Category Archives: Greatest Generation, Boomers, Millennials, Alphabets

Robots: Great as Servants, Terrible as Masters?

Robots are a current invention of capitalism.Recently, hotel chains have experimented with robots to perform some types of hotel labor: deliver towels to customers, clean floors, and so on. Hotel workers are worried about the future of their jobs.

How will robots, if widely used, change our human interactions, however brief those interactions? Will I prefer being serviced by a robot? Will I feel slightly uneasy going to and from my hotel room passing, not house cleaners, but little R2-D2’s?

It’s true, I won’t have to tip a robot. Of course, how do I know hotel owners might not add robot service to my bill?

Also, because of fewer jobs, more homeless people may confront me and my conscience as I step from the hotel. More homeless camps? More soup kitchens? Perhaps my taxes will rise to support emergency room care because fewer Americans have health insurance.

In themselves robots are neither good nor bad. Machines, including computers, have freed us from much backbreaking labor and tedious calculations. They have increased both our physical and mental reach.

If robots bring benefits, that is all to the good—as long as the benefits are shared. If fewer human hours are needed to perform work, establish, perhaps, a 32 hour work week as opposed to a 40 hour one. Provide affordable job training for increasing tech jobs and other growing fields. Employed workers pay taxes.

Capitalism is great. Share it.

Purpose Beats Escape

“People whose method of coping with life has been to escape it have to learn, almost from scratch, how to live. . . . It’s a long, hard and essentially spiritual process.” So writes Danny Duncan Collum in “Learning How to Live Life (on Life’s Terms)” (Sojourners, April 2019)

Collum, a writer based in Kentucky, comments about a film Recovery Boys, an effort to aid young men in recovering from drug addiction.

Boys attempt to kick the habit while housed at a remote farm. They take care of animals and crops and spend time in meditation. Some are apparently making it; others have a harder time.

Collum’s article suggests the need for purpose if one is to avoid, not only drug destruction, but all sorts of other ills. We can be drug free yet addicted to wealth or power or pleasure. Somehow, to overcome, or to prevent such “addiction” in the first place, we must be protected by some purpose bigger than ourselves.

It is, as Collum says, a spiritual battle.

Our Waning Love Affair With Cars–Winners and Losers

Americans who came of age in earlier decades fell in love with the automobile. It became an appendage of their lives, like mobile phones today, the symbol of freedom, a way to escape parents and prying eyes.

As they grew into adults, many of them walked little more than the few yards from parking lot to their job in an office building or from the garage into their house at the end of the day.

That generation rushed to the suburbs, created for cars, difficult to serve with mass transit. The central city was left to those too poor to buy a vehicle.

The modern city actually began in the Middle Ages as a place for merchants and shop owners to lessen dependence on the landed gentry. Modern employers are again discovering the advantage of clustering in urban spaces. Today, Seattle, the largest city in my area, is a city for the well off young worker, especially those employed by tech companies. Some employees even walk to work. Many take mass transit.

However, lower income workers are not faring as well, once again forced into spaces less and less attractive as they move further out to escape rising rents. They inherit suburbs now spurned by the more well-off. Of course, living in suburbs often requires them to buy cars to travel to work . . .

To Community

We don’t actually have a verb “to community,” but we need one.

We have morphed from extended families to nuclear families to couples and singles, from neighborhoods to isolated apartments. Some of us have lost the talent for community.

We demonize the “other.” We form, not communities, but polarizing forces.

This is not to say we should attempt a return to a nonexistent past. May we avoid the danger of thinking the past was a glorious time of togetherness. It certainly wasn’t for many “different” and left out people.

We have, however, been captured by a value system of things. Fewer people in bigger houses. More time on our digital devices and less physical time with friends. Less eating together and more solitary meals.

Being happy while alone is not a bad thing in itself. Solitude in a busy world can bless.

But when solitude turns into disconnectedness, we may need “to community.”

Working Citizens

David Brooks, columnist for The New York Times, recently wrote: “A lot of us pundits said President Donald Trump should run a positive campaign bragging about all the economic growth. But Trump ran another American carnage campaign. That’s because American life still feels like carnage to many.” (“What the working class is still trying to tell us,” The Seattle Times, 11 November 2018)

We have, Brooks said, fixated on economic growth and not on the ability of our citizens to produce.

This even applies, he wrote, to our programs for the poor. Welfare programs “have focused on consumption—giving money to the poor so they can consume more.”

He suggested, often quoting from a book by Oren Cass, The Once and Future Worker, that we should stress a multiple approach to education. We should be as interested in apprenticeship programs as in college preparatory courses, for example.

Most of us have a strong need to feel we are of worth, that we can contribute something to society. Indeed some of the drug culture among youth may stem from a sense of uselessness and lack of purpose.

Producing? Serving? Work as valuable? We could do worse.

Smorgasbord Samplers Versus Full Meal Dealers

We tend toward one of two groups: the smorgasbord samplers or the full meal dealers.

The smorgasbord samplers are the internationally minded post moderns. They are turned off by the brutality and slaughter of competing groups. They believe good is found in all cultures.

They have foresworn the close associations of past communities. They prefer to choose from a variety: one may be an atheist and a Buddhist. Or a Catholic married to a Jew whose child follows an Indian holy man. If one appreciates all cultures, one is less likely to condone ethnic/religious bloodletting, they say.

The full meal dealers find meaning in a long term community dedicated to common purposes: shared religious faith, social justice, meeting the needs of vulnerable people, for example. They crave long term commitments.

In truth, the two camps can learn from each other. The smorgasbord samplers need the purpose and commitment of the full meal dealers. The full meal dealers need the empathy and humility of the smorgasbord samplers.

Why Must Wealthy Donors Rescue Us?

Jeff Bezos has announced a donation of two billion dollars to help homeless families and to create preschools in low income communities. Bezos is due our praise for his gift and his stated intention of giving more in the future from his accumulated wealth.

We have other wealthy people in this country who give generously to worthy causes. They are to be congratulated for their generosity. The tradition of “paying it forward,” of sharing blessings is a noble one.

But why are the basic needs of so many in need of rescue? Why don’t our taxes cover basic education, medical care, and affordable housing?

If basic needs were met, wealthy giving could fund “extras”—scientific experiments, worldwide agricultural breakthroughs, and other endeavors not easily financed through regular taxation.

Of course, meeting basic needs would no doubt require more taxes from the wealthy.

From Tribe to Nuclear Family to the Solitaires

The dominance of the nuclear family in the United States began about the time World War II ended. Many returning soldiers and sailors married and moved with their families into university housing to take advantage of the GI education bill.

Others moved to find jobs, leaving parents behind in small towns and inner city neighborhoods. Suburbs gained dominance, a haven of the nuclear family. Senior citizens were often absent from those first suburbs.

As baby boomers aged, older suburbs grayed as well. The children grew up and moved, some to different suburbs with townhouses and smaller lots. Who has time to mow a lawn these days? Others rediscovered the city.

We whittle down the nuclear family to the single going it alone or with a partner. Children? Perhaps, but children are expensive to raise, not to mention the time and energy they take.

Singles and those in loose partnerships have changed the landscape. The nuclear family, conqueror of the extended family, is now conquered by the solitaires.

Somewhere, we lost community, too. The solitaires may have their own groups, their friendships. They can change when they feel it necessary, not bind themselves, they say, to dead marriages or associations that have lost purpose.

Community had its drawbacks. Those who didn’t fit were too often ostracized. Some groups were dysfunctional, wounding their members.

Yet we lack adequate replacement for covenanted community, for dedicated care to meet physical and spiritual needs. A task for our age is the healing and rebuilding of community.

Worship of the Talented

“Many of the great failures of the last 50 years, from Vietnam to Watergate to the financial crisis, were caused by extremely intelligent people who didn’t care about the civic consequences of their actions.”

So writes New York Times columnist David Brooks (“The failure of the educated elite,” The Seattle Times, May 30, 2018).

The old system of power depended on who your parents were and on the hereditary passing of power. We exchanged it for a more just one based on merit.

Yet, Brooks points out, the old system had qualities that the new system lacks.

Blue bloods from the older system like George H. W. Bush “won World War II and built the American Century.”

In contrast, those put into power under the new system, based on merit and education, are passing down advantages to their children but not to the nation as a whole. Our society has become more unequal than ever, says Brooks.

What the new meritocracy lacks is “a civic consciousness, a sense that we live life embedded in community and nation, that we owe a debt to community . . . ”

The new system will work when we pass good things not just to our children, but to our neighbor’s children as well.

Why Do So Many of Us Depend on Our Employers for Health Insurance?

I was fortunate that all my employers offered health insurance. That may be why I went early to my doctor to treat symptoms of what turned out to be cancer.

My successful treatment, done early, may be one reason I was saved from having to undergo radiation. Not only was I spared that trauma (or even early death), but the costs of treating my illness were much less.

Unfortunately, many working Americans have no health insurance. Their employers may not offer it, or they are self-employed.

Unlike most developed countries, Americans do not have universal health care coverage. This can mean delayed visits to the doctor for symptoms until the illness is more expensive to treat and more likely to be deadly.

In addition, if your employer does provide healthcare, they have one more tie to keep you working for them. You may have a tyrannical boss or even a predatory one, but if your healthcare depends on them, you may think twice before leaving a bad situation.

In addition, fewer potential entrepreneurs will begin their own businesses and experiment with new ideas if they must give up access to healthcare as a condition of striking off on their own.

Transportation infrastructure, good schools, and a strong military are our important assets for a vibrant economy. So are healthy citizens.

Doonesbury’s Latest Take on Religion

Readers of the Doonesbury comic strip by Garry Trudeau on April 22, 2018, witnessed a segment spoofing the much touted white evangelical embrace of President Trump.

The “elders” of a comic strip church have now changed the definition of sin. It no longer includes actions readers would have no problem connecting with Trump.

Behavior formerly condemned as sin, but now exempted, range from lewdness and adultery to lying and pride. Particularly telling is the pastor’s last comment: “Lastly we’re willing to overlook Biblical illiteracy, church non-attendance, and no credible sign of faith.”

Followers of Christ might remember Jesus’ use of ironic humor in some of the stories he told. They got the point across quite accurately, especially to the religious leaders.

Frankly, My Dear, I Don’t Give a Hoot

Actually, the long suffering and finally fed up Rhett Butler said to Scarlett O’Hara at the end of Gone With the Wind: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

The word “damn” was effective because, at the time, swear words were not part of the public vocabulary as they are today. Rhett’s speech now would be about as noticeable as a car passing on the street.

As we all know, our language has been upended. So called swear words and terms for bodily fluids and intimate acts are common in both our movies and our written literature.

No doubt we bid good riddance to the faux courtesy of earlier days, as well as the racism embedded in Gone With the Wind.

However, our greater honesty is threatened with a vocabulary that is as enlightening as an overflowing sewer.

To use demeaning words prevents us from discussing a topic in meaningful terms. To claim, for example, that either proponents or opponents of the recently passed tax laws are covered in excrement kills true discussion.

We might, instead, say that we favor the law because we believe it will boost the economy with money saved from taxation. Or we might oppose the law because we believe it taxes middle class income while leaving too much wealth untaxed.

Some of our current speech is too often undisciplined blather against people who bother us. Or it flows out against those who happen to be in our space.

Purposeless language aiming merely to shock is like the empty calories of junk food.

Men at Home

Until the industrial age, women’s contribution to the economic well being of their families was as important as that of men. They worked on farms and in home based shops and businesses along with their fathers and brothers and husbands. In addition, children knew their fathers on a close, daily basis.

With the industrial age, work and home began to separate. Men went off to factories and city offices. Women stayed home to raise the children. Women were separated from the economic function, but men were separated from the home.

In the past few decades, women entered the economic sphere once again. However, the separation between home and work continues, for the most part, with too many fathers absent from close contact with their families.

Here and there, the digital age brings changes. Some businesses operate from private homes. Some corporation employees work partly from their homes.

Still, family remains an afterthought in our current life. The career person, man or woman, is in the spotlight—often portrayed as a gung-ho, get-it-done, partying millennial.

We lack, though, a work environment that allows home and work to more closely align.

No one supposes that every man and woman should become a parent. However, it’s to our benefit to create a society that allows its citizens (men and women) to choose both family and career if they wish.

In fact, our survival depends on birthing and raising responsible offspring more than it does on any career.

Holiday Libations

Writers and other artists have a reputation for drinking a lot. Maybe the artistic culture has more drunkards or maybe its members just write more about it.

Szilvia Molnar, a publishing professional, wrote about the importance of drinking within the writing/publishing world. ( “On Book Publishing’s Drinking Culture,” Literary Hub, 6 December 2017)

Though Molnar has no problems with drinking per se, she said she recently recognized “while it’s not been difficult for me to turn down a drink when I’ve not wanted one, it’s only recently that I don’t feel embarrassed by not drinking at all.”

It’s a high school mentality, she writes, that one must have a drink in order to fit in.

She indulges in a few whimsical imaginings: “ . . . what if we incorporated a little nonsense juice-bonanza into our social events? What if we performed delicate tea ceremonies or got really wild and crazy about latte art? Or ended a reading with a meditation rather than an open bar?”

Caveat: Like Molnar, I don’t have a problem with responsible drinkers. I don’t drink alcohol for a number of reasons, one being that breast cancer has appeared in many females on my mother’s side, and studies indicate that drinking alcohol may increase the odds of developing it.

Besides, I fulfill two services to society. One: Recovering alcoholics don’t have to stand out for refusing to drink if I’m around. Two: I’m always available as the designated driver.

War on Newspapers

Can Americans be led to doubt responsible journalism? One group’s aim is to make it as hard as possible for traditional newspapers to do their job.

James O’Keefe is the founder of Project Veritas. The organization’s purpose appears to be the decapitation of mainstream news media through feeding them false stories and hoping they will accept them.

Recently, a woman tied to Veritas tried to peddle a false story to The Washington Post about her supposed sexual relationship to Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore. The paper performed checks on the woman’s stories, found them questionable, and refused to publish her accusations. That is what responsible news media do.

Being human, they do sometimes make errors. When brought to their attention, however, they admit their errors and correct them. They are not in the business of spreading rumors but of bringing truth to their readers.

It is doubtful our representative government can survive without them.

Opioid Plague: Searching for Spiritual Answers?

Dr. Thomas Andrew, at age 60, is changing his profession from medical examiner to that of minister. As medical examiner for New Hampshire, he’s appalled by the mushrooming number of deaths from drug overdoses for which he’s had to perform autopsies.

He’s planning to enter the ministry as a chaplain under the United Methodist Church. After watching the drug toll mount, Dr. Andrew, in the words of a newspaper article, “wants to try, in his own small way, to stop it.” (The Seattle Times, “Opioid deaths are taking a toll on medical examiners’ offices,” October 8, 2017).

Maybe Dr. Andrew has hit on an answer too little tried in our horror at what can only be called a moral epidemic. We plead with young people and others to save themselves from drugs, to enter rehabilitation programs, to think about what the drugs are doing to them.

Maybe getting people off drugs is not merely to keep drugs from harming them. Perhaps it’s also because, if they destroy themselves, they deprive their communities of their gifts.

Their job is to find their purpose in life, to discover their particular talents and skills, to explore ways to serve. In other words, to understand that they don’t exist for themselves alone.

Bring Your Pets to Work; How About Your Children?

A shopping section of one newspaper featured equipment a pet owner might want for taking their pet with them to their workplace. Suggestions for the growing pet-to-work movement included a pet carrier, collapsible feeding dishes, and a portable paw washer.

Anyone who’s loved a pet can understand the satisfaction of a pet’s affection and how the pet’s presence might contribute to less stress in the work place.

Animals now are used in some prisons to teach inmates responsibility as they provide care for a living creature dependent on them. Hospitals use pets to relieve tension of patients preparing for medical procedures. Sometimes animals are part of mental health programs.

Might parents also profit by having their infants and young children close by as they work?

Small humans present certain challenges, of course. They sometimes cry and want to be picked up no matter what other responsibilities the worker parent has. They have to be changed and fed, not always on schedule. As they begin to crawl, they are apt to pick up small items off the floor and attempt to swallow them. They constantly explore. Trash baskets and reachable desk drawers are a treasure trove.

One solution might be close-at-hand children’s centers. Parents could stop by on breaks and spend a few minutes. They might eat lunch with them or perhaps put them down for a nap.

Our separation of work and home, beginning with the industrial age, separated mothers from economic production. It also separated fathers from their children. Perhaps bringing children closer to workplaces might lessen both problems.

Personal Tragedy Becomes National Tragedy: We Can’t Work Because We’re Addicted

“The Columbiana Boiler Company [in Youngstown, Ohio] forgoes roughly $200,000 worth of orders each quarter because workers can’t pass drug screenings.”

–The New York Times, as reported in The Seattle Times, July 30, 2017

For several years, we’ve read about the opioid epidemic, the drug abuse that kills young people in unprecedented numbers, especially in states like Ohio and West Virginia. Drug users have so increased in number that large segments of the young adult population cannot qualify for good jobs.

Working class jobs, we read, are disappearing. Yet, available jobs are going unfilled, because “too many applicants—nearly half, in some cases—fail a drug test.”

The risk with drug abusers is the higher possibility of accidents related to their addiction. Accidents may result in fellow workers being killed and maimed. The company cannot hire them. It loses work to foreign companies because those countries have a better labor pool, apparently with less drug abuse.

States now rush to pass laws legalizing cannabis because pot has become a part of the culture. The reasons behind legalization are understandable. Law enforcement officers are stretched thin to fight opioid use, much less cannabis.

Yet cannabis also interferes with a worker’s ability to produce. Why did pot suddenly come on the scene? Why did Americans need a new pleasure drug?

Communal drinking has been around since grapes were first fermented. But today’s drinking has gone beyond a few beers around a television while watching a football game. It’s become more than enjoying a satisfying wine to enhance a meal.

Party goers now drink in order to get drunk. Unlike countries such as Great Britain, where the public takes more seriously the ban against driving under the influence, car-dependent Americans think nothing of driving away inebriated from the bar or the party, their judgement seriously impaired.

Why do we feel such a need for that which destroys us? It’s a question we should all be asking.

What Is the Alt-Right and Why Did the Largest Protestant Denomination in the United States Denounce It?

“Resolved, That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention, meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, June 13-14, 2017, decry every form of racism, including alt-right white supremacy, as antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ; . . . ”

Thus, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States announced itself against alt-right white supremacy.

What is the alt-right?

The Seattle Times defined the alt-right, or alternative right, as “a loosely defined far-right movement associated with white nationalism, racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and a desire to keep the United States a majority white country.” (November 29, 2016, “What Is the ‘alt-right’?”)

Why did Southern Baptist delegates from an evangelical denomination vote as they did? The denomination was founded in 1845 partly because of issues over slavery, some leaders at the time espousing slavery as supported by biblical texts.

However, in recent years, Southern Baptists have begun dealing with their past history. In 1995, they apologized for their role in supporting slavery. The convention now includes more non-white members.

No doubt a more diverse membership contributed to passage of the resolution. One of the bulwarks of the evangelical belief of Southern Baptists is that people can repent and change.

Hallelujah.

Ann Gaylia O'Barr

Culture and World Events from a Christian Perspective