Thoughts on the dream of science without politics
Torrey Orton
Feb.27, 2009
I wrote the following in response to the policy draft mentioned below. I blog it now because it captures the outlines of my understanding of the world we are in and some challenges for science and public decision making arising from it (and recursively, contributing to it!). My intent was to add context understanding to the deliberations of the summit. I am not hopeful of immediate impact but I am certain of the need for my effort. These sketches will be explored in two larger pieces on (1) blame and responsibility in the Victorian fires review, and (2) is politics possible now? The Policy Position Draft is in re-write now by participants in the Summit.
Re: Australian Climate Action Summit – Policy Position Draft #2 Jan. 23, 2009
I’m concerned at the hope implicit in the segment extracted below.
“ … an Independent Science Committee that:
… identifies policies, measures and targets required to tackle climate change underpinned by sound science not political convenience.” (pg. 53, Sec. 8 Keeping Australians Informed; Australian Climate Action Summit – Policy Position Draft #2 23 Jan. 2009)
There is no human organisation that does not have ‘politics’, including scientific and religious ones. The ‘politics’ of life is about purposes and the distribution of resources to achieve them – a task all organisations have to handle. To distribute by any political system requires negotiation about the priorities, ends and such – even if a kingdom or a dictatorship. Failure to adequately and appropriately resource our priorities leads to their under-fulfillment. We have a lot of evidence of that now. In order to establish support for particular priorities and ends, we argue for them with facts and values and beliefs seeking to attract people to our preferred objectives.
So, for these among other reasons, the hope of separating “sound science” from “political convenience” is a dangerous fantasy about the world we are in. Getting to a world in which this is not the case will have to pass through this one, the denial of which will produce its own confusing problems on top of the current ones… and so…
What is this ‘political’ world now?
1) At the moment, public confidence in most sources of information is flagging, most notably in science or ‘evidence’ based sources. As well, we are all swamped with pithy data and summary generalisations from positioned commentators through which we can seldom see a common thread other than the domain name – health, education, etc. – or the attracting dog whistle. This leaves us wondering if they are talking about the same world even if the headline says transport, or education or health. How can we tell the truth rather than just lean towards our natural political or social comfort zone?
2) Back to our calamitous times. The world of material certainties is fading around us as a (perfect) storm of personally uncontrollable forces assail us. Not merely is it the economy stupid. It’s also the climate and the fluids (fuels and waters), the food and the pervasive speed of movement of them all, plus a gathering of insights and innovations which mark the growing edges of the sciences.
Second, we are engaging these forces from a weakened position in our fragmented relationships. And these weaknesses will be enhanced by the times which are the reasons for our worries in the first place. Making the effort for the longer term will be even more important as each day of its decline passes.
3) In addition, underlying these things are damaged components of our core adaptation systems. Let’s call them deep institutions:
· Everyday language is so debased that truthful speaking about almost anything in public life is impossible – all things are commoditised, some fetishized as a result, and reduced to potential calculables in short term ROI projections. This is the language of business speak and its associates celebrity speak and greed speak.
· The public deliberative process is now conducted almost wholly in adversarial terms – demonising the others as the first move; every public issue is now a “debate” (a secondary school exercise for verbal bullies – see Parliament at work) to be settled by point scoring, not truth making. This derives in part from the first point – the only common denominator is feelings: fear, loneliness, etc.
· As the tangible and intangible pressures on daily lives increase, relationships fragment and thought fundamentalises , and the two aggravate each other. These affects are visible across any political spectra you prefer – but, most obviously the ‘Right’ and ‘Left’.
· Our systems and tools of political representation are damaged. In other Anglo countries the participation rates in major elections – national and regional / state – yield results based on victory by less than half of less than half of the possible electorates (and politicians are reviled almost without exception across the electorates). So, only with the greatest bi-partisan care are decisions prevented from being illegitimate in the eyes of their populaces. Similar patterns can be found across the EU, especially about the EU itself.
· Add the above together and you have the basis for the no accountability processes and discourses which dominate public space – it’s all spun.
So what to do now?
First, at the internal level within peak climate groups (and local ones!!) one approach is to build workable truth relationships through which to share the ‘facts’ as we discover and articulate them. These would be existing relationships at work or in personal associations of various kinds (sports, religious, community groups). We should add a focus on linguistic reform to their everyday activities – for example you could work on a few weasels by:
countering expressions of personal unaccountability – e.g. ‘whatever ‘ replaced with an explicit expression of feeling about the relationship at that moment; ‘It’s all about…’ replaced with statements of the actual undertaking or intentions, etc.;
making assertions about matters of public concern – especially environmental, health and educational – which present the whole picture of the issues, or the reliability / validity constraints of the unknown features of the evidence about them;
challenging uses of business-speak which obscure real differences – e.g. ‘customer’ for patient, student, etc.; ‘assets’ for human capabilities, relationships, etc.; ‘business’ or ‘industry’ for activities which are certainly not businesses or industries (education, health, law); ‘market’ for relationships which are not transactional (student, patient, parishioner, plaintiff, etc.…); and,
interrupting premature closures in discussions and meetings – e.g. ‘at the end of the day…’, ‘the reality is…’, ‘the truth is…’, ‘the fact is..’, etc. - by presenting the discussed and unresolved content as dilemmas or uncertainties which pre-mature closure denies.
Second, at the external influencing levels:
1- keeping the perspectives in view on major issues – starting with acknowledging one’s own in every influencing initiative;
2- identifying where the specific issue being discussed borders, depends on or has interdependencies with other issues;
3- sponsoring face-offs between different positions focussing on what facts they could agree on in their domains of struggle – and which are emotional argument for the hidden paradigm;
4- providing key issues development scorecard(s) for (a) major life need domains – education, health, economy; and (b) daily life quality indicator domains – crime, cost of living, transport performance ….;
5- having an articulated cultural / historical differentiated models of well-being within which the target issue(s) can be interpreted;
6- the contexts considered should include local, regional and global comparisons or applications of the points argued; and,
7- an assertion of possible common ground across all discussants should be made as part of each contribution to the discussion (these might include shared facts, beliefs values and standards).
Friday, February 27, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
The Rectifications…of names and things (1) – ‘Send a message…’
Torrey Orton
Feb. 20, 2009
One tool for obscuring reality is inappropriate or incorrect generalisations. Another is incorrect conceptualising of the world. Contemporary spinspeak is alive with them both. Following the suggestion of Confucius, I will undertake some rectification of names in our times, though perhaps without the same finesse of distinction and definition. However, my aim is to show the way to the concrete, to palpable truths, by way of agreed significations for our signs. This requires demystification and deconstruction. The first of these follows.
Instrumental relationships (see my 2 blogs on “Dances with Difference” for details of relationship types), increasingly dominate civic processes and discourses, and uproot /swamp the intimate ones. One way this is repeatedly imposed on us is this: the prominence of expressions like ‘send a message’ or ‘the message is…’ in contexts where the audience or subject of the message is not present (and often not discoverable in any concrete sense). This is a source of endless wonder – almost an acknowledgement that no communication can occur. The presumed audience is usually the ‘community’, or occasionally a stereotypical sub-community within the ‘community’ – e.g., bikers, bankers, bogans, beachbums, barbies, ….
We know that communication is not a unidirectional encoding-packaging-sending-unpackaging-decoding process of the sender –receiver type typical of communication training. The main reason this construct fails (the sender-receiver one) is that the ‘message’, whatever it is, is truly in the eye of the beholder in the first place and so cannot be seriously claimed to have been sent until ‘reception’ is proven by a ‘receiver’ response – which is mostly undoable in the contexts where ‘send a message’ is the name for the act of attempted communication.
The claim a message is sent implies it must be heard and so settles the need of senders to fulfil their perception of their obligations to others (and implicitly to themselves). Yet, ‘send a message’ is often a plea for an effect which cannot be attained by sending alone. Maybe the speaker knows it. The intended effect therefore is the appearance of caring about the espoused ‘message’. In Australia, examples of this abound in matters like: reducing binge drinking, athletic drug taking, excess non-evidence-based executive remuneration, and on and on. And we haven’t even looked at really serious stuff like climate, GFC, fluids. Foods..… the stuff of question time where it often seems the messages are mostly to themselves, and select audiences in the political apparatus (persons and organisations – the various players).
Where the message is for a clear audience, its intent is often to show that they needn’t worry; they are understood, etc. These tend to be marginal groupings of various sorts with high marginal political potential. (See forthcoming blog called “Political Default” for disproportionate influence achieved by marginal groups). Somebody’s whistling. While we are at it, we should notice that ‘stay on message’ is the supporting cast for the main acting of sending one. Its virtue is persistence in the face of increasingly insurmountable odds that no one’s listening - except other message issuers.
Torrey Orton
Feb. 20, 2009
One tool for obscuring reality is inappropriate or incorrect generalisations. Another is incorrect conceptualising of the world. Contemporary spinspeak is alive with them both. Following the suggestion of Confucius, I will undertake some rectification of names in our times, though perhaps without the same finesse of distinction and definition. However, my aim is to show the way to the concrete, to palpable truths, by way of agreed significations for our signs. This requires demystification and deconstruction. The first of these follows.
Instrumental relationships (see my 2 blogs on “Dances with Difference” for details of relationship types), increasingly dominate civic processes and discourses, and uproot /swamp the intimate ones. One way this is repeatedly imposed on us is this: the prominence of expressions like ‘send a message’ or ‘the message is…’ in contexts where the audience or subject of the message is not present (and often not discoverable in any concrete sense). This is a source of endless wonder – almost an acknowledgement that no communication can occur. The presumed audience is usually the ‘community’, or occasionally a stereotypical sub-community within the ‘community’ – e.g., bikers, bankers, bogans, beachbums, barbies, ….
We know that communication is not a unidirectional encoding-packaging-sending-unpackaging-decoding process of the sender –receiver type typical of communication training. The main reason this construct fails (the sender-receiver one) is that the ‘message’, whatever it is, is truly in the eye of the beholder in the first place and so cannot be seriously claimed to have been sent until ‘reception’ is proven by a ‘receiver’ response – which is mostly undoable in the contexts where ‘send a message’ is the name for the act of attempted communication.
The claim a message is sent implies it must be heard and so settles the need of senders to fulfil their perception of their obligations to others (and implicitly to themselves). Yet, ‘send a message’ is often a plea for an effect which cannot be attained by sending alone. Maybe the speaker knows it. The intended effect therefore is the appearance of caring about the espoused ‘message’. In Australia, examples of this abound in matters like: reducing binge drinking, athletic drug taking, excess non-evidence-based executive remuneration, and on and on. And we haven’t even looked at really serious stuff like climate, GFC, fluids. Foods..… the stuff of question time where it often seems the messages are mostly to themselves, and select audiences in the political apparatus (persons and organisations – the various players).
Where the message is for a clear audience, its intent is often to show that they needn’t worry; they are understood, etc. These tend to be marginal groupings of various sorts with high marginal political potential. (See forthcoming blog called “Political Default” for disproportionate influence achieved by marginal groups). Somebody’s whistling. While we are at it, we should notice that ‘stay on message’ is the supporting cast for the main acting of sending one. Its virtue is persistence in the face of increasingly insurmountable odds that no one’s listening - except other message issuers.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Dance(s) of Difference – 2 - Civic level
Dance(s) of Difference – 2 - Civic level
Torrey Orton
Feb. 13, 2009
I noticed that my voice in the first of my difference blogs (Feb.5, 2009) was confused. Sometimes I was me, sometimes we, sometimes other, sometimes us, sometimes you… which reflects the mixture of histories in the envelope of myself. I literally can’t draw a clear picture of being a member of Anglo Australia, which I certainly am from any non-Anglo’s viewpoint, and largely from my own, except that I have a host of missing formative experience memories. Their place is occupied by formative American experiences – small town, default protestant, private schooling from year 8 on, ice hockey for fun and definition, liberal arts undergraduate education, graduate school in two disciplines, commune living, experimental high school founder…etc. It’s been 38 years since the last of these.
Not all of these are shareable with any one person; only chunks with some varying with their respective personal histories. In this sense, the pathetic assertion a few years ago by Hugh Morgan, the ex-MD of now dead Western Mining, that immigrants weren’t to be trusted as Australians because they are always split, is true in its basis but not its conclusion. That he could not imagine anyone could sustain a split life is also apparently true. That no one from the dominant culture criticised either truth shows how far we have to go in our understanding of these matters. A second generation Greek did in a letter to TheAGE about qualification matches for the last world cup. This is, perhaps still, our civic culture.
It was only 10 months ago that Anglo media were alight with Obama’s radical pastor story. Commentators of all persuasions had things to say because race was explicitly in play for the first time in the US presidential campaign. Obama’s speech about his relationship with and views of the minister (March 18, 2008 in Philadelphia) opened with the assertion that slavery was America’s “original sin”. The framers of the Constitution left it to later generations to address. No one I could find (I looked through four major US papers and a couple of British) pointed out that certainly the original US sin was the arrival of armed Europeans on various North (and South) American shores well before slavery was introduced.
Perspective is much in matters of culture. Focussing on the second sin allows the first to drift into the hinterlands of awareness and the shallows of public memory. And it is the first original sin in America which is still alive in the same way ours is (think reservations whose present inhabitants as still trying to get the relevant government department to fulfil its treaty obligations to their tribe(s) from 130 years ago).
Here in Oz we have been treated to a long “culture war” to assess how many indigenous or ‘settler’ people were intentionally killed, wounded and displaced during the generations of conflict. It is a war which keeps the original, and undoubted, sin of European invasion out of the picture of our present understanding of the relations between surviving indigenous peoples and the invaders’ ‘children’. That is was germs and not guns which did the bulk of the killing, as in South America, changes little except the weaponry. No invasion, no measles or flu, or small pox, etc. Aborigines, and other First peoples in the world, do not forget such things in their national experience. People just won’t ‘move on’ from major injustices. The perpetrators cannot either, hence the energy of the culture wars.
These examples are the other side of the intercultural experience - histories which emerged from uninvited domination (a part of all human history as far as I can see, perhaps back to the assumption of the mantle of human from our predecessors, the Neanderthal). Perspective (and so, knowledge) is what allows us to balance our perceptions of cultural rightness, superiority, inferiority. The civic level of relationship is the one where we can negotiate such differences, and set the conditions for negotiation.
We normally experience the civic level in workplaces, the settings where we have differences in their most publicly engaged forms. For instance, a friend, originally from a village in Africa and 20+ years resident here, told me of feeling disrespected by his work colleagues here because they did not recognise his undisputable seniority – a seniority of age, professional experience, qualifications, organisational longevity and cultural diversity. They did not even know they were doing so, but that did not change his feeling.
This is how these things work. Ignorance of others’ world views is a fact but does not excuse us from the pain we cause unknowingly. In our legal system the requirement of knowing the laws is assumed. Ignorance is not an excuse. We don’t make the same assumption for matters of culture. Maybe we should. And our increasingly turbulent times may push that ‘should’ into a ‘must’.
Leadership in these times may often require cultural changes while attempting to retain cultural integrity. Things like the citizenship tests, Aussie values programs in schools and such are our current experience of this at the civic level. And leadership is not just for nominated leaders. Many are called to lead because immediate situations require many actions and actors.
Stressful workplace events draw out our most culturally preferred approaches to life – the Westerner will be talking about the problem and the non-Westerner about who it affects and how. Each may see the other’s focus as irrelevant / inappropriate, and be irritated by it. This pattern is a well-known one in business relations between cultures. For either person to lead in such circumstances requires work to interrupt the natural reactions to such different approaches.
Three things provide the basis for success – real knowledge of cultural differences (acknowledging the reality of the differences, not universalising them out of existence), respect for the fact these differences exist (which does not mean accepting or approving of all differences), and courage to appropriately engage differences when they interrupt relationships. Respect is the most important. Without it, neither relevant knowledge can be found nor courage appropriately employed. Perceived disrespect is felt as attack.
What could it look like to engage someone about an emerging problem? Maybe something like this: (1) Notice that a potential high conflict situation is near. (2) Acknowledge that you are likely to have a problem which will push each of you back to your preferred approaches – relationships vs. problem-solving. (3) Propose that you try a new way this time – which ensures equal time to both perspectives. (4) Invite the other to talk about how / why their concern for relationships works in this situation and offer your needs for problem solving (not to justify but to inform). And, (5) propose you develop a joint process for working on the relationship(s) and the problem task.
Of course, to do this some prior bridging of the differences is required. Who should take the first step(s) and how? In principle, it should be the dominant culture person (or most positionally powerful, or other culturally appropriate authority factor) because they have least to lose from the negotiation of the difference(s). This principle applies in everyday life within cultures, too. However, the dominant often do not see that they are dominant (members of a dominant group and therefore seen by non-members (‘others’) as dominant though they do not experience themselves as such). Now we slide towards the intimate, but don’t necessarily arrive there. The next post explore will how to direct this slide usefully.
Neighbouring* subjects & issues: social policy, intercultural communication, sustainability and culture(s), difference and learning, power and groups.
*neighbouring = historical and conceptual factors which give perspective to the blog topic
Torrey Orton
Feb. 13, 2009
I noticed that my voice in the first of my difference blogs (Feb.5, 2009) was confused. Sometimes I was me, sometimes we, sometimes other, sometimes us, sometimes you… which reflects the mixture of histories in the envelope of myself. I literally can’t draw a clear picture of being a member of Anglo Australia, which I certainly am from any non-Anglo’s viewpoint, and largely from my own, except that I have a host of missing formative experience memories. Their place is occupied by formative American experiences – small town, default protestant, private schooling from year 8 on, ice hockey for fun and definition, liberal arts undergraduate education, graduate school in two disciplines, commune living, experimental high school founder…etc. It’s been 38 years since the last of these.
Not all of these are shareable with any one person; only chunks with some varying with their respective personal histories. In this sense, the pathetic assertion a few years ago by Hugh Morgan, the ex-MD of now dead Western Mining, that immigrants weren’t to be trusted as Australians because they are always split, is true in its basis but not its conclusion. That he could not imagine anyone could sustain a split life is also apparently true. That no one from the dominant culture criticised either truth shows how far we have to go in our understanding of these matters. A second generation Greek did in a letter to TheAGE about qualification matches for the last world cup. This is, perhaps still, our civic culture.
It was only 10 months ago that Anglo media were alight with Obama’s radical pastor story. Commentators of all persuasions had things to say because race was explicitly in play for the first time in the US presidential campaign. Obama’s speech about his relationship with and views of the minister (March 18, 2008 in Philadelphia) opened with the assertion that slavery was America’s “original sin”. The framers of the Constitution left it to later generations to address. No one I could find (I looked through four major US papers and a couple of British) pointed out that certainly the original US sin was the arrival of armed Europeans on various North (and South) American shores well before slavery was introduced.
Perspective is much in matters of culture. Focussing on the second sin allows the first to drift into the hinterlands of awareness and the shallows of public memory. And it is the first original sin in America which is still alive in the same way ours is (think reservations whose present inhabitants as still trying to get the relevant government department to fulfil its treaty obligations to their tribe(s) from 130 years ago).
Here in Oz we have been treated to a long “culture war” to assess how many indigenous or ‘settler’ people were intentionally killed, wounded and displaced during the generations of conflict. It is a war which keeps the original, and undoubted, sin of European invasion out of the picture of our present understanding of the relations between surviving indigenous peoples and the invaders’ ‘children’. That is was germs and not guns which did the bulk of the killing, as in South America, changes little except the weaponry. No invasion, no measles or flu, or small pox, etc. Aborigines, and other First peoples in the world, do not forget such things in their national experience. People just won’t ‘move on’ from major injustices. The perpetrators cannot either, hence the energy of the culture wars.
These examples are the other side of the intercultural experience - histories which emerged from uninvited domination (a part of all human history as far as I can see, perhaps back to the assumption of the mantle of human from our predecessors, the Neanderthal). Perspective (and so, knowledge) is what allows us to balance our perceptions of cultural rightness, superiority, inferiority. The civic level of relationship is the one where we can negotiate such differences, and set the conditions for negotiation.
We normally experience the civic level in workplaces, the settings where we have differences in their most publicly engaged forms. For instance, a friend, originally from a village in Africa and 20+ years resident here, told me of feeling disrespected by his work colleagues here because they did not recognise his undisputable seniority – a seniority of age, professional experience, qualifications, organisational longevity and cultural diversity. They did not even know they were doing so, but that did not change his feeling.
This is how these things work. Ignorance of others’ world views is a fact but does not excuse us from the pain we cause unknowingly. In our legal system the requirement of knowing the laws is assumed. Ignorance is not an excuse. We don’t make the same assumption for matters of culture. Maybe we should. And our increasingly turbulent times may push that ‘should’ into a ‘must’.
Leadership in these times may often require cultural changes while attempting to retain cultural integrity. Things like the citizenship tests, Aussie values programs in schools and such are our current experience of this at the civic level. And leadership is not just for nominated leaders. Many are called to lead because immediate situations require many actions and actors.
Stressful workplace events draw out our most culturally preferred approaches to life – the Westerner will be talking about the problem and the non-Westerner about who it affects and how. Each may see the other’s focus as irrelevant / inappropriate, and be irritated by it. This pattern is a well-known one in business relations between cultures. For either person to lead in such circumstances requires work to interrupt the natural reactions to such different approaches.
Three things provide the basis for success – real knowledge of cultural differences (acknowledging the reality of the differences, not universalising them out of existence), respect for the fact these differences exist (which does not mean accepting or approving of all differences), and courage to appropriately engage differences when they interrupt relationships. Respect is the most important. Without it, neither relevant knowledge can be found nor courage appropriately employed. Perceived disrespect is felt as attack.
What could it look like to engage someone about an emerging problem? Maybe something like this: (1) Notice that a potential high conflict situation is near. (2) Acknowledge that you are likely to have a problem which will push each of you back to your preferred approaches – relationships vs. problem-solving. (3) Propose that you try a new way this time – which ensures equal time to both perspectives. (4) Invite the other to talk about how / why their concern for relationships works in this situation and offer your needs for problem solving (not to justify but to inform). And, (5) propose you develop a joint process for working on the relationship(s) and the problem task.
Of course, to do this some prior bridging of the differences is required. Who should take the first step(s) and how? In principle, it should be the dominant culture person (or most positionally powerful, or other culturally appropriate authority factor) because they have least to lose from the negotiation of the difference(s). This principle applies in everyday life within cultures, too. However, the dominant often do not see that they are dominant (members of a dominant group and therefore seen by non-members (‘others’) as dominant though they do not experience themselves as such). Now we slide towards the intimate, but don’t necessarily arrive there. The next post explore will how to direct this slide usefully.
Neighbouring* subjects & issues: social policy, intercultural communication, sustainability and culture(s), difference and learning, power and groups.
*neighbouring = historical and conceptual factors which give perspective to the blog topic
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Dance of difference(s) - 1
Dance of difference(s) – 1 – Close up and impersonal: Instrumental relationships
February 5, 2009
Torrey Orton
We are entering more dangerous times for difference. As many threats, and a few promises, assail us, our room for response contracts. This will lead to uses of difference (stereotyping, demonising, etc.) which make normal engagements with difference unmanageable, producing a self-fulfilling prophecy of difference’s distastefulness and, eventually, punishment worthiness. This is the material for clashes of civilizations occurring daily in various sites and sizes around the world. Many of them are already in play here, too.
Reading Melanie La’Brooy’s plaint about strangers in the street asking her ‘Where are you from?’ (27/01/09) in The AGE, I was thrown into one of my favourite dilemmas – the cultural differences entanglement. It enthrals me because it is so much the classic dilemma: two seemingly incompatible truths about the same experience. One truth, all cultures are the same because all people are the same – they solve common human problems. This is why we can read literature classics across centuries and languages of almost untranslatable difference. We can see the world through different artistic eyes and hear its tunes on different instruments through different ears and body rhythms.
Truth two: all cultures are different, as are all individuals. They differ in human ways which we can understand once we learn the culturally appropriate means of experiencing their solutions to being human. We have to learn to hear uncommon music (even within our own culture, if you recall your first atonal notes), to see as Aborigines see the world, to taste as Chinese flavour their food (and it’s probably easiest to learn things in the reverse order). Foreigners of all sorts master other cultures’ cooking (see the Japanese show Iron Chef on SBS for one approach), but fewer master really different painting and music unless there’s an important cultural prize for doing so. 250 years ago Chinoiserie was a hit but Chinese living was another thing. Now everything of ‘ours’ is made in China, and they still won’t soon become like us.
As LaBrooy made clear, we often experience our difference by having it put in our faces by others who, we learn, we are different from. Second generation immigrants get this one often unless they live largely in same-culture enclaves, think of themselves as being of it and have futures which are largely enclosed in its displaced variation in their parents’ new country. We ‘get’ it because we are reminded in a variety of ways. These are up close but impersonal encounters. However only the dominant culture folks get to say it is not personal. It always feels personal to the different.
The only place I remember hearing an Anglo group saluted with a sneering soubriquet – “skips” – was a technical school with a larger Italian/Greek population than Anglo. When my wife, teaching in another of that lost type, was told that her husband “isn’t a wog, miss” there was an initial surprise. On the other hand, I have not to this day 35 years later failed to be asked “Where ya from, mate?” by people who don’t on the face of it have a right to know – bank tellers, check out kids, and such, with whom I have no relationship – just a once-off transaction. These are invariably Anglo locals. From cab drivers I sometimes get the same question as a precursor to discussion from inside the veil of otherness. It is always more directly broached in an appreciative remark about difference – theirs or mine – where usually I am assigned partial membership of the dominant Anglo mass.
If you are one of them – the Anglo locals – you might get a feel of the experience I’m talking about by walking into a pub in a part of town where you are not ‘at home’. Or, try a part of the footy ground where you are not at home because of your colours. Remembering your early days in school is also a source of debilitating difference experiences for many within their own cultures. A tram ride in central Melbourne seems to provide similar insights for others – the strange sense of exclusion that arise from hearing another language used as if it belongs to the space we are in. Which it does. Our culture abounds with internal difference projects to right disadvantages arising from e.g., bullying, gender, class, congenital disablements, religious minority, and so on. These are similar to the intercultural differences.
The intercultural newbie’s experience is something like this, only it happens daily in the street at unexpected, though not wholly unpredictable, times. The intent of the locals in explicitly noticing our difference(s) is often a bridge / expression of their slight discomfort, their uncertainty of whether ‘normal’ politenesses will work, or produce a discordant moment. But for us, the others, it may be an invasion. I don’t often want to have my American self recollected. Where to begin with sharing it with anyone who doesn’t have it already (and then, of course, the often quickly explicit assumption that I share their version of my stereotypical history!)?
I need a relationship framework to make sense of this experience. There are at least three major clusters of human relationships: the intimate (covering the family, personal friends of long duration and intensity (not 500 Facebook ‘friends’, thanks)), the instrumental (most life maintaining activities) and the civic (providing the broader relationship of humanity to itself or the universe…). The civic provide the setting and content of our respective cultures – and the prospect of their sustainability. Intimate provides the platform for the other two. Instrumental is enabling; necessary but not sufficient.
Add significant differences of basic relating – gender and generational role expectations, religious habits, and governance role expectations which are signalled through ‘race’, ‘class’, and language – and the mix becomes threatening to immediate comfort. It cannot all be learned at once or wished away in encomia of oneness. Our turbulent times increased pressure on these points, the early civic effects of which can be seen in public protests of foreign workers in the UK, rise of exclusivist political groups in Europe and random race / ethnicity based violence.
These are the matter of major cultural differences which distinguishes them from internal, own culture differences – the spectra of forms and values which life takes in our cultures of origin. Hence, it seems clear that progress in handling of differences can only occur through some degrees of conflict.
In following posts I will explore challenges of difference at the civic and intimate relationship levels, with instrumental more in the background. I will begin to introduce approaches to engaging the potential for violence(s) in productive ways.
Neighbouring* subjects & issues: social policy, intercultural communication, sustainability and culture(s), difference and learning, power.
*neighbouring = historical and conceptual factors which give perspective to the blog topic
February 5, 2009
Torrey Orton
We are entering more dangerous times for difference. As many threats, and a few promises, assail us, our room for response contracts. This will lead to uses of difference (stereotyping, demonising, etc.) which make normal engagements with difference unmanageable, producing a self-fulfilling prophecy of difference’s distastefulness and, eventually, punishment worthiness. This is the material for clashes of civilizations occurring daily in various sites and sizes around the world. Many of them are already in play here, too.
Reading Melanie La’Brooy’s plaint about strangers in the street asking her ‘Where are you from?’ (27/01/09) in The AGE, I was thrown into one of my favourite dilemmas – the cultural differences entanglement. It enthrals me because it is so much the classic dilemma: two seemingly incompatible truths about the same experience. One truth, all cultures are the same because all people are the same – they solve common human problems. This is why we can read literature classics across centuries and languages of almost untranslatable difference. We can see the world through different artistic eyes and hear its tunes on different instruments through different ears and body rhythms.
Truth two: all cultures are different, as are all individuals. They differ in human ways which we can understand once we learn the culturally appropriate means of experiencing their solutions to being human. We have to learn to hear uncommon music (even within our own culture, if you recall your first atonal notes), to see as Aborigines see the world, to taste as Chinese flavour their food (and it’s probably easiest to learn things in the reverse order). Foreigners of all sorts master other cultures’ cooking (see the Japanese show Iron Chef on SBS for one approach), but fewer master really different painting and music unless there’s an important cultural prize for doing so. 250 years ago Chinoiserie was a hit but Chinese living was another thing. Now everything of ‘ours’ is made in China, and they still won’t soon become like us.
As LaBrooy made clear, we often experience our difference by having it put in our faces by others who, we learn, we are different from. Second generation immigrants get this one often unless they live largely in same-culture enclaves, think of themselves as being of it and have futures which are largely enclosed in its displaced variation in their parents’ new country. We ‘get’ it because we are reminded in a variety of ways. These are up close but impersonal encounters. However only the dominant culture folks get to say it is not personal. It always feels personal to the different.
The only place I remember hearing an Anglo group saluted with a sneering soubriquet – “skips” – was a technical school with a larger Italian/Greek population than Anglo. When my wife, teaching in another of that lost type, was told that her husband “isn’t a wog, miss” there was an initial surprise. On the other hand, I have not to this day 35 years later failed to be asked “Where ya from, mate?” by people who don’t on the face of it have a right to know – bank tellers, check out kids, and such, with whom I have no relationship – just a once-off transaction. These are invariably Anglo locals. From cab drivers I sometimes get the same question as a precursor to discussion from inside the veil of otherness. It is always more directly broached in an appreciative remark about difference – theirs or mine – where usually I am assigned partial membership of the dominant Anglo mass.
If you are one of them – the Anglo locals – you might get a feel of the experience I’m talking about by walking into a pub in a part of town where you are not ‘at home’. Or, try a part of the footy ground where you are not at home because of your colours. Remembering your early days in school is also a source of debilitating difference experiences for many within their own cultures. A tram ride in central Melbourne seems to provide similar insights for others – the strange sense of exclusion that arise from hearing another language used as if it belongs to the space we are in. Which it does. Our culture abounds with internal difference projects to right disadvantages arising from e.g., bullying, gender, class, congenital disablements, religious minority, and so on. These are similar to the intercultural differences.
The intercultural newbie’s experience is something like this, only it happens daily in the street at unexpected, though not wholly unpredictable, times. The intent of the locals in explicitly noticing our difference(s) is often a bridge / expression of their slight discomfort, their uncertainty of whether ‘normal’ politenesses will work, or produce a discordant moment. But for us, the others, it may be an invasion. I don’t often want to have my American self recollected. Where to begin with sharing it with anyone who doesn’t have it already (and then, of course, the often quickly explicit assumption that I share their version of my stereotypical history!)?
I need a relationship framework to make sense of this experience. There are at least three major clusters of human relationships: the intimate (covering the family, personal friends of long duration and intensity (not 500 Facebook ‘friends’, thanks)), the instrumental (most life maintaining activities) and the civic (providing the broader relationship of humanity to itself or the universe…). The civic provide the setting and content of our respective cultures – and the prospect of their sustainability. Intimate provides the platform for the other two. Instrumental is enabling; necessary but not sufficient.
Add significant differences of basic relating – gender and generational role expectations, religious habits, and governance role expectations which are signalled through ‘race’, ‘class’, and language – and the mix becomes threatening to immediate comfort. It cannot all be learned at once or wished away in encomia of oneness. Our turbulent times increased pressure on these points, the early civic effects of which can be seen in public protests of foreign workers in the UK, rise of exclusivist political groups in Europe and random race / ethnicity based violence.
These are the matter of major cultural differences which distinguishes them from internal, own culture differences – the spectra of forms and values which life takes in our cultures of origin. Hence, it seems clear that progress in handling of differences can only occur through some degrees of conflict.
In following posts I will explore challenges of difference at the civic and intimate relationship levels, with instrumental more in the background. I will begin to introduce approaches to engaging the potential for violence(s) in productive ways.
Neighbouring* subjects & issues: social policy, intercultural communication, sustainability and culture(s), difference and learning, power.
*neighbouring = historical and conceptual factors which give perspective to the blog topic
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