The Servant Mentality

One of the most important things in the narrative of both my personal and professional lives is that I want to serve a greater purpose. This servant mentality has shaped the decisions I have made and the positions I have taken.

The servant mentality means that the service is not just to the bottom line. The bottom line is important too, but it is not the full measure of success. Success to me has instead been more on the people I have reached and the lives I have touched. 

I started realizing this when I was in graduate school at Kansas State examining literature. I was tasked to teach introductory writing to help pay my way in school. For me, it soon became obvious that I could have more impact in teaching writing skills and helping students be more prepared for their futures than I could in being the thousandth person to puzzle over the symbolism of snow in James Joyce’s “The Dead”.  Watching as my students grew more confident with their writing voices and technical skills made me realize my future wasn’t in research.

It was lucky enough to find a position at Saint Rita that allowed me to have the same sort of impact. I enjoyed the opportunity to be both teacher and coach. And even though some of the young men were exasperating, I know that in my time there I helped them grow and develop not just in the subject area but it life itself. I recently talked to one of them on Facebook, and he told me “You were still one of my top 5 teachers that shaped my experience.” Now, it’s not number one.  However, he didn’t have to say it and being remembered after a decade is what you want as a teacher in serving your charges.

After Saint Rita, I was at a crossroads. I feel fortunate that I found a professional home at Community Support Services in Brookfield. It is here that I have really found not just a professional home but I made Brookfield my home too. In my roles at CSS I am not in direct service with our participants. From the very beginning I have been aware that I was in key positions that facilitated the services that we do. I could leverage my skills to be of service to people with disabilities. Making sure the money is coming in keeps the lights on for all the services that we do. I have also been able to develop relationships with several of the people we serve. Knowing that they can thrive because of our service as an organization makes all my and my colleague’s hard work worth it.

And it doesn’t end with CSS. I’m running for the Library Board because I want to help serve the citizens of Brookfield to have the best infrastructure possible. It will continue after the election no matter the outcome. The servant life is what has chosen me.  

Taibbi's "Insane Clown President": In the Footsteps of Hunter S. Thompson

Since early November, I have been trying to make sense of just how Trump won the election and is now our president. Needless to say, my sense of shock was magnified by the idea that there was no chance that Trump could win. The margins in the polls were too broad, and living in a blue state, I was more or less a spectator to the proceedings since by the laws of our land, the few big competitive states are what matters for the presidential elections. 

So, I read this book with interest. Taibbi is a keen observer of both human nature and the political process. The essays in this book are mostly campaign-related reportage, so they were written in real time in the guise of Rolling Stone’s patronage of Hunter S. Thomson’s journalism in 72. What I’m afraid of is that I still feel at a loss. I had read a lot of the essays here in real time on the website, and they are only sadder in retrospect. 

I bet that when the editors had the idea of this book, it would have been more in the idea of reviewing the possibility of danger that a Trump president would have presented and thus we would be able to find solace in the fact that Hillary wasn’t left enough by looking at this and wiping our brow, going “Phew!”. But that was not what happened. This book shows a preview of the last month in the narcissism and disorganization that the Trump presidency has been. 

My thoughts are that the Trump win makes this a more marketable book than it would have been in the case of a Trump loss, as well as a more historically important book. When the future civilizations shift through our wreckage, they read books like this and ask how it happened and didn’t we see it coming. I bet it is bittersweet for Taibbi.

The Library as as Center of Learning

Recent research from McKinsey & Company, the consultancy, estimates that in the next twenty years, fully half of currently existing jobs will no longer exist because of automation. 

The cloud and Artificial Intelligence and robots and Virtual reality can and will come to take those jobs away, they say. Anything that can be automated will be, and this applies across the spectrum. It will have an effect not just on the fast food worker, but the accountants and lawyers.

This is scary, but it has always been so. As the calendar turned from 1899 to 1900, almost half of the jobs in America were in agriculture. Now it’s two percent. If we were to go back in time and tell the thinkers of that time that in over a hundred years 96% of all farming jobs would be lost what would happen? There would be panic because it would represent a massive dislocation in the work force.

Was there reason to panic? In hindsight, of course not. The reasons were two-fold. First, entrepreneurs made huge technological changes that helped redirect the workforce from the farm to the factory. Innovators from Samuel Colt to Henry Ford made it so that the goods people wanted could be made at a scale people could afford the price tag. And it created jobs. On the other side, society started to invest in the people more – with compulsory schooling arising and the spread of accessible libraries in towns across the nation. Literacy became much more common place. American know-how combined with civic investment were the tools that created the twentieth century, the American Century.

We stand at a similar crossroads. The rise of technology makes some thinkers hopeful. With silicon and metal doing all the hard work, humans will be able to flourish in a way never imagined as creators and consumers of art. Other thinkers are deeply pessimistic, thinking that all the gains will accrue to those at the top while the losses are spread amongst the masses. If I were a betting man, and in a way, I am since I must live in this world, I would suppose that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. There will be winners and losers but the key is flexibility and lifetime learning.  Our community should make the investment for the next century that allows for this flexibility and lifetime learning.

It is as easy to say “No,” as it is to say “Yes.” The harder thing to explain is why you say either one.  In conversations, I have had with voters, the primary concern about passing the referendum was about the cost. I understand the concern. Every dollar out of our pockets is a dollar that is not paying for something else that we need right now. I know what it is like to slide your card for payment, thinking and hoping that you have enough money to pay for that purchase and not sure how you were going to pay for tomorrow. But investing in the community isn’t just about paying for tomorrow. It’s about paying for all the tomorrows. It’s about thinking for the long run and creating the flexibility and providing for lifetime learning today and in the future. Our current infrastructure in Brookfield isn’t up to the task, and the longer we kick the can down the road the more we tie our hands on needed investment. We need to make sure that when we look at the twenty-first century, we did our best to help it become the second American Century.