Well if you have been hanging in here with my posts I have to say I appreciate it and hope it is worth your while. Only two more... Everyone has a job to do, but both the dismissive and the sanctimonious are troubling examples of partisanship; “a firm adherent to a party, function, course or person; especially one exhibiting blind, prejudiced and unreasoning allegiance”. Oh yes, as partisans we may be very smart, very clever at turning information to our advantage. But just because we can manipulate facts and technologies and arguments to suit our self interests or pre-determined notions doesn’t necessarily mean that it is intelligent to do so. Manipulating information to support a partisan view that is not based on sound reasoning in the first place can hardly be considered intelligent. I consider intelligence to be the ability to convert knowledge into wisdom. That ability is gained through experience, and again, through the application of genuine, honest, and persistent reasoning. Time and patience and humility are essential to developing wisdom through solid reasoning. Unfortunately time, humility and patience are in short supply in our rapid-paced, conflict-ridden, vested interest and partisan, decision making processes. I dont hold much hope that reason can reach the minds of the dismissive or the sanctimonious. And so this brings me to “the indifferent”. These are the mass of folks who are for the most part unaware, or who don’t care, or who just maybe don’t care enough to do anything, with respect to the challenges of a rapidly changing world. Many are perhaps just too preoccupied with their personal lives. I think though, that a considerable portion of this group consists of those people who don’t buy into the views and rhetoric of the vocal extreme. Another portion includes those folks who just don’t think that their involvement can make a difference. And there is another portion that just simply doesn’t see any viable options to the partisan interests that dominate politics, religion and the media. I think it is important to realize that the media, the noise, the attention, the debates, deliberations and ultimately decisions very often revolve around the interests of the dismissive and sanctimonious and may well not represent the interests, opinions or preferences of the disenfranchised indifferent. If we want decisions to be made based on more than the unreliable cacophony of partisanship, raising the level of awareness, education and engagement of disenfranchised groups is likely to be essential. A key challenge is that the indifferent are unlikely to engage in, or be heard in our typical processes and debates. Capturing the attention and involvement of the indifferent is likely to require a concerted effort to communicate, educate and then implement more participatory, more representative forms of engagement in democratic decision making - perhaps including greater use of cooperative management, planning and futures modelling tools, and other social science research, design and change methodologies, a re-working of decision making processes, and electoral reform that helps us to get past partisan limitations. I’m going to assume in my next and last post in this series, that the dismissive and the sanctimonious do not represent the ideals of most folks, and that following their lead does not move us forward for the reasons I have contended. Ill save the analogy on our place in the world I promised last time and try to wrap up with some suggestions on how we can change engage in more reasoned approaches to difficult, uncertain, and contentious decisions. Thanks for your time and patience.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 02:03:21 +0000
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