Forced out and dismissal
by Bob on November 10, 2007
I was sitting in an office in Boston and noticed two books, amongst many others, on the shelf near where I was working at the time. One was "Forced Out" and the other one was "Dismissal". It was about people losing their jobs and the toll it takes on them and their lives. Of all the books in the book case these caught my attention by peripheral vision. Now, some very wise person told me decades ago that such spottings are never random. I even think Dr. Freud might have given some credance to that, too.
So we sometimes see what we want to, despite the facts, with rose coloured glasses. Sometimes also, we are shown what is happening to ourselves by such a Jungian Synchronistic event, hardly hapstance.
Being forced out of somewhere, or dismissed is the height of pain, especially if it is unexpected or unimaginable. It produces terrible psychic hurt. One might counter-argue that most incidences of this sort are imaginable or expected, but the human will to deny the obvious clues leaves us with the usual complications of the human condition. We can't see something which is too difficult to handle.
The Pharmakos was forced out of the community or sacrificed in ancient Greece as a regular matter. This, in some sense, portrays the human weakness to scapegoat someone.
Originally the purpose of a pharmakos was purification. It started with the sacrifice of a pig usually. Then later we have the dismissal of a member of the community out of the community for purposes of community purification and harmony.
Forced out and dismissed also happens to poor people in a society and those also who are enfeebled by their age or medical condition and without actively caring family to assist.
There is a profound difference between caring about someone and actively caring about someone's fate. Active caring means getting involved and helping until it is all better and resolved. There's nothing more upsetting than a half-cooked meal. It makes us sick. So it goes with caring. It has to go all the way. We see this in many cultures, but especially in the story of the Good Samaritan.
Corporations, especially multi-national corporations, if not supra-national corporations, have little paternalism toward their employees like companies used to. Workers are treated as pluggable and unpluggable modular working pieces and also as part of the factory, whether it be on an assembly line or in a white collar job handsomely paid.
There seems to be little accountability these days to morality. It's all "bottom line" thinking. What it costs. How it will affect profits. The sirenic song of the accounting "bean counters".
This was essentially posed as a dilemma by the great playwright, G.B. Shaw, in at least two of his plays, "The Doctors Dilemma" and "Major Barbara". In the former, the medical community is callously aware that it is cheaper to eradicate someone than to treat him, and in the latter play, we are asked what price does salvation cost now. Very poignant pieces.
With the post-industrial phase burgeoning, and even proto-post-consumerism, that is where no one has a choice although there is a veneer of a plethora of choices, this all boils down to societal Spartanism.
We have the classic juxtaposition of profit versus kindness. And being forced out of a home, job, or town, or being dismissed from a life situation, is becoming callously the norm.
The octopus has too many tentacles, it would seem, to not get smothered and crushed.
As Villon wrote, ah but for the snows of yesteryear. They were at least water and not acid rain. Literally and figuratively.