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The Gaffer's Philosophy;
Part 20: Beyond Hope:
September 9, 2002:
In my last essay, I addressed some of the responsibilities of
the family and of individuals. I included our responsibilities
to the environment, to each other, and to the community. I said
viable communities can only exist where the citizens hold to a
personal ethic and take responsibility for themselves.
Now I must face up to a simple reality. In many cases, these responsibilities are not being fulfilled. The truth is, as to accepting responsibility, some people are beyond hope. There is no doubt about that. As a note, I am not speaking of the physically handicapped here. That is an issue for another essay. Now, I am only addressing the reasonably able bodied citizens.
We cannot be dishonest about this. We know that there are a very large number of non-families and families of-a-sort who are not able to fulfill the responsibilities of the home and family. We must also face the fact that most of these failures occur in the Black and to some extent the Hispanic communities. This is not in the way of blaming or profiling. It is simply a matter of facing the truth.
It may be interesting to examine the historical reasons for this problem, but that will not solve it. There is already too much finger pointing and blame. At this point blame is irrelevant because it does not address the problem. There are already enough fools on both sides of the issue. On one side we find the racist card being played by the Jessie Jacksons and other self appointed demagogues of the world. On the other side we find the nonsensical inferior race theory, being propagated by the Bubbas among us. These are both divisive polarizing stands which inhibit thoughtful discussion of the problem.
The real issue is, how do we correct this situation? Current policy seems to be to finance the failure of these folks. That, I insist, is not an acceptable solution. I believe that financing failure is counterproductive. It simply reinforces dependancy and insures continuing failure. We should aspire to be a great people. If we are, we can do better than that. We are going to have to figure out how to really help these folks instead of continuously financing their failure.
Before we can seek solutions to this problem, however, I think we must understand that there is more than one class of failure here. This will help prevent us from doing things which are unnecessary, inappropriate, or counterproductive. First, there are some people who cannot fulfill their responsibilities. There are also many who simply will not. The reasons for both of these are varied.
Now, let us examine some of the reasons for those who cannot step up. I think that the people who are really incompetent are in a small minority. These are the truly mentally handicapped folks. In fact, this group is so small that supporting them would not be a particularly heavy social burden. We could, and probably should, do that. That is my belief. In order to verify it, we would have to sort them out. We would need to separate the mentally handicapped from the others who cannot perform.
I think the test is simple, if we dare apply it. It has to do with measuring aptitude. When I was drafted, into the "Korean Conflict," the United States Army had become quite proficient at this. They had what they called an Aptitude Area test. It was an all day session which I endured at Fort Wayne in Detroit. For the army, it was a way of separating the cannon fodder from those who could be trained in some kind of specialty. Fortunately for me, I turned out to be trainable. I ended up as a field radio repairman. In my mind, that beat the heck out of becoming an infantry rifleman.
This aptitude test is really a special form of IQ test. Like an IQ test, it will tell us if a person can be useful at all. It is different in that it also tells us what a person might be good at. Think of this. If we can find what a person might be good at, we can help them to fulfill their potential. Here is a psychological truth. In general, people are good at what they like to do. This means training a person in the right field will be reenforcing for the person. They are much more likely to stay with it and become a responsible citizen.
Of course, the other thing we must do is to match the training to a real need. Here again, the army has set the example. They had a list of needed specialties which were matched to the aptitude areas revealed by the tests. That is a necessary ingredient. I have seen many of these so called training programs come and go. Most of them were hare brained in that they tried to train people without determining the required aptitude. Others were beyond hare brained in that they trained people for positions which did not exist or which did not pay a living wage. Stupid! Beyond stupid!
Perhaps this is not a complete solution, but it is at least a direction. Up until now, we have not had a direction for our welfare roles. We simply muddle along the same old path. Now, even if we deal with this problem of people who cannot perform, we are left with the others. The ones who will not.
I think it is much easier to address the problem of people who will not step up. Sometimes, I suspect the problem is simply despair. If that is the case, our first solution may address it. If these people see hope, they will step up. Another problem is probably inertia. We all tend to get stuck in a way of life and resist change. Here again, our first solution may help.
Even so, we finally must face up to the problem of the hardcore deadbeats. I'll be quite blunt about this. After we have honestly offered truly viable opportunities, we need to get tough with the hardcore. We need not support these people. We should not support these people. It is an insult to every honest person in our culture. We must not support them and, if they become criminals we must deal with that.
We need to have some kind of vigorous treatment for the people who refuse to accept their responsibility and act illegally. I don't care if they are making or selling drugs, abandoning their children, or robbing banks. They are all the same. They must be brought to the bar. Our culture cannot function if the citizens refuse to accept responsibility. If nothing else, we must restrain them. We must make sure that they will be ineffective in damaging our culture.
These people will have all kinds of phoney excuses. They will claim emotional hardship and a mean past and anything else they can think of. And, for sure, someone like Jackson will jump in to muddy the water. It's all bologna. Every one of us has some form of emotional baggage to carry. Pretending that we cannot act responsibly because of our baggage is a lie. That's all! That kind of behavior should be treated as a living lie instead of being excused. Too many bleeding heart liberals want to help these losers and all they do is reward them for failure and excuse them. It is time to put a stop to that, but we must first make sure we have made honest offers to these people. Until then, we can have no leverage against the do-gooders.
Let's be honest. We all have days when we would rather not
try, but the best of us do our duty regardless. Responsible behavior
can come out of habit. We all know the difference. We need not
be enlightened to know. We need only act responsibly regardless
of how we feel. Bad feelings are not an excuse for sloven or unethical
behavior. To even begin the journey toward recovery we most begin
to act responsibly.
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