Time Immortal

Binks (the Web Elf) writes in with some follow-up commentary on the Paul Lane/HRC brouhaha (see here, here, and here).

As someone with family members beset by bipolarity, I know whereof I speak — depending on the degree, type, and severity of the cycles, the Bipolar personality can range from extremely over-achieving, to very depressed, suicidal, parnoid, even psychotic.

The complainant has no human right to be mentally ill and operate potentially dangerous military equipment. Someone with that condition at a desk-job is less likely — by accident or design — to injure himself or others.

The complainant has no human right to hide his potentially dangerous condition, which would reduce unit effectiveness, resources, and cohesion.

Sorry, man — life dealt you a bad hand in this one respect: deal with it, and find a place where your gifts can be of greatest use and least potential harm to your comrades in arms.

Just so, O Reader. Just so. We don’t always get to choose everything we have to deal with in life, but whether we chose something or not, we still have to accept the reality of our situations and take responsibility for ourselves — that includes taking ownership of, and responsibility for, the various things which may afflict us, even the ones that came to us by factors and vectors beyond our ability to control.

We cannot — must not — sit idly by and demand that the rest of the world adjust itself to us, while at the same time doing nothing to treat or offset that which afflicts us. And yet that is what Mr. Paul Lane is doing, and what the human rights commission is enabling him to do. And that is shameful, for Mr. Lane and for Canada.

By the way, O Reader, don’t forget to visit Binks at FreeMarkSteyn.com, and at his other (and much longer-running) blog, The Web Elf Report.

Pistol Pete writes in again with some follow-up thoughts to my previous response to him.

Thank you for your thoughtful response. I would say that persons such as myself with bipolar disorder have the right and responsibility to function as best we can while receiving the best treatment we can. If this isn’t adequate, we have the right and responsibility to seek disability. We shouldn’t have it both ways.

I think Pete has it exactly right, especially in how he balances rights with responsibilities. Let us be clear about something, O Reader: human beings do not always get all the choices they might like to have. We do not always get the choice, for example, as to whether or not we become afflicted with a particular disease or disorder; sometimes, it just happens that we do, because we are genetically predisposed to it and cannot alter than fact.

Whether we choose something or not, we are (or should be) responsible for everything about our whole person; not only our actions and words, but the talents we possess and the afflictions with which we struggle. And if we become afflicted with a certain disease or disorder, we do have a right to seek treatment for it…but equally, we must take for ourselves the responsibility to actually seek treatment. We do not possess the right to receive treatment if we sit and wait for it to come to us, nor do we necessarily possess the right to demand that others conform themselves, their expectations, and their actions to our affliction while we ourselves do nothing about it. At the same time, we do have the right to expect that when we are taking all reasonable measures to deal — medically, emotionally, psychologically, etc. — with our affliction, the people around us (our bosses at work, our friends, etc.) will understand that we may occasionally require some understanding and leeway from them.

That’s called “give and take,” and it’s a part of successful and rewarding human interaction. The point, I think, is that it all begins with us, each of us as individuals, taking responsibility for ourselves and for the various things which form a part of who we are. What Paul Lane has forgotten, as so many progressives have forgotten, is that he must take responsibility for his own conditions first, before he can reasonably expect any employer to make exceptions and accommodations for him. He must be honest and open about his condition — he should not lie and hide its existence. He must seek treatment for it first and do everything in his own power to ensure that he can work at any position he applies for — he cannot simply show up for work on Monday and expect by Wednesday that the boss will let him off for up to three months if and when he becomes manic. And if he is unable to work, even after exploring all viable treatment options, then he should seek disability assistance from the government — he should not demand that a company that he lied to, and which he cannot complete the tasks expected of him for, pay him to sit at home, unmedicated and manic.

Our culture, I think, has forgotten the notion of responsibility for one’s own person and one’s own actions; the existence of HRCs is evidence of that much, as is the fact that the HRC is seriously considering Mr. Lane’s case rather than telling him to get some help and be more honest the next time ’round.

Pistol Pete sends in his thoughts on this article and the human rights complaint filed by Paul Lane. Let’s just briefly re-cap Mr .Lane’s situation:

Mr. Lane lie[d] about his having bipolar disorder to get the job [testing artillery] in the first place, work[ed] just over a week before being incapacitated by his bipolar disorder (did the Reader get the part where his job involved testing artillery software — how do we suppose one does that, exactly?), and is let go because a) he lied about his condition to get the job and b) like most employees at most companies, he was on a 90-day probationary period in which the company needs to give next to no reason to dismiss an employee anyhow.

Pete writes the following:

I can appreciate how in this case the employee misrepresented his ability to function. I would, however, point out that the condition of Bipolar Disorder need not be a disability any more than the condition of diabetes. Those of us who take our meds, seek apropriate treatment, and make a commitment to self-care can function as well as anyone. I’ve been in a high stress career for over 13 years since my original diagnosis and have been very successful.

This is something interesting that I admit I’d overlooked in my previous article, and it raises the possibility of one of two truths; either Mr. Lane is afflicted with an unusually virulent form of bipolar disorder which is well beyond the ability of any medicine — even any regime of medecine that he might currently be taking, or might have been taking at the time of his brief employment that is at issue here — to control adequately, or else he refuses to acknowledge that his condition requires treatment and a regime of medications.

In either case, his dishonesty is deplorable and his human rights complaint absurd. One desires to be charitable and assume that Mr. Lane’s problem is the first of the two possibilities outlined above; bipolar disorder is (or can be) a terrifying condition that one would never wish on anyone, even a dreaded enemy. But somehow, given the readiness with which Mr. Lane denied his condition, and given the speed with which he turned his (rightful) dismissal into a frivolous human rights complaint, that his actual problem tends toward the latter of the two I have detailed. It is more probably, methinks, that his viewpoint of his bipolar disorder is not that he suffers from a tragic condition that requires treatment, but that he suffers from a tragic condition that everyone around him must be compelled to make accommodations for, even though he himself refuses to explore any of the many effective treatment options available for him.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

The human rights commissions are like some kind of perverse “gift that keeps on giving” in terms of what new depths of stupidity their rulings seem to sink to.

Consider the case of one Paul Lane and the Canadian Department of National Defence:

In 2001, a man named Paul Lane was interviewed for a job with an Ottawa consulting firm, ADGA, to test artillery software for a Department of National Defence contract. It was a highly specialized desk job involving tight deadlines and high stress. No problem, he said, and he was hired.

What he neglected to mention was that he suffered from bipolar disorder - a serious mental illness that was easily triggered by workplace stress. He also understated the number of sick days he’d taken in the previous year. (In fact, he had parted company with one previous employer when his illness got the better of him, and had filed a job discrimination complaint with the Human Rights Commission.

The case was settled, on terms that weren’t disclosed.) When he filled out ADGA’s employment equity survey, which asked if he had a mental disability, he said no.

A couple of days after he started work, he asked his boss to monitor him for inappropriate behaviour, which he attributed to “emotional abuse” in previous jobs. Soon after that, he told her he had bipolar disorder and said he was susceptible to manic episodes that might require him to take as much as three months off work. Then he started having paranoid delusions and stopped functioning entirely.

Like all employees, Mr. Lane had been hired on 90 days’ probation.

On Day 8, the firm decided to cut its losses and cordially told him it was letting him go. Given the nature of its work, there was no way to reassign him.

Mr. Lane complained to the Ontario’s Human Rights Commission, saying the company had failed in its duty to accommodate his mental disability. After several years of unsuccessful mediation, the case went to a tribunal hearing, which announced its verdict in December.

The tribunal awarded Mr. Lane $34,278.75 in lost wages, $10,000 for “reckless infliction of mental anguish” and $35,000 for “violation of his inherent right to be free from discrimination.” It also ruled that the company must hire a consultant to provide all employees with human-rights training. The HRC trumpeted the verdict as a “landmark” decision for the rights of the mentally disabled.

Let’s briefly re-cap: Mr. Lane lies about his having bipolar disorder to get the job in the first place, works just over a week before being incapacitated by his bipolar disorder (did the Reader get the part where his job involved testing artillery software — how do we suppose one does that, exactly?), and is let go because a) he lied about his condition to get the job and b) like most employees at most companies, he was on a 90-day probationary period in which the company needs to give next to no reason to dismiss an employee anyhow.

And then, after lying about his bipolar disorder on his job application, he has the temerity to file a human rights complaint claiming that the company (whom, again, he lied to and told that he had no mental disorder) had done nothing to “accommodate his mental disability.”

And the HRC sided with him in his complaint (there’s that 100% “conviction” rate again…) against ADGA.

That is what we’re seeing here, isn’t it, O Reader?

What exactly is the role of the HRCs in Canada? To protect human rights? To censor? To conspire with every designated victim group against the nation’s private corporations, even when the relevant member(s) of the aforementioned designated victim groups are completely at fault for the fate that befell them, as was the case with Mr. Lane? I sympathize with the fact that he has bipolar disorder, which is unfortunate…but why did he lie on his job application, then? Why did he say that he could handle the stress of working in a “high octane” consulting job when, in fact, he couldn’t handle himself properly after just two days? And why does he feel he is now entitled to monetary compensation for having been a liar?

These commissions need to go. They are nothing short of a menace.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!