Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive!
Marmion, by Sir Walter Scott
1. Victims of discrimination, or just of history?
If Discrimination is an offense to justice, and it is, when does reverse discrimination operate the same way or is the larger social aim worth the smaller afflictions it imposes, like, I suppose the draft?
There's a real reason I pose this question.
An eclectic friend of mine has long worked in a certain branch of his profession and has risen to the top of it. He's well respected and frequently consulted by members of that profession.
But he's odd in it, in a way (maybe lots of ways) in that part of his success is frankly that he's never been particularly mercenary in a field that is highly mercenary and will admit that his position within a field that has many subdisciplines is largely accidental.
Now, throughout his time in his work, he's hoped to advance to a certain position within it that would involve a substantial reduction in his income and which requires an appointment to acquire.
He won't be getting it.
He won't be getting it even though others in his profession including those who have occupied the position he has aspired to have urged him again and again to aspire to it.
And the reason he won't, at least in part, is because he's male.
The position he seeks is one which has traditionally been occupied by men. Indeed, until recently, by which we mean the last 40 years, very few women ever occupied it. And because of that, as part of an official but not officially stated policy of those who administer the appointment, it's been skewed towards women for the last decade. Again, while nothing official has been stated, unofficially those responsible have been very open that they sought to balance things out through female appointments.
Which means now that because of age and geography a well qualified male, urged to try for the position and regarded as eminently qualified to occupy it never will. Which in his mind, while he keeps it to himself save those who know him well, is a bitter defeat. He feels the fool for trying for it.
So, the question. Is operating on a larger social scale to balance out a perceived past inequity, which in this particular case is subject to a set of larger social influences, just if it works an injustice on individuals?
And if it is, when does that actually stop? In 2019, most types of legal discrimination, save for this type, are illegal and there's no practical end to the social balancing a person might try to impose on an imbalanced world.
Victims of discrimination, or just of history?*
2. A victim of legitimate criteria or of the tyranny of certification?
Another eclectic friend of mine just tried to make a late career, career change. And by career change, I mean a radical one.
Officialdom stopped it in the form of certification.
This individual had sought this position decades earlier, but as he was in a position of having to support a young family at the time, when it was finally offered to him, he couldn't take it. Economics dictated his choice.
But now with his family grown he reconsidered. He'd never lost the desire to do the other job and after a long and successful career in something else, he decided to reapply.
In the interim, the rules had changed and now the position he was offered so long ago, which hasn't changed in its nature at all, requires a degree he doesn't have, and as he can't really just cease working, he can't get it. And not only can he not get it, if he was to attempt to, at this point, the natural advance of age would put him in a category that, no matter what, he wouldn't be hired as people do discriminate on the basis of age, no matter what they say. Indeed, this individual is so cognizant of that, that he questioned if he'd get the open position in the first place and credited discrimination on the basis of age to be legitimate in regard to that question, a view that few would hold.
So he's stuck too.
A victim of legitimate criteria or of the tyranny of certification?
3 Lost vocations?
When I knew her she was a Lutheran, but she'd been born into a Methodist family and baptized by a Methodist pastor as an infant and raised in that faith.
She'd converted to become a Lutheran due to the influence of a college friend, and in some ways that characterized her personality. Highly intelligent, but very insecure, and adoptive of her friends influences. Her faith was no doubt sincere in depth, but in expression a person would have later cause to wonder.
She became a lawyer, and was undoubtedly a genius, but a genius with a highly awkward personality that is difficult to describe. Perhaps for that reason, she was always relegated to small time law, sometimes as part of an agency, and sometimes on her own.
After law school she married and became a Catholic to do so. The marriage did not last long. At some point thereafter she was expressing the Episcopal faith. A conservative in earlier years when her friends were conservatives, now she was a feminist liberal, with feminist liberal friends. She became a Deacon in the Episcopal church and is now set to be ordained a priest.
Lost vocations?**
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*I actually know at least three people who have experienced this, although I know only one well, and one somewhat well. Oddly, maybe, in two of the instances the choosing entity was completely forthright about how it made its choice, after it made it.
**I can think of at least four lawyers I know who became clerics of one kind or another, one a Catholic priest, one a protestant pastor, one a Jewish rabbit, and this last instance. At early common law, fwiw, the clergy and the law were both "learned professions", which is where the term "professional" comes from.
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