Homelessness After College 2

Homelessness After College 2
04 Aug
schad.rick Communication and Empathy, featured
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Homelessness After College 2

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Previous Segments In This Series: Homelessness After College

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Names of the individuals and local business have been changed for privacy and legal reasons. This story reaches further than the players involved–the universality of the issues discussed should alarm us all.

Part 1: A failure of adults

Like so many bright and hungry teenagers, Jesse and Beth listened to the adults of this nation, and worked hard in school to get into a good college. They hadn’t even met yet, but both, in their respective towns, were working through the checklist of academic achievements and extra curriculars, believing in what they had been told–that their hard work and passion, applied to a college education, would earn them some level of success. Too many teenagers from up and coming generations are faced with the same unacceptable truth. College is not a reliable pathway to work, and colleges are handcuffing former students to loans that are unbearable for those graduates that find themselves without the jobs that were advertised.

Every generation has endured some form of hardship, and sometimes our own hardships from the past make us blind to the new challenges that younger generations face. We justify watching our youth struggle because we see it as a right of passage, and possibly also because in hindsight, we see the value of the lessons learned from our own difficult experiences. Despite this value, we must have compassion, and intervene when we see nothing but pain.

We justify watching our youth struggle because we see it as a right of passage

As one of the adults in the room, I’m horrified to think that Jesse and Beth did everything “the adults” asked or recommended, and then when the result didn’t fit society’s narrative, we collectively abandoned them. Young people are by all definitions being scammed through false advertising and promises of opportunities that colleges and universities seem unable to make good on. We are letting down our children by refusing to acknowledge that not everything that was good for our generation is good for theirs. And worse, when they fail, we imagine that the problem is their endurance for difficulty, not the difficulty itself.

Part 2: Homeless with full time jobs

Jesse and Beth could be so many of this nation’s youth. They met in college, fell in love, got married, and upon graduation, were ready to find careers together. The young couple immediately began looking for work in their trained fields, and found that the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on education had failed them entirely. As a company, we see this frequently and have come to expect that anyone freshly out of college will require almost as much training as individuals that have no higher education at all.

Due to their exceptional work ethics and natural talent–no thanks at all to the university they attended–we chose to take them on as part-time employees. As employers that provide a good wage, we were shocked when we learned that the work we could give them plus Jesse’s full time job, and a few part time gigs Beth had, weren’t coming close to paying the bills.

the couple was forced into homelessness despite a very full work schedule.

We discovered that Jesse and Beth were homeless, and had been for more than a year. Like so many others with loans that cannot be deferred, they were strapped with an enormous ongoing expense. Owing almost a grand a month in private student loans to an unforgiving bank, and with a shortage of low-income housing options, the couple was forced into homelessness despite a very full work schedule. For Jesse and Beth, the burden of student loans was only the beginning of a crushing series of events.

Part 3: COVID-19–a choice between work and safety

It is never a good time for a pandemic, or for homelessness for that matter, however experiencing both at the same time is abominable. While many of us have struggled with cabin fever inside our nice houses due to stay at home orders, Jesse and Beth have lived an unimaginably difficult existence, quarantined without shelter. Beth, who battles an immunodeficiency disorder, has struggled with her health, another expense that burdens their finances. At a time in which they needed extra precautions and assistance, they found that there was not only a lack of help, but an utter disregard for Beth’s safety.

Jesse and Beth have lived an unimaginably difficult existence, quarantined without shelter.

Recently, Jesse’s full time employer, let’s call it “Biz X”, reopened to employees. Though it was legal to resume work, Jesse was uncomfortable with the lack of safety protocols to keep employees from contracting COVID-19. With an immunocompromised wife that needed his care, and no ability to self quarantine separately, Jesse was left with little choice but to forgo a paycheck and stay away.

Jesse attempted to work with “Biz X”, explaining the situation, however “Biz X” was unempathetic. They refused to lay him off, not wanting the extra expense related to their contribution for his unemployment, but were also unwilling to compromise and make alterations to the safety of the workplace. Many people might have been able to stay at home and wait it out, thinking that the long term benefits of a steady income would outweigh the temporary hardship of living without a paycheck. But for individuals with non-deferrable student loans, this is no option at all.

With the next month’s student loan payment breathing down their neck, Jesse was given the choice of quitting to receive temporary benefits from the CARES Act, or showing up to an unsafe working environment.

For anyone unfamiliar with private student loans, it is a pervasive burden in which there is no escape and no forgiveness, unless you have money for a lawyer that can open a few unlikely doors with an “undue burden” status. Loanees cannot pause this burden or escape from it, even through expatriation. Astonishingly, for Jesse and Beth, a homeless status has not been a factor that was considered in the repayment schedule of their loan.

With all of this hardship, I had to ask myself, where is the slack supposed to come from? Life shouldn’t be this hard for young adults.

Despite all of these undue burdens, Jesse and Beth are some of our best employees. They have endured more hardship than a lifetime usually brings by just their mid-twenties. Their story is not a fringe example, but a familiar and common reality for many individuals just starting out and trying to make their way in this world.

Their story is not a fringe example, but a familiar and common reality for many individuals

This is not how it is supposed to be for anyone, and as “the adults”, we wanted to show them that despite their disappointing experiences, there are people willing to stand up and do something about injustice when they see it.

Part 4: Doing something about it

Jesse and Beth followed every reasonable step to avoid their reality, yet their actions and hard work have not had an impact on their circumstances. It is our job as adults to make sure we consider the advice we give to our youth and to protect them against predatory entities taking advantage of a generation that hasn’t had the life experience to know better. Being “the adult” means ultimately being responsible for the problems of the world and fixing them. This teaches the next generation to do the same for their descendants when we pass the torch and they are in our position.

No hard working individual should go without a roof over their head, and no bottom line should justify a business making their employees choose between the health of their family or the ability to earn an income. It is my sincere hope that we can collectively demonstrate that this is not how we treat our youth by admonishing such behaviors and by showing how caring people can band together to solve problems.

Helping our youth is an investment in the future.

Fight With Your Mind is calling all of the “adults in the room” to do what the private student loan industry wouldn’t–recognize the undue burden. Let’s do what the university they attended should have done–pay them back when they didn’t receive the product they paid for. Let’s do what the world should have done–show them compassion. They have earned it.

The “Help Jesse and Beth get out from under their student loans donation account” has been set up here. You don’t have to donate an amount that will change their life–imagine what it means to just change their day.

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Facing our fears so we can understand our differences, for the purpose of a shared reality

Facing our fears so we can understand our differences, for the purpose of a shared reality
03 Aug
schad.rick featured, The Expanse
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Facing our fears so we can understand our differences, for the purpose of a shared reality

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The universe will always be as large as it is, regardless of whether or not we can see the whole thing.

Our perceptions might as well be how we define reality. We can all observe one event, and regardless of how simple or straightforward that event is, we have seen time and time again that our perceptions will differ. This extends to our emotional state as well, with difficult events bringing insights that almost re-write the pain to be positive growth. Knowing that humans can’t seem to agree on a universal reality could be looked at as a terrifying thought, or depending entirely on how we choose to see things, it could be extremely intriguing. This choice holds a great deal of power because it means that the ability to see something differently is inside the self.

Hate is not our belief system, or morals, or right vs wrong–it is fear of the unknown.

Humans really enjoy knowing things. The state of not knowing makes us so uncomfortable that we conjure and hypothesize or sometimes outright make up answers to satisfy the gap that information should fill. When we don’t know something, we don’t like to admit it, but more often than not we allow lack of knowledge to simply turn to fear. Fear most commonly expresses itself as hate, and it accounts for almost every prejudice we have toward each other. People that don’t understand differences hate differences. Hate is not our belief system, or morals, or right vs wrong–it is fear of the unknown. This is extremely difficult to accept and most humans flat out reject this simple and statistically overwhelming piece of psychology, even if it is out of their character to reject information.

If we do accept this, then we realize that hatred, and therefore prejudice, is a completely fixable problem. Fixable does not mean easy, and being humble enough to deprogram and then learn the necessary information takes guts. Stepping outside the self, enough to really imagine a different set of circumstances that are nothing like your own experiences takes practice. It requires that we are always willing to learn. It asks us to commit to leaving room for future information to alter what we feel should be our conclusion. This does not mean to live in a state of flip-flopping and to never own opinions or make conclusions. It means that we can never let ourselves stop learning.

Change cannot be fought any more than time can be reversed. There is no point in trying to return to another time by wishing days past could be again.

The moment we believe we have learned enough is the moment we join the side of hate. Time is a cruel thing to those that hate change because it is the entity that ensures change is constant. Change cannot be fought any more than time can be reversed. There is no point in trying to return to another time by wishing days past could be again. What we can do is learn from our past and take our lessons into the future. Living in this state of acceptance naturally fights misunderstanding and hate and gives peace to the self. It is because of this that we should honestly celebrate our differences as they are opportunities to explore and understand more of the world. Instead of feeling small because we realized we knew less than we thought about the world, we can enjoy and marvel at how much more of the world there is that we get to experience.

One does not lose the self or a part of their identity when they change their mind. We should be willing to explore outside the box ideas because of how much more interesting they would make the world if we could understand how they are possible.

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We all put our knee on his neck

We all put our knee on his neck
03 Aug
schad.rick featured, Questioning and Thought
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We all put our knee on his neck

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With the murder of George Floyd, it has been a mixed bag of emotions. For the black community, they are experiencing just another instance of the extraordinary pain that comes with loss and injustice–just another needless, tragic, and hateful crime that is a reminder of how blind our country is to the perpetual suffering and discrimination endured daily due to our country’s blind, naive, and white attitude.

I am trying to remember that regardless of my disagreement with that past, I still benefit from its outcome.

I have been thinking a lot about my white heritage, my white culture, and my white privilege. Mostly I feel shame, because I hate the history that I come from. I am trying to remember that regardless of my disagreement with that past, I still benefit from its outcome. White people owe black people, not just for what previous generations have done, but for what privileges we have unfairly acquired because of that racist history. These benefits have always been at the cost of equally deserving people, and it is shameful that we have failed to see that what we have defined as our baseline, is in reality, just our sense of entitlement to a larger piece of the pie than we deserve. We need to level this playing field because the privilege was never rightfully ours to begin with. We need to change our attitude about reparations because giving back is not a sacrifice when the power was stolen, not earned. White people should be grateful for their over exposure to privileges, and hand them back enthusiastically and willingly, with grace. This is an action that would establish a new white culture that I could be proud of.

But we need to do a lot more than just that–we must dismantle our old white culture. This starts with understanding it. Like many, my shame for white culture has led me to distance myself from it, which in itself is a problem because decisions are made by people in the room, and in staying away, I’m handing over my vote. It isn’t possible for a white person to disown white history anymore than it is possible for a back person to walk down the street unaffected by black history. White culture needs to be changed by white people, and white people must accept the terrible truths of what they have inherited in order to learn.

It isn’t possible for a white person to disown white history anymore than it is possible for a back person to walk down the street unaffected by black history.

White people don’t like to feel uncomfortable. We need to stop thinking of ourselves as peacemakers, because our avoidance of conflict has tangible consequences. White people have a long history of looking the other way. The impact of our complacency and the consequence of not listening has predictably led us to where we are now.

We have collectively contributed to a normalization of brutality and inhumane treatment of black people, feeling that we weren’t a part of the problem as long as we weren’t blatantly racist. It is not enough to not participate, to not stand up, or to mitigate to avoid conflict. The truth is there whether we acknowledge it or not, and we should not act surprised when our actions, and lack of actions, have consequences.

The death of George Floyd was not premeditated murder. In fact, some would argue that it was accidental, but accidental doesn’t mean it wasn’t foreseeable or that any part of it was excusable. We should be very concerned that we have collectively allowed our norms to slide into such dangerous territory that our police officers are unable to recognize themselves as murderers in the moment they were committing the crime itself. Our scale for normal is wrong and we must fix it.

We have created a society that is so blinded that we can do harm and believe we are doing “the right thing”.

As white people, we should all take some responsibility for George Floyd’s death. While we weren’t at the scene of the crime ourselves, we all did our part in creating a society where murder has gone unpunished as long as it is a black victim. We have created a society that is so blinded that we can do harm and believe we are doing “the right thing”. We must open our eyes so that what has been normalized can be seen for what it is. If we are able to lift the veil, we might be shocked into realizing that people are being murdered right in front of us. This shock might motivate us to finally do something to stop it.

We have all been blind. We have all been ignorant to some degree unless we have experienced racism first hand. We all had a knee on George Floyd’s neck. Nothing will change until we can understand this.

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Meaningful Action

Meaningful Action
30 Jul
schad.rick featured, Meaningful Action

When peaceful protesting is ignored by power, violence is inevitable

Rebellious Teenagers are a sign of ignorant parents. Many of us remember this first-hand, acting out as teenagers with self-destructive behaviors that hurt no one but ourselves. As much as it seems counterintuitive, to a teenager, it is a cry for attention, help, or some kind of change. There are usually signs of struggle that proceed acts of rebellion that go unnoticed, which is usually the reason for the act of rebellion in the first place. As parents, it is normal to let life get in the way of the things we should be seeing in our children, however, usually, when these rebellious events occur, we wake up and realize that we need to pay attention more than we have been.

Our government is designed to take on a parental role, and listening to the needs, wishes, and hardships that constituents face is part of the job description. This seems especially lost these days, and at a time of ubiquitous protesting in our country, listening is more important than ever before. The rioting and escalation to violence in response to yet another black man murdered by a police officer should not be considered a misbehavior of the public. This misinterpretation of the public’s actions and responses only reveals the extent of the ignorance of power.

Psychologically, this is no different than the rebellious teenager. The people have tried calm communication. They have been non-violent. The only result was the realization that power doesn’t listen to non-violent communication. Instead of focusing on the public’s escalation in the streets, we should ask the government why they didn’t listen when the public used peaceful channels–why they didn’t listen, even though it was their job to do so. Like anyone that finds themself desperate and out of positive options, the people, much like an angry teenager, started to take on destructive behaviors. The simple psychology of this situation is so straight forward that I find myself baffled that those in power do not recognize it.

I do not condone violence but I also see uprising that becomes violent for what it is–a thermometer.

I do not condone violence but I also see uprising that becomes violent for what it is–a thermometer. Violence, not surprisingly, is a red hot indication that there is a massive disconnect between power and people. Violence does not occur randomly or without cause. When peaceful protest turns violent it is almost always because those that should be listening are not.

Violence is an act of desperation to be heard and an act of desperation for change. Instead of condoning violence from their soap box, the government should take some accountability and admit to themselves and the public that violent events would have been unlikely to transpire if those in power had listened in the first place.

After shirking the duties of their offices, being ignorant to the realities and experiences of their constituents, and ignoring the peaceful cries for help, the fact that politicians have the audacity to ask the people to stop pursuing the only option that they have left is screwed up. Yet the same people that are getting screwed would likely be worse off if they said out loud the thing that no one wants to admit. Violence gets their attention.

Historically, violence is one of the most reliable catalysts for change. Reviewing the history books, there are very few peaceful communications that resulted in meaningful reactions from the associated powers. Unfortunately, most change only occurs because things finally got violent.

I am of the school of thought that believes that resorting to violence shows a lack of creativity

I am of the school of thought that believes that resorting to violence shows a lack of creativity, and personally I don’t even think it should be used as a last resort. Quite frankly, if you feel that someone needs to be hurt to get what you want, then maybe it is time to consider that what you want isn’t worth it. However in situations where authority abuses its power, there does seem to be a need for something to help level the playing field.

“Stop the violence”–even though I agree, those words are insulting coming out of the mouths of those that ignored the needs of their people. It is hypocritical at best. Just once I want to hear a politician address the neglect of their people before they bring up that very meaningful phrase. Stop the violence. It is your responsibility, YOU–the person in power, to stop this madness every bit as much as the person committing the violent acts. Don’t act like stopping this all is any more complicated than YOU just finally listening.

Brainwashing

29 Jul
schad.rick Deprogramming and Education, featured, Upcoming

Is it Really Brainwashing?

Brainwashing is a heavy term that as marketers we do not like to use without serious consideration. There is certainly a difference between tactics being used to communicate and influence for the purpose of advertising, and using those same tactics to create and control extremism. However, both can be described as: The systematic programming of the brain of another individual to react in a desired manner to a specific message, ideal, opinion, tendency, or inclination.

The difference is mentality. When used honestly, marketing tactics can enhance communication with the public, but when used for dishonest or self serving reasons, the tactics become synonymous with brainwashing, and there is no discernible difference.
A Note from Marketers

Our concern is that the public is unaware that many extreme perspectives have been normalized, resulting in a blind spot that can be abused.

The dictionary definition of brainwashing is: The process of pressuring someone into adopting radically different beliefs by using systematic and often forcible means.

Honest Marketing and Business Development explains that “we often focus on the word ‘force’, imagining a brainwashed individual strapped to a chair in front of flashing images with their eyes taped open. This spycraft image we have, where years later the brainwashed individual hears a code word that triggers their programming, is imaginative for Hollywood, but is not reflective of the true nature of brainwashing in our society”.

With information warfare, which is a form of brainwashing, the tactic is to create the same level of change without the individual ever realizing that they have been influenced or brainwashed. To the brainwashed individual, they don’t believe that their views have changed or that they have adopted a radically different perspective. This is extremely difficult to combat because it is impossible to know the alternate ideals that the same individual would possess without being exposed to the brainwashing influence.

While brainwashing might not be apparent to the individual, the larger trends in public polling show very apparent turns to extremist ideals. This is also reflected in responses to extremism, which by nature is extreme itself in order to be proportionate. Similar to the method for boiling a frog, the public slowly is exposed to more and more extreme ideas, that to the individual, will feel normal as they escalate, due to the slow gradient of change.

Is it extreme to call it brainwashing? Not at all.

The strategy isn’t to convince you that their ideas are right, it is to program you like a computer.

Brainwashing is a systematic programming of the human brain to react to information or cues in a specific desired manner. It is very subtle and highly invasive, and is done with the intent to alter everything from automatic responses to opinions, without the subject ever realizing anything has changed. Because it is nearly invisible, it can be difficult to see where one has been influenced.

Below we explore some of the most common techniques used to manipulate the masses. Having an understanding of these common tactics is helpful when taking an internal inventory, because it highlights the intent of the sources we receive information from.

It is extremely important to make sure that what we think, what we feel, and what we prefer was set based upon our experiences and factual information, not programming from outside entities.

The following techniques are used in dirty marketing, propaganda, and information warfare, three distinctive, yet similar categories that we as marketers have watched degrade into synonymous with brainwashing due to abuse of power in corporations as well as government.