Fear and Freedom

Healing the Hurts of the Earth, and Resisting the Orcs

Lúthien Tinúviel, Allan Lee

I recently signed a petition that constitutes a sort of "please cease and desist" request from two private individuals to their local Planning Department. The story need not be told here, but, in summary, the local government very clearly overstepped its bounds and intruded upon the peace of honest citizens as they made an act of good faith by attempting to confirm the legality of their living situation.

We have been seeing this sort of intimidation very often recently, and it has become more and more apparent that government positions are increasingly attractive to power-minded individuals, those who would "lord it over" their fellow man: "Dominion and service, egoism and altruism, possession and gift, self-interest and gratuitousness: these profoundly contrasting approaches confront each other in every age and place" (Homily, Benedict XVI, St. Peter's Basilica, 18 Feb. 2012).

Not all would agree with the theological account of "the beginning", but many in this day and age agree that a certain stewardship of the earth, a relationship with nature that is mutually beneficial, is laudable, and may, in its various forms, be the one appropriate vocation of man.

It just so happens that the persons at the center of the story mentioned above were seeking to grow vegetables, raise chickens and goats, and otherwise live a very "green" lifestyle from a converted, off-grid school bus. They were seeking to perform a deeply human function, following deeply human desires. They were doing no different from the first people of this country, English immigrants in America, the frontier families, and indeed many peoples in various countries, cultures, and economies throughout the world today. It seems odd that their quiet, unobtrusive, and humble lifestyle should cause any stir whatsoever.

It should cause no stir unless it be an inspiration to live in like manner.

That county officials sought to extend the tentacle of arbitrary conformation is a clear sign that America is no longer free, and that the government has made itself an enemy of humankind and of nature, enforcing -- and thereby merely postponing the certain demise of -- a flailing social and economic doctrine.

Why should we expect fear and intimidation when we seek to do the simplest of things, when we choose to do that for which we were made? Why should we balk at the idea of freedom?

Before even it has become illegal to practice one's religion in this country (an impending doom, no doubt), it is illegal to own private property. You are certainly allowed to hand over your life's saving for a deed, title, and other proofs of nominal ownership, but you are not permitted to do as you will with the earth that you cultivate. Instead, the agents of cookie-cutter suburbia come knocking at your door, demanding some blathering nonsense.

The environs are foggy, but the choice is clear.

The current state of affairs, the current tone of local government (and certainly state and national government) effectively precludes any chance of overcoming absurd legal boundaries on an individual basis. What can one man do? He can do something. A foundational principle of the American nation was that a man can't tramp all over you merely because he has the bigger stick. We no longer live in that nation. We live in a state of passive-aggressive cold war with our governing bodies.

And we must put up a rampart of defense against what is clearly an infringement upon our rights as human persons, which include the right to produce food for our own sustenance and shelter against the elements, without restrictions based on our means or some pitiable norm of "success". It is not a moral wrong to be poor. It is a moral right to care in the best way one may for oneself and one's family.

It is time for persons and families of like mind and similar pursuits to band together and live as they see fit, and to reject all unreasonable molestation as well as the consequences of that rejection. We must no longer allow ourselves to be punished for the basic activities required of existence. We must no longer allow arbitrary policies to define our very nature.

We are human beings born in a place, and this is no crime. We have every right to preserve our existence in this place without interference, especially if we obtain property and cultivate it to our liking. It is time to take a stand, and to reject unjust discrimination by a nihilistic society pressured by a police state. It is time for "the adornment of Arda and the healing of its hurts" (Tolkien, quoted in Patrick Curry's "Iron Crown, Iron Cage ..."). It is time to raise happy families to join in the work that has been set out before us. It is time to reject the jealousy of Cain, and justly preserve the pursuit of innocence.

Surviving Ideology

A cursory critique of the more public Slavoj Zizek

Marc Chagall

"The unexamined life is not worth living." -- Socrates via Plato (or Plato via Socrates) (or both)

In February, Slavoj Zizek wrote an article loosely attached to the unified protests in Bosnia-Herzogovina. Zizek paints a portrait in which "we see the demonstrators waving three flags side by side: Bosnian, Serb, Croat, expressing the will to ignore ethnic differences. ... What the Bosnian outburst confirms is that one cannot genuinely overcome ethnic passions by imposing a liberal agenda: what brought the protesters together is a radical demand for justice."

Zizek expresses the similarity of this moment with "the enemy soldiers fraternising across the trenches in the first world war", an "authentic emancipatory event".

Unfortunately, the auspices of this event are those of oppression. The "radical demand for justice" is very basic, very fundamental. These ethnic groups together sought "jobs, a decent life, an end to corruption", objects so universally valued that there are few upon the earth who would deny their significance. While such an event is certainly inspiring and reaffirmative of these essential desires of the human heart that bind us all together, regardless of our differences, it is yet not such a landmark as it may seem. 

Indeed, "the people of Bosnia have finally understood who their true enemy is: not other ethnic groups, but their own leaders who pretend to protect them from others", but it is only when their most inalienable rights are threatened that such unity is apparently possible. As above, they face a common enemy to life and livelihood itself.

Zizek sees this as a beautiful alternative to the rise of fascism brought about by the "left's failure". But the situation in Bosnia-Herzogovina is merely a regression, the return to a point at which the examined life is not possible because humanity is deprived of certain requirements for society. Immediately antecedent to this crisis, Bosnia was "a country which, in the last decades, has become synonymous with ferocious ethnic cleansing".

It is difficult to say that such a unification of these ethnic groups is a step forward towards a true democracy, but it is possible that we who sit outside the conflict may observe the role of justice and change our ways. There is a simple lesson to learn: what draws the people together is justice. 

A word too often manipulated throughout history, but which still rings of a perfection beyond human attainability. If one were to approach every matter from the perspective of the man who seeks justice -- to give every person his/her due -- he would be difficult to ignore in argument or debate. This is the hope that Zizek's portrait reveals:

• The conflict between liberal permissiveness and fundamentalism is ultimately a false conflict – a vicious cycle of the two poles generating and presupposing each other. What Max Horkheimer said about fascism and capitalism back in the 1930s (that those who do not want to talk critically about capitalism should also keep quiet about fascism) should be applied to today's fundamentalism: those who do not want to talk critically about liberal democracy should also keep quiet about religious fundamentalism.

Justice is the gathering point, the place in which all clamor must cease. Justice recalls our duty to examine what we hold in common, in respect of which we must pursue a social resolution that renders men live, whole, and happy. It is much easier to listen to someone who is willing to discuss all points, and, measuring all holistically, come to a conclusion that suits all because it nods in every direction without bowing in any.

But with Zizek, too, we must give what is due. We must disagree that he understands what this justice is. We must disagree that "a new Dark Age is looming, with ethnic and religious passions exploding and Enlightenment values receding. These passions were lurking in the background all the time, but what is new is the outright shamelessness of their display."

For to highlight the "shamelessness" of even Islamist reactionaries while neglecting to note the desperately extreme moral depravity of the West is to fail to recognize that the looming "Dark Age" is one instigated by Enlightenment values, and met with the disgusted and frightened herd of ludditism. 

In fact, those pillars of Western Civilization which now recede are the learned Greeks and the Christians who bore them up out of decadence, the great philosophical, theological, and literary traditions that still cling with fingers faithful to the barren earth.

"Lurking in the background" of Zizek's global imagination is that same undiscerning tolerance that left the garden untended while the golden serpent danced and writhed, that subtlest beast of all the field, and left man in the dark for saying he could know God's mind and act in his stead.

As the aforementioned "simplistic liberal universalism long ago lost its innocence", so Zizek's statement in his article of May 6 that "only a transnational entity can manage" to "teach the superpowers, old and new, some manners" proffers a worldview that will only inevitably lose its innocence, hastening a wasteland of the dispossessed and disemboweled.

If the current panoply of armed superpowers assaults human dignity by playing puppet -- in Zizek's quotation of Popper, "hypothesizing" -- with smaller national and cultural entities, then how heavily will a global power (made up of who else but a narrowing cadre of superpower regimes) crush the lighted prism of the world.

Over the Rainbow

Rainbows are gatherings often held in areas remote from the general hubbub, tucked away in the woods and fields where nature still enjoys its proper place upon the earth. People hike for miles to find the Rainbow settlement -- a city of tents. These voluntary gatherings may remain in a single place for many months.

One website, www.welcomehome.org, describes the "Rainbow Family" as follows:

• Some say we're the largest non-organization of non-members in the world. We have no leaders, and no organization. To be honest, the Rainbow Family means different things to different people. I think it's safe to say we're into intentional community building, non-violence, and alternative lifestyles. We also believe that Peace and Love are a great thing, and there isn't enough of that in this world. Many of our traditions are based on Native American traditions, and we have a strong orientation to take care of the the Earth. We gather in the National Forests yearly to pray for peace on this planet.

Rainbows are indeed nebulous. There are no formal laws, but the community often organizes itself according to unwritten values of "love, peace, non-violence, environmentalism, non-consumerism and non-commercialism, volunteerism, respect for others, consensus process, and Diversity" (http://www.rainbowtribe.net/).

The images you see above were taken from photographer Benoit Paille's Behance profile (https://www.behance.net/gallery/Rainbow-Gathering-%282010-2011%29/1193675). Observing the physical constitution, the open posture, the clear and healthy eyes, the soft light of these figures who stand at home amidst the wild calls to mind another race. A race foreign to us.

If you recall, in Aronofsky's Noah, how the simple life, the stewardship of the land above all else preoccupies the line of Seth -- then you cannot help notice the similarity here, even that of dress. Note the earthen tones, the grainy texture and spartan design. The pouches at the belt.

 

There is something impure in the Rainbow gatherings: look at the drug use, the pagan practices, the rejection altogether of beneficial technologies, etc. Yes. We say this. In our conservative towers we point over the heads of the lowly. And our towers crumble.

Is such a lifestyle not preferable in every way to the indescribable indignities of capitalism? Infused with the heights of the Western spirit, could we not become the ordo contemplativus of St. Bonaventure?

Such a radical return to the first and proper vocation of man may be required, and certainly even now is intensely needed amidst wholesale cultural degradation of the meaning and dignity of the human person. If, at the Rainbow gatherings, "we often say 'We are one.'", then perhaps this is a place we all should be (Paille).

Why do we have the desires we do? Why is it necessary to sacrifice the person for his betterment? Why suffer the deadening effects of the corporate desk job for health insurance, for a nice car? We are slaves to a system we ourselves have created, a system that literally values material gain over the fulfillment of truly human needs, truly human desires. We lay ourselves down as fertilizer for a machine, and when we are gone -- dead from laboring in its service -- it too will die. We have created a new meaning of ephemerality.

But rainbows will endure. And in these communities that bear their name, human beings come together in harmony, attempt to see each other, to see the person in each other: "We experience all these differences and confrontations, and experiment in matters of conflict management. We learn to talk, look, understand, to become more tolerant." (Paille).

Paille says that "All ideologies and beliefs coexist in harmony." and yet "decisions are not made through a majority vote, but truly through a common consensus. It can take days." What seems to be some sick offshoot of liberalism is rather a reconciliation of all beliefs into the most universal -- and this is seen as so important that "It can take days." The entire human family, from every conviction, is welcome. And every conviction may have its say until only one is agreed upon. Why do Church councils take so long?

We see in Rainbow gatherings a practical model for human life that seeks post-lapsarian remediation, that values the posture of the human community in reference to the spiritual world above all else, and that does not stoop to violence even in preventing it: "If someone becomes dangerous, violent, it can happen, people will make a sina shanti (a peace circle), where men will peacefully surround the individual by holding hands." (Paille).

I may yet see a Rainbow.

All photographic images are the property of Benoit Paille. Please check out his beautiful work:

http://benoitp.prosite.com/

https://www.behance.net/Benoitp

Noah: Neither/Nor

On March 29th, Matt Walsh wrote a wedgie-twisting diatribe on Aronofsky's Noah, describing the film as "the most insipid, absurd, unimaginative, clumsily contrived piece of anti-Christian filmmaking to come along since, well, probably just last week."

And Brett McCracken roundly praised it: "Most importantly I believe the film — which ends up being an epic somewhere between Tolkien’s The Two Towers and Shakespeare’s Hamlet — retains the theological themes of the Noah story, powerfully bringing to life a 'second Eden' tale that highlights both the justice and mercy of the Creator, a God of grace and second chances."

Neither/nor.

Darren Aronofsky's Noah is not a flimsy, foppish anti-biblical attack on bull-pig-pseudo-Christian America, nor is it a great flower of Western culture. It is a somewhat interesting exploration of the Noahic themes that yet struggles to portray a convincing interpersonal conflict.

But let us first clarify something very pertinent if we are to avoid Walshian troubles.

Noah's success as a work of art is the only relevant plane on which it may be evaluated. The rest is observation and commentary, valuable to a point, but not ... well ... all that relevant in judging a film ... at which point I inadvertently stumble into a quote by Kierkegaard: "Anyone who is something, and is something essentially, possesses 'eo ipso,' the claim to be recognized for exactly this special thing, and for nothing more or less." (The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress)

For instance, if you found Noah offensive, this may be because you misunderstand the presuppositions of the movie theater. When one enters a playhouse or a movie theater, it is with the expectation that he is going to see a play or a movie, respectively. He is going to see a good story. On less frequent occasions, he may see a political, historical, or religious documentary.

However, Noah is not advertised as a documentary. It is advertised as an epic story that postures a man named Noah as its central figure. In no fashion is the film represented as "the biblical tale" or "the literal, word-by-word retelling of the flood story with fancy moving pictures". The lack of boundaries from preexisting material allows the story to be what it is, and this is true of any film. At the same time, those boundaries allow a certain depth by implied allusion, but that's another story. ;)

As a fictional story in the form of a movie, Noah proffers some worthy considerations, some new perspectives that invigorate the perceived dustiness of the OT story. As Brett McCracken posed:

• What was the mindset of Noah (who, apart from Gen. 9:25-27, never actually speaks in the biblical narrative) during this crazy episode in his life? What did his family think? What were the interactions between Noah and the wicked population doomed for destruction? Did Noah have a relationship with his grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins)? The film explores all of this in the spirit of midrashic interpretation, and takes the story far beyond the source material. Some of it works and some of it doesn’t, but (as far as I can tell) none of it directly contradicts anything in the biblical account. 

Unfortunately, there is contradiction. And I say "unfortunately" not for any other reason than that the introduction of a wifeless Ham is indeed "unimaginative". Were the story of Noah wholly new to us, the conflict perhaps may have worked. But as this story is woven so deeply into the fabric of the Western imagination, we see Aronofsky's manipulation as irresponsible in light of the artistic tradition. It appears that the director could not sufficiently develop the themes offered from centuries of paintings, sculpture, stained glass, and oral tradition, and thus sought to embellish a tale of such a magnitude that it renders significant alteration laughable if not incredibly pretentious.

There are certain departures in the film that are very interesting, but they find their origin in a profuse mythological structure: the Nephilim/rock angels, the wicked men/industrialists, the dramatic visions of "death by water".

Another very interesting departure is Noah's psychosis regarding the destruction of humanity, including his own grandchildren. This too could have more effectively provided a profound insight were his psychosis not so sudden in onset and not so drawn-out as to bore the viewer. The complexities of such a psychomachia were also obscured by their external consequences: Emma Watson all freaked out, Noah's wife in a tearful rage, Shem getting violent.

Overall, the film has an unfinished feeling to it, some major mashwork in the plot that brings it to its knees. However, we are certain of what the film is -- a colorful but limping depiction of an ancient myth -- and what it is not -- a bible-school-friendly reenactment or a primordial Hamlet.

As for Russell Crowe's performance: fairly compelling. Fairly. He is proof that it is possible to be a well-skilled actor while completely lacking discrimination. It may be that this record will mar his oeuvre as it has his ethos.

Regardless, I think that the film is worth watching as long as you fast-forward a bit through the arduous annoyance of life on the ark during the flood.

A Challenge to the Pro-Life Establishment

Abortion and the Postmodern Imagination

"If the law purports to require actions that no-one should ever do, it cannot rightly be complied with; one's moral obligation is not to obey but to disobey....If the lawmakers (i) are motivated not by concern for the community's common good but by greed or vanity (private motivations that make them tyrants, whatever the content of their legislation), or (ii) act outside the authority granted to them, or (iii) while acting with a view to the common good apportion the necessary burdens unfairly, their laws are unjust and in the forum of reasonable conscience are not so much laws as acts of violence....Such laws lack moral authority, i.e. do not bind in conscience; one is neither morally obligated to conform nor morally obligated not to conform." 

"All who govern in the interests of themselves rather than of the common good are tyrants....Against the regime's efforts to enforce its decrees, one has the right of forcible resistance; as a private right this could extend as far as killing the tyrant as a foreseen side-effect of one's legitimate self-defence."

-- from the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas

Today, I go to work, wait anxiously for lunch time, sit outside and bask contemplatively in the play of sunlight through oak leaves, turn quickly into the building at the appointed time, let the last hours of rushing and typing and talking fly by, and go home to entertain myself with -- maybe -- a short read and certainly a show or two. Cigarette and wine after cycling and water. Aestheticizing. Bed.

Tomorrow, I will behave similarly, and perhaps call it "the holiness of the ordinary". 

In fact, many Americans will do likewise. They will be educated, self-educating, confident, secure, and moderately sane. They will be capable of thoroughly and admirably condemning the social ills around them, especially in the company of friends, of making sweet moan about the many seething injustices that exist almost by default in our rotten society. They will swear, philosophize, and prophesy. 

They will go out to eat on weekends, sleep in on Saturdays, mow the lawn, hate and love themselves -- with a little more love than hate -- and live quotidianly.

Aestheticizing on the non-despairing hope of helplessness as parousia slowly grows nearer.

The Metamorphosis of Narcissus, Salvador Dali

We only do what we like. We go off to die in wars when peace is hell. When peace is not quite hell, but a fine balance of leisure and self-deceit of salvation, we can endure.

And hence the ever-crumbling edifice of abortion yet lingers.

There was a story a few years ago about a woman who stood her ground as a large man armed with a hammer beat her door down. Her two children were with her in the house, and she was going to protect them. She told as much to the 911 dispatcher. When the man rushed through the door, she shot him full in the chest with a 12-gauge shotgun. 

We consider it right and just to kill a man who would harm an innocent. The woman in the story had no charges placed against her. 

We consider it admirable to defend a human life, admirable because it is a difficult duty. We would call a soldier a coward who hid as his wounded brethren were murdered. We call soldiers heroes who defend their country, placing themselves in the sight of death in order to kill.

In keeping with this consideration, we ourselves organize large marches on Washington, elaborate displays of passion with no follow-through. ...

The citizens of the capitol prepare their businesses for great profit, concerts are organized, politicians make seasonal speeches pantomiming deep commitment to the cause, friends meet and talk, tourism abounds, and everyone goes home fat and happy. Thanks for coming, pro-lifers. See you next year!

And the intellectuals aestheticizing on leisure in a sinking world, waiting for the sun to liven gray tendrils that pull forth dawn.

Our moral fantasy is our great masque of protestation. It is a device of self-preservation, an intellectual necessity if we are to maintain personal safety, and, furthermore, comfort, convenience. Our great masque: our legality, our passive inoffensiveness, our pattering-about on sidewalks. 300,000 strong could shake a country. 300,000 strong could certainly shake a capitol. ISIS is not nearly so strong. But we are poor stewards of our flesh, and allow the murders.

Indeed, we have such complex rationalizations which we describe as peace, patience, humility, hope. Unfortunately, these are in practice fear, sloth, helplessness, anxiety.

We permit the mutilation and murder of innocent human beings. Right now. This minute. And the next.

The plea through the courts has been accomplished. The plea has been rejected (Cf. 1973). This was, in truth, a declaration of war. Those who met that devil's declaration -- priests who chained themselves to the doors -- are now despised and ridiculed for tarnishing the reputation of the cause.

This should be a ready sign: that we put on a pretty face for murder. "Listen to us, postmodern society. We're legitimate!" we whine.

And the intellectuals just waiting and aestheticizing. Not helping the psychosis of the masses.

And any mention of physical resistance is met with the argument that it would be paradox. An unworkable contradiction.

An unworkable contradiction is declaring abortion to be the most heinous evil we now suffer and standing by while the perpetrator struts from his Bentley to the clinic door.


This is a posture against hope.


The revolution in policy will begin. And if it does not, then ISIS will have been our moral superior: they annihilate what they perceive to be evil.

Ships in the Night

Cycle of Terror, Graydon Parrish

Many of us are very concerned with our surrogate morality of politics.



From this base we mobilize against the enemies of our rights, gracing our elegant platitudes with the Constitution's old lace. Thus we are kept secure and fervent for awhile. We cannot be assailed in our perfection of doctrine. Is there anyone more doctrinal than one American trying to prove a legal point to another. 

It's not a question.

We often hear we should respect the office of the president even if we do not respect the man. This is perhaps not so clear or shocking as the greater fabric of propaganda that feeds the American desire of divine imperial right, of secular sanctity. Jupiter and Jefferson, Neptune and Ben Franklin.

Our Pantheon, like any which is untrue, is manipulable, subject to the requirements of the time. Our views and values shift, some towards decay, others toward growth and fertility. I am not suggesting that allowing our political system to change as development requires is inadvisable. But allowing our political construct, which is intrinsically changeable, to become the basis by which we measure the human good -- to allow popular consensus to override the necessity of moral considerations -- is deranged.

Since when has the populace en masse been a moral authority. It has become the surrogate morality.

Those who support gay rights may very well have a legal basis for doing so. But considering a woman may choose to sue a family if her child hurts himself of his own fault on said family's property, or considering the hypocrisy of asserting the "right to choose" whilst forcing religious institutions to forgo that right, who should place his faith in the republic?

It becomes more and more apparent that supporters of gay rights are not a minority. They are making slow headway toward the achievement of their ironic goal. This is the public thing. It is a part of the ideological doctrine, and it will be enforced.

So why debate the issue on the legal plane? Why discuss in the arena a question of fundamental import to the understanding of the human person and his dignity. The sanctuary in the stock exchange.

I don't believe that the majority of those concerned with the effects of homosexuality on the cultural -- and indeed the personal -- sphere give two little lumps of refuse about what is legally sanctioned in the United States of America, or any other state for that matter. The question has political implications, sure, but it is, at its root, a theological discussion requiring a holistic approach.

Hence the absurdity of claiming a political institution such as civil marriage as a sort of banner of moral rectitude. Civil marriage is ultimately an agreement between two human beings who do not necessarily understand the spiritual significance of human relations. Civil marriage is something surfeit, another part of that ideological framework that says freedom is doing what one likes. It even speaks to the machinery of capitalism, the form of the business agreement. Civil marriage is for one or both parties who are not yet capable of acknowledging the transformational significance of sacramental marriage.

Doubtless, there is meaning if the promises made are kept, but that meaning derives from the secular desire to give just as much as one must without sacrificing the farcical ideal of the autonomous self. Moreover, let us remember that the official acts with the authority vested by the state.

The state is a format. It is not an authority. It's the clothes we wear, and no one needs a talking hat (unless there are some magical, faerie qualities of which I am unaware).

In the end, if same-sex unions are permitted, nothing will have been proved. It will simply be fact. Arbitration du jour.

Deep ontological disturbance will remain beneath the animal accretions of the postmodern self who seeks to war in arrogance like a prancing bird of paradise in its alpha display. See me. Love me. That is my only cry though it is the burning song of hatred.

Finally, the postmodern homosexualist rests his argument upon the naught. If his rationale is "liberal" and "progressive", then it has foundations in youthful inexperience and discounted sophism. If it is based on the state, then it is simply unseasonal (if he is trying to prove the goodness of homosexual acts). Freedom is meaningless if used to refer to a political "right". "Goodness" is meaningless if dressed in the same trappings. We determine the state. It does not determine us.

The only determination that is meaningful will be a discussion on a theological basis: what is the meaning of man? And the "progressive" "liberal" must join if he is to be considered. Otherwise, his cries are irrelevant, his attempted discrediting of religion (from a position of postmodern secular doctrine) laughable. The cart does not lead the horse: politics must nod to the wisdom of religion. Things go badly when they do not.

This is not a question that the state can answer or was designed to answer. The impending legislation is asinine: posterior end first. Again, the state can rise, fall, remain with a limping mediocrity -- this has no bearing on the question of what is right, what is good, what is fitting. Parties on either side of this debate must not be afraid to abandon the town hall (if it becomes a center of propagandizing) for the churches and universities.

I would start with an in-depth consideration of John Paul II's positive explication of human sexuality, which is not based on a fervid desire to discount the validity of homosexuality, but a desire to understand man. Hence, you will not find the popular phraseology you seek. Bring your anti-ego.

He starts from the beginning. Head first.


See Susannah Black's Brave New Cold War

"College Kids" and the Narrative of Egotism

Money, Frantisek Kupka

Short of brimming with delighted anticipation at the next years harvest of ripe young graduates ready to enter the professional world, employers seem less than enthused.

They publish articles describing why they refuse to hire college graduates, and generally project an air of disapprobation, at best.  And why not? College graduates lack, well, everything needed to succeed in the North American sea of capitalistic furor.

And indeed, there are a host of reasons for this failure to be perfect.

But let us examine the disposition that allows resentment toward the ignorant.

Why are employers actively en garde against the little-cocky-twerps-who-think-they-know-everything who veritably drown HR department in resumes (as instructed)?

I submit that all of the popular reasons are a farce.

The modern corporate employer seems to suffer from a sort of amnesia regarding human nature and personal development. Either he is a totally disconnected father of college-aged children, or he is somewhere in the range between 35-45 and his children are still at home.

Is there any reason to think that college graduates should know better than the corporate employer the difficult and only semi-permeable sphere they are trying to access. Is it any wonder that graduates are inexperienced, unskilled (regarding a potential employer's values), and immature? No. It is, however, increasingly wondrous how immature men of power can be in their disbelief in the face of youth.

But this disbelief reveals them. This disbelief betrays them as credulous little boys and girls who seem to think that human dignity can be stratified into castes, that the college graduate is an opponent, an entity to be staved off, an invasive species that will set upon their financial security like locusts in a cornfield.

Is there anything more childish than attempting to blame someone for circumstances which are beyond his control? The college graduate "lacks interviewing skills", as Mr. O'Toole so kindly informs us. But isn't this a no-brainer?  Of course he lacks interviewing skills. How many interviews has he experienced?

Why does the modern corporate employer seek what cannot be found? Why does he endeavor to discover a fully grown whale in a tide pool? Either he is stupid (quite possible) or he is attempting to defend what he believes to be his very self: a position of pride, power, wealth, and enviability.

Symptomatic of an abortive culture, the employer hates the youth because they signify his death, his imminent irrelevance, the loss of his having. They signify humanity, and the employer has forgotten that humaneness does not sustain selfishness.

Reveling in his fortress, the employer ironically dispossesses himself of every professional "skill" he claims the graduate lacks: "communication skills", "interpersonal skills", adaptability. If the corporate employer owned any of these, he would not be concerned about the host of unknowing humans entering the workforce.

He would instead acknowledge that they -- as he himself had learned -- will learn the ways of men and women. He would acknowledge that new eyes uncover unknown possibilities. He would instead focus on training up these young minds to receive the great task, and the great debts, that will be laid upon their shoulders. He would be apologetic about messing everything up instead of arrogant about his own achievements. He would not look for their faults, but seek their virtues, and thus accelerate their education by encouragement. He would not see them as a threat, but as both a responsibility and a blessing.

Instead of proffering a throw-back to freshman year's clashing ivory towers of faux-intellectualism, the corporate employer would display a wise bearing, a patient hand. He would make that windowless office seem appealing.

As it is, the bully mocks the blind beggar. But one doesn't need so much reliance upon analogy when, straight from the horse's mouth, he hears "You were two minutes late."

The youth may make some changes.


(And if we take a closer look at Mr. O'Toole's lovely slideshow, we might just notice that the more young graduates feign knowledge and experience, the more likely they are to be hired. He loves the glitz. What a shiny door to an empty vault. Maybe corporate America is empty after all. ;) )