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The Introduction reads:

 

The first book of the New Exodus Series is A Christian Political Option by Bob Goudzwaard... The level of discussion, the sophistication of approach, and the assumption that a Christian political option is possible will no doubt amaze many readers in the English-speaking world. Until recently there has been little historical evidence for or possibility of self-consciously Christian political thought and action in our countries... [Goudzwaard's] latest book, Non-Priced Scarcity, deals with the ecological costs of industrial pollution which fall outside the marketplace pricing system, and hence must be paid by the public through other means. The richness of Goudzwaard's experience and insight as a Christian political economist informs the pages of A Christian Political Option. 

 

A thorough listing of Goudzwaard's publications, interviews, and lectures can be found here.

 

What prompted this 1972 publication? Who else supported it, besides the grant from the Dutch Anti-Revolutionary Party of which Goudzwaard was a member (1967-1971)? In 1972 Goudzwaard took up his long-held post at Amsterdam's Free University (VA), a likely correlate to the 1972 publishing of his 1969 ARP tract.

 

In the auspicious year of 1967, the Institute for Christian Studies (ICS), Toronto was founded. But what was the build up like?

 

Wikipedia:

 

 

 

The school went through a series of growth spurts, culminating in 2004 when ICS gained the ability to grant its own degrees (rather than from VA).

 

Also:

 

 

 

 

The above is context setting. It might appear that I am leading the reader toward doubt and suspicion of these early Reformers (for aren't Christian programs in secular society to be suspected?), but connecting this discussion to the growing religiosity in Canadian politics that is everywhere now apparent would be a false connection. At least if the connection is made too directly. What discussions of Goudzwaard and those following his tracts will no doubt reveal, is that the breadth of a critical political economy characterized by social and environmental stewardship somewhere went astray. It seems that thinkers such as Goudzwaard conceived the long-view, while a strong-arming minority of those who assumed the mantle of 'a Christian political option' throughout the 1980s and 1990s were ineptly short-sighted. The consequences of this non-stewarding Christian outlook are becoming more known, and more deeply felt. Only through discovering and discussing the contravening antecedents of contemporary Canadian Conservatism can new options be articulated. And what might these options be? As professor Emeritus Goudzwaard advocates, There are Thousands of Alternatives (TATA). To understand the basis for thousands of alternatives, the reader might begin with the works included below, or else consult the listing of works linked to above. For the more academically inclined, I recommend starting with the third option - Economic Theory and the Normative Aspects of Reality (.pdf).

 

If you don't have time to read his 1961 essay, suffice it to say:

 

 

Whether in your opinion Goudzwaard is on or off, out there or with it, he remains active and steadfast. In 2007 he co-published Hope in Troubled Times. You can read the Foreword and Chapter 1 here.

 

 

 

 

 

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Like everyone else, I'm wondering what are the most productive ways to spend our time and energy?

Have you been invited to a meeting or rally related to the G8/20 summit?

When people receive invitations, they should ask, "what do I personally get out of this?" Maybe ask, "What's in it for me?" Be selfish. It is about 'you'. There are a million and one causes. We are one in a million. If someone asks you to attend an event, ask them how they are connecting causes, you included.

 

 

I speculated about a safe and secure event for casual conversation during the G8/20 in Toronto. I presumed conversations would be about something(s) specific. My first mistake. I presumed a scale. Second mistake. Conversations between people can take many directions and many scales, many forms and many meanings.

 

Many possibilities, but one basic human need remains always.

We now have successful models that make these types of encounter possible and positive, such as Open Space Technology.

If a leading group can demonstrate clear individual improvement for each attendee, that's a powerful angle.

Someone will ask...

Are you actually extending a genuine invitation to participate in something constructive?

If so, count me in. 

2010-06-07

Some music?

Things like music becomes social when it becomes easily linkable. You can only share what is in common. That's a "common" thing's nature. Sharing (including the things which are shared) has a multiplier affect. What is sharing's preconditions? What are its effects? 

♫ - http://is.gd/cFXXX

 

English: 59% / 17.5 Million

French: 22.9% / 6.8 Million

Chinese: 2.9% / 872,400

 

As the trend toward less English, less French, more everything else continues, Canada approaches a historically common commons crisis. Am I being unclear? Or perhaps you're not an anglophone? Chances are it's a bit of both. This combination of audience-unaware English usage and un-English audiences is causing lots of headaches. It is forcing the language used in the public sphere (the commons mentioned above) to be pushed in many directions at once, but primarily toward simplification. But is this such a bad thing? Is simplicity even worth exploring? I mean what's so complex about being simple?

 

I'd like to play a word game or too. 

 

Instead of focusing on Official Languages why don't we focus on the official's language? I am not suggesting we disregard national policy. Instead, I'm choosing to focus on the inverse of the Confederation's agreement, i.e. the individual servants and administrators who sustain the Act through daily procedure. Sometimes this takes the form of publications and press releases, but its most common and vital forms are: meetings, phone calls, emails, letters by post, and other emerging forms of instant messaging. How does the official's (use of) language reflect the originating intentions of the Act? How does usage reflect public service values while shaping public perception (of the PS)? How have government communications been affected by trends toward natural and necessary simplification (of diction/synonym usage/metaphor/legal terminology)? Why is simplification a good thing and how can it assist in the widely shared agenda of public service renewal?

 

In April 2010 I blogged about Sir Ernest Gowers and his work, The Complete Plain Words (1954). Gowers was a lifelong civil servant. He retired in 1930 and took up various posts until after World War II, when in 1948 at the invitation of the H.M. Treasury Gowers authored Plain Words, a guide to the use of English. During 1948 and 49 Gowers' work was received so well and so widely in Britain that the Treasury invited him to produce a second work, The ABC of Plain Words. In 1954 these two works were combined, published as The Complete Plain Words. This amalgamated work was then republished and printed by Pelican in 1962, 1963, 1964, 1966-1972, republished by H.M. Stationery Office in 1973, with several re-printings in the years following, including twice in 1975. How did his teachings promulgate clarity, concision, and simplicity? How were these teachings assistive in the administration of government departments? What, if any, were the renewing affects of the reified language that Gowers promoted? How can the Canadian Public Service adapt various concepts held by Gowers and his contemporaries, given our unique situation of one space, two languages?

 

Gowers began his life as a servant around 1910, just two years after the publication of The King's English. One section that must have grabbed Gowers was titled How to Write Plain English. Of course there are infinite ways by which to write plainly. But according to the Fowlers brothers, there are approximately five principles that will give you direction and set you on your way.

 

 

YOU MUST BE

When writing you should:

 

(a) make your meaning clear; arrange the subject in logical order; be grammatically correct; not include irrelevant material; clear

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influences of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.

i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

 

ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. 

I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language —and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase — some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse — into the dustbin where it belongs.

   Let us therefore agree, before we go any further, that a reasonably good standard of writing is a mark not of preciosity but of good sense, not of prissiness but of efficiency; that such a standard can be attained by anyone with a little effort; that the effort is well worth while (or, if I must put it this way to convince the sort of man whose soul I seek, that significant results in terms of cost-effectiveness are anticipated to stem from the resource-input); that it requires neither hair-splitting nor self-consciousness but merely a willingness to acquire good habits; and, finally, that a writer with good habits may be allowed to make an occasional slip, just as a good doctor or lawyer may occasionally give the wrong advice or a good cashier the wrong change, without incurring eternal damnation.

   If we cannot agree on these propositions we had better part company at this point.

We often hear people say, “Come on, get real!”

Being is the same as getting, right? Well it’s not easy being or getting real these days (PDF). Real tends to muddy up our morals. We contemplate things as real when plunged into situations, or else when imagining compromising experiences in life. We affirm we’ll hold to one thing but many times life (on Earth) offers a limited set of variables to choose from. 

When faced with compromising limititations, people choose desired outcomes and courses of action based on percieved advantage. By ‘perceived advantage’ we mean prospectful gain, but also natural advantage, as in a natural advantage according to one’s (natural) occupation -- of space[s] and/or arenas. Therefore, the way we occupy space is essential to our being (real).

I recently agreed with a claim made online, saying “Yes, reason does beats force.” But everytime? I added, “Only if those applying force listen!” If the Forceful act deaf, stalemate! Or is it checkmate? In this situation, Force wins. Non-force can’t out-persuade Force (impossible), nor can it out-maneuver Force (no escape). Force thrives by creating surrounds that capture the Non-Forceful. We call these surrounds of force. The Non-Forceful party either succumbs to life within the surround, or else circumvents a surround by gathering a greater number of reinforcements. Force is not applied back upon the Forceful. Instead, Force’s propensity for coercion is problematized by a thickness of Non-Forceful groups, or publics. Here, Mass beats Force. But if democratic dialogue subsides, Mass can slide into being Force. That’s why questions are vital. They keep Mass healthy and sustain movement. This idea of the Forceful and the Non-Forceful might be served better by an example. How about a Greek one?

Socrates and his pal Glaucon were down at the water’s edge, praying and what not. On their way back to the centre of town, the two were stopped. Polemarchus and his buddies snarred, then surrounded them. They said, “Come with us.” Socrates said, “We’re on our way to the Agora (the place of reasoned dialogue), how can I convince you we must pass?” The gang of Polemarchus replied, “Convincing presumes we’re listening.” “Not happening” they said. Socrates replied, “Glaucon, it seems we must head their way.” Socrates outlasted the Forceful, continuing on his way some hours later. As a realist, he recognized the natural duress of his situation. Sort of. Actually morning came. Hometime. Party was over.

If Glaucon and Socrates were nearby larger masses (of people), if they had been able to demonstrate popular support or else widely consented to facts about the decorum of Athens, then their commitment to dialogue and real discussion at the Agora would have won the day. They would have been allowed to pass using a Mass-based, non-forceful strategy. What do these strategies look like, world-around? Are they replicable? How are they affective? What do we seek to affect in Canada?

Thick publics that complicate Force's movements are the result of immeasurable voluntary efforts mounted by communities of practice. When professionals from a niche field gather with developers to create web-based tools about some aspect of governance and decision-making, the thickness of our Canadian public increases. These resources are initially created in response to a perceived lack of informative resources. In the beginning, we assumed that government was responsible for this lack. That is, its lag in catching up with the Information Age explained the dearth of citizen-oriented learning resources. But as this movement toward a denser public sphere has continued, Canada's leading publics are not only taking pride in their creations, they are now discovering that our lack and lag rested with ourselves. What's that you say? Allow me to try and explain ourselves.

IF the government creates learning tools 

THEN the Government (read: PMO) will direct the government to proceed, but only so far

THEREFORE factual demonstrations made by these tools will be consistent with the performance measurements of the government and the ambitions of its Cabinet

But...

IF free citizens self-coordinate in order to create nationally-accessible resources 

AND if these citizens demonstrate a commitment to facts and to the hybridization of facts 

THEN the public sphere will possess sophisticated resources which slowly become undeniably authoritative amidst hyperbole and spin

THEREFORE the manners of the active citizenry must be akin to the values and ethics of Ottawa's civil servants -- when acting or voting solely, we naturally act with partiality, yet when conjoined in public initiative, our commitment to impartiality is what furthers our private value- and ethics-based agendas

Funny how that works, eh?! 

In this age, a public's ability to influence policy is determined by the degree to which it approximates the trustworthiness of civil servants, who are simply individuals that have been sworn to inform Government of truth and trends. Whereas we have been taught to see various publics as biased, I believe we are now seeing the emergence of focused publics, who like departments and programs commit to issues and topics by owning them. 

Which begs the question, "What do you own and what is it worth?"

In this image things are not evenly spaced. This is a concept piece, created to elicit ideas about how we represent the "hierarchy" of the Government.

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