Reply #20: You "don't see a way?" Rub your eyes and look harder! [View All]

[TygrBright]

You have the power to make a difference, you know. You really, really DO! I'm not saying you can do a Norma Jean tomorrow and start a movement and by next year the infotech field will be fully unionized and everyone's problems will be solved blah-blah-blah... Nor am I (I hope) making unreasonable demands of time & energy, as I know damn' well how scarce that is for today's workers. I don't mean you should do the equivalent of giving up a "normal life" to become a flaming crusader, either.

But the infotech field, especially at the mid-levels, has enormous organizing potential, just because infotech workers have so many informal networks, ways to communicate, etc. And everyone from the mid-high levels on down is grotesquely exploited in terms of working conditions, employer expectations, job security, etc. It's built up over nearly two decades as the field has passed the knee in its growth curve, and it's still a young field, much as "factory worker" was in the 1880s. If infotech workers started now, using all their networking and communications ability, the field could be organized in ten or fifteen years, maybe less.

A ten or fifteen year timeline discourages the hell out of us instant-gratification-conditioned Americans, but it's eminently doable. No one individual has to assume leadership responsibility, you don't even have to consciously "organize" or have a plan, just start laying the groundwork by demolishing assumptions like "there's nothing we can do about it," and by building a realization and consensus that the situation is unacceptable. As more and more people start sharing such ideas, leadership WILL emerge. A vision will coalesce. Factions will form and break up and re-form. Experiments will happen, you'll get slapped down and experience losses, but realize that you've survived them and, guess what, it really DOES make you stronger.

I hear what you say about getting married, too. I think it's beyond rational for people who care about each other to discuss what strategies will give them the best quality of life, what the costs and benefits will be, how they will each make their contributions, etc. The "traditional family" model didn't just evolve from religious and cultural norms, it made solid economic sense for a vast swathe of society who realized that they could greatly reduce cash expenditures AND increase their overall quality of life by having one partner maintain the domestic economy while the other maintained the cash flow. When that's a conscious, voluntary strategy on the part of all involved it can work extremely well. It's only when it's "the only option available" and the tasks are assigned solely based on rigid cultural criteria that it becomes oppressive.

Families and communities ARE healthier when stable households form around loving adult partnerships, maintaining a balance of workplace, domestic, and leisure activities. If we want our nation to survive our damaged environment and depleted natural resources, we need to be thinking in terms of sustainability, and restructuring an economy based around healthy family and community dynamics is the key to that.

It's more than possible to work our way out of the trap that unregulated economic Darwinism has reduced us to, we just have to acknowledge that no one will do it for us, and start being creative about doing it for ourselves.

urg... sorry if I went all preachy on you, you just pushed some buttons that have been really aching lately. Ignore if it works better for you.

diffidently,
Bright