Security Part

North America » United States
March 20th 2007

Published: March 20th 2007

This is the promised rough draft of the security part... its a little long...but... idlike to thinkworth reading

Security
While cliché, mortality is truly the single most pervasive factor in all of our lives. Every living thing from the one celled amoeba to the greatest of all animals, the human, is going to perish, and, in the grand scheme of things, perish soon. This fact, however, does nothing to prevent life from clinging on as long as possible for, as my wise teacher Dr. Vengatraman says, “Everyone wants a natural death, no one wants an accidental death.” I will take it one step further and say “Everyone wants a well-timed death, no one wants a surprise.” Since life is the highest goal of living things, confidence in a hospitable immediate future is essential to happy individuals.

Over the last 50 years real income throughout much of the world, especially in the West has risen dramatically. However, little in the way of contentment has accompanied the new influx of dollars, pounds, and euros. This phenomena has been proven to be reversed in the case with poorer countries. As countries such as South Korea, Chile and Taiwan have developed economically they have become happier. This phenomenon arises from the same reason that within societies an increase in salary makes the poor happier while the rich have no visible change when given the same raise. What does this mean? Well, it seems to me that while for the rich (those who have more than enough money for health care and their basic needs) an increase in salary merely means amplification in purchasing power, whereas for the poor it provides access to essentials; food, health care, shelter.

This exact issue was raised by a porter named Subbidah in a conversation I had with him one day at the Tirunvelli train station porter house. I had always been interested in porters because their job is unbelievably physically and mentally demanding. They work 24 hour shifts, lifting luggage from the trains that arrive every half hour. Although the luggage averages 60 pounds each, these men usually only make one hundred rupees ($2) for the days work. Subbidah was a grizzled forty two year old man with deep set eyes who at first glance could have passed for a sixty year old. “What do you think about your job?” I asked.
“It’s very hard but I am very thankful for it because I am not under the sun and I have a fixed salary” he said.
“What’s this about the sun?” I enquired.

“When I was sixteen my father died so I had to drop out of school to work. It was either that or my family would starve. But I lived out in a village where the only work was in the fields. Let me tell you, all jobs where you are out of the sun are better than jobs where you are in the sun. I worked in the fields until 12 years ago when my brother-in-law was able to get me this job. When I worked in the fields I had to show up every day at the farm with the men where they would say whether or not there was work for that day.” He had been slouched on a bench and at this point he sat up tall as if he had a pronouncement to make. “I had a family then! When you do not know if you will have a job the next day, or the next, or the next, it is very bad. You do not know if your family will have food. If someone gets sick there is no money for medicine. You cannot live like that. But I’m settled now” he said leaning back against the wall once again. “Now I’m happy.”
“What do you wish for your children’s lives?”
“I wish for them to have more settled lives than I had. I want them to go to college and get salaried jobs so they can be settled.”
“And what makes an especially good day?” I asked.
“A day when I get lots of tips. Because when I get lots of tips I can save and when I can save I have more confidence in my family’s future.”

Throughout the rest of the conversation Subbidah stressed time and again that the most important thing for him was being “settled”. Having previously lived in a situation in which his very family’s existence was in question, merely having a salaried job, albeit poorly paying, was enough to give him contentment.

One day during the monsoon season I experienced the most severe rainstorm of my life. During the pinnacle of the deluge I was biking back from playing soccer with my cell phone in my bag. Over the course of the journey my clothes and everything in my bag got drenched, yet I was impervious to this fact, so much was I enjoying the rain. I got home, however, to discover that my cell phone had been destroyed by the water. “Arg!” I grumbled to myself. After the rain stopped I walked over to a dosai stand bordering on a wine shop to eat dinner. As I walked past the wine shop a man stumbled out quite obviously drunk. He started talking to me saying, “I hate the rain.”

“You hate the rain! I hate the rain” I responded. “My cell phone was destroyed! 2000 rupees lost!”
“Yeah, well the wall to my house collapsed. The wall fell down. Then the whole house fell. Now I have to build a new house!” he yelled looking exasperated. “I wish I had a house made out of concrete.” I will never forget that interaction. To think, all this man wanted was the security of having a house that could withstand a downpour, but for him affording it was impossible.

The 2003 Human Development Report for Tamil Nadu has compiled large amounts of data from which one can infer many things. Firstly, that Tamil Nadu is improving rapidly when compared to many other Indian states. Secondly, that it is falls far short of the developed West in many key developmental areas.

The average life expectancy at birth for males in Tamil Nadu in the year 1997 was 64 years. For women it was 68. These numbers are good, especially when one considers that in 1960 these life expectancies were 41 and 38 years respectively. However, the United States has an average life expectancy about 10 years longer. More worrying, however, is the infant mortality rate. At 48 deaths per 1000 babies it stands as the third lowest rate in all of India, but compared to the rate of 6 deaths per 1000 in the United States it is appalling.

Statistics can provide perspective, yet they lack a human element. What makes the difference in health care between India and the United States evident to me is the frequency with which I see maimed or limbless people. At least once a day I see someone, often a beggar, with a part of their body badly disfigured. At times the maladies are so gruesome that my weak stomach forces me to look away. One man who I see every time I venture down to the heart of Madurai pierces my heart. All day he sits hunched over on a shredded blanket with a change bowl in front of him. His spine is so badly misaligned that it looks like he has a fin running the length of his back. What is most disturbing, however, is to know that many of these ills were caused by commonplace, easily fixed accidents such as broken legs. Since health is integral to happiness, it makes sense then that faith in one’s medical system, or in the case of the United States, being insured, is of the greatest importance.

Good health is necessary for security, but so too is a decent income. The average per capita income in Tamil Nadu in 1997 per the Human Development Report from 2003 is Rs. 15, 929, or approximately 350 dollars. This is above the Indian average of Rs 11,554. Despite many Westerner’s claims to the contrary, this is usually enough to subsist on. It is definitely enough in Tamil Nadu where the most basic foods such as rice and sugar are heavily subsidized. However, this figure is not enough to cover unexpected, unplanned for events such as serious illnesses and a death of an income provider.

Whole nations, even wealthy ones can be plagued by a sense of insecurity. In recent times France has been mired with high (for Western Europe) unemployment and slow economic growth. Jacques Chirac, the current albeit soon departing Prime Minister described present day France saying, “There is anxiety over unemployment and the risk of exclusion… It is not a matter of fatigue, nor malaise, but a veritable collective depression.” Writes The Economist, “To the casual visitor to France, a country of high-speed trains, well-stocked municipal flower beds and sit-down lunches, such French glumness is baffling. Fully 54 percent of respondents told a poll by Ipsos recently that they considered their country to be in the decline; only 12 percent thought the opposite. Underlying the malaise is an intangible sense of insecurity: about finding a regular job; about making ends meet at the end of the month; about the creeping bankruptcy of the social system; about the unresolved tension of the banlieues; and about the failure of politicians to make any difference.”

In my neighborhood there is a small tailoring shop owned by four sisters. Their father died seven years ago which meant that all of the girls and their younger brother had to drop out of school early and work to support the family. The family member’s combined salary is around 2000 rupees, which, very differently from America, is pooled together for use by the family.

Over the course of this year I have grown quite close to them and even once visited their house. When the bus stopped at their neighborhood called Pudur I was shocked, for they lived in one of the numerous slums around Madurai. As I walked down the narrow lane towards their house from the bus stop I was encircled by a flurry of activity. Next to the pavement there ran a ditch with slimy, feces ridden water standing stagnant. Hens, accompanied by an array of scurrying chicks scuttled to and fro over piles of trash and the ashes of former piles. “I can’t believe they live here” I said to myself. I was to find out soon that “The Four Marys” as I called them, (Sesu Mary 33, Reggina Mary 30, Sahaya Mary 22, Arul Mary 21), their mother, and their younger brother all lived together in one room. Their house consisted of a bed, about fifty square feet of floor open floor, a dresser for all of their clothes, and a counter top which also served as a makeshift kitchen. At night their mother slept on the bed while they slept on the floor, interlocking like a jig-saw puzzle so as to fit in the limited space. I was blown away by how few possessions they had. Yet, from talking to them and people of their same economic status I have learned that one needs very, very few possessions. Said Sesu Mary, “We don’t make much, but we have enough. We have enough food to eat. We can pay rent. There is money for soap and shampoo. And sometimes buy new clothes.” Once, her younger sister Sahaya Mary asked me if I wished to be a rich man. When I responded that it was not my goal, but that my goal was merely to have podum, or “enough”, she was so pleased with the answer that she jumped towards me with an outstretched hand and broad smile to shake my hand.

While one can live with little, if healthcare is not taken care, then massive problems arise, often unexpectedly. As is always the case, there are two sides of every coin. One day Sahaya Mary was looking very ill. When I asked her what the problem was she responded that she was sick, but that the family didn’t have the 100 rupees she needed for medicine at that time. After much pleading she finally took the money I offered her.

One other thing to consider is the freedom of choice. Without any savings they have little choice in what they do with their lives. Whereas I came to India because, well, just because, they lack options. They know that tailoring is one of the few job options open to them and thus the job in which they will most likely spend the rest of their lives working. Similarly, one time we visited a factory that makes prosthetic limbs. There we heard the story of a man who was a professional driver. After losing his leg he could no longer drive, rendering all the skills he had acquired over the years useless. For this and other obvious reasons he was overjoyed to be blessed with an artificial leg.

Beyond the security of the individual there is a second level which I will call stability. Everyone has carved out a routine to their days regardless of beliefs of the contrary. Most people’s routines are very obvious for the observer to see and often involve waking up at the same time every day, taking the same bus, driving the same route to work or eating the same lunch. When the stability that the routine brings is threatened, however, small changes become annoyances. Take a road detour for example. A slight change in route, even one that does not cause an increase in traffic leads to people becoming frustrated and angry. If the detour does not cause the person to be late or result in them becoming lost, then the detour in and of itself could not possibly be the real cause of irritation. Instead, what actually causes the disturbance to the individual is the breakdown of the routine and the stability it brings. The morning paper not arriving, running out of milk for cereal and one’s internet malfunctioning are miniscule alterations that result in a disproportionate amount of disturbance.

I highlighted these small affronts to routine because by noticing them one notices a routine that is typically overlooked. The reason that we all create such order for ourselves is that this order brings with it stability. This personally constructed stability does its best to gloss over the fact that this world is unstable and chaotic.

People create meaning for their own lives, and, in doing so, construct a personal sense of security. This is why Copernicus’ heliotropic universe and Darwin’s Theory of Evolution caused such outrage. People had invested much time and energy into their old beliefs because they propped up the importance of the individual. The Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis describes his experience of seeing a monkey soon after finding out that humans descended from apes in his autobiography Report to Greco. While looking at the monkey in disgust he says, “This my first grandmother? These my roots? In other words, was it true that God did not bear me, did not fashion me with His hands, breathe His breath in my nostrils? Was I begotten by a he-monkey who had siphoned his sperm from she-monkey to she-monkey? In short, was I a son not of God, but of the monkey?”

Since personal stability and happiness go hand in hand it is no surprise then that that which deals the most damage to stability is also one of the leading causes of unhappiness. So, what is the most problematic for stability then? If the United States General Survey is to believed it is unemployment and family break up. They issued a survey quizzing Americans on their happiness and satisfaction with different aspects of their life (family, finance, work, community, health). From their responses we can rank the most important dimensions of ones life or, put another way, those dimensions most closely linked to happiness. The results showed that family relationships and financial situation were one and two, followed by work, community and health in that order. It’s no surprise that family and finance, the most integral elements to stability, are fingered by respondents as being of the highest import.

Since 1981 the World Values Survey has carried out a study of happiness and administered surveys to 90,000 people in forty six different countries. In the survey a person reports their happiness on a scale from 1 to100 while at the same time reporting upon the various features of his or her life. From this one can learn quite a lot. The following table shows a sampling of the results.

Effects on Happiness
Fall in Happiness (points)
Financial Situation
Family Income down by a third 2

Family Relationships
Divorced (rather than married) 5
Separated (rather than married) 8
Widowed (rather than married) 4
Relationship break-up (not marriage) 4.5

Work
Unemployed (rather than employed) 6
Job insecure (rather than secure) 3
Unemployment rate up 10 percentage points 3

Community
“In general, people can be trusted”
Percentage of citizens saying yes down by
50 percentage points 1.5

Health
Subjective health down 1 point
(on a 5-point scale) 6

Personal Freedom
Quality of Government
Belarus 1995 rather than Hungary 1995 5

Personal Values
“God is Important in my life”
You say no to this rather than yes 3.5

Unemployment is a menace not just because of lost salary. Accompanying the loss of job is often a sense of inadequacy by the unemployed and a worry about the security of their dependents. One day in an Ithaca College Spanish class my professor Julio Lopez-Arias halted a lecture halfway through, turned towards us students and said, “What’s the main reason people have jobs?” My classmates answered the question different ways while basically saying the same thing - “Well, to support yourself, of course.” Julio, after letting everyone speak responded, “The reason that people have jobs is to give structure to their days and, more than anything else, take up time.” While I don’t buy into this concept completely, it is scrumptious food for thought. Income, it seems to me, is the most important reason people work, and, being in India, you realize that a job is a job, and a job means survival. Once I asked an auto-rickshaw driver whose name I have now forgotten whether he liked his job. He said, “No because it is boring. But,” he added, “I don’t have a choice. I have to provide food for my kids.” His statement notwithstanding, it is true that a job takes up a significant portion of each day, adds structure and makes the time off work more meaningful. This, agrees Bertrand Russell, is in fact the most important facet of work. He writes in his book The Conquest of Happiness “Even the dullest work to most people is less painful than idleness. There are in work all grades, from mere relief of tedium up to the profoundest delights, according to the nature of the work and the abilities of the worker. Most of the work that most people have to do is not in itself interesting, but even such work has its advantages. To begin with, it fills a good many hours of the day without the need of deciding what one shall do.”

Everyone likes to feel needed and useful. Whether a policeman, a lawyer, a teacher, or a businessman, all people tend to give significance to what they do, especially regarding its importance for the community at large. Cartamma, one of the two program cooks described this exactly in my talks with her. She said, “It makes me happy when you like my food. If you eat well and look happy, then I am too. But if you don’t like the food one day, then I am sad.” Now, imagine if one day she was fired. Not only would she lack the income the job provides, but she would also feel as if she had anything to offer. Thus, going hand in hand with unemployment is a sense of uselessness.

Insecurity in one’s job, while not quite as bad as unemployment, is also a great inhibitor to happiness. Uncertainty about the future, as mentioned before, often causes stress and, left unchecked, prevents people from being either productive or at ease. I avidly follow the New York soccer team formerly called the Metrostars. Last April, only weeks before the season started the club was bought by the energy drink Red Bull, leading to the exit of the general manager and constant rumors about the future of then manager Mo Johnston. Day to day no one knew Johnston’s status or whether they themselves would still be on the team. What was supposed to be a good team collapsed. Players who I had watched for years looked like they had aged years overnight. Amado Guevara, the league MVP the prior year, said, “It is like having two opponents to play against. There is the opponent on the field and then there are the distractions off the field.” "Every day is not the same thing here," said former Red Bulls forward and legendary French national team star Youri Djorkaeff. "Turf, no turf, coach, no coach, general manager, no general manager. You can never be surprised here. You must always be ready." The doubt swirling about the team was enough to throw off a team comprised of players who not only had more than enough money, but also would have found new employment easily. It seems then that security and stability are craved by all, professional athletes in addition to the rest of us.

There is no doubt about it, transitions are difficult. This is as true for societies as it is for individuals. Newly formed countries, nations which have undergone a political revolution and states that have been opened to globalization for the first time bear this out. Rarely has the first implementation of democracy in any country gone smoothly although it is nearly consensus the world over that democracy is an ideal, (or as close to ideal as presently possible) government. So too is transition difficult for individuals, even if the direction that the change is occurring towards is positive. When the abolitionist movement started gaining steam one would have thought that all slaves would have been completely behind the movement and begun seeking independence. Surprisingly, this was not the case. Since many slaves knew only servitude and had established routine based upon it, they preferred to stay bound to a master than to pursue their own freedom. However, as time went by and the notion of freedom became more accepted and realistic all slaves came to believe in their own human rights. Even if the goal is an absolute positive, resistance will remain because old ways must be abolished and along with them old methods of coping in this world.

Perhaps the most difficult transition a person can go through in the course of their life is the collapse of a family. Family is the most important of all human institutions and affects everyone on the most personal level. There is not one person I have ever come across in my entire life that has not described their family with the words “crazy”, “embarrassing” or some similar term. Yet, whenever a dispute between factions (races, countries) arises each group inevitably claims moral superiority due to the strength of their families. As anyone who has ever experienced divorce or the death of a family member can tell you, the breakdown of family is one of the most difficult changes one will have to adapt to in one’s life. The World Values Survey chart seen previously shows that divorce (for the divorcee) affects happiness by more than double the loss of a third of one’s income. Since I grew up in the United States, a country with a divorce rate of over forty percent, many of my friends came from families where their father and mother lived separately. Most of them wished for the parents to stay together because that is what they were used to, regardless of how bad a situation it was. However, they all claimed to have adapted quickly to the new circumstances. I will discuss that in more detail in a later chapter.

Ever since Swami Vivekananda introduced Hinduism to the West at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago 1893 the West has had a fascination for the spirituality of India. In recent years India has played a bigger part on the world stage politically, but it still maintains its magical nature to many abroad. While to some extent I feel that the West over mystifies India, it is true that despite scientific progress and increased understanding about our surrounding world, in general, India has sustained its spirituality. Out of all of the people I have come across in India I can only think of a few people who were not religious and lacked faith in the divine. Every single person I interviewed for this project mentioned their personal faith to some degree and its importance. One man, a small, button-like man tailor named Bharti was the most explicit. Very rarely have I ever seen Bharti without a humungous, missing-toothed smile splattered across his face. He said, “I’m happy because I believe in God. Nothing can ever go very wrong because I have God. I feel sorry for the atheists because they have no one to take care of them. If something goes wrong they have no support.” Says Subbidah the porter, “Politics doesn’t give me security, God gives me security. I don’t get paid by the government, so it doesn’t matter so much to me. But God helps me directly.”

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