In good economic times, corporations rob the markets; in bad times, they rob the workforce.
The last part of that axiom is brought home to me every single day now, as I enter my fourth month of unemployment. I have humbly applied for jobs paying less than half my usual rate: so long as it pays a dollar more than unemployment benefits, just show me where the grindstone is, and my nose will follow.
The problem is, however, that there is more than mere money involved in recession-era corporate robbery. In the best of times, corporations are fussy in how they recruit workers; which I wouldn’t have a problem with, except that they are typically finicky for all the wrong reasons. They focus with an obsessive-compulsive zeal upon the most superficial aspects of qualification, and thus tend to accumulate the most superficial employees. Experience matters only in a numeric or mechanical sense. Even when they make a show of penetrating appearances, the results are often laughable — the old “if you were a tree…” thing. I have been asked many times by interviewers to “describe my weaknesses;” never to show how I’d react to conflict or reversal in a time-intensive project. In other words, the real value of experience in professional settings is typically ignored.
In economic times like these, the problem is compounded: the cubicle, having already been foreshortened into a pigeonhole, now becomes a cell in a spreadsheet — and woe to the man or woman who makes the slightest move toward its edges, let alone beyond them. In corporate America, “thinking outside the box” is always an activity restricted to someone higher than you.
This, of course, is why recessions and waves of unemployment tend to recur regularly, like bad television shows in the summer. The timing and severity are the only elements that vary; otherwise, it is the same Hell with superficially different demons.
This is not a problem that government can solve. President Obama, as much as we may admire him, cannot bring either democracy or creativity to the workplace. That would be up to us.
Well, how then? We have to demand it. But not “demand” in the way you normally think of it. In times like these, confrontational demand will get you onto Line E faster than usual; and trust me when I say that you do not want to be unemployed in this economy.
The Bush era taught us, if anything, that confrontational demand leaves you with nothing — indeed, with less than nothing. So this seems to be a good place to start, by understanding that there are other ways of demanding justice, democratic rights, and equality, either among nations on the planet or colleagues in the workplace.
So let me be very clear: this is not a matter of either institutional intervention or intellectual mastery. Neither the government nor the board of directors can be of any use to you here; and neither your IQ nor your technical skills will make much of a difference in this respect. The demand, in this instance, must come from the heart, which is not an organ of thrusting aggression, but of an assured and rhythmic pulse.
The heart is the source of the clearest thought and the most well-directed action. This is why, for many years, I punctuated my corporate workday with brief meditations: they had the effect of calling other and often neglected aspects of being into action. Most folks I’ve worked for couldn’t care less how anything gets accomplished, so long as it gets done.
What we do, how we act, is guided by how we feel; and how we feel is guided by the resources that we call upon from within ourselves. If I have pushed my intellect out onto the stage of action naked and alone, with no support or synergy from the other elements of my personality (and I have done exactly that), then I will most likely fail, or else accomplish just enough at great cost to keep the treadmill barely moving. Intellect by itself never created a single thing, never transformed a single person.
This is whyI have saidthat, in times like these more than ever, we need the arts — not just to have paintings and books and music to divert us from our suffering, but to have a creative movement in our midst that may inspire us to bring art to our own professions, be we investment bankers or auto mechanics.
Corporations do not understand creativity, even if they pay it lip service in their advertising. Only the freethinking individual can set the creative example, mold the creative solution, and contribute to the resurrection of a stiff and morbid culture.
Our children, when they come of age, will recognize whether or not we have lived up to the challenge of this time. Most of us have zero influence over what the government does or how Wall Street changes, if at all. But we can bring our total being into the workplace and, through our actions, our example, our mere presence as whole and sane individuals, demand that human and democratic values are returned to our businesses and institutions.