal with change and complexity. So I believe we could use a new folk saying to suit today’s circumstances: Life’s too long for worrying. When we get hung up on our grudges and fears, we might easily wake up one morning 40 years later and realize how much time and energy we wasted obsessing about small problems that could have been solved long ago, if we hadn’t convinced ourselves they were gigantic obstacles.

Although the complexity of our world may often leave us feeling anxious, it also gives us many opportunities to make positive changes. We have a vast array of choices that were unimaginable even a generation ago, and we’ll have exponentially more choices as time passes and technology continues to improve. Having so many options may cause us to feel overwhelmed; but because we have such long lives, we can accomplish very ambitious goals without doing everything at once. All it really takes is finding one way to do something constructive each day. Over time the small changes add up, and we discover that we’ve created far more than we might have imagined.

Trading Time for Money

September 2, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: , ,

We all have different perspectives on managing our money. One common approach to curbing wasteful spending is to think about each purchase in relation to the work done to earn it. Before buying an expensive new gadget or a trendy pair of shoes, a person first stops to reflect on how many hours of work were needed to earn that much money.

While this may be an effective way to break a bad habit of impulse buying, I believe it creates more problems in the long term by conditioning the subconscious mind both to see work in a negative light and to see scarcity rather than abundance. When we measure everything in small increments of time and money, weighing one against the other, we’re left feeling as if we never have enough of either.

Psychologists doing research in this area have found that when people look upon their work in terms of how much they’re paid by the hour, they are more likely to feel that they don’t have time to get everything done in their personal lives. Business owners and salaried professionals actually spend more time at work than hourly employees, on average; but they often feel that they have more free time.

Some of that is because they have enough money to buy their way out of time-consuming chores, such as by hiring a maid instead of having to clean the house themselves. However, I’m inclined to think that much of it really is just a matter of belief. Because business owners look upon their work in terms of challenges and accomplishments, rather than hours, their work doesn’t feel like it deprives them of personal time.

In contrast, when people avoid making impulsive purchases by reminding themselves how many hours of work they did to earn the money, this necessarily implies their job took time away from other things they would rather have been doing. Too much of that attitude builds a wage-slave mentality in which work is seen as a misery to be endured for the required number of hours, all for the sake of buying one’s carefully rationed rewards when each paycheck arrives.

One of the reasons wealthy people don’t think like that is because wages are not their only source of income. Maybe they’re working 60 or 70 hours a week to build up the business, but they have investment accounts earning a good return. They probably also have a substantial amount of equity in real estate and other assets. So when they go out and buy things, the cost is only a small percentage of their total wealth. They don’t see it as chunks of time sucked out of their lives in exchange for wages.

Most of us aren’t wealthy enough to make withdrawals from investment accounts and go on shopping sprees whenever we feel like it. We need to put reasonable constraints on our buying habits, while going about it in a way that won’t leave us feeling deprived of time, money, material goods, or some combination thereof.

I believe the key word in that last sentence is “habits.” We live in a very complicated society, and we navigate its complexities every day by relying on whatever routines we’ve developed. When these routines become unproductive or harmful, then they need to be modified by substituting another habit that works better.

We’re all familiar with the need to change our routines in the context of managing our weight. Those of us who have full-time sedentary jobs can’t eat as much as when we were teenagers, unless we want to spend large amounts of time at the gym. Many people avoid eating too much by reminding themselves of how many hours they’ll have to run on the treadmill to make up for all the calories in that fried chicken and biscuits. This is exactly the same trade-off that is often used to curb impulse buying—time vs. overeating, time vs. overspending, measured in calories and cash respectively.

I’ve found that a more effective way to avoid gluttony (of both the food variety and the consumer goods variety) has been to replace an overindulgent habit with a moderate one. It’s basically an “out of sight, out of mind” approach. I don’t often think about eating fried chicken and biscuits since I started regularly buying baked chicken and salad instead. If a particular store or website seems like it’s getting too much of my money, I change my routine so that I’m not visiting it.

And on the time side of the equation, I don’t force myself to do workouts that I dislike. There are plenty of ways to get exercise that are more fun and are just as effective. If a workout routine is so unpleasant that the thought of doing more of it stops a person from overeating, then the person isn’t likely to be motivated to do enough to get results. Same goes for jobs. Anyone who feels stuck 40 hours a week doing a crummy job probably isn’t performing well enough to earn much money there. It makes more sense to change jobs. Granted, the economy isn’t at its best right now; but as time passes, more opportunities come along.

Although it may sometimes feel like a struggle to control time, spending, and food, this doesn’t mean we should obsess about rationing them. Looking at it from another perspective, we have an unlimited supply of time because there is always more of it as long as we’re alive. As time goes by, there are plenty of things we can do with it. What’s needed is to choose wisely from among the vast possibilities available in today’s world, picking those that are well suited to form enjoyable, lasting habits.

Celebrities and Friends

July 29, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags:

When I enjoy a free or low-cost ebook, I’ll often write a review. I consider it a way of showing appreciation for the author’s time, effort, and willingness to share creative energy with the world. It’s chiefly meant as encouragement, like posting a comment on a thoughtful blog entry or giving feedback to a friend in a writers’ group.

Conversely, when a book doesn’t suit me at all, I move on to something else without reviewing it. Everyone has different tastes, and I have better things to do with my time than complain. Besides, it strikes me as mean-spirited to post a review saying that a book sucks, even if that is my honest opinion. It’s not like commenting on a shoddy product where a company has been deliberately cutting corners to save money. Authors of ebooks usually aren’t weighing cost-benefit considerations when they dream up their stories. They’re just ordinary people.

And when I read a book by a celebrity author, I generally don’t feel motivated to write a review. Not even if I believe it’s a great book, recommend it to someone I know, or buy it as a gift. That’s because I put celebrity authors in the category of businesspeople selling a commercial product, rather than online acquaintances creating stories for the pleasure of sharing them. As such, my encouragement isn’t needed.

For the past century or so, we’ve had an entertainment industry whose business model has been to create glamorous stars for the masses’ adoration. They’ve made it such an ingrained part of our culture that it seems like the natural way of things. We expect to see tabloids full of celebrity gossip in the grocery checkout line. Most of us take for granted that a career in the creative arts is only available to a lucky few, and that for everyone else it’s just a daydream. When our kids say that they want to be actors, novelists, or singers, we tell them it might be a fun hobby, but they’d better keep up their math and science grades because they’ll have to get a real job.

Of course, today’s technology-driven society really does need a lot of engineers, and I am not suggesting we shouldn’t inform our young people of that fact. On the contrary, I’m very much in favor of programs that encourage high school students to take a rigorous schedule of math and science courses in preparation for careers such as engineering and nursing, which are facing major labor shortages in the near future. That’s wise public policy in a world of rapidly falling birthrates and increasingly specialized jobs. But at the same time, our technological advances have created more space for artistic pursuits than we ever had before.

In the early days of our celebrity culture, real physical constraints made it impracticable for any significant number of people to pursue creative careers. We still had a mostly agrarian society, and manufacturing was low-tech and labor intensive. Most people had to be farmers or factory workers because the economy didn’t generate enough surplus production to support more than a few entertainers. Also, the low level of technology meant that films, printed books, and vinyl records were expensive to produce and distribute.

What a difference a century makes. Today’s cheap technology and the Internet have made it possible for anyone to create indie movies, songs, and books. Although our culture still has its celebrities and all the hype that goes along with them, I expect that paradigm will fade quickly as we move toward a decentralized entertainment industry. The corporate winners will be companies like Amazon that provide a low-cost platform for individuals to market their creative works.

While indie artists won’t make millions or have paparazzi following them around, there is enough money in today’s economy that they should be able to earn a respectable living, while also enjoying a close relationship with audiences who look upon them as friends.

Magic in a Bottle

July 7, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

I recently exchanged emails with someone I knew from a writers’ group several years ago. We’d had great fun sharing stories with a lively, imaginative circle of friends. Even the silliest stuff usually found an appreciative audience who understood it in the playful spirit it was intended. But after a while, we just got busy with other things and drifted away. We talked about how much we’d enjoyed the group and how we missed those days.

“Sometimes my husband asks if I’m ever going to get back into it,” my friend told me, “but I don’t know that it’s possible to recapture magic in a bottle.”

After the conversation ended, I thought about all the moments that we don’t fully appreciate until after they have gone by. We chase around after our kids when they’re young, and we feel exasperated because they’re so noisy and they make such a mess. Maybe we snap at them, “Grow up!”—and then they do, and we’re left looking at their empty places across the quiet dinner table.

Or we complain about trivial annoyances at work, even though it’s a pretty good job and we get along well with our coworkers. We let the small stuff get blown totally out of proportion, and we grumble about every careless or inconsiderate thing someone does. We fantasize about how much better a new job would be. But after we’ve moved on, we don’t remember the little annoyances; it’s the good times that stick in our minds.

Of course, we learn something every time our circumstances change. Our perspective broadens, and we become more resilient. Even though change is stressful, we’ve come to expect it, as creatures of our busy modern society. If we stayed in the same place doing the same things all our lives, as most of our ancestors did, we’d get bored and restless. Besides, we have much longer lives than our ancestors, so naturally we’re going to fill them with a greater variety of experiences.

The way I look at it, those magic-in-a-bottle moments aren’t really lost. They just get moved farther back on what I envision as a memory shelf, as present-day moments take their place. We write more stories and find other groups of readers who enjoy our creations. When our kids are grown, we still have conversations with them, even though they live somewhere else and we talk about different topics. Maybe we become grandparents, as more time passes. We find new jobs that challenge us to develop our skills in unforeseen ways, and after a while we discover that we’re pretty good at them.

Before we know it, we’ve built up a lovely collection of antique bottles sitting proudly on the imaginary polished hardwood of the memory shelf. They sparkle in different colors, glowing inside with fragments of the magic they once held. Here’s one that gleams softly in warm green-brown hues, holding memories of a beautiful summer morning at the river. There’s another, flickering a bright fiery yellow like the candles on a birthday cake. And look at that perfect red—it’s just the color of the roses around grandma’s porch, fragrant and humming with bees on a Sunday afternoon.

The magical moments we encounter in our daily lives can easily go unnoticed. We rush from one activity to another, worried about completing our tasks and staying on schedule. Often we don’t pause to be mindful of the dazzling sunlight coming through the window after a dark gray morning, the soft comfortable fabric of a new pair of blue jeans, or the affection in a loved one’s voice greeting us when we return from an errand. So many little details don’t find their way into our conscious awareness until many years later, when a scent or sound unexpectedly triggers a wonderful memory.

When we take the time to notice life’s small details as they unfold around us, we’re opening a door to invite the magic into the present.

Interruptions

June 1, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

We’re always busy doing something, or at least it seems that way. When we’re not at work, we’re running errands or doing household chores. On top of that, many of us regularly work out at the gym, watch our kids’ soccer games, attend religious services, volunteer with a charity, or fill our schedules with other obligations. Even the things people do to relax—such as watching TV, going to the movies or a sporting event, and playing video games—often take up distinct chunks of time too.

Because most of us have so little unscheduled, free-flowing time in our lives, we feel like we’re always being interrupted. We let the phone go to voicemail because we’re in the middle of something, no matter when we get a call. We feel annoyed when a coworker asks a question because it breaks our train of thought. When a family member wants help around the house, it’s a nuisance because we have to put aside whatever we were doing. Even if it’s nothing but Facebook or a mindless video game, we’re still getting interrupted, and we don’t like it.

In today’s society, interruptions often are described as wasting time, which in turn causes us to resent people who interrupt us. A common cultural script goes like this: “How inconsiderate they’re being! Don’t they know our time is valuable? We’ll never get anything done if they keep bothering us!”

When I’ve had a day with a lot of interruptions and start feeling annoyed, I find it helpful to remind myself that it’s not really a natural instinct to react this way, even though that’s what it may seem like. Getting angry when we’re interrupted is a culturally conditioned response—or, in other words, a collective bad habit. We can change how we react to interruptions by reframing them in our minds. When our coworkers or family members ask us something, it’s probably not because they want to waste our time. On the contrary, if they didn’t value our input, they wouldn’t be asking for it.

Living in such a busy world gives us both opportunities and challenges. Every year we have more choices about how to spend our time, and we can put together a schedule better suited to our needs and interests. We have far more opportunities than at any time in the past. But the more choices we have, the more mental energy it takes to navigate them effectively. We don’t have much left over for dealing with unexpected changes. Without predictable routines, we’re likely to get overwhelmed by stress. So when someone interrupts us, we may perceive it as a threat to our fragile coping ability. As such, it triggers the fight-or-flight response. We may snap at the person or storm off in a huff before we even stop to think about it.

Because so much of how we respond to interruptions takes place on a subconscious level, if we want to respond differently, we have to change our subconscious perceptions of what an interruption is. Put another way, we have to tell ourselves different stories. Humans are by nature storytelling creatures, and we filter all of our experiences through the narratives we use to explain them. Therefore, if we don’t want to get stressed out by interruptions, we have to convince ourselves that the interruptions are not really a problem.

Parents do this as a routine matter when teaching children good time management habits. We might, for instance, tell our kids that it’s time to do their homework now, and they can just pause the cartoon or the video game—it’ll still be there afterward. But often we don’t think about applying this simple lesson to our own busy schedules. When we get interrupted at work or while we’re doing something around the house, we’re likely to react without thinking and get annoyed about it. We’d do better to remind ourselves that the task isn’t urgent (which it usually isn’t) and can get done later.

As with many of the things we do, taking control of the interruptions in our lives is chiefly about developing better habits.

Surly Peasants

May 13, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags:

Back in the 1990s, my favorite computer game was an empire-building game called Lords of the Realm. Players began with a small medieval fiefdom and had to grow its economy, raise an army, and build a castle. As the game progressed, players could build stronger castles. Armies invaded nearby lands and conquered them through battles for control of the castle. Different prices had to be paid to equip soldiers of various types, and peasants could be conscripted. Although peasants got killed quickly going into battle with their pitchforks, they were useful for digging when a moat around an enemy’s castle needed to be filled in.

I enjoyed the sound effects for the battles, which included dialogue. Professional soldiers such as knights or pikemen replied with an eager “Yes, my lord!” or “Right away, sir!” when sent into battle. The peasants, however, made their lack of enthusiasm abundantly clear. When they were selected, they grumbled something surly like “What now?” or “Where to this time?”

I don’t suppose the authors of the game had in mind today’s employment practices when they composed that dialogue, but it struck me as an amusing and very apt bit of social commentary. Modern corporations no longer expect to keep employees for a lifetime, or indeed for any amount of time. Company pension plans are vanishing. Instead of training young workers, which was once common practice, managers insist that new hires must already have all skills required for the job. If no applicants can be found who have the perfect background, work goes undone or is contracted out. Very little thought is given to the long-term effects of cutting costs; only the next quarter’s profit matters.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone in management, under these circumstances, when the employees grumble like surly peasants. Corporate executives give rah-rah speeches and bestow small perks such as letting employees wear jeans to work, but that doesn’t change anything. When their decisions reflect the attitude that any worker can be replaced at any time by someone who comes cheaper, they can’t reasonably expect to enjoy the steadfast loyalty that a medieval knight would give to his liege lord.

Eventually, as globalization progresses, the multinational corporations will exhaust their supply of low-wage workers in underdeveloped nations. I estimate that in less than two decades, companies will be faced with widespread labor shortages. Thereafter, advances in automation won’t keep pace with a shrinking labor force and an increased demand for better-trained workers. When that happens, the most successful companies will be those willing to invest the money needed to retain skilled employees. Competitive pressure will force employers to raise wages, improve benefits, hire the most qualified applicants without discrimination, and generally treat their workers with more respect.

Many executives won’t like it, of course, because they’ve gotten so accustomed to treating their employees like peons. They’ll have no choice but to face the facts, however. If they don’t… well, another feature of the Lords of the Realm game was that if the peasants got too unhappy they’d revolt. They would abandon their fields and go marauding across the countryside. If the revolt wasn’t put down quickly and the peasants’ happiness level raised, the castle would be lost. Those who want to manage the corporations of the future would be wise to take a lesson from that.

Defining Values

April 23, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

What are you?

The answer most of us would give, according to the customary social script, is an occupation: truck driver, teacher, sales clerk, or whatever we might happen to be doing for our paycheck. If we’re older and no longer working, then the answer changes to retired, perhaps with our previous career description tacked on. As students who haven’t yet entered the workforce, we might talk about our particular course of study and a career plan based on it. When we’re married and spending our days taking care of small children, we occupy a traditional niche in society as a stay-at-home parent.

But there are no good answers in this script for those without jobs who don’t fit the categories of retiree, student, or homemaker. Unemployment doesn’t just leave a person with no money—to a large extent, it also strips away his or her identity. Our society has plenty of words to describe the jobless, but that lexicon is viciously pejorative: bums, slackers, moochers, takers, lazy, useless, and a burden to others. So when we’re unemployed, that means we’re not only faced with the stress of looking for a job, not finding one right away, and going through our savings (if we’re lucky enough to have some). We also have to deal with the perception that anyone who doesn’t have a job is a worthless social failure.

And right now, although things are slowly improving, there are a lot of people who don’t have a job. We live in a society that is struggling to adjust to the massive impacts of globalization and modern technology. At present, the world’s economy is fragile and all too easily disrupted. There are many more people looking for work than the number of jobs available.

It’s not always going to be like this. As the world becomes fully industrialized and birthrates continue to fall, we can expect that many industries will face chronic labor shortages. People who are looking for jobs will have no problem finding them. But we’re not there yet; and in the meanwhile, we have to ask ourselves—on both a collective and an individual level—how we’re going to deal with today’s difficult job market.

Without getting into the political debate about whether the government ought to focus on job-creation programs or tax cuts, I’ll simply note that both sides recognize there is more involved than money. Politicians, whatever their party affiliation, commonly talk about work in terms of a person’s dignity and ability to contribute to society. Work is generally understood to make up a large part of our identity.

Before the modern era, when there was very little social mobility, defining people’s identity in terms of their occupations made a lot of sense. If your father was a blacksmith or a carter, you probably were too, if you were male; and you would never do anything else, unless you had the bad luck to get conscripted by a passing army. Everyone in your town would refer to you as John the smith or Tom the carter. A man’s occupation was a quick and easy way to distinguish him from others who had the same given name, back when common folks didn’t have surnames.

Now we live in a complex, unpredictable society where most workers will change jobs many times. Career retraining has become commonplace as old industries shrink and new ones emerge. It’s not unusual to get a college or university degree in one field and then end up employed in another. Modern workers are more likely to migrate to another city or country, and we have more diversity in our personal characteristics and interests. As a consequence, a person’s job says less about his or her identity than at any time in history.

And yet, we still ask children what they’re going to be when they grow up. The dominant cultural narrative is much the same as it was centuries ago, defining our personal identity and value in terms of how we earn our pay. If we get laid off and can’t find another job, or if we’re stuck in a low-paying job and have had no luck applying elsewhere, it’s hard to look at the situation objectively and not feel like we’ve been rejected by society in general. Our culture takes it for granted that a person’s dignity and value depend on employment status.

There are many variables that go into determining that status, however, and often they’re not under our control. We can’t reasonably be expected to predict an economic downturn that causes our company to go bankrupt or a technological advance that makes our work experience obsolete. Prejudice or nepotism can cause a less qualified applicant to get hired instead of us. Maybe our employer decides to cut costs by moving production overseas. We can’t prevent any of these things from happening, so why do we allow them to change how we feel about ourselves and about other people in our community? We might do better to think about redefining our values, in more ways than one.

What We Say About Ourselves

March 27, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: , ,

Researchers have found that people who often complain about being old or fat have more health problems than others of the same age or weight. And when older people leave their usual environment and go somewhere that they associate with youth and physical activity, their health improves. For example, blood pressure might be significantly lower after spending a few weeks at a hotel in the mountains, surrounded by hiking trails and furnished with dated décor reminiscent of one’s younger years.

When articles describing these studies appear on news websites, readers often post skeptical comments downplaying the effects of attitude. People complain more because they’re in worse health, not the other way around, the commenters suggest. And they argue that when someone’s health improves during a vacation, it has nothing to do with feeling younger—it’s simply because of a better diet and more exercise.

Some readers gripe that the scientists are being unethical by conducting studies that have the effect of encouraging people to lie to themselves. After all, if someone is old or fat, that’s the truth. It’s nonsensical to pretend otherwise, they say; and it gives people false hope that magical thinking will cure serious medical problems.

My take on it is that categories like “old” and “fat” are chiefly matters of opinion. Their boundaries can and do change as our cultural expectations shift over time. A century ago, when the average lifespan was much shorter than it is today, people thought of themselves as growing old earlier in their lives. And before the modern era, when food was much harder to get, a substantial waistline often was thought desirable—both because it was a sign of prosperity and because it improved survival odds in times of famine.

We also differ in how we sort ourselves into categories based on our life experiences. For instance, I would call myself middle-aged because both of my children are grown and are close to getting their university degrees. To my mind, it wouldn’t make any sense to describe myself as a young adult when my kids are now young adults. But nowadays, because of second marriages and fertility treatments, there are plenty of people my age who started their families just recently. They are likely to spend much of their time associating with young parents of toddlers and, as a result, to think of themselves as being nowhere near middle age.

Another factor in how we classify ourselves, which is even more individual, has to do with the connotations that we attach to the words. One person might despair upon approaching middle age, believing that it means the best part of life is over. A more optimistic person might view it as having many more years of a long and happy life remaining. Although they’re both using the same term to describe themselves, what they mean by it is totally different.

As to the health effects of what we say about ourselves, I believe the skeptics have a valid point that there’s more to it than positive or negative thinking. When someone is in better health after a vacation, it probably has to do with being more active than usual. The person isn’t just sitting around the whole time repeating affirmations, visualizing a younger and healthier self, and so forth.

That said, however, it’s all interrelated. When we think of ourselves as healthy people in the prime of our lives, we’re likely to act accordingly, getting regular exercise and taking better care of ourselves. To a large extent, humans are creatures of habit. What we say about ourselves is a strong factor influencing what habits we form, which in turn goes a long way toward shaping our circumstances.

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