Occupy: Changing the message, giving hope

In all the disruption created by the recession, I see how a collective sense of purpose has had a timely convergence with popular mythology to create the lightning bolt that is the Occupy Wall Street movement. Like many others, I have so much at stake. The challenge living between jobs is to keep the narrative of my life on a course that makes sense. And just how does one do that? They say you’ve really got to pay attention to the messages you internalize.

The job search industry message flourishes by helping people navigate the preparatory maneuvers for getting hired. It’s a mix of networking, presentation skills, and the summation of all that you have to offer, your personal brand. In fact, professionals need to see themselves as a start-up, a constantly evolving, improving machine of business efficiency and innovation.

Alongside this conventional wisdom runs a cross-current that is trying desperately to envision life and work beyond the demands of commercial markets. For those who feel betrayed by working for the typical corporate structure, the search for alternative messaging finds itself right in the heart of the Occupy movement. It takes no convincing for the truth to resonate among the ninety-nine percent who have already sold their personal brand enough times to know their efforts aren’t making a difference. Mechanisms that once provided a balance to capitalism are now dismantled and the resulting inequities weaken its ability to make people believe that they can profit at all. So while the popular advice for servicing the corporate system still prevails, our collective impulse compels us to create an ethos that promotes fairer participation. Therein lies the beauty of living in a hyper-connected world.

The birth of the Occupy movement coincides magnificently with so many supporting social trends:

*        the work of social psychologists like Dacher Keltner, Brene Brown, and others that cede we are built for cooperation and connection, not just competition

*        the emergence of collaborative consumption, (eloquently explained in What’s Mine is Yours¹) that may shift the predominant ownership paradigm to one of more autonomy and control through shared networks of access to products and services

Indeed, mastering the moment through appropriate messaging has never been more abundant with possibilities. My challenge is in making sure I’m listening to the right ones. The predictable corporate-speak that prefers I see myself not as a person, but a resource of free agency traded on the market, never counted on alternative currencies, alternative trade, alternative networks.

                What gives me hope is that now more people are listening. They are paying attention and sorting things out. They know the process will hit snags, be uncomfortable. And none of that will necessarily be any harder than the lives they are already living. Maybe it will, and that won’t be surprising. But if what evolves is a greater distribution of functional livelihoods for all those who seek them, then perhaps the new message will replace the dysfunctional status quo. It obviously isn’t working. Not everyone sees themselves as an entrepreneur, not everyone sees themselves as a knowledge worker. Resources might fit in boxes, people don’t. Why do we pay so much lip service to notions of innovation and imagination, passion and creativity, and then have no courage to embrace what the results might be? I think we are going to answer that question sooner rather than later. And I can’t wait.  

¹ Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers, What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, (HarperCollins Publishers, 2010).
 

Building methods that make sense right now

What is discussed and exemplified in these videos is a way to build structures that meet criteria for being economical to build and responsive to ecological concerns for conservation and low impact.

Watch all 12 First Earth videos!

Still trying to optimize the built environment

I was invited as a participant to the TEDxRainier conference set for November 12, 2011 at Kane Hall on the UW campus. This is what I wrote in my invitation request:

I’m passionate about finding ways to circumvent obstacles to home building. I’d love to replace the 30 year mortgage with community-supported alternatives coupled with alternative building methods. There are methods that are environmentally sound, that will withstand structural engineering scrutiny and still cost less than $120/square foot. I’d like to encourage an industry that promotes acceptance of a greater variety of building methods like cob, straw bale, superadobe, etc. Why do we accept a debt for nearly a third of our lives simply to live in a place we call home? This is the change I want to be. I’m renting now and refuse to mortgage my future for the sake of the debt economy. I played that game, sold my home and don’t want to go back to the status quo. Please invite me. Thanks!!

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We're all trying to grapple with how to be effective in the world as it has become in the space of our lifetimes. It is terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. I want to take the fear out of it entirely and meet as many kindred spirits as possible.
 
I'm hoping that one of the speakers, Howard Frumkin will give me some insight about how to approach this subject matter.

A public/private partnership in healthcare?

Yesterday, I was imagining a potential public/private partnership as a means to reform healthcare. On closer examination, I think this won't work. A private, for-profit model for the provisioning of a basic human right is completely untenable. What was I thinking?? Guess I was pulling an Obama.

I respect our president, but this kind of compromise is not why we voted for him. As any OWser can tell you, our current system simply needs to be dismantled. I once worked for a consulting firm, and while doing a content audit, found an article by one of the actuaries still (2009) defending the use of the pre-existing condition clause in insurance policies. The policy structure that maintains the health insurance industry protects all the typical players, in all the typical ways that private enterprise is known for. The needs of the customers in this case are actually at odds with the goals of the service the health insurance company intends to provide. They must pay as little as they can according to their contractual agreements, and do it, foot-dragging all the way.

Have you ever had to wait eight months to be billed for a minor surgery? You know what I mean. There is an oceanic cesspool of bureacracy between the service provider and the customer.

Once in a while the conscience of a good soul emerges from ignorance, and when that person is from the industry, he deserves a listen. Such is the case for Wendell Potter who, in this video admits: "I was insulated. I didn't really see what was going on."

Remove the connection between healthcare and employment

Do I have the option only to work six to nine months of any given year? No, not if I want uninterupted health insurance coverage. If I don't mind being dependent on someone else, my time and labor can be freed up for other things. That means my husband has to work for my right to health insurance. In this society there is no assumption that a human life has value independent of labor as measured in the balance of the workforce. So, my husband makes up for my labor deficiency by having the uninterupted job with benefits he shares with me.

Can I accept this form of dependence? I have done so, but it sucks. This is a constraint I can't do much if anything about. I live in a society where it is not my option to have health insurance independent of my job. One could argue that I am free to source an individual insurance plan for myself, but that is a joke, as the expense alone may easily consume the money I derive from working. In fact, I was part of a plan sponsored by Lifewise and they refused to pay a legitimate claim. I went through all kinds of official channels to resolve the issue. At one point I was even reminded that I could lodge a formal complaint with the state insurance commissioner. I cancelled the policy. Let's face it, I knew what I was dealing with. Health insurance companies resisting the payment of legitimate claims is emblematic of the reasons for the Wall St. occupation.

And so I live in a society that appears to have some requirement that my fear of lacking health insurance should be maintained. The excuse given is that costs to society would be too great for everyone to have coverage. However, costs are not calculated according to the status quo we already are living in, where the uninsured find their only option is an emergency room visit. It is fairly obvious that the costs of maintaining this form of care are simply passed on in ways that aren't made clear to most of us.

The costs of running Harborview Medical Center don't exactly make the local news. The policy makers do no want us to know how wasteful the healthcare system is, let alone how it could be changed.

There is no reason basic health maintenance should be an insurmountable task. When supplemented with insurance for catastrophic care or chronic disease management, there is no reason our government couldn't assure simple, routine measures of health maintenance like office visits, consultations, screenings, tests, and even massage and accupuncture and other forms of stress and pain relief.

These things could be easily definable, and other forms of insurance would only kick in at specific points of protocol where more intensive measures are necessary. It is a failure of political will that prevents us from having a decent, more evenly shared economy.

When everything is viewed through the lens of market valuation, it leaves no room for viewing humans as willing participants in their own value. If human value cannot be immediately assumed in the exchange of goods and services through enterprise or labor, there is no other assumption that is made. Humans after all are grown and developed by other humans who assume the creation, care, and feeding of their eventual worth in the workforce until such time as they are let loose on the world at age 18 or there abouts. As long as we're plugged into the labor force our status is assured.

If the world view assumed some already accepted value in the souls walking this earth then no one would ever be unneeded in the maintenance of the world. All would be cared for at a basic level through a system in which all partake. Call it taxation, call it socialism. I don't care what you call it. All I know is that what I am describing is not impossible.

I hesitate to back-pedal, but in truth, I would prefer single-payer, universal healthcare. By putting these ideas together, I was attempting to imagine a hybrid system worthy of consideration.

Doing the real work

Matthew Crawford's essay, The case for working with your hands, provides an excellent definition for determining what makes work worth doing:

"A good job requires a field of action where you can put your best capacities to work and see an effect in the world."

In this essay, an except from his book, Shop class as soulcraft, Crawford contrasts the work environments typical of the corporate world with those of manual labor. His observations about these cultural differences are extraordinarily accurate. I found myself in every passage.

Eighteen years ago I ran a business as a custom tailor in the back of a high-end vintage clothing store. I created original designs and provided restoration on the garments sold in the store. As much as my customers appreciated the work, they also disliked having to pay for it and often didn't hesitate to tell me. I sensed their vulnerability from not knowing if they could trust me or if what they wanted was possible. My job involved the execution of my craft and being a consultant and hand-holder, too.

During the years I spent tailoring clothes I experienced the full spectrum of attitudes that people maintain about practical, manual labor. On the one hand, some were genuinely gracious and understood the work as having value and requiring skill. On the other, there was always someone available at a drycleaner who would do it for less, but communication was an issue so they came to me. I understood very well the context of this prejudice toward sewing as work, but didn't believe it should be my problem to solve. From my point of view, I was offering a service just like any tradesman, and no less deserving of the same esteem as an electrician or mechanic. However, there seemed to be a strong distaste for this particular form of labor deep within the collective psyche, one I didn't share.

At one point, a well meaning person even said: "...I wouldn't be ashamed of doing that..." It never occurred to me that I should.

Fast forward several years, and I'm in a cubicle farm of a sportswear product group conversing with overseas factories about the fit and proportions of next spring's fashions. I have been sufficiently retrained as Crawford would say, "according to a certain cognitive style". 

Now rather than having the immediacy of directing my own actions, I am obligated to manage the work of others. I will never know or see them, but I'm utterly dependent on them creating garments according to specifications and instructions I provide. So while my previous skill development serves me well for orchestrating this, it bears no resemblance to what I call the "real" work.

Patterning, cutting, sewing, and finishing all require a knowledge and precision no less important than the clarity of emails I write to the reps and managers in Hong Kong. However, this labor went from being locally devalued to being globally devalued all so that we can purchase jeans and tee shirts at prices that have no connection to the true cost of production.

What I love about Crawford's essay is how well he grasps this transformation, and the resulting realization that work on either side of the ocean is not what it seems.

"When I first got the degree, I felt as if I had been inducted to a certain order of society. But despite the beautiful ties I wore, it turned out to be a more proletarian existence than I had known as an electrician."

And so, we are left to question the process by which any kind of work is esteemed.