On 12/9/02 10:39 AM, "Jonathan Walther" krooger@debian.org wrote:
On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 03:40:20PM +0000, tarquin wrote:
Jason Williams wrote:
Consensus and niceness are good things, but contention and argument drive the wheel faster and produce more comprehensive results.
You've been watching too much Babylon 5. I'm with the Vorlons -- conflict may promote growth, but it's not a healthy way to do so.
The social workers I have encountered have been idiots, not pathological liars. I've found it's the structure they work within (and their pen-pusher mentality which means they can *never* look outside of it) which has caused me problems in the past. If we want to criticize social workers, we need evidence, like specific cases -- and we also need to present the wider picture.
<anecdotes of malicious social workers snipped>
And theres plenty more where that came from. Shall I continue?
Not on the list. Try Wikipedia. And anecdotes are of limited utility. There are as many evil doctors and soldiers and teachers as there are social workers. And what can be said is not that doctors, soldiers, and teachers are the foot soldiers of the ivory tower social engineers that governments and big businesses hire to keep the masses under control, but that there are abuses of power and problems of accountability, which are endemic to all bureaucracies with more power than accountability.
You don't get to say, "Doctors are often found in hospitals, and play a hand in ear-marking newborn babies for potential seizure and kidnapping by government adoption departments," which I'm sure they do, under a certain definition of "potential seizure and kidnapping".
Or "Teachers are widely hated".
Or "Soldiers are trained to treat their feelings and gut more important than reason, rationality, and respect for the human dignity of those they seek to help. "
That's not to say that there aren't endemic problems with social workers, doctors, soldiers, or teachers. That just wasn't the way to go about it.
What's annoying is that you should know this.