I recently suggested to some friends that a way to work towards a more equal society would be to get more involved with their union. This was met with rather vehement objection, on the basis that their union doesn't serve their interests. The more I've thought about this response, the more amazed I am because of how backwards this logic is.
Whether they like it or not, their union is the (strongest) vehicle for collectively representing their interests as employees. The union hasn't served their interests well in the past precisely because a small number of biased people have been making decisions on behalf of a larger group (I know this because I used to be in the same union and had many of the same frustrations as them). So I'm advocating that my friends get more involved so as to make their union more effective at representing their interests.
So basically I'm saying: the current power structures of society don't serve your interests, so you need to work more for your own interests and do less delegating of that work to others.
And they're responding: but those others don't work for my interests.
And they seemed to think that undermined my point!
In retrospect, I think that a big source of confusion is that they, like most North Americans, have only the faintest notion of what democracy actually is, aside from voting. Not because they're stupid, but because they're deluged with propaganda and they have little exposure to genuinely democratic organizations. They have little concept of how people could possibly manage their own affairs rather than letting someone else control things. To them "the union" and "the people who've been leading the union" are indistinguishable - pure authoritarianism. Thus, "getting more involved with the union" doesn't work because they can't imagine that meaning anything other than just doing what the union leaders tell them to do. The idea of working together to force powerful people to respect your interests is just utterly foreign. Again this isn't because they're dumb, but because they've never known anything else.
The topic came up in the first place when I made a broader point about helping people that has been on my mind lately. I noted that, given the existence of human suffering, there are two main ways to make things better. You can either find a suffering person (or people) and try to heal them, or you can address the root causes of that suffering. It turns out that social structures can be pretty strong root causes of suffering. (There's a pretty convincing body of evidence that economic inequality leads to all kinds of nasty shit, see this book for a good start, and so I suggested that if you want to help people, fighting for greater equality is a way to address root causes.) Because there are entrenched interests that will resist changes to social structures, and because working directly with a suffering person can create a more immediate improvement, I argued that the root cause approach is too neglected. (Not to mention that there's more money to be made in treatment!) I think that if people shifted their total helping efforts to do slightly more root cause work (even at the expense of treatment work) I suspect we'd all be better off.
Their resistance to my idea tells me I'm fighting an uphill battle.
9 comments:
I think you've been pretty harsh on us. Many of your arguments are ad hominem or straw-men: we have, for instance, a decent concept of how to manage our own affairs. We absolutely do not see this union as immutable authoritarianism, but as systematically ineffective. Unions can be effective vehicles, however this particular student-run union is currently a lost cause. It's a tangled mess that takes more time to learn than most are willing to devote. The base that it represents is a too-broad mix that truly do have different interests (boy those kids in humanities really have it tough...but we don't), and the process of partially disbanding or forming smaller unions to represent diverse interests is met with derision and hostility by those who so proudly wave the liberal progressive union-loving flag. Especially given the immature, sometimes pompous, nature of those transient would-be world-savers, I (and most?) are discouraged that things are worth the effort required to change. It doesn't help us, doesn't hurt us much, and is not worth fixing. It's just THERE, a safety net in case things DO get bad, a relic from when they used to be bad.
And this might be the point: right now, this union is not worth our time. With the limited time that we have to devote to furthering the causes that we see important, half-fixing a union to maybe help future graduate students is not a priority (help them do WHAT? is a good question with no answer that screams itself necessary--perhaps humanities students should be complaining less about money from the university and more about being under-appreciated by society in general). We're talking about grad students who don't NEED help--they're *almost* the wealthiest, luckiest, most educated few. We would see more change in the injustice of the world with thirty minutes on Kiva.org than at every union meeting all decade. In other words: Perhaps the root-causes could be addressed more, but what does this have to do with our silly little student union?
Your initial argument at the bar was that attacking the root-causes is more important than helping individuals (we should just let those with anxiety, depression, schizophrenia just rot and work on fixing the structure that produces them). I understand this greater picture argument, and perhaps people would do better to invest a little more into it, but you're neglecting the fact that a) we'll never completely fix those institutional/societal problems, (thus always needing better ways to treat individuals) and b) there are far more than 2 levels to work on things--in this case, you can treat patients, identify factors that lead to disorders and work toward preventing those, and of course address the giant problem of income inequality.
The problem is that this latter is not a tractable problem yet, and in the meantime, people are suffering. Joining a student union to fight against this income inequality is a ridiculous drop in the ocean, whereas intervention and community outreach programs (like Sophie's research) to the poorest neighborhoods might actually do some good, maybe helping those who will later join your cause to tear down the establishment. And how are these people going to utilize whatever social mobility they can muster if they are too messed up with mental disorders. In this view, volunteering at a soup-kitchen on the east-side actually does more big-picture than working in the student union.
I think you're an idealist who has forgotten that we're on the same team.
It seems to me that your objection to union involvement are:
(1) You don't think TA/grad students are unfairly treated. I think you're wrong about that. We do the same basic things as professors (research and teaching) and have to live on 10% of what they take home. Even if you concoct some reason that's "fair" (presumably based on some future prospects, which for many might never come) it certainly isn't equal.
(2) That you don't have enough common cause with TA/grad students in other areas. Again, I think this is terribly wrong. They're in the same basic boat: they do the same things as professors (teach and research/creative stuff) but have to subsist on far less money. And even if they are MORE needy than you, is that a good reason to turn your back on them?
(3) That you don't like the people who are involved. I don't know how much time you've spent around them, but most of them are pretty good people. Get involved, and bring some people you like along with you, and the crowd will look even better!
Beyond that, my argument at the bar was NOT that root-cause work is more important, which I repeatedly emphasized whenever you guys said that. So I'll say it again: I think both kinds of work are very important. As I said then, and said in the post, I think that there should be MORE root cause work, even if it comes at the expense of some treatment work. I think the balance of helping is shifted too far in favor of treatment, but I don't think there should be no treatment. That you haven't understood that despite my repeated emphasis means I need to do a more effective job of communicating that.
I certainly haven't forgotten we're on the same team! Why else would I be appealing to you on the basis of common interests?
And remember, I was suggesting getting more involved with unions just as an example of a way to work on root-causes of suffering. If you see a more effective way to do that, that's awesome, go for it! I think unions are an easy and useful example because there's already an infrastructure and community ready to go, and it can be much easier to get started in an established (if flawed) structure than building from the ground up.
Further, remember that I noted that unions are involved in all kinds of social justice work, not just fighting for compensation for their members. One's union involvement could mostly focus on that other social justice work, if you think that to be more worthy of your effort. And your union is doing such things. You could of course do such things apart from a union as well, but given that the union is there and is representing you in your professional capacity, it seems worth strongly considering some level of involvement with them.
"we have, for instance, a decent concept of how to manage our own affairs."
"[our professional union is a] tangled mess that takes more time to learn than most are willing to devote."
contradiction, right?
To elaborate on that last point:
Your union is managing quite a large chunk of your affairs! It takes money out of your paycheque every month. They negotiate the terms of your employment with your employer on your behalf. They also work with other organizations to advance your interests.
If you don't know how they operate, then you don't know how your affairs are managed! And if you take no part in the operation, then you aren't managing your own affairs! You've giving that task over to the union. (Just as you've give that task over to the government that take money and negotiates on your behalf, etc.) If you're convinced that the union (or the government) is not democratic, that it isn't responsive to your interests, that's a reason to get involved and make it more democratic, not a reason to stay out and allow it to continue to exploit you!
I'm reading this as "get more involved with government", which is fair. The bigger question is how?
This also presupposes that each individual's top priority is more equal society.
it don't think it presupposes that everyone wants equality. i'm saying that for those people who want to make things better for everyone (rather than just themselves), fighting for equality is a great way to do it.
It is important to point out that the original post was meant to a) educate the See For Yourself audience that alleviating income inequality can substantially change our social fabric in a favourable way for the masses and b) encourage individuals to fight both the ultimate and proximate cause. Both ztd and adspar are unmistakably advocating for the same cause, and disparate opinions on the role of a specific union are clouding the important message (I think, anyway).
The union is ineffective because it is a body that governs populations with varying objectives – adspar sees the vulnerability in the structure as an opportunity for modification, and ztd believes his valuable time should be spent focused on problems he believes are worth his time. Whether an individual’s fight is proximate or ultimate is irrelevant, all that matters is that we think critically about what difference we want to make given the time we are willing to “sacrifice” to the cause, and respect that each individual’s conceptualization of what cause is worthy may be different.
Total agree with your first paragraph, mtv. I have a quibble with the 2nd:
The union is ineffective because it is a body that governs populations with varying objectives
I don't think of unions as governing bodies, and I might go so far as to say this is just completely wrong. Unions are organizations of people with common interests. They don't control those people. They manage some aspect of their business or other interests. I agree that the perceived lack of common objective of the membership of the union in question is a big reason that union seems so worthless.
I'm in no position to judge someone for how their allocate their pro-social time between ultimate and proximate causes of suffering. I am in a position to judge whether more ultimate focus would be useful. And I say yes!
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