Wanted - Leadership on jobs? Ok, here you go!

The New York Times has an editorial today titled "Leadership on jobs".

In part that article says:

September was ... the longest unbroken stretch of losses since record-keeping began in 1939 — ... And that understates the damage. ..

The unemployment rate for September ... also understates the damage. It would have been higher but for the fact that 571,000 people dropped out of the work force last month — in general, it’s assumed, because they’ve despaired of finding work. If they had kept looking, they would have been counted as unemployed.

The combination of a rising unemployment rate and a quickening pace of labor-force dropouts is especially worrisome. ... For adult men, who have been particularly hard hit by job loss in this recession, the employment rate fell to ... its lowest level since the government began keeping track ....

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And for adult African American men, the odds of finding a job that justifies staying in school are now effectively zero.

The Times continues

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A shrinking labor force represents a tremendous waste of talent and potential, a loss of value that will not be entirely retrievable. Widespread joblessness among men is particularly devastating for the economy and many families, because men tend to earn more than women and to have jobs offering health insurance.

To make matters worse, unemployment among men and women is proving relentless. ...over a third have been out of work for ..., the highest percentage of long-term unemployment on record. By the end of the year, benefits will expire for more than one million unemployed workers. ...

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and finally

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The real work, however, lies ahead. Economic recovery will not automatically replace the jobs that have been lost so far in this recession. Nor will higher levels of learning and skill — necessary as they are — magically create jobs, especially in the numbers that are needed.

... Congress and the administration also have not done enough to directly create jobs.

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OK. I agree that a lack of jobs is a serious problem, and finding a way for the unemployed to continue to eat and pay the rent without resorting to a life of crime is an urgent need and a moral imperative.

BUT, at the same time, we also need to look at the problem that most of the "jobs" that ARE out there are walking disasters that justify their own Dilbert cartoon strip. People show up for "work", mess around all day, have depressing and incredibly hostile "meetings", get paid and go home. During the day they sort of "follow orders" that make no sense, working on projects or products that have no future, in a sort of simulation of actual productive work. Everyone knows its just a matter of time until the company folds and the new pink slip arrives, and most of their energy is spent either trying to figure out what their next job will be, or doing their best to destroy the work of those around them so maybe those people will get laid off FIRST as times get rough and there is more and more "work" for fewer and fewer people to do. Meanwhile, upper management appears to have lost all contact with reality, as well as their own imperative to actually "show up" for "work". There seems to be no relationship between ultimate survival of the firm, or actually delivering quality goods and services to actual paying customers that meet actual needs, and the tasks that fill each day.

How bad is it? In white collar offices, the phrase "I'm going home so I can get some work done" is commonplace and makes perfect sense -- because the American "workplace" is the LAST place on earth where actually useful, productive work can be carried out.

Tragically, this is NOT a cartoon strip. Here's the truth -- if the government expends huge resources to create MORE "jobs" like these, it will only complete the task of destroying the entire American productive engine. In the long run, unless we are actually creatively producing goods and services that meet important needs, we will all go out of business.

The shattered dreams of those without jobs only masks the shattered dreams of those WITH jobs, that they might do something meaningful with their lives, not just claw and fight to survive one more day on a sinking ship that everyone keeps on pretending is floating.

The workplace continues to be a haven for "workplace abuse", a parallel to domestic abuse. It is not unusual for a boss to feel he has the right, if not the obligation, to yell at, cut down, and humiliate the "workers". It is not unusual for a boss to demand over and over that people "work harder" while having no accountability for the work making any sense or being efficient or effective. And, as the staff is cut even more to make it more "lean", it is not unusual to demand that workers give up evenings and weekends to deal with crises that could have been avoided if management had done its job and planned better or even with compassion.

So the workplace is depressing, and worse than simply non-productive -- it is as one person described it to me, a "life-sucking" world that produces sham goods and services at a tremendous cost in human suffering, depression, anxiety, and associated illnesses such as obesity and diabetes. It's only a miracle that there is as little visible workplace blow-back violence as there is, and I suspect that is largely due to the fact that the most psychologically abused workers are in such a state of hopeless helplessness that they can't even get organized to fight back. They are told to stop complaining and "be glad you HAVE a job!"

At the same time, there are now some great examples of what human beings can do together in totally different contexts. Highly productive, energizing, creative work can be done, with an actual joy in doing it. Some people look forward to "going to work" and spending the day slaying dragons with their co-workers in victory after victory.

This is not simply "icing" on a cake. In my own reading of things, the whole reason "the economy" is in trouble, and shedding "jobs" and entire companies if not entire industries, is that that pruning of dead wood is a healthy response of the national body to this disgusting and useless pretense of work. Also, it seems to me, that if THIS problem of pretend creation of wealth is not addressed, it's not just companies, but entire COUNTRIES, that will be pruned from the global body.

This is, at the core, an economic downstream effect of a spiritual problem -- we've lost our bearings as to why we are here, and what we should be doing while we are alive.

There is no way, in my reading of this, that people can simply create "more jobs" or "better paying jobs with better benefits" unless the question is addressed of what the heck kind of task all those "person-hours" are dedicated to accomplishing. More, better paying jobs is a downstream effect that will arrive AFTER we focus our collective national person-hours on the RIGHT tasks, not this collection of socially meaningless, and valueless, goals and objectives.''

The efforts the collective national workforce are putting out are not valued, precisely because they don't justify a high value, and are, in face valueless.

The erosion of jobs, companies, and at the rate we're going, entire cultures and countries, only reflects this loss of direction and lack of an uplifting focus on a long-term spiritual level.

We need jobs, yes, but we need jobs that produce, as output, sustainable improvements in our society, and, that are produced by creating vital environments, full of life and vitality and mutual support and encouragement, where people help each other focus on and be caught up in the immense joy of working productively on important issues, and succeeding at overcoming obstacles in getting there.

We are essentially attempting to power our "economy" by running on our starter engines, instead of utilizing our true capacity for enormously productive work that we are born with -- our capacity to plug into a community of others and find ourselves mobilized, motivated, energized, and empowered as the full creative life-generating power of the universe finds a channel through us to others and flows through that channel.

We have it entirely backwards. Humans can't build an economy, and then, when that is in place, move up Maslow's Hierarchy to start working on a community. We need the community first and the purpose and empowering engine to float the economy.

That is not something that will come "later", in some way, "after we get jobs at all." Where there is no spirit, there shall be no life, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, paraphrasing the Bible. What we HAVE is dry, lifeless bones, where the wind blows across empty fields, with the plow abandoned across the furrow, to further paraphrase TSE, "our lives unwelcome, our deaths unmentioned in the Times."

Eliot saw exactly this during the last great world-wide depression. Here's a section from his poem "Choruses from the Rock." What's crucial is not that he saw the problem, but that he also saw, through the symptoms, what the actual underlying problem was, and therefore how to address it and fix it.

After 50 years or so of pondering this question, I agree with him. Here's a few snippets of that poem, slightly rearranged. This was written in 1934.

But you, have you built well,
that you now sit helpless in a ruined house?
Where many are born to idleness,
to frittered lives and squalid deaths,
embittered scorn in honey-less hives?
What life have you if you have not life together?
There is no life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of GOD.

And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads,
And no man knows or cares who is his neighbor,
Unless his neighbor makes too much disturbance.

Will you leave my people forgetful and forgotten
To idleness, labor, and delirious stupor?
In a street of scattered brick where the goat climbs,
Where My Word is unspoken.

And the wind shall say: "Here were decent godless people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls.

We build in vain unless the LORD build with us.
Can you keep the City that the LORD keeps not with you?
A thousand policemen directing the traffic
Cannot tell you why you come or where you go.

When the Stranger says: 'What is the meaning of this city?'
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?'
What will you answer? 'We all dwell together
To make money from each other'? or 'This is a community'?

O weariness of men who turn from GOD
To the grandeur of your mind and the glory of your action...
Engaged in devising the perfect refrigerator.

Though you forget the way to the Temple,
There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.

A larger section of that poem, which I posted in October, 2007 when the Michigan state government shut down briefly, being unable to come up with a budget, is here.

The entire poem is difficult to find on-line, and there are many postings of small portions of it which give no indication that there are parts missing. But, I did find it in images so you can read it. The whole poem can be found here, along with most of the rest of Eliot's poems.

Eliot carries his thoughts into a Christian reverie, but don't be put off by that if you are not Christian -- there is nothing in the core thought that is not really universal, and could equally well be a Moslem or Jewish or Hindu reconnection with the spirit of life that animates this planet, and is willing to animate us, if we only turn to it and let that happen.

(Side-bar: I'm not sure that atheists, regardless how well intended or well educated, can connect with this type of wireless broadcast power to make it through the day. Looking at how "collegial" most university campuses tend to be among educated, atheistic faculty and scientists, there is little evidence that "community" is a driving value, or a sufficient reason to rise above petty squabbles or let go of long-standing bitter grudges. The drive to compete and noticeable sag in energy and increase in green envy when someone ELSE succeeds or looks good is not a strong sign of an academic "community". )

This poem is worth reading and rereading. The "new bricks" reference is what inspired the name of this weblog, by the way, and is in the hopeful section of the poem,

Yet nothing is impossible, nothing,
to men of faith and conviction.
Let us therefore make perfect our will.
O GOD, help us.

The soul of Man must quicken to creation.
Out of the formless stone,
when the artist united himself with stone,
Spring always new forms of life.

The LORD who created must wish us to create
And employ our creation again in His service.

The lights fade; in the semi-darkness
the voices of the WORKMEN
are heard chanting.

In the vacant places
We will build with new bricks
There are hands and machines
and clay for new brick
and lime for new mortar.

Where the bricks are fallen
We will build with new stone

Where the beams are rotten
We will build with new timbers

Where the Word is unspoken
We will build with new speech

There is work together
A Church for all
And a job for each
Every man to his work.

THIS is ultimately what "learning organizations" and "positive deviance" are about -- envisioning meaning and plugging into the resultant power to build new life, if we can break our eyes away from death and open our hearts to the joyous creation of life in the face of all odds.

Wade