Yesterday we went to LA to visit Jack. We also went to City Hall to participate in the "Solidarity with Wisconsin" rally. About 2000 people there--lots of speeches, some songs, some celebrities. Like old time religion. But maybe it's a start to change we can believe in.
But also some name calling--some attribution of evil intentions or souls in the hearts of the bad Republicans on the dole of the corporate elite. (While I think the dole part can be demonstrated and behaviors can be opposed, evil intentions and souls and hearts cannot or at least should not. It's none of our public business.)
The name-calling at the rally was minimal, certainly not as much as those saying Obama is a Muslim terrorist or a Nazi and we who do not believe in them are "nuts" or "idiots." An article in the LA Times today quotes people (the other Michelle and her rival Sarah and of course Rush) as accusing the first lady of being a hypocrite, trying to get government to coerce good eating and exercise habits and endanger citizens by urging them to walk.
"Civility" and "civilization" of course comes from the Latin "civitas." "Civitas" is often translated as "city" or "state." It is the Latin translation of the Greek "polis" from which we get "politics"--often translated as "city-state" like classical Athens--and better translated as "public realm." It is the place where people come out of their private households to discuss with, argue with, persuade fellow citizens with both thoughtful argument and emotional passion on the shape of the polis and on collective action for public welfare.
"Ad hominem arguments" have no place in the polis or civitas. Disagreement, persuasion, passion backed by logical argument and science do.
When we citizens argue for our point of view by calling others who disagree bad names. When we label them "evil" to stir up hatred for them, we not only commit a logical fallacy, we undermine the civitas, the public order, the nation. We open the public space, not to collective speech and action, but to physical force or violence or simply passive silence.
Bernie's cousin Vern, whom I like personally, disagrees vehemently with my politics. But we can never carry on a conversation. He would just pass on to me "bumper sticker" unfactchecked emails and when I would try to counter with an argument call me a "socialist" (which is not a bad name to me, but is for him), "nuts," "duped by idiots." I tried over and over to have a civil (though admittedly passionate) discussion with him. But I only received ad hominem arguments--i.e. name calling. So no more conversation.
Nothing kills a republic like the kind of "politics" that is now being exercised--especially by many of the tea party enthusiasts who have a valid point of view and even some good positions. Those positions are more in the interests of the haves than the have-nots than I would like, but that's certainly what the res publica is all about as Madison pointed out in the Federalist Papers, his defense of a strong central government. But the name-calling, the we vs them, good vs evil mentality, just undermines it all.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Liberation Day 2
(A break from "Coming Storms")
I am thinking again of Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Iran. It is like 1848 when all the capitals of Europe experienced "revolutions." Regimes were thrown out by popular uprisings. Unfortunately, in a very few years they were all reestablished. But it still did lead to some additional movement towards democracy and maybe some additional rights.
Why are not the youth and their allies on the streets in the USA? Well, there is Wisconsin. Is that a beginning? There was also grass roots energy behind the Obama election and the Tea Party movement. But like all "revolutions" we just elect our masters and turn over power to them. There was authentic revolutionary discontent in the Tea Party movement but then they let themselves be defined by Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, Rand Paul, and Glen Beck--pure defenders and products of the established regime. And the Obama movement wound up in an election in the same old structures. I experienced their appointments--safe and reactionary.
I go back to my original distinction between "revolution" and "rebellion"--or really Albert Camus's distinction. Revolutions revolve back. Rebellions like Sisyphus and Prometheus are on-going. Jefferson and Trotsky were advocates of perpetual revolution. Each generation must wage its own. No absolute state, no utopia.
The US is I think in a condition that begs revolution. It is totally controlled by corporate based plutocrats who shape the values, the perspectives, the behaviors, and the leaders of the existing social order. They often decide who will win elections--most important they decide what will happen no matter who wins elections. They set the limits for any change that might affect them--e.g. health care, taxation, military equipment, contributions, foreign aid, business, communications, energy. They do not form a party or "interest group." No need for that since they can generally shape what any party does and also support the think-tanks, magazines, and media that represent their regime.
I don't blame the Obamaists and the Tea Partiers for getting caught up in the electoral process since I think the blame game is unwinnable. Also the electoral process is important, but that's not where the revolution is. The revolution is redoing the constitution, i.e. the social order (I don't mean rewriting the American Bible) so that there really is freedom and justice for all.
That will not happen through populism (e.g. mass movement or democracy) which just changes players in the same game with the same owners. Populism is like the NFL--huge cheering crowds with the owners choosing the coaches and players and the rules of the game.
Social justice will be achieved only through republicanism--that is the creation of publics, localities in which people educate themselves in the interests and values of each other, develop their own rules, exercise leadership collectively, and continually learn from and connect to other publics.
Hannah Arendt described these publics occuring in the townhalls of the American colonies, the soviets of Russia, the societies of France, and in civil society institutions of developing countries. She also described how the townhall, soviet, and societe traditions were overcome by centralized domination of economic concerns.
Jefferson, a member of the landed plutocracy, was no democrat and like many of the founders of America distrusted the masses. But he was a republican intellectually and morally and had faith that people who thought, spoke, listened, and acted together, could continue to change. He, and the other founders, knew that the American Constitution as written as well as the constitution as actually performed were very flawed leaving out the rights of many people (e.g. blacks, native Americans, women), trade-offs necessary to create a strong central government.
His republican hope, and ours, is that people by meeting, speaking, listening, and acting together would continue the progression of humanity towards greater freedom and justice for all.
I am thinking again of Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Iran. It is like 1848 when all the capitals of Europe experienced "revolutions." Regimes were thrown out by popular uprisings. Unfortunately, in a very few years they were all reestablished. But it still did lead to some additional movement towards democracy and maybe some additional rights.
Why are not the youth and their allies on the streets in the USA? Well, there is Wisconsin. Is that a beginning? There was also grass roots energy behind the Obama election and the Tea Party movement. But like all "revolutions" we just elect our masters and turn over power to them. There was authentic revolutionary discontent in the Tea Party movement but then they let themselves be defined by Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, Rand Paul, and Glen Beck--pure defenders and products of the established regime. And the Obama movement wound up in an election in the same old structures. I experienced their appointments--safe and reactionary.
I go back to my original distinction between "revolution" and "rebellion"--or really Albert Camus's distinction. Revolutions revolve back. Rebellions like Sisyphus and Prometheus are on-going. Jefferson and Trotsky were advocates of perpetual revolution. Each generation must wage its own. No absolute state, no utopia.
The US is I think in a condition that begs revolution. It is totally controlled by corporate based plutocrats who shape the values, the perspectives, the behaviors, and the leaders of the existing social order. They often decide who will win elections--most important they decide what will happen no matter who wins elections. They set the limits for any change that might affect them--e.g. health care, taxation, military equipment, contributions, foreign aid, business, communications, energy. They do not form a party or "interest group." No need for that since they can generally shape what any party does and also support the think-tanks, magazines, and media that represent their regime.
I don't blame the Obamaists and the Tea Partiers for getting caught up in the electoral process since I think the blame game is unwinnable. Also the electoral process is important, but that's not where the revolution is. The revolution is redoing the constitution, i.e. the social order (I don't mean rewriting the American Bible) so that there really is freedom and justice for all.
That will not happen through populism (e.g. mass movement or democracy) which just changes players in the same game with the same owners. Populism is like the NFL--huge cheering crowds with the owners choosing the coaches and players and the rules of the game.
Social justice will be achieved only through republicanism--that is the creation of publics, localities in which people educate themselves in the interests and values of each other, develop their own rules, exercise leadership collectively, and continually learn from and connect to other publics.
Hannah Arendt described these publics occuring in the townhalls of the American colonies, the soviets of Russia, the societies of France, and in civil society institutions of developing countries. She also described how the townhall, soviet, and societe traditions were overcome by centralized domination of economic concerns.
Jefferson, a member of the landed plutocracy, was no democrat and like many of the founders of America distrusted the masses. But he was a republican intellectually and morally and had faith that people who thought, spoke, listened, and acted together, could continue to change. He, and the other founders, knew that the American Constitution as written as well as the constitution as actually performed were very flawed leaving out the rights of many people (e.g. blacks, native Americans, women), trade-offs necessary to create a strong central government.
His republican hope, and ours, is that people by meeting, speaking, listening, and acting together would continue the progression of humanity towards greater freedom and justice for all.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Coming Storms 3
I am getting ahead of my story. But before I discuss each of the coming storms and their unique convergence in our century, I think the big story may not be the six or so storms coming, but the mounting reaction to them. "The action is in the reaction."
And to each of these forces are extreme reactionaries who will be in struggle (sometimes violent) with each other.
In respect to global virtualization, the nearing Singularity, i.e. info technology reaching such an exponential speed that the new "superman" is being created, and the understanding that the Matrix is all there "really" is will bring out contemporary Luddites to destroy our computers and undo the internet and the Technophiles aiming to issue in a utopia without limits where the tool becomes the master.
As for global secularization and the ascendancy of science, already the battlefield is being staked out by the old time Religionists or fundamentalists who demand sworn allegiance to the absolute truth as it is written by divine authors in Bible or Constitution and cynical Nihilists who mock those looking for some transcendent meaning by which to live and act.
And so on:
global regionalization: tea party nationalists and ethnic terrorists.
global entropicalization: denying ostriches and resource controlling capitalists.
global urbanization: top-down planners and laissez-faire developers.
global civilization: alien-phobes and individual rightists
I know there is a lot to explain here.
But the gist of it: Our globe is changing really fast economically, politically, culturally. There are tremendous dangers and opportunities. New battlefields are being drawn. Our children and grandchildren could be on these battlefields or may experience collateral damage. They need to be prepared. Not to react. But to act creatively.
I am convinced they will look back on these times--as we do the 1960s. These will be their times. They will organize and act. They will make mistakes as we did. But they may also move the world and humanity to the next stage--as we did. I hope so.
And to each of these forces are extreme reactionaries who will be in struggle (sometimes violent) with each other.
In respect to global virtualization, the nearing Singularity, i.e. info technology reaching such an exponential speed that the new "superman" is being created, and the understanding that the Matrix is all there "really" is will bring out contemporary Luddites to destroy our computers and undo the internet and the Technophiles aiming to issue in a utopia without limits where the tool becomes the master.
As for global secularization and the ascendancy of science, already the battlefield is being staked out by the old time Religionists or fundamentalists who demand sworn allegiance to the absolute truth as it is written by divine authors in Bible or Constitution and cynical Nihilists who mock those looking for some transcendent meaning by which to live and act.
And so on:
global regionalization: tea party nationalists and ethnic terrorists.
global entropicalization: denying ostriches and resource controlling capitalists.
global urbanization: top-down planners and laissez-faire developers.
global civilization: alien-phobes and individual rightists
I know there is a lot to explain here.
But the gist of it: Our globe is changing really fast economically, politically, culturally. There are tremendous dangers and opportunities. New battlefields are being drawn. Our children and grandchildren could be on these battlefields or may experience collateral damage. They need to be prepared. Not to react. But to act creatively.
I am convinced they will look back on these times--as we do the 1960s. These will be their times. They will organize and act. They will make mistakes as we did. But they may also move the world and humanity to the next stage--as we did. I hope so.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Coming Storms 2
The six storms that I see coming over the seas and about to converge into a perfect storm for our 21st century are:
1. Virtualization--by this I mean the blurring (erasing?) of the lines between the virtual and the real as well as between the human body/mind and computer/internet. This raises the huge question of the meaning of "reality," "knowledge," and even "human."
2. Secularization--the postmodern mentality finally in place with its ultimate irony, relativity, ambiguity. This raises the question of the meaning of "transcendence," "morality," or even of "meaning" itself?
3. Regionalization--the marketplace of goods and ideas beyond traditional boundaries (e.g. nation-states) into interdependent regions. This raises the questions of "value," "justice," and "equity."
4. Entropicalization--the dissipation of energy (or the shift to new energy resources), the change (or desecration) of habitat, the undermining (or renewal) of the conditions for species preservation. This raises the questions of "nature" and "survival."
5. Urbanization--the migrating and resettling of humans into large settlements that diminish the reality and sense of the rural and the wild. This raises the question of "society" and "community."
6. Civilization--empathic consciousness, the move to instant communication, universal data availability, the collapsing of space and time. This raises the question of "consciousness" and "history."
1 and 2 principally affect our emerging Culture; 3 and 4 the new global Economy; 5 and 6 the Politics of the 21st century.
Each one has a prophet or reporter to whom I will make reference when I discuss them.
None of these are new. Put "Global" in front of all of them and see them in symbiotic relationship effecting our culture, economics, and politics, converging into our 21st century--our space, our time, our social order--and the importance of these to my children and grandchildren--and to yours--will come clear.
A demain!
1. Virtualization--by this I mean the blurring (erasing?) of the lines between the virtual and the real as well as between the human body/mind and computer/internet. This raises the huge question of the meaning of "reality," "knowledge," and even "human."
2. Secularization--the postmodern mentality finally in place with its ultimate irony, relativity, ambiguity. This raises the question of the meaning of "transcendence," "morality," or even of "meaning" itself?
3. Regionalization--the marketplace of goods and ideas beyond traditional boundaries (e.g. nation-states) into interdependent regions. This raises the questions of "value," "justice," and "equity."
4. Entropicalization--the dissipation of energy (or the shift to new energy resources), the change (or desecration) of habitat, the undermining (or renewal) of the conditions for species preservation. This raises the questions of "nature" and "survival."
5. Urbanization--the migrating and resettling of humans into large settlements that diminish the reality and sense of the rural and the wild. This raises the question of "society" and "community."
6. Civilization--empathic consciousness, the move to instant communication, universal data availability, the collapsing of space and time. This raises the question of "consciousness" and "history."
1 and 2 principally affect our emerging Culture; 3 and 4 the new global Economy; 5 and 6 the Politics of the 21st century.
Each one has a prophet or reporter to whom I will make reference when I discuss them.
None of these are new. Put "Global" in front of all of them and see them in symbiotic relationship effecting our culture, economics, and politics, converging into our 21st century--our space, our time, our social order--and the importance of these to my children and grandchildren--and to yours--will come clear.
A demain!
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Coming Storms 1
I have been on "sabbatical" for a month, getting mind, body, spirit in shape for my next attempt. Reading lots of books and articles and blogs in new science, postmodern philosophy, new urbanism, and contemporary political-economy, I discern six huge trends coalescing, descending upon us like the perfect storm. They have been coming for a long time and the weather watchers have been pointing them out.
Storms cleanse the earth and the air, enrich the soil, and bring nourishment for new life. They can also be terribly destructive wiping out forests, leveling buildings, and flooding habitats. As I see these storms coming and combining, I worry for my children and grandchildren and theirs. I want them to be ready.
The six storms that I see coming relate to the generally accepted dimensions of human being, namely culture, economy, and politics. Let me say something about these just so I can better describe the storms.
What is most definitive of humanity is our unique ability to make patterns in chaos by using forms that we have created. Our peculiar way of dealing with our environment is through images, including metaphors and stories, that put data together in a way that is useful to our survival and advancement. In other words, it is our imagination--not separate from, but a means to our understanding and knowing of ourselves, each other, and our world.
What that means I will elaborate later because it is key to answering the huge questions being raised by the coming storms. This "most human" capacity is being examined assiduously by evolutionary psychologists, neuro-scientists, and biological anthropologists. And their theories and experiments are casting more light on our special ability to make images and symbols to organize, perceive, and act in our environment.
Why there are three dimensions of human being, culture, economy, and politics, can be explained by looking at this special human capacity/activity. I will show you this in the next blog.
But all this is just preliminary for understanding the coming storms and their import for our future and that of those we love.
A demain!
Storms cleanse the earth and the air, enrich the soil, and bring nourishment for new life. They can also be terribly destructive wiping out forests, leveling buildings, and flooding habitats. As I see these storms coming and combining, I worry for my children and grandchildren and theirs. I want them to be ready.
The six storms that I see coming relate to the generally accepted dimensions of human being, namely culture, economy, and politics. Let me say something about these just so I can better describe the storms.
What is most definitive of humanity is our unique ability to make patterns in chaos by using forms that we have created. Our peculiar way of dealing with our environment is through images, including metaphors and stories, that put data together in a way that is useful to our survival and advancement. In other words, it is our imagination--not separate from, but a means to our understanding and knowing of ourselves, each other, and our world.
What that means I will elaborate later because it is key to answering the huge questions being raised by the coming storms. This "most human" capacity is being examined assiduously by evolutionary psychologists, neuro-scientists, and biological anthropologists. And their theories and experiments are casting more light on our special ability to make images and symbols to organize, perceive, and act in our environment.
Why there are three dimensions of human being, culture, economy, and politics, can be explained by looking at this special human capacity/activity. I will show you this in the next blog.
But all this is just preliminary for understanding the coming storms and their import for our future and that of those we love.
A demain!
Friday, February 11, 2011
Today is Liberation day. Congratulations to the people of Egypt and to all people of the world who risk for social, economic, racial, political liberty, equity, and justice! And especially to the young people who led this revolution.
My Brookings Institution newsletter came today advertising Generation in Waiting a book that captures the situation in the Middle East and perhaps many "developing" regions where young people between 15 and 29 comprise over a third of the population and most of the unemployment which runs around 15%. Most have come to the cities for education and work but have been frustrated with the lack of outlet and reward for their talents.
"While today’s young men and women are more educated than previous generations, educational quality is poor. Moreover, these youth face diminishing opportunities to secure good jobs, access credit and housing, achieve financial independence, and form successful families," says the Brooking's summary. http://www.brookings.edu/press/Books/2009/agenerationinwaiting.aspx?p=1
When I looked at the fact sheet, I saw it mirrored another "developing region," here in the United States--our own San Joaquin (a.k.a. Central) Valley, California. I look at the situation of our youth who are emerging in society just as we are no longer investing in institutions that can most assist them. We are more concerned with our private, immediate short term gain, than with our long term future. We want to relieve ourselves of our private financial debts, and forget our debts to our children. We want to free ourselves from personal taxes, rather than tax ourselves to fulfill our obligations to our children.
The children of Egypt saw the way out was to move from society to the public realm. The old way of wealthy elites buying elections and running governments needs to be upended. When will the youth of this Valley and this country understand the same? The answer is not running for office in a corrupt plutocracy in which you have to accept the values of the plutocrats to achieve office.
You don't enter the public realm by taking office in a plutocracy. You enter the public realm by appearing with others to bring down the plutocracy. Many young people in the US felt they were doing this in the Obama election: "Yes, we can-si, se pueda" "Change we can believe in."
But Obama is not the answer--and of course he was the first to say this. Power is in people appearing together in the Tahrir and Tienanmen Squares and Grant Park and Washington Mall. The best thing that Obama could do now is catch the spirit of the youth of Egypt and facilitate a similar revolution here. Yes we can!
My Brookings Institution newsletter came today advertising Generation in Waiting a book that captures the situation in the Middle East and perhaps many "developing" regions where young people between 15 and 29 comprise over a third of the population and most of the unemployment which runs around 15%. Most have come to the cities for education and work but have been frustrated with the lack of outlet and reward for their talents.
"While today’s young men and women are more educated than previous generations, educational quality is poor. Moreover, these youth face diminishing opportunities to secure good jobs, access credit and housing, achieve financial independence, and form successful families," says the Brooking's summary. http://www.brookings.edu/press/Books/2009/agenerationinwaiting.aspx?p=1
When I looked at the fact sheet, I saw it mirrored another "developing region," here in the United States--our own San Joaquin (a.k.a. Central) Valley, California. I look at the situation of our youth who are emerging in society just as we are no longer investing in institutions that can most assist them. We are more concerned with our private, immediate short term gain, than with our long term future. We want to relieve ourselves of our private financial debts, and forget our debts to our children. We want to free ourselves from personal taxes, rather than tax ourselves to fulfill our obligations to our children.
The children of Egypt saw the way out was to move from society to the public realm. The old way of wealthy elites buying elections and running governments needs to be upended. When will the youth of this Valley and this country understand the same? The answer is not running for office in a corrupt plutocracy in which you have to accept the values of the plutocrats to achieve office.
You don't enter the public realm by taking office in a plutocracy. You enter the public realm by appearing with others to bring down the plutocracy. Many young people in the US felt they were doing this in the Obama election: "Yes, we can-si, se pueda" "Change we can believe in."
But Obama is not the answer--and of course he was the first to say this. Power is in people appearing together in the Tahrir and Tienanmen Squares and Grant Park and Washington Mall. The best thing that Obama could do now is catch the spirit of the youth of Egypt and facilitate a similar revolution here. Yes we can!
Saturday, August 8, 2009
The Analogical Mind
The recent debate regarding Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor featured the clash between “originalists” and “contextualists” in applying the law. I think it demonstrated the more fundamental clash between the univocal and analogical mind in American society.
George Murray was about three years ahead of me at our Jesuit School of Theology. He loved and promoted progressive jazz and argued that those who do not understand it “have a univocal concept of being.”
You have to understand that the predominant philosophy in our school at the time was Neo-Thomism. For Aristotelian Saint Thomas Aquinas, Platonists have a “univocal concept of being.” The “Real” means the same thing at all places and all times for all things and comes by attaining true and absolute Ideas through intuition and/or divine revelation. But Thomas, following his Aristotelian Islamic masters, affirmed that the concept of being was “analogous.” This means that knowledge starts with sense experience and is collected in categories through concepts that we infer through analogy or literally “cross reason.” We learn through similarity, metaphor, relationship and applying words and images so they best fit the situation. We could argue that it was this insight that gave rise to empirical science which many univocal thinkers today still oppose with their revealed truths.
I don’t think that all who don’t like jazz have a univocal mind. Jazz is a very culturally shaped medium. Nor do I think that all jazz lovers have an analogical mind. Certainly not “smooth jazz” elevator music lovers! But I love Murray’s characterization. Jazz experiments. Jazz weaves diverse themes and tempos, discovers harmony in discord, and builds on improvisation. Jazz is never the same. It seems to me that Murray was on to something when he divided the world between univocalists and analogicians.
And I think the distinction has relevance to not only taste in music, but also to religion, economy, politics, and human life itself. Life’s battle is not between civilizations, eastern and western, or religions, Christian and Muslim, or political parties, liberal and conservative, or psychological types, introvert and extrovert, or economies, socialist and capitalist, or classes, haves and have-nots. Rather I think the battle is between the univocal and the analogic mind in all of these and in all of us.
The analogic mind acknowledges that the images that it uses to deal with the world and other persons are indeed images, fashioned by humans, developed through historical usage, and used to project and shape the human future. It is the complex of these images in a certain time and place that make up a specific culture. These images and concepts can be set in stone as well as in pictures and words but never in eternity though the naïve mind seems to think so simply because it has not come across others.
The analogic mind is characterized by a profound sense of humor, which is not just the ability to make jokes. The sense of humor I am talking about is a sense of irony or impermanence in all our beliefs. The analogic mind laughs with the gods at all of our human conceit and foibles. The analogic mind does not take itself or the world very seriously which is not to say without passion or importance or commitment.
The analogic mind therefore is not a “true believer,” i.e. never identifies its faith with its beliefs and is always suspicious and ready to examine beliefs, especially those held most vehemently, which is why the analogic mind is not a good subject for religious conversion. This mind has made peace with uncertainty and actually revels in ambiguity finding itself in a continual point of tension between the inner life and outer action, tradition and innovation, individuality and communality, privacy and publicity.
The analogic mind is a relational thinker and doer. While avoiding absolute ways of speaking or living, it can also express and commit itself to principles and purpose. It can be argumentative, opinionated, passionate, and loyal but never unmovable. It has causes, but never ultimate ones. The analogic mind has the ability to see itself from many other viewpoints. It also recognizes that even in recognizing diverse viewpoints that there is no viewpoint without a blindspot. Scotoma is just part of the human condition from which we cannot extricate ourselves even in our fantasy of fleeing flesh to unite with the Great Spirit.
When Bernie and I saw the film No County for Old Men, we were mind-swiped. It’s the story of a man who while out hunting in the vast desert plains of Texas comes across the results of a drug deal gone wrong. He finds many men shot dead and a truck full of bags of dope. One man is alive but dying and asking for “agua’ which he does not have to give. He also finds a man dead under a tree with a case full of money which he takes home with him. The rest is the hunt for him by a sociopathic killer who seems totally at home in the country and by a tired aging sheriff for whom the country has accelerated way past him.
When the film abruptly ended, we just sat there gasping. When we were able to, we talked. We saw illustrated in the film an allegory of our time, our nation, and our choices. The film haunted our dreams that night and we discussed it more the next day. I had read Blood Meridian by Cormick McCarthy and we both read The Road so we knew that this artist was continuing his very ambiguous portrayal of an America past and present between violence and redemption. For a further sense of the film I went to the net and read reviews and comments by critical moviegoers. Large numbers of them said that the film was too violent, was boring, and were unhappy with an ending without resolution.
Here was the univocal mind encountering an analogical masterpiece.
I see Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh as extreme illustrations of the univocal mind. Their jokes are not funny to me because they are all disparaging and without understanding of their own foibles. They are strident in their attacks on people with whom they do not agree or who challenge their cherished principles and beliefs.
It is not because they are conservative. John Kekes is a powerful conservative with an analogical mind. So was Russell Kirk. I enjoy engaging with them as I do sometimes with George Will (though he often falls defensively into the univocal mindset) and certainly David Brooks.
On the so called “liberal” side, Alexander Cockburn often demonstrates a univocal mind without a sense of irony. I hear commentators on Pacifica Radio who take themselves and their ideas too seriously. Christopher Hitchens is just a little too fervent in his atheism. Richard Rorty on the other hand is epitome of the analogical mind in the progressive camp and was sometimes attacked by the true believers of the left.
William Kristol is a brilliant neo-conservative, much more affable and easy to listen to than the Coulters and Savages but as un-nuanced as Dick Cheney. Whereas Francis Fukuyama I think is an analogical mind in the neo-conservative camp, highly nuanced, self-critical, not at all absolute in his pronouncements. I have learned much from him.
Other examples: Vladimir Lenin vs. Leon Trotsky, Donald Rumsfeld vs. General Powell, Pope Benedict XVI vs. John XXIII, John Calvin vs. Martin Luther, Pat Robertson vs. Bishop Spong, Mel Gibson vs. Woody Allen, the Left Behind Series vs. the Chronicles of Narnia, Unitarian-Universalism vs. Focus on the Family. But you make your own list.
The inspirations behind most of the great religions were analogical minds; and maybe that is the “great transformation” of which Karen Armstrong is speaking in her book by that title. Lao Tsu, Jesus of Nazareth, Socrates, the Yahwist, Buddha Gautama, Paul of Tarsus, Rabbi Gamaliel all had analogical minds that challenged the univocity of the established order; their teachings and lives were then distorted by the univocal minds of “the Fathers” of the religions that codified them.
So what makes a mind analogical or univocal? I leave it to neuron psychologists and evolutionary anthropologists to identify the genetic or cultural causes.
Maybe it is education? But I think back on my early training in philosophy and theology where I found so many professors of Aristotelian Thomism who, while teaching the epistemology of analogy over intuition, were total univocalists. They taught Thomism because Rome commanded it; but they were loathe to adopt any of the insights of the great British empiricists, German idealists, or French existentialists that were then challenging thinkers and pushing beyond not only fixed ideas but the very correspondence theory of truth itself. According to these old professors, there was one reality and one truth and Thomas and Rome had it. A univocal mind does not play with ideas.
Is one approach more successful? But then I realize that univocal and analogical minds have much different gauges of success. Univocal success is usually evaluated in terms of material capital accumulation, influence on others, security and stability. While analogical success consist in the thrill of adventure, the tension of ambiguity, spiritual capital, and relational action.
Maybe the difference is just a matter of Jungian personality preference such as measured by the Meyers-Briggs test. This implies we all range in degrees between a univocal and an analogical approach to reality at particular times and positions. This explanation of course appeals more to analogical minds.
In any case, at parties and in lecture halls I do prefer the analogical mind; and I tend to engage with others of that mind no matter to what philosophical tradition, political party, religious persuasion, economic class, racial type, age or geography they belong. I don’t like univocal minds. They are too pious and preachy and righteous. And I don’t like myself when I am being a univocalist. Deliver me from the strident reactionaries and dour radicals of the world.
We need Presidents, Justices, journalists, and community leaders who like jazz.
George Murray was about three years ahead of me at our Jesuit School of Theology. He loved and promoted progressive jazz and argued that those who do not understand it “have a univocal concept of being.”
You have to understand that the predominant philosophy in our school at the time was Neo-Thomism. For Aristotelian Saint Thomas Aquinas, Platonists have a “univocal concept of being.” The “Real” means the same thing at all places and all times for all things and comes by attaining true and absolute Ideas through intuition and/or divine revelation. But Thomas, following his Aristotelian Islamic masters, affirmed that the concept of being was “analogous.” This means that knowledge starts with sense experience and is collected in categories through concepts that we infer through analogy or literally “cross reason.” We learn through similarity, metaphor, relationship and applying words and images so they best fit the situation. We could argue that it was this insight that gave rise to empirical science which many univocal thinkers today still oppose with their revealed truths.
I don’t think that all who don’t like jazz have a univocal mind. Jazz is a very culturally shaped medium. Nor do I think that all jazz lovers have an analogical mind. Certainly not “smooth jazz” elevator music lovers! But I love Murray’s characterization. Jazz experiments. Jazz weaves diverse themes and tempos, discovers harmony in discord, and builds on improvisation. Jazz is never the same. It seems to me that Murray was on to something when he divided the world between univocalists and analogicians.
And I think the distinction has relevance to not only taste in music, but also to religion, economy, politics, and human life itself. Life’s battle is not between civilizations, eastern and western, or religions, Christian and Muslim, or political parties, liberal and conservative, or psychological types, introvert and extrovert, or economies, socialist and capitalist, or classes, haves and have-nots. Rather I think the battle is between the univocal and the analogic mind in all of these and in all of us.
The analogic mind acknowledges that the images that it uses to deal with the world and other persons are indeed images, fashioned by humans, developed through historical usage, and used to project and shape the human future. It is the complex of these images in a certain time and place that make up a specific culture. These images and concepts can be set in stone as well as in pictures and words but never in eternity though the naïve mind seems to think so simply because it has not come across others.
The analogic mind is characterized by a profound sense of humor, which is not just the ability to make jokes. The sense of humor I am talking about is a sense of irony or impermanence in all our beliefs. The analogic mind laughs with the gods at all of our human conceit and foibles. The analogic mind does not take itself or the world very seriously which is not to say without passion or importance or commitment.
The analogic mind therefore is not a “true believer,” i.e. never identifies its faith with its beliefs and is always suspicious and ready to examine beliefs, especially those held most vehemently, which is why the analogic mind is not a good subject for religious conversion. This mind has made peace with uncertainty and actually revels in ambiguity finding itself in a continual point of tension between the inner life and outer action, tradition and innovation, individuality and communality, privacy and publicity.
The analogic mind is a relational thinker and doer. While avoiding absolute ways of speaking or living, it can also express and commit itself to principles and purpose. It can be argumentative, opinionated, passionate, and loyal but never unmovable. It has causes, but never ultimate ones. The analogic mind has the ability to see itself from many other viewpoints. It also recognizes that even in recognizing diverse viewpoints that there is no viewpoint without a blindspot. Scotoma is just part of the human condition from which we cannot extricate ourselves even in our fantasy of fleeing flesh to unite with the Great Spirit.
When Bernie and I saw the film No County for Old Men, we were mind-swiped. It’s the story of a man who while out hunting in the vast desert plains of Texas comes across the results of a drug deal gone wrong. He finds many men shot dead and a truck full of bags of dope. One man is alive but dying and asking for “agua’ which he does not have to give. He also finds a man dead under a tree with a case full of money which he takes home with him. The rest is the hunt for him by a sociopathic killer who seems totally at home in the country and by a tired aging sheriff for whom the country has accelerated way past him.
When the film abruptly ended, we just sat there gasping. When we were able to, we talked. We saw illustrated in the film an allegory of our time, our nation, and our choices. The film haunted our dreams that night and we discussed it more the next day. I had read Blood Meridian by Cormick McCarthy and we both read The Road so we knew that this artist was continuing his very ambiguous portrayal of an America past and present between violence and redemption. For a further sense of the film I went to the net and read reviews and comments by critical moviegoers. Large numbers of them said that the film was too violent, was boring, and were unhappy with an ending without resolution.
Here was the univocal mind encountering an analogical masterpiece.
I see Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh as extreme illustrations of the univocal mind. Their jokes are not funny to me because they are all disparaging and without understanding of their own foibles. They are strident in their attacks on people with whom they do not agree or who challenge their cherished principles and beliefs.
It is not because they are conservative. John Kekes is a powerful conservative with an analogical mind. So was Russell Kirk. I enjoy engaging with them as I do sometimes with George Will (though he often falls defensively into the univocal mindset) and certainly David Brooks.
On the so called “liberal” side, Alexander Cockburn often demonstrates a univocal mind without a sense of irony. I hear commentators on Pacifica Radio who take themselves and their ideas too seriously. Christopher Hitchens is just a little too fervent in his atheism. Richard Rorty on the other hand is epitome of the analogical mind in the progressive camp and was sometimes attacked by the true believers of the left.
William Kristol is a brilliant neo-conservative, much more affable and easy to listen to than the Coulters and Savages but as un-nuanced as Dick Cheney. Whereas Francis Fukuyama I think is an analogical mind in the neo-conservative camp, highly nuanced, self-critical, not at all absolute in his pronouncements. I have learned much from him.
Other examples: Vladimir Lenin vs. Leon Trotsky, Donald Rumsfeld vs. General Powell, Pope Benedict XVI vs. John XXIII, John Calvin vs. Martin Luther, Pat Robertson vs. Bishop Spong, Mel Gibson vs. Woody Allen, the Left Behind Series vs. the Chronicles of Narnia, Unitarian-Universalism vs. Focus on the Family. But you make your own list.
The inspirations behind most of the great religions were analogical minds; and maybe that is the “great transformation” of which Karen Armstrong is speaking in her book by that title. Lao Tsu, Jesus of Nazareth, Socrates, the Yahwist, Buddha Gautama, Paul of Tarsus, Rabbi Gamaliel all had analogical minds that challenged the univocity of the established order; their teachings and lives were then distorted by the univocal minds of “the Fathers” of the religions that codified them.
So what makes a mind analogical or univocal? I leave it to neuron psychologists and evolutionary anthropologists to identify the genetic or cultural causes.
Maybe it is education? But I think back on my early training in philosophy and theology where I found so many professors of Aristotelian Thomism who, while teaching the epistemology of analogy over intuition, were total univocalists. They taught Thomism because Rome commanded it; but they were loathe to adopt any of the insights of the great British empiricists, German idealists, or French existentialists that were then challenging thinkers and pushing beyond not only fixed ideas but the very correspondence theory of truth itself. According to these old professors, there was one reality and one truth and Thomas and Rome had it. A univocal mind does not play with ideas.
Is one approach more successful? But then I realize that univocal and analogical minds have much different gauges of success. Univocal success is usually evaluated in terms of material capital accumulation, influence on others, security and stability. While analogical success consist in the thrill of adventure, the tension of ambiguity, spiritual capital, and relational action.
Maybe the difference is just a matter of Jungian personality preference such as measured by the Meyers-Briggs test. This implies we all range in degrees between a univocal and an analogical approach to reality at particular times and positions. This explanation of course appeals more to analogical minds.
In any case, at parties and in lecture halls I do prefer the analogical mind; and I tend to engage with others of that mind no matter to what philosophical tradition, political party, religious persuasion, economic class, racial type, age or geography they belong. I don’t like univocal minds. They are too pious and preachy and righteous. And I don’t like myself when I am being a univocalist. Deliver me from the strident reactionaries and dour radicals of the world.
We need Presidents, Justices, journalists, and community leaders who like jazz.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
The Ethic of Transparency
Recently I listened to Janice Stein reflecting on the notion of “accountability” which has all but replaced “responsibility” in our language. Since words not only express, but also shape thought and the worldview within which that thought has meaning, I found this a very useful reflection.
We have finally begun demanding accountability. And well we should, as presidents lead us to war on false premises, as financial institutions sell products with less than stated value, and religious organizations hide their officials’ wrong doings. We now speak of the accountable public or private organization and of holding our leaders and institutions accountable. We use less the word of the responsible leader or organization or of the responsible self and society. Or we simply use the words interchangeably. And there is a loss in that.
To hold accountable or require accountability has a different nuance than to be responsible or take responsibility. To account for something to someone has a different meaning than to respond to someone for something. Rendering account focuses on measured worth. Being responsible focuses on value, but not the kind that can be easily quantified. Accountability connotes an external referee and a balance sheet. Responsibility connotes a more internal judge, a conscience. An accountable politics is one of checks and balances and looks at forms, processes, and regulations. A responsible politics is one of social justice and looks at the substance of human freedom and equality.
Elsewhere I wrote of five metaphors for ethics. And here are two: the scale or balance in commerce (accountability) and the foundation of a building (responsibility). These two are important to each other: responsibility will require accountability, which in turn can measure and promote responsibility.
Yet there is tension when we look as the behavior of corporations and encourage social responsibility, when we look at voluntary organizations not just in terms of what we get for the money, but for what kind of a community they embody and promote. There is certain a tension in a leadership that is directing and supervising according to rules and one that is trusting and encouraging innovation. Education that teaches to the test may be accountable, but may not be responsible and educing responsible citizens.
Another word is being used a lot lately: “transparency.” Maybe that could resolve the tension or make it constructive. Transparency does mean visibility—out in the open for all to see and judge. But it also means illuminating or glowing from within like a radiance you can see through.
We have finally begun demanding accountability. And well we should, as presidents lead us to war on false premises, as financial institutions sell products with less than stated value, and religious organizations hide their officials’ wrong doings. We now speak of the accountable public or private organization and of holding our leaders and institutions accountable. We use less the word of the responsible leader or organization or of the responsible self and society. Or we simply use the words interchangeably. And there is a loss in that.
To hold accountable or require accountability has a different nuance than to be responsible or take responsibility. To account for something to someone has a different meaning than to respond to someone for something. Rendering account focuses on measured worth. Being responsible focuses on value, but not the kind that can be easily quantified. Accountability connotes an external referee and a balance sheet. Responsibility connotes a more internal judge, a conscience. An accountable politics is one of checks and balances and looks at forms, processes, and regulations. A responsible politics is one of social justice and looks at the substance of human freedom and equality.
Elsewhere I wrote of five metaphors for ethics. And here are two: the scale or balance in commerce (accountability) and the foundation of a building (responsibility). These two are important to each other: responsibility will require accountability, which in turn can measure and promote responsibility.
Yet there is tension when we look as the behavior of corporations and encourage social responsibility, when we look at voluntary organizations not just in terms of what we get for the money, but for what kind of a community they embody and promote. There is certain a tension in a leadership that is directing and supervising according to rules and one that is trusting and encouraging innovation. Education that teaches to the test may be accountable, but may not be responsible and educing responsible citizens.
Another word is being used a lot lately: “transparency.” Maybe that could resolve the tension or make it constructive. Transparency does mean visibility—out in the open for all to see and judge. But it also means illuminating or glowing from within like a radiance you can see through.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Rewiring HUD into the 21st Century
Rewiring HUD in the New American Political-Economy
A Proposal for a Different Kind of Federal Agency
What if HUD were made up of?
What if the role of HUD was?
Introduction:
I have worked almost eleven years for HUD, mainly as a Director of a Field Office in Fresno that serves the Central Valley of California. My previous 30 years of experience have been in nonprofit organizations that provided planning and organizing services to local communities, e.g. neighborhoods in Chicago and Toronto, Metropolitan and Regional communities in San Jose, Honolulu, and Cleveland. In every place I also taught and attracted students in urban planning and community organizing.
As an experiment for both the organization and for me, I signed up with HUD as a Community Builder and have stayed a Community Builder. As the director I have maintained the Fresno Office as a Community Building organization even when the program was terminated. We could do this in Fresno because the office was small and served a very poor region that drew little notice and support. I believe that our small team of field specialists did some of the best community organizing of my career by finding and promoting local leadership to create regional institutions that cut across jurisdictions and became vehicles for federal, state, and local public-private partnerships for smart growth, clean energy, new jobs, land use and transportation, and affordable housing.
Many of my colleagues, usually without fanfare, have forged their local field offices into places for connecting local and regional resources and fostering coordination among HUD and other programs around local institutions, issues, and opportunities. We did this knowing full well that the HUD administration saw HUD primarily a federal bureaucracy distributing and accounting for funds allocated by Congress.
Early on we saw what was happening with the housing market. There was no system for communication or planning within HUD to address a market that, without intervention, was about to fall. We could only prepare locally for rescue operations rather than make the structural change to prevent or deal with the causes.
A Proposal
With the new Obama administration arrives the possibility to rewire HUD using the principles and moving the agenda of the Obama campaign.
I propose that a team of HUD leaders voluntarily gather on their own time and dime, but with the full knowledge and approval of the Secretary and/or Deputy, to discuss ways to reinvigorate field offices to achieve their fullest potential. This team would get the assistance of professional organizers and planners in and out of HUD. The team would explore securing the participation of universities and of national training networks. The team would discuss and propose a recruiting, training, and consultation process, that is voluntary, begins with the regional heads, field office directors, and their field specialists to support and in many cases retool field offices so they perform the powerful function that they are well placed to perform.
Suggested Objectives and Measurements over an Eight-Year Period
1. Build a shared analysis and integral vision of the interdependent, interrelated, and contingent roles and responsibilities and the potential of all HUD activities to increase and sustain health and prosperity nationally, regionally and locally. Identify concrete measurable goals related to poverty, employment, affordable housing in safe and educational neighborhoods. Analyses for each region supported by a field office will take into consideration the industry sectors, the housing market, regional planning mechanisms, regional resources in education and culture, energy use and dependence, the political players and institutions, and the position of the region within the national and global economy. Measure: the quality and usefulness of these analyses.
2. New regional institutions are developed or retooled through collective, collaborative action to be agents of innovation and change for the region. Measure the number and quality of participating institutions. Measure: the significant changes achieved through these regroupings.
3. Citizen participation through congregations and associations, permanent organizations that ensure ongoing participation. Measure: the amount and quality of new leadership.
4. There are concrete outcomes. Measure: housing availability and affordability, energy independence and sustainability, employment and personal asset creation, vitality of the region in the new economy, safety and security of residents, businesses, schools, and educational achievement.
5. The Field Office is positioned and recognized as a vehicle for regional planning and organizing, for linking and changing institutions, for coordinating federal resources around specific placed-based projects, for servicing local jurisdictions and their partners, interacting with other field offices to build a dynamic and resilient HUD. Measure: the opinion of stakeholders and partners.
Process: How to get there:
1. Recruit the planning team with people within and outside of HUD.
2. Recruit a university as a site and resource for training. Recruit experts in new economy, climate change, new urbanism, contemporary science, change theory and practice. (See below)
3. Establish a training curriculum. (See below)
4. Work with the 10 Regional Directors for three days to get them to shape and buy into the objectives and process.
5. Recruit 2-4 field offices from each of the ten federal regions.
6. 5-day training for office directors and their field specialists with the beginning of local regional analysis and agenda. Class of 40.
7. Consultation with each field office on site.
8. Ongoing peer-to-peer communication and reporting.
9. Start with the next class of 40 along the same cycle with adjustments from lessons of the first class.
Elements in Training Curriculum
• The revolution in science and technology
Physics: chaos, uncertainty, and self-organization; string theory and multi-dimensionality; Evolutionary Biology, genetics, neuroscience and learning
Social sciences: new economic, social capital, language and culture
Technology: communications, energy, learning technologies
(The purpose here is to blow minds with new findings about the universe, world, and human development. Agitate towards new ways of thinking beyond stereotypes. Also to introduce concepts that are helpful in understanding the contemporary situation)
• The ecological challenge: global warming and its effects, notion of sustainability. (The purpose here is to help local actors see how they are connected to world processes; also a rationale for the new energy economy.)
• The emerging political economy: The energy challenge, globalization, nation-states, multi-national capital and industries, immigration and outsourcing, regions as starting points, housing markets. (The purpose here is that effectiveness has to take wider contexts into consideration; also to demonstrate regionalism as a starting point even beyond metros; and to see the connection between urbanization and ruralization.)
• Interrelation of HUD products and other federal resources in the Age of Recovery and beyond. (The purpose here is to foster action that breaks not only the silos in HUD but throughout the federal government and to discover creative ways of coordinating resources in places.)
• Organizing at diverse stages and levels. Base building for change. Exercises in leadership development. (The purpose here is to refresh participants in the principles and practices of organizing both so they can use these in the way they construct their office, and also to promote organizing and leadership development in communities).
• The HUD Field Office—ideal and real. (The purpose here is to realistically reconstruct the field office so it plays a more vital and vibrant role in positioning HUD and in fostering new relationships for change in local communities).
• Ethics and social change. Looking at some of the great ethical thinkers (e.g. Niebuhr, Dewey, Rawls, King, Ghandi) in how they found meaning in social action and civil service. (The purpose here is to encourage each participant to come to terms with his or her reason and passion for being an agent of change as a public servant.)
Some possible experts, thinkers, presenters, consultants:
Richard Florida, Rise of the Creative Class
Joshua Cooper Ramo, Age of the Unthinkable
Tom Friedman, Hot, Flat, and Crowded
Francis Fukuyama, Trust
Zygmunt Bauman, Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers
CS Holling, Panarchy
Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought
Gordon Frazer, The New Physics for the 21st Century
Peter Calthorpe, New Urbanism
Paul Krugman et al. Spatial Economy, Cities, Regions, and International Trade
Robert Reich, Supercapitalism
Naomi Klein, Disaster Capitalism
Peter Senge, The Necessary Revolution
Mark Gerzon, Leadership Through Conflict
Rollie Smith, 4-12-09
A Proposal for a Different Kind of Federal Agency
What if HUD were made up of?
- Eighty field offices, linked to political, intellectual, economic, and cultural institutions, in a dynamic regional network for social planning and action.
- Eighty venues for communities to strategically join federal, state, and local assets to meet their issues and achieve their opportunities within a sustainable metropolitan and regional environment.
- Eighty communities innovating within their regions, horizontally communicating good ideas across regions, retooling local and regional institutions so that all people through local congregations and associations have the ability to act to change their circumstances.
- Eighty organizations creating a dynamic and resilient national organization that shapes policies for a new urbanism that protects the rural countryside, that locates people close to transportation, jobs, and educational opportunities, and that promotes sustainable communities in a new clean energy economy.
- Eighty places for interaction, education, and power to build a diverse and equitable region that competes successfully in the global economy.
What if the role of HUD was?
- Not only to administer and manage programs established by Congress according to rules established by technicians.
- But also to constitute vehicles for all HUD programs and other federal and state agencies to connect to local communities.
- And also to service local governments and their private and nonprofit partners to provide opportunities in human development for people in their communities.
- And also to assist partnering institutions and leadership to think about and influence the policies that affect them at all levels.
- And then also to foster innovative leaders and the organizations to support them?
Introduction:
I have worked almost eleven years for HUD, mainly as a Director of a Field Office in Fresno that serves the Central Valley of California. My previous 30 years of experience have been in nonprofit organizations that provided planning and organizing services to local communities, e.g. neighborhoods in Chicago and Toronto, Metropolitan and Regional communities in San Jose, Honolulu, and Cleveland. In every place I also taught and attracted students in urban planning and community organizing.
As an experiment for both the organization and for me, I signed up with HUD as a Community Builder and have stayed a Community Builder. As the director I have maintained the Fresno Office as a Community Building organization even when the program was terminated. We could do this in Fresno because the office was small and served a very poor region that drew little notice and support. I believe that our small team of field specialists did some of the best community organizing of my career by finding and promoting local leadership to create regional institutions that cut across jurisdictions and became vehicles for federal, state, and local public-private partnerships for smart growth, clean energy, new jobs, land use and transportation, and affordable housing.
Many of my colleagues, usually without fanfare, have forged their local field offices into places for connecting local and regional resources and fostering coordination among HUD and other programs around local institutions, issues, and opportunities. We did this knowing full well that the HUD administration saw HUD primarily a federal bureaucracy distributing and accounting for funds allocated by Congress.
Early on we saw what was happening with the housing market. There was no system for communication or planning within HUD to address a market that, without intervention, was about to fall. We could only prepare locally for rescue operations rather than make the structural change to prevent or deal with the causes.
A Proposal
With the new Obama administration arrives the possibility to rewire HUD using the principles and moving the agenda of the Obama campaign.
I propose that a team of HUD leaders voluntarily gather on their own time and dime, but with the full knowledge and approval of the Secretary and/or Deputy, to discuss ways to reinvigorate field offices to achieve their fullest potential. This team would get the assistance of professional organizers and planners in and out of HUD. The team would explore securing the participation of universities and of national training networks. The team would discuss and propose a recruiting, training, and consultation process, that is voluntary, begins with the regional heads, field office directors, and their field specialists to support and in many cases retool field offices so they perform the powerful function that they are well placed to perform.
Suggested Objectives and Measurements over an Eight-Year Period
1. Build a shared analysis and integral vision of the interdependent, interrelated, and contingent roles and responsibilities and the potential of all HUD activities to increase and sustain health and prosperity nationally, regionally and locally. Identify concrete measurable goals related to poverty, employment, affordable housing in safe and educational neighborhoods. Analyses for each region supported by a field office will take into consideration the industry sectors, the housing market, regional planning mechanisms, regional resources in education and culture, energy use and dependence, the political players and institutions, and the position of the region within the national and global economy. Measure: the quality and usefulness of these analyses.
2. New regional institutions are developed or retooled through collective, collaborative action to be agents of innovation and change for the region. Measure the number and quality of participating institutions. Measure: the significant changes achieved through these regroupings.
3. Citizen participation through congregations and associations, permanent organizations that ensure ongoing participation. Measure: the amount and quality of new leadership.
4. There are concrete outcomes. Measure: housing availability and affordability, energy independence and sustainability, employment and personal asset creation, vitality of the region in the new economy, safety and security of residents, businesses, schools, and educational achievement.
5. The Field Office is positioned and recognized as a vehicle for regional planning and organizing, for linking and changing institutions, for coordinating federal resources around specific placed-based projects, for servicing local jurisdictions and their partners, interacting with other field offices to build a dynamic and resilient HUD. Measure: the opinion of stakeholders and partners.
Process: How to get there:
1. Recruit the planning team with people within and outside of HUD.
2. Recruit a university as a site and resource for training. Recruit experts in new economy, climate change, new urbanism, contemporary science, change theory and practice. (See below)
3. Establish a training curriculum. (See below)
4. Work with the 10 Regional Directors for three days to get them to shape and buy into the objectives and process.
5. Recruit 2-4 field offices from each of the ten federal regions.
6. 5-day training for office directors and their field specialists with the beginning of local regional analysis and agenda. Class of 40.
7. Consultation with each field office on site.
8. Ongoing peer-to-peer communication and reporting.
9. Start with the next class of 40 along the same cycle with adjustments from lessons of the first class.
Elements in Training Curriculum
• The revolution in science and technology
Physics: chaos, uncertainty, and self-organization; string theory and multi-dimensionality; Evolutionary Biology, genetics, neuroscience and learning
Social sciences: new economic, social capital, language and culture
Technology: communications, energy, learning technologies
(The purpose here is to blow minds with new findings about the universe, world, and human development. Agitate towards new ways of thinking beyond stereotypes. Also to introduce concepts that are helpful in understanding the contemporary situation)
• The ecological challenge: global warming and its effects, notion of sustainability. (The purpose here is to help local actors see how they are connected to world processes; also a rationale for the new energy economy.)
• The emerging political economy: The energy challenge, globalization, nation-states, multi-national capital and industries, immigration and outsourcing, regions as starting points, housing markets. (The purpose here is that effectiveness has to take wider contexts into consideration; also to demonstrate regionalism as a starting point even beyond metros; and to see the connection between urbanization and ruralization.)
• Interrelation of HUD products and other federal resources in the Age of Recovery and beyond. (The purpose here is to foster action that breaks not only the silos in HUD but throughout the federal government and to discover creative ways of coordinating resources in places.)
• Organizing at diverse stages and levels. Base building for change. Exercises in leadership development. (The purpose here is to refresh participants in the principles and practices of organizing both so they can use these in the way they construct their office, and also to promote organizing and leadership development in communities).
• The HUD Field Office—ideal and real. (The purpose here is to realistically reconstruct the field office so it plays a more vital and vibrant role in positioning HUD and in fostering new relationships for change in local communities).
• Ethics and social change. Looking at some of the great ethical thinkers (e.g. Niebuhr, Dewey, Rawls, King, Ghandi) in how they found meaning in social action and civil service. (The purpose here is to encourage each participant to come to terms with his or her reason and passion for being an agent of change as a public servant.)
Some possible experts, thinkers, presenters, consultants:
Richard Florida, Rise of the Creative Class
Joshua Cooper Ramo, Age of the Unthinkable
Tom Friedman, Hot, Flat, and Crowded
Francis Fukuyama, Trust
Zygmunt Bauman, Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers
CS Holling, Panarchy
Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought
Gordon Frazer, The New Physics for the 21st Century
Peter Calthorpe, New Urbanism
Paul Krugman et al. Spatial Economy, Cities, Regions, and International Trade
Robert Reich, Supercapitalism
Naomi Klein, Disaster Capitalism
Peter Senge, The Necessary Revolution
Mark Gerzon, Leadership Through Conflict
Rollie Smith, 4-12-09
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