7 ms·

>> There is also the US Americans with Disabilities Act. I am dead certain that I lose work because I link to two essays about my mental illness right at the to

by dsacco 12y ago

>> There is also the US Americans with Disabilities Act. I am dead certain that I lose work because I link to two essays about my mental illness right at the top of every page of my website. With respect, why do you do this? How can you possibly think this is a good idea? I sympathize that you have a mental illness, but you're being stubborn by complaining that you can't get a job when one of the primary obstacles is clearly in your power. Don't advertise that you have a mental illness. No matter how you would like the world to work, it does not work in such a way that advertising mental illness is in any way conducive to searching for a job. Here is another example, to take away the stigma of mental illness: I'm a hiring manager, and I just found out that you have cancer on your blog. This was directly in the navigation of the blog. This is bad. I don't want to not hire you because you have cancer. I don't want to discriminate against you. But you've suddenly become much more complicated and emotionally loaded than this other person who doesn't have cancer. Worse, you display no regard whatsoever for social cues by advertising this so bluntly. If your mental disorder has anything to do with you not getting a job, it's really just because you're sending horribly unattractive social/communication signals to potential employers. There is an idealized world we'd all like to see, and there is a world we actually live in. It's not like you're a woman being discriminated against here. Your mental illness does not need to literally be the first thing people see about you when they look at your online identity. Sorry if any of this was harsh. I wish you the best in your search, but please consider not being quite so "loud" about your problems. Reframing who you are to potential employers could do wonders.

MichaelCrawford 12y ago
The ADA is intended to protect people who self-identify. If some chooses not to hire me because they see my essays at the top of my online resume, then they are violating Federal Law.
- owennoah 12y ago
  Correct, but unfortunately you will probably never, ever, ever know if this is the case and you would have a hard time proving it anyway so the point is probably moot. The real question is: what can someone who is having trouble finding work do anyway? See my response below.
- Frondo 12y ago
  Did you see the parent poster's question? I'm curious too, why you do the linking on your site, when you seem to be looking for work, and you suspect it's preventing you from getting it?
  - DanBC 12y ago
    I would not want to work for ignorant bigots, and self-identifying is a way to filter out employers who are ignorant and happy to break federal law.
    - owennoah 12y ago
      This is a fair point too, at least in as much as job seekers should be screening employers for a variety of things. Not enough job seekers do that. They just say whatever they think will make the employer happy.
      - MichaelCrawford 12y ago
        In recent years I've come up with a few ways to screen potential employers. One good way, before interviewing if possible, is to travel to the office during the time of day that you expect to arrive, were you to take the job. For most people that would be morning rush hour, but I commonly work at night. As well, travel from the office to home - or perhaps to the general neighborhood where you expect to relocate - at the time you expect to get off work. When you interview, ask the hiring manager whether he knows where you would be likely to sit, where you to hire on. In the case of my work at microsoft, that one question would have led to my turning down the contract. I was expecting an office with a door I could shut, but because I was a contractor, on my first morning I was told I'd have to sit in - I Swear I'm Not Making This Up - "The Boiler Room". If they have a lunchroom, ask to see it. Extra credit if you can actually eat there. I personally care quite a lot about what I can before and after work, and during my lunch hour in the general neighborhood of where I work. Some people don't care but I do - if there aren't any cafes in the area, I don't pursue it. That precludes quite a lot of otherwise good jobs that are in the middle of huge industrial parks.
    - 12y ago
owennoah 12y ago
Dylan, Noah here from the article. Let's put Michael's specific situation aside for a moment. The truth is, neither of us knows WHY he isn't finding work. We each might have our own inklings as to why but there are surely some causation/correlation flaws we have no insight into. (And I will get to this) So let's take him out of the equation and create a fictional person having a hard time finding work-- call him Bob. Maybe Bob went to a poor school-- or no school-- or blogs about satanism or who knows what. Bob's getting passed on and he doesn't really know why but can only suspect. You or I certainly cannot know why either sitting where we are so we really shouldn't speculate, even on the reasons this fictional person claims are the reason. That's because only the hiring managers passing on him know and their reasons might be different from what he thinks AND each other. This is not to mention that they might not even be able/want to verbalize it. Maybe some are bigoted and don't like his nationality. Maybe he smells funny when he walks in the room. Maybe they are all just assholes. Maybe he is terrible at what he does and doesn't know it (I went to school with someone like this who thinks the world has it in for him but he's really just very uncomfortable to be around and he can't help it and can't be made aware of it for whatever reason.) Sometimes these things are "gut" feelings-- right or wrong-- and they make hiring a particularly inexact science-- especially for the job seeker trying to reverse engineer it. What I have found working with the un-, under- and mal-employed is that a lot of times the reason they suspect they aren't finding the work they want-- and the reasons third party observers suspect-- is not really the case. Put on top of it the fact that hiring organizations often refuse to say why they didn't hire someone to shield themselves from lawsuits and that compounds the problem. Sometimes candidates walk into job interviews they had no chance of getting even before they walked in through no fault of their own-- I wrote about this here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140917152632-29657051-make-em-pay-the-solution-to-the-phantom-job-interview https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140917152632-29657051-make-... So what's the solution? Well, there is no perfect solution but there's also know obvious answers either. Coming back to Michael for a moment, in my experience, a lot of times people don't look at personal webpages so-- even if his suspicions about the mental illness affecting his job chances are right-- I highly doubt it has lost him EVERY single opportunity. Which, to be fair, it doesn't seem he is suggesting. What does that mean? Well... tl;dr: there's something going on none of us knows and/or cannot know that's at play here. Lesson: STOP DECONSTRUCTING THE JOB SEARCH! It's stupid. It's like trying to figure out why someone doesn't want to date you. What are you going to do? Argue with them? Yes, sometimes these practices are inane, frustrating, even illegal-- though the burden of proof is so high it's probably not worth most people's time. And yet-- and yet-- there's SO MUCH WORK TO BE DONE in the world, SO MUCH, and money is so cheap-- SO CHEAP-- creative job seekers with a modicum of skill can usually find meaningful work if they circumvent the traditional job search process. Indeed, these jobs are often better. I wrote about this as well: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140912054444-29657051-exploding-toilet-theory-the-only-thing-you-need-to-know-when-applying-for-work https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140912054444-29657051-explo... Only three questions matter when screening a candidate: can he/she do the work, does he/she want to do the work and do you want to work with him/her? The current process of resumes and keywords and personality-based interviewing biases toward the last question-- in my mind the least relevant. Lots of people didn't want to work with Steve Jobs because he was a certified maniac-- but so what? Certainly you don't want to hire unnecessarily disruptive people but I'd suggest companies be wary of passing on candidates too quickly for reasons we SUSPECT (key word) will make them poor fits-- including matters of which probably only trained medical personnel are qualified to speak about, even if to do so makes us feel safe. In my mind there are two types of organizations-- growth-focused organizations and risk-averse organizations. Generally speaking, risk-averse organizations will accept almost any reason not to hire someone if they don't fit a pre-determined mould (the right profile, the right background, the right look-- yes, the right school, etc) and depending on the firm's market position and corporate strategy that may make sense. This is the opportunity for the growth-based organizations. The market for people who are good at getting jobs is fierce and tight. If you can find these candidates on LinkedIn with the right keywords, they will be expensive and possibly flight risks anyway because they are very liquid in terms of marketability. But if you are looking for people who can and want to do the work, the market is wide open. And the benefit will be to the organization that sees this inefficiency and exploits it. 80% of people are in the wrong job or don't have one, per Gallup and gov't statistics. If that's not an opportunity for any enterprising organization, I don't know what is.
whybroke 12y ago
Your advice would surely help him and every one who reads it find a job. And if everyone did it, there would not be anyone on the web who posted about even minor treatable mental issues such as depression. Many, maybe millions, who might be helped by that wouldn't be. After all, each such post easily reaches thousands who have not found treatment yet. It might also be wise for job seeks over 35 to dye their hair or beards, for women to use gender obscuring name choices, for Jewish people to hide their religion and gays to hide that fact. Not only will this not solve any problems it will make a much worse future world. So while individuals may solve their particular problems by simply giving in to a broken system (I myself am posting here semi anonymously after all), it sure makes things worse in the long run and impossibly harder on people who can't hide these things (eg race).
- MichaelCrawford 12y ago
  "reaches thousands" At its peak, the copy of Living with Schizoaffective Disorder that I have on my own website - there are copies elsewhere - had 8,000 readers per month. The State of California Mental Health Department placed it on a reading list that they distribute to their county clinics. I was able to give some closure to a grieving mother whose son low-level formatted his hard drive then killed himself for no apparent reason.
slfnflctd 12y ago
As I see it, the more people do this, the less discrimination will be acceptable. No, I wouldn't ever personally advise someone to behave this way if they were seeking to further their career. However, if I were to advise humanity in general, I would suggest that we need everyone with such conditions to start doing it in order to force change. It's nearly the same thing as racial discrimination, except that it's based on something unseen. Rosa Parks didn't move civil rights forward by avoiding the negative consequences of acting how she believed she should. Sometimes the only way to get closer to that idealized world we'd all like to see is by acting like we're already there. Money isn't everything.
- MichaelCrawford 12y ago
  Thank You. It is more important to me that others read my essays on mental illness, than that I get a job. Edit: But even so, being poor totally sucks.
DanBC 12y ago
> But you've suddenly become much more complicated and emotionally loaded than this other person who doesn't have cancer. You mean than this other person who might be lying to hide their cancer from you. Your bigotry has made you say that you would prefer dishonest liars to people who are honest but with a mental illness. Don't you see how utterly fucked that attitude is? It's disgusting and you should feel ashamed.
- Raptor22 12y ago
  I totally agree with your comment. Is it sad that I've grown to accept the world as it is?
- owennoah 12y ago
  I think his point is that if someone has cancer and they end up needing to fire them it's going to become an issue for them emotionally. Good, bad or indifferent-- I understand what he's saying, if that is what he is saying. But Dan's point is well taken: is this what we want to incentivize? A culture of lying and partial disclosure? Now, that doesn't mean 100% disclosure of all things at all times-- people have a right to privacy. But what I think is often lost here is the understanding that when we force everyone to wear masks, we often end up not knowing where the masks end and the real faces begin.
- mistermann 12y ago
  > Your bigotry has made you say that you would prefer dishonest liars to people who are honest but with a mental illness. Wait, who is the "dishonest liar" in your hypothetical scenario? The person who "might by lying"?
- dsacco 12y ago
  >>Your bigotry has made you say that you would prefer dishonest liars to people who are honest but with a mental illness. >>Don't you see how utterly fucked that attitude is? It's disgusting and you should feel ashamed. You've made this far more personal than it should or has to be. You've completely misunderstood my meaning and chosen to become very offended at something I did not actually say. Given that, there is no reason to lash out at me when I am simply trying to help him. If you disagree, just say that. Now, I'm not a bigot. I genuinely care about his predicament. I've known many people personally who suffer from mental illnesses of varying types. What I was explaining is a hypothetical scenario where someone discriminates subconsciously, not consciously. They see a person's candidacy for a job and their first association is with mental illness, not competency. This is a terrible first impression. My point is that the world is filled with what I call "grey-area" discrimination. It's people who are otherwise kind and caring but not self-aware enough to stop themselves from discriminating when a subconscious impulse arises in the face of something they don't want to deal with. Now, elsewhere in this thread Michael explained that it is more important for him to take a stand than to have a job. That's fine! I fully support him. As long as he understands the impression he is making in interviews and job applications, I applaud him for being so committed to social change. My purpose was only to help him understand that what he is doing is tactlessly honest, if one wants to apply for a job. It appeared to me from his parent comment that his primary goal was getting a job, not taking a social stance, so I wanted to give frank advice. We all embellish who are to inspire confidence in others. On a date you will talk yourself up. On a job interview you will talk yourself up. Relaying a story to your friends, you will talk yourself up. Michael is doing the extreme opposite of that, and I wanted him to be aware of it because it was not the first time I had seen him complaining. But I fully understand his decision, in light of his explanation.
MichaelCrawford 12y ago
"When Hitler attacked the Jews I was not a Jew, therefore I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and was not concerned. Then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church - and there was nobody left to be concerned." -- Pastor Martin Niemöller Some things are more important than work: Hitler put the mentally ill in concentration camps long before he put the Jewish people there.
MichaelCrawford 12y ago
I edited the header on my site to make my intentions more clear: it is more important to me to educate the public about mental illness, than it is to have a job. Even so, it would be nice to have a job, and not to be faced with discrimination. Consider that most today revere the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior as a saint. But during his lifetime, he was not permitted to stay in hotels during his travels, and so had to sleep in his car. He wrote once about how that really got him down. http://www.warplife.com/ http://www.warplife.com/ Edit: Suppose I did get a job. What problems would that solve? In the US, the mentally ill are legally permitted to wear their own clothes, as well as to manage their own financial affairs while we are in mental hospitals. Even so, the hospital staff either is unaware of these facts, or refused to abide by them. This is the case even if one is on an involuntary hold. If I got a job, would that enable some other mentally ill webmaster to pay for his domain renewal, so he doesn't lose his livelihood?
MichaelCrawford 12y ago
"When I was asked to make this address I wondered what I had to say to you boys who are graduating. And I think I have one thing to say. If you wish to be useful, never take a course that will silence you. Refuse to learn anything that implies collusion, whether it be a clerkship or a curacy, a legal fee or a post in a university. Retain the power of speech no matter what other power you may lose. If you can take this course, and in so far as you take it, you will bless this country. In so far as you depart from this course, you become dampers, mutes, and hooded executioners. As a practical matter, a mere failure to speak out upon occassions where no statement is asked or expect from you, and when the utterance of an uncalled for suspicion is odious, will often hold you to a concurrence in palpable iniquity. Try to raise a voice that will be heard from here to Albany and watch what comes forward to shut off the sound. It is not a German sergeant, nor a Russian officer of the precinct. It is a note from a friend of your father's, offering you a place at his office. This is your warning from the secret police. Why, if you any of young gentleman have a mind to make himself heard a mile off, you must make a bonfire of your reputations, and a close enemy of most men who would wish you well. I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the world with their messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think they must save their strength and wait. They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard. "In a few years," reasons one of them, "I shall have gained a standing, and then I shall use my powers for good." Next year comes and with it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought, his ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say. I give you this one rule of conduct. Do what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don't be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time." John J. Chapman Commencement Address to the Graduating Class of Hobart College, 1900

by dsacco 12y ago

MichaelCrawford 12y ago

The ADA is intended to protect people who self-identify. If some chooses not to hire me because they see my essays at the top of my online resume, then they are violating Federal Law.

owennoah 12y ago
Correct, but unfortunately you will probably never, ever, ever know if this is the case and you would have a hard time proving it anyway so the point is probably moot. The real question is: what can someone who is having trouble finding work do anyway? See my response below.
Frondo 12y ago
Did you see the parent poster's question? I'm curious too, why you do the linking on your site, when you seem to be looking for work, and you suspect it's preventing you from getting it?
- DanBC 12y ago
  I would not want to work for ignorant bigots, and self-identifying is a way to filter out employers who are ignorant and happy to break federal law.
  - owennoah 12y ago
    This is a fair point too, at least in as much as job seekers should be screening employers for a variety of things. Not enough job seekers do that. They just say whatever they think will make the employer happy.
    - MichaelCrawford 12y ago
      In recent years I've come up with a few ways to screen potential employers. One good way, before interviewing if possible, is to travel to the office during the time of day that you expect to arrive, were you to take the job. For most people that would be morning rush hour, but I commonly work at night. As well, travel from the office to home - or perhaps to the general neighborhood where you expect to relocate - at the time you expect to get off work. When you interview, ask the hiring manager whether he knows where you would be likely to sit, where you to hire on. In the case of my work at microsoft, that one question would have led to my turning down the contract. I was expecting an office with a door I could shut, but because I was a contractor, on my first morning I was told I'd have to sit in - I Swear I'm Not Making This Up - "The Boiler Room". If they have a lunchroom, ask to see it. Extra credit if you can actually eat there. I personally care quite a lot about what I can before and after work, and during my lunch hour in the general neighborhood of where I work. Some people don't care but I do - if there aren't any cafes in the area, I don't pursue it. That precludes quite a lot of otherwise good jobs that are in the middle of huge industrial parks.
  - 12y ago

owennoah 12y ago

Dylan, Noah here from the article. Let's put Michael's specific situation aside for a moment. The truth is, neither of us knows WHY he isn't finding work. We each might have our own inklings as to why but there are surely some causation/correlation flaws we have no insight into. (And I will get to this) So let's take him out of the equation and create a fictional person having a hard time finding work-- call him Bob. Maybe Bob went to a poor school-- or no school-- or blogs about satanism or who knows what. Bob's getting passed on and he doesn't really know why but can only suspect. You or I certainly cannot know why either sitting where we are so we really shouldn't speculate, even on the reasons this fictional person claims are the reason. That's because only the hiring managers passing on him know and their reasons might be different from what he thinks AND each other. This is not to mention that they might not even be able/want to verbalize it. Maybe some are bigoted and don't like his nationality. Maybe he smells funny when he walks in the room. Maybe they are all just assholes. Maybe he is terrible at what he does and doesn't know it (I went to school with someone like this who thinks the world has it in for him but he's really just very uncomfortable to be around and he can't help it and can't be made aware of it for whatever reason.) Sometimes these things are "gut" feelings-- right or wrong-- and they make hiring a particularly inexact science-- especially for the job seeker trying to reverse engineer it. What I have found working with the un-, under- and mal-employed is that a lot of times the reason they suspect they aren't finding the work they want-- and the reasons third party observers suspect-- is not really the case. Put on top of it the fact that hiring organizations often refuse to say why they didn't hire someone to shield themselves from lawsuits and that compounds the problem. Sometimes candidates walk into job interviews they had no chance of getting even before they walked in through no fault of their own-- I wrote about this here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140917152632-29657051-make-em-pay-the-solution-to-the-phantom-job-interview https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140917152632-29657051-make-... So what's the solution? Well, there is no perfect solution but there's also know obvious answers either. Coming back to Michael for a moment, in my experience, a lot of times people don't look at personal webpages so-- even if his suspicions about the mental illness affecting his job chances are right-- I highly doubt it has lost him EVERY single opportunity. Which, to be fair, it doesn't seem he is suggesting. What does that mean? Well... tl;dr: there's something going on none of us knows and/or cannot know that's at play here. Lesson: STOP DECONSTRUCTING THE JOB SEARCH! It's stupid. It's like trying to figure out why someone doesn't want to date you. What are you going to do? Argue with them? Yes, sometimes these practices are inane, frustrating, even illegal-- though the burden of proof is so high it's probably not worth most people's time. And yet-- and yet-- there's SO MUCH WORK TO BE DONE in the world, SO MUCH, and money is so cheap-- SO CHEAP-- creative job seekers with a modicum of skill can usually find meaningful work if they circumvent the traditional job search process. Indeed, these jobs are often better. I wrote about this as well: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140912054444-29657051-exploding-toilet-theory-the-only-thing-you-need-to-know-when-applying-for-work https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140912054444-29657051-explo... Only three questions matter when screening a candidate: can he/she do the work, does he/she want to do the work and do you want to work with him/her? The current process of resumes and keywords and personality-based interviewing biases toward the last question-- in my mind the least relevant. Lots of people didn't want to work with Steve Jobs because he was a certified maniac-- but so what? Certainly you don't want to hire unnecessarily disruptive people but I'd suggest companies be wary of passing on candidates too quickly for reasons we SUSPECT (key word) will make them poor fits-- including matters of which probably only trained medical personnel are qualified to speak about, even if to do so makes us feel safe. In my mind there are two types of organizations-- growth-focused organizations and risk-averse organizations. Generally speaking, risk-averse organizations will accept almost any reason not to hire someone if they don't fit a pre-determined mould (the right profile, the right background, the right look-- yes, the right school, etc) and depending on the firm's market position and corporate strategy that may make sense. This is the opportunity for the growth-based organizations. The market for people who are good at getting jobs is fierce and tight. If you can find these candidates on LinkedIn with the right keywords, they will be expensive and possibly flight risks anyway because they are very liquid in terms of marketability. But if you are looking for people who can and want to do the work, the market is wide open. And the benefit will be to the organization that sees this inefficiency and exploits it. 80% of people are in the wrong job or don't have one, per Gallup and gov't statistics. If that's not an opportunity for any enterprising organization, I don't know what is.

whybroke 12y ago

Your advice would surely help him and every one who reads it find a job. And if everyone did it, there would not be anyone on the web who posted about even minor treatable mental issues such as depression. Many, maybe millions, who might be helped by that wouldn't be. After all, each such post easily reaches thousands who have not found treatment yet. It might also be wise for job seeks over 35 to dye their hair or beards, for women to use gender obscuring name choices, for Jewish people to hide their religion and gays to hide that fact. Not only will this not solve any problems it will make a much worse future world. So while individuals may solve their particular problems by simply giving in to a broken system (I myself am posting here semi anonymously after all), it sure makes things worse in the long run and impossibly harder on people who can't hide these things (eg race).

MichaelCrawford 12y ago
"reaches thousands" At its peak, the copy of Living with Schizoaffective Disorder that I have on my own website - there are copies elsewhere - had 8,000 readers per month. The State of California Mental Health Department placed it on a reading list that they distribute to their county clinics. I was able to give some closure to a grieving mother whose son low-level formatted his hard drive then killed himself for no apparent reason.

slfnflctd 12y ago

As I see it, the more people do this, the less discrimination will be acceptable. No, I wouldn't ever personally advise someone to behave this way if they were seeking to further their career. However, if I were to advise humanity in general, I would suggest that we need everyone with such conditions to start doing it in order to force change. It's nearly the same thing as racial discrimination, except that it's based on something unseen. Rosa Parks didn't move civil rights forward by avoiding the negative consequences of acting how she believed she should. Sometimes the only way to get closer to that idealized world we'd all like to see is by acting like we're already there. Money isn't everything.

MichaelCrawford 12y ago
Thank You. It is more important to me that others read my essays on mental illness, than that I get a job. Edit: But even so, being poor totally sucks.

DanBC 12y ago

> But you've suddenly become much more complicated and emotionally loaded than this other person who doesn't have cancer. You mean than this other person who might be lying to hide their cancer from you. Your bigotry has made you say that you would prefer dishonest liars to people who are honest but with a mental illness. Don't you see how utterly fucked that attitude is? It's disgusting and you should feel ashamed.

Raptor22 12y ago
I totally agree with your comment. Is it sad that I've grown to accept the world as it is?
owennoah 12y ago
I think his point is that if someone has cancer and they end up needing to fire them it's going to become an issue for them emotionally. Good, bad or indifferent-- I understand what he's saying, if that is what he is saying. But Dan's point is well taken: is this what we want to incentivize? A culture of lying and partial disclosure? Now, that doesn't mean 100% disclosure of all things at all times-- people have a right to privacy. But what I think is often lost here is the understanding that when we force everyone to wear masks, we often end up not knowing where the masks end and the real faces begin.
mistermann 12y ago
> Your bigotry has made you say that you would prefer dishonest liars to people who are honest but with a mental illness. Wait, who is the "dishonest liar" in your hypothetical scenario? The person who "might by lying"?
dsacco 12y ago
>>Your bigotry has made you say that you would prefer dishonest liars to people who are honest but with a mental illness. >>Don't you see how utterly fucked that attitude is? It's disgusting and you should feel ashamed. You've made this far more personal than it should or has to be. You've completely misunderstood my meaning and chosen to become very offended at something I did not actually say. Given that, there is no reason to lash out at me when I am simply trying to help him. If you disagree, just say that. Now, I'm not a bigot. I genuinely care about his predicament. I've known many people personally who suffer from mental illnesses of varying types. What I was explaining is a hypothetical scenario where someone discriminates subconsciously, not consciously. They see a person's candidacy for a job and their first association is with mental illness, not competency. This is a terrible first impression. My point is that the world is filled with what I call "grey-area" discrimination. It's people who are otherwise kind and caring but not self-aware enough to stop themselves from discriminating when a subconscious impulse arises in the face of something they don't want to deal with. Now, elsewhere in this thread Michael explained that it is more important for him to take a stand than to have a job. That's fine! I fully support him. As long as he understands the impression he is making in interviews and job applications, I applaud him for being so committed to social change. My purpose was only to help him understand that what he is doing is tactlessly honest, if one wants to apply for a job. It appeared to me from his parent comment that his primary goal was getting a job, not taking a social stance, so I wanted to give frank advice. We all embellish who are to inspire confidence in others. On a date you will talk yourself up. On a job interview you will talk yourself up. Relaying a story to your friends, you will talk yourself up. Michael is doing the extreme opposite of that, and I wanted him to be aware of it because it was not the first time I had seen him complaining. But I fully understand his decision, in light of his explanation.

MichaelCrawford 12y ago

"When Hitler attacked the Jews I was not a Jew, therefore I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and was not concerned. Then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church - and there was nobody left to be concerned." -- Pastor Martin Niemöller Some things are more important than work: Hitler put the mentally ill in concentration camps long before he put the Jewish people there.

MichaelCrawford 12y ago

I edited the header on my site to make my intentions more clear: it is more important to me to educate the public about mental illness, than it is to have a job. Even so, it would be nice to have a job, and not to be faced with discrimination. Consider that most today revere the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior as a saint. But during his lifetime, he was not permitted to stay in hotels during his travels, and so had to sleep in his car. He wrote once about how that really got him down. http://www.warplife.com/ http://www.warplife.com/ Edit: Suppose I did get a job. What problems would that solve? In the US, the mentally ill are legally permitted to wear their own clothes, as well as to manage their own financial affairs while we are in mental hospitals. Even so, the hospital staff either is unaware of these facts, or refused to abide by them. This is the case even if one is on an involuntary hold. If I got a job, would that enable some other mentally ill webmaster to pay for his domain renewal, so he doesn't lose his livelihood?

MichaelCrawford 12y ago

"When I was asked to make this address I wondered what I had to say to you boys who are graduating. And I think I have one thing to say. If you wish to be useful, never take a course that will silence you. Refuse to learn anything that implies collusion, whether it be a clerkship or a curacy, a legal fee or a post in a university. Retain the power of speech no matter what other power you may lose. If you can take this course, and in so far as you take it, you will bless this country. In so far as you depart from this course, you become dampers, mutes, and hooded executioners. As a practical matter, a mere failure to speak out upon occassions where no statement is asked or expect from you, and when the utterance of an uncalled for suspicion is odious, will often hold you to a concurrence in palpable iniquity. Try to raise a voice that will be heard from here to Albany and watch what comes forward to shut off the sound. It is not a German sergeant, nor a Russian officer of the precinct. It is a note from a friend of your father's, offering you a place at his office. This is your warning from the secret police. Why, if you any of young gentleman have a mind to make himself heard a mile off, you must make a bonfire of your reputations, and a close enemy of most men who would wish you well. I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the world with their messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think they must save their strength and wait. They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard. "In a few years," reasons one of them, "I shall have gained a standing, and then I shall use my powers for good." Next year comes and with it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought, his ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say. I give you this one rule of conduct. Do what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don't be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time." John J. Chapman Commencement Address to the Graduating Class of Hobart College, 1900