The Culture of Praise...and a Haunting

Okay...two interesting things today:

One...the ghost of Jimmy Cliff has miraculously intervened in our lives, in the form of an unsolicited YouTube video posted to this very blog. I thought Lori did it, she thought I did it...but now we believe it was Jimmy that done it. We were disappointed that he didn't add any text, possibly about the availability of good dope in the afterlife.

Spooky.

The other interesting thing (and probably more pertinent to the rest of you who aren't being haunted by Jimmy Cliff) is that I heard an interesting Talk of the Nation on NPR. Half the show was devoted to youthful indiscretions, and how long far into your adult life you should have to pay penance for them, and the other half was about "The Culture of Praise".

The culture of praise part fascinated me. It was about the expectations of young employees, those in their 20s and 30, for their workplace. They expect to be valued and praised a lot for achievements that appear minor to us old folks: showing up on time, showing up at all, actually getting some work done at work, etc. A lot of workplaces are reconfiguring their HR strategies to take those expectations into account. They achieve this is by, among other things, sending voice mails to employees thanking them for coming to work on time for a month, having "confetti parties" when they achieve their departmental goals, and providing copious gifting for their fickle charges.

The theory behind all that professional love was that parents of our generation intentionally inculcated in our children the belief that they were special. One caller called it the "Mr. Rogers Effect." The self-esteem movement was apparently begun innocently enough by parents who wanted to give their children all the emotional support and love that they felt they'd missed out on during the Father Knows Best era of the '50s and '60s.

So our peers continually reinforced to their children their inherent value. And our kids apparently took that message to heart. The result? Confetti parties.

So there I was, laughing about how ludicrous the idea of all that excessive workplace reinforcement was, and I arrived at my own workplace to find...

T-shirts! For everyone! Telling us that "There's No Us Without You!"

It's a sick world indeed when self-esteem comes to the Heartland. Luckily, I've done my part to stop the madness: I've explained to my own kids that children have no value until they can actually do something. They've taken this to heart and have no visible self-esteem. My work as a parent is done.

Note: The Evie School of Parenting will open it's doors promptly at 9am. Anyone who arrives late will be summarily grounded until Evie forgets why she was mad. All students will receive an "F" until they can convince Professor Evie that they deserve a better grade, possibly with generous endowments to the Evie U. Library Fund.

Wonderful World...Hmmm

I guess I had a good day at work...I made a lot of money for doing next to nothing, I read about half of my novel, and I puttered around on the internet. It was so deadly dull, in fact, that I ran night shift's QC and made up their reagents for them. All of which prompted Toni to fall to her knees and declare her love for me. That was fun. :-)

But I was thinking, as I watched several people on the AOL boards whip themselves up into a lathering, self-righteous frenzy...what did you people do before there was an internet to act insane on? Did you stalk your neighbors and coworkers? Did you berate store clerks and waitresses? Did you kick puppies and run over turtles?

How did angry people express all their turbulant rage before the internet made it safe to anonymously to mistreat strangers? I don't think anger was invented concurrently with the World Wide Web, so people with uncontrolled, uncontrollable rage at the world must have either contained it or acted out in real life. Maybe they beat their spouses or their kids...or maybe they sat alone, seething at perceived injustices in their lives.

But the interesting thing about the internet is that it didn't take any time at all for angry, unstable people to latch onto it as their venue of choice for retaliating at a world that doesn't care for them in the way they want to be cared for.

I read an article a couple of days ago about the number of people, mostly women, who've shut down their blogs after being ruthlessly harrassed online. Death threats, rape threats, and endless verbal abuse...from total strangers who disagree with their politics, their sexual orientation, or their viewpoint on life.

Huh.

Now imagine having a conversation in a coffeeshop with a friend and having a ranting, profane, hate-filled lunatic accost you. Easy, right? Call the cops. The problem with internet lunacy is that it's a voluntary association (although, really, a coffeeshop is voluntary too. If you don't like hysterical abusive people, drink your coffee at home.), there are free speech issues at work, and there's that darned anonymity.

But, as they say...somebody ought to do something. I don't know who that would be, and I don't know what they would do to make a more civil society where no one would need to go online to abuse strangers for sport, but it's reminded me of that old Jimmy Cliff song, "Wonderful World, Beautiful People, " which I tragically can't find on You Tube, or I would share it. Because sometimes...people in this wonderful world ain't so beautiful.