Rectifications (22) – Minister for the “respect agenda”?

Rectifications (22) – Minister for the "respect agenda"?
Torrey Orton– March 29, 2010


How did I miss the Maddening one? Guess I was concerned about learning to act ethically that day. The grounds of my amazement today are summarised well here. Meanwhile, trolling the net for a few minutes failed to reveal a definition of that agenda's prime term – respect. Then I found John Brumby, Dec. 2008 on respect, noteworthy for its negative simplicity. His three defining propositions are things not to do. Presumably these are items of disrespect. So we can't learn much about what to do or how to be respectful or ourselves, others and our community.

 

"Our government understands that many Victorians are concerned about anti-social behaviour in the community," he said on Wednesday, after announcing Mr Madden's new role. "We have got some challenges in our community, particularly based around what I call respect. If you respect yourself, you don't go out and binge drink; if you respect your community, you don't go out and vandalise it; if you respect people around you, you don't go out and beat them up."

I suspect some spin'ster (contraction of spinmeister) told him that positive propositions would open the government up to empirical review of its respect performance. Not that this should trouble them since no manner of empirical review touches their disrespect for the public…but I digress.


A year later the minister responsible, Madden, provided this conversion of Brumby's don'ts into do's in a ministerial epsitle. I have added some glosses for his key terms. These suggest the inappropriateness of the glib generalities on offer.

"The Victorian Government's Respect Agenda is based on three simple ideas. We respect ourselves by accepting and valuing who we are (does this include motor head hoons, financial fraudsters and internet scammers, child abusers and bullies, religious kooks and …? Aren't they are quite likely to accept and value themselves). We respect others by listening, treating people fairly and appreciating different circumstances and views (Listening, appreciating and fairness require shared social practices and values; they can't be grabbed across gulfs of language culture and value differences on demand, but the Minister did try to demand others listen to him in a meeting he wasn't invited to!). We respect our community by welcoming newcomers and lending a hand to each other (Well, it sounds good, but fairly small town to me, having come from on. What does welcoming look like on the streets of a city where smiling at strangers on the street is an invitation to a 'who ya lookin at?' from the passing others)."

And, the principle engine for increasing respect? The schools, actually. Think of the disrespect messages they are competing with!


Respect yourself and others will respect you ~ Confucius
For example, our cat Poppy has injured self-respect. He attempts basic cat respect behaviour - head butting anything of own catty family (watch your local lion pride anytime when they're not eating or sleeping) or anyone having to do with food or pre-heated sleeping spaces (us). But he won't get closer to us than a hand's length away; not a true head butt. It's long been evident that he had a deprived or depraved kittenhood before arriving in our lands. His self-respect is damaged and his respect for others is similarly slightly depleted.


He gets a slight disrespect from me in turn, even though it's not his fault. He's just not entirely there for real respect like a ride on my chest/shoulder almost face-to-face. He can't stand the closeness, and now 14 years later resists my conflicted effort to hold him up for a view and a smoodge. People can be certainly more difficult to respect than he is, though in principle they warrant it anyway as he does.


Observation #1 – Respect is a two way function in a two-way event – a relationship. Respect has to occur with almost perfect timing to prevent it's opposite – disrespect – from rushing in. Feeling respected provides a container of engagement and commitment which allows relationships of all kinds to weather storms of others' making. These others include the gods, other people and sometimes the relationship members themselves (where one is an other for the other, as husbands and wives, the ethnically different and the differently abled always are to some extent!).


Observation #2 – Disrespect, expressed in the now well known verb 'dis', can be the underlying assumption of all relationships for some people. The 'dis' sensibility presumes a likelihood of always being dissed, and probably is fed by feeling largely dissed by life. At the public political level this seems to be what's been happening in the US for the last 5-10 years (or more?) – a culture of disrespect on a grand scale. See the most recent responses of Right pundits to the US health bill.


Lack of respect vs. active disrespect
Observation #3 – Lack of respect, or active disrespect, is one of the most common complaints of couples in trouble (sometimes both members; sometimes just one). While active disrespect provokes more virulent reactions than lack of respect, it also sharpens the perception of the provocative behaviour and attitude(s). Because they are clear, they then become accessible to reworking, or not. The more passive lack of respect carries the flag for disengagement. Those needing a respect injection are usually looking for things like:

Being consulted about what's happening; being listened to, heard and acknowledged when they are contributing to discussion; being given space to speak for themselves; being treated as a person not just a role (husband, wife, caretaker, provider, etc.); being 'just me'- having a life apart from this relationship.

It's not love but probably you can't get love without respect. Or, you can kill love by withholding respect. Disrespect over long time periods for deep needs elicits powerful feelings which, once freed, make recovery of a workably respectful flavour very hard to do.


Observation #4 - Having a "respect agenda" is to misrepresent respect. The problem where respect is absent is how to have a shared agenda of any kind. This cannot be mandated – though power can be used to encourage rather than discourage sharing. Efforts to legislate respect are often dull and indiscriminate. Politically correct behaviours trap as much as they liberate. Readiness is required. See respect attitudes, assumptions and behaviours below


Responsibility and respect
Observation #5 – Appropriately admitting ones responsibility for a perceived error or misstep in a relationship is a good step towards rehabilitating respect in relationships. Doing so demonstrates respect for self and other(s) by setting boundaries and standards for the relationship. As a result, we know what actions will be respectful to members and who may be accountable for making the effort.



Observation #6 – Being self-respecting and other-respecting can be very difficult when we are injured, sick, overloaded, under attack (direct or indirect), etc. Like Poppy, I find it hard under such difficult conditions to respect others (or myself!) when certain levels or styles of self-disrespect are present. For instance, when someone has indulged beyond their personal capabilities in any kind of consumption which threatens others' viability – alcohol, gambling, drugs, food, palliative purchasing (the world of nothing's enough consumerism)…


Definitions…
Observation #7 – One definition of respect has 8 variations with an example phrase for each. There are larger numbers of variations (try the O.E.D. for instance) but 8 are enough to suggest the range of mistakes one could make in trying to be respectful. That's within Anglo cultures!


…and differences
Observation #8 – Within cultures, the entry level behaviours of respect are politeness formulas. These are acts like acknowledging another's presence with actual contact like a handshake or virtual ones like a nod or wave, and then a query about their current state (How's it going, How's your day been, G'day, etc.). Between cultures the same rules apply, but through often unguessable or unrecognisable forms of action. It is easy to bow the wrong amount to the wrong person and insult a monarch, or earn the ire of local morality mavens. Try getting the length of a handshake right without threatening sexual identities.


Back to the agenda
The Maddening Brumby respect agenda adjusted for realities looks like this:

1. 
   
   "We respect ourselves by accepting and valuing who we are".
   Adjusted version: The boundaries of respect in our culture are …, and differences about them can be engaged in this way…but some clearly not negotiable at the moment elicit spontaneous gut rejections from others.…and it is important to acknowledge that before anything else is done.
2. "We respect others by listening, treating people fairly and appreciating different circumstances and views." Adjusted version: Fair treatment (being heard and understood in our differences) for the less powerful in any situation require the more powerful to provide safety, especially on the debatable boundaries, and beyond them, of the respectful. Real differences cannot be simply appreciated because they shock and offend in some cases (your first sniff of black bean sauce may not of course!).
3. "We respect our community by welcoming newcomers and lending a hand to each other."Adjusted version: make way for new respects by informing the present residents of any space that new arrivals may inadvertently challenge and inform new arrivals what areas of respect will be challenged for them buy their new home. These are notably obvious: intimate relationship expectations and obligations, food choices, public behaviours in gender relations, hierarchy protocols, hygiene, the nature of security services,…etc. Try the DFAT and immigration websites to see what's available to immigrants and refugees as local knowledge.
   

The third level of respect – community – is the government's main area of responsibility. Only they can do it effectively. Effective means doing it before arrival here. Or at least soon after. In the absence of the fact, sing a little song:
either Otis's or Aretha's RESPECT

..or two, the Staples'
Respect yourself

Rectifications (11) – It’s all about..…

Rectifications (11) – It’s all about..…

Torrey Orton – June 29, 2009

“It’s about trying to find out what it’s all about – life that is – without sounding like a generation-X navel gazer. Is this possible?” This is Sarah Wilson, THE AGE Sunday Life‘s new A Better Life columnist, (June 28, 2009 pg. 6) blurb for her new column. I suspect that she may succeed in finding something life is about but not what it is. Her initial steps in the first column provide a skate around a variety of ‘about’ sources - pop-cultural with handles of deep culture (Asian religious terms, get-a-life coaching mantras and such). That’s her method for finding out I guess.

There’s a market for everything, and everything relentlessly is found by a marketer and transformed into product. I’m sounding bitchy to myself and I want to be clear it doesn’t derive so much from this example. It’s just the one which punched the following button. In the discourse of our public figures “it’s all about…’ is among the commonest sound bites to be had. In those cases, particularly the political speakers, the territory covered by ‘about’ is exactly what saying ‘it’s all about…’ cannot cover.

For example, our Premier, John Brumby, on the latest effort to deflect accountability for public transport by changing the guard without changing the task: it’s about serving the public, the community, which is just not what we the public think they are doing. We do not think so because the government traipses these platitudes (see organisational values below) around with decreasing public accountability, responsiveness or effectiveness in the performance the platitude addresses – transport in this case. Try planning for another.

What is it?
By linguistic nature, what something is about is not what it is. If it really is about something, then what that is is the matter of interest. The ‘about’ part is speculative, aspirational, at best, hopeful. It’s nice to know that the speaker has an aspiration, a hope, but not to know that that’s all they have.

In common usage, for example, we are asked ‘what was the film about?’ We answer it’s about crime, or love, or destinies… And our questioner, if interested in the leading line will ask something about what happens, the story. That’s what it is.

For pollies and CEO’s to ‘about’ things is to attempt a dog-whistle appropriate to their intended listeners – the public or shareholders or bankers. The result of effective aiming is the listeners don’t ask for more because they know what the story is supposed to be. They are playing a historical tune in peoples’ minds.

About values
Our leaders, for instance, say of their organisational values ‘we are about inclusion, transparency’, etc. (they all use a selection from a list of 10 or 12 I guess, for which they’ve originally paid Mckinsey and would-be’s $5K/day for top level consulting inputs, and now everyone can borrow them at the price reduction which comes from market penetration and copycat consulting). This can be found across the full organisational spectrum now.

To the extent such terms are proposed as a leader’s aspiration, they are already twice debased. Once by being potted priorities, and twice by being repeatedly proven (within the science accepted by such leaders – business effectiveness) to be unimplementable, or badly implemented, faultily understood, non-transerable and so on.

Take action
So, what to do? Try this: suppress your next use of ‘it’s all about’. Do it in normal conversation where the habit lies entrenched in standard usage. When you’ve done that 4 or 5 times you may discover that you have developed a capacity for saying what things are or are not. Often the missing material can be supplied be telling someone what struck you, what effect the performance, discussion, activity had on you. This will be the beginning of a short story which others can join through their stories of similar things. It’s for making the world closer to us and us to each other as a result. What it’s about is relationship.

Thoughts on the dream of science without politics

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).

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.