Results tagged “Assumptions” from Mobilizing Mouse

A work in progress - Stephen


An Hour or So With a Mexican Scribe
From The Washington Post

Is this the way ahead?

Seemingly backwards?

The wonderful Schumacher used the phrase 'intermediate technology' to refine the distinction between tools which put the power into the producers of the tools and home made tools which perhaps don't offer the mechanical advantage necessary.

In the villages of old, imagined societies, not everyone did everything. You had a fletcher - putting the flights on arrows, a blacksmith - shoeing horses, a baker - baking the bread.

A local person was skilled and revered for their skill. That skill was passed down through families. It grew upon a natural aptitude as well as something in the blood.

So no one failed. The large boned blacksmith wasn't forced to use his large fingers to be clumsy with delicate feathers.

In today's societies we are somehow made addicted to self-sufficiency.

I recall an incident about 20 years ago when the sister of a friend of mine wanted her bicycle serviced and asked me to do this for her. I remember being very angry at her refusal to learn from me how to do it herself. I had become obsessed with the self-reliant, we must all do everything approach and this incident exposed my unease with it.

So the story of Mexican scribes using electric typewriters to compose bills, love letters or contracts seems refreshing.

In westernized Vancouver, obsessed with formal learning, of course this would combat the idea of an educated population.As Daniel Quinn points out in 'My Ishmael' and Ivan Illich says everywhere, a child knows everything they need by about 12 years old. The last six years just turn them into insatiable consumers. Consumers of goods and of 'training'.

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So the poor people who did not write would be sent to school in shame and pity.

Equality would be cited; you have to be equal Equally dependant on capitalist baubles and trinkets.

The electric typewriter scribes would be sent for 'upgrading', in shame and pity, to become obsessed with computers and be current or modern and keeping up with the times.

But why should everyone be able, read lonely and independent, enough to know how to do everything that the educational and capitalist society wants?

Could it be that capitalism needs everyone to do everything to sell more of everything?

The photographer used to be called in to take photographs, now everyone has to have a digital camera.

So instead of one camera per say 1000 people there are 500.

A true graphic designer or illustrator used to be a talented person who had a gift.

Now everyone with a computer and a silly amonut of money to buy Photoshop thinks they are talented instead of just tooled.

Every house in a street has its own lawnmower, electric drill and other assorted owned tools used so infrequently that sharing could reduce dependency by perhaps 100 to 1/

So the illiterate would swap their illiteracy for dependence on typewriter and computers.

The social interaction with the scribes would be gone.

The scribes would have no work.

But everyone would have imbibed the expectation to purchase expected tools and be so called self-sufficient.

Progress.
 

'Go Fish' or 'Let's go fishing'?

'Give a person a fish an you feed them for a day; teach them to fish and you feed them for life.'

This common principle used to guide many employment programs sounds good practice on the surface (sorry) but if you take it apart it truly is a nasty piece of right-wing propaganda.

It's reminiscent of that cow Thatcher's infamous 'There is no such thing as society. Only individual men and women.'

The implicit message is that once you have learnt to fish you will never, ever, be given a fish again.

As soon as you are 'self-sufficient' (another phrase that needs to be examined) you are on your own.

Where's the joy of fishing together, the sharing of fish, the giving and receiving of fish? Where's the chance to talk about the 'one that got away'?

Fishing is not about the rod, reel and line. It's about the choice of bait for the type of fish.It's about knowing the river, stream, lake or stretch of ocean beach. It's about guile and experience and swapping knowledge. It's about keeping a 'weather eye' open for changing conditions.

Small wonder that some people who understand this implicit abandonment will spend their time waxing their rod, working on line selection and exploring their bait options.

Some 'teach to fish' programs even have the 'learn to fish by date' stamped on them: 'a three week program..', 'a six week..' or 'up to ten weeks of learning....'.

Read three, six or ten weeks to either lonely self-sufficiency or abandonment, probably both.

Want some help? Here's a wrench.

If I get my tires changed - I don't drive and I hate cars - but if I were to want to get my tires changed, I wouldn't expect to be given a series of workshops.

'John Boyd Dunlop - the man', 'a short history of the rubber industry', 'torque theory', 'wrench use skills', 'how to know when your tires need changing', '

Some would doubtless be given supposedly engaging titles: 'Left feeling Flat? How to cope with a loss of pressure' or 'Inflation is good thing! How checking your tires saves you money.'

Or take coffee.

If you go into a coffee bar what do you expect to get?

This employment counselling business must be the only field, I can't think of another, where if you are looking for a coffee you get shown how to make it.

The longer it is since you last had coffee, the more desperate you seem to get a coffee, the more coffee making training and theory you'll get.

Over two years without a coffee? Join our three week course. Includes espresso machine maintenance, bean roasting theory, and a barista shadowing day.

But a coffee? Forget it.

Knowing that you want a  'grande-non-fat-extra-hot-no-foam-decaf-space-for-milk-double-cup' or something requires substantial awareness of what you like, what you want from a coffee. This is our job as employment counsellors, working out the 'fit'.

With the internet getting itself organized better, just two job sites and about a dozen clicks will produce a job advertisement, more about the company and a map.

Every person I am working with gets a fish/coffee/job ad. every morning.

Not just any job but an:
'on-a-bus-route-that-passes-where-I-live-the-size-of-organization-is-one-that-will-suit-me-a-respectful-workplace-a-good-variety-of-people-to-work-with-pay-that-is-in-my-range-and-a-chance-to-move-forward' possibility.

This is daily chuck under the chin; watch for the look of expectation as they arrive to see what is their 'fish' today. The reaction to this gift of a hand selected 'fish' is a great for judging mood. Talking about the possibilities, terrors, fears and hopes involved is an excellent way of refining how to help.

Congratulations and Goodbye Forever

We call ourselves 'employment' counsellors but actually we are unemployment counsellors.

Not only do we usually wait until people are lost, lonely broke and depressed but our contract with them again has an implicit hidden meaning.

The moment you find work I am lost to you.

Even if you happen to have a shift that allows you to come and see me there is probably a rule concerning time limits and their involvement with your program.

So should the job not work out they are most likely to be 'sent' to another program and have to start again.

Tell someone you are working with that you are still in contact with those you worked with over 3 years ago and say that your relationship with them is for as long as they want it and see the set of the shoulders change.

Why aren't more programs open in the evening and on weekends? Why don't we add this feature to our program proposals?

Given that work is a relationship like any other, the relationship with someone who is looking for work has to have both the strength and longevity to propel them past the fears which accompany this search.

People will have had bad break ups, messy divorces, abusive partnerships, one night stands; in work terms being fired, being 'downsized', a bully in the workplace and casual day labour.

No relationship is healthy if it begins with one party focussing solely on what the other wants. Yet this is what many people looking for work are told. Being what the employer wants is the way to get into a new working relationship.

Conversely a healthy relationship comes from both parties being clear (self-knowledge) about what they want and what they have to offer.  Our modelling of this 'fit' is to be mirrored in someone who is looking for work and their 'fit' - the job that's right for them.

Good news - you're a loser

Do you post seemingly good news stories such as 'Canada's unemployment rate hits 33-year low, pushing Canadian dollar to new high?' or talk about finding work being easy in a 'hot' economy?

In the late 1960s the governments of westernized democracies began to get worried. Draft dodgers burning the American flag in cities around the US, riots on the streets of Paris, the LSE in London occupied by its students.

'With an increasingly educated workforce and unemployment rising should we be worried about a revolution?' they asked.

The social scientists they consulted quickly came back with good news.

Unemployment is a divisive, isolating and depressing condition.

Give people shelter and just enough to eat (sound familiar...?) and you have nothing to worry about.

Put unemployment in its political context, and normalize its depressing effects, indeed its relied upon divisive effects, and watch for the look of '...so it's not just me...' come over people's faces.

For every percentage point unemployment falls those still not working feel that much worse. '..heck they are even importing workers from Mexico, but I can't find work. I must be a total loser.'

So think twice before before posting good news stories about employment figures and the 'hot' economy. They may be meant well but are as about encouraging as a Kate Moss poster at a fat farm.

For every 'good news' story, everyone not working needs more chucks under the chin, more smiles, more attention.