pps. 37-81. (please start a thread by adding a comment. The next reader doesn't need to start a new post but add a comment. Please integrate an acknowlegement of the comment prior to yours into your comment so that we have a dialogue going, a little different than our normal reader responses.)
Prompts
Chapter 3: Alford writes: "Narrative is best formed as it enters into discourse. In the absence of a discursive frame, narrative tends to turn in on itself, like a snake biting its tail. Without someone to share it with, narrative risks becoming an endless monologue" (37). Does this resonate with other concepts that have come up in prior readings? What are the ethical implications of dialogue vs. monologue?
7 comments:
I think that this is an important place in the text because it could be interpreted as a bit different from our previous readings. Instead of asking us to look inside ourselves, and stop and think or, find a place of personal moral righteousness he is asking us to converse. He seems to be implying that the most efficient way to work through an issue is by connecting with someone, sharing with another individual.
The same impersonality in an organization that fosters efficiency, simultaneously keeps officials and employees from responding to each other’s unique, personal needs, at times. According to sociologist Max Weber, formal organizations can create alienation by reducing the human being to “ a small cog in a ceaselessly moving mechanism”. Although organizations are formed to serve humanity, Weber feared that people might well end up serving formal organizations. Alford leads us in a discussion about bureaucratic inefficiency and ritualism, and its impact on employees who turn whistleblower. In his discussion regarding results from whistleblower’s experiences, she illuminates bureaucratic inertia, patterns of exclusion, and the moral narcissism of whistleblowers.
The problems of bureaucracy –especially the alienation it produces and its tendency towards oligarchy – stem from two organizational traits, hierarchy, and rigidity. Rules and regulations made at the top guide every facet of people’s work down the chain of command; bureaucracy is a top-down system. Bureaucratic inertia describes the Alford describes the military whistleblower who took on the inefficient special education department of his military locale. This screening department for learning disabled military children existed in name only. He could not achieve effective programming for his son, even though there was a branch of the military base that was formed to do so. The officials were striving to keep their organization going even though its goals had not been realized. The military officer had forgotten Alford’s truisms: “that the purpose of the law is to remove the caprice of powerful individuals “, and that “loyalty is not equivalent to the herd instinct”, and that “someone, somewhere, who is in charge, knows, cares, and will do the right thing”.
Therefore patterns of exclusion, isolation, and shunning serve to quiet, emasculate, or shame employees who dare to criticize the firm. “If the organization feel sufficiently threatened by the individual, it will remove him, not just beyond the margins of the organization but all the way to the margins of society”.
This shunning leads to a lack of shared stories, and a disconnected narrative, as well as moral narcissism for the whistleblower. A Los Angeles Metro engineer who exposed structural issues in tunnel construction felt he was suspended in time, and disengaged from reality due to his experience. “Whistleblowing has reduced my faith and trust in people and in our justice system”. Often these difficult experiences dismay and alienate whistleblowers permanently from others. “The unwanted knowledge of the way that the world really works possess them, invades them, and the only way for them to be free would be to give up the truth of the common narrative”. Sometimes the whistleblower is left strangely suspended in time ” strangely absent from the chain of events he or she has set in motion”.
From my work at Matrix, I have realized that often the parents of children with developmental disabilities feel isolated or shunned from a common narrative of “normal” child development. They balance issues regarding accessing education, recreation and socialization for their disabled children daily. Social expectations provide daily hurdles, as their children’s disabilities restrict their ability to perform at the level of “common narrative”. In a way, they feel the pain of shunning, isolation, and shame, analogous to the whistleblower. For they are, in fact, more like “ an external narrator, telling us from a position of vast remove about a world that constitutes something terribly important”, the human condition.fqjcr
Your story of how the kids are treated triggered "Tom's story," on page 55. He was the man who "wrote his congressman, after trying for several years to get his child placed in special education. . . It was then that Tom entered the machine whose product is the elimination of the whistleblower in ways entirely compatible with the law." But what about his child and the children of other military personel who's needs were never met?
On p67, Arendt "writes about training your imagination to go visiting. It is, she suspects, the ground of all ethics, the ability to take others into account." This speaks to me of service-learning. The ability to imagine a better quality of existence for others - or to imagine the possibilities of how I can make a difference,and how we can work together to promote change,this is "training my imagination to go visiting."
Alford states that whistle- blowers possess an "imagination for consequences...the structure of all empathy: taking up in one's imagination the place of the other" (68). I believe empathy is another crucial element for ser- vice learners to cultivate To me, it was empathy that enabled that professor in Milgram's experiment to refuse to "deliver the full battery of shocks...saying that he was now taking his orders from the victim" (71). Alford then explains that, "Whistleblowers identify with the victim by making the victim's fight their own"(71).
The other night at dinner in a restaurant my friend and I were discussing my father's illness. I was recalling accounts of my Dad's behavior, the behavior of other family members, and my desire to sleep through the whole process. My friend stopped my discussion, and questioned me. What do you need? As tears welled up in both of our eyes, I told her i wanted my children to visit their grandfather. She encouraged me to pursue this goal even if it was met with resistance. Our discussion continued, and we spoke of reporting as compared to really talking.
When I read Alford's comment, "... like a snake biting its tail," I was reminded of my discussion with my friend. My narrative had become, "an endless monologue." I was not discussing what was really in my heart and mind.
I also compare the idea of "an endless monologue" to my service-learning commitment. As a tutor, my question to the students is not "Can I help?", but rather "What do you need?" By engaging in a dialogue with the students, I place their needs before my position as a tutor. I am there to be a part of service. After all, what is service, "... without someone to share it with?"
Even though Alford explains that, "Whistleblowers identify with the victim by making the victim's fight their own"(71). Yet I think the larger issue is their ability to have courage to follow-up their observations about transgressions of the organization with the conviction of action, whatever the personal cost, marginalization, discipline,etc.Alford claims the whistleblower does not “set truth against loyalty”, yet remains “unavailable for the act of collective transgression” to be committed by the organization”(98). In modern culture's "herd" mentality there is a definite social pressure against ethical individualism.
In Schneider's Rediscovery of Awe, I thought his description of self," is inspired by choice, imagination, and love. it is a self that holds poignancy along loneliness; mediation alongside forlornnenss; and firey passion alongside rage"was poignant and real.His discussion about the dynamism of an enlarged consciousness was key" the individual finite life is intimately linked with ultimate concern. This is why modern mad whines so pitifully with the burden of life - he has nothing ultimate to dedicate it to; nothing infinite to assume responsibility for; nothing self-transcending to be truly courageous about".Connecting to service learning and community service definitely expands one's horizons regarding how secotrs of power are constituted and social lives are arrayed in a big picture of 'global ethic'. I do believe in his assertion " when people can assemble together, share experiences, and learn about each other's intimate lives, they become more tolerant of each other and appreciative of one another's humanity". I have seen in my work at Matrix, that often when I can bridge that gap, administrators/teachers move off of their positions of power, to truly acknowledge the student's needs. It's definitely worth it "to see a diversity of perspectives interwoven". For isn't relationship building (along w/ education)an example of " rediscovery of awe" in moment-to moment social interaction, and therefore key to our survival as a culture?
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