Get a Job, You Bum!

What the crow said

When it comes to governance in a democracy, conservatism makes an excellent opposition; allow conservatism to take charge, however, and the clean up takes years of tedious commitment.” - the crow

Having been an adult educator for a dozen or so years, my ears perk up when I hear announcements relating to that field. Employment and Social Development Minister Jason Kenney met with the provinces and territories this week to sell a new plan for preparing the unemployed for the job market. I didn't get the details, but it apparently involves reducing the grants for this purpose to provinces and spending the difference on a joint training program involving industry. There's a logic to it; if Widgets, Inc. needs people to function on the Widget assembly line, they should probably bear some of the burden of training people to do that. Chalk it up to cost of production and raise your prices to cover the new expense.

The provinces and territories, as would be expected, balked on jurisdictional and budgetary grounds. 'Twas ever thus.

The concept of job training as a solution for the marginalized, the chronically unemployed and the ethnically marginalized needs a bit of sober second thought however. In the first place, there's a huge area of employment that may be short of workers but where skills training is not relevant. How much training does it need to teach Widget assembly? What able-bodied person can't nail down asphalt shingles day after day with just an hour of instruction and demonstration? There may me a myth afloat out there about skills training as a solution for employers who have only mind-numbing, thankless, routine, minimum-wage jobs to offer, but that remains a myth.

Secondly, a job does not a life make. Seen from the skills training perspective, people become widget-like in the public eye. “Get a job, you bum,” and all that. Never mind that training has been attempting to displace education in these times, the idea that a job is the relevant goal of all those years spent in school strikes me as penny wisdom and pound foolishness. Most of the people I counselled as an educator did not lack the ability to do the jobs that were out there, they were short on knowing how to live. Their lives were too chaotic for the consistent performance of even the most basic of life necessaries like managing relationships satisfactorily, postponing rewards for a distant goal, the minutiae that goes into successful child rearing, eating and feeding families with wholesome nourishment, etc. Most of my adult students had had jobs, many jobs in many cases, but chaos had undone them long before the prospect of advancement could be contemplated.

Two good ways to spend the billions we're currently throwing away on shadows:

First, employers have to be trained to make their workplaces amenable to family and social life of the people they employ. I could work at McDonald’s if the fact of being with the people there were something to look forward to, if the work were balanced with reasonable monetary and personal rewards and if the atmosphere was one of people performing a worthwhile service for deserving customers.

Second, training must never displace education. It starts in Kindergarten and never stops. It is the nurturing of the essences of being successful human beings, creatures who love, eat, travel, play, vote, hear and express opinions, read and understand, pursue artistic endeavours, and generally feel comfortable and self-confident in the communities in which fate has placed them. This is liberal education; it has no substitute.

To expropriate a Biblical adage—possibly ill-advisidly—seek ye first [a liberal education] and all these things—including meaningful work—shall be added unto you.

The idea that jobs build lives is very much a conservative way of thinking. Our current government is interested in labour supply and reducing public spending, the unemployed shall assemble Widgets as they themselves are widgets of the economy.

How long will it take a future government to undo this folly?

Thank you Me Me, wherever you are

three-quarters empty

A commentary on Yahoo News by a person calling himself or herself “Me Me” was entitled, “Why the Conservative Base Will Always Vote Conservative.” It equates Conservatism with Authoritarianism and lists the following points (with references to Altemeyer; Haddock, Zanna, & Esses, 1993: Robert Altemeyer is a retired professor of Psychology at the University of Manitoba and has written widely on Right-wing Authoritarianism. Haddock, Zanna & Esses references are to a 1993 paper on “Assessing the structure of prejudicial attitudes: The case of attitudes toward homosexuals.)

Does any of this ring bells for you?

*Authoritarianism…happens when the followers submit too much to the leaders, trust them too much, and give them too much leeway to do whatever they want--which often is something undemocratic, tyrannical and brutal.” (Altemeyer, 2006, p. 2)

*An Authoritarian is “someone who, because of his personality, submits by leaps and bows to his authorities.” (p. 8)

*Authoritarian followers usually support the established authorities in their society, such as government officials and traditional religious leaders. Such people have historically been the “proper” authorities in life, the time-honoured, entitled, customary leaders, and that means a lot to most authoritarians.” (p. 9)

*Psychologically these followers have personalities featuring:

1. a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society;

2. high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and

3. a high level of conventionalism (believing that everybody should have to follow the norms and customs that your authorities have decreed ).


*High authoritarians are extremely self-righteous individuals who maintain a strong acceptance of traditional (i.e. Religious) values and norms, possess a general willingness to submit to legitimate authority, and display a general tendency to aggress against others (especially those who threaten their conventional values and norms). They see their own aggressive behaviour as righteous rather than hurtful. (Haddock, Zanna, & Esses, 1993)

Authoritarians believe in traditional gender roles, racial prejudice, negative attitudes toward homosexuals, conservative (fundamental or orthodox) religious values, and are low on openness to experience. They are also extra-punitive toward law breakers. They assign longer jail times for any law breaker (no matter how small the crime), they think the crimes are more serious than most people do, and they find “common criminals” to be highly disgusting and repulsive – it makes them feel glad to be able to punish a perpetrator,

. . . But they go easy on authorities who commit crimes.


Thank you Me Me, whoever you are, for condensing some interesting research on the authoritarian mindset.

A Fox News Sabbath

Walking the dogs on a Sunday afternoon

Here’s a question I find interesting, although you may not:

When Moses brought down the Ten Commandments from Sinai, including the admonition to “remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” did the Children of Israel know exactly what day that was? In other words, if they were to labour for six days and rest on the seventh, was it clear to all and sundry which day of the week was the seventh one and when it would next appear?

I followed a surfing-chain yesterday starting with a forwarded email from a friend suggesting I sign a petition to block Fox News from coming to Canada. That led me to the website of Glenn Beck, Fox’s resident reactionary, on which there was a link to the Restored Church of God, which led in turn to a few talks by a David C Pack on why the Restored Church of God is the only true church in the world, which led further to the debate in the Church of God about whether or not the true Sabbath is actually Friday sunset to Saturday sunset, thence to the article declaring Sunday observation a heresy by said Mr. Pack.

If the Children of Israel had begun to observe six days on, one day off immediately, would the current Saturday still be in synch with them? I don’t think so. Every leap year pushes the calendar one day back (or forward, take your pick) and a strict sequence of six-on, six-off would mean that the Sabbath would rotate through the days of the week over time. Correct me if I’m wrong.

This may illustrate little more than that the exploration of the web is best characterized as a descent into ignorance, silliness and the endless flogging of pet horses. Or it may raise a far more disturbing question: if the reading of the Holy Bible produces such enmity, confusion and strife as we see in the splintering of the Church of God (into The Living Church of God, the Worldwide Church of God, the Global Church of God and now, The Restored Church of God) and the endless bicker about doctrines, should we be recommending other reading instead, or at least, as well?

Maybe we should rise up and block Fox News. The movement across North America toward fundamentalism and “conservatism” is insidious and concerted, and very, very discouraging. It’s a movement that throttles the great potential with which creation has endowed us. It’s a movement that eulogizes the merits of old doctrines and habits and would rather concern itself with mystical meaning in ancient writings than with the expanding possibilities of human intelligence, logic and creativity. It would rather predict the future than live responsibly in the present, and assigns catastrophes to the workings of powers beyond our control. It’s anti-civilization, and to see the church leading the charge back into ignorance would be the most disappointing development of all.

An aside: David Pack makes much of the verses where Jesus is purported to speak of “building my church.” This is not a firm foundation for many of his arguments, since etymologically speaking, the word church was not used in the sense in which we use it until the fourth century AD (see http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=church). Some will say that Jesus never set out to “build a church,” others will say that it’s not possible that Jesus ever said those words, particularly in the sense that we understand them. There’s a difference between “reading” and “reading with understanding.”

So back to the Sabbath. Taking a day off regularly is a good idea, no matter what day it is. Giving that day to contemplation of a greater reality than our daily tasks allow is probably a bonus. Fighting over whether that should be done on Saturday or Sunday was probably not what was intended, to say the least.