Softly, I will leave you, softly!

What is the truth about living in South Florida?

The truth is that this is an arena of intense competition for goods and services. A social milieu that ignites a competition that is so intense and so little restrained by moral precepts that this region must qualify, as much or more than any in which I have previously resided, to be described as a ‘state of nature.’

Behind the patina of civilization created by skyscrapers, schools, libraries, parks and beautiful beaches is a concrete jungle, in which might almost always conquers right, in which there is a never ending struggle and conflict between predators and their prey with fangs and claws liberally and callously applied, in which only the strong survive.

This is a milieu of unending and interminable stress, a social system in which I perforce must march to a different drum, because my definition of happiness is a drama free existence.

Is this too harsh and cynical a judgment of the reality that exists here, do I expect too much of individuals and institutions, am I too idealistic or am I being exceedingly realistic?

The acid test is the intrinsic nature of the experiences of individuals who exist on this treadmill of poverty and despair; and as I prepare to quietly exit this scene, as I with very few regrets hit the road to discover if there is, anywhere on this continent, a more salubrious moral and cultural climate in which I might spend the remaining years of my life; I feel constrained to give an account, a truthful and completely factual account, of my experiences over the past few years and leave it to my readers to judge the veracity of my claim.

I feel constrained to state that as always I am prepared to testify on any and every segment or component of this testament hooked up to a lie detector machine while waiving my constitutional right to avoiding self incrimination.

Also, that I could have chosen any period in the seventeen years during which I have languished in the gilded cage of South Florida existence to find the evidence to support and prove beyond a reasonable doubt the above stated thesis.

Almost two years ago, I was returning from grocery shopping when, while waiting for a traffic light to change I was pulled over by a Police Officer. He requested the usual documents and after he ran these he indicated that my driver’s license had been suspended.

He indicated that the reason why the license had been suspended was not available, that it could be for any of a number of reasons; but that he was required to take the license. He said further that he could have had my car towed and left me afoot. He said he had declined to take this action because I was so obviously returning from grocery shopping.

The next day I took the day off from work and went to the nearest Licensing Authority where I was advised the reason for the suspension was that the records indicated that I did not have insurance. I produced the documentation proving that I did indeed have insurance and was issued a replacement license.


In that building was an annex of the Court and I attended there and declined to pay the fine and requested my day in Court. The representative at the counter indicated the date and time of that appearance would be forwarded to me.

Later that year, prior to my birthday, as required by law I renewed the registration on my motor vehicle online over the internet. In October, when the renewal documentation had not arrived, I made enquiries and was informed that the documents had been sent to my previous address. I had filled out the address change online but that data had not been captured by the system.

Shortly thereafter, I received a communication saying that my license had again been suspended. When I investigated the cause of this new occurrence I confronted the following sequence of events:

A summons requiring my appearance in court had been sent to me, not at the address on my license, my current address, but at my previous address under which my motor vehicle was registered.

I had neglected to register a change in address for that document believing that no harm would be done if I did it when the annual registration fee was due. This innocuous failure caused me to be enmeshed and mired in the red tape produced by the governmental bureaucracy.

Since I had not received the summons I did not appear in court. The date of the appearance, September 9th , 2004 was also the date on which a major hurricane made landfall in South Florida. A continuance was granted in respect of all those who were scheduled to have their cases heard that day, a continuance which I did not request, which I could not have requested, since I had not received the summons in the first place since it was sent to the wrong address.

Of course, I did not appear for the new court date because again the summons had been sent to the wrong address. At this juncture, a bench warrant was issued for my arrest and my license suspended. When I renewed the registration on my motor vehicle my current address was belatedly captured in the system and the communications containing this information eventually caught up with me.

As I attempted to cut through the red tape to get this matter resolved, I discovered other interesting information as to why this foul up had occurred. The Licensing Authority was part of the State Government machinery, while the registration of motor vehicles was under the aegis of the Broward County governmental machinery . Since the Traffic Court was also local it relied on the information contained in the local system. It had no access to the more up to date information held by Licensing Authority.

Also, I discovered to my cost, that since I had ‘requested’ one continuance I could not request another, so my only option was to pay the fines, the very substantial fines that had accumulated because of my alleged delinquencies. This was not an option for me because I simply did not have the money.

What living in South Florida has done is given me a deeper appreciation of what it means to live and coexist with an Absolutist regime, one with arbitrary power, in precept, on a day to day basis. This was an issue I had scrutinized at length and in some detail as I studied human history but there is no substitute for actually living it, to understanding the dynamics and interior dimension of frustration and despair involved in this experience.

I was expected to have complete knowledge of the workings of the bureaucracy. I was expected to know that the Licensing Authority existed separate and apart from the local Traffic Court which had to rely on the information captured by the Department of Motor Vehicle Registration. I was expected to know that even though the address on my driver’s license was up to date, I could still fail to receive summonses from the Traffic Court - because this legal body relied on the data held by the Department of Motor Vehicle Registration. In short, what was expected of me, and other citizens in the State of Florida was absolute and complete knowledge of the workings of the bureaucracy.

We might, at this time, wish to compare what was required of me, and other citizens, against what was required of the Government and its agents.

First of all, the policeman who stopped me was guilty of racial profiling. He stopped me in broad daylight as I was parked at a traffic light. I was not speeding, none of the lights on my motor vehicle were broken, there was no evidence or indication that I was engaging in any criminal activity, he had no reason whatsoever to pull me over - except that I was apparently of African descent.

Further, it would be too much to ask of our democratically elected government, which is supposed to serve the people, that the information be accessible to policemen as to why the suspension of the license has occurred. If the policeman had had that information he could have verified that I did indeed have insurance, and he would not have had to take possession of my license. That would have been too easy, it would have been too efficient and cost me too little in lost time from work and the numerous other inconveniences I suffered as a result. And, it would have meant much less revenue to become part of the Pork Barrel.

Also, we might examine what is required of the Insurance Companies, the other actor in this drama. These commercial organizations routinely report when an insured does not renew his or her policy. They do not report when they write new business. So if any individual engages in an completely innocuous act like changing Insurance Companies, that individual is likely to become embroiled in the snares and toils of the governmental bureaucracy.

If that individual also changed his or her address in the last year, they are likely to find themselves in the same predicament as I did.

The Licensing Authority does not suspend driver’s licenses without warning. They send out two letters via ordinary mail requesting that individuals confirm that they do have insurance coverage. It is only after failing to receive a reply to these letters that they take action.

For several weeks I tried to find someone who was employed to the Traffic Court who was capable of understanding my predicament. Most could go no further in comprehending what obviously was a very convoluted issue for them than to conclude that I had requested one continuance and therefore was not entitled to another.

Others advised that I pay the fines. One woman who also migrated from Jamaica asked me what I would do if I had been found guilty in court and a fine levied? I resisted the powerful impulse to state the obvious, that this was not case, that I had not in fact been found guilty of any infraction.

No one whom I spoke to had the slightest doubt that I could afford to pay the fines, but was just being intractable and difficult. This opportunistic and self serving attitude is widespread among civil servants and politicians and is the consummate irony of life in the USA, because in fact the major obstacle to every citizen and resident in this country achieving economic independence and viability is the overspending, corruption and waste endemic in the governmental bureaucracy.

Eventually, I wrote a letter to the Clerk of Courts in Broward County explaining the situation.

Some time later I received a form letter requesting I attend Traffic Court.

The timing of that attendance required that I take further time off from work. After a short wait I was given a date to return on which the matter would be heard.

Of course, this required that I again leave work early, precipitating further loss of income. On the appointed date, after a somewhat longer wait the matter was heard, and the case dismissed, without my saying a word, beyond confirming my identity, because on the date I was stopped I had provided evidence that I did have insurance coverage, and there was no other charge against me.

The judge asked the policeman if I had produced documentation that indicated that I had insurance coverage and when he affirmed that I done this, he dismissed the charges and indicated I was free to go.

This should have been the end of this incident, my patience and perseverance should have extracted me from the pitiless, insensate snares and toils of the governmental bureaucracy, it did not.

After all my efforts, spending hours on the phone with civil servants, writing letters to the Clerk of the Courts, taking time off from work to get my license reinstated and attend court, nobody bothered to inform me that dismissal of the charge did not mean that my driving privileges would be restored. No one bothered to inform me that I would still have to pay in excess of thirty dollars to have these privileges reinstated.

We might together examine the meaning of the word ‘justice’ as defined by The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: 1. Moral rightness; equity. 2. Honor; fairness. 3. Good reason; He’s very angry, and with justice 4. Fair handling; due reward or treatment.

To receive justice in South Florida and avoid the drama in this region it is not enough that you are a law abiding citizen. In the period since I migrated to the USA, in August 1984, I have got four or five speeding tickets. I have not been involved in an accident, if I ignore the occasions when motorists have run into the back of my car causing very minimal damage. I have never made a claim on any insurance company. In the past decade I have not received a ticket of any kind, not counting this incident of racial profiling.

It is not enough that you renew your insurance in a timely fashion and keep the required documentation to operate a motor vehicle up to date, more is required of you.

However, very little is required of government agencies. For the government in the State of Florida, suspension of driving privileges has become the catchall penalty for a number of crimes.

For example, if you present a bad check you may wind up with your driver’s license being suspended, and this may aid in your being made responsible for this delinquency. But what is the reason for not providing to police officers the reason for the suspension, could it be because this failure in communication results in increased revenue to the government?

And in the event of a hurricane, or other Act of God, or other force majeure, causing the canceling of a court sitting, why could this not be clearly indicated for the benefit of the benighted alumni of the America Public School System who are responsible for implementation of policies and mandates, instead of this cancellation being subsumed under the heading, a continuance was granted? Is it not clear that this must result in some individuals being deprived of their right to request a continuance, as was my experience?

I have on many occasions in my articles referred to the benighted alumni of the American Public School System, insulting and offending droves of people, but I cannot do otherwise because this is the major, most easily observable symptom of the disease that affects the American body politic. How many individuals know what a force majeure is, how many individuals could follow the chain of logic to expose the injustice and harassment implicit in my predicament, how many if they knew how would be motivated to?

How many individuals reading this will be able to comprehend my analysis, even more to the point, how many individuals will be galvanized to act to change the palpable ineptitude and inefficiency endemic in the governmental bureaucracy by my cogent analysis of this and other issues? The answer is very few, it may even be none, the talking animals of South Florida whether they be predators or prey are incapable of action that would change the status quo, that is why I must hit the road.

If this were an isolated incident I could have, and would have ignored it. It is not, every contact, no matter how innocuous, with the governmental bureaucracy produces the same experience.

Life in South Florida is close akin to wading interminably armpit deep in excrement, towards a secure and safe location that is moving further and further away, and the level of fecal matter is slowly, tortuously and inexorably rising every day, until eventually the individual drowns in it. I decline to live like this any longer.

In December, 2004 the company to which I was employed closed down its call center in South Florida relocated to Oklahoma, and, expanded its call center operation in India. I was unemployed for four and one half months.

One company, it sold car insurance, required as a prerequisite to employment that I have a valid driver’s license. I was sure that my driving privilege had been reinstated by my efforts but something moved me to make sure. I discovered that my license continued to be suspended, completely frustrated and disillusioned, I gave in, and paid the required amount to restore my driving privileges. I had been found guilty of no infraction but was still required to pay substantial penalties, in lost of income occasioned by loss of time from work, in time spent trying to explain the obvious to the oblivious, and eventually had to pay to have my license reinstated.

After three months of unemployment I began to think I might not land another job in South Florida, and widened my search to include other States. I began to seriously consider migrating to another region in the USA.

Filled with trepidation and consternation, anticipating the exhaustion of my unemployment benefits, I made a serious mistake. I wrote and signed a letter indicating that I would be vacating my apartment at the end of that month. When I moved in I had paid a deposit that included my first and last month’s rent and believing this would be my last month, and strapped for cash, I decided not to pay the rent for that month but to use my deposit for that purpose.
I discovered that the availability of jobs in other States that I could canvass was no better than in Florida, and that selling my furniture was not as easy as I had first thought, so I decided to stay where I was.

But was placed in a precarious situation, teetering on the brink of homelessness, because I had no where to move to, could not pay the next month’s rent on time, and the letter I had written permitted my landlord to evict me without recourse to any court.

Providentially, the manager for the complex displayed compassion and allowed me to continue to occupy the apartment. She even allowed me to pay the rent late and neglected to collect the late fees. And I got a job.

But the temporary agency through which I was employed did not pay me for the first week that I worked, it held a week in the back. And my employment benefits ceased as soon as I started working so for the first week on the job I was not paid.

Again, it is clear that the governmental bureaucracy has no comprehension whatsoever of the impact, the possible disastrous impact on the life of an individual that can be precipitated by losing one week of pay, nor can this be explained by petitioning the unfeeling, irrational and unintelligent monolith that can only hew to the rules by which it operates, notwithstanding the effect of these rules can have on citizens.

If I collected the benefit for that week I would have been able to pay my rent on time, I would not have to rely on the compassion of the agent of my landlord, who had already previously been demonstrated her magnanimity and declined to make me homeless when it was in her power so to do. Further, I knew that she was employed to manage the complex and further delinquency on my part might force her hand.

And, let us explore what is the reality behind employers employing the week in the back payment system. First of all, it is clear that employers can pay their employees on a current basis, without strain because of the computerization of payroll accounts. But to hold one week of payroll in abeyance means that the employers have funds equaling one week payroll at their disposal interminably, since it is unlikely that more than a few employees will be separated in any given week. So the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, or in my specific case run the risk of homelessness.

I declined to run this risk, instead I applied for and received unemployment benefits and again became embroiled with the governmental bureaucracy when they discovered I had broken the rules. In the protracted grievance procedure that ensued the arbiter who heard the grievance actually asked if I had been evicted, despite having all the facts at his disposal, including the information that my address which had not changed.

I declined to state the obvious, that I had not been evicted because I had collected one extra week of unemployment benefits, a transgression that prompted the necessity of procedures which cost much, much more than the pitiful amount of one week of employment benefits. I am still being dunned for that amount because living from paycheck to paycheck as I do I have not had the means to satisfy that debt.

Before examining the operation of the sweatshop in which I was eventually employed after four and one half months of unemployment, let me present credentials that might allow me to reasonably claim to be an expert on organizational structures and the esoteric of creating positive developments in these structures.

Also, that I have been exposed to the dynamics, consequences and implications of adversarial industrial relations, as existed in Jamaica where there were powerful trade unions, and so have a deep appreciation of the facts permissive of my contrasting this against the near absolute power enjoyed by employers in South Florida.

It is almost superfluous to add that these qualifications, experiences and skills have had very little weight in the USA, an arena in which their application would have been so beneficial, since most managers here if judged entirely on merit, would be exposed to be totally and wholly unqualified to administer or operate an organizational structure as simple as an outside pit latrine.

My daughter, when she managed a segment of the operations of a large retail chain, confided in me that when the women she supervised gave her trouble she responded by not speaking to them. She saw nothing wrong, unusual or bizarre about this managerial technique.

It has been my observation, that promotions into management in the USA are seldom merited but are gifts from benefactors, in a pervasive, ubiquitous system of patronage. That managers receive little training, and therefore, when required to cause others to act fall back on means they employed as they grew up, the practices used within their circle of family and friends. There is little discrimination between the informal arena of social interaction, and the professional, more formal approach required in the workplace.

During the first decade of adulthood I was employed in an oil refinery. Then I became a Union Officer representing workers employed in the Public Utilities and Heavy and Light Industries.
At the time job evaluations were a popular means of creating equity in the workplace and I was deeply involved in the process of preparing job descriptions, ranking jobs and creating scatter diagrams that indicated how jobs related to each other in varied and variegated workplaces; as well as conduction wage negotiations and settling grievances.

I traveled to Israel and was trained to be a change agent, a catalyst of positive change in organizational structures. One component of that training was an introduction to time and motion studies.

I can make a serious claim to have overcome poverty among a group of stevedores. I was the change agent that fostered and supported a productivity increase among the group of some three hundred per cent, which was the basis for individuals in that group being able to purchase homes, have access to improved health care and a better quality of life.

I can also accurately claim to be that contradiction in terms, an honest politician
I served as Co-Chairman of Manpower Utilization Committee that along with other like Committees produced a National Production Plan for Jamaica in 1978. In effect I was the Human Resources Director for the island during that period.

For two years I was employed as a free lance journalist for the Daily Gleaner, the newspaper with the largest circulation on the island of Jamaica; researching and writing articles for a weekly column for the most part dealing with political and social issues.

After four and one half months of unemployment and with homelessness looming I was ready to take any job I could get. And even as I engaged in the training program I became aware that had been hired to work in one of the numerous and ubiquitous ‘sweatshops’ that contribute to causing Fort Lauderdale to have the odious label of being the scam capital of the universe.
But this was a sweatshop with a difference, with one redeeming feature, its hook was that it provided great customer service.

If that option had been open to me I would have left when I observed the intense emotion, the rage that suffused the individual doing the training when she became aware that an employee was a minute late returning from break.

She was one to two managers who displayed and demonstrated so inadequate and poorly developed interpersonal skills that in my thoughts I dubbed them the Autistic Twins.

So uncivilized and primitive were their relations with employees that I concluded that if they had been raised by animals, these were much more likely to have been hyenas rather than wolves.

During my initial contact with her twin, he informed me that I had a very heavy accent, one so thick that he could barely decipher what I was saying. He also seemed to support the overt racism of a female caller, who had openly and palpably demonstrated her prejudice from the moment the call was initiated. His comments caused me to conclude that not only was I working in a sweatshop but that I had landed in a nest of racists.

For several months on every occasion that I had to approach one, or the other, of the Autistic Twins I did so with feelings of trepidation and anxiety. Especially if it was early on a Saturday morning, because I was never certain if even my most casual and deferential salutation would trigger a display of their extreme animus and undisguised contempt for the human beings that had the misfortune to be their colleagues. For a long period I made sure I spoke to them as little as possible, or none at all.

Towards the end of my stay in this arena so replete with tragedy and despair they both demonstrated that despite their autism they were very intelligent, they began to treat me with deference, civility and respect, I think they became aware that I had the means to lift and remove the rock which hid their social disabilities from the world.

All but a handful of employees were black, every manager was white, or appeared to be white. I was made aware during the training period that there was a manager in training, that he had not come through the ranks but was recruited from outside the organizational structure, that no one who worked on the phones had been afforded the opportunity of joining the management team when that opening occurred.

On that first day on the phones I witnessed another scene that filled me with great disquiet. A member of my training class, who hailed from Trinidad, and whom I considered a friend, we had worked together and shared the experience of being laid off from my previous job, was sitting sprawled out legs up in his seat. He worked two jobs and the exhaustion this precipitated was reflected in his body language.

Another manager whom in my mind, I deemed “the dirty old man,” laid hands on “Trini” and removed his foot from the projection on which it rested, and forcibly placed that appendage on the floor of the booth. I was shocked, to say the least, I was certain that if he had acted in that manner in most of the Call Centers in which I had previously been employed, since such behavior could be construed to be a physical, criminal assault on the person of an employee, his action would have resulted in his immediate termination.

He habitually laid his hands on employees, whether they were male or female, coming up behind them in their booths and pressing his body against theirs, and rubbing their shoulders.

After a very brief, perfunctory and very casual acquaintance, I never saw him outside the confines of the phone room, or shared any interest with him except a fascination with American football, he often found it necessary to say that I was cute, and told me, on numerous occasions, that he loved me. It was near the end of my period of employment in this location that I found the courage to inform him that I found such behavior deeply objectionable and very offensive, that such overt, public displays of affection between males were anathema in Jamaican culture.

He was not only a dirty old man, he had other failings. I heard him tell Maryann, who for a period, occupied the booth directly behind me, “ If I find you out of your seat one more time today, I will put my foot where the sun does not shine.”

I think the management knew, and exploited the fact that this woman was a single parent with a family for which she was the sole support; because the father of her child had tragically died in the not too distant past, because they treated her, even more than most, with very scant regard, certain that she would not complain, resist or demur because of how much she needed the job.

One Saturday morning, there were very few calls and she was reading some book, when I observed a manager who had hitherto seemed the most civil, respectful and professional of the group, flick her ear lobe to motivate her to desist from reading on the job.

The strictures that I found most difficult to accept and endure, were those that required employees to raise their hands and inform a manager on each and every occasion that they attended the restroom; and, the fact that breaks were not scheduled, that each and every day, twice a day, employees had to approach the raised dais on which the management team was ensconced, and indicate that they needed a break.

These breaks were not automatically granted, far from it, if the call volume was high, and it always was during their peak sales season, breaks might not be granted until close to lunch time, or in the afternoon, or sometimes not at all, as I will relate. It was clear that the management did not believe that employees had a right to breaks, certainly not to scheduled breaks but that these should be granted depending on call volume, and the whim of managers.

The most amazing innovation I discovered at this call center, was that some people who worked a full eight hour shift did not take any time at all for lunch, they worked eight hours and the only time they were off the phone was during their breaks.

The fact that I took half an hour for lunch, and in addition desired two ten minute breaks was considered by managers to be very unusual, to say the least. Also, we were not supposed to eat while seated in our cubicles, but this stricture was routinely if covertly flouted - except by me since I was habituated to the practice of not eating while taking calls.

I found that after two hours of continually taking calls, my throat became dry and I needed something to drink. Since breaks were not scheduled and I was never sure when I would get a respite, or indeed, if I would get a break I purchased a spill proof container and kept it at my desk.

I feel constrained to state that the calls were not onerous, in fact, sharing with my customers was the only light in the black as midnight tunnel of wage slavery that working in this call center became. I hated and dreaded going to work each and every day. My discomfort was increased because I did not have two consecutive days off. I was off on Friday and Sunday and never was away from the place long enough to get a real break from the indignities, degradation and humiliations that were routinely and perennially heaped on me there.

I must freely admit that on occasion I shared with my customers too much and a few calls lasted much longer than they should have. I was able to interact with them in truth, to admit failures of the company if and when these occurred which were relatively infrequent, and was empowered to take such action as would satisfy the customer, a vast difference and a saving grace when compared to other call centers in which I have worked.

After a few months of working under these conditions I started to experience stomach pains after about two and one half hours without a break, which was an everyday occurrence. I found a stopgap solution to this problem by taking anti acid pills. I had been diagnosed with a duodenal ulcer in the past and wished to avoid a reoccurrence of this problem, if this were at all possible.

I began working in this call center in mid May, two days after my sixtieth birthday on September 12, 2005 I started to have serious pains, as I later told the emergency room intake person, on a scale of one to ten, this pain was at least a twelve.

I tried various home remedies, including increasing the number of anti acid pills I chewed but nothing worked. I endured the pain through the day, it was a Thursday, and I was off from work the next day, but I got very little sleep that night and when the pain had not eased by afternoon of that Friday I attended the Medicare Clinic I was a member of but was told that I could not see a doctor until Monday of the following week. Having no other viable option, I was well aware of the possible dangers and massive costs inherent in such a choice, I attended the Emergency Room of a Broward General Hospital.

Within a not unreasonable period of time I was clothed in the open backed hospital garment, hooked up to tubes that provided saline solution, and was seeing a doctor.

Very significantly, without listening to my report on possible causes of my pain, he diagnosed me as having a diseased gall bladder.

Eventually I was required to submit to a test that provided a picture of what was happening in the area of my pain. My blood and urine were also tested.

About 8 pm that evening, five hours after I had entered the emergency room, the doctor who had initially seen me, came to tell me that the results of my tests would be given to me by a surgeon, but first I should see the doctor who assisted that surgeon who needed to collect some information.

That assistant came to see me and while collecting the information delivered the bad news. That in fact my gall bladder was diseased and to correct this condition and stop the pain would require that I have surgery.

The first part of the treatment which would take place the next day, he suggested, would be to clear the blockage in the gall bladder, following that the diseased gall bladder would be removed. The surgeon’s assistant did indicate that the surgeon was a bit brusque, the explanation that he gave for this inadequacy was that he was a surgeon.

It was obvious that they had mistaken me for one of the benighted alumni of the American Public School System, who had not had any extended contact with surgeons, somebody who viewed them as Gods and who would therefore be amenable and passive; and, willing to go along with the surgeon’s prescriptions without question.

The only person who had any perception of who I was, was the attending nurse who remarked on how calm I was, despite the pain I was suffering. She said she had previously made the acquaintance of another Jamaican senior citizen, who exhibited the same emotional equilibrium.

Shortly after the interview that was supposed to prepare for the arrival of this godly surgeon, I heard him approaching. Even before he entered the room I could hear him loudly interacting with the personnel outside. I clearly heard the emergency room doctor
asking him if I could return on some future occasion for the surgery, to which he replied loudly, arrogantly and abrasively as if he were a supernatural being, as if his diagnosis or treatment schedule could not be questioned. I was aware that his bedside manner would be much more like a blowtorch, cutting, abrasive and destructive, than the caring, knowledgeable professionalism that I required from health care providers.

And so it was, he delivered his diagnosis as if he were berating me for some misdeed, not in any sense as if he were providing a service that I would have to pay for. Two days before I had had my sixtieth birthday, yet he spoke to me as if he were addressing a recalcitrant and willful child.
I listened respectfully and quietly to what he had to say, I was after all still hooked up to various tubes, and I had no idea how far these medical personnel were willing to go to further what I had become sure was just another South Florida scam, how far they would go to further their nefarious design.

When I did not agree to go along with his program, when it became clear that I would not stay overnight in the hospital, and have the blockage in my gall bladder cleared, and have this ‘diseased’ organ removed by him, his fulminations and loud shouting died down and he left the room.

He was quickly replaced by the emergency room doctor, who apologized for the bedside manner of his colleague, but told me that despite this I was in fact close to death’s door, and that if I did not submit to their ministrations I would not last two weeks.

I rejoined that I had never in all my life, in all my long life, been subjected to such a racist, disrespectful diatribe from a health care provider, that whatever I chose to do I would never consider for a moment having the arrogant, abrasive and completely lacking in civility surgeon lay a finger on me. Having taken care of that, I asked him if there were other options open to me.

He said, again and again, that surgery was the only option that would give me surcease from the intense pain that I was suffering. I told him that I could not afford it, that I lived alone and could not just submit to surgery without making arrangements to protect my livelihood, pay my rent and do the other things that prevent me from becoming destitute as a result.

He said I was jaundiced, he said that the urine test had indicated that the organ was not functioning and that if I left the hospital without having the surgery done I could not expect to live for more than two weeks. He said that if I was driven back to the hospital by the pain I would face the same diagnosis.

I told him that I had never had surgery in my life, and that before I contemplated such a radical and extreme solution, I would need a second, or even a third opinion. I told him that if he had no other treatment option to offer I was going home.

He said I would have a sign a waiver indicating that relieved the hospital of any responsibility for my action. I agreed to sign such a waiver.

The nurse who had attended me came to remove the tubes from my arms. She also attempted to close me, to get me to accept their diagnosis and stay overnight in the hospital. I use a metaphor from the sweatshops of Fort Lauderdale deliberately, because that is how it seemed to me, whether selling cruises, or hotel packages, or septic helper, if the salesman, in this case the surgeon whose beside manner was about as subtle as a blowtorch failed to close the sale, there is a manager who makes a second attempt, and most times another closer - if the mark remains on the phone that long. The tubes in my arms precluded me leaving, forcing me to listen to the arguments and importuning of several health care providers.

As a footnote to this incident, and to confirm I did listen to what they were saying; I heard the one component of their combined diatribe of misinformation and scam that seemed logical, that my gall bladder was plugged. I ceased taking the anti acid pills which would have precipitated that situation in the days and weeks following my return home. I also drank a lot of liquids and never suffered a recurrence of pain and discomfort.

Shortly thereafter, having completed three months of employment, I got on the medical plan of the Company who ran the sweatshop and had a complete physical, that indicated I was in perfectly good health, none of the tests indicated that I had a diseased gall bladder.

Also, the peak sales season came to an end in September, the phone center was no longer deluged by orders, and I began to have access to two breaks in the eight hour work day, breaks moreover that I could take early enough that I did not suffer so intensely the pangs of hunger so I was able to survive workdays without again resorting to anti acid pills.

My take on this situation is that they are too many hospitals in Broward County serving too few patients. So to maintain the profitability of these institutions the medical personnel must resort to these nefarious schemes to scam individuals into staying overnight and submitting procedures which they do not need.

I enquired at work and quickly discovered a female colleague who had had her gall bladder removed. I also heard in a television news report about a mother who was being prosecuted for abusing her teenaged daughter that indicated that the daughter also had had her gall bladder removed.

It is clear that the gall bladder, like an appendix, can be removed without any serious long term ill effects, and that anyone who reports to the emergency room with stomach pains is very likely to have this procedure done, whether it is indicated or not.

I am still in possession of my gall bladder and so could prove if required that it is not diseased, had it been removed proving malpractice on the part of the health care providers at Broward General Hospital would be exceedingly more difficult.

And there is another dimension to this story - the cost of this malpractice. In the ensuing weeks I began to receive dunning phone calls and written statements indicating that I owed Broward General Hospital upwards of Four Thousand Dollars for the failed attempt of their personnel to scam me, an incident during which they prescribed me no medicine to relieve my discomfort, or any treatment option that related to my predicament.

Consider that for the entire year my income was less than Twenty Thousand Dollars, and that in one evening which I spent languishing in the emergency room and then protecting my physical self from the intrusion, the wholly unwarranted surgical intrusion of these medical hacks and scam artists, I accumulated debts totaling more than one fifth of my income for that year. Can any reasonable individual fail to perceive that there is something seriously wrong with the health care system in this nation, that a crisis exists in the health care system?

While on the subject of crisis, even while taking a break, a well deserved much need break from writing this, I happened to see the Oprah Winfrey Show, and the topic for the day was the crisis in education.

Ms. Winfrey in the presence of several teachers and parents, regaled us with the information that the Reverend Jesse Jackson had brought to her attention that there was a crisis in American schools, that she had examined the situation herself, and agreed that a crisis did indeed exist, and that together with Time Magazine, whose latest issue contained an article, “The Dropout Nation,” and Bill and Melinda Gates, action was being taken to alert the nation of this urgent and disastrous development.

On this web site, I have recently published an article, in which I indicated that human action was always and perennially too little, too late, and posited reasons that together gave a logical explanation for this phenomena.

This initiative by Ms. Winfrey et al, reinforces my position to a degree that should, and I feel constrained to emphasize the word should, completely validate my findings. Indeed, it should, for the first time at last, give credence to my analysis and cause my theory on what constitutes the major obstacle to human progress to be given widespread consideration. But will it?

From the perspective of my world view, the appreciation by Ms. Winfrey et al, that a crisis exists in education, is two decades too late. I am also completely at odds with what is being implied is the cause of this crisis. Ms. Winfrey took us through the lens of television cameras to the site of an inner city where drop out rates were very high, and then to a school some thirty five miles away in the suburbs of Chicago, where the drop out rates were very low, the implication being that the problem is insufficient resources, proving again the degree to which individuals in this nation are influenced by social welfare ideologies.

My take on the problem, is that the rot began to set in, in education, when the schools were desegregated in the Sixties and early Seventies, and white parents caused corporal punishments to be no longer permissible in public schools because they did not want black teachers to be able to apply this form of motivation to white students.

Predictably, very predictably discipline and order suffered, indeed, teachers for most of the class were engaged in the futile attempt to preserve order, and very little time was spent in teaching or learning.

But teachers still had to produce results, or give the appearance that students were being educated, so ways and means had to be found to move pupils up through the system, means had to be found to give the appearance that students were achieving good grades.

These means were found and more and more examples surfaced of pupils graduating high school without being able to read or do simple sums, but these were ignored and swept under the carpet as being aberrations.

Over time, unions of teachers became one of the most powerful political organizations in the nation, so for any politician to expose the gigantic fraud that was being perpetuated in classrooms across the nation became close akin to political suicide.

I suspect that the failure to expose this fraud had another major contributing factor.

Education before the end of the Second World War had been limited to the few. If the son or daughter of a poor family received a good education it was on scholarship, and the number of such welfare cases was manageable, and their impact on the status quo limited.

When it seemed that education, free public education, was to become available to all, the powers that be became fearful that their position and hegemony could never be maintained if the poor had untrammeled access to education, and they did little to rectify the situation, the dire crisis in education in the USA when it became apparent in the decade of the Eighties as a result of corporal punishment no longer being possible in Public Schools.

I migrated to the USA on the 22nd August, 1984. I thought I could be successful - armed with the skills I had, and eventually was disabused of this notion six years later when I arrived in Fort Lauderdale with the clothes on my back after suffering business reverses in the flea markets of Central Florida.

In 1990 I enrolled at Fort Lauderdale College prompted by a television advertisement. In two years, after accumulating very substantial debts and obligations from student loans I had received and not learning anything new, I switched to Broward County Community College.
I switched because I concluded that Fort Lauderdale College was a total scam, but hoped that the educational institution associated with the governmental bureaucracy would be a viable institution of learning.

In early 1996, a more than a decade ago, I wrote a letter to the Head of Communications Department at the Central Campus of Broward Community College that ended with the following opinion of the brand of education offered at that institution:

Where it was supposed to teach students to perceive social reality, it creates delusions. Where it was supposed to create attitudes and aptitudes the application of which would foster independence, it perpetuates dependency. Where it was supposed to liberate the wretched of the earth, victims for hundreds of years of unbridled capitalism, it causes them to internalize and take as part of their intellectual makeup attitudes equivalent to the manacles and shackles that so long festooned and chafed their bodies.

BCC is graduating students who are qualified only to perform tasks while lying on their backs or on their bellies, or, kneeling where those whom they serve have an excellent view of the tops of their heads.

They are being prepared for low paying ‘service’ jobs, where they toil endlessly on a treadmill of poverty and negative circumstances. Or, deal drugs or participate in other criminal activities. Always believing that their teachers did the best for them but that their condition is what they deserve and all that they are worth.

Education become mind destroyer, perpetuator of dependency, and pacifier all in one neat bundle.

Fort Lauderdale is the scam capital of the nation and the Faculty at BCC is involved in what has to be the sweetest scam of all. A scam that causes teaching to be so easy, one in which so many impressionable and vulnerable young people respect and depend on you. Even if some crazy old guy rats on you, you will still have TENURE.

During my stint in politics I thought I observed beings who plumbed the depths of human depravity. I revised that estimate after observing the relations between drug dealers and addicts. After seeing what Instructors are doing at BCC under the guise of respectability I am again revising that estimate.

I include in this indictment the minority who are teaching college level courses at BCC. They are guilty because of their silence, or worst because they tell students, in graphic detail about the fraud being perpetuated against them, but never speak out in forums where this information might make a difference.

I am a resident alien, one of those who are being bound and trussed by the different Propositions being considered in diverse States. We are being prepared to be scapegoats for the failure of America. Yet I feel so strongly about this issue that I will try to tell everyone who will listen about the real deal at BCC. I intend to ask them to examine the schools and colleges in their areas to see whether this cancer in education is present and having the same effect.

This will be like charging hell with a bucket of water but for one element of hope. If we have applied more than fifty years of free compulsory education to this society and this has resulted in a secular decline and deterioration in family life, rising levels of crime and drug abuse, and governmental action that is patently inadequate and futile; there is no hope that we can create a functioning democracy in America. If the brand of education that I have described is the one that has been in vogue, we might reform it and create a whole new world.

This letter was dated February 20, 1996. I spent the intervening years trying to sound the tocsin in this nation. I wrote numerous letters to the media, to politicians at every level to try to alert Americans to the dire peril to the nation created by what was happening in the classroom. I wrote to Jesse Jackson in my attempt to spread the alarm. All my efforts were ignored.

Now, a decade later, Ms. Winfrey et al have belatedly joined in this crusade. It may be that they will be too little, and much too late in their efforts to overcome a problem that is now of such a magnitude and so deeply embedded that it may be impossible to root it out.

It does not help that they seem unable to accurately describe the problem. Politicians have been grappling with this problem continuously and unsuccessfully, as evidenced by the “No Child Left Behind” program instituted by the current Administration.

They have failed because they have not the courage to confront the fundamental issue, low levels of motivation in the classroom, and the illicit means teachers have developed to appear to have overcome this lack. No politician, or celebrity, or talk show host can deal with this problem, it is the responsibility of parents. Only they have the will and the numbers to successfully confront and precipitate the behavior modification necessary in teachers.

I wish them every success, as I have been trying unsuccessfully to communicate for the past decade, this is the most urgent and gigantic obstacle to human progress in every functioning democracy.

I also feel constrained to state that the school in the suburbs of Chicago might be successful because parents of the majority of those students did something as simple as reading to them regularly at an early age, and they learned to pay attention. I am suggesting that the inner school children, the majority of whom are baby sat by televisions have not learned to pay attention, to sit quietly and listen while someone reads to them, necessitating that this lesson be learnt in school, a behavior modification that timeouts and other alternatives to corporal punishment cannot achieve, especially when there is present at least one crack baby.

The fundamental difference between my perspective and my actions, and that of every other human being that I have knowledge of, is that I can subordinate my interests to the common good. That this is not about me, my objective, the application of my intellectual efforts, of my writing skills has had the same end in view from the beginning of this quest, to create a matrix in which each and every child, regardless of race, or national origin, has the possibility of happiness.

Also, I feel constrained to state that my take is that the immigration issue has been contrived to divert attention from the pressing need to impeach President Bush and end the war in Iraq.

We confront individuals at the moment in history who are totally addicted to and corrupted by power, who will do anything to maintain control of the levers of power, despite the disastrous consequences implicit in their actions for the American people, and for humanity as a whole.

Just as they found and promoted an issue to divide the American people, homosexuality, to ensure their victory in the last Presidential election, they have found an issue to divide and divert attention from their criminal and irrational misdeeds.

I am not so easily distracted by their shenanigans, or by the demonstrations of the thousands who are, I know that to save America’s soul we must impeach this rogue President and bring home the troops from Iraq. I am as likely to lose sight of this primary objective, as I am to fall prey to any of the scam artists of South Florida.

I have left the jungle behind, I will neither play the role of predator, or prey. I stand unmoved and uninvolved, a spectator to the intense competition for goods and services in South Florida, I will not exploit any individual to satisfy any of my innate or socially learned drives, nor will I allow anyone to exploit me.

I will be constructive and never destructive in response to the predatory proclivities of individuals and organizations in South Florida. I will turn the other cheek, and nothing that occurs here will diminish my capacity for civility, compassion and love. The future holds no mysteries for me, I have been made free by the practice of the discipline of truth.

MY HIP HOP PSALM

The psychedelic, fissionable material of my transcendent existence,
Is approaching its apocalyptic, critical, lethal mass.
The time has come for me to discard, and disengage myself
From the phobias and fears that hobble and ground me;
And belatedly embrace without reservation or restraint,
The faith that could wholly enliven and emancipate me.
I have got to stop sweating the choice I made, twenty eight years ago;
I had no alternative then, if I were to continue to be in harmony with those cosmic forces,
That I sense exist just beyond the scope of my rudimentary, primitive philosophy;
If I were to retain my selfhood, my fragile integrity.
If I were to continue feeling other human beings - And I have no choice today.
My aspiration should be to become a tight verse over that perfect beat,
Yet I continue to struggle on the treadmill of this social system - going nowhere,
Straining with every fiber to fit in, where I never can, where I should not in good conscience have any desire to.
I must break the chains and shackles that connect me to possessions, to material things;
To my sixty inch television and my DVDs, and my status in the sorry scheme of bling bling.
I have got to be gully, and find joy in it.
And accept what existence has made of me, and never again quibble
Over the gift of my life, that I freely, deliberately and voluntarily dedicated, to the service of my God.

I wrote this poem three years ago, and as usual, it was replete with prophesy.

Even before the training program in the sweatshop ended, I knew what was limiting the development of that organization structure. I saw the vicious circle in which that Company was trapped.

They had an absolute, black and white view of what their employees should be, but could never find a sufficient number of employees that were capable of meeting their requirements so they perennially lost twenty per cent of the calls into the center during the peak season.

In the search for employees who could meet these requirements, they engaged in continuous training during that season. They lost a large percentage of those they trained, and when this was combined with attrition among the staff already in place, continuous training produced no significant net increase in staff. Yet they could not come to the realization that what they required was unrealistic and unattainable by most human beings.

They persevered in the belief that the perfection that they required of their staff was an attainable and realistic goal, that if they trained enough people they would find a sufficient number of staff who were capable of perfect attendance, who were never late, or never absent for any reason. They remained oblivious of the effect of working conditions had on staff turn over, they had no idea that working conditions at the location were intolerable, dehumanizing and degrading.
As staffing levels declined they applied even more draconian measures in the futile attempt to reduce the amount of dropped calls, causing more and more employees to leave because they could not meet these standards or because the pressure of meeting these standards became too much to bear. And the more and more they required of the staff the less they required of themselves, a double standard that was most apparent with the onset of Hurricane Wilma.
The company had a generator but failed to have it serviced before the hurricane made landfall. For three full days customers could not make contact because the telephone service required electricity to work, orders were not filled and customers had no way of finding out why or when shipments would resume.

Employees who reported to work on the day following the hurricane were requested to wait for two hours to see if the generator could be made serviceable. This scenario was replayed on the second day. Those faithful souls who attended work, and waited on these two days were not paid for those hours, a promise was made that they would be paid for the gasoline they used but even this minimal obligation was not fulfilled.

On Thursday of that week the generator came on line, and provided power to some twenty five stations allowing electronic mail to be processed. On Friday, four days after the departure of the hurricane, was the first occasion on which customers could talk to a live person.

Normality was returned on the following Tuesday, when a generator capable of running the operation came on line. This was too late for the second shift which was decimated, most of these individuals worked this shift because they were working two jobs, or had to go to school during the day, or had other commitments that made it imperative for them to work the evening shift, this shift was down for a full week and when it resumed most had found alternative employment.

From my first day on the phones I identified the most rational manager and began through him promoting the notion that instead of more draconian penalties the Company should move in the other direction, a more functional approach which would cause them to reduce staff turnover and achieve their objective of reducing the amount of calls lost.

I entertained the hope that a management that had such an enlightened view of relations with their customers, a modus operandi which had such a positive impact on their business, could come to the realization that a similar approach would increase production and productivity among their employees.

Most of my attempts to demonstrate to managers that a more enlightened approach would be functional were misconstrued. When I did not request a break as we processed electronic mail on the Thursday after the hurricane departed, they evinced surprise. What I was trying to demonstrate was that in an emergency situation like the one that obviously existed at that time, I would be happy to sacrifice my break - but not as part of the regular schedule.

When I asked if we would be paid for the hours that we waited to hear if the generator was fixed, management replied that we could not be paid because we did not take any calls. When I persisted, it was stated that those individuals would be reimbursed for the gasoline they used, though this promise was never fulfilled.

This management and the governmental bureaucracy in South Florida shared the same attitude towards those who received wages that are so depressed that they live from paycheck to paycheck, without the possibility of saving anything. The vast majority of claims were denied which were based on lost wages, so the poor and the marginally employed bore the burden of hardship precipitated by the hurricane and the loss of electricity that was its aftermath.

Eventually, I began to see some positive signs, team leaders were chosen, and the Company began recruiting personnel directly instead of through an temporary agency. I actually witness a meeting of the management team that included employees of African American descent. A meeting was scheduled with all employees.

I entertained the hope that at that meeting a new direction would be announced that included working conditions that took into account the true intrinsic human nature of employees. It was not to be, the meeting was mandatory, attendance was required but when it was convened the management has nothing to say, there was so little substance that it could have been accurately described as a complete waste of time. I was so disappointed that I let it show.

On my next day at work I was called to a meeting with the highest ranking manager in the Call Center. He called me a cancer in the operation, he said I stuck out like a sore thumb. I asked if this had something to do with my performance on calls, or the way I did my job. He said it did not, it was clear to me that it was because I displayed disappointment with the meeting. Next he asked if I was happy working there. I hesitated, because in all the time I had worked there, I had never heard any worker indicate they were happy with the job, every worker was aware that these were the worst conditions that a human being could confront. In the lunchroom there were two microwaves, both were filthy and in poor working condition, and served too many employees so that the wait on a half an hour lunch break seemed interminable.

Eventually I dissimulated and said happiness was a subjective term. He told me that he would do anything for the firm, that if they asked him to run on the spot in front of the time clock he would gladly do it. I realized that was why he had the job, because he would blindly carry out any directive, without questioning it. It could not be because of his management skills because he obviously knew as little about management as I did about brain surgery, it was because of the blind and unconditional loyalty that he demonstrated that caused him to be the ideal candidate to manage the sweatshop.

On the following day I asked him if he wished to document the very serious charges he had made the day before. He said he had never call me a cancer, that he had never said that I stuck out like a sore thumb, he said I had misunderstood his comments.

To cut a long story short, a few months later, I abandoned this employment, even though I knew that this action would cause me to have to hit the road again, that it would cause me to lose most of the pitiful belongings I had accumulated during my stay in South Florida. I just grew tired of the abuse and humiliation being heaped on me by wholly immoral completely oblivious semi illiterate individuals whom I was doing my best to help. As evidence of the literary skills of that absolutely loyal manager I present the following:

Good morning/afternoon,

I just wanted to remind EVERYONE that we will not authorized anyvacation requests between March 1 and Sept 15thWe are way to busy during that time and cant afford anyone beingout during the above time period. If you give us a requestit will be denied without pay, if you choose to take it withoutauthorization it will treated as a no call no show. Its is criticalthat everyone understands this rule. We get to March every yearand the requests come in daily.....we will not take them this year at all. Please make sure to use your time wisely andof course you will not lose it if your time is up, it will carryover to the off season in which you can use it then.

Thank you very much!!!

Employers are required to provide vacation time for employees, does the law permit employers limiting employees to taking such accrued time off only during certain months - because this employee has such poor working conditions in place that there is always a shortage of qualified staff?

To prove beyond doubt that the problem is cultural, let me relate one final incident.

A few days before Christmas I received an e mail message from my brother, to say that my mother had fallen and broken some ribs. He indicated she was in the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital, and he requested that I go and see her and supervise her care.

This seemed to be a genuine emergency and I proceeded to do what I could. I had prevailed upon a community outreach organization to pay the major portion of my rent for the preceding month and part of my electric utility bill, based on hardship preceding out of losses in income and other circumstances arising out of the advent of Hurricane Wilma.

I had succeeded in having this claim satisfied whereas most others had failed. Because of this I had a few extra dollars which I had decided I would use to purchase a cell phone and take some woman on a date, something I had not done in several years. So even after purchasing the cell phone, I had a few extra dollars with which to meet this emergency.

Having accepted this duty, I entered into it with dedication, thoroughness and zeal. I spent Christmas and New Year’s Eve in the hospital. I spent most of my hours away from work there. It was clear my mother was hallucinating and giving her care givers a hard time.

I did as much as I could to reduce the amount she abraded them. I listened patiently as she paraded her delusions. When she indicated that she had difficulty eating the institutional fare I brought her dinner, purchased from various restaurants. I also purchased an extra dinner for the nurse attending her to create goodwill.

When she indicated that she was cold I purchased her a warm nightdress. When she was thirsty I went to the supermarket and got numerous cans of the beverage she liked. As usual, I did too much, I went outside my budget and knew I would suffer privation for it in the following month.
After about ten days she had recovered sufficiently that she could return home. On my first visit to her residence as I listened to her, I realized she was again in her right mind, she was no longer hallucinating, her attempts to deceive and obfuscate were deliberate.

She interjected into the conversation that one of her boarders was not paying his rent.

That rent she told me on this occasion was Three Hundred Dollars that he paid twice a month. She seemed to forget that she had told me previously that his rent was Three Hundred Dollars, and that she had never stated that he paid it twice per month.

She went on to provide a litany of his faults, he was bringing home items from the construction sites where he worked, filling her space with rubbish. He had strung a line that he was using to dry his clothes. As she went on and on, she prompted me to remember what I knew of her relations with this individual.

He had been her support through the massive and intensive emergency that Hurricane Wilma had been. He had put up the shutters that had protected her home from damage. He had cooked for her, using wood as a fuel when electricity was not available. Without him it would have been difficult for her to survive.

I had not thought to contact her prior to the advent of the hurricane, because I was aware that on the several occasions I had done so since I had lived in South Florida, she had refused my help, she had declined to admit that she ever needed help.

My take on the situation was that she never took any help from me, because she did not want to feel beholden to anyone in my situation. She would not take any favors, especially from someone as poor as I was, because she did not want to be called upon to return any favors. She would take but only from those who would never require anything in return from her, in Jamaica it would have been said “she was so mean, she would not give away prayers.”

But now, circumstances and events had demonstrated that she needed my help, she was over eighty years of age and could no longer live alone, as her recent fall and its aftermath had demonstrated. What she was doing was negotiating the terms, the basis of our future close association.

When she had told me that her boarder was paying Three Hundred Dollars as his monthly rent, perhaps she had lied, to seem his benefactor and create the illusion of generosity.

But now she had another objective in mind, my paying her to live with her and take care of her, as much as she knew I paid to live in the apartment complex which was my current habitat where my rent was upwards of Six Hundred Dollars each month.

Also, for some reason she could not simply tell her boarder that she required that he move, because she palpably needed a family member close by, so she was itemizing grievances and creating a situation that would place on me the burden of telling him to move.

Even as she was speaking she was causing to remember an incident she related when her defense mechanisms were inoperative in the hospital.

She had reported then that she had hired a contractor to convert the garage she no longer used, since she no longer owed a motor vehicle, into a den. His motor vehicle broke down in the middle of the job, and so that he could finish the conversion she had loaned him Fourteen Hundred Dollars to be the down payment on the new vehicle he needed to purchase, and cosigned the loan at the car dealership.

As she spoke to me in the hospital, she indicated how much she regretted this lapse in judgment and lamented as to its cause. She wanted me to help her get her money back, and be relieved of the obligation implied when she cosigned the loan agreement for a total stranger.

I compared and contrasted her generosity towards that stranger with her treatment of me, and of her other close family members. On numerous occasions during the period I had lived in South Florida, my penchant for doing the right thing, had landed me in hot water.

It had precipitated occasions when I could not pay my rent, or get enough to eat. She had never helped me during those hard times, yet she displayed open handed generosity to complete strangers, and here she was, needing me to live with her to insulate her from the vagaries and pitfalls of old age, and pay her the maximum rent possible while doing this.

And she was trying to achieve this objective by telling me facile lies.

I do not relate this sad tale out of malice, but because it is a means of forcibly bringing to the attention of my readers the duality and dichotomy that lames the higher mental processes of human beings. What I am trying to communicate is that though the circumstances and context are different the methodology of all the actors is the same in all the incidents I have described, on every occasion I have confronted the same dread, insensate visage of predation.

My mother knows, beyond doubt, that I am not in any way repressed. During the time we were forced to spend a lot of time in each other’s company because of her ill health, to overcome boredom and enliven the antiseptic and depressing atmosphere of her hospital room I recalled episodes from the past that demonstrated the quality of my memory.

I reminded her that we visited a friend of hers who lived in the town of Lucea in the Parish of Hanover in Jamaica when I was less than two years old. I reminded her that I was placed on the saddle of a very large horse, or so it seemed to me then, which was ridden by the mailman, was terrified, and squalled loudly to communicate that terror.

I do believe that was the genesis of my fear of heights. When I spoke to her I could not remember the name of the friend she visited as I related that tale to entertain her and caused her to forget her discomfort in the hospital; I have since recalled that name, her friend’s name was Gwen.

When the manager on the job described me as a cancer, and said that I stuck out like a sore thumb, and I called him down on it, to convince me that he had not said anything of the kind, he had a number of individuals questioning my memory of the incident. One, the dirty old man, had the effrontery and gall to say that I was paranoid.

I have done the reading in normal and abnormal psychology and completely understand what the label paranoia implies, yet I do not consider myself qualified to describe anyone as paranoid, and I wondered what qualified him to apply this label to another human being, and knew it was the same combination of ignorance and arrogance that caused that made him appear to be a dirty old man.

I am not paranoid, I am rational. I am protected from paranoia and most other forms of mental illness because I tell the truth. To prove this beyond the shadow of a doubt let us together examine my methodology of turning the other cheek, or in more contemporary language, as I attempt to enlist the cooperation of other human beings.

I am leaving South Florida, as I once was forced to leave Jamaica, and the reason is that I have attempted to improve function by describing problems accurately. Why is this such a problem, why has this been a problem from the beginning of the human story? Because of the dichotomy and duality embedded in human culture, because of the difference between concept and precept, because of the difference between what people say, and what people do.

As I have said ad nauseam, so many, many, many times before, this dichotomy was produced by the fact that to survive humanity had to become adept at using force, they had to become efficient predators, which had the inevitable consequence of embedding in human culture the roles of predator and prey.

With the development of ethics, the premature development of ethics, to continue to think well of themselves, to preserve their self esteem, in a world still in a state of flux, physically, socially and politically; an environment which was not permissive of the practice of these ethics, human beings learned to pay lip service to these principles, to pretend to practice these principles, and be unaware that they were doing this, producing a steadily widening gap between concept and precept.

The fundamental conflict in the human story since time immemorial has been between rational action based on the fact, and irrational action based on interests.

To break this down so that it can be comprehended, let us examine what is implicit in my approach. In this document I have described the reality of my experiences, in an attempt to improve function, and make this a learning experience for those involved. I have not named the Company involved, or made this a formal compliant, or engaged in a lawsuit against this anonymous Company. If I did that, I would create an adversarial situation, which would require the Company to defend itself, and make it unable to learn from its mistakes.

All the conflicts of the past, between absolute rulers and the nobility, between the those who invested capital and owned property and the government, between the working class and constituted authority, between women and the constituted authority, between minorities and the government, none of these conflicts have resolved the fundamental issue, the conflict between what is rational and what is irrational. In fact, these conflicts have hardened attitudes.

The basis for the conflict is that those with power at the beginning of the human story, with no other model for social interaction to draw on but that of predator and prey concentrated in their hands all rights and privileges.

Over the many millennia of human history more and more groups have gained social, political or economic power and joined the competition for goods and services, perpetuating and intensifying the conflict, with dominance passing from one group to another with the ebb and flow of events and circumstances but with function remaining a goal to be sought after but never attained.

The thing is, when rights, wealth or privileges were distributed at the outset, the basis was power, might was right, the law of the jungle prevailed. Over time the balance of power has changed, but the ideational paradigm that is the basis of human culture, the ethos of human culture has remained the same. What facilitated competition, that permitted human beings with consciences to compete, to enslave others and make them serfs, to exploit others, was this mechanism that produced a lack of awareness, and created an ever widening gap between concept and precept.

What moral men and women, like Jesus and the prophets, like Joan of Arc, like Francis of Assisi, like Martin Luther, and Frank Serpico, and myself have done, that is so terrible and unforgivable is expose and highlight the differences between concept and precept that is permissive of the application of coercion which produce function in the existence of every individual and every organization since the beginning of time.

To do this these moralists have had to be able to endure intense privations, because as is palpably clear in South Florida, the price of satisfying the innate drives of human beings for food, shelter, sex, companionship etc. is to play the role of predator or prey, those who dare to reject playing these roles, whether they cannot because they have not been socialized to the skills that would permit them to, or whether they will not because they perceive that this runs counter to function and the common good, endure poverty.

“Not knowing what he said, he said it.” This is another quote from the greatest novel of imagination of all time, “Dune,” by Frank Herbert. That ranking manager from that anonymous Company defined this issue, he remarked that I was able to give great customer service by playing the role of prey to callers, by in effect acting consistent with the dictum that the customer was always right, but was unable to do the same to further the objectives of the Company.

What he was implying that I should take breaks and vacations at the convenience of the agents of the Company, no matter the effect on my health, accept that the dirty old man should rub my shoulders and tell he loved me at work and not demur or resist these assaults on selfhood and individuality. He would do anything for the Company and he felt that I should, and could follow his example.

He was oblivious of the fact that what I was doing was what worked, what contributed to function in both cases, and further that I was applying the same values.

At the beginning of the human story those with power used that power to fulfill their innate
drives - without the slightest consideration as to the needs of others. It is popular, as we look back in history to believe that the actions of our ancestors were informed by values, they were not. Those with power did what they wanted, and those who resisted in any way were subject to draconian penalties. We repress the information that for all but two hundred years of human history overt coercion buttressed this system.

Today, information is power. The sweatshop I worked in exists because the wider society does not know what is happening there. And for another reason, the time and money it takes to successfully prosecute a lawsuit. If Maryann, for example, was to institute a claim for damages, as soon as agents of the Company became aware of this, she would be fired, and she may not get another job for a long period, and even with unemployment benefits she might not be able to support her family while her claims drags through the court, and she might not win the case because it would be her word against that of the dirty old man.

The old adage is true, “You cannot legislate morality.”

When dealing with customers I have the information, and therefore the power. In many situations and many call centers I was employed in, I used that information, that power in ways inimical to the customer, to cause them to buy products they did not need, or to defraud them in some other way.

In my last employment, the information was used in the interests of the customer.

Customers reacted by referring their friends and family to the Company, something unique in my experience. I entertained the hope that this approach to customers would spread nationwide, that this honest approach to customers would be adopted by used car dealers and other salesmen, that there would be honest advertising and customers would receive value for their money.

I still entertain that hope. I hope that some agent of that Company will see what I have written and learn from it. That they will start conforming with the basic rules and regulations and satisfy the needs of their employees, that they will treat them with the respect and consideration that they deserve.

The manager who described me as a cancer, deeply and sincerely believed that what he was doing was right and functional. He denied the request of Addie, a single parent who had an asthmatic child in the hospital, to leave early without pay, so she could be with that child, and believed that this would be a means of increasing her loyalty to the Company.

It was the slow season with few calls, the denial if it had rational grounds, was meant to impress upon her, that whatever the demands of family, she had to work her shift. He was unable to comprehend such arbitrary action would have the effect on most human beings, of causing the job to be a stopgap, something they did until they could find a real job, with employers who treated them with the requisite consideration and respect.

The same model applies to the arbitrary actions of the governmental bureaucracy, in fact because they have more power it is easier for them to resist change. There are sections of the media dedicated to airing the complaints and solving the problems of citizens, but complaints against the police or against government departments are not prosecuted in the media. “Help me Howard” is no help in the urgent need to reduce the incidence of legal murders perpetuated by the police.

The fundamental issue is that attitudes and institutions have not changed, or have changed very little in the past three hundred years as human beings have attempted to create functioning democracies.

There was no rational, considered reason for the institution of modern chattel slavery, a need for labor existed that could be filled by Africans, and the profitable Triangular Trade filled that need.

When opposition to the trade in human beings precipitated examination of that institution, the defenses of slavery were constructed out of the personality adopted by the slaves to survive the intense hardships and rigors of that institution. A completely irrational and prejudiced picture of the personality of Africans was constructed, and no matter how differently they acted when freed, that perception persists to the present day.

Also, because the system has not changed, and perpetuates the stereotypes and archetypes created by Absolutist regimes. An African could not be a good father during slavery because he did not have the means, socially or economically to fill that role. Contemporary Africans cannot be good fathers as they languish in poverty or in jail.

This model applies to every subordinated group because the attitudes that created the stereotype or archetype have not changed.

There will always be prostitutes as long as there are men who see women as prey, objects of exploitation, not human beings worthy of their respect and love.

Humans are capable of such feelings, April 23rd will be a very special anniversary for me, on that day I will celebrate thirteen years since I have had sexual relations with a woman, because I have developed beyond the system of exploitation that would allow me to satisfy my innate sex drive.

The modus operandi applied in the sweatshop is the same as the methodology used in the war on drugs, both are completely ineffective yet cannot be changed. The contrived brouhaha about immigration prompted some politician to say as much, it is impossible to prevent drugs or immigrants crossing the borders into the USA, other solutions must be found, and to find such solutions the problem must be accurately described.

The problem with drug abuse is that expectations created by television and other media about the way individuals should live and love, are completely different from what is possible for most human beings. Without the intellectual or philosophical means to confront or accept the sere reality of their lives, human beings resort to ways of creating forgetfulness and mindlessness, to alcohol, to drugs and possession by the spirit in church.

The solution must be to bring expectations and reality closer together, and to create ways for human beings to realize the quality of life they aspire to; at the same time educating individuals to a more rational and realistic appreciation and acceptance of what can be achieved.

What would solve the problem of immigration is if the USA could develop and export the means to overcome poverty. Human societies can be organized so that we can overcome poverty, but attaining that objective and preserving and perpetuating the status quo create aims that mutually exclusive.

No one would become a permanent resident in the USA, if they could achieve even a minimum quality of life in the nations in which they are born. The fuel driving migration is poverty, abject poverty. No cornucopia of policies will stem the tide of migration, except the means to relieve poverty in the numerous countries from which these immigrants come.

Poverty is not the only urgent problem confronting humanity. There is the problem of global warming.

Is it not clear that global warming is not only increasing the virulence and intensity of hurricanes, but of all weather systems. That the tornadoes that are claiming lives in the middle of the American continent, are more intense and, as a consequence, more dangerous as a direct consequence of global warming. It is time for urgent action or it is certain that individuals who wish to see the Statue of Liberty in the not too distant future will have to hire a submarine.

The inability to solve these problems have the same root cause. Humanity was driven up the steep incline towards civilization, to facillitate reliance on coercion meant that those doing the driving, and those who were driven had to be mindless, the higher mental processes of the vast majority of human beings were lamed during this process. This process was inevitable and unavoidable, humanity did not have a choice, the course of history was determined by the circumstance of evolution from a state of nature.

Yet there is a way for man to be free, to avoid destruction by the weapons he has created.

Telling the truth will transform irrational beings into rational beings,

To put this message in a Biblical context, to facillitate understanding, let us assume that Jesus had this same message. The message could not stand on its own at that time, because there was no way then to demonstrate the efficacy and power of facts. At that time the scientific establishment was very poorly developed.

So to convince the populace that morality was the bridge between fact and function, required that angels had to announce the arrival of the messenger, wise men had to validate the momentous circumstance of his birth, he had to be of a certain tribe, and he had to be seen to be fulfilling prophesies. He had to be able to perform miracles, he had to be seen to be without sin, and be able to overcome death.

Today, there is a burgeoning Scientific Establishment that has produced a very sophisticated technology that demonstrates, beyond reasonable doubt, the efficacy of facts, the relationship between facts and function.

Today, human beings routinely rise into the heavens borne by chariots of fire. Individuals who have stopped breathing are resuscitated by medical teams in the emergency rooms of hospitals.

These things, and all the other fruits of technology are a consequence of the application of the scientific approach, which creates ideas, principles and theories that accurately describe phenomena that occur in the physical environment.

Telling the truth, the foundation of morality, is a tool, a means of converting information into the facts that would support function. But like any other tool, you must use it to make it work, air conditioning will not cool your habitation - unless you turn it on, a fur coat will not keep you warm unless you wear it. And my message will not have any impact on your life unless you practice it.

By offering you the bare facts I pay you the highest compliment a human being can pay another.
I believe that you can overcome all that has been done over many millennia to lame your intellects. I demonstrate faith in the human capacity to learn, adapt and change, a characteristic never more urgently needed than at this specific moment in human history.

My enduring privation again and again, my periodically losing everything of social, economic or emotional value will remain meaningless and have no effect unless and until human beings become filled with, and galvanized to divest themselves of ways of thinking, myths, superstitions, illusions, delusions, prejudices, stereotypes and archetypes inimical to progress by embracing, and not crucifying, the Other Comforter promised and prophesied by Jesus, the Spirit of Truth.

William E. Virtue

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