Thursday, 10 February 2011

Moving unconsciously in the same direction

The other day I wrote a little about arrogance and power. This evening we had a masterful display from Hosni Mubarak, an awesome example of the patronising superior stupidity of someone inexcusably detached from ordinary life.

Exceptional though his bizarre, tasteless speech was in that particular quality, its basics are hardly unfamiliar. The tone is not much different to what we are accustomed to from Westminster and many of our town halls: I know best, I have the power, you are young and enthusiastic, jolly well done in that respect, and it's nice to think about change, gosh yes quite right, but not just now.

The style is characterised by patronising half-compliment, damning with faint praise, miserably-minor concessions, ignoring the real issues, selective deafness, and measured encouragement to keep on keeping on for the common cause - but on status quo terms, otherwise there could be recriminations, I think you know what I mean.

More than once I have heard the same tone of unjustifiable, in-the-face-of-reason arrogance from the chair of a community group or residents' association, from a housing officer, once I remember from a senior council officer who thought she could play politics with everyone.

How does this come about? Scientists, help us: where is the disempowering gene, can it be isolated? What is it in humans that drives them to demean others in this pathetic and incendiary way? What is it about arrogant people in power that fails to stop them behaving like History's Total Dickheads?

I want to ask, is it really necessary to be detached from the everyday to have power? If you attain power, do you have to sever ties with the ordinary? Why? What could be more inapproriate?

And let's just note that, as with the London disturbances in December, this is a network society moment. A moment focused by the democratising lens of technologies, with people able to network together in a way which is no longer inferior to the networking power of the Haves. One BBC correspondent said of the people in Tahrir Square,

'This is the twitter generation, they know what's going on.'

Other comments I heard on the BBC's coverage:

'What matters in this is the street, the people on the street... These young people are too smart...'

Of Mubarak's inner circle: 'They don't know what democracy is'.

And from within the crowd, the crowd itself described as 'Moving unconsciously in the same direction'.

 

10 Feb 2011 22:37:07 | Citizenship and democracy, Governance and participation

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
On invitations to conversations To Cambridge for a meeting on nieghbourhoods today, as a guest of a theological college at the university. A novel environment for me, exploring the role of faith (not faith groups, necessarily) in local life. My take on that, FWIW, was to draw attention to the interesting tension between, on the one hand, people's suspicions of religion as a form of social control; and on the other, the fact that people of faith tend to go round wearing a badge saying 'values' very clearly. You might or might not agree with them, but it helps enormously to know that values matter to this person. Two things in particular I brought away with me to ponder. The first was the direct consequence of having several Americans in the room. What, it was asked, is the English equivalent of the American front porch? This is a use of semi-private space close to the home where everyday conversations can be started without threat or awkwardness. The response of Hank Dittmar of the Prince's Trust, was to say we should look for precedents elsewhere in the English way of doing things, and build on those. But I'm not sure that gets us much further than dogwalking. We've surrendered the street, and the cars are all over our front gardens as well. I'd like to see more communal waste and recycling bins, with the greater likelihood of neighbourhood encounters around them; but it doesn't exactly have romantic charm as a design solution, does it? (Better suggestions over on 50 Ways to Meet Your Neighbour please). My second takeaway came from a remark made by Indy Johar which got me thinking about the difference between having opportunities to participate in local initiatives, and being invited to participate. Often enough people have cause to complain about how opportunities have been created through community work or action, for people to just get together or roll their sleeves up and do something, and people haven't taken them up for whatever reason. Success can depend on creating an invitation in which people's interests or needs are aligned with whatever might be going on. It doesn't have to be personal but it does need to be more than an announcement of an opportunity. I remember a good example from talking to someone at a community centre in Shipley. He had never previously been to a community centre and was telling me how he went along to a school of an evening to hear a talk about doing classes at the centre, in this case on digital photography: he said, 'it was as if she were talking just to me'.
PREVIOUS POST
'What were people like where you used to live?' Here's a little parable, offered in a blog comment here by Steve DeSanto: A man moved to a new town. He asked a local resident whether the people there were friendly or not. The resident asked the man, “What were people like where you used to live?” The newcomer scowled and said, “They were really an unfriendly and rude bunch, and I couldn’t wait to get away from that place.” The resident said, “Well, I’m afraid you’ll find the people here are pretty much the same.” A week later, another man came to town. He happened to meet the same resident and asked him the same question. The local asked this second newcomer the same question: “What were the people like in the town where you used to live?” This newcomer smiled and said, “Oh, that town was the friendliest place you could ever imagine.” The local returned the smile and said, “Well, I’m glad to hear it, I think you’ll find people here are very friendly too.”

Kevin Harris

Search

My Other Accounts

Recent Comments