I wanted to get back to talking about my dad, and it's possible I'll do this in dribs and drabs as things come to me that might be pertinent to inclusion here. In my last post devoted entirely to him you could have come away thinking he was virtually without flaws. (I forgot to mention that he didn't have a temper either. If he ever got angry when I was growing up he'd just go out for a walk. After that if something needed to dealt with, he did so calmly. But this was very rare, anyway.)
Of course in talking about flaws, I mean things I had issue with but other people may not agree with me, so this is very much a personal view and is about my relationship with my dad.
I think dad believed in his work and I don't have any indication that he any moral issues about it. Oh, I know, for example, he hated wearing a tie so that was irksome to him in his work, but that's not what I mean; I mean the big issue things like working as a defense contractor, working in star wars (SDI) in particular, the impact his work might have on his family.
Before he worked for Boeing he had been in the Air Force, having been called up by the draft at the end of the Korean War, although the war ended before he finished boot camp, so he never went overseas. But, as I understand it, that experience at some point got him pegged to work in aerospace at Boeing.
As you can undoubtedly understand, I tried to learn a bit more about what he did and I eventually came to the view that SDI wasn't very effective anyway and as such was a waste of tax payers money.
Well, be that as it may, dad had a job and I think he found some satisfaction in it as he got rewarded for doing good work. But over the years I've thought a lot about moral and ethical issues in various professions, and some professions I'd rule out as unethical in their very essence. One of the issues in anything military-related is how it might affect the family. At one point I tried to find out if there was a group or association out there of people like me who'd been affected negatively by family members (esp. parents) in military positions. I never found a group like that, but I've always wondered if anyone out there had every gone through anything like my troubles in trying to have a ministry in Eastern Europe. Of course, it would also depend on the type of military-related position too, as some positions might have more effects on family members than others.
Family members of the Vienna missionaries had restrictions put on them because of the nature of the mission work, but these were pretty well up front and commonly acknowledged. But what happens when one's work limits the professional opportunities of a family member, like a child? How does that then reflect on the morality of the position that results in the family member being limited? Or is that just a price we have to pay for the sake of the country (or democracy, or freedom, etc.)?
I understand that did did make some sacrifices for me, such as telling me once that it affected the type of contracts he could work on.
Well, the thing was that at every turn I seemed to have problems and I did everything I could, I was tenacious, I worked hard, but it never was enough. There was always something to block my way. Now it would probably be reckless of me, however, to presume that all of my troubles were related to my dad's work. But it's hard for me not to think that a good chunk of them were. I also don't know if he fully realized what I was experiencing or what was happening to me. He often tended to explain things away, unless there was something so obvious that he had to acknowledge something. That was the case when, after my return home from Vienna, I called the FBI to report the suspicious actions of a Soviet Goodwill Games guest, and when dad got the call from them at his work the next day we talked about it and he told me that sometimes the Soviets got a hold of employee lists. But this semi-admission of is work affecting me only happened because the FBI had acted on it. So that's pretty much what he needed in order to believe that any of my experiences were related to him. Of course, I don't know why he wouldn't admit these things unless pushed into a corner, so to speak, but this is how he seemed to me, for whatever reason.
I think he dealt with the conflict between my interests and his work by trying to find a balance that would let him work while trying to minimize possible impact on me. This makes me wonder how things would have been if he hadn't done that at least. I also wonder what he knew about the possible affects his work could have on me. He obviously was somewhat familiar with potential security problems and risks in his line of work, but there might have been gaps so that areas he didn't know about he dismissed, which also would take any responsibility off of him.
In recent years I've come to the belief that this country (the USA) is altogether too focused on defense and not enough on other areas. But dad didn't think that way. Still, his way of trying to take into account the possibility of his work affecting mine was to turn down certain contract assignments at work. This didn't seem to be enough, though, because I was affected by his work, despite his efforts to minimize that possibility. I'll probably never be sure how many of my problems were directly related to him, though.
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Now I should say a little about what all this kind of thing made me feel. I think I always could think about these kinds of rational explanatory perspectives, but it still often made me very angry at him, to the point that I cut off or severely limited relations with my parents for much of my time in Russia. I guess I still have some anger about it, but it's mellowed a lot as I've gone through other crises, most recently health ones, but also financial and relations with one of my brothers that tainted relations with the rest of the family. So now that I'm more distanced from those things the anger isn't as fresh.
But if I think of how my life could have been different and I wouldn't be where I am now, that I realize that I still have a tinge of anger left in me. I think though, that there are so many variables along the way that it's too mind-boggling of an exercise to try to figure out what might have been the best (or even just better) possible outcome at any particular juncture. It's sort of like the trails in the Wienerwald (Viennese Forest); I lived about 1/2 mile from one trailhead and enjoyed going hiking there, but I never could figure out the marking system. So if I were going to use the Wienerwald trail system as an epitype of my life, I'd right now be somewhere in the middle of the forest scratching my head looking at posts with a myriad confusing painted stripes of various colors on them, wondering how to get home again. And I might be thinking, "And which turn was it that got me in this mess... lost out here in the middle of nowhere?"
It's funny now to think that I used to make plans for my life, concrete goals, if you like, as to where I wanted to be in 1 year, 5 years, 10 years. It never turned out how I wanted it to. So now I live day to day and that's all I can keep up with any more. And I'm only 51. I wonder where I'll be in 5 years? or even in 1 year?
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This next article is:
Sutton, Robert I., & Louis, Meryl Reis. (1987). How selecting and socializing newcomers influences insiders. Human Resource Management, 26(3), 347-361.
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The first figure in this article provides a jumping off point for commenting. Across the top there are 4 broad areas (prior to interviewing, interviewing, hiring, socializing) presented on a time continuum. Then under each of these 4 broad areas are events that are situated on a diagonal to show time and sequence.
Since I've pretty much told you all I know about the "hiring" process (the word "hiring" isn't usually used in the faith mission setting), I'll just explore a bit the hiring and socializing events.
Under "hiring" there are 3 events in sequence: hiring, initial arrival (ceremonial) and orienting. I think my initial arrival did seem somewhat ceremonial in that I was practically smothered in efforts to welcome me and make me feel important and long-awaited. It was nice, but then what followed - the work itself, for example, was practically diametrically opposed to that lavish welcome. The orienting I got was mostly regarding logistics, such as registering my residence, where the grocery store was, how to use the laundry machine I could use at the office, etc. This orientation seemed pretty thorough and quite adequate.
Under "socializing" there are 3 more events: formal training, informal training, and telling newcomers stories about the organization. The mission, as far as I knew, never did formal training, so that didn't happen (including the German language classes we were supposed to be able to have). I didn't get much informal training, unless you count reading software manuals as informal training, but my secretary-mentor (my boss's boss's secretary) made herself available if I had any questions. She probably did things like show me where to get replacement supplies (paper, pens, etc.) and how the phone system worked, for example. As far as "telling newcomers stories about the organization" goes, I mostly got that kind of thing in the "big group" settings, although sometimes I might have heard some of these things ad hoc in other situations, but these weren't things that were part of socialization per se.
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Most of the article is devoted to "Seven Situations in Which Newcomers Can Influence Insiders." I'm going to skip over a bunch of these and go right to "Socialization" which is the only one (of the 7 situations) I'm going to address here.
"A member of one fraternity on the Stanford campus argues that, while passing through one's own initiation rites is important, a new member only becomes a 'true brother' in the fraternity after helping to plan and implement rites for others. His assertion is consistent with sound social-psychological principles. Planning and implementing initiation rites (or a training program for new executives) entails working with more senior insiders. Senior insiders are likely to explain to the rookie socialization agent the socially agreed upon reasons for various initiation rites - these inputs to sense-making may enhance the rookie's knowledge of organizational values and norms." (p. 356)
I think this was true of the Vienna mission context too. For example, it was interesting (I'm not sure that's the best word) to watch the secretary from Alaska who'd arrived just a few months before me. She did eventually, it seemed, become socialized and towards the end of my stay took a more active role in dealing with me (I don't know that by that time they were necessarily socializing me, but I still had relations with the mission so they had to do something with me.)
Also, this kind of a system assumes that you are willing to take part in something before you understand it well, since the "rookie" in this text was already a functioning part of the organization, but was still in a position to not fully understand the values and norms of it, or even to understand these enough to pass on the basics of them to someone else. This was untenable for me in the Vienna mission, as I've already discussed many times, because of my not believing in their way of doing things and the apparent values that under girded their actions.
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"Commitment is likely to increase because planning and implementing the initiation rites of others are acts that occur under conditions of high perceived choice, are explicit indications of commitment to the organization, are impossible to revoke once completed, and are public." (p. 357)
I agree with this, in that it probably fits the Vienna context, and it's even possible this happened intentionally, although I don't know for sure about that. I would add that being able to socialize others indicates that you have internalized the group's values and norms, because if you hadn't it would be very difficult to take part in passing these on to others and if you tried, because of the nature of the values and norms of the mission, you'd probably be found out - that you hadn't internalized them as much as was thought.
While typing this text I thought of another situation that might bear enough resemblance to be helpful. A couple years ago, when I was up north in New England living in an apartment my brother made available to me when I lost my last job for health reasons, I started getting massages by a nurse turned alternative medicine guru. As part of her work, she joined with a group that sold health products of various kinds that if used together could form a personal health system or "wellness home". Some of the things really intrigued me, but being the cognitive type I tried to find research confirming their claims but never could find any, and even the resources available for their representatives were more replete with testimonials and had practically no evidence of scientific research having been done on the effectiveness of their products (I looked at other places too like the National Library of Medicine).
Eventually my thinking about the organization developed like this: a person would begin to be interested in the products and would buy a few of the lower priced items. Eventually s/he might indulge in one of the more pricier pieces of equipment, and at that point s/he'd be eligible to become a representative his/herself and earn money off of others buying products. The more you get drawn into this system, then, the more you have invested in it and and committed to believing in it (otherwise you might find yourself thinking you were a fool for being duped). So, it's sort of self-feeding that way and hard to extricate oneself from without serious damages to one's ego (and possibly reputation among all those you'd sold items to).
Can you see how there could be a bit of a corollary between this illustration and rookie socializers? The thing is that you keep getting more responsibility and more knowledge and the more you've passed it on to others and the more you've gone public about your support of the mission's values and norms, the more you have invested in it and the harder it might be to extricate oneself from it, even if one wanted to. Anyway, it's just a thought. I think it's possible that there was a certain amount of this kind of thing in the Vienna mission.
Thankfully, I never had to socialize anyone. Can you iimagine what that would have been like? The mission would really have been in for a shocker.
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That's all for this article, and for today.
