This next thing I want to say about my dad is only true, I think, within very specific parameters, and as such will undoubtedly be met by a great volley of protests from people who knew them. So I want to be clear about the specificity of my observations here about him. That's going to be hard to do though, because I'm not very sure about the mechanisms involved (i.e., how or why exactly he fit the description I'm going to peg him with in certain ways and situations).
I think I've already demonstrated how my dad had fairly conservative gender views, but these weren't particularly extraordinary within the context of him aligning himself with both conservative Evangelical Christianity and also conservative Republican beliefs. Also, I should add that he did support my education efforts and might even have been proud of my accomplishments in this realm, so there was a limit to how pervasive his gendered views were.
But I think he also had a certain amount of ethnocentrism. How this became clear to me, was in a way, however that might have also had another motivating factor - a contributing variable in the equation, if you will - and that was regarding language.
At some point in my 20s we had at least one discussion about education, K-12 especially, in which we hammered out what each of us thought should or should not be required subjects in school. Language was one of those subjects we discussed, but so as physical education, for example. He didn't think language was necessary because English was the universal language anyway, so there wasn't such a need for it, in his opinion. I held the contrary opinion.
The other situation came up in a discussion about a recent business trip he had been on, in which, as he described it, the Swedes would discuss things amongst themselves in Swedish during the course of formal business discussions around a table. He got rather irate (at least "irate" in relation to his usual demeanor, which was normally very easy going and steady) that the Swedes had the gall to do that when the Americans couldn't understand what they were saying.
This was wrong on many levels (as one of my brothers is prone to say). Here were my reactions (spoken or otherwise):
1. You mean to tell me that a country the size of Boeing can't even send a single person to language school (such as Berlitz) to learn Swedish or even hire a translator?
2. Why should you expect Swedish people in Sweden not to speak Swedish? And, conversely, why should you expect Americans in Sweden to only get along speaking English?
3. And what happens when the Boeing people speak English amongst themselves?
Etc., etc.
I think you get the picture.
I think that dad probably did think of the USA as the best country in the world, although I'm not sure if I ever heard him say this specifically. He did enjoy travel to other countries though, but I think mom was probably the one that probably would have taken the lead in cultural understanding aspects of such travel or even relationships, such as ongoing relationships mom's maintained with Japanese exchange students they hosted over 20 years ago now. Although mom was naive enough (that's where I got it from, remember?), that she might have been bordering on a cultural relativism stance, at least in her actions and relations, if not her thinking. I think I've explained before that I'm not a cultural relativist because I believe in moral absolutes (biblical absolutes) against which all cultures - including my own - should be compared.
Hopefully you know me well enough now to understand how I might have been quite at odds with my dad in this area. So, for example, when he took steps to help me get out of Russia for good in 1997 he could well have been thinking about what scoundrels those Soviets/Russians were (I was first invited there when it was still the USSR) and that I was returning to a blameless country that very rightfully had been doing everything it could to maintain its best-nation-in-the-world status. I'm not sure to what extent he might have eventually believed that I didn't agree with this assessment. He did, however, come to understand that I had come to hold somewhat (!) more liberal political views than him. In returning to the USA, I was actually doing so only rather begrudgingly, thinking I might have a better chance of moving on with my life. In hindsight I think my reservations about returning were were not completely ill-founded.
So coming back to my assertion that I'm an equal opportunity criticizer... I don't think the same could have been true for dad. That is, he wasn't so blind as to think that the USA was perfect, but just that it was the best. But I think he still used the USA as a measuring stick by which to compare all other countries. And since I'm an idealist in the manner of St. Augustine, I used a different measuring stick by which all countries fall short, and this idealistic measuring stick allows for me to be somewhat more "equal opportunity" in my criticizing that dad could have been in making the USA his yardstick. That being said, however, it would also be naive of me to think that my being raised in the USA and in the family and other specific contextual confines that I was raised in didn't affect my view of what this idealistic yardstick might be. But my education, formal or otherwise, and experiences should have helped temper those early constrictions on my views as to what ideal might or might not be.
Also, I might add that I think dad was actually more informed than I was regarding the issues, even with my efforts to make up for certain gaps in my understanding and knowledge. But he was gracious enough that he didn't force his views on me, but let us sort of "agree to disagree" without forcing issues, and this is true for other areas we eventually didn't see eye to eye on. And we didn't see eye to eye in as much as I had changed, not him.
I do want to make sure to add here that dad didn't treat people in noticeably bigoted ways, probably because of several reasons, such as there being limits to these prejudices, his magnanimity and graciousness in how he related to others, and an ability to get past stereotypes to treat people as individuals.
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Now that we're all thoroughly confused on that score (just kidding, I hope that's not true!), let's move on to another arena, as defined by our next text:
Ott, J. Steven. (1991, Fall). Disentangling the rites of organizational passage. The Journal for Public Managers, 20(3), 53-56.
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"The government working environment is often highly political, which reduces the usefulness of rational objectivity for establishing reality. Rationality is only one of many realities..." (p. 53)
Ignoring the specific reference to government agency contexts, this point still is one, I think, well worth considering even in an organization like the Vienna mission. The way in which the usefulness of rationality as a means of functioning might have been limited within the context of the Vienna mission might be different than those described here (e.g., change of administration - Republican vs. Democratic), but I think there's still an element of truth to it (at least by way presenting a different and useful vantage point) vis a vis the Vienna mission context that it's worth pursuing, so I will do just that.
Of course, a major irony might be well worth noting before I get started, and that is my very use of rationality - both then and now- to disentangle the quagmire that the mission became for me. And, undoubtedly, the mission would also have preferred that I not be so bent on rationally trying to make sense of things - either then or now.
That being said, I don't think that I really believed that what was going on in the mission was completely rational in the sense of people having sat down and decided in a completely rational manner how the mission was going to run and that's how I found it when I arrived on the scene. No, I might have been naive, but I wasn't that naive. But, of course, my understanding of the potential non-"rational" aspects and impacts on that specific mission grew as I learned more about the organization over the course of the 2 years I was with it.
The "politics" part of how the mission came to be the way it was (and here I'm referring to the "office politics" kind of politics, which isn't to say I'm excluding the possibility of any other kind of politics, but just that I'm not talking now about anything else) involved somewhat of a balancing act in its attempts to please all 15 of the missions as well as the people in the countries they worked with. For example, specific aspects of theology had to be hashed out to not unduly raise the ire of any major party in the mix. So it is very possible that a good chunk of how the mission came to be the way it was is because of this kind of attempt to navigate potential land mines.
But understanding this, because of who I am (my personality, etc.) wasn't likely to make a lot of difference in whether or not I could go along with it, especially in things I had strong convictions about being wrong. In other words, I didn't/don't think making certain compromises could be validated just for the sake of pleasing everyone. This, of course, could use some fleshing out.
Part of the problem with this process (making compromises to please stakeholders) not only serves as a decision-making framework, but also becomes a part of the very value structure of the organization. That is, each time a decision is made in this manner, there is a byproduct of the process that is expression of and development of value structure. In this way, the organization comes place an ever increasing valuation on this as a proper and valid tool for decision making. But it also serves to construct and reinforce an organizational value structure, in that each time a decision is made using this method, it is decided, in regard to the specific issue at hand, that pleasing all parties is more important than the issue itself and also that the means used is more valid than any other means vis a vis that particular issue. Before you know it, pleasing everything is more important than anything else.
As a Christian and idealist one at that, that position was untenable in Vienna, although I couldn't have said it so succinctly then. But I think I did suspect something more or like this was going on behind the scenes. One of my concerns was, and is, not knowing who all the "stakeholders" were that were part of this process. That is, I knew who the missions were, but I wasn't sure if there was anything else going on or not, and the ambiguity and secrecy didn't help matters in that regard. In fact the extent of the ambiguity and secrecy, above and beyond what I thought was reasonably necessary only served to increase my concerns if anything.
Another problem is the assumption that it was necessary, above everything else, to try to please everyone. Was there a point at which it might have become inadvisable (in the eyes of the mission) to try to please everyone? As far as I was concerned there didn't seem to be such a point. And if there was such a point, what would have been the basis for it? The answer to that question could also be very telling about what the mission was really like at its heart.
Also, with this kind of a decision-making set up, its not too hard to see where such a set up could lead to excessive security measures, as it would be necessary to please the missions with the strictest security demands, and if different missions had different security requirements, then all of these different demands would need to be incorporated into the Vienna mission protocol. But again, that's assuming that the mission accepted the premise that pleasing everyone was more important than, say, at some point trusting God. In this way trusting God could come out on the short end of things.
If I can, I'd like to make another comparison/analogy.
Let's say that I'm afraid a hurricane will destroy my apartment this year (I live in southern Florida, after all), and I talked with a lot of people that had an interest in me protecting my belongings, but they all had different ideas as to what to do, and so in order to please them all I go out and buy several full insurance plans to cover my belongings, just to make sure I'm pleasing everyone. In doing this I pay full insurance premiums on all of these policies, putting a high valuation on not upsetting any of my advisers, against a calculated risk that a hurricane is going to destroy all my belongings.
Would you think I was overdoing it a bit? Maybe I was too obsessed with pleasing everyone, leading to steps that might be considered paranoid and excessive, and that a good dose of counseling and faith in God might help put things in better perspective? Now you get the idea.
And just because the mission used a politically charged decision-making process and related value structure, didn't mean I had to accept it any more than if they'd ended out the same place through a completely rational process.
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We've just started on this article, but I'm going to stop here to do some other things.
