Just Imagine...

Lois M. Scheel

1994

Published in:

Northwest Area News, May 1994, No. 124

Imagination. How important is it? Most of us believe we have imagination, but how often do we put it to work for us? Do we even think about it? If we let our imagination idle, how can we understand what others feel: their frustrations, their fears, their joys, their wants, their needs; how can we understand what we feel or what we would do in an adverse situation?

An Avon lady once said she found that her well-off customers were much more thoughtful and polite than her customers who lived in poor neighborhoods, in rundown rentals, and who owned old beat-up cars or owned no car at all. She further said that it seemed as though the poorer the housewife, the more she put on airs as though she was "above me." this puzzled her. Evidently her imagination lay in limbo.

S.I. Hayakawa used his active imagination when he wrote the first chapter in his excellent book, Language in Action, first published in 1939. He gives an interesting hypothetical case of two communities and how differently each handled the unemployment problem. In A-town the city legislators as well as the unemployed had been brought up to believe that anyone could find a job if he tried hard enough. since many people remained unemployed, even those who searched diligently for work, the city legislators, being kindly persons, did not want to see these unemployed persons and their families go hungry. So they set up a "self-respect" program that was sure to get people off relief. The moral disapproval of the community would be at work at all times. Suggestions were made to print the unemployd's' names at designated intervals or to take away their vote until their shame brought them to terms with their own negligence. Surely they would be grateful for the small income provided them, an income they didn't have to work for. Undoubtedly they would do anything to get off relief.

But there weren't enough jobs to go around. The people on relief became more and more disrespectful; they accused the city legislators of snooping; they claimed that they were just as good as anyone else. Some of them committed suicide. Many of them went into crime to make money rather than accept relief from those who demoralized them. Besides, there was more money to be make in crime. Many wound up in jail. Family relations deteriorated. Long-time friendships failed. Children were ostracized at school by their peers.

These ingrates proved to the upper crust of A-town that giving people something for nothing demoralized them. A-town became divided into the "haves" and the "have-nots", which brought about class hatred.

Then there was B-ville. One alderman convinced his peers that unemployment, sickness, accident, fire, tornado, or death, hits unexpectedly in modern society, irrespective of the victim's merits or deserts. He further convinced them that B-ville's homes, parks, streets, industries and everything else the village could be proud of had been built in part by these same people who were now unemployed. Why not consider the work they had done for their village as a premium paid to their community against a time of misfortune. And why not consider monthly payments to them now as insurance claims against their misfortune.

A ceremony took place in B-ville where the first checks were presented with much positive fanfare, making the recipients of the insurance claims feel much better about themselves as newly unemployed citizens. Their children did not suffer abuse at school from their peers. No one committed suicide. They did not feel as though they were failures. Crime became nonexistent. And the city legislators were looked upon with respect by these citizen policy holders.

Of course, Mr. Hayakawa's intention in writing this book was to point out the importance of language and understanding it and the importance of making others understand it. But his "story with a moral", as he calls it, also says a lot about the human condition and about mental and behavioral characteristics of individuals and groups.

Any perceptive person can see that A-town hints at our own unfair system where the unemployed and the underemployed, through no fault of their own, are looked down on. Some of these people will never be employed again, especially those who are just under the retirement age—too young for pension benefits or Social Security and too old to be employed by companies looking for younger employees so they can pay them less for their "inexperience." And as technology advances, more jobs disappear, so why aren't we insuring these citizens against hard times as their birthright?

People just can't imagine the connection between crime and despair. Perhaps some of these unemployed people, like the desperate ones in A-town, would rather take a chance on going into crime for sustenance and possibly landing in jail rather than suffer the degradation of peer pressure. At least in jail they would have a roof over their heads, paid for by the same taxpayers who probably could never imagine the advantages of B-ville's social insurance program, not only to the unemployed but to themselves as well.

And how does our government want to handle the problem of crime? Build more jails. Hire more cops. Three strikes and you're out. With enough media hype to convince them, the citizens would rather spend more of their tax money to support a bigger prison system, put more cops on the beat and more of its citizens in jail than on getting to the source of the problem and possibly abolishing it altogether.

Suppose you walk into a supermarket and take in the overall picture of its contents. Look at all that food. In fresh produce or the meat department, what happens to the excess food that doesn't sell? Is it offered to the hungry, or do they have to dig it our of dumpsters after it is tossed out? Can you imagine yourself being surrounded by all this good food while you go hungry because you don't have the money to buy enough food to sustain yourself? Can you imagine the anger that might build up in you? Especially since you are not lazy, but there just isn't a job available?

And the nonsense on TV. Advertisements of the good life abound. Most sitcoms portray comfortable living quarters in nice homes where everyone has plenty of food to eat and more than enough clothes to wear, even in single-parent homes. Poverty doesn't exist in sitcoms. You can tell because everyone is deliriously happy. The poor who view these lies know they are lies, so you can imagine the frustration building up in them.

While so many people look down on other people who can't make it in a vicious system that provides for some but not for others, they think nothing of the really big welfare recipients gobbling up their tax dollars: oil, automobile, S&L's, big-time farmers, defense, retired military personnel, retired politicians and more. How many taxpayers complained about this juicy tidbit, excerpted from Parade's special Intelligence Report, 5-19-91:

"Congress has authorized $60,000 for two gold medals, to be sculpted by the U.S. Mint for General Colin L. Powell and General H. Norman Schwarzkopf. Powell is chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Schwarzkopf is allied commander in the Persian Gulf." While Congress shells out appropriations for meaningless baubles, our people go hungry.

With our advanced technology and our dwindling, but still sufficient natural resources, we can distribute enough goods and services for everyone on this Continent. Why aren't we doing it? An equitable distribution system for North America and the exchange of the value system for one of Measurement, insuring security form birth to death, would eliminate most crimes practically overnight, and false pride in maintaining a work ethic in an era of diminishing jobs would gradually disappear. Imagine that!