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Big Society
My experience of community"work" is non existent, so I may be blundering here, but I wonder whether the debate about the Big Society is pre-framed. maybe we need to re-purpose our communities. This would require, of course (ha!) coordinated action across different community streams. These would include economic, social, psychological, justice, equity, skills, education, youth, tech, infrastructure and so on. I wonder if one possible answer to the reality of globalisation is to re-localise, enhancing local affiliations and identity with a global infrastructure. I look at cities such as Bilbao, and how they have re-purposed themselves, not always around economic activity, and wonder if this might support a more inclusive, flexible society.
Tags: big, re-localisation, re-purposing, society
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Phil Green on -
Hi Peter, sounds good to me, but I'm wondering how we convince ourselves to trust each other enough to start realising some of the empowerment that working together more might bring?
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Permalink Reply by peterstannack on -
Hi Phil
I guess trust comes about as a result of a number of factors- consistency, shared experience, language codes, etc. We have choices in creating trust. We can masquerade or use proxies such as local community workers. We can build consistency over time, which is increasingly difficult in the face of global volatility Or we can give people the information they need, in the formats and on the platforms that will help them make their own choices. We sort of favour the latter. Dangerous yes, but more effective we hope
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Permalink Reply by Phil Green on
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Hi Peter, thanks for your reply. Something like this'd be good written into some part of the
Our Society: A Guide
thing we're trying to co-create, wouldn't it?
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Permalink Reply by peterstannack on
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Hi Phil
And maybe, just maybe, external purpose is better than external threat
I'll take a look, maybe a debate paper would help? Is this your normal process of co-optation?
Cheers
Pete
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Mowatt on -
I've been trying to get some of our locals together to co-invest in a community heating scheme and with a slide show I need to make some corrections to, I introduce the issue of trust with a lesson from Tao teaching. This little story illustrates how we may propagate trust by first trusting yet being prepared for disappointment:
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Permalink Reply by Phil Green on
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Hi Jeff, thanks for sharing this, love the quote from Lao Tzu
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Mowatt on
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Phil,
One of the ways in which we can encourage trust is to engage in 'radical transparency'. I offer an example of this in a blog recently about an international development initiative in which ideas shared online can be seen to create long tail impact 5 years later.
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Permalink Reply by peterstannack on
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Whilst I agree that we can take lessons from everything, if we are so prepared, dressing lessons up as Daoism, Zen, Quakerism, Technology, Politics, Community, Family Therapy or whatever is, I think, a trap.
If we put lessons in a box or category, we enable people to take a category position. This can then create thought leadership, and then sadly, thought followership.
Category positions do not support clear thinking. Just because Lao Tse, or Kung Fu Tse, or Jesus Christ, or Joseph Smith said it don't make it right
Sorry to be negative and provoking - but it satisfies a need in me ;-)
All the best
Pete
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Mowatt on
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OK Peter, but it was just an illustration of how trust can be propagated as Phil wondered. For my part I've avoided any particular proprietary view. .
For example the Social Enterprise group I created on Facebook isn't a branded group, neither is the one on Social Business for Linkedin.
It's a broad spectrum you describe. My example above is in international development and reforming capitalism.
Where would you like to start>
Jeff
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Permalink Reply by peterstannack on
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Hi Jeff,
Sorry, I was being negative, and I did like the lesson. As an ex Zen Buddhist of sorts, who decided -arrogantly and mistakenly -thirty five years ago that Zen was for old men. ;-)I'd like to start with the basic building blocks of clear thinking, and how we can achieve it.
This incorporates a lot of issues which you might find in all belief systems whether religious, political, scientific, tech or whatever. But one needs to be careful. I was always told that the developmental path data-information-knowledge-wisdom just as easily became data-information-knowledge-belief-ideology-fanaticism. I think this is true even among liberals.
My quotes for today are (;-)) "Good and bad are a sickness of the mind" and "the journey of one thousand miles begins with one wrong step"
Cheers
Pete
Jeff Mowatt said:OK Peter, but it was just an illustration of how trust can be propagated as Phil wondered. For my part I've avoided any particular proprietary view. .
For example the Social Enterprise group I created on Facebook isn't a branded group, neither is the one on Social Business for Linkedin.
It's a broad spectrum you describe. My example above is in international development and reforming capitalism.
Where would you like to start>
Jeff
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Mowatt on
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OK , well how about something to do with capitalism. There's a bit of a seasonal Christian message. I didn't write it.
What it's really about is ethics. An American writing to his government to ask is it reasonable to let children be exploited by mafia and spend far more on ordnance than we do on development.
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