>From: Ed Weick >(commenting on Challen) >> >> >>WHY WORK >>( like all good work - unfinished ) >> >>Real work is mental or physical effort >>benefiting at once ourselves, others, and >>the delicate inter-dependence of the planet. >> >Yes, yes, that is a very nice thought, and your poem is very nice too. If >only it could be that way. But we live in a rather nasty and brutish world >in which people are as likely to blow each or up as to cooperate. > >Ed Weick > >Cordell > >I see 4 possible responses to Ed's comment. > >1. Right. The world is nasty, brutish and short and I want my place on the >gravy train--where do I sign up for my MBA? Many people do in fact respond this way. I did when I was young. In many countries you can't go for the MBA or do anything legitimate, so you work for a drug lord or some other powerful boss. >2. Right The world is nasty brutish and short and I find it appalling. I >find it so difficult to live in this sort of world that I will make it a >better place by working in my church and community alleviating pain through >prayer and good works. I wonder if this is why people pray and do good works. Perhaps. But I do know many people who do both but who have no special quarrel with the world. They pray because they have been taught to as children, because they think God will do little favours for them (I know someone who claims to have recovered a stolen brief case through prayer!) and perhaps because they think it will get them to Heaven. They do good works out of a sense of duty and because it makes them feel good. >3. Wrong. It doesn't have to be this way. In fact a radical and rapid >change to the existing order can bring about a better world. But revolutions >seem not to work and revolutionaries are usually dispatched before thery >have a chance to implement the changes. What I fear most in this world is the idealist turned revolutionary -- the true believer who is going to make the world better even if he does it with the point of a gun. But then I fear a world without ideals almost as much. Actually, I believe I'm an anarchist, and therefore the most useless type of idealist in a world in which the only real game appears to be power. (I'm not a bomb-throwing anarchist.) >4. Wrong. Humans have a host of genetic responses to situations. We have >over-empasized some at the expense of others. We have given undue weight >and emphasis to competition and getting ahead and have given decreasing >emphasis to cooperation and community. We need to restore balance. Here, I'm not quite certain of what restoring balance would mean. Living in a rich country, my average annual income is approximately five times that of my counterpart in a poor country. I'm getting richer and he's getting poorer. I have ever so much for myself and my children that he can't possibly have. How much should I give him to restore balance (which has probably not been there since the ice-age)? Even within my rich country, my income is far greater than my neighbour's. I already feel overburdened by the taxes that I must pay to keep him on welfare. How much more should I do? And if I do any more, how can I be sure that it will really do any good? Why should I, as an individual, do anything when I see that we, as a collective, are not interested in doing very much -- when the whole orientation of our governments is to offload responsibilities for the poor onto churches and other do-good groups, and when, instead of fostering real international cooperation and development before the fact (as we did during the Cold War), we send in peace keepers after hundreds of thousands of people have been slaughtered.? I've always tried to raise my children with the belief that the world is positive and beautiful. When my youngest, who is now fourteen, was a small child, she would get up in the morning, go to her window and exalt at the beauty of the world. She still loves the world, but in among the green grass and the flower beds she has seen people with guns pointed at other people, people with their hands out for small change while others walk by, and people who have no place to live. She has noted that kids just a little older than her, and in some cases no older, are trying to make a living by washing windshields, and that the government of a wealthy province is about to come down hard on them for doing so. I do agree that we need to restore balance, but balance implies a centrepoint -- some kind of fulcrum -- something which suggests that the burden placed on one side should not be heavier than the burden place on the other. Where is that in today's world? How can we ever hope to find it? Ed Weick
