Re: [Futurework] The world of work

[Ray Evans Harrell]

Selma you said:   It seems to me this whole discussion is about specialization and fragmentation as vs. 'wholeness', whether you all agree that there is such a thing as 'wholeness' for a community, or not.     I suspect it is even more basic that the whole.   I think we are talking about particles and wave forms and those being in one can't imagine the other.    Wholeness is beyond the either/or.     One thing the discussion suffers from IMHO, is that it is based on and either/or mentality. I have long believed that it is possible to have human communities in which there is specialization without fragmentation as long as the specialization is kept in context and treated the way we treat tools. There is absolutely no reason why, if some people are expert at some specialized task, their lives should be fragmented  in the way this is true in our society.     I agree.    Would you talk a little more about "fragmentation."     We can have both/and; we can have specialization and community and transcendence. This issue has a great deal to do with some concepts I have mentioned a few times on this list. The distinction between authority and status. It is possible for a person to be respected for their authority in a particular area without that person being labled as 'better' because of that expertise or 'worse' because of a lack of it.      I agree!     The whole issue has to do with our ideas about how people should be valued and our ideas about equality.     Its strange that we get all of these Romantic 19th century concepts about materialism and technology but we miss the one crucial element that glues it all together.    Whether in the great Verismo Tone of the singer or the sound of a might orchestra the message is that underneathe it all every human being is valuable and has a noble heart.    It is the message of Romantic Religion at its best.      Today the 19th century has met the sociopath and the psycho-path and has been derailed by it.   How can someone who so clearly denies the value of others be noble at heart?     I think the Mic-Macs and the Japanese have something that could be said about this.    Both speak of the importance of varied paths in life and how each person must find their own.    It gets wierd, as systems always do, when the MicMac won't help his brother who fell out of the boat back in because of his desire not to divert anyone from their path.   Systems should always be taken with a grain of salt.    But the basic rule is IMHO a good one.    We have our sociopaths and we enjoy them and are not fooled by their sleaziness.    Everyone has the working out of nobility and that is the key.    You are born with two legs but you have to develop your potential and become human.       Martin Niemoeller told me years ago that he had a dream about a man behind a very dark cloud saying, "you never witnessed to me!   You never told me about the Saviour!" and Niemoeller took that thought to his grave even though that man had put him in concentration camp.    Hitler was a lapsed Christian and I'm sure that each person would like to imagine that they could have changed all of that.    On the other hand, how would they have changed it?     Stopped the initial committee that kept him out of Art School?   They thought they were protecting the quality of the Art.   Was Hitler noble of heart?    Stalin?   Andrew Jackson?    the Railroad Moguls who lied and cheated the Chinese Coolies who then gave their lives to build a Railroad the Whites would never build through the Sierra Mountains in winter where they died to become Americans only to ship the remaining ones back to China?    Today we use the Chinese against the other ethnic minorities as proof of White values.   If that is so now than how much more "white" were they than the "white" folks in having the strength and courage to build a Railroad tunnel in the dead of winter by hand?      Nobility is our birthright but like Esau we can sell it for a cup of soup or for a billion dollars.   Either way our humanity is gone.    But is it retrievable?    I don't know.   But there is a funny thing about making that judgment even on a monstrous act.    Judging makes us blind to our own actions.       I can tell you that I would have found it very difficult to take a piece of that Karma into space with me no matter what it represented.    But I don't know what that meant for him.    Whatever it was, it is now gone in the fires of space.   I believe we need to give each other all the help we can in order to get past this place and that means also giving other people the freedom to work out their own vision with the great Creative energy that flows through each of us in different ways and from different places.       Again, I refer to Dorothy Lee's wonderful book-still in print, by the way, *Freedom and Culture*.   I don't know it.    Perhaps you could share some of the insight.   Everything in that book is directly relevant to everything we discuss on this list. I keep wanting to summarize some of her ideas as they relate to various discussions and I never seem to be able to carve out the time to do that but-one of these days, maybe I will.   That would be an act of sharing.     I like that.     Ray Evans Harrell   Selma       ----- Original Message ----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, February 04, 2003 9:05 AM Subject: RE: [Futurework] The world of work The economies that arise from comparative advantage and specialization lead to great productivity, at the same time it cuts of off and makes us insensitive to those many tasks that are done by others so that we may continue to do our specialized job in this economic productive beehive.   Maybe people should rotate and do other things if only to realize the enormous complexity and interdependency of society.  Even if such knowledge comes at the cost of lowered measured productivity but heightened awareness of our basic interconnectedness.   arthur -----Original Message----- From: Charles Brass [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 6:26 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] The world of work My comments about cleaning toilets in various posts about the changing nature of work have begun to be taken too literally.   Arthur Cordell wonders whether there is something Freudian in the analogy, and points out that a much more unpleasant task for him is completing his tax return.   This will do just as well as an example, except that those who help you complete your tax returns are generally seen in a better light than those who help you clean your toilet.   The principle is the same, however.  These are both kinds of work which need to be done.  One way to do them (the very old fashioned way) would be for everyone to do them for themselves.  This is highly inefficient, which is one of the major reasons why societies move to a system in which labour is more specialised - ie you train to become an accountant and as a result become better at a particular kind of work, completing tax returns.   Some people think that until we reach the ulltimate in this sort of specialisation we won't have fully implemented capitalism.  These people point out that outsourcing domestic activity has created all the industries which currently exist, and that there is about 40% of human activity which is still done domestically and that outsourcing this represents the next great hope of an economic revival.   This may be true, but as I say to the greatest Australian exponent of this way of thinking - thanks Phil, but I want to wipe my own arse.....   Whether or not outsourcing everything is the future of work is not the real question I am addressing here.  It certainly represents one alternative, and as near as I can see one which achieves my fundamental objective (which is to create a world which has a viable place for everyone).   It certainly, however, does not represent the sort of world I would prefer to live in.  As I colourfully said above, some things I want to do for myself.  I don't want to be defined simply as a 'doer of things for others'.   Back to toilet cleaners.  In our modern world people are defined by what they do for others (after our name, the first thing we are asked for when we are introduced is 'what we do').  Hence, we have people who are defined as toilet cleaners (or, for Arthur's benefit, tax accountants).   The fact is all of these people are more, so much more, than this simplistic definition of themselves.  But we focus so much on this job approach to work that it hard for us to see behind the 'job definition' which first confronts us.   And then, as has happened in recent years, when there aren't enough jobs to go around, we define people as jobless and that's a whole other ball game.   So, when I talk about cleaning toilets I am not talking about a job, I am talking about work which needs to be done and looking to find a model for how it might be got done in the most preferred way.       Charles Brass Chairman the futures foundation PO Box 122 Fairfield  3078 Australia phone 61 3 9459 0244   the mission of the futures foundation is "...to engage all Australians in creating a better future..."