Better buy the dozen

With all the unfair, despicable, cowardly and brutal things going on in the (political) world around us, you'd be excused for not wanting to hear about another.

This is just a reflection on something that comes up time and time again in the course of my daily work. When I teach classes, sometimes I get to hear little bits of stories about the people who come to them.

Tonight, I had a dozen people, eager to learn the basics of Microsoft Word. I was into it for about ten minutes when a burly gentleman arrived and apologized for being late. I set him up with a computer, and got him caught up to the point I had left off with the class. In a few minutes, he was a bit lost, so I went over to him and helped get him back on track. During that minute and a half or so, he told me that he had just lost his job, a desk job in law enforcement, that he had held for 30 years, because he lacked the computer skills required by changes in the department, and was given no time to pick them up. He needed to climb the mountain of the learning needed to become competent in Windows and Office skills, because that was now a requirement. Fortunately, he had a working wife.

After the class was over, I got talking to another of my students, a man in his 40s, who lost his job as a machinist, because he had apparently had a back condition that was undiagnosed from birth, resulting in a deterioration that made him no longer capable of doing the kind of operations that machinists do. He too wanted the Windows and Office skills to make it possible to re-enter the workforce. Fortunately, he had no family or dependents.

There have been many others, especially during the last eight years, who have felt the sting of layoff, firing or unemployability, and they pass hopefully through our classes, which are probably too general to do them much good. In all this time, I have not heard of more than about three people who have succeeded in getting a job that paid a decent wage. One person solved the problem by working for his brother, but that is rare indeed.

This America is not a worker-friendly country any longer. There are no real breakthrough ideas as to how to deal with the older, hard-to-employ worker. There are few good jobs for mothers returning to the workforce, or starting for the first time since their children left home. There are no solutions that haven't been tried by thousands. And there is no compassion because there is a common perception that there are no solutions that aren't basically socialist in nature. And socialism is a four-letter word.

What would it take to change this country into a nation that actually cared about the poor and the powerless? Cared enough to try to change so that everyone is treated fairly?

Some form of the 12-Step Program should just about do it.

1. Admit that life in America has become unmanageable because of addiction to consumerism, power and the accumulation of wealth.
2. Realize that a Power beyond anything we have experienced can restore us to sanity. That could be, for example, the power inherent in an unrigged election system.
3. Make a decision (i.e. vote) for someone who is undeniably moral, decent, honest and open, who has the best interests of the world's people at heart, not just "what's good for GM".
4. Take stock of what exactly we mean by "morality" and develop a global perspective on what morality means in the context of our common existence on this blue ball.
5. Admit to the current and past (and in the case of Iran, future) "enemies" the exact nature of what we have done wrong to them as a nation and part of the world as we know it.
6. Become entirely ready to remove all these defects of character, attitude, and posture.
7. Humbly ask them to help remove these defects. For those who think God, however understood, has any interest in this, well, we need all the help we can get.
8. Make a list of all the countries and nations and peoples that we have wronged and publicly and as a matter of policy prepare to make amends to them all.
9. Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Releasing the wrongfully imprisoned at Guantanamo would be a good start.
10. Continue this process of moral and political inventory, especially through the rehabilitation of the mainstream media, which would long since have awakened from their acquiescent stupor and pernicious collaboration during the reign of the current administration.
11. Sought to improve our conscious contact with our conscience, both public and private, such that the right thing would always be done whenever there was a choice.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, then try to carry these principles (freedom, equality, opportunity, compassion) to others and practice them in all our affairs.

While I realize that "in a perfect world none of us would be here" (thank you, Eric), I also think that it is the lack of personal effort even to stop and think that there may be a better way than the one we're going now that causes so much indifference, fear, cruelty and self-indulgence. Every minute of every day is a great starting point to create a better world. So come on, let's do it. We need to heal the nation's addiction to greed and self-preservation. We can. We must. It's the right thing to do.