I have long been way off the edge of our society in a philosophical, (anti-)religious, and anti-capitalism sort of way. Now I am physically located just off the edge as well, living in a small sailboat that is normally under way or anchored off shore. Though the actual distance may be just a couple of hundred feet; the mental image is of me being "here" and most of the rest of the world being "over there". There are a bunch of us "here", a whole tribe of gypsy boaters that wander north and south to escape the hurricanes of summer and the Nor'easteners of winter (either of which can easily disassemble a boat and leave the gypsy homeless). My world is different in another sense as well, it never stops moving. Even when at a quiet anchorage moving around the boat causes the boat to move; the wind and tide will swing the boat, and wakes from other boats will rock the boat. After a few days of this, when I do step back on land, the motion continues. My inner ear isn't sure how to interpret a floor that stays level or a wall that remains vertical so imaginary motion gets added to make things seem "normal."
Living on a small sailboat also means living outside a lot. The steering station is in the cockpit and there is usually someone nearby that station when underway, even with the wind vane helm engaged. At anchor we are often out on deck for meals, reading, and (when far enough south) swimming. Our human ancestors lived outside as well, concluding that the earth was the center of all things by watching the stars, moon, and sun wheel overhead; an illusion that persisted right up to modern times. In spite of all their advances even the Greeks were mystified by these asters planetai (wandering stars). It has only been in the last few hundreds of years that the illusion gave way to understanding; everything in the cosmos moves at nearly unimaginable speeds all the time, including earth.
Knowing that, for me anyway, chases away the illusion. In my normally moving world the earth is not standing still, it is rolling through the universe at a breakneck pace taking all of us along for the ride. Being stationary with the world around us appearing unchanged, that is the illusion. One that rarely colors my world view anymore.
Because of that some ideas are even less attractive then they once where. It is impossible for me envision a god unchanging, the same "yesterday, today, and forever". I can say the words, write the sentence, but can't add it up to having any meaning. In much the same way I can't understand the lure of conservative ideology. Nothing can stay the same, especially human society. Trying to keep it the same is beyond the realm of possibility. The best we can do is try to keep the changes in line with what we are learning to be truth. All human kind is one species; we are all the same "tribe". This planet is the only place on which we can (currently anyway) survive for more than a few minutes. (A very few people live on the space station for months, but only with constant resupply from earth.)
To me religion and conservatism have, as their foundation, the illusion that the earth is fixed.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Taking the human out of human endeavors
I have a young friend who is a teacher. She tries to do her best by her students hampered by an education system that is, by any metric, failing. She has a position for the coming school year, hired to fill one of four positions. Unfortunately the district has only enough budget to fill one of the four positions, leaving three empty for the coming year. She will, of course, be expected to pick up the slack without complaint since, "she is lucky to have the job".
In addition to be hampered by an completely unrealistic work load she is saddled with a "program" she is supposed to use. She tells me it is a really bad program, poorly written, poorly researched, and pretty much butchering the subject she is supposed to teach. But it is the approved program so she will have to do the best she can. And the truth is she will do pretty well for a simple reason, she is a good person who loves her job; she will do it well regardless of the challenges.
(Next year will be her last though. After that she and her new husband, an abused worker in the health care industry, will be shedding the American dream and making the same alternate lifestyle choice I made. There may be no industry that takes the human out of human endeavors more effectively than American health care.)
The failings of our society are assaulting her on several fronts, but the one that caught my attention was the program. The claim is that following the program will achieve the desired result without regard to the person using the program. Good person, bad person, good teacher, bad teacher; none of it makes a difference to the success of the program. And while hers is the world of primary education, this worship of "program" over "person" had permeated our entire society.
In the case of my teacher friend, what she is supposed to concentrate on, what she is supposed to be "good" at, is administering the program. There is no focus on developing her own abilities as a teacher or in her learning to relate to and help her students. Even worse there is no focus on her students. If they all fail to learn as desired the assumption would be that the program wasn't administered properly. In all probability the students would be "held back" to be subjected to the same program, though likely administered by a different "teacher".
This dehumanizing suffuses our entire society. It doesn't matter much of a product actually performs a particular function well, so long as the advertising for the product entices a lot of people to buy it. (American cars of the 1960s come to mind.) The human experience with the product is mostly ignored. If, somehow, your experience with the product isn't satisfying ( say, thinking a 1969 Mustang was a piece of shit car) that wouldn't matter at all.
We like programs partly because we are lazy. If one program (say for teaching math) can claim to fit all then teachers and administrators only have to contend with a single "student body". This is much easier than being responsible to and for 100 individual students who each have a different affinity for math and who would blossom under different teaching styles.
Another false plus for programs is that they seem efficient. One teacher + one program / one student body (2) is much simpler than math * 100 students * 100 "programs" / 5 teachers (1000). Two somethings is clearly more efficient than a thousand somethings and obviously much cheaper.
Which is the main reason we fall for programs. It is far cheaper to administer a program than it is to teach 100 students math. In addition the program originator likely has far more political clout than do teachers, and certainly much more clout than do students. Creating and selling programs is directly profitable for a few. Teaching students math is a calculation very hard to add to anyone's bottom line.
In our society we count money and reconcile that as having some direct correlation to human endeavor. Anyone who makes a lot of money must be good at something important. Anyone who doesn't make a lot of money is obviously not good at anything important. This is a myth but, like all myths, has just enough of a basis in reality to linger on. People who are really good at something often do make a better than average living at doing that thing. Unfortunately the relationship between the person, the ability, and the thing is twisted by a society that has very strange views of what is important. (The best example here is that we think the ability to make money, all by itself, is somehow important and beneficial to society.)
Ours is a society failing in almost every measurable way. The root of that failure may be nothing more complicated than we have worked, and succeeded, in taking the "human" out of human endeavors.
In addition to be hampered by an completely unrealistic work load she is saddled with a "program" she is supposed to use. She tells me it is a really bad program, poorly written, poorly researched, and pretty much butchering the subject she is supposed to teach. But it is the approved program so she will have to do the best she can. And the truth is she will do pretty well for a simple reason, she is a good person who loves her job; she will do it well regardless of the challenges.
(Next year will be her last though. After that she and her new husband, an abused worker in the health care industry, will be shedding the American dream and making the same alternate lifestyle choice I made. There may be no industry that takes the human out of human endeavors more effectively than American health care.)
The failings of our society are assaulting her on several fronts, but the one that caught my attention was the program. The claim is that following the program will achieve the desired result without regard to the person using the program. Good person, bad person, good teacher, bad teacher; none of it makes a difference to the success of the program. And while hers is the world of primary education, this worship of "program" over "person" had permeated our entire society.
In the case of my teacher friend, what she is supposed to concentrate on, what she is supposed to be "good" at, is administering the program. There is no focus on developing her own abilities as a teacher or in her learning to relate to and help her students. Even worse there is no focus on her students. If they all fail to learn as desired the assumption would be that the program wasn't administered properly. In all probability the students would be "held back" to be subjected to the same program, though likely administered by a different "teacher".
This dehumanizing suffuses our entire society. It doesn't matter much of a product actually performs a particular function well, so long as the advertising for the product entices a lot of people to buy it. (American cars of the 1960s come to mind.) The human experience with the product is mostly ignored. If, somehow, your experience with the product isn't satisfying ( say, thinking a 1969 Mustang was a piece of shit car) that wouldn't matter at all.
We like programs partly because we are lazy. If one program (say for teaching math) can claim to fit all then teachers and administrators only have to contend with a single "student body". This is much easier than being responsible to and for 100 individual students who each have a different affinity for math and who would blossom under different teaching styles.
Another false plus for programs is that they seem efficient. One teacher + one program / one student body (2) is much simpler than math * 100 students * 100 "programs" / 5 teachers (1000). Two somethings is clearly more efficient than a thousand somethings and obviously much cheaper.
Which is the main reason we fall for programs. It is far cheaper to administer a program than it is to teach 100 students math. In addition the program originator likely has far more political clout than do teachers, and certainly much more clout than do students. Creating and selling programs is directly profitable for a few. Teaching students math is a calculation very hard to add to anyone's bottom line.
In our society we count money and reconcile that as having some direct correlation to human endeavor. Anyone who makes a lot of money must be good at something important. Anyone who doesn't make a lot of money is obviously not good at anything important. This is a myth but, like all myths, has just enough of a basis in reality to linger on. People who are really good at something often do make a better than average living at doing that thing. Unfortunately the relationship between the person, the ability, and the thing is twisted by a society that has very strange views of what is important. (The best example here is that we think the ability to make money, all by itself, is somehow important and beneficial to society.)
Ours is a society failing in almost every measurable way. The root of that failure may be nothing more complicated than we have worked, and succeeded, in taking the "human" out of human endeavors.
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