On Toxic Workplaces

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I just finished annual training that included a segment on how to not have an abusive workplace. Having worked in abusive workplaces before, it gave me pause to think.

The advocated response, “go to HR with your issues” is not one I’m 100% on board with. HR’s job is to protect the company, not you personally. Feel free to do so, but don’t expect it to save you from abuse.

You have a right to not be treated with abuse in your workplace, so when you find yourself in a toxic environment, don’t panic. Slow down your thinking and plan your exit. I have never seen anyone fired for being an abusive person: they are not going away, so you need to get moving to a new place where the abuser you know doesn’t work. Update your resume, start applying for new roles, and expect a few weeks to months of looking before you are free. In the meantime, you have power to take sick days, vacation, and to do the minimum for your job. Save your best efforts for a non-toxic environment that will appreciate them.

If you contact HR, let them know that you plan to leave because of the toxic environment. If they’re worried about legal blowback, they won’t fire you and they may very well transfer you to another group. If you get the transfer, you are lucky in that you now have a quieter place to work until you get the new job. You’re still a marked person at that firm and your career is at an end there.

DO NOT POST COMMENTS ABOUT YOUR EMPLOYER ON LINKEDIN. There are software tools that can flag comments for potential bad PR and that move will just make that toxic environment even more so. I don’t have my employment connected to my FB, so I’ll post here about that sort of thing. My current employer is great and I really love the culture there. I know of many other places to work that have a strong, supportive, and inviting culture where people really do work well together. I’ve seen the places and know they are out there. That’s the good news. If you’re not at one of those places yet, then keep looking, you’ll find one.

But if you’re currently at an abusive workplace, don’t blame yourself. Don’t believe in the myth of the personality conflict. It’s not up to you to make where you work a better place. It’s up to you to get out of the abuse and to a different place that has a chance of being better than the one you left.

Memorial Day 2022

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Memorial Day.

Let us remember the soldiers who did not fall in battle, but who fell at home due to mental health issues. Let us remember the soldiers who did not fall in battle, but who struggled with lost limbs, lost eyes, burned bodies, organ damage, and brain injuries the rest of their lives. Let us remember the soldiers who did not fall in battle, but who were lynched because they were a different color and believed that wearing a uniform gave them some kind of equality in this nation. Let us remember the soldiers who did not fall in battle, but who struggled to fit back into civilian life after seeing what they had seen and doing what they had done.

Let us remember the soldiers whose spirit of civic duty of self-sacrifice to make the world better is a spirit we all should aspire to, that there may be no more war among us again. There is an ultimate hope in the calling of a soldier: a hope that, through one’s discharge of duty, there may come a day where we ask no more for soldiers, that service no longer consumes one’s life, whether on the battlefield or in the years that follow the battlefield.

Memorial Day.

The Right Time to Start Talking About Gun Control

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Now is not the right time to start talking about gun control. The right time to talk about it was probably September 7th, 1949, after 13 died in the Camden, New Jersey shootings. So, if we’re late to the conversation, we should still have it.

The Second Amendment was created not for national defense or for personal defense, but to allow states to have their own militias to suppress slave rebellions, out of fear that a federal army made up of troops from states opposed to slavery would not assist in suppressing slave rebellions. Following the Civil War, the emphasis shifted to maintaining White control of economics and politics through exclusive access to firearms. Whenever Blacks or Hispanics defended themselves from White mobs with firearms, they were swiftly and surely prosecuted and punished by Whites for daring to disturb the White supremacy.

At its roots, the Second Amendment has always, always been about racial oppression and inequality. There is mythology and propaganda placed around it to obscure those roots, but let us deal in truth. It is a legacy of America’s slaveholding past. It continues to be a right that has a “Whites Only” ring to it all too often for it to be a truly universal right. The solution to America’s gun violence problem is to first acknowledge that we no longer have any danger of a slave rebellion and that we want all people to live in freedom, safety, and equality. Then we acknowledge that it is still possible to have personal weapon ownership, but with restrictions. There are dozens of examples around the world of democratic, peaceful nations that have both regulated personal weapon ownership and murder rates much lower than in the USA.

That’s not to say that murders and gun violence are non-existent in nations with regulations. It’s that the gun violence is at a much, much lower rate. Imagine what it would be like here if, instead of having 17 mass shootings in the last 10 days that took 33 lives and hospitalized 76, we had only one? I’d rather none, but one instead of 17 is a start. In the last 10 *years*, Germany has had only 21 killed and 65 hospitalized as a result of mass shootings, and they permit regulated personal weapon ownership.

When, in our nation, we have lost more in 10 days than another has lost in 10 years, we have to confront our present with a realization that we have built up walls of illusions about weapon ownership that prevent us from seeing the truth and the better place we can be if we begin to have the conversation that should have started 73 years ago… or even before that… but we need to have the conversation and we need to be willing to compromise from all-or-nothing stances to find a solution that will work for reducing America’s gun violence. We have to believe in and have hope that such a solution can be found, and that it can be lasting. We have to be ready to shed our idols and happy illusions so that we can be comfortable with the truth as our chief tool that will build the future we want to live in.

I don’t want to exclude anyone from the conversation: even if you’re a White Supremacist, it’s time to have the discussion about reasonable regulations on personal weapon ownership, along the lines of any of the dozens of other democratic nations that have implemented them with success. We can look to Australia, Germany, Canada, Norway, Switzerland, Israel, Japan, UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and many others. When we make peace our path, a better world is our destination.

The Poor Shall Never Cease

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“For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore, I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thy hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land.” – Deuteronomy 15:11

In the New Testament, Jesus underlined this teaching of Moses’ many times. Since then, men have made excuses for not observing this commandment. Many of these excuses are ultimately connected to an addiction to money.

An addiction to money is a serious and real thing. The addict wants to gather up as much of the stuff as possible, more than could be used sanely by any one person in life. That excess is seen as necessary, and the addict makes up all manner of falsehoods to justify not giving away freely what is not needed to sustain life.

If you make excuses or reservations or qualifications about how to fulfill the command to open your hand – and not just barely open, but wide – to the poor and needy, who are equated as brothers to you, then that is the addiction to money speaking. You need to find help so that you have a healthier relationship to money that does not involve a dependency. There are people at all levels of means who are able to open wide their hands to their brothers. As we heal ourselves of addictive behaviors towards money, we join with them in healing the world.

The Doctrine of God

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There is a passage of scripture: “Behold, this is not my doctrine, to stir up the hearts of men with anger, one against another; but behold, this is my doctrine, that such things be done away.”

In a culture in which online behavior that arises out of aggression and conflict is rewarded, we have to be willing to forgo the likes and comments that result from aggression and conflict, for such things are not of God, and therefore not of either Truth nor Love.

Truth and Love compel us to do away with anger, one against another. Truth and Love compel us to allow our hearts to be moved with compassion, one towards another. Truth and Love compel us to allow our hearts to be moved with forgiveness, one towards another. Truth and Love compel us to allow our hearts to be moved with peace, that our words and actions also bring peace. That is how “such things be done away.” Not with silent death, but with peaceful life.

Suffering in Righteousness

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In my reading this Sunday morning, I encountered the idea of righteous suffering with no reward on earth for it. In other words, the answer to the question, “Does God grant every wish of the righteous in their lifetimes?” is no. God does not.

So then why be righteous? It is because of something unseen, something much bigger than what our eyes can perceive now and something our hearts and minds are not ready for without preparation. We learn from both Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that suffering in righteousness is an act of devotion. It is an act of love. It is an act of purifying the soul.

True righteous suffering, however, is not suffering alone. There is a peace and an understanding that comes with it, a forgiveness and a love for the persecutors that is hard to explain to the unprepared. But, as one prepares in faith and deepening understanding, it becomes known and part of one.

An Eternal Thought

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What we term tragedies and terrible losses here on earth… how many of them will prove to be critical to our souls as we strive to attain one-ness and unity after our mortality ends?

There is more than what we see or live through. Peace teaches us to understand beyond the senses or the living experience. Therefore, seek peace.

Anger Without a Cause: A Misplaced Phrase

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“But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment…” – Matthew 5:22, KJV

Biblical scholarship has determined that the phrase “without a cause” is an incorrect translation and should not be there. Some scholars, like Jerome, caught it very early on in terms of New Testament history. Nevertheless, the phrase persisted in some translations, such as the King James Version. Someone involved in compiling and composing the New Testament must have felt strongly that there has to be some kind of anger that could be justified.

But, if there is a cause to be angry, who serves as the gatekeeper to those causes? The victim of a crime or fraud? A judge or watchman? A committee that meets biweekly? All of these things I’ve mentioned are human sources, and I don’t trust any of them to not make mistakes. And if “without a cause” was placed there – and kept there – by someone who felt that all causes to be angry were justifiable, then I have to ask, who is actually angry without *any* cause, justified or not?

If the argument goes that only God can express anger, then we see a God who has told us to forgive others, completely and without exception. We see a God who told us to love our neighbors and to bless those who persecute us. We see a God who teaches compassion, generosity, and unconditional love in his parable of the Good Samaritan. This is a God who asks us to not be angry with our brother.

Yes, the flashes and flares of anger will arise. And then, God asks of us that we still our minds, to slow down our thinking, and find the healing calm within.

I found that being conscious about my anger has led to a rather rapid transformation in how I interpret bad driving. I used to say hard words about drivers that impeded my forward progress in one way or another. Then, I started saying “I forgive you for cutting me off” or whatever the offense was. In doing that, I noticed the offense was all in my mind. I didn’t have to be offended by what the other driver did. It may still have been a reckless maneuver, but I began to shift to think more on the lines of “I hope that driver is all right” and wonder what stress would push a person to drive like that. Was it an emergency? Deep emotional pain? Foolishness that hopefully does not result in an accident? I find that in forgetting my anger, my heart draws out to a stranger.