[753] Applecart

I've been waiting to sense a certain kind of moment for several weeks. I think it just clicked, and it was one of those that gives you the title to what you're about to write before it's written.

I'm not even halfway through my “training” to be a DCS Family Case Manager. Entire days, excuse me, “work days,” are devoted to interviewing and paperwork and navigating these big confusing machines colloquially understood as “computers.” Just like my last job, they make it feel very large and “official” by paying for hotel stays and asking for business casual. Our I.D. badges ensure only those with the proper credentials get behind the proper doorways. The classroom dynamics and politi-speak of the trainers are what anyone “normal” would expect.

I understand there are important reasons for this. The nature of the job is to intervene in the lives of otherwise sovereign individuals. If you don't even look or sound like you have your shit together, things explode immediately. I also understand that on a very large timeline of human behavior and experience, these bland offices and formalized speech can be considered revolutionary and downright magical. You can consider a tie or belt variations on a leash theme, and I probably wouldn't disagree with you, but the vast majority of dogs I've encountered need better training on how to operate on one.

To be sure, this isn't about “office culture.” Every half-rate and occasional slam dunk media portrayal of that life and its satirization abound. This is about the mental passivity and “security” spell it puts you under. You can be as wild and indignant as I've historically been routinely accused of, and still find yourself under it. The real click happens when you think about what may disturb it. When you fear you won't have your access, or consistent check, or colleague banter. When the veneer gives way to the seedy underbelly of your mind that knows it will have to contend with everything going unverbalized.

This is a job that has a high turnover rate. Simultaneously, they want you to be informed and cheerleading for the long-term transformation of families living in varying degrees of crisis. Two fundamentally at odds with each other positions that are both very loud and very obvious across layers of the organization. A key point of insistence from one of my training days was getting to the “underlying needs” of the client. It's one thing to pop into someone's life, give them a few months of obligations for them to comply with, and then the moment you step out, they're right back to the meth, or violence, or broadly understood “neglect.”

And fair enough. A capacity and willingness to change, if it ever “really” happens a philosophical presupposition for another day, takes time. But the formal atmosphere doesn't allow for the meat of the discussion to get tenderized. These people are poor, exhausted, and often suffering from generational abuse. Their “informal supports” are legions upon legions of people who have not just “normalized” pathological behavior, but celebrate it and build it into their traditions and parallel formal structures. I think of cartels operating like Fortune 500 companies; the parallels are broader and darker than anyone cares to discuss. As well, the gaps in human knowledge and capacity aren't even part of the conversation, let alone identified as a prevailing root issue. Dumb oblivious people cause immense consequences, and some very particularly dumb and oblivious ones have disproportionate effects on the system at large.

Here's where the applecart comes in. They have theirs. We, in our “normal society” posture, have ours. Neither want to be disturbed. We want to eat to our hearts content every kind of apple available to us. For them, it's the conflicting self-destruction and rewards of being enmeshed in drugs, sex, and the proclivities of their culture. For us, it's being smarter and luckier about the conflicting self-destruction and rewards of being enmeshed in drugs, sex, and the proclivities of our culture.

I'm not trying to equivocate. I don't think you neglect, nor would neglect, children in your care like these people do. I'm not saying you're as addicted to meth as the person who fluidly lies about all of the meth fairies sprinkling it on their fries and weed. Nor do I think the poor assumptions much of modernity rests on are as destructive as the kind of jungles constructed by myriad negative forces associated with poverty and abuse. What I will say, is that at the individual level, people across the board pick their poison and pretend it isn't slowly killing them and everyone around them.

Let's be less abstract. Damn near everyone at the training building is overweight. For me, it's one of the most immediate indications that there's a problem you don't care to engage with that rests at the heart of implications for other problems. I also differentiate between the weight that happens from getting older or having kids from being fat, nor do I confuse different body types with “giving up.” I can have a big ass and still not know 3 weeks in advance I'm definitely sitting out the company kickball game.

Less obvious than ballooning bodies is inflated pride. These people, and trainers in particular, are proud of the work they do. “Despite the struggles” they know they are “helping.” Their success stories aren't a matter of statistics and what might happen anyway, they testify to their capacity and professionalism. Things are getting better! New language and evolving training materials ensure that the pain points in conversation will result in the eventual better outcomes of our families. From our “strengths-based” perspectives, we can build teams and plans that will see families reunited. Meanwhile, at the desks of the new students, and in every regional office, you'll never find more condescending and dark humor regarding the people you're dealing with.

I feel I've been resisting the urge to adopt the “negative” moniker of my disposition as a badge of pride. I cannot persuade myself that it is wise or necessary to equate “reality” with “negativity.” I also don't mean that as though I have some sort of special claim or license to dictate reality. It's more akin to a notion of “common sense.” If I point to a hand and call it a hand, and you retort “No! It's a wondrous splendiforous jerk-off orgasm machine!” I mean, okay, sure? Saying we're likely to have a fleetingly small if perhaps negative impact in how we conduct our affairs as long as we ignore the roots of poverty and addiction, or at least sideline them and refer to them as “framed too negative” to be discussed intelligently, is not me dismissing our potential or putting your shaping of the matter down.

Shifting gears a bit and more personally, if I seem to have an “insistent” posture, I think it's a reaction to all that's insisted upon me. No, I don't need to be “hopeful” to do my job, as one trainer suggested, I need to be realistic. My responsibility to child welfare transcends unyielding deference to the machine and properly worded note sheets. This means I can work within the confines of my job and give voice to other avenues I've identified as having a greater or tangible impact than my disposition. I try to maintain a sense of immediacy in my mind because, if not now, when? If you don't call the shitty food your eating shit, you definitely won't find yourself working out that afternoon. If you don't recognize your excuse not to engage with something that “sounds negative” you'll sit comfortably on the mantel of things you've awarded yourself for.

I have my under-construction house in the middle of nowhere because for years, “right now” has been when I've worried about not having something like a pension or ability to afford the inevitable medical bills or space to express creative energy that remains important to my energy and vitality. I'm only a month or 2 away of dedicated focus to reach a relative peak in fitness because no matter how far removed I am from ultimate Frisbee games or consistent gym attendance, I'm never spiraling or complacent. The truth of who you are or need to be has staying power. It's memories that don't go away. It's pain worth engaging when the topic arises. It was true when you were 5 and will be true when you're 95. Actually dying is just a part of life, but subverting yourself to a parsed mockery of the whole truth that's required to thrive is the kind of sinful suicide that mostly only dresses or talks differently depending on where and how you grew up.