Save the Post Office -- Write a Letter!

About a month ago, I was helping my parents with the last detail of their move from our town to a town in Arizona: I turned in their Post Office box keys. But, before I could do that, I had to take out whatever mail was still there in the box. A week had gone by, and the box was stuffed to the gills, to the point that there was a half-full overflow Postal bin that I had to collect at the counter.

I sorted through everything at home, after I turned the keys in. Out of that half bin, there were twelve pieces of actual mail; the rest was ads and direct mail catalogs.

I sighed at the waste.

At one time, I worked in the Direct Mail industry at a merge/purge shop. You could add your name and address to the seed names list, and receive copies of any catalog you wanted. (People on the seed names list receive the catalogs, or other mailing pieces from the direct mail campaign, so that they can check to make sure the mailing was done properly.) After a while, I took my name and address off the seed lists, but added that information to the Direct Marketing Association’s Preference File. This file is used to suppress the names and addresses on it from mailing campaigns, so that people won’t get tons of unwanted mail. People might get catalogs from companies they like, but then those companies either sell or exchange your name and address to other like companies—just an extra way to get either more money or more names.

What I found out was that I didn’t want to receive a whole lot of catalogs because I didn’t want to constantly buy things.

There is, after all, only so much room for furniture, cooking utensils and clothes in one’s life. All the things we own, including our image, require care and upkeep. And there are catalogs that sell products and implements to handle the care and upkeep of our image and our stuff. Of course, this all adds up to more stuff and things and gewgaws and wobbity-wobbits and round-to-its and widgets and just plain junk.

The other thing that happened, while I was working in the direct marketing industry, was the rise of the now ubiquitous personal computer, followed closely by the advent and eventual explosion of internet. Quite suddenly, it seemed, everyone could get in touch by electronic mail. Wow!

So, what happened? People stopped writing letters and our United States Postal Employees have become slaves who annually shoulder millions of pounds of bulk third-class mail, bills, circular ads and not a whole lot else.

Now the cry is out to abandon our United States Postal Service, opting instead for all mail being handled by privatized services. The claim is that this will cut bureaucracy and save the taxpayers and the government millions upon zillions of dollars.

I say that this is a bad idea. The US Postal Service has been one of the longest running services that people have been able to depend upon, often when there was nothing else to depend upon. Because the service is run centrally, it has established distribution hubs, transportation routes and flight patterns. There are regulations about what is proper to mail (nothing liquid, perishable, potentially hazardous, etc.) and there are regulated postage fees. You generally have an idea when your mail will be delivered, and you sometimes really count on that!

The privatized business community claims to know better how to run just about any enterprise. But we all know that serving the “bottom line” would require cost cutting in areas ill suited to cuts. I would not be surprised to see disrupted and irregular service, no guarantees of arrival time for time-sensitive material, along with no recourse for disputes. Workers rights would undoubtedly be infringed upon and there would be sharp rise in worker’s compensation claims, due to workers having to deal with irregular packaging and potentially dangerous packages. This would lead to sharp rises in insurance premiums and health care. A complete dismantling of regulated pricing would be a detriment to the public. In short, dismantling of postal regulations could pose potential danger to the public, as well as anyone working in the postal industry.

The business side of mailing aside, I would like to say a few words about history. One of the reasons we know so much about life and thought in previous generations is because of two types of artifacts: letters and ephemera (all those little bits of paper that have doodles, drawings, notes, ads and other things printed or hand written on their surfaces). Since the invention of the telephone, everyone has been writing and actually thinking less. The invention of the typewriter, eventually morphing into what we now call keyboarding, has had the mixed impact of allowing more people to communicate by means of clear and even text, but to the detriment that few people are able to write legibly by hand.

When people talk to one another, the tendency is to think less before speaking. Letter writing takes more time and thought put toward a flow and organization of ideas. Because so much of our communication is ephemeral, dissipating into the ether either by digital deletion or by vocal immediacy, it goes unrecorded. What record will remain of the existence of this generation? Ephemera in the form of catalogs? A few poorly edited newspapers? How will people know what YOU thought about LIFE? Will it be as if you never existed, after you are gone?

Oh, no, no… That is unthinkable. But I want you to think on it.

I am advocating a year (or the rest of your life) of less distraction. Don’t give up your computer, don’t stop social networking or blogging. Do take the time to think, and to organize your thoughts. Do write a letter to someone you love and appreciate. Share your struggles, your thoughts, your hopes, your dreams.

History, and the United States Postal Service, will thank you.

Meanwhile, if you want help the environment by receiving less mail, register your preferences here:

https://www.dmachoice.org/dma/member/home.action

Is There Life Beyond The Jetsons?

The future blurs before us now, blazing a trail we have initiated and will perhaps be unable to halt or even slow. It is also possible we will not be able to follow this trail. If Prometheus has been unbound, what kind of future has been unleashed?

C’era una volta, an individual who embarked upon and completed a university education was considered a person of the world, one who had encountered a sufficient breadth of knowledge and had developed the ability to think broadly and critically. By critical thinking, I mean the ability to embrace life’s questions as an entré to a lifelong journey of discovery, where answers are more likely to be provisional, rather than arrival points. Such an education was meant to encourage independent thinking.

In the twilight of the humanist Enlightenment ideal of the university, we see that the corporate commodification of education has presented as the new ideal (indeed a new product for consumption in a marketplace that vaguely resembles a high-priced flea market) that education must be goal-oriented, the goal being, of course, career preparation. This model university is universal only in that it allows one universal opportunity to sacrifice the mind for an idée fixe, that of entering the job marketplace with a specialized knowledge.

If any trend has made education elitist, this is it. Where for hundreds of years, academia was able to engage with the corporate world without compromising independent thought, now this may no longer be possible. The public has been sold on the corporate advertising myth: education is too expensive to publicly fund. Now we will all have to pay more for education, so that we can learn less and ask fewer questions.

Technology, the primary tool of the captains of industry and finance, has contributed to a state of affairs whereby the average person, rather than being served by technology, is forced to run after it. Technology has not freed the human for contemplation and rest. Technology has become the equal opportunity slaver. Quite simply, if you don’t have it and don’t know how to use it, you are useless and will be left behind. If you don’t have the very latest, you are passé.

There was a time when auto repairs could be done by most everyone, with a few parts and tools. That time has been gone for decades, since the advent of computer components. While people are expected to know how to use computers, for the most part they do not know how computers work, much less how to repair hardware or applications. Where there was had always been craftspeople to repair watches and other items, there are few such people left—they are dying at an alarming rate, and there are no young people willing to learn their arts. There has been a revival in the art of handmade paper and books, but there any people left who do hand engraving? No, but there is a technician who can run a machine that will do a flimsy sort of engraving that has no character or depth. The computer technician can diagnostics on your machine and maybe (though sometimes not) solve your difficulty, although you will not learn what the problem was or how it might be avoided or remedied should it occur again.

With technology has come the expectation that humans can and will perform work at greater speeds, and for longer periods of time. People have been trained to answer their calls, rather than allow the automatic features to take messages for them. People have been trained to work through lunch and dinner and vacations. Business, because it has been globalized, is transacted 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In short, people have been and are being trained to live for work, not work to live.

There must be a breaking point. Where will it show itself? Probably the fruits of this will be marked by increased illness and individual dysfunction and inability to cope, but also in greater division and divisiveness among individuals and societies.

A computer can make millions of computations per minute, but it does not have life independent of the user. A computer is capable of diagnostic functions, but not of self-examination. The liberal arts university education promoted free thought that was directional outward, but also intended the ability for self-reflection. The blur of a future blazing beyond the Jetsons seems poised to obliterate independent thought, as well inwardly directed contemplation.

There is a remedy for this dilemma: we must remember that computers and other electronic devices do not live. We can turn them off. We must remember that the human mind is capable of self-reflection and abstract, expansive, outwardly directed thought. We must remember that thought does not cost money; our thoughts cannot be owned by anyone. We must remember that our minds are worth more than technology, and our thoughts will outlive the relevance of technology. The computer stops when it is turned off, but the mind at rest is still alive, awake, and at work during sleep, even if that work is only apparent as a dream.

Further, education never need end at a degree. Too many people stop reading and thinking, once the degree is in hand. A degree is not the key to your potential, not the key to your mind nor, these days, necessarily the key to a career.  

When the years of formal education end, the lifetime of informal education begins. A public library card is your free ticket to lifelong journey of learning, free association of ideas and free thinking. 

Take time, each day, to turn off all your machinery. Then, turn on your mind.