Rectifications (7) – ‘Make a difference…’ ….‘Give back…’

Rectifications (7) – ‘Make a difference…’ ….‘Give back…’

Torrey Orton
April 22, 2009

Following the suggestion of Confucius, I continue some rectification of names for our times. Elsewhere I offer some ‘solutions’ to some problems of linguistic degradation. Relevant observations appear towards the end of my most recent Dances with Difference (4) post.

‘Make a difference…’ is what we say when we mean that whatever we’ve been doing until the moment of speaking has not been making a difference; that we’ve been contributing negatively to the human condition? Is this what all the job adverts mean if they don’t involve ’making a difference..’, if they don’t promise that you can ‘make a difference..’ by working with us, our clients / customers??

I got about 75, 000,000 Google hits for the expression, with involvements in every domain of human life and specialties like the Make a Difference movie. I just can’t help thinking about all the lives which, presumably, are not making a difference. They’re just getting on with living in various forms, which makes humanity continue. I guess they are not making progress or making things better or something. Being one who has always struggled to find what difference was worth making, I find it hard to join this parade. And I can’t also help thinking of the gratuitous exclusion from virtue of those who have no access to such opportunities!!

In fact, I’m inclined to sneer a bit about making a difference. This inclination is strengthened when I remember that ‘Make a difference..’ reminds me of its cousin ‘Give back…’ (146 million hits, amongst which some organisations I support like Environment Victoria with Gifts that Give Back). From its viewpoint I’ve been robbing you quietly all these years. Am I now going to make amends for damages which you never noticed I was doing, either directly or indirectly, by being associated with destructive products, process and payments???

Does the return of unprincipled and unearned bonuses constitute an example of giving back? How would we know when a claimed example of giving back actually amounted to enough of whatever it is that was withheld or stolen in the first place to recompense the victims? For example, Bill Gates is lionised for giving back immensely – his whole fortune, more or less – by doing which he gets to play god with the lives of masses he chooses to help on topics he decides are most important. And have the consumers gotten back the outsized results of his de facto monopoly?

Similarly, but from the product side of the make a difference equation, there are products which make or sustain their appeals to buyers on the back of making differences of highly ambiguous sorts. The alcohols which support sports events / organisations come to mind. I suspect there’s a pile of cultural studies books on variations of this theme among certain clothing manufacturers and styles, cars, and on and on. Probably someone’s done the work. Let me know if you know who and where.

These may be also more or less making a difference by giving back?? Two-faced contributors to NGO’s now come to mind. ,,, and how about the energy companies spruiking new energy orientations while sustaining old energy profits (an unavoidable conflict of interest for an existing industry seeking to respond to market or other changes??).

I think all this (my anger / irritation) has to do with the stripping of the moral fibre of late capitalism to its thinnest. What’s left are pretensions to it – a moral fibre – which keep us aware of our awareness that there’s little left to aspire to in our world but things. Other reminders include CSR, the new one – ESG (environmental, social and governance) issues, pleas for greedless leading, disparaging of excesses and denials that there’s any role for anyone in anyone else’s use of their choices as long as they do no harm to others (harm calculated as something like shooting rather than spiritual dismemberment). I rave on without making a difference.…

Thanks to Brassie and Hamid’s complaints about my lack of channels for anger a few weeks back, I’m going to provide some channels for making a difference here. What you can do to make a difference wherever you are now is:
1- Do your job right and well – whatever you have to do to live
2- Do the right job well – something you care about and make a living
3- See to it your organisation does its job well and right
4- Discourage yourself and others from consuming the results of wrong and badly done jobs – scams, frauds, discretionary misrepresentations ( the most widely spread chicanery in human worlds) in ‘normal’ commercial endeavours – that is, omission of important consumer information which is not required by law. Complain where you find these hidden, preferably by naming and shaming.
5- Encourage others to join the difference you are making.

That’s for starters. You may notice that this is merely a recommendation to bring basic virtues back into the everyday.