GuidoWorld

This post and the next one will involve a lot of the same themes and hopefully I will be able to minimize any duplication of material. The title of this post is also the name of one of my CD’s and a song on that CD which you can listen to and read in the music section of this website.

I realize from a historical perspective I was very fortunate to be born in the USA in the 1950’s. Even though I grew up in a relatively poor household all of my basic needs were always taken care of and I never went to bed hungry nor did I ever suffer in any tangible or lasting way.

Though the fruits of empire were never divided equally, almost everyone in the US benefitted by our nation’s economic status and ample resources. No matter how hard we worked, we lived a comfortable life in comparison to most on the planet.

The birth of arguably the largest middle class ever to exist in a world society allowed so many of us to experience great leaps in standard of living and quality of life. Public health practices and vaccinations made crippling disease a relatively rare occurrence, and mother’s dying in childbirth became a relic of family history rather than a current event I witnessed in my or my friends lives.

Due to the growth of labor unions, the womens, student and civil rights movements and easy access of information via newspapers, radio and TV most American’s were finding their voice and feeling empowered. Popularization of labor saving machines and appliances along with the mind boggling accomplishment on having people walk on the moon spawned a sense of hope and optimism that few previous generations have ever been privileged to be a part of.

In so many ways the US was a safe haven and a land of plenty. Other than the A-Bomb threat from Russia and the Cuban Missile Crisis, our lives were safe and secure. Famine, lack of drinking water, life destroying epidemics and fear of attack were not realities for the US as they were for the rest of the world and world history. The fight for survival was replaced by free market competition and being on the losing end of competition did not prevent one from trying again tomorrow.

Yet, in many ways the protests against the war in Vietnam, the women’s and civil rights movement and the birth of the Ecological movement were more end points than the births they were touted to be. Just when we were on the verge of creating a living Eden we started going the other way.

Somewhere in the 70’s we began to become the land of Opportunity Lost. We began to see that progress had its costs. Waste and pollution began to endanger some of the gains we made in public health by contaminating our water and air with toxic substances. The very industries which led to our rise in the standard of living were faced with the fact that working conditions and substances involved in the production of their products were a public nuisance and often a detriment to public health.

The culture which had cured many lethal diseases and had created a more wholesome environment was now faced with new problems and hurdles to overcome. Yet, instead of using new technologies and invention to successfully tend to these problems money and resources were used by the status quo oriented large corporations on public relations messages and litigation which only gave the perception of change and the false reassurance of solution.

Individuals like the corporations they worked for and fiscally supported began going down roads that would not lead to a continuation of a higher quality of life. While corporations increasingly valued profit over quality of life, individuals moved towards success and convenience over health and relationships.

Just as corporations minimized or denied research that showed the harm and danger of their products and waste materials so likewise did individuals ignore studies on health and personal satisfaction. Studies regarding the dangers of smoking, lack of exercise, poor diet, and stress induced by the fast pace of modern life were ignored by corporations and individuals alike. The only difference was that corporations stood to profit by their denial while the individual stood to suffer from theirs.

The burgeoning medical, pharmaceutical and psychologically therapeutic industries all gained by identifying the physical and psychological dangers and harms of modern life while losing business or becoming extinct if true cure were to be found and implemented. Individual’s were seduced by the convenience and status offered by being consumer’s of these “helpful industries.

Our generation of abundance and safety was wasting a great opportunity. Instead of using our resources, technologies, affluence and talents to create an even higher quality of life for even more people on the planet we were succumbing to lures of competition and the monetary gain of exploitation.

Individuals once citizens became consumers. Instead of sharing the wealth, saving for tomorrow, using our safety and freedom to create strong bonds and friendships, and providing for future generations, we bought more than we made, went into debt, ate poorly, became a nation of divorcees and broken families while leading the world in depression and self-dissatisfaction.

Instead of making the world a healthier and safer place we became a nation of pirates stealing and controlling the resources of other lands, and became a full time war nation and military opportunist in various ways such as nation building and arms sales.

We squandered the spring and the summer of our Eden and did nothing to prepare for the coming fall and winter. Though we have had a few significant natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods and tornadoes we’ve been incredibly fortunate to not have any major earth quakes, epidemics, plagues, pestilence, famine or the like.

This is not an alarmist, gloom and doom, perspective. It is just the simple fact that we are not above and beyond the cycles of nature and that things will happen. On almost every level of life we have been consuming instead of saving, acting instead of preparing and winning instead of loving.

Are we now fated to suffer the anguish of our lack of preparation and be punished for our wasting away our fortunate and golden opportunity? The housing and debt crisis has awoken many to the dangers of not saving and preparing, but are we ready as a society to see this as a symptom of a much larger crisis?

The majority of my adult life I’ve been uncomfortable with the US’s belief in the concept of earning a living. I not only think it is inaccurate and misleading but often times a complete mythology.

The concept of earning a living involves a number of beliefs about people, justice and fairness. One of these is that anyone willing to work hard will be adequately rewarded and recognized in our society and the hardest and most capable workers are the most successful in our culture.

Yet, a quick look at the real world finds a lot of information which does not support this belief. First, the most physically demanding work in our society is often poorly paid. In fact the majority of menial and physically challenging work will likely result in your being near or below the poverty line. In the US a large portion of those hard workers can’t afford health insurance and are struggling to survive.

When one responds that in today’s world the definition of a hard worker has less to do with menial labor and more to do with talent, credentials and education I once again find actual life to be non-supportive of this view. In US history the wealthiest and most financially successful people in our society have generally not been the best educated, credentialed or talented. Up until recently our most successful entrepreneurs and businessmen have typically been college or even high school drop outs. Not many would argue that most of most successful politicians are our most talented leaders, political minds or gifted communicators.

In almost every field and discipline the most talented, credentialed and educated people are not its leaders nor the richest and most recognized. I have personally known some very talented musicians and though some of them have had professional and financial success the larger portion of them have not, while many inferior musicians in terms of expertise and talent have flourished.

Instead of hard work other factors seem to play a more pronounced role. One’s success usually has more to do with family background, personality traits, luck, height and physical attractiveness, ambition and verbal skills to name a few factors.

Even the rather self-evident idea that people who perform the best in a given field make the most advancement and get the job promotions is not true according to my experience. The bulk of my job experience has been in the human service and education arenas. In a number of situations my job description or role in the agency I was working in made me aware of or directly involved in the hiring, firing and promoting of employees. I can state most assuredly that the bulk of employee decisions did not reward the hardest working and talented employees.

I can recall numerous situations where a classroom teacher or direct care staff was promoted because of inability rather than ability. A teacher incapable of managing their classroom or whose students weren’t succeeding were promoted to remove them from an unsuccessful situation hoping that their weaknesses and incompetence would be better hidden in a more administrative (and high paying) position.

Likewise some were overlooked for promotion due to the fact that they were too valuable in the classroom, or whose talents were too threatening for those up the ladder from them. Others were denied professional and fiscal advancement due to their intelligence, talent and ambition being viewed as posing too much conflict and discomfort for the administrative team.

In my experience I always felt that the those with direct contact with clients and students deserved the most pay. Yet, direct service personnel are almost always some of the least paid individuals in an agency or school.

The factors that seem to most impact the amount of monetary success and influence you achieve in our society is often not so admirable. While those with drive and ambition are often thwarted by incompetent and stagnant bureaucracies and businesses, a person with a ruthless drive often rises to the top in our society. An obsessive, self-promoting and pushy person will often succeed when competing against a caring and adaptable person.

I’m fond of talking about looking at our earning a living as literally a human race. Anyone who bends over to help someone, or courteously waits their turn falls behind. Any business owner who pays his workers more than his competitors and gives his workers more benefits will be at a severe economic and business disadvantage to those owners who underpay their workers and cut corners on benefits and working conditions. Those who misrepresent the benefits and importance of their product while denying or minimizing its drawbacks or uselessness will usually defeat an honest competitor.

In my book “A Crack in the Wall” I pointed out how beneficial it is from a business perspective it is to maximize the potential addictive qualities of a product. Many businesses have worked hard at fine tuning the “attractiveness” of their product which is a euphemism for exploiting the addictive qualities of the product.

Some of the addictive qualities are obvious like tobacco, beer, coffee, prescription medications, recreational drugs, gambling and prostitution. Yet, the majority are more subtle tweaks in the taste, feel, smell, appearance and psychological recipe of the product which are borderline addictive in nature but not in effect.

To this point my presentation of why I find the concept of earning a living distasteful is due to its functioning under the false assumption that desirable qualities such as talent, education, intelligence and industry directly result in financial reward. The belief is that in a true democratic free market economy everyone is capable and will be able to earn a good living if they are disciplined, work hard and try their hardest to learn marketable skills.

I have attempted to give a few examples of how the real world does not support that financial success does not correspond to these vaunted qualities and characteristics. An entire book could be written citing example of example of how our democratic free market does not work in this way. I leave it to you to find your examples and will not bore you with a couple hundred pages of mine.

Yet, I want to move on to two more core objections I have to the concept of earning a living. Even if it were true that qualities such as industry and characteristics such as talent and intelligence did have a direct correlation with monetary success and quality of life, would that be reason to construct a society based on these functional truths?

Is my being more intelligent, creative, talented or personable than someone else entitle me to having a better quality of life then them? Due to marketable skills and personality traits am I more worthy of comfort, medical care and security than someone less gifted or disciplined?

Should one have to earn a living? Or should having access to one’s basic needs be a given? Are less talented, handicapped, mentally disadvantaged or slothful individuals unworthy of a quality existence?

If the above humanitarian argument does not move you or you view it is dangerous and unproductive let me address another practical argument.

If we go back to the initial hard work interpretation of earning a living we find that the definition of hard work has been going through changes during the entire span of the industrial revolution which most likely gave birth to it. The hard manual labor of man was first replaced by beasts. Instead of men pushing and pulling plows we had horses, cattle and the like do the truly hard work.

Later with the emergence of steam and then the combustion engine we much more productive and less laborious. The age of machines removed us from our most strenuous labors while dramatically increasing our production and efficiency. The age of machines and automation morphed into the electronic and then the age each reducing our labors while increasing our efficiency. Our emerging world of robotics, and artificial intelligence promises to even further reduce our labor.

Yet, as we work less and utilize and rely more on technology and non human labor forces it is becoming more and more unrealistic to talk about us “earning a living”. With more and more of our mental and physical labor not only being executed but often designed, monitored and regulated it is hard to sell the earning a living image. In an environment where most of our most sophisticated and delicate surgeries are being done by robots and lasers, it will be become increasingly become difficult to justify surgeons making oodles of money despite the fact that they may still be very educated and talented understudies to the robots they employ.

A major reality undermining the old earning a living model is the fact that almost every advance in modern technology removes more jobs than it creates. Each and every passing day it is becoming increasingly obvious that we do not and will most likely never have enough jobs for everyone on the planet. Our expectation that everyone earn a living and allowing those without significant employment to suffer, live in poverty, die due to insufficient medical care and even starve due to their lack of earning power is unrealistic at best and cruel and inhumane at worst.

I was taught to believe that anyone who was poor was so because they were lazy. selfish and immature. Disciplined and responsible people always found gainful employment and made a positive contribution to society.

People who were under or unemployed were and are still viewed as being a burden to society. My personal experience has differed greatly as I have found many poor people I’ve known and met to be hard working and caring individuals.

Yet, I would also like to point out that in my life slothful people have been less of a problem for me than ambitious and industrious one’s. It may be true that the slothful may have been a source of irritation in my day-to-day world and in some ways forced me to take care of them when I may have felt they could and should have taken care of themselves.

Yet, those of fiscal ambition and the desire for power have had a great role in making our world unsafe and unhealthy. Our polluted water and air are the product of the industrious, as is most of our military and religious conflict and war. The damage done to our ecosystem and the degradation of our quality of life by filling our environment with dangerous and toxic substances is due to ambition more than sloth.

The exploitation of peoples weaknesses for financial gain has made our highways, neighborhoods and workplaces increasingly violent and less safe. The misinformation and propaganda which fosters fear, mistrust and destruction of life and property is a product of the politically ambitious and those who thirst for power.

I’m not saying that the talented, intelligent and industrious aren’t worthy or shouldn’t be respected and rewarded for their gifts and efforts. What I am saying is that one should not have to earn a living, we all deserve food, shelter, health care, clothing, access to information, and the resources necessary to have a high quality of life.

Jim Guido