Back in January, a Facebook friend of mine posted a Salon article on why "doing what you love" is a bad career choice. I finally got around to finding and reading the article, and it's even better than I thought; take a look at it (linked above). The author's argument is that defining "real" work as "what you love to do" makes the people doing "unlovable" work (cleaning toilets; making beds; assembling circuit cards) invisible, and without worth. It also encourages people to take unpaid internships, because they "love" the job. She's very sharp about Steve Jobs, who was a great advocate of "do what you love" - without ever acknowledging all the people at Apple who were just toiling away, doing the dirty work.
I'd like to write a bit about a man who never had the luxury of doing what he loved - my father, Lestle Warren Ivy. Born in Missouri in 1907; in 1910 his mother left his father and took the five children with her. Because he had to work to help support the family, it took him until 1928 to get his high school diploma; he was 21, and that was as far as he got. (He made sure both his daughters went to college.) Here are the jobs I know he had at some point: He worked in an ice cream factory. He tried doing field work in Texas, but he couldn't stand the heat
and he couldn't make it work. He drove trucks for bootleggers. (I only
just learned this!) He sold shoes. (He never let either me or my sister buy shoes without him along. He didn't trust the salesmen to fit us right.) He may have sold furniture; his older brother worked in a furniture store.
In the 1940s he moved out to California to work at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, the only job I (as a child) ever knew him to have; he worked there over 30 years, retiring in the early 1970s. Because he wasn't a veteran, as a civilian employee he was a second class citizen - the better jobs went to veterans. Every time the Navy got a budget cut, they had a "rif" - a reduction in force - and the non-veteran civilian employees either got laid off or were reassigned to lower paying jobs. Before I learned what it meant, I knew that a "rif" was a bad thing. Dad did everything blue-collar at Mare Island; he chipped paint on ships (which cost him his hearing, but the Navy never admitted it); he drove forklifts; he carried and stacked boxes. After the war, he moved up to stockman; at one point he made quarterman, with a team under him. I have his awards for years without a team accident. He moved officers in and out of quarters for awhile; to the end of his life he could get more stuff in a U-Haul trailer than anyone else I knew.
Did he love any of that? He appreciated the paycheck. He didn't like the rifs, but he just kept going; it was a good job. And while he was doing that work, 5 days a week, driving 30 miles back and forth to work from Napa (with 5 riders, to help him pay for the gas), in his spare time he was rebuilding our house from the inside out. He painted the house himself, every time. He sheetrocked the walls and ceilings. He put in oak floors - after the war, the Navy tore down some enlisted housing in Benicia. Underneath the linoleum, the floors were 1" x 4" solid oak. Dad got a truckload of that oak for $150 and he relaid the entire floor except for the kitchen, the back hall, and the bathroom. It took him three days to lay the first plank. He hired a man to finish the floor in the first room; he followed him around and watched what he did. Then he rented the equipment and finished the rest of it himself. I remember being down on my knees on that floor with a handful of steel wool and a can of paste wax. Last time I was in Napa, I saw that, finally, somebody is remodeling that house; I hope they can salvage those floors.
Everything he did, was done as well as he could possibly do it. He never paid anyone to do anything he could possibly do himself. He fixed his own cars, he mowed his own lawn; if he had friends who needed it, he fixed cars and mowed lawns for them. Work was what you did; what you loved was your family and friends. When he retired, he had his civil service pension, but no Social Security; so in his 60s, he got a job as a roustabout at a local body shop, washing cars and sweeping the place up, to get in his Social Security quarters. When he finally quit that, they begged him to stay; they said he worked harder and better than anybody else they had. It wasn't the work; it was him. His self-respect was in doing the work, any work, as well as he could. When he couldn't work any more, like many men of his generation, he lost his self-respect, along with his hearing and his eyesight; and so he eventually died, in 1994, aged 87, a few weeks short of his 50th wedding anniversary.
Whatsoever thy hand
findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device,
nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. - Ecclesiastes 9:10 (King James Version)
Friday, April 18, 2014
Tuesday, April 01, 2014
Morality and War
This afternoon I was listening to "Philosophy Talk" on KALW radio, and I heard a man ask, speaking of the war in Syria, "Is it more immoral to kill 1,500 people by gassing them with nerve gas than it is to kill them by mowing them down with machine guns?" I didn't hear an answer in the time before I had to go do something else.
This evening I was reading this week's Economist, and the Lexington columnist was discussing the current flap in the Pentagon over whether drone pilots, and other "cyberwarriors," who never actually get shot at, should receive medals for valor.
The combination of the two leads me to answer Philosophy Talk's question - yes, I believe it is more immoral to kill someone with nerve gas than with bullets; and I believe that really good drone pilots should be recognized for their contribution but a medal for valor isn't the right award. To explain why I feel this way, I want to do a quick review of the history of warfare. I don't write much about this subject, but I've actually read quite a bit about it over the years; the human race being what it is, you really can't study history without studying war. I've studied European warfare, so that's what I'll use to explain my point, which is that nerve gas is immoral because it can be used from farther away, and there is no way to fight back against it. If a man is mowing you down with a machine gun, he has to be within machine gun range, and you can at least try to shoot back at him, if you have a gun.
It's fairly accurate to say that until roughly the 14th century, when Joe wanted to kill Ed, he had to get very close to him, and fight him hand to hand; and he had a measurable chance of losing the fight, and his life. The invention of the bow made it possible for Joe to kill Ed from rather farther away; so did the sling. But the bow and the sling are specialist tools; not everyone can just pick them up and kill someone. They require training; they require a lot of practice. It takes less practice to use a club, a spear, or a sword. The Welsh bowmen who defeated the French army at Agincourt were masters of their trade, and they trained from childhood.
In the 14th century, European traders began reaching the Far East, and among other things they brought back gunpowder. Gunpowder rendered the fortified castle obsolete; artillery could throw rocks through the castle walls. Individual soldiers still fought hand-to-hand. It took another couple of centuries to develop individual weapons like muskets and pistols, which could reliably shoot lead balls without blowing the shooter's hand off; and they fired one ball and then had to be reloaded, a task which took an expert almost a minute. Still, by the 17th century, armies still fought hand-to-hand, but they did so after shooting several volleys of bullets at each other, from a working range of maybe 50-100 yards.
In the early 19th century, someone put two inventions together and produced a major step forward (if you call it that) in the ability to kill people from a distance: the mass-produced gun with a rifled barrel. Mass produced meant there were now a lot of guns relatively cheaply available; the rifled barrel meant the range was more like 300 yards. Part of the carnage in the American Civil War was due to the fact that the tacticians on both sides were placing the ranks maybe 100 yards apart, and the troops were firing rifles at each other which were accurate up to 3 times that.
In the Civil War, of course, hand-to-hand combat was still very common. But the next century and a half developed weapons with greater and greater ranges - artillery pieces which could fire for miles; airplanes dropping bombs from above; short range and eventually intercontinental ballistic missiles. The objective is to kill as many of the enemy as possible, without exposing your own warriors to their weapons. And the more long-distance methods were developed, the less hand-to-hand combat was needed. Poison gases were used on World War I battlefields, to such universal horror that nations produced an international agreement not to use that again, although as always, not everyone obeyed the agreement. If you look at the war in Syria (yes, I mean you, Mr. Assad), you'll see that the government forces attempt to use the longest range killing machines they can.
With remotely controlled drones, the 21st century has produced a weapon with which a soldier can kill people on another continent, at no risk to his own life. I've thought for some time that this is making war much too easy for the attacker. War should be hard. If Joe wants to kill Ed, he should risk his own life to do so. Otherwise he shouldn't be doing that at all. If you conclude from this that I think remote-controlled drones are immoral on a level with poison gas, you're right. I do think that. We have found that by spending huge amounts of money on these drones, we can kill people in Afghanistan, get in the car, and drive home to have dinner with the family. The arrogance of remote-controlled drone attacks is appalling. I can't even imagine what this is doing to the drone pilots. We should be giving them their own personal psychiatrists, not medals for valor.
And we shouldn't be conducting war like this at all. For that matter, why are we still shooting at Afghan tribesmen with remote-controlled drones? We are the richest, most powerful nation on earth, and we're using our riches to kill people who live in mud huts with no electricity, at no risk to ourselves. Consider that image, if you can stand to. And yet we have the gall to complain about Basher Assad's poison gases.
This evening I was reading this week's Economist, and the Lexington columnist was discussing the current flap in the Pentagon over whether drone pilots, and other "cyberwarriors," who never actually get shot at, should receive medals for valor.
The combination of the two leads me to answer Philosophy Talk's question - yes, I believe it is more immoral to kill someone with nerve gas than with bullets; and I believe that really good drone pilots should be recognized for their contribution but a medal for valor isn't the right award. To explain why I feel this way, I want to do a quick review of the history of warfare. I don't write much about this subject, but I've actually read quite a bit about it over the years; the human race being what it is, you really can't study history without studying war. I've studied European warfare, so that's what I'll use to explain my point, which is that nerve gas is immoral because it can be used from farther away, and there is no way to fight back against it. If a man is mowing you down with a machine gun, he has to be within machine gun range, and you can at least try to shoot back at him, if you have a gun.
It's fairly accurate to say that until roughly the 14th century, when Joe wanted to kill Ed, he had to get very close to him, and fight him hand to hand; and he had a measurable chance of losing the fight, and his life. The invention of the bow made it possible for Joe to kill Ed from rather farther away; so did the sling. But the bow and the sling are specialist tools; not everyone can just pick them up and kill someone. They require training; they require a lot of practice. It takes less practice to use a club, a spear, or a sword. The Welsh bowmen who defeated the French army at Agincourt were masters of their trade, and they trained from childhood.
In the 14th century, European traders began reaching the Far East, and among other things they brought back gunpowder. Gunpowder rendered the fortified castle obsolete; artillery could throw rocks through the castle walls. Individual soldiers still fought hand-to-hand. It took another couple of centuries to develop individual weapons like muskets and pistols, which could reliably shoot lead balls without blowing the shooter's hand off; and they fired one ball and then had to be reloaded, a task which took an expert almost a minute. Still, by the 17th century, armies still fought hand-to-hand, but they did so after shooting several volleys of bullets at each other, from a working range of maybe 50-100 yards.
In the early 19th century, someone put two inventions together and produced a major step forward (if you call it that) in the ability to kill people from a distance: the mass-produced gun with a rifled barrel. Mass produced meant there were now a lot of guns relatively cheaply available; the rifled barrel meant the range was more like 300 yards. Part of the carnage in the American Civil War was due to the fact that the tacticians on both sides were placing the ranks maybe 100 yards apart, and the troops were firing rifles at each other which were accurate up to 3 times that.
In the Civil War, of course, hand-to-hand combat was still very common. But the next century and a half developed weapons with greater and greater ranges - artillery pieces which could fire for miles; airplanes dropping bombs from above; short range and eventually intercontinental ballistic missiles. The objective is to kill as many of the enemy as possible, without exposing your own warriors to their weapons. And the more long-distance methods were developed, the less hand-to-hand combat was needed. Poison gases were used on World War I battlefields, to such universal horror that nations produced an international agreement not to use that again, although as always, not everyone obeyed the agreement. If you look at the war in Syria (yes, I mean you, Mr. Assad), you'll see that the government forces attempt to use the longest range killing machines they can.
With remotely controlled drones, the 21st century has produced a weapon with which a soldier can kill people on another continent, at no risk to his own life. I've thought for some time that this is making war much too easy for the attacker. War should be hard. If Joe wants to kill Ed, he should risk his own life to do so. Otherwise he shouldn't be doing that at all. If you conclude from this that I think remote-controlled drones are immoral on a level with poison gas, you're right. I do think that. We have found that by spending huge amounts of money on these drones, we can kill people in Afghanistan, get in the car, and drive home to have dinner with the family. The arrogance of remote-controlled drone attacks is appalling. I can't even imagine what this is doing to the drone pilots. We should be giving them their own personal psychiatrists, not medals for valor.
And we shouldn't be conducting war like this at all. For that matter, why are we still shooting at Afghan tribesmen with remote-controlled drones? We are the richest, most powerful nation on earth, and we're using our riches to kill people who live in mud huts with no electricity, at no risk to ourselves. Consider that image, if you can stand to. And yet we have the gall to complain about Basher Assad's poison gases.
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