Insensitivity Training Improves Workplaces

Sounds counter-intuitive? No. When employers tell you they are going to build trust -- mistrust them. "Corporate team-building" uses Sensitivity Training, which aims to promote diversity even as it enforces uniformity. Never trust a thing that is actually being its opposite. Better to do the real opposite: Insensitivity Training.

How would that work? It would do what 19th C investigative journalist & magazine editor Ida Tarbell recommended: practice not minding things that you can't change anyway. In the workplace, stop minding that everyone's not the same. Some will be a pain, some delightful, some in-between: diversity. 

1. Resist group-obsessing about skin colour, ethnicity, and diverse ableisms.

2. Forget "identities".

3. Drop the word "racism" (especially after the adjective "systemic"). Also drop "harm", "triggering" and "stigma".

4. In the name of freedom of expression, appropriate whatever you like. (Let's call it intersectional creativity.)

5. As far as respect is concerned, respect the right to privacy.

6. Let no manager harass and bully you into giving up your right to introverted non-participation in group whining and parroting.

7. Understand that the core of democratic liberal humanistic civilization is acknowledgement of other people's right to express opinions you despise. Then, ignore them. (You'll get better with practice.)

8. While it is unkind to express hate, there are times when hearty dislike is unavoidable. 

9. Forget micro-aggression, make your just aggressions adult-sized. Share them when appropriate, and then retreat into dignified silence.

10. Don't get drawn into competitive victim-narratives.

11. Embrace the Enlightenment ideal of merit. Who wants to live in a shabby, meritless world of self-obsessed equitable mediocrity?

12. Claim your right to walk away from offensively invasive staff "training" meetings to the safety of your own desk. 

Let's let the Sensitivity Elephant leave the room

The Haunted Car

Some homeless people live in cars or vans. It's more cosy and private than a tent on the street, but are they living in a haunted vehicle? Those ones are the recent models. 

Some low-income folk drive old cars, with their lovely old atmosphere. You can roll up the window, switch on the analogue radio, cruise along, enjoy the view, dog in the passenger seat, backpack in the back ... 

By contrast, new vehicles which are to be eventually government-mandated, are haunted. Nothing comes out of the exhaust pipe, and everything going into the car is digital and monitored: haunted by ghostly digital spies. 

Electric means demon-filled. E-car spy devices know (and tell authorities) by "global positioning" where you are, and where you've been. They know when you got into the driver's seat, when you got out, where you got charged up, what sites you listened to online, who you texted, whether you drank alcohol, whether you exceeded the speed limit. Eventually, will police agencies be able to lock your door and stop your engine remotely? Who needs an old-fashioned police chase when you can be arrested by remote?

It's bad enough for those living in high-tech houses bristling with digital devices (spy techware smuggled in under the label of "convenience"); soon we'll be forced to drive demonic cars as well. Ghouls and evil apparitions will travel abroad -- as our stowaway passengers.

🎃 🎃 🎃

For a description of the Digitally-Haunted House -- a story: 

https://treewatchvictoria.blogspot.com/2022/10/haunted-house-on-digital-halloween-night.html

Here's a tale of the old-fashioned ghost:   https://www.shorthumour.org.uk/10writersshowcase/everyday.htm

Oh no ... it says here we're being replaced by computers!

Remembering Librarianship Past

 What has happened to the time-honoured scholarly side of librarianship? Even in the 1980s, at the UBC School of Librarianship there was still an assumption that librarianship had something to do with books, reading, literacy and scholarship. There was recognition of the historic role of public libraries in extending knowledge free of charge to the populace. Libraries were agents of democracy, free speech, and equal access to information. 

And now, in the 2020s? Judging from the Agenda of the Burnaby Public Library’s Board, libraries are no longer distributors of diverse information but arbiters of “misinformation”. They appoint themselves judge and gatekeeper of what the public should be allowed to read, in print and on-line.

Some libraries have or intend to have Social Workers on staff, as well as extra security staff prepared for “trauma-informed incidents” in the branches. They used to provide research material about drugs and addiction, now they provide the drugs  – onsite. They provide “safety”: safe spaces for the racialized, indigenous, those in need of “equity, diversity and inclusion”, those feeling “harmed” by other people’s ideas, and those needing a whole alphabet to define them (2SLGBTQIA … etc…) but not necessarily the alphabet used by the literate reader.

The public library is now much concerned with mental illness, but in its early days it was a zone of mental health, being a quiet peaceful place where patrons could wander among book shelves, calmly peruse a newspaper, borrow a book from the magical trove of novels, verse, and sundry non-fiction. Every citizen had access to the haven of literature in peaceful civil surroundings – a blessed retreat for those living in crowded quarters or blighted urban ghettos. 

Now the space for books has shrunk, while libraries find space (and budgets) for “non-traditional resources” such as video games, juggling kits, blood pressure cuffs, bike repair kits, radon detectors, vehicle diagnostic scanners, and ukuleles. Seriously. And this despite the fact that fully 48% of Canadians have inadequate literacy skills (according to the Conference Board of Canada). Instead of fretting about non-traditional resources and “non-binary” culture, why don’t libraries concern themselves once more with the literacy/illiteracy duality, and resources for bridging it?

As for novels, librarians now approach them with fear and suspicion in case they harbour non-correct thought or ideas that make others feel “triggered”. To trigger readers is the reason a writer goes to the effort of writing a book in the first place: to trigger imagination, new ideas, open-mindedness. Maybe, instead of appointing themselves the judges and censors of books, librarians should simply stock them all and let readers make up their own minds about them. Never mind "non-traditional resources" – diverse reading is what their taxpayer-based budget is for in the first place.

It’s time for public libraries to return to their core role as protectors of free speech and to be run by librarians, not social workers, not climate action leaders, not thought-police and anti-misinformation crusaders. The public are smart enough to figure out the information wars for themselves – if they can read. According to Statistics Canada, 49% of adult Canadians read below high-school literacy levels – immigrants, indigenous and low-income being the lowest. These are the very groups the library "social work" and mental health mission is particularly targeting. So both schools and public libraries are failing to deliver on their core responsibility: supplying books and advancing literacy.

BC Fairies are short-staffed

 Bulletin from BC Fairies: EXPECT LONG WAITS ON HOLIDAY WEEKEND

Public:  Oh no, not again. When are the Fairies going to get their act together? Look at this:  "Coastal Celebration hoverers removed for repairs". Why doesn't the Government just take over the whole Fairy Fleet? Bring back the Ministry of Magic-Travel.

*  *  *  *  *

Fairies Management:  Sorry, Ariel, but no you cannot take stress leave right now. We're understaffed. We need all sprites on board. It's a holiday weekend.

Ariel:  I don't want stress leave, I'm retiring for good, I was promised by CEO Prospero himself -- he promised me my freedom. After all the super-natural service I've given for all these years, I deserve it.

Management:  I know, I know, but later, Ariel, we promise ... just wait until we find some new hires. Everybody keeps calling in sick. Everybody claims they're "burned out".

Ariel:  So hire some Fireflies. We Sprites can't do it all -- get the Fireflies in for night shifts. 

Management:  We're trying, believe me. It's a really bad time, what with half the Magic Fleet off for repairs. One needs a wing repair, another has a defective hover mechanism ...

Ariel:  Not my problem. I was promised my Official Retirement, and I'll sue if I don't get it.

Management:  Just one more service, Ariel. We need you to inspire the Naiads with the example of your faithful loyalty -- those Nymphs of wandering brooks and lakes keep wandering off on sick leave.

Ariel:  So call in the Nereids. Sea Nymphs are more loyal than Freshwater Nymphs. 

Management:  I would, but their leader Thetis has taken them on a Dolphin Break. It's in their contract.

Ariel:  Well, my contract says "we shall miss you, but yet thou shalt have freedom". So: good-bye.

Management:  But if you could just delay a bit ...  Oh NO ... here's another damning media headline: "Public let down by BC Fairies once again. Terminals full. Magic Fleet betrays travellers and supply-chain truckers. Fire the lot of them!"

Ariel:  The travelling public no longer believes in us like past eras did. You'll just have to find a new type of recruit. Try the Elves and Gnomes. They're more down to earth than those airy-fairy Sprites with no work ethic. As for me -- I'm flitting off out of here.

The 24-Hour News Cycle -- critique by an old-fashioned Romantic

"The News" is too much with us; late and soon

getting and spending, it fills up all our hours;

Little we see in publicity that's ours;

and endless pinning notifications are certainly no boon.

Where once we read editions, rhythmic diurnal times,

now there's nothing edited at all,

for that's beyond the Media power -- 

with this our minds are out of tune.

I'd rather read a bottled note washed up by the sea,

and hear the News through Triton's horn

blasted out at six o'clock, and once again at three.

Always Be Ready To Try an Old Experience

Do you get the feeling that too often, new experiences are inferior to old ones? That the hip novelty bandwagon goes too fast, and the new doesn't stay "new" as different newly-correct behaviors and products are forced upon us ...? 

One longs for Old Experience, like the practice of turning a blind eye to other people's habits, like accepting that the world is full of diverse opinion, and like getting Life Guidance from literary classics, not social media.

Thankfully we can still have that lovely Old Experience of turning a printed page. Of looking up a word in a printed dictionary. Of receiving written notes from friends, rather than pinging "notifications".

What about the old experience of physicality when not your smartphone but you yourself knew where you are on a landscape? And there on the landscape, you might see surviving woodland, or smell the scent of mown grass. You might even see some, an old-fashioned sweep of shimmering emerald lawn.

That's the delight of heritage neighbourhoods with Settler Architecture (home-y houses with flowery gardens settled on quiet streets, and pet cats roaming free). And there, is the old-fashioned certainty that you're not being spied on from every wall and roof-top by CCTV.

There's also that old-fashioned habit of people sticking to a gender, or if they choose to gender-blend they just quietly go ahead without a political song-and-dance as if we're all at an endless performance of "SOGI, the Musical".

One longs for an Old Experience of public clock towers and pay-phones, of land-lines, paper money, cheque-books, and parking meters and tip jars that take coins. Without coins, what will we throw into the wishing well when we make a wish? (How about our smartphones?) And what might we wish for? A Society For the Preservation of Old Ways would work well for some.

Anyone can try the Old Experiences that give relief from the downward drag of post-post-post modernity.

 JestJests  

A 'Senior Lives Matter' movement?

       Handicaps are not failures, and we all have some -- physical, social, educational, circumstantial. They may even signal prowess (the best golfer gets the highest handicap, and the racehorse with the most victories carries the heaviest weight). In our society being old is a social handicap. A "dis-ability" is not even required. 

       Too often able seniors are marginalized. For example, when submissions to galleries and journals are invited from designated groups (the disabled, racialized, trans, neuro-diverse and so on), seniors aren't among them. In that regard, seniority really is a handicap. 

       Society, then, isn't more equitable than it was, the musical chairs have merely been re-arranged on the floor. When the music stops, the elderly are the ones most often eliminated. This accomplished tribe is demoted, but in the culture wars ageism gets a free pass, and seniors have no "Senior Lives Matter" movement. Maybe that's because older means wiser and wisdom includes acceptance. Older may also mean tired, as in tired of sectarian battles. 

       Seniors are supposed to retire gracefully, as from a field of battle. Even if still at the height of their creative powers, most don't have that lean and hungry look that signals prowess. 

Leave me alone, I'm tired of sound and fury, I want to cultivate my mind in peace.

Yet we all know people in their 90’s who aren’t really in retreat. They are hungry for knowledge and information. In Canada, people over 55 are the biggest news-consuming group, according to www.marugroup.net/polling.

Staying informed and sharing views about current issues is recognized as an aspect of healthy aging. Ditto engaging in creative pursuits, which are often patronizingly considered appropriate to the retirement years: people are more willing to admire the paintings which older citizens exhibit in craft fairs than they are to listen to their political views.

       According to https://rishihood.edu.in/creativty-and-creative-ageing/enior, UN statistics reveal that the 65+ age group is a fast-growing part of the world population. Currently at 12%, the proportion of seniors is expected to rise to 22% by 2050. Will the rights of almost one quarter of the human race matter less than those of the other three quarters, in 2050? Where’s the Old Lives Matter movement? 

According to Statistics Canada, “from 2016 to 2021, the number of Canadians aged 65 and older rose 18.3% to 7.0 million". This  represents nearly 1 in 5 Canadians (19.0%), up from 16.9% in 2016. Older Canadians are staying healthy, active, and socially involved for longer. The cohort aged 85+ has doubled since 2001, and according to projections, could triple by 2046. 

In 1981 BC seniors made up 5.4% of the labour force; by 2016 they made up 11.6%. Yet there has been no preferential hiring for them; on the contrary, in many professions they're forced into mandatory retirement despite being the most experienced and skillful workers on the scene, and despite the "quiet quitting" habit their juniors go in for now. Still, some seniors are taking up more roles in the economy, though without a movement signifying that they matter. What might "Senior Lives Matter" accomplish? For a start, maybe it’s time for art curators, editors and social influencers to add “elderly” to the list of disadvantaged groups from whom they solicit contributions. We could also make a point of supporting post-retirement commercial enterprises launched by seniors. We should encourage seniors to write their memoirs, which will provide tomorrow’s insights about the history of today. Memoirists report from a ring-side seat on the unfolding drama of current affairs, and the longer you’ve lived on Planet Earth the more insightful your judgement will be. Let us all, and our descendants, sample the smorgasbord of wisdom offered by elders in their memoirs. 

Part of wisdom however is the waning of appetite for conflict and competition. “Sound and fury signifying nothing” loses its attraction. Presumably the closer you get to death the more you concentrate on things that signify something. You might be less inclined to blow your own horn, which is why, where elders' rights are concerned, other groups must help with the "representation". The American Association of Retired Persons says that less than 1% of American grant money goes to seniors' rights and ageing. In Canada, the federal Ministry of Health did announce another $30 million for brain health research this year. Not much is spent on seniors' equity rights however, or on grants for creative projects in later life.

That seniors should be disabled by younger people’s assumptions and dismissals is an unfair handicap. International Ageism Awareness Day, October 7th, is a good moment to think about it.

                                                                                                                JustJests

-- S. B. Julian 

The Very Detrimental Caterpiller

The world is full of meanings we aren't aware of. "The world is so full of a number of things / we should all be as happy as kings", wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, but the world of thought and ideas is overwhelming and we learn to focus. Out of our tiny focus, we extract our own treasured, and rigid, belief system. Most people narrow their awareness just to get through the day. Maybe it's a safety instinct. We no longer aim for a capacious or well-furnished mind; public school systems certainly don't. People are told they need to "feel safe" and not be "triggered". Too often, other people's ideas are seen as "bullying". 

Hence a renewed book-banning mania. One Canadian school system decided to remove any children's book written before 2008, as "detrimental" for the "marginalized" -- including classics like Anne Frank's Diary, The Very Hungry Caterpiller, Anne of GG, and the Harry Potter series (of course).  Schools were instructed to specially support the Afro-Caribbean and indigenous students, and if that's the new meaning of "inclusive", then schools have problems with word definition. Maybe they'll throw out the Dictionary as well, as something detrimental -- maybe thinking it's as bad as the Very Detrimental Caterpiller.