Simon Duffy

Thought is Like a Ladder

2012-02-27T08:55:00.001-08:00

Thought is like a ladder, it can quickly extend to the stars. But to be of any use it must lean on something solid.

Taxing Love

2012-02-27T08:47:00.003-08:00

You can't redistribute love.

Love is the most important thing in life. It is what keeps us strong, makes great children and build good citizens.

The government cannot take away someone else's love and use it on other people. Love is bound up with real human relationships, commitments and families.

However, while the government cannot redistribute love it can tax love and often does so in ways that are highly damaging. In the UK system we find love taxed in many ways:

If you are in poverty and live together then you lose benefits
A family where one partner is working loses the tax allowances of the non-working partner
If you need care or support you are often deemed ineligible if you have family in your life

So we punish people for love, impose taxes on families, means-test family strength. For example, disabled people have sometimes found social workers encouraging them to get a divorce in order to be entitled to higher levels of benefits or social care.

The design of the current tax-benefit system is anti-love - it punishes and penalises people for being in relationships and it incentivises family breakdown. The answer is not to reduce benefits but to design a system that does not punish love.

Brokered by Love

2012-02-25T02:29:00.001-08:00

Happiness and virtue are brokered by love.

In moral philosophy there is a significant divide between:

Those who think morality has a purpose - telos - or
Those who believe moral action is just about doing the right thing - with no reference to a goal.

In my Phd thesis I have argued at length that the moral understanding cannot be reduced to either perspective, that it is ultimately founded in our experience of duty, but that duties reaches out to virtue both in its respect for rights, but also in its desire for the good.

However another way of looking at this dilemma is much easier.

Think about bring up your child. You want your child to be happy (and this can have many meanings) and you want your child to be good (and this can have many meanings). So what is the exercise of loving your child if it is not the effort of reconciling these two objectives. The paradoxical hope of true love is that our children will live long and contented lives but that they become the kind of people who know when they must sacrifice themselves for the sake of others.

Only love, not empty rationality, can reconcile this paradox.

Making the Story True

2012-02-25T02:10:00.002-08:00

"Pride" she [Isak Dinesen] once wrote in her notebook, "is faith in the idea that God had, when he made us. A proud man is conscious of the idea, and aspires to realise it."

…she did write some tales about what must have been for her the obvious lesson of her youthful follies, namely, about the "sin" of making a story come true, of interfering with life according to a preconceived pattern, instead of waiting patiently for the story to emerge, of repeating in imagination as distinguished from creating a fiction and then trying to live up to it.

Hannah Arendt on Isak Dinesen

Pride is the first sin and yet it seems such a natural and unavoidable part of being human and of having some notion of our own purpose, destiny or value. In the Greek tradition pride is something proper - often it almost seems to be the point of everything - think of Ajax on the beach. But in the Jewish and Christian tradition pride is always problematic.

Elie Wiesel tells this Hasidic tale:

Just before he died, the Baal Shem told his disciples that the one among them who would teach them how to overcome pride would be his successor. The problem was put to each of them; the Maggid happened to be called first. His answer: Since pride is one of God's attributes, man cannot uproot it entirely, all at once; it must be fought every day and at every moment. This reply was so favourably received, no one else was questioned.

I love this thought. It seems to truly capture what is necessary in pride, and yet, it properly puts pride in its place.

Part of what it takes to 'fight pride every day and at every moment' is also to be found in the idea of 'letting the story emerge...'. The vanity of pride is not found so much in the fact that we value ourselves but in that we pretend to know what to value in ourselves - how to define the pattern of our own life. This is real vanity. Stories are not projects - they evolve and they are changed by the world and its contingencies.

We must live our lives with imagination. We must tell and listen to the stories. We are looking for meaning. But we must not force the story to come true or feel defeated when the story takes an unexpected turn. This is why proper pride is an act of faith, not knowledge; we must have faith in our value - but not pretend to know what that value actually is.

How Euthanasia leads to Eugenics

2012-02-08T09:17:00.000-08:00

…a [Nazi] Ministry of Justice Commission on the Reform of the Criminal Code drafted a similar law sanctioning "mercy killing" of people suffering from incurable diseases. The law read, in part:

"Clause 1 Whoever is suffering from an incurable or terminal illness which is a major burden to him or others, can request mercy killing by a doctor, provided it is his express wish and has the approval of a specially empowered doctor.

"Clause 2 The life of a person who because of incurable mental illness requires permanent institutionalisation and is not able to sustain an independent existence, may be prematurely terminated by medical procedures in a painless and covert manner."

From Forgotten Crimes by Susanne E Evans

Notice that the first clause is almost exactly what those seeking to advance euthanasia in the UK are putting forward as a reasonable legal measure. And notice the easy and natural step to by-passing the question of voluntary choice for those who might be deemed lacking mental capacity.

There is hardly a break between euthanasia and eugenics - the first creates the licence to ignore the dignity of human life, the second gives others the duty to ignore it.

The Rich need the Poor

2012-02-03T03:48:00.000-08:00

The Scotsman reported on 3rd February 2012:

High-earning migrants and promising student entrepreneurs will find it easier to work in Britain as the coalition aims to ensure only “the right people are coming here”, the Immigration Minister has said. Damian Green, a Conservative MP, said middle managers, unskilled labourers and benefit seekers would be kept out as the coalition seeks only migrants who “add to the quality of life in Britain”.

When politicians tell us that the only immigrants that will be welcome are those who will make a positive contribution and then goes on to exclude 'middle managers, unskilled labourers and benefit seekers' I am left wondering:

Does Damian Green believe that the millions of existing citizens in the UK who are middle managers, manual workers (I will drop the term 'unskilled' as nobody is unskilled) and people who rely on benefits (and there goes another tale) don't add to the quality of life in Britain? Together these groups represent more than half of the UK population. So, on this basis, Damian Green believes that most people in the UK don't add to the quality of life. I hate to think where he would put disabled people or people with poor health.

The prevalent philosophical belief - rampant in all political parties - is in meritocracy: that the best should rule. They are the best (in their own heads at least) and the rest of us should be grateful for the great efforts they make on our behalf. In their imaginings: they contribute, we take.

Of course we are left with the paradox faced by all meritocrats - they need us to rule over and they need us to do all the things they think are beneath them. At its worst such thinking leads to eugenics - and we are certainly slipping down that slope.

I am reminded of a thought by someone much wiser, Rebbe Shmelke, who said:

The rich need the poor more than the poor need the rich. Unfortunately, neither is conscious of it.

Sufficient unto the Day

2012-02-03T03:20:00.000-08:00

Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Matthew 6:34

nolite ergo esse solliciti in crastinum
crastinus enim dies sollicitus edit sibi ipse
sufficit diei malitia sua

Vulgate

I love the phrase from the King James Bible: 'sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.' When things look really black and worries pile high it helps to remember that you only have to focus on what is in front of you now.

Two things are also worth noticing about this saying from Jesus.

First, although the King James translation talks about having 'no thought for the morrow' the Vulgate says 'don't be worried about tomorrow' and this seems more realistic. We have to plan - in so far as is reasonable - to avoid any additional evils that the tomorrow may bring. But we don't have to bear the burden of them as worries.

Second, there is no doubt that tomorrow may bring evil - and this is something to worry about - there and then. Jesus is not a stoic; he is not saying that bad things don't matter or that they are only a function of our desires and aspirations. For Christians the world should be good and our best aspirations and their fulfilment are also good. Christianity is not nihilistic and it is not interested in annulling our desires.

But this also means that when evil comes then evil must be resisted and overcome - not wished away.

Difference evokes Meaning

2012-01-28T08:03:00.000-08:00

The philosopher, and disabled activist, Judith Snow tells us that disability is a gift.

Disability is a gift because all of our distinct features - everything that makes us different and unique - is a gift.

Of course this statement can only be made as an act of faith. Clearly differences do not always feel like a blessing and they may not be treated by others as a gift. But she is asking us to have faith in the possibility that another person will exist who, at the right time, in the right place, will be able to receive that gift.

This may not be an empirical statement - but that does not matter. The demands of faith are central to our approach to the world. Judith Snow is telling us how we should approach the world - not predicting that we will do so.

She is also calling us to recognise the central importance of difference to a life of meaning. Getting back what what we've already got is an unsatisfactory experience. Difference stimulates, provokes and creates the possibility of meaning.

However to experience this meaning through difference also demands that we share in a common world that makes meaningful exchange possible.

Odysseus and Taxation

2012-01-23T12:47:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, like Odysseus before the Sirens, we seek to limit ourselves, to put ourselves under the control of others, because we do not trust ourselves.

Insurance has this function - we tax ourselves in order to put something aside in case of adversity. While this strategy can be useful it can be also dangerous.

In a democracy we see the same phenomenon when citizens are taxed from afar, that is passing their resources far away, to higher authorities - only to have them come back (or some proportion of them come back) with strings attached.

Some people like this process, it encourages national uniformity and if you trust those who further away more than you trust yourself or those who are more local it makes sense. But this indicates a kind of weakness and an unintegrated mentality. This encourages centralisation of power and undermines the community's own development.

Sometimes, as with health care, we are right not to trust ourselves - we would be better to trust others. But we must be wary of unfounded faith in 'the system' and 'the powerful.'

Selfishness and the Self

2012-01-15T08:30:00.000-08:00

The selfish act is not an act overly focused on the self; it is an act which depends upon a narrow or shrivelled sense of self or one which is overly concerned with the self as it appears in the eyes of others.

We must love ourselves - but at its best our love mirrors the best love we have for others. We want 'the best' for them - including we want them to be the best that they can be.

As the ancient Greeks observed, if we want the best for our child, it is to want them to be happy only in the sense that we want them to have led a life which is truly worthy or respect. [Hence the paradox that you can only judge someone to be happy when they are dead.]

So strangely - not only must we love others as we love ourselves, so we must also make our self love the kind of love that we give to others.

Tools Don't Work

2012-01-07T10:23:00.000-08:00

Give a man a tool and he'll go and build himself a tool-shed.

Collecting tools is far easier than finding out how to use them well.

Tools do no work - only human beings do the work; tools, if well used, just make that work easier.

This simple truth is so easy to forget. Just as men go and buy power tools and gadgets that they will never use - and certainly will never master - so do governments buy into concepts and social innovations that (at best) are only useful tools. But when the state enforces the application of those tools then you can be assured that tool will rarely be used well, and certainly will never be mastered.

Varun tells a story of how he designed a wonderful solar oven to help poor villagers in India. But, when he came back to the villages where these ovens were to be used people, he found that people were simply using the ovens as cupboards. This was not from stupidity - cupboards was what they really needed.

Ultimately the value of a tool does not lie in its use but in the outcomes it acheives. It is only by looking at things from the perspective of our real needs and aspirations that the true value of a tool will be discovered.

Sadly, concepts like Personalisation, Individual Budgets, Self-Directed Support, Person-Centred Planning, and so many other attractive and often useful concepts, are all now tainted by the mindless enthusiasm of government. By making someone use a tool (especially a tool that you do not understand yourself) you guarantee that it will be either obsolete or put to an entirely different use.

Different People, Equal Joy

2012-01-07T09:53:00.000-08:00

We are born into a human body and we find great joy in it. Yet there are other lives within the transformation of the ten thousand beings that are just as good and equally full of joy.

Chuang Tze from the Tao Te Ching

Taoism recognises the value of human diversity - there is no one joy, there is no one right way of being, there is no one type of person who is the best.

Cultivate Yourself First

2012-01-07T09:42:00.000-08:00

The sage of old cultivated himself before he attempted to help others. If you yourself are not cultivated, what help could you possibly be for others? Do you know how virtue is lost and how mere knowledge arises? True virtue can be destroyed by fame, and mere knowledge is often reached by conflict. Fame is something that can be used to beat down others and knowledge is used to attack others. Both are instruments of evil and the sage has no need of either.

Confucius quoted in the Tao Te Ching

Confucius is talking to an enthusiastic do-gooder who wishes to tutor a tyrannical prince. The whole discussion is very interesting. Each time the young man suggests that he has found the right way to influence power then Confucius explains how the strategy will fail.

To seek to do good, through the agency of another person, is an exciting dream and it is hard not to indulge it. We may think we know exactly who the football manager should pick for his team or we may think we know exactly what the Prime Minister should do for the best. But it is a kind of cheating - instead of trying take on that role - with all of its responsibilities we wish simply to act as puppeteer: do this, do it my way.

However I am not sure how Confucius would respond to the logic of democratic politics and the need for debate and policy. Equality and citizenship allows, in fact should encourage, debate and mutual tutoring because these things are proper to the function of the citizen. This kind of influence is not a dream it is a responsibility - but there can be no short-cut through the agency of the powerful.

If Our Minds are Limited...

2012-01-07T09:18:00.000-08:00

Our lives as well as our minds are limited. To try and understand that which is unlimited is foolish and dangerous. To do this and consider it knowledge is even more foolish and dangerous.

Chuang Tzu from the Tao Te Ching

Paradoxically materialists, the dominant philosophers of our time, should be particularly conscious of this problem because they are confident that thought, mind and the understanding are all just physical events, elements of a reality that is much greater than them.

Our thoughts about the whole can only be elements within the whole - they cannot comprehend that whole.

But if that is so then what is the status of materialism itself? "Thought is just some event in the universe, reference and truth are illusions..." but what is the status of this thought?

Of course, those of us who believe in rationality cannot escape our limitations; but at least our awareness of those limitations is not itself self-contradictory. Humility brings with it some truth (if only partial).

Fair Incomes and Welfare Reform

2011-12-30T05:05:00.000-08:00

One of the simplest ways of understanding what is wrong with the current welfare system and why current efforts to reform it will continue to fail is to consider this question:

Do we really want to ensure that nobody is ever subject to absolute poverty?

There may be a few extremists who will say yes to this and who are happy to see their fellow citizens die in poverty, but their views should be discounted. Almost everybody from Right to Left actually agrees that we do not want to live in a society where anyone would be left without support.

So does that mean we have a guaranteed minimum income?

Well we do, and we don't.

Our current benefit system - for all its craziness, complexity and poor design - does attempt to provide a minimum income - through the Income Support system. We will (almost) always get something if the system's rules say that we are entitled, but these rules are designed so that this are right is conditional upon our poverty. This is how poverty traps work:

You can get x, but only if you are poor enough.

The current welfare system is an incoherent compromise and it reflects a point of indecision in the body politic. We don't want poverty; but we don't want to guarantee the end of poverty. We feel uneasy: Can we afford it? Do we trust each others to make the necessary contributions? Do we trust ourselves not to abuse the system? And so we continue with a crazy system that gives millions a pitiful income and at the price of robbing them of the natural incentives to contribute, earn, save and grow their own families. In a way we are all caught in a collective poverty trap - unwilling to trust each other, unable to move forward together - we guarantee social insecurity, fear and the waste of human talent.

But we can spring the poverty trap by moving away from conditional rights and towards universal rights. If instead of making a minimum income conditional upon poverty we make it unconditional - universal.

It is as if each citizen were to say to each other:

Let us each pay a fair amount in taxes, and guarantee to each other a fair minimum income; using this we can each of us build our own life and make the best use of our own talents.

In practice we could make this shift by (a) merging tax and benefits into one system and (b) creating a guaranteed minimum income for all which then acts as the threshold at which we begin to pay taxes.

I describe these ideas in more detail in a joint policy paper with The Centre for Welfare Reform and the University of Birmingham:

Fair Income Policy Paper

I am not the first to make these arguments. In fact societies have, from ancient times, constantly attempted to achieve the right balance between income security and personal freedom. The system of Jubilees, part of the Jewish tradition of social justice, had exactly this function. No one could be cast into the slavery of poverty for ever - there was always the potential for redemption and the chance to build afresh because land that was lost through differences in trade, luck or talent would be returned to the family every fifty years.

The current UK government has at least realised that the current benefit system does penalise the poor through high taxes (dressed up as benefit reduction rates) but unfortunately it is unwilling to take the next logical step and to create a universal system of income security. Instead it is attempting to devise a complex new tax regime for those on the edge of the benefit system - which will leave some people better off and some people worse off. Given that we already live in the third most unequal developed society it seems that increased poverty for some is a price we should not be willing to pay.

Ultimately there are only two ways to reduce poverty traps either (1) to push some people deeper into poverty or (2) to lift everyone out of poverty together. The government has quietly set about the first strategy. Surely it's time to consider the second approach - the only sane and moral solution.

From Pooling to Differentiation

2011-12-11T04:58:00.001-08:00

If I were constructing a Utopia, which God forbid, I should describe a higher civilisation in which every human being had a hundred names; in which each had a particular name known only to a particular friend; in which there were more and not less ceremonies differentiating the various kinds of love and friendship and in which the suitor had to go through ten names before he got to Glory. That would be a Utopia really worth constructing; for it would be a real question of construction. Most of the Utopias represent only a dull sort of destruction; the sort of destruction we call simplification. It would really be something like fun to invent a ritual; but since the neglect of religion, no man has really had the courage to invent a ritual. It would be a great lark to draw up a code of law, decorating Tom, Dick and Harry with their Seven Secret Names. But these things will not come until the modern world has realised that its cure lies in distribution and even in differentiation; and not in mixing up everything together in one great mess. Comradeship has become a sort of Combine; bearing the same relation to true friendship that a Trust has to a true trade. Nobody seems to have any notion of improving anything except by pouring it into something else; as if a man were to pour the tea into the coffee or the sherry into the port. The one idea in all human things, from friendship to finance, is to pool everything. It is a very stagnant pool.

G K Chesterton from On Calling Names

Chesterton is the great advocate for the road to social justice less travelled. He believed that the path of the Fabians, the communists and the social democrats towards social justice was the same path taken by the great capitalists: to destroy diversity and so to achieve a greater centralisation of power and control in their own hands.

One hundred years later Chesterton's path remains untravelled. But could we not rethink social justice? Could we seek fairness, while still respecting tradition, complexity and diversity? Could we build, without destroying?

People with learning difficulties have already shown us the way. People who have been excluded, victimised and disempowered, do not want revenge or some meaningless token of 'equality'. They want to be included, to live in freedom, to be safe and to make their own contribution, in their own way. People want citizenship and world that enables them to find their own honoured place within it.

The Problem of Giving

2011-12-09T09:07:00.001-08:00

We do not quite forgive the giver. The hands that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.

Ralph Waldo Emerson on Gifts

The problem of giving is profound and double-edged. If we are the recipient of a gift there is a danger that we see our own need as a weakness (which it is not) and this then erodes our sense of our own value. If we are the giver then the danger is that we view our gift as some subtraction from ourselves (which it is not) and that we feel a pride and superiority to which we are not entitled.

One approach to this problem is to deny the reality of property (the property as theft argument). But this leaves us all poorer - or all subject to whatever power is in the business of organising property (the state, the market or the gangster).

A better approach is to welcome the concept of property and the notion of property rights but to recognise that property is not absolute. Property rights must be balanced with other social rights in order to ensure that everyone has the right to enough - even if some have more and some have less.

Paradoxically the healthiest perspective is to recognise that everything is a gift - not from other human beings - but from God. Humility before God takes nothing away from the soul.

Design requires deeper thinking

2011-12-09T08:29:00.001-08:00

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn't what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really work out what it's all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don't take the time to do that.

Steve Jobs from Wired in 1994

This seems to me to be true of design in our welfare systems too. People are always in such a hurry, working so hard, but thinking so little. What this leads to in the end is poorly thought-through public policies.

It is not the lack of 'research' that is the problem - no design innovation ever came from research. But design should be driven by a deeper understanding of the problems that need to be solved and the outcomes desired. This understanding is certainly informed by research, but it also needs to be informed by an understanding of human psychology and a commitment to basic ethical principles. Without this moral and social realism new designs will just be short-term fixes that will fall apart under the slightest pressure.

Having been responsible for designing several new systems for the organisation of welfare systems (individual budgets, self-directed support, resource allocation systems etc.) nothing is more depressing than to see people get enthusiastic about new ideas without making any real attempt to understand how and why they work. This is what then lead to such poor implementation. Without any deeper understanding people implement a process, e.g. the seven steps to self-directed support, as if it were a magical formula.

Sometimes it is better that people are sceptical and resistant than that they naively embrace innovations for the sake of novelty. Innovation must serve powerful moral purposes; it must right real wrongs. Otherwise it will be wasted effort and distraction.

Long-shot Utopias

2011-11-23T23:38:00.001-08:00

The hardest strokes of heaven fall in history upon those who imagine that they can control things in a sovereign manner, as though they were kings of the earth, playing Providence not only for themselves but for the far future - reaching out into the far future with the wrong kind of far-sightedness, and gambling on a lot of risky calculations in which there must never be a single mistake. And it is a defect in such enthusiasts that they seem unwilling to leave anything to Providence, unwilling even to leave the future flexible, as one must do; and they forget that in any case, for all we know, our successors may decide to switch ideals and look for a different utopia before any of our long shots have reached their objective, or any of our long-range projects have had fulfilment. It is agreeable to all the processes of history, therefore, that each of us should rather do the good that is straight under our noses. Those people work more wisely who seek to achieve good in their own small corner of the world and then leave the leaven to leaven the whole lump, that those who are ever thinking that life is vain unless one can act though the central government, carry legislation, achieve political power and do big things.

From Herbert Butterfield's Christianity and History

I came across the wonderful book in a second-hand book store in Sheffield - it is a real forgotten treasure: a great history Professor reflecting upon the relationship of history to faith and moral action.

I love this passage partly because it describes so well one of those tempting traps all dreamers can fall into. We think we know what should be done, we think we know what the future should be like, we think we should be the one to push the buttons. But this is all vain: the truths we've grasped are only partial, whatever we want others may not want, and there are no buttons - life is far too complex to be directed by anyone - least of all us.

These points seem true regardless of our faith or any lack of faith. However Butterfield also describes how faith in Providence - God working his purposes out over time - can help us manage our anxiety and our passion for moral change. A combination of utopian dreaming and atheism is particularly dangerous because you can have no faith that change will happen right, unless it is you who are in charge of that change (for there is no guiding Providence at work). More frighteningly still, you are free to breach all moral principles in pursuit of your dream, because nothing matters except the dream.

Social Mobility and Meritocracy

2011-11-23T16:33:00.001-08:00

At the same time there existed in the sphere of the world a land that was called the country of wealth after the nature of its inhabitants. They saw in money alone the goal of their life and would recognise no other profit and no other perfection than possession. Thus all posts of honour and all ranks among them were regulated by this valuation. It was necessary to own a certain amount in order merely to be a man; he who did not possess this much stood lower and occupied in their esteem the rank of a manlike animal, and was called such. He owned more than that minimum amount occupied a higher position, and a very rich man stood near the stars; for he had, so they believed, the power of the stars, which cause gold to grow in the bowels of the earth. But the richest of all, who could never grasp all that was theirs or even merely survey it, these they exalted to gods above them and served them in the dust. It was ordered that each show his possessions every year so that he could maintain his station, rise, or fall, and it was then possible at times that from a man, an animal would come into being, and from an animal, a man.

From The Master of Prayer by Rabbi Nachman, as told by Martin Buber

Rabbi Nachman's fable captures brilliantly the interwoven madness of two contemporary obsessions:

Meritocracy involves the crazy desire to equate wealth and power with merit (today often equated to academic excellence). Once we think this through we can see that there is no merit in meritocracy - in fact we might say that as those with merit are already blessed perhaps we should be happy to see those without merit get the distinct benefits of power or money. Meritocracy is greed.

But meritocracy also invites the craziness of social mobility. On one reading social mobility - if we can abandon the notion of up and down - is harmless or good. It is certainly bad if a natural footballer is forced to play cricket, a natural comedian runs a funeral parlour or a natural gardner becomes an accountant. However the idea that there is any virtue in people getting much richer than their parents and (and by logical necessity that there is virtue in seeing people become much poorer than their parents) is nonsense. It is an illusion that is only credible if we also believe in meritocracy.

The Value of Stories

2011-11-22T13:29:00.001-08:00

It is true that storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it, that it brings about consent and reconciliation with things as they really are, and that we may even trust it to contain eventually by implication that last word which we expect from the "day of judgement."

Hannah Arendt from her essay on Isak Dinesen

Many academics are rather snobby about the value of stories.

But think about what a story does.

Telling a story is a way of revealing the reality of a person - not trying to fully comprehend that - but to try and see it - honestly. Any individual life is too much, too rich and too mysterious, to be captured by any limited perspective. But we can listen, we can learn and we can explore meanings - together.

On the other hand if we discard all that and say that truth must be in the numbers then first we need to create some simplistic account of what matters - one that will give 'good maths'. We then abandon persuasion and exploration. We try to win - but often it is mere a trickery, an illusion that depends upon ignoring all the other questions you didn't ask.

The Survival of Justice

2011-11-22T12:24:00.001-08:00

The lucky man's great good fortune
Ruins his children.
This was old wisdom.
Is it true?
Surely the father who breaks heaven's law
Ruins his children.
The father who denies heaven's right
Blinds his children.
The father who forgets to be humble
Crushes his children.
Evil begets evil.
But the children of the man who fears heaven,
They tread with care. They care for the good.
They are rewarded.

Rich pride mounts rich pride
And begets insolence.
Pampered insolence begets
Anarchy.
And anarchy, where every man
Is the tyrant
Of his own conceit,
Begets all-out-war -
Striking at heaven and earth.

Justice lives in poverty.
She survives. She measures
What is necessary.
She honours what ought to be honoured.
She seeks out clean hearts, clean hands.
She knows what wealth and power
Grind to dust between them. She knows
Goodness and the laws of heaven.

From Aeschylus' Agamemnon, translated by Ted Hughes.

The chorus sing of justice just before Agamemnon arrives, to be slaughtered. They see how the powerful, always believing themselves to be justified, in fact deny justice. And they see how all of this will unravel. Evil begets evil. Justice survives, even as it is ignored - it cannot be eliminated.

Space Disabled

2011-11-21T10:23:00.001-08:00

The use of the term 'disabled' is complex and disputed.

In the UK the term 'disabled people' is preferred to 'people with disabilities'. Disabled people can wear it with pride. It is used as a badge of identity and, if it refers to anything, it refers to the prejudice or obstacles that confront some of us because of our impairments or our differences. Disability is not in me - disability is in the social circumstances that make life more difficult for some of us.

Other English-speaking countries take exactly the opposite approach and reject the concept of a disabled person because it seems to imply that in some way our personhood is disabled - as if we were not fully functioning as a person.

For instance, the Canadian philosopher (and woman with a disability) Judith Snow rejects the concept of a disabled person because being unable to do certain things without assistance does not make one disabled. "I cannot get to the moon unaided - but I am not space disabled." The fact that someone needs more than an average level of assistance in one area of life, where others require less assistance, does not mean that they are any less of a person.

Personhood does not depend on our ability to perform some set of tasks: there's no ability test for being a person.

As she points out, any distribution of abilities follow the normal curve. For any specific ability there will be some who are very able, some who are less able, while most will be in the middle. There will be those of us who can't run, those of us who can run very fast indeed and the rest of us who might just manage a jog.

The crucial point here is that the normal curve is normal; it is just the way that inevitable variations in the natural world get distributed. There's nothing special about it.

But it seems that we struggle to treat these variations and differences as natural. Natural variation gets turned into a kind of weapon. Some are tempted to see themselves as superior, just because they are lucky to have an ability at one end of the curve. Some may start to feel they are inferior, just because they happen to have an ability at the other end of the curve. Some may even glory in just being normal. The normal curve becomes a weapon for oppressing and harming others or even ourselves.

Even worse, the idea of disability may be treated as if it refers to some kind of failed version of a thing. As she notes, we do not really think of a 'disabled car' as a particular kind of car, we see it as a failed car - a car that does not work anymore. Applying disability to humans in this way is dangerous nonsense.

Judith Snow does not reject the existence of abilities or disabilities - so long as we understand that this concept is a doubly relative term: relative to a particular human activity and relative to the distribution of that activity. There is nothing bad about these variations in the distribution of capacity - and nothing unfair. It is all just a part of our natural human diversity.

Snow rejects the notion that our human status that can be switched off, or even diminished, by our abilities. We ourselves are not disabled, we cannot be disabled.

However UK perspectives also makes perfect sense. In a world where people use the term 'disabled' of people then it makes good sense to say: Okay, that's me - but if you see a problem the problem is in you - not me.

But it also makes sense to say that you can't apply the term 'disabled' to people - its bad grammar.

Both agree that the adjective 'disabled' does not really qualify the noun 'person' - but each chooses to make a different moral point in their response to the fact that some people do use the term as if it does apply to people:

We are a group - we have an identity, which we control and of which we are proud.

Or

I am a person - don't rule me out, don't ignore me or degrade me.

Both perspectives are entirely valid. So let's use them both.

The Incompetence of the Clever

2011-11-18T09:32:00.001-08:00

Much of society is organised on the principle that we should leave decisions in the hands of those who are most competent to make them. But we often confuse competence with cleverness. However clever you are there are very real limits to your competence to make decisions on behalf of other people:

Understanding - you don't really know how I think or what I value
Position - you can't take the opportunities or avoid the hazards that lie before me
Social - you can't replace me in relationships of love, work, friendship
Motivation - you can really avoid putting your own interests first

It is a special temptation for the clever to think they can act on everyone else's behalf. It is a deep incompetence which is often masked by phoney rationality and a dismissive attitude to those they see as somehow beneath them.

How to Make a Life

2011-10-31T11:03:00.000-07:00

You are a citizen when you are defined by your contribute, by what you create in the company of others, not by what you consume…

We need to find ways for all of us to act together as citizens on the truth in Winston Churchill's statement: "We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give."

Mike Green from Citizenship and Person-Centred Work

Modern economic and social theory has failed to capture this important dimension of citizenship. Philosophical theories like utilitarianism and liberalism and the accounts of rationality used by modern economics are badly distorted by their inability to understand the need to give, the need to contribute and the reality of obligations.

The Medicine We Bring

2011-10-31T10:16:00.000-07:00

I believe what Native Americans believe: that every person born to this earth is born with gifts. It's totally impossible to be born without them. No one's birth was a mistake. We all come here with something to give. And it is in the giving that these gifts become medicine, for the world, for the tribe, for the family the school, the agency. The health and the wholeness and the vitality of any community requires 100% participation of every member of that community.

Denise Bissonnette from Citizenship and Person-Centred Work

This is hard truth. It demands that we ask ourselves what has been lost and what will be lost every time a child with a disability is terminated before its birth, or killed just after its birth. What is lost every time an older person or a person with disabilities is 'hurried towards death' or is just left, segregated, within a care home.

It seems that society doesn't always want to take its medicine.

We are choosing to be the kind of society that only values the shallow and the temporary. We want to be happy, at any price; but we don't want to have to show love, pay attention or take care. Perhaps we think we already have all that it takes to be human within ourselves - we just don't need other people. Or perhaps we only value the famous, the rich and the powerful.

But, if this is so, we are on a long journey to deep disappointment.

True value cannot be found within inevitably scare and fleeting moments of celebrity or in the enjoyment of rare pleasures. True value lies all around us - in every moment, in every person - but it can only be found in love - not self-indulgence.

Citizenship and Higher Purpose

2011-10-31T09:34:00.000-07:00

Citizenship is related three ideals of democracy that are at the core of person-centred work. First, all people are created equal, which means that everyone is equally entitled to reach for their higher purpose. Second, in order to reach for higher purpose there must be equal opportunities to do so. Third, our work as citizens is not simply to receive but to give back; not to reach for our own higher purpose, but to do so in a way that contributes to the greater good. Pursuing these ideals strengthens society and enriches culture for us all.

Beth Mount from Citizenship and Person-Centred Work

Beth Mount is the real inventor of person-centred planning, although her work has largely gone unrecognised in the UK - perhaps because in her hands it is too subtle for the kind of industrialised approach that was encouraged by the Valuing People White Paper.

What is important about what Beth is saying here is that notions such as person-centredness must also be tied to a broader concern with citizenship. This means making two changes to how we currently think about both ideas.

First, we must recognise that the notion of person-centredness only really makes sense - and it does make sense - if we begin to see human life as having real purpose where each individual has their own purpose, their own distinctive role to play. Human beings are not just animals, merely meeting their needs; human beings are individuals, each with their own distinct contribution to make.

Second, we must stop treating citizenship as if it is primarily a political concept - that we are citizens because we are a certain kind of member of a certain kind of society. Citizenship is something we create, we create though our own individual contribution. This means it has an important and foundational moral character - it offers a pattern for how we should be with each other. This means that all of us can be citizens, can strive for citizenship, even when we live in a deeply paternalistic, meritocratic or oppressive society.

Reflections on William Beveridge

2011-10-20T09:58:00.000-07:00

In proceeding from this first comprehensive survey of social insurance to the next task—of making recommendations—three guiding principles may be laid down at the outset.

1. The first principle is that any proposals for the future, while they should use to the full the experience gathered in the past, should not be restricted by consideration of sectional interests established in the obtaining of that experience. Now, when the war is abolishing landmarks of every kind, is the opportunity for using experience in a clear field. A revolutionary moment in the world's history is a time for revolutions, not for patching.

2. The second principle is that organisation of social insurance should be treated as one part only of a comprehensive policy of social progress. Social insurance fully developed may provide income security; it is an attack upon Want. But Want is one only of five giants on the road of reconstruction and in some ways the easiest to attack. The others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.

3. The third principle is that social security must be achieved by co-operation between the State and the individual. The State should offer security for service and contribution. The State in organising security should not stifle incentive, opportunity, responsibility; in establishing a national minimum, it should leave room and encouragement for voluntary action by each individual to provide more than that minimum for himself and his family.

William Beveridge from Social Insurance and Allied Services

At the foundation of the welfare state it was clear that Beveridge was under the same pressure to 'patch' that we have faced ever since he designed it. Revolutions are difficult precisely for the reason he identified - they challenge sectional interests. Today the welfare state itself has become one of those sectional interests.

He also noted that social insurance is only part of what is required, and this is surely correct. However it is noticeable that in the delivery and funding of the welfare state social insurance is one of the weakest elements of the current system. Once we take out the taxes that the poor pay we find that only £25 billion is actually being spent on lifting people in the lowest 40% of earners out of poverty (that's 2.5% of GDP). The vast majority goes on fighting the other 'giants'. May be we've got the balance wrong?

The final principle seems more honoured in the breach than in observance. We have neither a clear minimum nor an encouragement for voluntary action - quite the reverse - obscure entitlements and perverse incentives.

For more thoughts on this see my essay for The Centre for Welfare Reform - Who really benefits from welfare?

Adam Smith on Celebrity

2011-10-15T09:41:00.000-07:00

This disposition to admire, and to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean conditions... is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

Adam Smith from Theory of Moral Sentiments

Adam Smith gets it right again. The love of celebrity and wealth does not just cause social injustice it distorts the basic fabric of our everyday moral instincts which becomes tattered and confused. We forget where our sympathies should be directed, we admire those we know are not admirable and we drop our standards to the level of those we admire.

On the Mystery of the Incarnation

2011-10-11T09:50:00.000-07:00

It's when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-like, God
(out of compassion for our ugly
failure to evolve) entrusts,
as guest, as brother,
the Word.

A Poem by Denise Levertov shared by John O'Brien

Spartan Tax Rates

2011-10-11T05:09:00.000-07:00

...the Helots were tied to the lands as serfs of the Spartan community, paying for their right to live by a contribution of half the product of their labours on the soil.

E B Castle from Ancient Education and Today

Hence we might observe that the Spartan tax rate, placed upon their slaves was at 50%, is similar the size of the UK's tax rate (once we aggregate the many different taxes we pay).

However it may be too strong to conclude that we are slaves like the Helots. After all the political elite have to pay the same tax rates as we do, whereas the Spartan elite were supposed to own no private property. Moreover we have effectively agreed to pay our 50% tax through the electoral and democratic process.

But do we really feel that these resources which we hand over to the state and to politicians to spend on our behalf are well spent? Do not growing rates of inequality suggest that we have failed to grasp the real causes of injustice?

The Tyranny of the Medianocracy

2011-10-10T09:31:00.000-07:00

Aristotle feared that democracy might become the rule of the mob, the demos. He saw their short-sighted, wilfulness as a threat to good order. Of course Aristotle did not know how big and powerful a state could become, nor how sophisticated the democratic process could be at refining the will of the people.

Today, at least when it comes to matters of money, the real threat to good order does not come from the rich or the poor but from the median voter. The rich, as always, can always buy themselves some power but it is the median voter - the swing voter - who holds the key to power. Typically the median voter is also the media income earner and so politicians have learnt how to bend the welfare and tax systems to ingratiate themselves with this group.

In the central distributionary matters of tax and benefit policy there are two competing tactics at play. The Right tries to find ways of making the median voter believe that they are one of the rich, but are being exploited by the poor; the Left tries to make them feel that they are one of the poor, and are being exploited by the rich. The reality is that it is the median man who is exploiting both rich and poor.

What justifies extra high tax rates for the rich? The rich must pay more in tax, of course they must, but it is more difficult to explain why they should pay at a higher rate of tax. What justifies the even higher marginal tax rates (or benefit reduction rates) faced by the poor? If high taxes create disincentives then the poor should face the lowest tax rates - not the highest.

Rationality supports neither policy. In fact both poor and rich groups are more likely to be subject to disincentive effects than are middle-earners; for they are not in the kind of steady and secure work that the typical middle-earner enjoys. It is not rationality or economics that explains the current system - but political pandering to the key voter group.

We currently live in a medianocracy and this distorts our tax, benefit and welfare systems. Constitutional government has always been justified on the basis that the rule of law must also be used to discipline the will of the people. It seems to me that we must begin to learn now what rules should discipline the welfare system. A fair welfare system would pay much more attention to ensuring that those who worst off were given the fundamental guarantees and securities that protected their active citizenship.

Mohawk Prayer of Thanksgiving

2011-10-05T08:45:00.000-07:00

John O'Brien shared the following Mohawk prayer of thanksgiving.

OHEN:TON KARIWENTEHKWEN

We offer our greetings to all the people.

We offer our greetings to the Earth, our Mother.

We offer our greetings to the waters of all the rivers and lakes and streams.

We offer our greetings to all the fish life.

We offer our greetings to all the root life.

We offer our greetings to all the plant life (the green things).

We offer our greetings to all the different natural medicines.

We offer our greetings to all the insect life.

We offer our greetings the foods we eat.

We offer our greetings to all the fruits and berries.

We offer our greetings to all the wild animals.

We offer our greetings to all the bird life.

We offer our greetings to all the trees and young saplings.

We offer our greetings to the four winds.

We offer our greetings to our Grandfathers, the Thunderers.

We offer our greetings to our Grandmother, the Moon.

We offer our greetings to our Elder Brother, the Sun.

We offer our greetings to all the stars in the sky.

We offer our greetings to the Creator.

Now we have done the best we are able, if there was anything we forgot, we ask you to put your minds together to provide it and we wish you good health.

Now our minds are one.

The Citizen & the Stranger

2011-10-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

The just society treats the stranger as a citizen - but never forgets what citizenship means.

The Limits of Centralisation

2011-10-03T13:20:00.000-07:00

Centralisation imparts without difficulty an admirable regularity to the routine of business... in short it excels in prevention, but not in action. Its forces desert it when society is to be profoundly moved, or accelerated in its course; and if once the cooperation of private citizens is necessary to the furtherance of its measures, the secret of its impotence is disclosed...

These are not conditions upon which the alliance of the human will is to be obtained; it must be free in its gait and responsible for its acts, or (such is the constitution of man) the citizen had rather remain a passive spectator than a dependent actor in schemes with which he is unacquainted.

Alexis de Tocqueville from Democracy in America

I love 'free in its gait and responsible for its acts'. Politicians tell us they want our participation, our citizenship and our contribution. But one feels that they only want us to get involved on their terms - not when we're ready - but when they're ready.

Citizenship must be rooted in local experiences of active engagement. We cannot be expected to spring into action only when our masters decide they are ready for us.

The fact that the UK is the most centralised welfare state in the world should give us all cause for concern.

The Paideia Proposal

2011-09-26T01:29:00.000-07:00

The Paideia Proposal was an educational reform plan proposed by Mortimer Adler in the USA. The description of the plan below is drawn from the article Reconstituting the Schools, included in the 1988 edition of his book Reforming Education, The Opening of the American Mind.

The Paideia Proposal is a system of liberal education intended for all children, including those who will never attend a university. It was a response to what Adler characterized as our antidemocratic or undemocratic educational system, a holdover from the 19th century, when the understanding of universal suffrage and basic human rights fell short of 20th century expectations. Adler further believed that a system oriented primarily for vocational training has as its objective the training of slaves, not free men, and that the only preparation necessary for vocational work is to learn how to learn, since many skilled jobs would be disappearing.

The Paidea Proposal was based upon the following assumptions, which contradict beliefs widely held by educators:

All children are educable
Education is never completed in school or higher institutions of learning, but is a life long process of maturity for all citizens
The primary cause of learning is the activity of the child's mind, which is not created by, but only assisted by the teacher
Multiple types of learning and teaching must be utilized in education, not just teacher lecturing, or telling
A student's preparation for earning a living is not the primary objective of schooling

The relevance of the Paidea Proposal to our present difficulties is obvious. Clearly the damaging assumptions that Adler challenges are still around today and they still damage the spirit and capacities of today's children and adults.

However, and at the same time, it could be said that many of the failed reforms of past decades have also drawn on some of Adler's counter-cultural assumptions. His optimism about the capacity of educators to include more and more children within their academic disciplines also seems to have fed a decline in academic standards and discipline as educators are told to be more inclusive and more flexible.

Perhaps part of the problem is that we continue to see education as merely a professional process that is done to our children - to prepare them for labour markets. If we were to truly follow through on Adler's assumptions would we not want to consider a more radical approach to education? The springboard for a child's education is the love of the family, not the love of educators. We want our teachers to love and honour their subjects and find effective methods for communicating those subjects to our children. But we erode the family's authority and responsibility by taking away form them the ability to shape their child's education.

Strangers are much less likely to see potential within a child than loving parents.

The community does have a wider role here, both to support and discipline the family in the fulfilling of their responsibility. But no school-only approach is really going to work for most children. We need to begin developing family-based approaches to education.

Furthermore we need to challenge the notion that the state is competent to set a curriculum based on its flawed guesstimates of what the labour market will demand at some point in the future (all the more flawed because markets don't 'demand' anything). Again we may still want to think about explicit accounts of the basic skills that are critical to our citizenship - but we should much more realistic about our capacity to foresee the market-value of skills we try and impose on our children today. Listening to the child's capacities is more likely to be a reliable foundation for meaningful success that any sketch of our future economy.

It does not help those who are educationally disenfranchised to include them in a system that is flawed and failing. Instead we must attend to the conditions that really support motivated learning, personal development and real excellence in multiple fields: academic and non-academic.

Democratic Welfare Reform

2011-09-21T10:47:00.000-07:00

The struggle for democracy offers us a parallel to the struggle for welfare reform. People need more control over their own lives, within an institutional framework that creates rights and opportunties for redress. We must end the feudal assumption of the current elite that their power brings with it all the necessary authority and wisdom to rule every detail of our lives.

Mr Pye and Do-Goodery

2011-09-19T10:38:00.000-07:00

Mervyn Peake's novel Mr Pye is a wonderful fable on the perils of do-goodery. Bringing boundless wisdom and benevolence to the island of Sark he ends up, much to his own disgust, turning into a winged angel.

What is at the root of his strange fall is his own pride, his determination to not just be good - but to look good.

Several symptoms of his prideful benevolence shine though the pages of the novel:

Unlike Christ, Mr Pye never asks the person he is about to help whether he really wants his assistance.

Power is never questioned. Confident in his own benevolence and greater wisdom he treats people as puppets - at times quite literally.

God becomes the Great Pal - always smiling, always present. Only in his final reconciliation with God does he experience any fear and trembling.

One Value of Diversity

2011-09-14T10:21:00.000-07:00

A diversification among human communities is essential for the provision of the incentive and material for the Odyssey of the human spirit. Other nations of different habits are not enemies: they are godsends. Men require of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to be understood, something sufficiently different to provoke attention, and something great enough to command admiration.

A N Whitehead

The Odyssey of the Human Spirit may seem rather grand to modern ears. But it is a wonderful perspective on human existence.

We take diversity for granted. We do not understand how valuable are the differences between us. If we imagine stripping away the dimensions of human diversity we find that we will be left with an empty shell - nothing of value. Contra John Lennon we need our countries, our languages, diverse skills, diverse needs, different perspectives, different histories, genders and different bodies.

We know that each of us are not complete in ourselves - we each need the difference of one another.

Not from Benevolence

2011-09-10T10:19:00.000-07:00

[each individual] stands at all times in the need of the co-operation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons...

...It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their interest.

Adam Smith

We can all dream of a world in which everyone puts aside their own selfish interests and seeks the good of all. But this is not just unattractive it is undesirable. Our duty to look after our own interests is right and proper. It is the only way in which our own needs can be met in a way which is both coherent and respectful.

Other people can never look out for our own interests with the necessary eye for detail. It is hard enough doing it as a parent for a child we love, it is impossible to do it as a collective on behalf of everyone. Only we know ourselves from the inside out.

More remarkably still, as Smith observes, if kept within certain bounds, this kind of proper self love is of great benefit to everyone. Our own need for the things that only other people can provide creates a healthy interdependency. Nature makes sure that we need other people and that they need us.

The great danger however is that looking after our own interests can be turned into an idol or a god. Love for the self will not solve every problem. It will not protect the world itself nor will it protect the interests of those who are endangered by others.

We also need to love other people and we need the discipline to ensure that we can find the right balance between these two loves. It is for this reason that society develops rules and institutions that help us keep these loves in balance. The search for social justice is the search to find the right balance between love for self and love for others and the world we share.

However even social justice can be corrupted. When we begin to see some people as just too different we can be tempted to separate them from the interconnecting web of human need. Then we are in danger of making the most fatal mistakes. The eugenicist, the racist and the meritocrat all share the same mission to redefine humanity so that they only have to focus their love for others on some smaller group - some group within which they find it easier to see a mirror image of themselves.

True social justice will always be inclusive, will always seek to define itself primarily by its concern for those who are most likely to slip out of consideration all together.

Equality

2011-09-07T10:25:00.000-07:00

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organising its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness....

The Declaration of Independence

These words are so familiar that their radical nature now scarcely registers. Moreover, even those of us who like America and Americans, tend to become cynical when we put these words alongside the kind of heartlessness that seems to pervade social policy in the USA. It looks like the right to pursue your own happiness has ended up trumped all those other of inalienable rights.

But, if we are interested in how to bring about a better world, a fairer world, then cynicism takes us nowhere. Two things at least should inspire us:

The call to recognise our fundamental equality as human beings is so powerful that it resounds through the centuries. It rings true even amidst slave owners and it creates demands on all of us even when we are failing to live up to those demands or are confused about what equality means.

The recognition of this equality has also inspired some of the most profound acts of creation and social justice. Radical innovation is not always successful or good - most revolutions are profoundly damaging and wicked. However the existence of this American Revolution - at least partially inspired by justice - demonstrates that human beings can build anew, with at least some success.

Perhaps one further lesson of the Declaration is the power of reason - thinking, writing and reflecting - to help both galvanise and organise human behaviour. In particular the Declaration is both the recognition of an ideal and an acknowledgement of the human weaknesses that will undermine that ideal. Rights, duties and all the underlying structures of government that support them exist because we cannot be trusted, on our own, to do the right thing. We need reason to help us understand our own weaknesses by looking honestly at human behaviour, our history and the lessons it can teach.

The Centre of Totalitarianism

2011-09-07T08:23:00.000-07:00

Just as the stability of the totalitarian regime depends on sealing off the fictitious world of the movement from the outside world, so the experiment of total domination in the concentration camps depends upon sealing off the latter against the world of all others, the world of the living in general, even against the outside world of a country under totalitarian rule. This isolation explains the peculiar unreality and lack of credibility that characterise all reports from the concentration camps and constitute one of the main difficulties for the true understanding of totalitarian domination, which stands or falls with the existence of these concentration and extermination camps; for, unlikely as it may sound, these camps are the true central institution of totalitarian organisational power.

Hannah Arendt from The Origins of Totalitarianism

Many people are rightly nervous of any attempt to compare Hitler's death camps with any other institution in world history. After writing the The Origins of Totalitarianism Arendt herself was criticised for comparing the death camps with Stalin's gulags.

But Arendt's analysis of the unreality of the camps - the way in which they were sealed off from public view and made to seem 'impossible' to many - even in Germany itself - should make us question this prohibition on comparison. Finding some point of comparison does not lessen the evil of the death camps, instead it is a way of making sure we do to forget that evil. To seal the camps of as unique and unrepeatable evil is a failure: a failure to remember, a failure to connect, a failure to honour the dead and a failure to arm ourselves against such evils in the future.

We should be able to see that institutions that hide people away, segregate them from ordinary life and create utter dependence are dangerous and very likely to tip into evil.

Science and Humanity

2011-09-06T10:15:00.000-07:00

Science in that sense moderates potential Hitlers [they need the scientists for their own victories and so must take care of them] - but only in that sense. In general it increases man’s power without increasing his virtue, hence increasing his power to do both good and evil.

The total picture is one of great danger resulting from the political involvement of science. Some people assert that we have to reinvent politics in order to meet the danger. Swift tells us that politics was already reinvented by the founders of the Enlightenment, and that is the problem. It turned out that natural science had nothing to say about human things, about the uses of science for life or about the scientist. If he does so, he uses none of the tools he uses in his scientific activity, and his conclusions have none of the demonstrative character he demands in his science. Science has broken off from the self-consciousness about science that was the core of ancient science. This loss of self-consciousness is somehow connected with the banishment of poetry.

Alan Bloom from The Closing of the American Mind

Social science seems to contradict Bloom: it offers itself up as a science for society, for politics and for human beliefs and culture. But closer attention reveals that social science demonstrates the validity of Bloom's perspective.

The important judgements about society, about ourselves and about others are moral judgements. They need not be subjective or prejudicial (although the gravitational pull towards mere subjectivity is always present) but they cannot be neutral. Neutrality is just under-cover scepticism and that is a moral perspective in itself.

Towards a View from Nowhere

2011-09-05T10:14:00.000-07:00

In the pursuit of justice, positional illusions can impose serious barriers that have to be overcome through broadening the informational basis of evaluations, which is one of the reasons why Adam Smith demanded that perspectives from elsewhere, including from far away, have to be systematically invoked. Though much can be done through the deliberate use of open impartiality, the hope of proceeding smoothly from positional views to an ultimate 'view from nowhere' cannot hope to succeed fully.

Amartya Sen from The Idea of Justice

Sen is rightly cautioning us to avoid any simplistic or reductive attempt to fix what is morally important. We are familiar with the notion that pursuing our own self-interest with no regard to its impact on other people is wrong. But he is also saying that even if we do have moral concern for others the nature of that concern can also be very partial - unfair. We don't always understand what is in the interests of other people nor can we always trust our own values or ideals. Partiality creeps in everywhere.

However it is also important to notice that scepticism about our own moral perspective can easily slip into scepticism about morality as a whole. This is very different and very dangerous. Becoming sceptical about morality may seem more 'liberal' or even (in a highly paradoxical way) more moral; but it is not. Moral scepticism is the death of our shared humanity - it excuses both selfishness and moral laziness.

The fact that an objective perspective, God's perspective, is difficult to achieve does not entitle us to abandon morality or to stop striving for moral truth.

In fact it is more rational to be humble rather than sceptical. It makes more sense, when in doubt, to look to the authority of those we can trust and to those values that have survived longest, instead of throwing ourselves upon the bonfire of scepticism.

Do Not Harvest to the Edges - Biblical Social Justice Theory

2011-09-01T10:13:00.000-07:00

When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien.
I am the Lord your God.

Do not steal.
Do not lie.
Do not deceive one another.
Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God.
I am the Lord.

Do not defraud your neighbour or rob him.
Do not hold back the wages of a hired man overnight.
Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling-block in front of the blind, but fear your God.
I am the Lord.

Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favouritism to the great, but judge your neighbour fairly.
Do not go about spreading slander among your people.
Do not do anything that endagers your neighbour's life.
I am the Lord.

Do not hate your brother in your heart.
Rebuke your neighbour frankly so that you will not share in his guilt.
Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbour as yourself.
I am the Lord.

Keep my decrees.

Leviticus: 19:9-8

This ancient account of social justice theory is not just interesting because it demonstrates how our awareness of the demands of social justice has a very long history. It also shows that about social justice in the past was often more sophisticated - even if it is framed in terms of an agricultural economy - than our thinking today. Notice in particular:

1. The priority of making sure the most needy are provided for, but also the way in which this maintains the dignity and the autonomy of the poor - who do not need to beg or receive patronage.

2. The importance of fair dealing and the imperative to not exploit those who work for you by delaying payments.

3. The need to create an environment of dignity and respect for all - especially for those who can easily be taken advantage of.

These observations are all reinforced by the fear of God - his knowledge of all your actions and all your intentions. There is complete awareness that enlightened self-interest is not sufficient to protect those who might be exploited by the more powerful. The constant refrain - "I am the Lord" - puts everyone in their place, reminds everyone that the power or status in this world is illusory - it justifies nothing and entitles us to no special treatment.

Citizenship in the Welfare State

2011-09-01T09:53:00.000-07:00

Above all, I think the idea of citizenship should remain at the centre of modern political debates about social and economic arrangements. The concept of a citizen is that of a person who can hold [their] head high and participate fully and with dignity in the life of [their] society.

Jeremy Waldron in Liberal Rights

This observation was really important to me. I had been taught by Jeremy Waldron when I studied politically theory and especially social justice theory with him at Edinburgh. He was an impressive and challenging thinker. But I only read this in one of his books some years later - while working with people with learning difficulties.

At that point I had seen my role as about promoting citizenship and helping people take back control over their own lives. But what was powerful in Waldron's observation was the realisation that the whole welfare state (although often to a lesser degree than the institutional models imposed on people with learning difficulties) tended to treat people, not as citizens, but as subjects.

We need to move away from models of public policy that treat citizens as if they were merely subjects - or as Aristotle would have it 'slaves'. This demands change at every level - from constitutional foundations upto the direct interface between citizens and professionals.

Sufficiency is Wealth

2011-08-30T10:22:00.000-07:00

Nevertheless the soul can be just as thoroughly ruined by excessive poverty as by excessive wealth; both wound with equal severity, for wealth and beggary are two extremes. The mean is called sufficiency, and that is where abundant virtues lie, for Solomon has written, without reservation, in the thirtieth chapter, in fact, of a book of his entitled Proverbs: “By your power, O God, preserve me from wealth and beggary, for when a rich man takes to thinking too much about his wealth, he so sets his heart upon madness that he forgets his creator. And how can I save a man from sin when he is assailed by beggary? It would be hard for him not to be a thief or a perjurer.

And...

I neither say nor maintain that kings should be called rich any more than the common folk who go through the streets on foot, for sufficiency equals wealth, and covetousness equals poverty.

(Guillaume de Lorris) & Jean de Muin: The Romance of the Rose

The idea that sufficiency is equal to wealth may seem paradoxical. Its truth depends on understanding the way in which inequality poisons life between fellow human beings - the excessively poor are tempted into one set of vices and the excessively rich are tempted into a different set of vices. However, in order to accept this analysis you may need to be able to see that we should judge social life by moral standards: economic growth and achievement, on its own, has no real meaning. It is what we do with our wealth that matters.

Another way thinking about this is to recognise that one of the keys to citizenship is sufficient income security. If someone is too poor then they become unduly dependent upon others - this damages their status. However if someone is too rich they do not need others and this also damages their status (an oligarch is not a citizen). Having 'just enough' is also important in that it leaves us with room for growth, earning, development - that is, incentives for deeper citizenship.

Perhaps His Blood is Redder

2011-08-27T10:28:00.000-07:00

In fourth-century Babylon, a man came to Rabbi Rava and said: “The governor of my town has ordered me to murder someone [who is innocent], and has warned me that if I do not do so he will have me killed. [Can I murder the man to save my life?]” Rava refused him permission. “Let yourself be killed but do not kill him. Who says your blood is redder? Perhaps the blood of that man is redder.”

Pesachim 25b

This simple and powerful moral dilemma represents an absolute fulcrum for our moral perspective. On any account of morality based upon enlightened self-interest or the power of rationality (e.g. Korsgaard) we will not reach the proper moral perspective represented by Rabbi Rava: self-sacrifice cannot be justified by reference to the self. So, unless we are prepared to accept these lower forms of morality, we must seek a stronger, even if more uncertain, form of justification.

The idea that his blood is redder is simply code for the fact that we are not worthy to judge. Only God can judge. And we must presume our own unworthiness: we must put ourselves last.

The Prince and the Rooster

2011-08-26T10:30:00.000-07:00

Once, in an ancient kingdom, there lived a fine and handsome and intelligent prince. But one day he got it into his head that he was a rooster. At first the king believed this was simply a passing thought, a phase his son was going through. But when the prince took off all his clothes and began flapping his arms and crowing like a rooster, the king knew he had a real problem. The prince took up residence under the dining-room table and would eat only kernels of corn dropped onto the royal carpet. The king was sad to see his son in such a state. He called in his best doctors, his miracle workers, his magicians. One by one they talked to the prince, tried medicine and magic. But he remained convinced that he was a rooster. One by one they filed out.

Each time, the rooster crowed. The king fell into a deep depression, convinced that no one could cure his son of his tragic malady. He told his servants to allow no more medicine men or fortune seekers into the palace. He had had enough. One day an unknown sage approached the palace and loudly knocked upon the palace gate. The king's chief servant cracked open the wooden door and saw an old man with piercing eyes staring at him. "I understand the king's son believes he is a rooster. Well, I am here to convince him otherwise." The servant slammed the large wooden door. "So many have tried and failed. Go away, old man!" The next day, the servant heard once again a loud knock upon the gate. Again he cracked open the door. "I have a message for the king," said the unknown sage. "What is it?" said the servant. "Give it and be gone." "Tell the king these words exactly: 'To pull a man out of the mud, sometimes a friend must set foot into that mud.' The servant had no idea what it meant, but he left the sage waiting outside the gate and took the message to the king.

Slumped on his throne, the king listened to the cryptic message. "To pull a man out of the mud, a friend must set foot into that mud." Hmm, what did he mean by that? But as he thought about it, the words began to make sense. He sat straight up and said, "Yes, bring him in. I will give him a chance!"

To everyone's amazement, the wise man began by taking off all his clothes. The king shook his head. Now there were two naked men under the dining-room table, crowing like roosters. Soon the prince said to the wise man, "Who are you, and what are you doing here?" "Can't you see?" said the sage. "I'm a rooster, just like you." The prince was happy to have found a friend, and the palace resounded with flapping and crowing. But the next day, the wise man got out from under the table, straightened his back, and stretched. "What? What are you doing?" asked the prince. "Not to worry," said the sage. "Just because you are a rooster doesn't mean you have to live under a table." The prince admired his friend, so he tried it. It was true. A rooster can stand and stretch, and still be a rooster. The next day, the sage actually put on a shirt and a pair of pants. "Have you lost your mind?" asked the prince. "I was a little chilly," said the sage. "Besides, just because you are a rooster doesn't mean that you can't put on a man's clothing. You still remain a rooster."

Puzzled, the prince reluctantly tried on some clothes. The sage then asked for a meal to be served on the golden platters of the king. He sat down with the prince, and without realising it, the prince began to eat. The sage engaged him in a lively conversation about the affairs of the kingdom. Suddenly the prince jumped up from the table and cried, "Don't you realise that we are roosters? How can we be sitting at this table eating and talking as if we were men?" "Aha!" cried the sage. "I will now tell you a great secret. You can dress like a man, eat like a man, and talk like a man, but still remain a rooster." "Hmm," said the prince. And from that day forward, he behaved just like a man. In a few years, he assumed the throne. He led his kingdom to great glory. But every once in a while, the thought occurred to him that he was, in fact, still a rooster-and when he was all alone he would crow a little bit, just to make sure.

Rabbi Nachman from Nina Jaffe & Steve Zeitlin (1993). While standing on one foot. Puzzle stories & wisdom tales from the Jewish tradition. NY: Henry Hot. 70-75. Prince Rooster

I first heard this story from that great promoter of Hasidic Wisdom, John O'Brien. This story also reminds me of the work of Womencentre in Halifax. What is magical about their work is the way in which each woman sees herself as working alongside the woman who is in need. And as an equal they can help, enable and challenge within a relationship based upon trust - focusing on the real issues facing the woman - not their labels or reputations.

The best support is always paradoxical in this way - it lifts people up as equals - not from above, not from below - but alongside.

Three (or Four) Kinds of People

2011-08-24T10:32:00.000-07:00

Three officials were assigned to guard the king’s treasures. They proved to be corrupt, and dividing the valuables, ran away. One thought better of it, and returned of his own accord. The second was persuaded by a friend to return. The third witnessed the execution of an embezzler and returned out of fear. The first was restored to the king’s confidence; the second received a less responsible post, the third was appointed executioner of the embezzlers:

“There are three kinds of people in the world who act like these three officials with respect to the fulfillment of God’s injunctions" explained the Pulnoer.

An Hasidic Tale

This story reveals a theme which runs through moral philosophy. Are we motivated to act rightly because of duty itself or because of external influence or fear?

In my own work I find the similar fourfold distinction useful - not for analysing moral behaviour - but in terms of attitude to change:

Motivation by belief - to have a vision of the possible and faith in the unseen - these are the natural innovators
Motivation by status - to seek evidence and stay close to authority - these are the followers of fashion, the makers of movements
Motivation by price - to look for the consequent value of the innovation: it makes life easier, cheaper, more fun - these are the utilitarians who wait for trends to be set and for prices to drop
Motivation by fear - to know the negative value of the innovation: to fear the loss, the change and the unknown - these are the sceptics

Notice that each of us takes a different attitude to change in different aspects of our life. Nobody is an innovator in every walk of life. Notice also that each attitude has a positive purpose and that the tensions between these perspectives are legitimate.

So if you value an innovation remember that the other person, who does not seem to understand the value of the innovation, is not being purposefully stupid or wicked. Instead they are either:

Worrying that there is not enough evidence - What would it look like if they backed something that proved false?
Worrying that there is not enough value yet - Is it the right time to invest in this? What will my return be?
Worrying that they will lose something else they value - Doesn't this threaten me?

For social innovators it is important to respect these fears - knowing that you cannot resolve them at once. You also need to develop strategies that:

Increase data and improve understanding of the value of the innovation
Reduce the price, increase simplicity and ease of application of the innovation
Design the innovation so that it is sustainable and respectful of other values and approaches

Perhaps most importantly, if you have a vision of how things could be better, you will need to find ways of sharing your vision. Most powerfully this is achieved by making your vision real - even if its just in some small way.

The Mohawk Prayer

2011-08-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

"Because are human, we are going to mess up, we are going to make errors and omissions – so we are asking for your forgiveness in advance…"

My thanks Nan Carle for sharing this with me. It needs no commentary.

Medical Power & Personal Health Budgets

2011-08-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

The modern doctor evokes respect and awe, mixed with some fear and suspicion. At the most basic level a power relationship starts to exist as soon as we feel that another person holds in their hands an important key to our own life, death or happiness. We feel that we need them and this gives them power. However modern medicine reinforces this age-old pattern of dependency further because of the enormous progress made by modern medical science; progress which is underpinned by an interlocking system of research, education, accreditation, power and money. So, to put this another way, for thousands of years doctors have had power over patients; but since the development of modern medicine in this power has grown considerably - because modern medicine really works.

Ultimately Personal Health Budgets cannot be understood without thinking about this relationship, because it is an innovation within the doctor-patient relationship. It is not an innovation that effects everything in medicine directly; for there are many areas of modern medicine where the use of Personal Health Budgets would be entirely inappropriate. However it does create the possibility of a new kind of partnership between doctors and patients - at certain points - and as such this does start to change the whole relationship.

Make Learning Fun for All

2011-08-19T10:40:00.000-07:00

The following lessons are shared by experts in inclusive education - committed to ensuring that disabled children play a full part in classrooms, schools and the whole educational experience.

Teach people to get enjoyment from all their senses! - We have many senses and many ways of learning
Feed the need! - If we really feel a need to learn, explore and experiment then that's where attention should go
Let one system or domain support another! - We are not all good at everything, so let strengths in one area support the developments in others
Don’t hurt, it must be fun! - We don't learn when we're in pain - physical or mental
Compensate and let development come where it may! - We don't all grow and develop at the same pace nor in the same areas
Keep it cheap, fresh and novel! - Education should be fun for everyone - especially teachers (after all - its their job)

Food for thought for all of us at every stage of life.

The Fictional Economy

2011-08-10T12:18:00.000-07:00

One of the most frightening things we do as human beings is to hurt ourselves with fictional entities. One of these fictional entities is 'the economy'.

We tell ourselves that we must not lose the economic race (although its not clear who we are racing against or why); we must make the economy grow (even if bigger doesn't actually mean better); we must respond to the latest demands of the economy (even though there is no such thing). The economy demands - so we must respond.

But what is this entity, the economy?

We certainly each have needs and we have capabilities. And if the idea of an economy merely describes the interactions between these two human conditions then of course there are legitimate economic questions: What stops needs being met? What increases the chance of people's capability being advanced?

But this isn't what advocates of 'the economy' mean. They are not concerned with meeting human needs or supporting human beings to flourish - these things just get in the way. The economy has become a goal in itself, with its own strange needs, to which real human beings must be sacrificed. It is as if the economy is an instrument of war and we are all seeking the biggest weapon.

Six Blind Men of Hindustan

2011-08-04T10:38:00.001-07:00

There were six men of Hindustan,
to learning much inclined,
Who went to see an elephant,
though all of them were blind,
That each by observation
might satisfy his mind.

The first approached the elephant,
and happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
at once began to bawl,
“This mystery of an elephant
is very like a wall.”

The second, feeling of the tusk,
cried, “Ho, what have we here,
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ’tis mighty clear,
This wonder of an elephant
is very like a spear.”

The third approached the elephant,
and happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
thus boldly up and spake,
“I see,” quoth he,
“the elephant is very like a snake.”

The fourth reached out an eager hand,
and felt above the knee,
“What this most wondrous beast
is like is very plain” said he,
“‘Tis clear enough the elephant
is very like a tree.”

The fifth who chanced to touch the ear
said, “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
deny the fact who can;
This marvel of an elephant
is very like a fan.”

The sixth no sooner had begun
about the beast to grope,
Than seizing on the swinging tail
that fell within his scope;
“I see,” said he, “the elephant
is very like a rope.”

So six blind men of Hindustan
disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
exceeding stiff and strong;
Though each was partly in the right,
they all were in the wrong!

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

John Godfrey Saxe

It may be that the treatment for attitude is experience. But what do we each experience? Our experiences are never the same. As Hannah Arendt argues: it is only when we allow different perspectives to come into view and when we try to understand and integrate those perspectives that we can then come towards some kind of 'sanity' (wholeness).

Churchill and the Persians

2011-08-04T10:38:00.000-07:00

Churchill observed "America will always do the right thing... but only after exhausting all other possibilities." He could have deduced this from Katz's Law which is that "Men and nations will act rationally when other possibilities have been exhausted."

We can treat this as a cynical statement about our weakness and our tendency to always fall for the easy, but wrong, alternative. However it is also tells us something about the demands of rationality. If it is true - don't despair - think things through, make safe experiments, argue things out.

We are all prone to this weakness - we all want the quick and easy win - we resent the unintended and unforeseen consequence. So we need to develop some better habits to help us see things from different perspectives.

Herodotus says that the Persians used to review their plans both while they were drunk and while they were sober. Only if they thought the plan was good when drunk and sober would they commit to it.

The problem we face today in developing good public policies is not that we are often wrong. Our biggest problem is that we are so frightened of being seen to be wrong that we will never learn how to be right - we will never exhaust any of those other possibilities. We are stuck with what we've got and we have to make it seem right despite all evidence to the contrary.

Little Faith in the Average Man

2011-07-05T02:14:00.000-07:00

The Fabian writer Beatrice Webb said "We have little faith in the 'average sensual man', we do not believe that he can do more than describe his grievances, we do not think he can prescribe the remedies."

And it is true that sometimes we do not always no the remedies to the problems we face; however sometimes we know better than anyone else what is the right solution for us.

And if we allow this meritocratic paternalism to dominate decision-making in the institutions of welfare we can easily slip into making the further mistake: that there is not even a need to explain or justify 'our remedies'. We end up assuming that there is some elite who knows the remedy and is therefore already justified in implementing it - because it is best for us, but too hard for us to understand.

But even a doctor lacks this kind of meritocratic power - the doctor needs our permission before he can act on us. But what kind of permissions do the leaders of a meritocratic welfare state seek from us before they act up on the body of society?

Exiles

2011-07-04T10:48:00.001-07:00

Imagine a man who washes up on a desert island. He has all he needs, but then new people arrive on what he thinks of as ‘his island’. We can identify at least 4 different kinds of cases that each demand a different response:

Colonists - people who come to take over. He would reject any rights they claimed absolutely if he understood that they came to take ownership away from him.

Holiday-makers - people who come, but not to stay. They would be his guests, but he would want them to behave appropriately. They can go home - they are here for their pleasure (not to build a world) their rights would be limited.

Migrants - people who want to leave their old home, and who want to live with him - to build a world with him - although they still have a home. They should be made welcome as equals (ceteris paribus) - after all, they must judge that they can build a better world here than where they used to call home.

Exiles and Refugees - a man with no home, no one to go home to, no power and no rights is automatically at home when he lands on the island. His rights are as strong as the first man’s rights - in fact the first man is under a powerful obligation to help him settle - at his own expense.

The exile is our equal - a complete stranger to the land - has no other home than our home - and so is our complete and utter equal in rights and citizenship.

Equality of Opportunity

2011-07-04T10:47:00.002-07:00

When we demand equality we are rightly demanding recognition of our fundamental equality - our essential human dignity or worth. And naturally we often want this deep equality to be reflected in our social and economic conditions. This usually implies some kind of universal right or response, for example an equal right to high quality healthcare. However each right often has to be reflected in a personalised or tailored responses to that right: a particular entitlement that reflects particular needs. For example, I want the right medication for my particular condition.

One of the rights that is broadly accepted by everyone as a good thing is the right to equal opportunities. But when we demand equal opportunities we can easily slip between two very different conceptions of equality of opportunities:

We may be demand that no specific difference is to be taken into account that is not relevant to the opportunity we seek. This is the demand that there should be no prejudice in offering people opportunities. For example, my skin colour should not effect whether you offer me a particular job.
However this reasonable idea may then slip into a much more worrying account of equal opportunities - wanting the 'best' people to achieve the 'best' opportunities - this is the meritocratic hazard. On this view the problem is not one of unfair prejudice but that some kind of unfair obstacle is being put in the way of the 'brightest and the best'. In fact this vision of equal opportunities is deeply prejudicial.

In fact there are no 'best people' (accept in relationship to specific opportunities) and there are no 'best opportunities' - unless we choose to narrow the paths open to us. Rather, if we let wealth, power and influence become the only kind of ‘best' then we are on the path to hell.

Human differences are real and good. And human differences can flourish in all their diversity so long as we let there to be many different kinds of opportunities for that diversity to flourish. We need to let there be many different things that people can and should value - many different paths that we can explore - possibly even a unique path for each of us.

We must not let the rightful demand that there should be no prejudice slip into the dangerous demand that the powerful should be allowed to sort us according to their own narrow account of human worth.

Turning Wealth into a Desert

2011-07-04T10:47:00.000-07:00

Generosity can make a little enough; but envy always turns wealth into a desert.

The Best Donor

2011-07-04T10:46:00.001-07:00

The best donor gives knowing that what is given is not their own - but is God’s.

The Gift of Equality

2011-07-04T10:45:00.003-07:00

He who treat as equals those who are far below him in human strength really makes them a gift of the quality of human beings, of which fate had deprived them. As far as it is possible for a creature, he reproduces the original generosity of the Creator with regard to them.

This is the most Christian of virtues. It is also the virtue which the Egyptian Book of the Dead describes in words as sublime even as those of the Gospel. “I have never caused anyone to weep. I have never spoken with a haughty voice. I have never made anyone afraid. I have never been deaf to words of justice and truth."

Simon Weil from Forms of the Implicit Love of God

This gift is not a form of patronage. Rather we can only share with each other the gift of equality when we realise the ultimate emptiness of the other person's power over us. However, this is only really possible if we can identify some source of self that is not locked into the natural world - with all the differences it throws up and reinforces.

We might also say that we have chosen equality as a moral ideal - but what lies behind the power of that ideal is not an empty choice or individual preference; instead it is a reflection of the true nature of things.

Democratic Welfare

2011-07-04T10:45:00.001-07:00

The struggle for democracy offers us a parallel to the struggle for welfare reform. Without this struggle political systems tend to autocracy.

Welfare reform should be about helping people have more control over their own lives, within an institutional framework that creates rights and opportunities for redress. Democracies have always attempted to achieve this - not just by creating a process for collective decision-making, but also by protecting the rightful autonomy of the individual from state intrusion.

We must end the feudal assumption of the elite that their power gives them the necessary authority and wisdom to rule every detail of our lives.

Four Kinds of Design

2011-07-04T10:44:00.001-07:00

There are four kinds of designer, each with their own style. No style is right; each has its merits and its limitations:

Radical design - this is direct and active - it tries to identify a core functional structure - for example, making a garden from scratch. The radical designer is still constrained, but tends to treat all existing constraints as ultimately negotiable (although is clearly an impossible extreme - many constraints will continue to frame the design, even if they are in the unconscious of the designer).

Compensatory design - this is indirect and passive - it accepts the limitations of all the prevailing structures and identifies a different functionality - for example, putting a building into an existing garden. The compensatory designer is respectful of all constraints; how this is also an impossibly conservative extreme - anything new must in some way change what was already in place.

Adaptive design is direct and passive - it accepts the constraints of the prevailing structures, but tries to find new ways of building in functionality - for example, managing a garden over time. The adaptive designer is mindful of the finite nature of resources, and seeks to massage the given into something more useful.

Constructive design is indirect and active - it treats the foundations of the structure as fixed, but tries to add new or positive features - adding plants, sculpture to an existing garden. The constructive designer is highly tolerant of additions, of bells and whistles, of new features and new ideas.

For those of us involved in trying to reform the welfare system we must be mindful of these different styles of design. Often we may find that we agree about the need for redesign but that we do not share a notion of what kind of design is best. Simplifying we might say:

Theorists tend to be radical designers - "What we really need is..." or "The system is wrong!"
Bureaucrats are compensatory designers - "We can't possibly change anything that already exists!"
Managers are adaptive designers - "How can we reshape what we already have?"
Advocates are often constructive designers - "We need something different and new" or "That change is wrong!

Each designer has their own burden to carry and we are wise to recognise that each has their proper place. Those of us who think that the welfare system is badly designed at a very deep level will need to show some patience with those who have a different temperament and we will need to explore to what extent merely adding, adapting or developing new features can still help move us towards a more just settlement. We may even need to accept that our own radical ideas will need to be reinterpreted as additions, adaptions or developments by others. For there will be some truth in such an interpretation.

Irony of Education

2011-07-04T10:43:00.001-07:00

The irony of education is that while as a process it demands all the plurality and innovation required in any attempt to reach the most exalted outcome, there is no way that outcome can be defined accept by reference to the process of learning itself. And so it is always in danger of slipping into something beneath education.

First we may slip into assuming that we are aiming at some specific (if unstated) goal, like ‘suitable for employment by the modern state’. Second we may slip into taking the process of education, or one of its tokens, as the goal ‘a good degree’. These mistakes are both corruptions of education - turning it into the tool of an elite or into empty gestures.

But this is not education.

It may be training - and training can be very useful if you know what you ought to be doing - but it is not education.

Education is a ‘leading out’ - even if the 'where we are going' is not crystal clear. Hence we must see education as the development of what is already innate. Education presumes the value of learner, their passions and interest, and is informed by a strong sense of moral value.

Such a process must combine love for the learner - a love which may require discipline - along with the exercise of authority by the educator. The character of the relationship is possibly a better guide to the reality of education than anything else.

Domestic Totalitarianism

2011-07-04T10:42:00.001-07:00

Each time that someone tries to fix the final purpose of education then they are engaged in a kind of domesticated totalitarianism. They are wilfully trying to limit the ends of others by their own definition. Good education implies some kind of risk - faith in the unfolding of human potential.

Crazy Systems

2011-07-04T10:41:00.005-07:00

A crazy system is one that defeats the purpose it was set up to achieve:

When a system of income security discourages the poor from earning or saving money - this is craziness
When families can only get support when they have broken down - this is craziness
When children leave school feeling worthless - this craziness
When people end up in hospital for lack of some modest support in the community - this is craziness

Often craziness is added in very subtle ways when we confuse the real goal with a false proxy: for instance we think the problem is to get people off benefits, instead of seeing the problem as one of poverty and poor incentives.

Perhaps craziness slips in when the appearance of achieving the goal becomes more important than actually achieving the goal - which is the norm in party politics.

When Dawn has Arrived

2011-07-04T10:41:00.003-07:00

A rabbi asked his students how they could tell when the dawn had come and morning prayers could be said.

One student responded by saying, “When you can see the sheep on the hill.”

Another suggested that one can tell that the dawn has come when a person is able to distinguish between a fig tree and a grapevine.

“No,” said the wise one. “It is dawn when you can look into the faces of human beings and you have enough light within you to recognise them as your sisters and brothers.”

An Hasidic tale passed on by John O'Brien.

Giving as God has Given

2011-07-04T10:37:00.001-07:00

Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye. On the first day of the week let everyone of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come. And when I come, whosoever ye shall approve by your letters, them will I send to bring your liberality to Jerusalem. And if it be meet that I go also, they shall go with me. (1 Corinthians 16: 1-4)

This description of charity in early Church has two interesting features. Clearly Paul expects his listeners to give according to their means - or better according to how God has given to them. Paul knows that what we have is not really ours at all. Paul also knows that care and attention must be paid to how these alms are distributed so he asks people to think carefully about who they will entrust with the important job of taking the alms to Jerusalem. This same thought is found in Maimonides and clearly reflects an important Jewish awareness of both the need to give and the hazards of giving charity thoughtlessly.

The Gift of Judgement

2011-07-04T10:36:00.001-07:00

Arendt accepts from Kant that judgement emerges as a “peculiar talent which can be practised only and cannot be taught” because “judgement deals with particulars, and when the thinking ego moving among generalities emerges from its withdrawal and returns to the world of particular appearances, it turns out that the mind needs a new “gift” to deal with them.”

Hannah Arendt (paraphrased by Minnich)

This may seem a very hard and complex thought, but it is important because it helps us understand both the power and limitation of thought when it comes to actually understanding the real world before us. Arendt was very aware of how theories or ideologies could go madly out of control. How one attractive thought - like equality is good - can drive us to bloody acts of horror - if thought was allowed to follow its own tracks. Respect for the limitations of thoughts, theory and ideology is at the heart of her work. Instead we need perspective, communication and a kind of humility in the face of a complex reality which will always somehow escape our grasp.

Justice and Mercy

2011-07-04T10:35:00.001-07:00

"Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha said: Once when I entered into the innermost part [of the sanctuary] to offer incense I saw Akhateriel Yah, [trans. the crown of God] seated upon a high and exalted throne. He said to me, “Ishmael, My son, bless Me!” I replied, “May it be Your will that Your mercy subdue Your wrath and Your mercy prevail over Your other attributes, so that You deal with Your children, according to the attribute of mercy; and may You, on their behalf, stop short of the limit of strict justice!” And He nodded His head toward me. Here we learn [incidentally] that the blessing of an ordinary man is not to be regarded lightly in our eyes."

From the Jewish Book of Legend

In the Jewish and Christian tradition we are all too aware that we need God to stop short of the demands of strict justice and that mercy must subdue God's proper wrath.

The Quality of Mercy

2011-07-04T10:34:00.003-07:00

"Rabbi Berekhiah said: When the Holy One was almost about to create Adam, he saw both the righteous and the wicked who were to issue from him. So He said: If I create him, wicked men will issue from; if I do not create him how are righteous men to be born? What did the Holy one do? He diverted the way of the wicked from before His sight, partnered the quality of mercy with Himself [saying to it, “Let us make man"], and then created him."

From the Jewish Book of Legend

The idea that God must remove the wicked from his sight meaning that he is prepared to overlook all our sins. This is mercy. This is forgiveness. This is absolute.

Why God Does Not Reveal Himself

2011-07-04T10:34:00.001-07:00

Hadrian Caesar asked Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah, “Does the world have a master?”

Rabbi Joshua: “Can you possibly suppose that the world is ownerless?”

Hadrian: “And who created heaven and earth?”

Rabbi Joshua: “The Holy One as stated: ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth’” (Genesis 1:1)

Hadrian: “Then why does He not reveal Himself twice a year, so that mortals may see Him and the awe of Him be upon them?”

Rabbi Joshua: “Because the world cannot endure His radiance, as is said, “No man shall see Me and live’” (Exodus 33:20)

Hadrian: “If you do not show Him to me, I will not believe you.”

At midday Rabbi Joshua had Hadrian stand facing the sun and said, “Look directly at the sun and you will see Him.”

Hadrian: “Who can possibly look directly at the sun, which is but one of the thousand thousands and myriad myriads of servitors who minister before Him, all the less can a creature look at Him, at the Holy One, whose radiance fills the world.”

Hadrian: "When will He reveal His glory?”

Rabbi Joshua: “When idols shall have perished from the world.”

From the Jewish Book of Legend

Hadrian thinks he wants to see God. But he cannot conceive of God as anything but the greatest of idols - something else in the world with power over us. God does not endanger our freedom like this. We are free to follow our idols. But we are also free to follow the path of faith.

Dignity Comes First

2011-07-04T10:33:00.002-07:00

If you take a cloak from a neighbour as a pledge you must return it to him before sunset, for it is the only covering for his body and what else has to sleep in. If he shouts out to me I will hear him with mercy.

Exodus 22: 26-27

In other words no debt entitles you to rob another of their basic rights, including their dignity. The cloak is also a symbol of our social covering - the means by which we maintain our dignity and appear with respect before others. Property rights exist - but they are not fundamental and they must be limited by the demands of basic human rights and our shared human dignity.

Everyone has their Use

2011-07-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

The lame rides a horse
the maimed drives the herd
the deaf is brave in battle.
A man is better
blind than buried.
A dead man is deft at nothing.

This poem comes from the Viking 'Havamal'. It shows a recognition of the value of human diversity that seems sadly lacking from the modern world. Perhaps, when people struggle against a hostile environment and really need to work together to build a common world, then perhaps they are little more thankful for each human good and little more mindful of the need to ensure that each one of us has a place - a place where we can play a fruitful role.

The Citizenship Imperative

2011-07-04T10:31:00.003-07:00

If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would help an alien or temporary resident, so that he can continue to live among you. Do not take interest of any kind from him, but fear your God, so that your countryman may continue to live among you. You must not lend him money at interest or sell him food at a profit. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God.

Leviticus, 25:35-38

This is a powerful moral test. Notice that the imperative to help a fellow citizen is put on the same terms as help for the alien. This may seem strange to us - because we have forgotten the ancient imperative to take particular care of the alien. To the Greeks Zeus was the champion of strangers. To the Jews - who really understood slavery and isolation - the duty to the stranger was absolute. So here the imperative to treat a fellow country man as if a stranger is to lift him on to the same, honoured footing. This means not taking advantage, demeaning or exploiting him.

We believe we are so advanced. But we treat the stranger as if he shouldn't be here and we treat the needy as if they deserve their fate and anything we do for them is not from duty but from our own patronising kindness. We have fallen down from these ancient Greek and Jewish standards, but we close our eyes and pretend that we are rising. But we are simply rising on the back of the success of industrial production - there has been no moral advance.

True Leaders in History

2011-07-04T10:31:00.001-07:00

True leaders
are hardly known to their followers.
Next after them are the leaders
people know and admire;
after them, those they fear;
after them, those they despise.

To give no trust
is to get no trust.

When the work's done right,
with no fuss or boasting,
ordinary people say,
Oh, we did it.

Lao Tzu

This complex and multilayered thought from Lao Tzu is often quoted - but it is still fresh and relevant.

If it is true it means that all our histories will tend to be distorted by the greater visibility of the worst sort of leader - for the best will be invisible to historians and increasingly so over time.

It can be seen as good management advice: delegate, empower, trust...

But its truth depends upon faith in the Tao, the way, Providence. Only if we believe that morality does reflect some deeper reality will it make sense to do the right thing quietly. However, in a moral vacuum, where there is no sense to things, we can have no such faith. So we will be impelled to force things - to try and shape reality as we see it, rather than let it unfold.

Noisy leaders lack faith,
They don't trust you
They don't trust God
And they struggle to trust themselves

Oppression as a Reproach to God

2011-07-04T10:27:00.000-07:00

He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker: but he that honoureth him hath mercy on the poor.

Proverbs, 14:31

Why is it an insult to God to oppress the poor? It is because God made them and that if you try to justify your oppression by demeaning them in any way ("the underclass" "NEETs" etc.) then you imply that it is God who has failed. If you do not believe that each person has gifts, potential, a positive role to play then you are saying God does not know what He is doing.

Don't Take Advantage

2011-07-04T10:26:00.001-07:00

Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless: For their redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause with thee

Proverbs, 23:10-11

This is a powerful image of social justice. The landmark represents the notion of an entitlement - something fixed and something that assures each party that they will maintain their fair share. However the writer knows that for those who are weak - the fatherless - there is always the grave danger that their rights and entitlements will be eroded.

The idea that God is standing alongside the fatherless is an ancient validation of the perspective articulated by the philosopher John Rawls: a society is best judged on the basis of how it treats those who are least able to protect themselves from exploitation.

Designing from the Wrong End

2011-07-04T10:24:00.001-07:00

The Master said, 'To attack a task from the wrong end can do nothing but harm.'

Confucius

It is easy to imagine change. It is easy to imagine you know what is wrong and what would be better. But getting there depends upon a very different perspective. In order to change things you need to know what sustains them as they are.

Systems of oppression, patterns of bad practice or injustices exist for reasons - not good reasons - but for reasons. It is only by tackling these factors that we can bring about the change we desire and often the path we must take is paradoxical:

If we want people to make better decisions we may have to give them the freedom to make worse decisions.
If we want to make one thing more attractive we may need to make something else much less attractive.
If we want to learn we may need to unlearn.

Very often the obvious solution is the wrong solution:

Let's have a new structure - but don't change the old structure
Let's have a new profession - but don't change the old profession
Let's have a new process - but don't change the old structure

Often these bolt-on solutions unravel as they bring about both resistance and inefficiency.

The challenge of genuine social innovation and welfare reform - as with any other design challenge - is to figure out how to make the 'good idea' be more than a 'good idea'.

The Best Sort of Principle

2011-07-04T10:20:00.001-07:00

We see it, and to us it appears like principle, and the best sort of principle at that - the principle of allowing the people to do as they please with their own business.

Abraham Lincoln

This principle can be exploited and distorted so that some people get cut out and oppressed. So we can't leave it at that - this is not the only principle a decent society must have. But it does seem a rather good principle not to forget.

The Poison of Power

2011-07-04T10:18:00.001-07:00

Power is a poison well known for thousands of years. If only only no one were able to acquire material power over others. But to the human being who has faith in some force that holds dominion over all of us, and who is therefore conscious of his own limitations, power is not necessarily fatal. For those, however, who are unaware of any higher sphere, it is deadly poison. For them there is no antidote.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Of course the existence of the religious totalitarian seems to contradict Solzhenitsyn. We can certainly find plenty of religious people who are quite capable of believing that they know what God wants and that they are entitled to act out his wishes.

But even a religious maniac must - logically - recognise he could be wrong. He knows he is subject to another power - even if he has deceived himself that he is its agent.

Those who reject all moral authority outside themselves, the true existentialists, cannot be wrong. This is why the poison of power is so dangerous to them. Not because they are essentially any worse than the religious, but when you see no constraint other than what you are able to achieve with the power that you do have then the temptation to acquire more power, and to protect yourself with that power, can quickly become over-powering.

Logic impels each honest atheist to become a tin-pot dictator. What other choice can he have? Who else can he believe in than himself? When push comes to shove even ordinary standards of integrity and honesty must be sacrificed if they get in the way of success.

Education, Democracy and America

2011-07-04T10:16:00.001-07:00

In America, on the contrary, it may be said that the township was organised before the county, the county before the state, the state before the union... ...The law enters into a thousand social wants that even now very inadequately felt in France.

But it is the mandates relating to public education that the original character of American civilisation is at once placed in the clearest light. "Whereas," says the law, "Satan, the enemy of mankind, finds his strongest weapons in the ignorance of men, and whereas it is important that the wisdom of our fathers shall not remain buried in their tombs, and whereas the education of children is one of the prime concerns of the state, with the aid of the lord..." Here follows clauses establishing schools in every township and obliging the inhabitants, under pain of heavy fines, to support them. Schools of a superior kind were founded in the same manner in the more populous districts. The municipal authorities were bound to enforce the sending of children to school by their parents; they were empowered to inflict fines upon all who refused compliance; and in the cases of continued resistance, society assumed the place of the parent, took possession of the child, and deprived the father of those natural rights which he used to so bad a purpose. The reader will undoubtedly have remarked the preamble these enactments: in America religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of divine laws leads man to civil freedom.

Alexis de Tocqueville from Democracy in America (1835)

de Tocqueville notices some very interesting features of the early American social and political system.

There is first the genuinely 'federal' character of early American political organisation. Authority is seen to lie in citizens, then towns, counties and then it moves upwards to the state and the union.

Yet he also observes that, at that time, American society was not individualistic nor anti-social. To de Tocqueville it was extraordinarily social: the desire to do good and to attend to "social wants" is everywhere.

The paradox is that ambitious social concern combined with a federal and legalistic society lends itself quite naturally to demanding a state that can increasingly interfere with individual liberty. By the standards of the time, America was certainly a nanny socialist state. Perhaps its current liberalism is a reaction against this early enthusiasm.

However, some resolution to this paradox is found in the role played by religion in early American life. While tolerating diversity of religious practice, American society seems bound together in a shared moral concern for each other that is religious rather than liberal. However this is counter-balanced by a distinctively protestant concern for the liberty of the individual soul. The notion that any citizen can be sacrificed for the sake of the collective would be profoundly problematic for such a protestant country.

Today we are more sanguine about sacrificing the individual for the collective. Mechanisation, atomisation and the erosion of moral and religious feeling all encourages a sense that we are just all part of some vast machinery of need and production and that our role is simply to play our part and to try and squeeze out for ourselves whatever share of the social product we can manage.

If we are not careful citizenship stops being the foundation stone for a just society - instead it simply becomes a way of flattering us into accepting our role as mere subjects of the state.

The Kutuzov Strategy

2011-07-04T09:49:00.000-07:00

In War and Peace Tolstoy describes the subtle strategy of General Kutuzov who saves Russia from Napoleon’s attack. The central image of Kutuzov is of an old man surrounded by yapping and competing generals. While they come up with one scheme after another Kutuzov concentrates on saving the lives of the common man, retreating before Napoleon and cutting off Napoleon’s resources.

Napoleon is defeated by winter, his troops reduced morale and the sustained commitment of the Russian forces. What is essential about Kutuzov’s strategy is that he puts all his energy into supporting natural forces - he does not put energy into defending or attacking tactical plans, nor into continual fights with Napoleon. He stands back, sees the big picture and uses the dynamics of the system at work.

For social innovators it is essential to exploit Kutuzov's strategy. The social innovator has nothing going for them - they have no money, no power and rarely any status. So you must tap into the grain of things - the forces that lie latent with the current social situation. It is our faith in positive possibility, combined with these latent forces, that bring about positive change.

Adam Smith on Welfare Reform

2011-06-28T07:40:00.000-07:00

"The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands.... and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbour, is a plain violation of this most sacred property."

Adam Smith gets to the heart of what is wrong with imposing the highest marginal tax rates on the poor.