Where Have All the Grown Men Gone?

Up until about 30 years ago, so I've been told, one could sell a car in Alabama and write a bill of sale on anything, most notably, according to my source, even a paper bag. Of course, this illustrates a bygone era in our country: the handshake sealing a deal; a man's word being his bond; and so on. This is the way it was when my parents grew up. Yes, there were dishonest men but they were notorious, ostracized and often "tarred and feathered".

Today, there are contracts, torts and surety bonds. Legal agreements are supposed to take the place of all of the above and protect those who are supposedly of good character and need protection from anyone who isn't. Anyone who has a rudimentary knowledge of business knows that this system simply doesn't work. We live in an age of the "Loophole". Known as small print and sometimes even hidden in the large print, is the ability to renege on one's obligations under the contract. Which brings us to the purpose of all of this meandering: Honesty. Or, living with honor.

Corporations spend millions of dollars a year hiring speakers and consultants to teach everyone on their staff what really amounts to living the Golden Rule. Then, the same companies spend millions more on attorney fees to create agreements with other businesses that imply that the company lives by this rule and that they suspect no one else does. Then we have Congress, who legislates morality. They will take your money and if in their view, we citizens are not doing enough to straighten out inequality and inequities in our society, they'll do it for us. The net result typically being at the very least, failed programs and our money being squandered.

This is all symptomatic of the lack of honor in our culture. It's seen everyday in men who promise and will only deliver if it suits them at the time. We see it in men who make vows at the altar and then deftly justify breaking their commitments to their wives. In business, men enter into agreements with no intention of honoring them. (I'm being gender specific one, for the sake of expediency and two, because being one, I can speak more authoritatively about the way we think.) For the brightest, it's always knowing the loopholes that provide the justification for not honoring the commitment.

Distilled to its' simplest elements, if one does not have a moral center and thus, live a principled life, one cannot begin to understand what making a commitment means. And with so little evidence of this in our society, it is unlikely to be learned by experience. It has to be inculcated as a part of a child's education in the home. If the lessons being taught in the home are not being lived by the parent, it will never be "owned" by the child. Consequently, the fact that so few among us live with honor points to the fact that we either have never been taught right from wrong, or we have abandoned this precept because we deemed it too difficult to do so.

It is difficult to do the right thing in all cases. We don't do the right thing because it's easy, however, we do it to live with Honor.

Economics and Cold Showers

Well, it's official. I am unemployed, sorta. I mean, my employer can't afford the payroll and there aren't enough projects to go around. Seniority, etc. Which means, when new projects are released, if they ever are, I get one. Then, I'm not unemployed anymore. Confusing? It isn't when you file for unemployment benefits. By the time you get through the queue to simply input your social security number, any doubt that you're actually among the dispossessed citizenry has died. Based on my calculations in the small County office I went to, multiplied by several thousand offices like this one all over the country, January unemployment numbers are likely to be shocking. I must admit that the workers did a lot to help make the whole experience palatable. There are a lot of good resources available but my initial take in the job bank computers on available professional positions leaves me, once again in my storied life, wishing that I had stayed in school and followed my chums into law school. Hindsight is always 20/20, eh?

For a man, being unemployed is a little like getting a vasectomy. Not a great analogy, but both do make one feel like less of a man. What we do is who we are. What I find fascinating is the range of emotions one goes through upon discovering that there is no where to go the next morning. For a while, the flurry of activity that is advised for one not ready to retire keeps one busy. In the worst economy since the depression, it will take a lot of faith and positive thinking to prevent dusting off that old hand gun and cruising by the nearest convenience store. (Just kidding, really). If one builds houses or works in an automobile factory, one will need to recreate oneself or one will be watching a lot of Oprah.

There are 13 million un- and underemployed Americans. There are no where near that number of positions open, even if they all matched up perfectly with each applicant. So the answer is: reinvent oneself. Expand the scope of one's search to the entire country. Be willing to be re-trained or return to school if that's even possible. It is, of course, for those few who enjoy that lovely windfall known as "the severance package". The parachutes for most of us leaving the workplace are camouflaged, not golden.

Depressed? Not necessary. There is always opportunity in any sudden change in life. And after all, we still live in the greatest country in the world, at least for now.....