Employment

I was walking home, from whatever it is I do during part of the day, and I got stopped by one of the many people asking for money for a particular cause.  He liked my shirt, with its picture of the solar system according to Kepler, or something.  The conversation, approximately:
"Nice shirt, is that the solar system?"
"Something like that."
"Are you part of the solar system?"
"I guess so."
"What do you do?"
"I'm unemployed."
"That's OK.  What did you do before?"
"I was a physicist."
"Cool, I studied audio engineering.  Sort of the same."
"Sort of."
"Would you like to sponsor [organization, with some details and cost]?"
"Not today."

And, I got to thinking, it is really not OK that I (along with some other, similarly skilled/educated people) am unemployed.  This is a huge failure of the market to manage resources properly.  I spend a decent fraction of my time searching for jobs, sending out CVs, e-mailing people, and that time could be spent being productive.  It is not like I have no education, no skills, or that my skills are valueless (well, maybe they are).  It is not like my past employment misrepresents my skills and education.  In fact, my history should show that I am highly competent, a good thinker, able to work through projects - and I say this as someone with a generally low sense of self worth. 


Maybe I am being too picky.  (Unlikely, since I have applied for adjunct teaching positions, postdoctoral researcher positions, staff positions - it is true that I would rather stay in science/research/academia than in, say, what is generally referred to as the "service industry," but if someone with my education level is relegated to that then it is also a giant systemic failure. 

Don't we want more people who create knowledge and technology?  Isn't that supposed to be the future economy in the US, the post-industrial, post-manufacturing economy?  Or does that refer solely to high-level computer programming and creation of new companies to do things like order pizza for you?  (An aside, this has been sort of mentioned articles in various places, the new app economy basically is meeting the needs of privileged, frugal 20-something males with disposable income.  Most other demographics are being left behind.  The new apps are all simply middlemen, taking their cut of the inflated cost, as well.  Often such apps are free, but the price must be felt somewhere else in the economy, such as lack of investment in other industries and increased prices for goods that are advertised online.  The increased cost to an individual is often small, since the true cost is spread over the internet-using population.)

Employment is a huge problem in the US right now, especially for younger (under age 35, as of mid-2014) people.  The lost production related to this is probably huge (though there's really no way of knowing).  Vague, ageist statements about the work ethic of younger people really don't help.  Job hunting is exhausting, frustrating, and somewhat humiliating.  Not good emotions to instill in a generation.

Reading "Americanah"

I recently finished reading “Americanah” by Chimamanda Adieche.  It was an interesting look into privilege and racism from the perspective of an educated Nigerian immigrant.  A few things stood out that I was unaware (or only mildly aware) of previously.

We have in the USA the notion of race.  In the USA, race is denoted by a few external markers – skin color/tone, hair texture/color, and eye shape being the three most notable and broadest markers.  In this system, an immigrant from Africa is of the same race as a descendent of slaves (and usually slave owners as well) brought to American 300 years ago; the same is true for Chinese and others, though they were never mentioned in the book.  Black people are, for historical reasons, at the bottom of the racial hierarchy in the USA, and are significantly more likely to be poor, uneducated, and have the various disadvantages associated with that status.  An immigrant (or non immigrant student) from Sub-Saharan Africa automatically assumes the same position in the hierarchy upon arrival, no matter their education level, English competency, social status at home, etc.  This is untrue for a similar immigrant from, e.g. Germany or Russia, who enters as a white person at the top of the hierarchy.

That is the main message of “Americanah.”  African immigrants from Nigeria and other countries, as well as black people from the Caribbean, are immediately put at the bottom of American society and are resentful of that fact.  The non-American (for lack of a better term) blacks are portrayed as disdainful of American black, who are seen as lazy, uneducated, criminal, etc, similar to stereotypical portrayals in general American media.  The attitudes go so far as parents in Nigeria not wanting their children who go to the US to have intimate relationships with black Americans.  (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, and European parents of people who come to the US for graduate study have the same attitudes, in my experience.)

There is something discomfiting about this.  The solution to the problem, as seen by the well-off Nigerian immigrants (the protagonist is a college student, her aunt who lives in the US is a medical doctor) seems to be more tribalism, not greater inclusiveness.  Attempts are made to be not categorized with a different group with whom one shares certain superficial traits (i.e. erecting more barriers), as opposed to attempting to break down all barriers and remove racial/tribal classifications.  (As a note, this is in opposition to some black Americans’ push to be more affiliated with their African heritage – the immigrant communities want nothing to do with black Americans, but black Americans would like to be more included in African culture, with the black power movements of the 1960s and later going in that direction.  I realize that, as a white person, I might be portraying this improperly, and I maybe shouldn’t even be writing about this.  Anecdotally, I was once getting on a shuttle from the airport to the subway station and a black man asked a young lady if he could use her phone.  She responded that she was from Spain and didn’t have a working phone.  He responded that he was from Africa, and when asked which country, kind of stammered and said he didn’t know, that’s just what he’s been told.).

I do not know what the author’s intent was for this book, whether to portray these attitudes as bad for society and inclusiveness (basically, the main characters are antagonistic protagonists, people whose actions and viewpoints we should not emulate), or whether to inform the reader that the all-inclusive “black” (and by extension, other all-inclusive terms like “Asian”) is not a good category.  I don’t think the latter is a good take-away message, since it conveys definite tribalism and national-originism, and more tribalism is not what our world needs right now (or ever).  Most likely it is an amalgam of both; of course, the message is entirely dependent on the reader and the reader’s viewpoints and history.  Personally, I was a little put off by the characters’ tribal arrogance.  I would like for society to move towards a more post-racial society, with educational and life opportunities available to all regardless of racial or poverty status, and to move beyond stereotyping based on historical privilege.  This book made me think more about this, and in that sense it worked as literature should. 

STEM, jobs, education, modernity

Science, technology, engineering and mathematics.  STEM, by the acronym.  The acronym is actually pretty good – short, makes an actual word, uses only the first letters of each word.  It is an acronym that abounds in print these days.  We need more people who know STEM in the workplace, some ungodly fraction of new jobs will be in STEM, America is not producing enough STEM people so we need to import them.  (Google the subject for any number of articles.)

Are these statements accurate?  If not, who would benefit from providing such inaccuracies?

To address these questions, we first need to know what is so special about people who pursue STEM, at any level.  The answer, often times, is nothing (despite what Internet pundits and commenters would have us believe).  Many who study STEM fields at college (be it at the bachelors level, associates level, or certification) are simply in it because of the job prospects.  While we are often told that majoring in a STEM field requires logical thinking and huge amounts of skill, most actual jobs in STEM do not actually require them and many jobs outside of STEM do.  Computer-aided drafting (CAD), running a premade mass spectrometer, depositing thin films, performing PCR amplifications, and numerous other industrial tasks require one to push buttons and flip switches – not any more complicated than, say, running the espresso machine at Starbuck’s.  Most of the jobs in STEM are not creative, knowledge worker jobs; they are jobs that we simply do not have robots to perform yet.  (As a note, some jobs in research do require more knowledge and critical thinking, and most require a Ph.D. or equivalent.  Though, in my opinion and experience, many jobs that list a Ph.D. as a requirement do not actually require such high-level skills.)  

Employment and wage data shows no clear lack of STEM individuals in the labor force.  What may be lacking is people willing to do STEM related jobs at low wages, or people willing to do STEM “grunt work” as described above.  We are all told that we should search for fulfillment in our work and should want to get ahead and advance, but many of these STEM jobs simply do not offer that and many are boring and repetitive – the same problems that data entry and fast food workers encounter.  The only way past this is to brainwash young people into thinking STEM jobs are awesome, exciting, so difficult that no one else can do them, and one way to accomplish this is through media claims of shortages and lies about work quality enjoyed by STEM employees.

Another reason for this rhetoric is to push young people away from studying non-STEM fields, such as literature and history.  (The majority of literature, history, etc. majors would be able, with minimal training, to perform the basics of many STEM tasks, and many STEM majors would be able to perform human resources and accounting tasks given the opportunity.  The economy even agrees, http://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/stem/stem-html/)  Much study of the humanities and social sciences these days focuses on parts of the so-called liberal agenda – oppression, privilege, cultural relativism.  From a humanist standpoint, knowing about these aspects of society and being able to identify them is important.  It is important for informed voters to know, for example, that “traditional marriage” cannot be defined in a pluralistic society.  From a business standpoint, employees knowing such information can lead to complaints of sexual harassment and gender suppression, complaints about wages and compensation fairness, complaints about the company’s environmental record, and other similar undesirables.  Most engineering and technology curricula do not dwell on these aspects (they are more interested in “pure” information) and thus corporations prefer people who have studied them.  Note that this argument goes hand in hand with some recent pushes to remove diversity requirements from the requirements for a bachelor’s degree (required in some form at most institutions of higher learning).  

Should there be a place for people only interested in job training?  Certainly.  We should have some schools dedicated to pure technical training for those who want it – as well as apprenticeship programs and the like.  We should remove the stigma associated with this choice – currently, white-collar, office jobs that usually have a bachelors’s degree as a requirement are seen as “good jobs” whereas service-based and low education, technical jobs are seen as lesser.  This needs to change, as well as the pay scales for such jobs which are often not correlated with true economic productivity.  However, I think that people should also be encouraged to continue learning, even if outside of a traditional academic institution.

Would we be better off as a society if we focused on job training instead of broad, liberal education in college and high school, or limited such study to those able to pass certain tests at a certain age (as is the case in many other developed countries)?  That depends on how “better off” is defined.  We might be more efficient at work tasks, and be more compliant, and suffer less boredom at work – largely because ignorance is bliss and we would not think about life alternatives.  Maybe most people would be happier in this scenario, but most people would not be living up to, or even trying to live up to, their potential.  For a peaceful society at our current stage this might not be a problem, since we do not have the resources for everyone to be as productive as they could possibly be. 

I do not know if this is a problem or not.  I do know that people with knowledge across the spectrum of academic disciplines are more interesting to interact with, and the existence of many people with that quality increase my personal quality of life.  I can not say for certain that it is the same for everybody.  We, as a society, do have the resources and the privilege to be able to educate most people beyond simply what they need to know to do a certain job.  We would not be operating at maximum economic efficiency, but sometimes that seems like a small price to pay for opportunity and knowledge.

Guns

This post has been inspired by a friend’s question on Facebook, the response to which is simply too long to post on a comments thread.  The question was how to reduce (or stop) gun violence in the United States, in response to the numerous recent shootings.  I am not sure that I have a good, working answer – it is a complicated problem that requires cultural change that will not happen over night.  However, I can add some discussion of the problems and think about what needs to change.

Gun violence will disappear if nobody has guns.  That much is certain, almost by definition.  (As a note, guns are not a tool, and I will not entertain the possibility that they are.  They have no useful purpose beyond maiming, likely to the point of death.  This is not like a knife, hammer, screwdriver, ax, etc. all of which, though weaponizable, have useful purposes beyond hurting another individual – within which I categorize hunted nonhuman animals.)  however, complete eradication of guns in the US is politically and culturally (with the understanding that politics and culture are highly intertwined in a democratic society) infeasible.  What makes people, fairly ordinary people, want to own a gun?  We can gain some insight by looking at the arguments people use for gun ownership.  The number one (well, only) reason why a supposedly law-abiding citizen needs a gun is protection – one needs a gun to defend one’s self, family and property from others who do not respect rights to life, property and ownership.  This reason is indicative of large-scale distrust – not only in one’s fellow humans (though the untrustworthy ones generally belong to a different demographic, to put it as vaguely as possible) who will apparently attack one for no reason, but also in the system (i.e. Government) which fails to protect against such violations.  We end up with much unneeded violence because people see threats everywhere (but especially from people known to be untrustworthy, such as those with a different skin tone or accent) take a shoot-first attitude, backed up by laws supporting such action.  I will note the hypocrisy in a lot of incidents, such as one in Boulder soon after I moved here, or the recent incident in Montana, where people did not take the most basic precaution of locking their doors, and instead turned to guns for protection.  Violence should be a last resort, not the initial line of defense, yet we have societal attitudes that say differently.  These attitudes stem from the belief that you can trust a very limited number of people yet you need to interact with a much larger number of people on a regular basis.

Part of the problem is that we in the US still have beliefs that are holdovers from 19th century frontier times.  Back then, at the edge of “civilization,” there was no state sponsored police force to help ordinary citizens (or there was, but it was incredibly corrupt, more on that aspect later) and threats from outsiders, bandits, etc were commonplace.  In this environment one needed a gun for survival, and everyone had at least one gun.  It was also an incredibly violent, by today’s standards, place.  Society consisted of small, almost tribal cliques/clans with mutual distrust/distaste (similar to how societies have fragmented throughout history across the globe).  We have moved to a much more urbanized, high-density, pluralistic lifestyle since then, but many of the attitudes from them remain – and for many people, on the “fringes” of society, these attitudes are still necessary.  (Possible a blog post later –  how 19th century homesteading attitudes, apparently still in existence, affect what we do about the unemployed, homeless, and otherwise economically marginalized segments of the population.)

(Mistrust in the government is another subset of this argument for gun ownership – one needs a gun in case the government gets out of control and starts seizing property, taking people to salve camps, etc.  Sometimes it seems people think we in the US are in a near-dictatorship, instead of a very healthy democratic republic.  But I digress.). 

We can see evidence for this in terms of which people support gun control.  By and large, these people are white, middle to upper class, urban to suburban.  These are people who are most protected by the system – people who can afford insurance, who can feel safe calling the police for help, of whom the police will not question citizenship rights.  Many people do not have this level of protection, due to systematic corruption, racism, or location.  Note that the same demographic – the “liberal elite” – call for gun control as well as more government involvement in people’s lives and the economy.  This is because such people have some semblance of faith that the system works how it should, largely because historically, for their demographic, it has.  For people outside of this demographic, distrust of systematic protection still exists.  Many of these people still adhere to the more tribalistic aspects of societal arrangement (think of turf wars) and guns are necessary for protection.  Of course, once “those people” have guns, others need guns to protect themselves, fulfilling the logical circle.

Purging the modern USA of guns and gun violence will therefore require systemic changes, as well as attitude changes.  Full integration in cities will help.  Prosecution of people who shoot first should also alleviate some gun violence.  But mostly, we need to be able to trust our fellow citizens, of all demographics, and especially trust that the government is there to protect and help us if we need it.  Without that basic trust in the system, there is no point in having the system, and our society devolves.

Isla Vista/UCSB Killings

I was an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where 6 students were recently slain by Elliot Rodger (the LA Times has excellent coverage of the facts).  As a note, Mr. Rodger was a Santa Barbara City College (SBCC) student living near UCSB.  He apparently had misogynistic thoughts, was bitter about his interactions with women, and may have had other psychological issues.  Many ideas need to be mentioned and discussed in this case, and I will address some of them.

In a case such as this, we as a society will attempt to assign blame somewhere.  Clearly, our system designed to prevent incidents such as this has failed somewhere (probably in multiple places).  In the US, we are reluctant to blame the lack of gun laws, and instead focus on the fact that the individual was disturbed.  This is the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument, where guns are a tool that everyone needs, with unrestricted access, and when used properly no problem will arise.  (This ignores the fact that guns have one purpose - to seriously hurt other individuals, including use as a hunting tool.)  Requiring people to register their guns and pass background checks does not hinder individual freedom or violate the Second Amendment - any responsible person can still purchase a gun.  However, registration and checks on registration can help indicate underlying problems.  Mr. Rodger legally purchased and registered three semiautomatic weapons over the course of about a year.  There is really only one reason an individual will stockpile such weaponry - to go on a mass murder spree.  The fact that Mr. Rodger registered three semiautomatic rifles should have set off flags to law enforcement that something was wrong.  While the police did visit him a few weeks before the incident, it was apparently in response to disturbing posts on the internet, not in response to the guns.  Could better gun restriction enforcement have prevented this?  Almost certainly.  Did it?  No.  Is this a problem?  Yes, and it needs to change.

Mr. Rodger essentially blames women's rights - the fact that women would not choose to have sex with him - for this murder spree.  This is a more difficult problem to address, and requires a look at the cultural values and expectations that led to this attitude.  Clearly Mr. Rodger had certain expectations for his life that were not met, the most obvious one being loss of virginity by age 22, but also the expectation that college women would just have sex with him because, well, he's not a bad guy and he's there.  These expectations are culturally biased. Movies of college parties portray random people having sex with no problems and women rarely refuse (in such movies, e.g. American Pie, almost everyone ends up getting some eventually and stories are told from the male viewpoint).  Male virgin shaming (such as Mr. Rodger apparently received) bolsters this attitude that sex is something that men should just get if they ask nicely enough and are persistent.  However, women in our society have sexual rights, such as the right to refuse sex and choose sexual partners, and this fact can be in opposition to the male cultural standards and expectations.  This is apparently what put Mr. Rodger over the edge - women's ability to refuse him his "right" to sex despite being a "nice guy."  (Mr. Rodger also must have had other psychological difficulties, as not everyone in his situation goes on killing rampages.  I am not a psychologist and have not interacted with Mr. Rodger, so I cannot make any statements about his mental state.  However, while he may have benefited from therapy, there seems to be little indication that he was truly psychotic or in need of psychoactive drugs.)  The underlying theme here is the rapid evolution of women's rights coupled with a much slower change in male cultural behavior, as well as male resentment of the fact that the culture needs to change. 

Does an enhancement of women's rights represent a decrease in men's "rights," as some attitudes suggest?  Most certainly not.  An increase in women's rights and sexual freedoms will only increase overall quality of life - certainly for women, but also for men, as labor can be shared more equally and educated, aware women are better companions.  Yes, this can be intimidating for some men who expect their male privilege to continue into a modern society, who might look at the past as the good ol' days where women kept their place and couldn't say no (Mr. Rodger's manifesto included a part about keeping women in concentration camps strictly for breeding purposes, which is an extreme extension the "keeping women in their place" idea).  Hopefully we can move past this.  This will require some changes in culture, such as changes in films that glorify male sexual conquests, changes in workplace norms and a reinforced education system. 

Expectations

Expectations in life: shattered.  Gone. 
Feeling of self-worth: lost.

You can do anything if you put in the effort.  Except anything that you haven't already done.

College isn't about technical training, it's about learning and developing thinking, writing and problem solving skills and interacting with a diverse group of people.  All of which is economically worthless.

Why are you reading [fill in title]?  We don't do that here.

Your labor and life is what you make of it.  But if you don't work 60 hours a week, it doesn't look like you care about this job or getting ahead.  Not that getting ahead is an option for you anyway right now.

Part of this is the feeling of being lied to, about life options, education, the value of work.  Part of it is the feeling of being abused - thanks for your two years of work, for the publications on [supervisor's] CV, don't let the door hit you on the way out.  Part of it is being forced from the people I care about, all in the name of having a supposedly good, prestigious job (which it turns out not to be).  Part of it is the pressure to conform to society's standard.  Part of it is the moral standard of work: the fact that having a job makes one a worthwhile citizen (this goes along with recent talk about the "dignity of work" and the removal of welfare benefits and food stamps for society's leaches).

It's all exhausting, and psychologically draining.  And I don't think I can deal with it any more.


"Farewell Angelina, I must go where it's quiet." -- Bob Dylan

Why?  Why are there "too many" PhD students for the number of jobs?  Why do people take poor-paying adjunct and postdoctoral positions?  These questions have been asked recently, with various conclusions: we need to graduate fewer people, tell them about their mediocre job prospects, destroy false hope, etc.  But the question rarely comes up as to what these people would be doing if they weren't in PhD programs, or adjunct teaching - largely because the alternatives are often significantly worse.  Alternatives such as being wait staff at a restaurant, barista at Starbuck's, or a paper-pusher sitting in a cubicle.  Such jobs are also mediocre to low pay, and can be degrading, or boring, or require ingrained interpersonal skills that many in academia simply do not possess or do not want to possess.  And there is nothing wrong with that.  Forcing individuals into jobs they don't want, are overqualified for, or are psychologically demanding is not good for anyone.  There is a problem with low pay - such a problem exists in many fields, including food services - but that is a systematic failure enforced by salaries being set by employers and not bargained for by employees.  And that is the main problem currently - pay based not on true productivity but instead on perceived (not necessarily actual) skill levels and competition in the labor market.