June 2008
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30 June 2008
So today's my big day!
This evening I’ll be delivering my annual RSA lecture. As you might expect, I am very nervous and haven’t yet decided whether to read the speech or take the risk of delivering it in a more discursive manner. I am however reassured that David Willetts will give an interesting response. He and I were on the Today programme this morning discussing some of the ideas in the speech, and he was, as always, a thoughtful, challenging but friendly critic.
Hopefully we will have a full house but anyone else who wants to watch can do so on our website – hopefully as early as tomorrow (our wonderful Multimedia Manager, Sarah Staar, has offered to work during the night to turn it around before she goes on holiday). I guess if I had to pick out one passage in the speech that I am really keen to explore it would be the distinction between difference and separation:
One of the great confusions of modern selfhood is to mistake difference for separation. We are all a unique combination of our genetic inheritance our conditioning past and our present context, but our thoughts and behaviours are the result not so much of the ways we are separate but of the ways we are connected, to the world and to other people. Fifty years ago Galbraith talked about private affluence and public squalor. Reflecting on opinion poll data that shows we are over confident about our own prospects and over-pessimistic about the state of society, I recently suggested the phrase ‘private optimism public despair’. But when we compare the illusion of individual autonomy with the reality of the deep connections between our minds and the social world they inhabit we should perhaps speak of private myth and public blindness.
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26 June 2008
The nation state - where to?
Interesting piece in today’s FT by David Runciman, who spoke here recently on his excellent book ‘Political Hypocrisy’. Exploring the unpopularity of political leaders in Britain, France and Japan and contrasting this with the popularity of Alex Salmond in Scotland and Kevin Rudd and Australia, Runciman argues that the key variable lies in is Government responses to globalisation. Given the ambivalence, fringing in to hostility, of the public to globalisation’s impacts, Runciman suggests that Prime Ministers and Presidents need to look like they are fighting back. Whilst Brown, Sarkozy and Fukuda look as thought they are simply adapting to, or tinkering with, globalisation both Salmond and Rudd portray themselves as fighting against an external foe – in Salmond’s case England and in Rudd’s China.
David’s conclusion is that Brown needs to make the United States the rhetorical fall guy for the public’s discontent. I’m not sure, with a new President only five months away, this seems an odd time to turn away from the old ally. But I do agree that politicians need to find a way of describing the power they have, its potential and its limitations. I’m sure this isn’t the first time I’ve quoted Daniel Bell’s epigram that in the future the nation state will be ‘too small for the big things in life and too big for the small things’. We know that big issues like climate change, financial regulation, migration and security need global solutions. At the same time the nation state is too remote for a public that wants local accountability and personalised services. Yet rather than reduce its responsibilities the national Government seems to add every day to the list of its priorities; from obesity to climate change, from play to Britishness. Thus to misuse another famous American insight the nation state is in danger of ‘building an empire while losing a role’.
Nation states are, of course, vital not just in themselves but as the key actor in global decision making and as the body that sets the framework for local devolution. But without a compelling account of the new political economy of the central state, national leaders will be seen to be meddling in everything but solving nothing.
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25 June 2008
Social care sector - leads the way?
I’ve just returned from speaking to the final annual conference of the Commission for Social Care. My speech had to be cut right down, which, given the fee the CSCI was paying to the RSA, meant I achieved a pounds per minute rate rivalling Jonathan Ross! But it was worth cutting back to hear a splendid speech by Ivan Lewis.
It can’t be much fun being a Government minister at the moment, but Ivan’s speech was passionate, honest and full of ideas. But the other thing that really hit me about the conference was the number of social care users (clients and carers) playing a full role. As I’ve said in previous blogs, social care has gone from being deeply unfashionable to being the most innovative public service, in large part due to the commitment across the sector to user engagement. I was struck by the contrast between the many users I saw today and the fact that one rarely sees students or parents playing an active role in education conferences. At a recent RSA Opening Minds conference, it was the student who stole the show, but I have spoken at many other gatherings of head teachers, officials and educationalists and the user voice has been almost entirely absent.
10 years ago, anyone would have been surprised to be told that the social care sector would become innovative than education. I wonder how much of the explanation lies in listening to the voice of the user.
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24 June 2008
Lessons learned ....
I'm writing this blog during the coffee break of a conference I am chairing and I have learned a couple of things already.
Firstly, as regular readers will know, I am currently working on my Chief Executive's Lecture for next Monday. One aspect of the speech is a review of the research around the idiosyncracies of human decision making. Having just watched two speakers, with at least one more to come, talking extensively on this subject, I have realised that this area, which is a popularisation of behavioural economics and social psychology, is becoming more than a little clichéd. So, I'll be speaking less about that next week.
The second point comes from an entertaining presentation by Casper Berry and concerns risk - we live in a society that encourages risk but we are risk averse. However, in reality, the way risk is taken reflects inequality. Well-off people can take short term losses and wait for risk to pay off in the long term, and others, particularly those in the financial sector, can rig the system so they are almost certain to succeed. However, for those with fewer resources, risk is not such a good strategy. That is why, in the current credit crunch, people with big houses can afford to wait for another property boom, while those in smaller houses can find themselves out on the street.
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24 June 2008
Oops I forgot ....
The problem with blogging during a coffee break is that you can forget the point you were trying to make!
In my earlier blog, the point I was intending to make about risk links to a broader argument I heard made by Melanie Phillips (not someone I often find myself quoting!). Phillips’ contention is that middle class people adopt social norms e.g. recreational drug-taking, family break-up, which have considerable downsides but which they have the resources to deal with. The problem is that those norms filter down to less advantaged communities for whom the flipsides can be catastrophic. This is the argument I was thinking of – that we have a dominant culture that extols risk but the costs of risk are much easier to handle if you are well off.
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20 June 2008
No complaints this week
Another great week of events at the RSA. As well as the Ken Robinson tour de force on Monday, we had a really lively debate last night on the subject of privacy, which involved evidence and interrogation from 9 different people.
Yesterday afternoon I chaired the lunchtime debate with Julian Baggini, philosopher and author of Complaint, which I referred to earlier in the week. There were 2 particular observations I thought were worth sharing.
The first is his insight that risk aversion can be equally understood as responsibility aversion. When we say we are not willing to take a risk, equally we are saying we won’t take responsibility if that risk fails. So the problem with over-regulation and a litigious culture makes us fear we will be held responsible for the failure of risk.
The second is a rejoinder to those who equate risk aversion with an overbearing nanny state. Baggini argues convincingly that it is in fact the individualistic sense that if anything goes wrong in life, we should be able to blame someone, allied with the aggressive marketing of ‘no win, no fee’ compensation lawyers, that is an important driver.
As Fellows will know, we have our own Risk Commission here at the RSA and we are currently trying to raise money for a project on risk and aging to go alongside our successful risk and childhood work. Baggini’s perception is a useful corrective to some of the lazier thinking that can take place around risk.
I am continuing to work away at my 30 June lecture, veering between moments of inspiration and periods of panic! This morning, however, I found a single line which encapsulated the core argument I intend to make.
It is in the first chapter of Drew Westen’s influential book, The Political Brain. In arguing that politicians, particularly on the progressive wing, fail to understand the profound emotional nature of political affiliation, he described Democratic Party strategists as having an irrational emotional commitment to rationality.
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19 June 2008
Reclaiming freedom
I received an interesting email this morning from Max Hogg about some of my recent posts on cognitive capacity – here is an extract:
Somewhat ambitiously, I would suggest that the framework within which this research can best be viewed is nothing less than a new definition of freedom.
It's become a dirty word recently, I think largely because it has been defined in purely negative terms as the freedom of the individual from overt outside influences on her/his action.
Yet increasingly we are seeing that neurological and psychological influences on our actions are rampant and in many cases destroying our freedom (Tim Kasser's work detailing the impact of materialist psychological influences on our children is a good example.)
Neurological reflexivity, or learning how to think, offers an escape from this.
If we can better understand how external (or indeed internal) neurological and psychological influences impact on the way in which we think, we can better understand some of the reasons why, for example, as a society we are currently unable to take concerted collective action on issues such as climate change.
And if we can understand and mitigate against these psychological barriers, we would then be free to decide whether or not to take individual and collective decisions that will benefit us as individuals and society as a whole.
That would be true freedom, and true progress for society. Our lack of neurological flexibility is at present severely hampering our ability to make free choices, individually or collectively.
I think Max makes a really powerful point and one which I may shamelessly purloin for my speech on 30 June.
I wrote yesterday about the problems facing the Conservatives as they explored the problems of increasing civic engagement and community capacity without expanding the state. At a meeting this morning of Government ministers and officials, the same issue was discussed in the context of the Government White Paper on community empowerment.
Listening to representatives of the third sector, it was clear that there is real tension between the commissioning model in which the delivery of local public services is handed over to 3rd sector organisations and a participative focus.
The unavoidable bureaucracy of the commissioning process (involving as it does substantial public money) makes it especially hard for small community based organisations to compete. It appears that many of these small 3rd sector providers – particularly in the care sector – may go to the wall as a consequence.
On the other hand, an emphasis on community participation points towards a more traditional grant-giving form of funding in which it is recognised that the good the organisation does extends beyond quantifiable service outputs.
Central and local government, facing a long period of public sector belt-tightening, find themselves caught on the horns of this dilemma.
There is cross party commitment to third sector, community and volunteering, but it still seems to me that aspiration and exhortation too often drive out realism and policy coherence. The Government’s White Paper will tell us whether current ministers have found a credible way of addressing the hard issues.
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18 June 2008
The post-bureaucratic state
Interesting feedback from the Conservative Shadow Cabinet Away Day on the 'post-bureaucratic' state. The appeal of David Cameron's new Conservative brand is that it combines social ambition with scepticism about the state. In a sense, this is Cameron's own 'third way' between Labour's traditional combination of social ambition and faith in the state on the one hand, and a neo-liberal indifference to social outcomes on the other.
However, my informant (who shall remain nameless on the basis of Chatham House rules) tells me that the more the Conservatives discussed how they would devolve power to the community and increase the capacity of civil society, the more they ended up feeling that they were creating more public sector jobs and functions. The fact is that capacity doesn't simply spring up from nowhere and, even if you pass responsibility to community and third sector organisations, there is still need for public accountability.
I wonder whether the Conservative conundrum is a reflection of the more profound problem I described last year as the 'social aspiration gap'. Ultimately, whether or not we use public, private or voluntary sector agencies, we will not give those agencies the resources and support they need unless we recognise that we must change the way we think and behave.
We may be dissatisfied with the state and thus amenable to the Conservatives' 'post-bureaucratic' message, but it would be wrong to think this will solve the really hard question: how are we to prosper and survive unless we are willing, each of us, to be more positively engaged in collective decision making, to live more self-sufficient lives, and to be more altruistic to our families, communities and strangers?
The Conservatives are asking exactly the right question but it will take political courage to provide the kind of authentic answers that the public is currently unwilling to hear.
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17 June 2008
A meeting of minds
Yet another highlight of what is proving to be our best ever season of lectures. Last night we awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal to Sir Ken Robinson, who then gave a scintillating talk which managed to be most profound and at the same time very engaging. He is a long time friend and ally of the RSA, and has said many kind things about our work, from Opening Minds to our planned Progressive Education Charter.
Ken’s lecture will soon be available on our website and we would be doing very well if we could get half as much traffic as his famous TED speech, which has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
In relation to RSA Vision, the first stats are encouraging with 5,000 people watching a full lecture, and 1,500 viewing the short introductory video. More and more content on the web is being delivered through video and I am glad the RSA is in the vanguard. We all know we have got further to go in improving, for example, the staging but, having made a strong start, we can now aim for excellence.
Also yesterday we had a great all-staff meeting where we discussed the Trustees’ draft values and strategy statement. This will now go back to the Trustees before being more widely disseminated across the Society.
As well as this discussion, to which all staff contributed, we were given an exciting presentation on our new intranet by the wonderful Miko Coffey. If you don’t work here, you might wonder what benefit you might gain from an internal tool, but I am certain that by joining up people even better across their various functions, it will enhance the service we can provide to Fellows.
Finally, I am really looking forward to chairing the Julian Baggini talk on Thursday lunchtime this week. He will be talking about his book Complaint: From minor moan to principled protest which is a great read and makes a powerful distinction between authentic complaint: an important way of expressing our opinions and providing momentum for change and other forms: contradictory, self-serving and pointless. The book made me think once again about the problems of modern political discourse. Whilst many of the complaints thrown at government (not this just one, but any) are legitimate, a great deal of them would fail Baggini’s test. If you are around this Thursday at 1.00 pm, do join us – I think it will be a lively session.
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12 June 2008
A bridge over troubled waters
Yesterday I found myself speaking at the GC Expo 2008 conference. It was one of those strange bookings where the audience wanted to discuss something specific - technology and government – and seemed nonplussed by my attempt to give an overview of the British state! However, there were some positive points.
Firstly, I was incredibly impressed to hear about the project rationalising Government websites. The DirectGov people are well on their way to reducing over 800 websites to only a handful in a couple of years’ time. Having been in Government, I know what a mammoth task this represents – and also how difficult it was to get the various departments to think about this rationalisation when the idea was first floated.
When every newspaper reports daily on another Government failure, this is a remarkable success story and promises to keep the UK at the forefront of e-government developments. A second highlight was someone approaching me as I left the building to say they enjoyed my blog!!
Last night, we had our annual President’s Lecture – delivered by Professor Jorg Imberger from Western Australia, and chaired, of course, by Prince Philip.
Professor Imberger focussed initially on the relationship between water and climate change, but for the second half of his speech gave a broader analysis of the contribution of human behaviour to environmental degradation. More provocatively, he ended with a devastating critique of trends in British society over the past 30 years – increased consumption, drug and alcohol abuse, greed and inequality.
Whilst not everyone (including our President) would agree with everything Professor Imberger said, he did convincingly make the connection between the modern human condition and the state of the planet. This is a theme I intend to pick up in my own annual lecture on 30 June.
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11 June 2008
20 to one
Great day out in Exeter yesterday with South West Fellows. The evening reception was fun – it’s always nice to talk to Fellows old and new - but the high point of the day was the afternoon session with Committee members and invited Fellows.
In this session, we discussed half a dozen ideas for Fellowship projects in the South West – these ranged from the RSA helping to turn the historic Beer Quarry Caves into a World Heritage site through to giving young people a stronger voice in Exeter.
As we talked it became clear that some projects offered more as RSA initiatives than others, and this process of encouraging Fellows to develop ideas, then discussing them critically but positively, and working out the next stage as ideas turn into initiatives is exactly how I see RSA Networks developing.
Of course, we are at a very early stage – we need lots more ideas and we need to understand that this is about RSA initiatives rather than just supporting existing ideas and organisations. We also need to be realistic – out of, say, 20 good ideas only a handful will result in further engagement and possibly only 1 into an RSA initiative.
However, I am confident that in a few years’ time we will have a whole database of successful RSA initiatives from around the country – this will be an incredibly valuable learning tool, showing what works in one part of the country and could be adapted for another.
The development of the Networks project, without a strong history of activism to rely on, is the steepest part of the learning curve. But in the enthusiasm, camaraderie and willingness to engage and be engaged that I saw in the SW yesterday lies the future for the RSA Fellowship.
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09 June 2008
The stuff of thought
It’s great to be back after a couple of fallow weeks in blog terms and now on our new fantastic web site.
Without question the highlight of the last two weeks was Professor Stephen Pinker’s lecture last Thursday. Speaking to his most recent book The Stuff of Thought, he outlined the ways in which language reflects our perceptions of the world. One of the ways he illustrated this was an exploration of function and content of expletives. I couldn’t help thinking that the venerable Barry murals have never witnessed such a constant stream of swearing. Those of you with a strong constitution will be able to watch this lecture soon on RSA Vision.
The serious point that Pinker is making actually follows on from Kant. He argues that by analysing language we can understand the conceptual framework of time and space hard wired into our brains. However, the world we see and describe is not the world as seen by the theories and observations of physicists. Our sense of the world does not equate with the physical properties of the world. Arguably this is also true of our experience of consciousness – the ghost in the machine – and the reality of our bodies and brains as physical entities. More on this as I continue my thinking about neurological reflexivity, building to my speech on the 30th.
The brain and its evolution is the subject of a recent report related in the Telegraph today, and last week New Scientist’s cover story was on the search for a mathematical theory explaining the brain. New findings seem to be coming out all the time about our brains, how the work at every level, and how we relate to them. This is all fascinating stuff, but as we seek to understand ourselves we mustn’t allow this to crowd out the thorny problem of understanding one another, arguably this is the even greater intellectual prize.
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09 June 2008
The end of New Labour?
I’ve been reflecting on Gordon Brown’s all time low rating in the opinion polls. This is being driven in part by mistakes made by the government, and is also a reflection of people’s anxiety about the economy. But, maybe the volatility in the electorate reflects something deeper.
A characteristic of current politics in Britain is that people are very worried about lots of aspects of the world today - the economy, crime, migration, the environment - but they are sceptical about the capacity of their government, or any government, to deliver real change and improvement. A second characteristic is ideological convergence.
It’s gotten to the point that if a policy announcement were stripped of its party affiliations even the most sophisticated political commentator would be hard pressed to know where it had come from. -
02 June 2008
Holding Pattern
I've just returned from a week's holiday refreshed and ready to go.
The new website is up and running beautifully, with only a couple things still to be sorted out. One of which is my blog. Currently we're still using Typepad (obviously) but soon this blog will be accessed directly through our website.
In order to facilitate the process of transferring my blog archive over to the new site I've decided to put a hold on the blogging. I will post a message to let regular visitors and subscribers know when we're up and running with the new site later this week.
In the meantime Ewan McIntosh has highlighted the new website in his blog - so many thanks for that, and also for all your help and support!
I hope you're all enjoying the new site.
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