Power, Untempered by Compassion

It has bothered me for a long time that we seem to glorify our society’s high-tech whiz kids as fonts of success: self-made multimillionaires who started up companies before they reached their 30s. Brilliant. Singularly focused on success.

Any one of these characteristics on its own is innocuous, but put them all together and it’s a package of problems. The single focus becomes insular and selfish. The brilliance creates a veil of indifference.

These individuals control wealth and power but without compassion. And with our search for reasons and blame in the aftermath of the Littleton incident, I am haunted by what I see on the horizon with this domination of high-tech businesses.

I see little diversity in their workplaces. There are very few women and even fewer people of color within the ranks. I see little, if any, charitable giving, volunteerism, minority vendor programs or community outreach in their business plans. When we do hear of large contributions from this industry, it is usually a donation of computer equipment or software to schools. This is a clever way of marketing products to future consumers and is transparently self-serving.

There is no pressure for social responsibility. Choreographing winning at the game of technology and money is their core passion and they pray in their own language of cyberspace.

I sense an arrogance that doesn’t allow them to feel the need of being collaborative and inclusive in their world of commerce. Would Microsoft have had to call in a big public relations firm to soften its image if it had taken the time to build solid community and government relationships?

These people are the thrill seekers, in need of new adventures to connect them to themselves and to life. But once the thrill is gone, it becomes difficult to maintain the dull but necessary deeper details of life. Without compassion they experience a void in their souls that can never be filled.

Was it my generation of baby boomers who somehow produced such singularly focused offspring? A local psychiatrist said the parents of the children he counsels are never concerned about whether their kids have empathy for others. They are never concerned about their kids being well-socialized or caring about those less fortunate. He said these parents are just proud that their kids are computer nerds.

It is almost a status symbol for them. They don’t worry that their kids spend too much time in front of a computer. They think it’s cute. Their concern is more about getting their children into the best schools instead of nurturing themes and circumstances that have resonance and relevance to character and compassion.

Early on, some people saw the impending erosion of compassion in the high-tech industry. About five years ago, I met a women in her early 50s who had started a volunteer program for young professionals in the computer field who, she felt, lacked experience getting involved with diverse and different groups of people.

I contacted her only because my company had old equipment to donate, and at the time I did not recognize the real meaning of her mission. “They don’t understand the significance of giving back to people less fortunate,” was her mantra, and she was determined to create a way, through the public schools, to get these tekkies interested in tutoring and restoring computers for low-income students.

My acquaintance saw a tremendous urgency for these future business leaders to gain social skills and to understand the importance of giving of yourself.

This one woman has been able to collect a small group of high-tech volunteers who are willing to work with high school students on an ongoing basis. But she has not yet been able to garner strong support for her efforts.

I wish her well. After all, compassion has value.