Today in an employment-training class that I've decided to take, we
were given a handout which details the responsible organization's
policies, which are mostly the standard boilerplate that literally all
corporations, profit or nonprofit, with more than about five employees
are invariably required to use today. Prohibitions against sexual
harassment, discrimination, workplace violence and so forth are used
without a moment's thought, because it has today become unacceptible
under any circumstances to dissent with the politically correct
majority's officially designated opionion. And for the most part I'm
okay with that, but something about that last one (not the "and so
forth") has always kind of rubbed me the wrong way, and today I managed
to figure out why.
I am strongly prone to the use of
forceful rhetoric in my passionate argument of those (many) issues where
I have a deep conviction as to my beliefs. I often swear, even more
often use violent imagery, and sometimes even do things like punch my
other palm or beat my fist once or twice on my chest, just for the sake
of emphasis. While I've seen other Zero-Tolerance Workplace Violence
Policies before, this is the first time I can recall having read one explicitly
call out verbal belligerence as something to avoid...while this policy
was fairly apparently a "reasonable for the sake of nobody wants to get
punched," rather than "zero-tolerance for the sake of avoiding
litigation in case someone punches someone else and we are perceived as
not having condemned the action strongly enough", and I'm thus fairly
certain that I couldn't be held as being in violation of it unless I
actually used genuine threats or the like, it was still something of a
shock to recognize that I had sort of breached this policy before it was
even explained to me, and so I considered it at some length (and
fortunately was never called upon to sign "I agree", only "I acknowledge
receipt of this policy"; I've been known to take the former with
disproportionate seriousness and am not prone to signing it when any
misgivings occur to me, even if they are very tentative). It took until
after a lengthy walk around the neighborhood, and then most of the way
through my bus ride home, before I had fully digested the mental meal,
and came to the conclusion that it spurred me to, one which I thought
was important enough to be worth blogging about.
I've had many heroes and inspirations before, and today I asked myself which historical figure I most want to be like;
usually I automatically answer questions like that with my three stock
admirations: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mohandas
Gandhi. But having phrased the question in this particular way, I
decided that these answers would not suffice; Lincoln believed in the
redeeming value of hard work as I do not, King was profoundly religions,
and Gandhi was committed to living
pacifistically under even the worst of circumstances, a degree of
acceptance and endurance that I can only dream of being capable of. So
while I continue to consider all three paragons of humanity, I don't
outright seek to emulate them. Thusly, on the spur of the moment, I
came up with two new, at least semi-accurate answers to my own
question: Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. I've always idolized
the idealized version of the American Revolution, but of its best-known
architects, Washington was a soldier and Hamilton did money stuff, so
even if their efforts were necessary to the success of the rebellion and
the fledgling nation, I don't consider them terribly good role models,
as war and finance are not things I ever consider admirable no matter
what benefits they may bring. Jefferson, however, wrote the Declaration
of Independence, and Franklin drafted the Bill of Rights; both of them
were idea men, visionary statesmen (and in Franklin's case also a
scientist) who argued passionately in favor of ideas which they believed
could change the world, and succeeded in doing so. Both of these will
do splendidly, at least for now, as examples for me to follow. They
wrote words that forged a new nation in line with their principles; I
want to do the same, and once again found a regime which better
satisfies my ideology, regardless of possible opposition from the ruling
monolith whose thumb I have been under for longer than I can stand.
So, speaking of bloody insurrections against the resident evils of unjust government, you can see why I might
think that a blanket prohibition against violence, in a workplace just
by way of example, isn't the best idea ever. But that's not it
exactly...it's not like I'm pro-violence or anything, even in the
face of fairly serious provocation. I don't believe that killing
people solves much of anything, ever; much as the idea of toppling ivory
towers and making the lifeblood of oppressors run in the streets may
occasionally appeal to me, I have zero desire to actually live out such a
harrowing experience, even if success in my stated aims was guaranteed
after a price in exclusively-villainous lives was paid. So it's not
that I'm saying we should have violence in the workplace - but I am,
very decisively, saying we shouldn't have workplace policies prohibiting
violence. Why? Because I believe they have the opposite of their
intended effect.
H.P. Lovecraft once wrote "The oldest
and greatest emotion of man is fear, and the oldest and greatest fear of
man is fear of the unknown". I myself once wrote words to the general
effect of "anybody can get used to anything in time". Put these
together, and the message is clear - you can adapt to whatever you may
experience in life, but it's very difficult to deal with something
that's completely new and foreign to you. When something you never
expected, maybe never even imagined, suddenly happens, there's an effect
of paralyzing shock, a deer-frozen-in-the-headlights reaction as your
brain scrambles to cope with the sudden occurrence of the unthinkable.
And so, if there's some form of misery we don't want to have to deal
with in our daily lives, the worst thing we can possibly do is
make that thing unthinkable - because that means that when it happens
(and Murphy's Law dictates that, inevitably, it will), we have no hope
of handling it effectively, because we're too stunned by the simple fact
that it happened. Thusly, in creating a violence-free zone through the
use of laws and policies, we do not protect the people in that zone from
violence. Anyone can break that policy at any time, with consequences
they may or may not even care about; a suicidal, nihilistic madman with
nothing to lose is a thing that can totally exist (more and more
frequently, in our society's current state of economic and interpersonal desperation), and laws or
punishments ranging from expulsion to imprisonment to even death mean nothing to such
an individual. Instead of protecting people, all you do with a policy
like this is insulate them from the experience of violence, and give
them no opportunity to learn strategies to cope with it. What happens
if you're never exposed to chicken pox as a kid? Same principle here;
if you grow up in a bubble and never face any risks, you'll be
completely unprepared to defend yourself when something finally does go
wrong in your world.
Thusly, as a person who never
wants to be a victim of violence, I want these anti-violence policies to
go away. They don't actually work, they make things worse rather than
better, and they encourage a false sense of security instead of
providing actual aid in keeping people safe. Ultimately, I agree with
the writers of these policies; I want to see a day when everyone can be
absolutely sure that violence will not strike in the middle of their
workday. But I have no such confidence now; those policies are empty
promises of my safety, which a single fist or bullet could shatter at
any moment. What will protect us? The dawning of a day in which all
people have become utterly inured to the threat of violence,
being so completely comfortable with the possibility that it will
happen, so confident that they can handle whatever comes, that there's
no reason for anyone to ever bother initiating a conflict. Bullies and
brutes use violence as a tool of coercion because it works; in my
opinion, it is one of the very few things which actually does. So in
order to feel safe against it, I would need to see it robbed of its
persuasive power, and the only way that can ever happen is if our entire
society becomes completely devoid of the fear of violence,
instead seeing it as just another unfortunate reality to be handled
competently if it happens. We already have this kind of attitude,
toward things like tornadoes and building fires; we know they're
unlikely, but we make plans to prevent panic and ensure smooth traversal
of such vicissitudes. Man-made disasters should be viewed in exactly
the same way, because they are no less inevitable; in any society where
every human isn't a mind-controlled robot, some percentage of people are
going to snap and lash out in sudden ultraviolence, and we need to
accept that as a reality to be dealt with, not obsessively litigated
against.
If nobody cares whether violence happens or not, then
it almost never will, because it won't be an effective tool for getting
what its wielder wants. So I want to see people develop thick skins and
confident survival strategies; that way, the next atrocity that happens
will be the first step to ensuring that atrocities will eventually stop
happening altogether.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment