Britain – perhaps I should say England (I know it a bit better) – is a funny society. Maybe all human society is thus.
I’ve spent quite a few months now, getting to know a fairly resilient, unchanging – maybe ultimately unchangeable – society. It belongs (for I think that “belong” is the operative word – or, at least, so my intuition leads me to believe) to the city of my residence: the city which this project, chester.website, is looking to inform and invigorate.
Let me define “invigorate”, first: I don’t look to understand the term primarily in numbers – ie what is easy to measure. Far more I look to explain myself in qualitative terms. Ideas like “quality of life”, “wellbeing” (where not reduced simply to KPIs), “enjoyment”, “personal fulfilment”, “creative growth” etc.
So.
Established that assumption, let’s move on to the rest of today’s post.
I could easily have titled it “meetings, meetings, meetings”. In truth, a puzzled society has met a puzzling, curmudgeonly individual – and all in all, it kind of still feels a bit like an Ibsen play.
🙂
Yes. I know. If it does, it’s entirely my curmudgeonly fault.
Also in truth, I’ve learnt quite a bit in this gestation period. One thing I’ve learnt is that whilst a city may have a multitude of networks, all of them are tied together by the common interest that is earning a living. I could say “money” instead, but it makes us all sound a bit limited in our horizons; “earning a living”, meanwhile, is without question an honourable pursuit.
Some of the networks operate out of sophisticated self-interest, behind very closed, almost hermetically sealed, doors: and they work very well, allowing their participants to provide not only for their families but also for much wider personal and entrepreneurial ambitions.
Other networks look to foreground elements of altruism in what they do: there are those which use volunteers almost exclusively; there are yet others which combine work & life in productive and life-changing ways.
In all of this, however, I have two sticking-points. In the next three tweets, you have the opportunity to begin to understand why:
It refers back to two things I’ve realised about life – and not just in my city of residence:
The inverse of this being what I’ve realised over the past nine months’ period of gestation:
- openness, where practised, and defined as a voluntary honesty, is almost bound to beget suspicion
- money, where not unreservedly worshipped, is almost bound to create problems – even mild degrees of poverty – for those who find it difficult to engage in such worship
As I say, I’ve seen it across the country: not only in the north of England; also, notably, in the south. If people believe you have the resources to do something they can take advantage of but don’t need to pay for, they want to meet you ever so much. If they begin to suspect you don’t have your own means, their love of all things new begins to level off.
Two reasons for the original expressions of interest? As follows:
- maybe because they honestly wanted to work with you
- maybe because, and this is key I’m sure, they might prefer you not to work with someone else – or even, with your own means to hand, all on your lonesome
It’s all understandable, and it all relates to where you see the proper place of money, wealth and/or resource – whatever you wish to call it – in and amongst your life goals, loved ones and daily pleasures.
Three levels I guess:
- to earn an honest living
- to make an honest killing
- to become an honest billion-dollar unicorn
And where you see yourself may never be absolutely steady: it may depend awfully on the opportunity that’s presenting itself – or that you believe may be presenting itself. Also, “honest” may easily veer into “dishonest”. You really just cannot ever work it out.
Some people find it so very easy to leap onto bandwagons of all kinds. It doesn’t mean they are bad. It may just mean they’ve never had the chance of carving out more than a drudgery of a life.
So why did I start this post by saying English society was funny?
Because in all this time, over all these months, I’ve discovered one universal truth: we live in a society which talks – more than any other in history – of the importance and practice of openness.
Open source.
Open democracy.
Open communication.
Open government.
Open data.
Open culture.
Open minds.
Open doors.
And yet, despite all the above, more than any other time in history, the bigger the decision, the fewer people seem to get to take it.
The fewer people, in fact, even get a look in.
An example from today, just to paint the point more tangibly: who on earth decided that the UN would give Facebook a privileged platform to announce the goal of getting everyone on the planet using the blessed beast by 2020? Where did that decision get taken? With what intellectual or institutional right did someone take it upon themselves to officially allow the careful conflation of the Interwebs with Zuckerberg?
In truth, openness is a challenging step to take.
And in English society, particularly so. Not because of what it could achieve. Rather, because of what it might undermine.
The risk is real, I agree – especially for the privileged. But the advantages, if correctly implemented, could be grand for everyone.
So why might this resistance to openness be happening? Maybe because too many people, who have so much to lose, worry sincerely that if we don’t do it right, society (their society, anyway) will be soundly stuffed?
Maybe that’s it.
Sad all the same, ain’t it? The implications and consequences, I mean.
But more importantly, as I will continue to insist, it’s also inefficient. And that’s the real tragedy.
To construct a new society with the ancient, behind-the-scenes comms strategies of the old – even as we use brand-new gadgets, devices and concepts to do our shiny stuff – is a sorry case not of back to the future, but firmly forward to the past.
This is why I won’t give up in my beliefs or my actions, however foolish they look – and even as many times I appear to be on the point of doing so.
But don’t worry. Whether I am ultimately able to convince people or not, my simple goals will always lie at level one. An honest earning of a living, above all.
The unbridled truth.
eiohel 
5 thoughts on “back to the future – or firmly forward to the past?”