The conundrum of internship

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What to think about the ubiquitous issue of internship? On the one hand taking on an intern from college (extraordinarily popular in America) gives the young person an introduction to commerce or politics and a transition to the real world. It allows the organisation to assess the person’s usefulness and adaptability without immediate commitment or legal entanglement and the disagreeable possibility of having to fire a young, maybe vulnerable employee. For the internee it is a foot in the door.

On the other hand, some interns are paid something, but mainly a nominal amount; others are paid nothing, and the message is “you are lucky to be here at all”. The implication of this is that you have to come from a well heeled family prepared to subsidise you, and this is both unfair to the people without private financial help, very divisive, and no doubt annoying to parents who thought the end of college was the end of endless educational expenses.

In my day I never heard of internship at all. You were either offered a paid job or told your face didn’t fit. The starting pay was, of course, modest, but if you messed up the company had, by law, to warn you, point out your failings and make arrangements to train you better. This is/was the civilised way of conducting employee relations. I have a feeling that Epicurus would have a single word to describe internship: exploitation, a way of getting enthusiastic free labour for nothing. Of course, if there is an understanding that a permanent job is waiting for you, and this is merely a trial period, then I suppose internship is better than no work at all. But, were I still a company boss I would have nothing to do with it: either hire the young person after interview, or don’t. It is not Epicurean to keep a person trying like mad, only to wave goodbye to them, come what may, having benefitted from their work.

A few thoughts on Epicureanism

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Epicureanism stands for charity, friendship, foregiveness, and suspicion of ambition and politics. What Epicurus offered was not help in dying, but help in living. Liberated from superstition, he taught, you are free to pursue a pleasant life.

Here are some further thoughts:

“It is impossible to live pleasurably without living prudently, honorably snd justly, and also without living courageously, temperately and magnanimously, and without making friends, and without being philanthropic”.(Philodemus)

And this is the explanation of the universe espoused by Epicurus, to be found on page 63 of “The Swerve” by Stephen Greenblatt (highly recommended and very readable).

“In constant motion, atoms collide with each other, and, in certain circumstances, they form larger and larger bodies….the sun and the moon are made of atoms, as are human beings , water, flies and grains of sand. There are no super-categories of matter, no hierarchy of elements. Heavenly bodies are not divine beings who shape our destiny for good or ill. ……they are part of the natural order….subject to the same principle of creation and destruction, they govern everything that exists”.

Thought for a special day

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Epicurus would, were he alive today, strongly advise us to avoid getting distraught and upset about the state of the world, the ugly politics, the chaos, the partisanship, the rudeness and vulgarity that has been stoked by extremists, modern media and mutual intolerance. Even on this Christmas day this is a difficult thing to do, and I personally struggle to practice what I preach – it is sometimes incredibly difficult. But we have to remember that we cannot single-handedly change the world; all we can do is to be resolutely courteous, kind and thoughtful of others, listening and contributing constructively, respecting other points of view and setting an example of tolerance and relaxed good humour.

Afghanistan – the futile war

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It’s now more than 17 years later, years in which American commanding generals in Afghanistan repeatedly hailed the U.S. military’s “progress” there and regularly applauded the way we had finally “turned a corner” in the Afghan War — only to find more Taliban fighters armed with RPGs around that very corner.

Finally, in the 18th year of the war, an American general — to be specific, Joseph Dunford, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — has come to a somewhat different conclusion. This, mind you, at a moment when the Taliban has taken control of more territory than at any time since they were forced from power by the U.S. invasion of 2001. His assessment also comes in the face of the worst casualties (“unsustainable”) for the American-backed Afghan security forces in memory (more than 28,000 deaths since 2015, according to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani). In response, Dunford offered the shocking news that — get a grip on yourself here — the Taliban “are not losing right now, I think that is fair to say…” (Adapted from Tom Dispatch, 28 Nov 2018)

Hmm… give America’s top general for finally offering up the bad news, even if a few years late. In the twenty-first-century annals of the U.S. military, this passes for realism of the first order. Trumps reaction is to immediately remove half the American soldiers in Afghanistan, without consultation with anyone. This leaves the other half in acute danger, not to mention the Afghan army, whose members likely will be massacred. This reminds me of the scuttle out of Vietnam, the previous major American defeat. If you are going to withdraw, just withdraw, not half, but all the troops. This puts the remaining troops in jeopardy.

The Catholic church and sexual abuse

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At the Second Lateran Council 1139 Rome imposed mandatory celibacy for priests. The issue was money because, under primogeniture (now disappeared) the sons of bishops and priests had a legal claim on the land and holdings of the priestly “living.” Celibacy was instituted, but at the same time the Church, not then or since, has addressed sexual activity among priests.

Catholics are now in silent revolt, the more obvious sign being the new habit of placing one or two pennies in the collection box. More serious are the Five Demands:

– Stop the prevarications of the church and cooperate with the lay authorities to deal with errant priests accused of abuse.
– Stop wearing royalty-like garb and dress simply.
– Give space in every church newspaper to abuse survivors.
– empower the priests to cooperate with their parishioners local councils and committees.
– re- introduce women priests (women had a big role in the early church, until the misogynists
took control).

These ideas would help bring a measure of accountability and democracy to the church, but they do not address the reasons for the extraordinary number of accusations of sexual abuse.

The Pope has just announced that the church will not defend sexual predators, but he evades the real point.

The fact is that celibacy is the main driver in the wave of abuse. Celibacy has no scriptural validity; it is just a human construct. Human beings are gregarious and sexual beings. They yearn for love and emotional and physical closeness. This is a fact that cannot be ignored. Telling priests that love of Jesus is sufficient is not sufficient, and I guess both Jesus (who might or might not have been married), and his disciple Paul, the first Pope (believed to have been married) would probably agree were they to re-visit the planet. In short, celibacy is ridiculous and unnecessary, and by foisting it on the priesthood the church was asking for trouble, even if that trouble was postponed for nine hundred years.