Calling the Poor and Unemployed "Lazy" is Lazy Rhetoric (and Wrong Too)

Sometimes I have little epiphanies about fairly broad subjects. Today, I had one about the increasing volume regarding the rhetoric that the poor and unemployed citizens are "lazy". Not worth going into details why this rhetoric is so overwhelming right now (see: recession and trying to get rid of foodstamps or something) but needless to say, it exists.

However, while I can only speak about my own experiences, I feel like pointing out that not all unemployed people are lazy (this goes without saying, right?) but that furthermore, being unemployed does not automatically mean that one is not actually a productive member of society.

Since graduating from SUNY Oneonta back in 2009, I have yet to find full time employment. So you'll excuse me while I go into Sir BragsALot mode, but I'd like to use myself as an example to start out:
-While I was a student at SUNY Oneonta, I was credited with completing 750.25 volunteer hours of community service. My volunteer work included working on the SUNY Oneonta Undergraduate Philosophy Conference, the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center (which I also served on the Advisory Committee of after I graduated), and the Student Association Supreme Court, among other organizations.

-While I was still living in Oneonta, I also volunteered at a local emergency room and as an EMT for a volunteer fire department.

-Currently, while I am also doing coursework towards a possible Criminology degree at Wilkes-University, I am also doing an unpaid internship with a local law enforcement agency in Wilkes-Barre. While most of the time I am observing court cases, I have also done clerical work as well.

-For the past three years, I have been writing reviews of LGBTQ related films and now have an archive with more than 100 film reviews that I can call my own. While this arguably has little objective value, I do like to think that these reviews have added to a general understanding of queer cinema.

-On top of all of this, I also work out on regularly on a daily basis in the hopes of pursueing a career in either law enforcement or emergency medicine.

-Most recently, I am now volunteering as a researcher for the Quist, an iOS/Android LGBTQ/Queer history app.

Perhaps this is the height of arrogance, but I would like to think that thanks to my history of volunteering and educational pursuits, that I am not only the opposite of lazy, but that I just might be able to call myself a productive member of society. I just happen to not have been able to turn my productivity into a steady paycheck, yet. I cannot imagine that I am the only person who is unemployed and has spent many hours volunteering in an effort to make the kinds of connections that will lead to a paid position.

Of course there is the possibility that I am some kind of special case and the ranks of the unemployed are filled to the brimming with the lazy and unmotivated. Perhaps, but consider the fact that historically speaking, military veterans have generally faced unemployment rates much higher than the non-veteran population.

Call me perverse, but I look forward to the day when the same politicians who argue that the unemployed are the unmotivated scourge of society, go on national TV and argue that members of the U.S. Military have a poor work ethic.

This is all before we get into how privilege and minority status affects how readily one can find employment. One of the most frustrating aspects of an economics class I took this summer, was the circular reasoning that was taken by one of the required texts regarding this phenomenon. People of color are more like to be unemployed because they are less "productive" workers and the reason they are less productive is because they are less educated then white folks. Do I need to point out the not so minor issue with that argument, even if we accept as true? Like oh I dunno, that racism just might create a barrier to higher education for people of color?

Then there was the argument from the same text about the reason a pay gap exists between men and women. Which is apparently because women are also less productive. Now one reason for the productivity disparity was because women are less likely to pursue higher paying careers in traditionally male dominated fields. The possibility that women were less likely to pursue careers in male dominated fields because of sexist social conditioning never crossed the authors minds. They also attempted to use the "mommie factor" (that is women taking time off of work to raise kids) as another reason women are less productive than men. I will simply point out that this is a sexist argument in of itself, as it immediately dismisses the bearing and raising of kids as not being a form of productivity.

Continueing in this vain but did you know that sending out a "gay resume" means you're less likely to get called by an interested employer? Oddly enough, the same holds true for resumes with "African-American sounding" names. If this is true, we must assume then that your name or sexual orientation must be a reliable indicator to an employer of ones work ethic. Because otherwise things like racism and homophobia actually exist and admitting they exist is so very, very hard.

I do not wish to promote the idea here that one's ultimate worth as a human being is somehow tied up in ones employment status or any such nonsense. I just want to say that ultimately, what's really truly lazy is painting an entire population with the same brush. There is no effort required when it comes to promoting stereotypes.

Further Reading:
National Statistics on Transgender Unemployment - Transgender Workplace Diversity
My Name Is Jason, I’m A 35-Yr-Old White Male Combat Veteran…And I’m On Food Stamps
Homeless Veterans, By The Numbers - Thinkprogress

Silver Demon: Denial

So while trying to do serious research on The Holocaust, I keep coming across Holocaust Denial crap and getting distracted by it. Or rather sucked in. It's pretty much all the same to me as the 9/11 Truther Movement.

I have to confess, I just don't get it. Where does this kind of shit come from? What causes people to want to deny an established record in favor of a wild hypothesis with no established reason or evidence behind it?

Whenever I come across such sites my mind gets even more twisted around then it probably would by reading about what actuallyhappened in the concentration camps. I feel, I imagine, much like one of those super sentient computers that Captain Kirk keeps coming across on Star Trek, where Kirk just destroys the darn thing by presenting it with a logical paradox. Wait but your evidence that Auschwitz was full puppies and kittens, not gas chambers, is logically flawed. How can you believe it! But you obviously do! THIS DOES NOT COMPUTE *ARGH* *smoke starts pouring from ears*

Part of me, in spite of the obvious time suck this would become, would like to go through and spend some time debunking the crap that comes up on these sites.

For example, one time I was doing research on Father Mychal Judge, for one of those posts I abandoned halfway through, I came across a photo of Judge being removed from the World Trade Center, where the background had been washed out thanks to photo manipulation.

The photo, from a 9/11 Truth discussion board, had a caption that read "photos from 9/11 frequently show washed out backgrounds when mild contrast adjustments are applied. Clear evidence that 9/11 was staged."

In any case, my first reaction was: um, er, no, it's just a sign that the contrast filter on your photo manipulation software is working just fine. Because that's typically what happens when you adjust the contrast, some part of it gets "washed out". If your background happens to feature large amounts of smoke and dust, it will be particulary prone to this happening.

Anybody who has spent time playing around with photo manipulation software and particularly spent some time experimenting with the contrast control could tell you this.

In any case, I really hate to think about what might happen if such a person ever started watching the video of JFK getting assassinated on their computer. Oh my god! The video plays through twice as fast after I hit the 2x button! Time must be warping so therefore OBVIOUSLY OSWALD MUST BE AN ALIEN!

That is all I have to say on the matter.

Social Constructs and the Natural Order Part 3: Free Will, Choice, and Self Determinism Within Social Constructs

This is the third in a series of planned philosophical essays and therefore will not make sense if you have not read the first one.

Social Constructs and The Natural Order

Table of Contents
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: The Evolution and Survival of Systems
Part 3: Free Will, Choice, and Self Determinism Within Social Constructs
Part 4: The Role of Science and Religion
Part 5: Social Constructions Involving Race, Ethnicity and Culture
Part 6: Social Constructions Involving Gender and Sexuality
Part 7: Thoughts on Creating more Ethical Systems

If there was ever a more hoary concept than free will, I have yet to come across it. Basically, we all like to think of ourselves as entitities capable of determining our own destiny. We call ourselves "self made men" and arrogantly assume that could possibly be true on any level.

Of course, it should be important to note to define what free will is. Free will, for the purpose of this series, shall be defined as, "the ability to freely choose between two (or more) options, with those two (or more) options leading to significantly different outcomes."

To sum up me feelings on the matter, I do not believe in free will and ultimately that all "choice is an illusion".

In regards to social constructs this is important for several reasons. One, while "free will" is technically not a social construct in of itself, it is a false belief that is used to justify a lot of really problematic social constructs. For example, libertarianism not only requires a society of entirely rational individuals to function (good luck with that) it also requires that they are all capable of acting according to the principles of free will.

Furthermore, in our current society, conditions such as poverty and homelessness is not seen as the ultimate consequence of imbalanced and bigoted power structures, but the consequences of the choices of the individuals who are poor and homeless.

Than there is the reality that "choice" is seen as an empowering concept in of itself. By making consumers believe that they have "chosen" a particular brand (rather than having been skillfully manipulated by advertising) companies are able make costumers feel good about a given purchase. By selling the concept of free will to consumers, "choice" becomes another tool in a companies sales tool kit. Modern capitalism, like libertarianism, relies on the belief of it's proponents in free will in order to function.

I don't have much more to say than that I'll be exploring this more in the last part, Thoughts on Creating More Ethical Systems.

Social Constructs and The Natural Order: Part 2: The Evolution and Survival of Systems

This is the second in a series of planned philosophical essays and therefore will not make sense if you have not read the first one.

Social Constructs and The Natural Order

Table of Contents
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: The Evolution and Survival of Systems
Part 3: Free Will, Choice, and Self Determinism Within Social Constructs
Part 4: The Role of Science and Religion
Part 5: Social Constructions Involving Race, Ethnicity and Culture
Part 6: Social Constructions Involving Gender and Sexuality
Part 7: Thoughts on Creating more Ethical Systems

The Evolution and Survival of Systems

As the flight begins, all is well. Our would-be airman has been pushed off the edge of the cliff and is peddling away, and the wings of his craft are flapping like crazy. He's feeling wonderful, ecstatic. He's experiencing the freedom of the air. What he doesn't realize, however, is that this craft is aerodynamically incapable of flight. It simply isn't in compliance with the laws that make flight possible - but he woud laugh if you told him this. He's never heard of such laws, knows nothing about them. He would point at those flapping wings and say, 'See? just like a bird!' Nevertheless, whatever he thinks, he's not in flight. He's an unsupported objected falling toward the center of the earth.
-Ishmael, An Adventure of the Mind and Soul by Daniel Quinn

The story of an aviator who, after being pushed off a cliff while believing that he was in flight, provides a wonderful illustration for what I want to talk about with this article. But let's backup a little first.

To begin with, it was evolution that gave forth to rational consciousness and rational consciousness that gave forth to social constructs, which require the faith of rationally conscious beings in order to exist. These social constructs would of course have originally been designed by our rational consciousness in order to help us survive.

Now for the obvious conclusion, that social constructs should follow similar rules in terms of how they would survive and perpetuate themselves. It should also be equally obvious that there would be some significant differences as well. For example, the method by which social constructs are able to perpetuate themselves - propaganda, language, indirect persuasions, and way to many others to list here - are radically different from those of biological organisms, which rely primarily upon the transfer of genetic material from one generation to the next in order to perpetuate and survive.

However, that is where the differences end and the similarities begin. The most basic rule of biological evolution - that biological systems/organisms change over time and that those organisms which take on traits that give them a better chance of survival - relative to the other biological systems that they are competing with - will be most able to pass on their biologogical traits.

This too applies to social constructs. Social constructs wil compete with each other for believers, as well as natural resources, which means that social constructs will inevitably follow the same principles as biological organisms. That is, social constructs which take on characteristics that will best enable them to survive - relative to the social constructs they are directly competing with - will have a better chance of "surviving" and perpetuating themselves onto future generations.

While this may seem tautologically obvious, there is a key catchet that is often overlooked, namely that in evolution, negative characteristics or traits that do not help the organism/system to survive, can still be sustained, provided they do not cause the extinction of said organism or system.

Furthermore, social constructs can take on traits that may allow those social constructs to survive in the stort term while having others that guarantee extinction in the long term. It is possible for sustainable social constructs to be created that have traits that have negative effects, for both the constructs and those who believe in them.

This all leads me to the point I want to end on. Much like the doomed aviator in Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, it is possible for us to construct the means of our own doom. Our faith that certain social constructs are necessary for our survival will not save us if we are wrong.