05-10-2017, 03:42 PM
Just the other day I happened across a post in the New York Times responding to an article which appeared there. The poster is listed simply as cb (lower case) so I cannot give him/her full credit. But this is what the poster said:
In American, perhaps throughout the other Western nations, there has emerged a new phenomenon - the rapid explosion of a class of people who for various reasons, do not fit in, are not currently able to function in modernity. There are millions of these people. Their old way of life has disappeared. They find themselves untethered, adrift, unable to provide for themselves, their families. The era of traditional jobs/work is over, done, finished, a remnant of earlier times. What can be done for them? Rather than have them look for work when there is no work, and let them starve, enlightened countries should create/provide large agrarian based communities for them to work the land, along with other related farm activities commonplace in an earlier era. What can be done when there is no solution? The challenge is immense.
There it is. In analyzing this post, it does more and more seem as though the first few sentences are right on--that lifetime employment in a single company or industry has pretty much gone the way of the dodo, most likely never to return. But the idea of returning to the land is no doubt several years too late because most of the land that once could have been used for said purposes has long since been converted to shopping malls and office buildings, most of which are now having their own set of issues. There are what are known as "intentional communities", usually for certain types of individuals such as, say, artists. But they are just a drop in the bucket right now. The folks the poster describes here hit home for me personally because, although coming from a fairly well-to-do family I personally have struggled for the majority of my adult life, most likely due to a condition of social awkwardness which became commonly known as Asperger's Syndrome. I always wanted to be more social but have usually had difficulty obtaining such. Ironically at a time when we are actually becoming less social due to the invasion of technology, there is actually less tolerance for social awkwardness in our workplaces. Therefore, most of my life when I was able to obtain work I was relegated to the living paycheck to paycheck scenario.
The scenario the poster paints toward the end is reminiscent in its own ways of both a modern maturity version of the hippie communes a half century later, or the reservations the Native Americans were forced onto. Whatever it appears it is a said state of affairs nonetheless.
In American, perhaps throughout the other Western nations, there has emerged a new phenomenon - the rapid explosion of a class of people who for various reasons, do not fit in, are not currently able to function in modernity. There are millions of these people. Their old way of life has disappeared. They find themselves untethered, adrift, unable to provide for themselves, their families. The era of traditional jobs/work is over, done, finished, a remnant of earlier times. What can be done for them? Rather than have them look for work when there is no work, and let them starve, enlightened countries should create/provide large agrarian based communities for them to work the land, along with other related farm activities commonplace in an earlier era. What can be done when there is no solution? The challenge is immense.
There it is. In analyzing this post, it does more and more seem as though the first few sentences are right on--that lifetime employment in a single company or industry has pretty much gone the way of the dodo, most likely never to return. But the idea of returning to the land is no doubt several years too late because most of the land that once could have been used for said purposes has long since been converted to shopping malls and office buildings, most of which are now having their own set of issues. There are what are known as "intentional communities", usually for certain types of individuals such as, say, artists. But they are just a drop in the bucket right now. The folks the poster describes here hit home for me personally because, although coming from a fairly well-to-do family I personally have struggled for the majority of my adult life, most likely due to a condition of social awkwardness which became commonly known as Asperger's Syndrome. I always wanted to be more social but have usually had difficulty obtaining such. Ironically at a time when we are actually becoming less social due to the invasion of technology, there is actually less tolerance for social awkwardness in our workplaces. Therefore, most of my life when I was able to obtain work I was relegated to the living paycheck to paycheck scenario.
The scenario the poster paints toward the end is reminiscent in its own ways of both a modern maturity version of the hippie communes a half century later, or the reservations the Native Americans were forced onto. Whatever it appears it is a said state of affairs nonetheless.