We are social herd animals and within such a social grouping the alpha male position is constantly challenged. He has to assert his authority over the territory he lays claim to, be protective to and see off suitors for his female entourage, be vigilant to upcoming nubile females to add to his group, ensure there is food and shelter, decide when his male heirs can no longer be tolerated within his arena and keep himself fit, active, alert and ready for the next challenge.
Over the eons the alpha male within his herd group has evolved to carry those characteristics necessary for taking up an alpha position. Characteristic such as aggression, dominance, individualism, risk-taking, spray marking, confrontation and display.
In this human world that alpha male has had to sublimate his inherited characteristics to fit in with the ever expanding society he now has to move within. As the space gets ever more crowded the area the alpha male can claim authority over shrinks and the more the overt display of dominance must be subverted. So the out-stretched hand of welcome, the invitation into the home, the dominance over the TV controller and the parade of teen stick models on the cat-walk are all manifestations of this sublimation of the old old alpha male responses.
Trouble is all the essential characteristics that make an alpha male an alpha male are now out of favour. Individualism, challenge, dominance or aggression are definitely now taboo in this world of political correctness and sexual equality where we seek and only encourage the feminine side in the male. The alpha male has no where to go, his innate responses are wrong and unwelcomed in today's society.
Will we miss him? Will the girls miss the strong male that knew his ground and place? Will society be able to forge ahead without those individuals with the courage to stand aside from the crowd? Will society be that happier and peaceful place without his aggression? It is almost impossible to see the alpha male characteristics taking an even further and deeper sublimation to reappear in a new incarnation. I for one hope he makes it.
Friday 29 January 2010
Thursday 28 January 2010
Retire at 70+!
The logic is faultless. A burgeoning aged population and a shrinking working force generating income. Something has to give to square the equation, delaying the age when pensions are first paid is an obvious solution, no one can argue with its sweet reasonableness. Except it doesn't join up the dots to complete the shape of life's realities.
With age you lose the thrust and energy of youth, become burnt-out in coping with crisis or novelty and struggle to absorb the relentless expansion of knowledge and the body no longer copes with heavy burdens. The extra benefits of maturity and experience do not expand in direct proportion to the daily task's growth in demands. By all judgements an older man cannot keep up with a younger self and this discrepancy increases faster the further past the meridian of life the older man is.
Yet a man's position in any society is judged, by those he encounters and by his own self-worth, by his working roll. So how are we going to manage the scenario when the line manager is deemed to no longer be able to cut it, not sharp enough, not sufficiently uptodate, network contacts no longer relevant to the current market? Who is going to relegate him to the post room with a two third pay cut and how is that going to work with staff morale? Or who decides that craftsman can longer produce a satisfactory quantity of output and is growing dangerous with his lack of flexibility in a hazardous industrial workplace? So what happens to him and all his kind? There can only be a finite number of aged supermarket shelf-fillers and is this role a dignified end for a working career of a previously admired manager or craftsman?
The reality is that for most, they cannot continue indefinitely at their chosen work and at huge loss of self-esteem and self-respect will be forced to take some other menial work, just to survive until pension time is finally called by some remote actuary. This is not a multi-career choice that is lightly banded about, this is an ignominious shuffle off into a backwater job nobody else with any respect or modicum of skills would contemplate. That is life's reality to extending the retirement age to 70, or 75 or even eighty. What sort of fresh employment do you really think is plausible for a person at that age? Can you begin to imagine the personal humiliation of being forced to accept such low-grade work after a previous successful career?
This does not sound like a caring compassionate society to me. There just has to be another way to pay our way through this age bottleneck.
With age you lose the thrust and energy of youth, become burnt-out in coping with crisis or novelty and struggle to absorb the relentless expansion of knowledge and the body no longer copes with heavy burdens. The extra benefits of maturity and experience do not expand in direct proportion to the daily task's growth in demands. By all judgements an older man cannot keep up with a younger self and this discrepancy increases faster the further past the meridian of life the older man is.
Yet a man's position in any society is judged, by those he encounters and by his own self-worth, by his working roll. So how are we going to manage the scenario when the line manager is deemed to no longer be able to cut it, not sharp enough, not sufficiently uptodate, network contacts no longer relevant to the current market? Who is going to relegate him to the post room with a two third pay cut and how is that going to work with staff morale? Or who decides that craftsman can longer produce a satisfactory quantity of output and is growing dangerous with his lack of flexibility in a hazardous industrial workplace? So what happens to him and all his kind? There can only be a finite number of aged supermarket shelf-fillers and is this role a dignified end for a working career of a previously admired manager or craftsman?
The reality is that for most, they cannot continue indefinitely at their chosen work and at huge loss of self-esteem and self-respect will be forced to take some other menial work, just to survive until pension time is finally called by some remote actuary. This is not a multi-career choice that is lightly banded about, this is an ignominious shuffle off into a backwater job nobody else with any respect or modicum of skills would contemplate. That is life's reality to extending the retirement age to 70, or 75 or even eighty. What sort of fresh employment do you really think is plausible for a person at that age? Can you begin to imagine the personal humiliation of being forced to accept such low-grade work after a previous successful career?
This does not sound like a caring compassionate society to me. There just has to be another way to pay our way through this age bottleneck.
Free-Loaders Pt2
There are periods when there just is not time to spare for community services, but these periods do pass. To make amends we must make opportunities for these former free-loaders to pay back into the society they have been feeding off for free. Our contributions into our community needs to be continually monitored and evaluated by our peers. That stint as governor to the school, all those years trimming the hedges, keeping the play ground clean, picking litter, seeing the children cross the road, that period standing as parish councillor, all need to be recorded and a value-back to the community allocated. By our peers, by the people we live within and amongst an not by some bureaucrat in a remote disconnected office. We know who amongst us is making the effort and those who posture and only talk the talk.
That value should then return to the individual to be traded in for extra over care and resources as an when life emergencies descend. The longer time of contribution the bigger the benefit accrues. Late comers wanting to make amends for free-loading having to make significantly bigger contributions in kind or by bequest of a classroom or medical investigative procedure to earn back a comparable benefit.
That value should then return to the individual to be traded in for extra over care and resources as an when life emergencies descend. The longer time of contribution the bigger the benefit accrues. Late comers wanting to make amends for free-loading having to make significantly bigger contributions in kind or by bequest of a classroom or medical investigative procedure to earn back a comparable benefit.
Thursday 21 January 2010
An aside - Born Equal
At the moment of birth and that first cry we are all equal, just a helpless bundle but with a tenacity for life. Then our genes, environment and situation kicks in and we progress rapidly in different directions depending on degrees of poverty or priviledge, protection or exposure we endure. After the nursery phase we increasingly take bolder steps that mark out our own individual route through life. Some times we make bad decision that will scar our future well-being, mostly we get it about alright and comparatively we do more or less as well as the next person. A sort of normality. Just fine for society, no extremes, no over-promotion of any one position, just a nice cosy muddle within the middle band of acceptability.
Question is what should Societies response be to those who despite being alerted to the dangers, despite all the good information about the risk choose to ignore the recommendations and carry on systematically pursuing a dangerous high risk path, be it extreme sports, binge drinking, a first pregnancy at 50 or just grazing on high fat, sugar and salt comfort foods?
It is not right that individuals should be prevented from taking what are seen as high risk routes, who knows with hindsight they might even be seen as forging and a new and successful role model . They must have the right to choose, good or even bad, for themselves. No one else is better placed to make judgements on their life than they are. And to take the consequences if it goes wrong. It is not for Society to gather up the broken bones and divert scarce resources to mend a failed and doomed enterprise. Whether it is the all to predictable consequences risks for child and mother from a late pregancy, a life of smoking, drinking or eating to excess or just jumping off a tower block. Yet Society has an over-riding non-judgemental duty of compassion, care and concerns for all of its citizens.
Here I would like to introduce the idea of degrees. The care and most of all the resources we lavish on a young adult caught in misfortune does not necessarily have to be the same degree of resource or perhaps even care we lavish on an elderly person who has had a fall. There is a difference of degree. Why should a smoker or obese person claim full rights to resources and care when they encounter the very outcome predicted. They have a responsibilty for their own life and have to accept the consequences of choices they took. It is not for others around them to sacrifice and forego to buffer them from the consequences of the decisions they freely took.
So degrees, degrees of resource and degrees of care. Bottom line, no matter what each and every individual in our Society has to be taken in and looked after to provide a minimal comfort and shelter. Maybe not a grand single room hotel shelter in a hospital, maybe not a team of highly qualified technicians to monitor, supplement and promote health, maybe not the costly operation but shelter, pain management, minimal hygiene, basic food and yes the care due to any person in need.
Those who have not put their lives needlessly at risk, not ignored the counsel and caution about a hazardous life style then they continue to enjoy the full benefit of all the skills and resources society can offer. Once a life quality outturn assessment has been made. These must not be remote bureaucratic procedures but hands-on by those charged with the daily care and treatment and having full knowledge of past history. There seems to me to be ample scope of an on-going dialogue which leads up to judgements that the point has passed when full resources are no longer appropriate. We cannot escape the consequences of our own decisions, rage as we may against the injustice and unfairness, in the end society always judges us and we know we can be found wanting.
What is not sustainable is full-blown technology and panoply of associated support for all equally without distinction. Better to know and have the chance to work within stated limitations than be an end process of covert judgements beyond reasoning with.
Question is what should Societies response be to those who despite being alerted to the dangers, despite all the good information about the risk choose to ignore the recommendations and carry on systematically pursuing a dangerous high risk path, be it extreme sports, binge drinking, a first pregnancy at 50 or just grazing on high fat, sugar and salt comfort foods?
It is not right that individuals should be prevented from taking what are seen as high risk routes, who knows with hindsight they might even be seen as forging and a new and successful role model . They must have the right to choose, good or even bad, for themselves. No one else is better placed to make judgements on their life than they are. And to take the consequences if it goes wrong. It is not for Society to gather up the broken bones and divert scarce resources to mend a failed and doomed enterprise. Whether it is the all to predictable consequences risks for child and mother from a late pregancy, a life of smoking, drinking or eating to excess or just jumping off a tower block. Yet Society has an over-riding non-judgemental duty of compassion, care and concerns for all of its citizens.
Here I would like to introduce the idea of degrees. The care and most of all the resources we lavish on a young adult caught in misfortune does not necessarily have to be the same degree of resource or perhaps even care we lavish on an elderly person who has had a fall. There is a difference of degree. Why should a smoker or obese person claim full rights to resources and care when they encounter the very outcome predicted. They have a responsibilty for their own life and have to accept the consequences of choices they took. It is not for others around them to sacrifice and forego to buffer them from the consequences of the decisions they freely took.
So degrees, degrees of resource and degrees of care. Bottom line, no matter what each and every individual in our Society has to be taken in and looked after to provide a minimal comfort and shelter. Maybe not a grand single room hotel shelter in a hospital, maybe not a team of highly qualified technicians to monitor, supplement and promote health, maybe not the costly operation but shelter, pain management, minimal hygiene, basic food and yes the care due to any person in need.
Those who have not put their lives needlessly at risk, not ignored the counsel and caution about a hazardous life style then they continue to enjoy the full benefit of all the skills and resources society can offer. Once a life quality outturn assessment has been made. These must not be remote bureaucratic procedures but hands-on by those charged with the daily care and treatment and having full knowledge of past history. There seems to me to be ample scope of an on-going dialogue which leads up to judgements that the point has passed when full resources are no longer appropriate. We cannot escape the consequences of our own decisions, rage as we may against the injustice and unfairness, in the end society always judges us and we know we can be found wanting.
What is not sustainable is full-blown technology and panoply of associated support for all equally without distinction. Better to know and have the chance to work within stated limitations than be an end process of covert judgements beyond reasoning with.
Thursday 14 January 2010
Free-Loaders Pt1
You could say that by definition Society requires that we each individually contribute into it, to keep it meaningful, relevant and so pertinent that we would be at a loss without it. Not quite the Society you know and move in?
We are all so busy, busy building our careers, busy networking with all those contacts we encounter or so busy just keeping the family together under a roof. There is no time for any other commitments, not even to the foundations that we each stand on together, the basalt rock, the core that binds us and makes possible all the superstructures of Society we just take for granted to be there to support and help us when we have the need. Fortunately there are people who make gigantic contributions into their Society well beyond any return to them. Great we can just slide along, take what we need when we need it and there is always someone out there putting it about. Upto a point. When the freeloaders much exceed those contributing, suddenly those contributing realise the gross inequalities and stop and become freeloaders themselves. Its a tipping scale issue not a matter of tapping into a new generation of zealots.
We are all so busy, busy building our careers, busy networking with all those contacts we encounter or so busy just keeping the family together under a roof. There is no time for any other commitments, not even to the foundations that we each stand on together, the basalt rock, the core that binds us and makes possible all the superstructures of Society we just take for granted to be there to support and help us when we have the need. Fortunately there are people who make gigantic contributions into their Society well beyond any return to them. Great we can just slide along, take what we need when we need it and there is always someone out there putting it about. Upto a point. When the freeloaders much exceed those contributing, suddenly those contributing realise the gross inequalities and stop and become freeloaders themselves. Its a tipping scale issue not a matter of tapping into a new generation of zealots.
Before concluding this post on free-loaders, I need first to make a detour.
To be continued.
Friday 8 January 2010
Government Savings
Almost without fail each new government has promised significant savings that just don't materialise. The political government has to rely on the executive civil service to implement its planned savings and they have an entrenched position with an equally long tradition of being able to successfully bury each saving plan. How can it be otherwise, all of the reins on the day to day running of the country are firmly in their hands even if they have to nod to the left or to the right depending on the current political flavour.
Realistically we should not even be talking about yet another round of efficiencies, re-locating offices there, cutting a few redundant posts here, using the backs of forms to save paper or not issuing pencils until there is no stub left. What is needed is a systemic fresh look at government.
Government funding is based on annual budgets. Each year proposals are put forward, based on last years budget outturn, for an equal or bigger budget requirement. Who in there right minds would offer a reduced budget? Cuts are then made on these proposals to bring them all into line with the planned spending limits. Then all hell lest loose as each department vies with another to establish the ascendancy of their budget over them. The top civil servants are promoted to their positions because they successfully promote their departments budget and see off others. It has nothing at all to do with how much it actually costs to run government. The status-quo is maintained year by year, minus a few percent, any losses more than made up when 'new' workloads arise out of government initiatives.
What we inherit then is government bloat. Old budgets are fiercely defended by the entrenched civil service, manpower shaved perhaps only to be re-instated plus at the next workload addition and a civil service more than capable of burying cost effective engineering or savings in a deluge of paper.
The only way forward is to utilise the ingenuity of the civil service to re-structure their provision of government services, achieve their own saving targets and earn the consequent reward of additional allocation. This will be a bloody process and as an opening strike the top two tiers of the entire civil service should be made to take retirement! What is needed is a complete overhaul on what and how government services are provided. There is some two hundred years of bloat to cut through. Basic question, what are the bottom line services that a department must inescapably provide and how many persons and acres of floor space are need to service it? Dividing the tasks by the cost of people and floor space gives an indicator of how much of our Nations resources are being used. Then political judgements can flow. What is the cost to the Nation of a soldier, a fighter plane, a teacher, how much does it cost the Nation to raise a each of the different tax levies? Are there any parallels that can be drawn? Might it be better to not provide one service but more of another or even is this service really inescapably needed? In fact what are the roles left to a central government when decision making has been devolved (see - "Working it out together")?
An approach like this will result in a significantly scaled back government and from then on efficiencies that achieve in reducing the cost of provision can be rewarded with commitment to fund a long term programme of investment, providing the further efficiencies promised are delivered.
Realistically we should not even be talking about yet another round of efficiencies, re-locating offices there, cutting a few redundant posts here, using the backs of forms to save paper or not issuing pencils until there is no stub left. What is needed is a systemic fresh look at government.
Government funding is based on annual budgets. Each year proposals are put forward, based on last years budget outturn, for an equal or bigger budget requirement. Who in there right minds would offer a reduced budget? Cuts are then made on these proposals to bring them all into line with the planned spending limits. Then all hell lest loose as each department vies with another to establish the ascendancy of their budget over them. The top civil servants are promoted to their positions because they successfully promote their departments budget and see off others. It has nothing at all to do with how much it actually costs to run government. The status-quo is maintained year by year, minus a few percent, any losses more than made up when 'new' workloads arise out of government initiatives.
What we inherit then is government bloat. Old budgets are fiercely defended by the entrenched civil service, manpower shaved perhaps only to be re-instated plus at the next workload addition and a civil service more than capable of burying cost effective engineering or savings in a deluge of paper.
The only way forward is to utilise the ingenuity of the civil service to re-structure their provision of government services, achieve their own saving targets and earn the consequent reward of additional allocation. This will be a bloody process and as an opening strike the top two tiers of the entire civil service should be made to take retirement! What is needed is a complete overhaul on what and how government services are provided. There is some two hundred years of bloat to cut through. Basic question, what are the bottom line services that a department must inescapably provide and how many persons and acres of floor space are need to service it? Dividing the tasks by the cost of people and floor space gives an indicator of how much of our Nations resources are being used. Then political judgements can flow. What is the cost to the Nation of a soldier, a fighter plane, a teacher, how much does it cost the Nation to raise a each of the different tax levies? Are there any parallels that can be drawn? Might it be better to not provide one service but more of another or even is this service really inescapably needed? In fact what are the roles left to a central government when decision making has been devolved (see - "Working it out together")?
An approach like this will result in a significantly scaled back government and from then on efficiencies that achieve in reducing the cost of provision can be rewarded with commitment to fund a long term programme of investment, providing the further efficiencies promised are delivered.
Monday 4 January 2010
War on Terrorists
Since ancient times it has been the practice of institutions to demonise the enemy. They then can play on our primitive fear feelings and the need to protect our wife and children from molestation, to justify their actions against this terrible enemy. This primitive fear response supplants any normal rationale or questioning, so the enemy are all equally evil and we don't pause to consider whether all individuals are the same, whether there may be other moderate or conservative opinions and we certainly don't empathise with vulnerable groups within that enemy stronghold.
So currently our diffused enemy we are told are vaguely the Taliban or Al Qaeda or Afghanistan with Pakistan thrown in for reserve or Usama Bin Laden or any mix or combination depending on the latest news. These terrorist put all our lives and families we care about at risk. So we are at war with these evil people.
Trouble is there isn't a hilltop, or a flag, or a strategic place or a town, river crossing, or army front line or airport or harbour that we can capture and say , yeah, we beat them. We have won. There is no identi-kit terrorist that you can instantly recognise by their speech, clothes, hairstyle, colour of skin as unambiguous give-aways. We live in diffused societies and no long, (for a very long time) do we live among kin that we know, recognise and can relate to. Praise be for the diversity it brings but the downside is our enemy is no longer definable.
Worse our enemy is now ideological. So that person sharing the seat on the bus, or on the train or that car coming towards you, may now be an ideological terrorist.
Institutions ascribe authority, control and technical competence to their actions which we, having or chosen to follow their lead, are happy to accept without too much questioning. So we accept the calm assertions that the State's surveillance, intelligence gathering, law enforcement and containment measures are more than adequate to curb any rogue terrorists cells that may exists within our communities, all we have to do is to grant even more extraordinary powers so they can get the job done.
No.
Because their competence is an illusion only matched by the bungling stupidity of those 'artful' terrorists we are told to live in fear of.
No
Because the only way to answer the ideology gap is by demonstrating, day to day, that democracy works, that free-speech is vital and that the State trusts and respects its citizens.
No
Because the only successful attack that can be made on terrorists and terrorism is for each one of us to engage and talk with that neighbour we are sharing space and time with. Not the State, not by more surveillance or more body checks, only by talking directly with them will we get to discover their extremists views.
Only by engaging in non-confrontational dialogue can we get them to expose and recognise for themselves the inadequacies of their ideology and by engagement can we hope to persuade them that there are real alternate strategies to achieve their goals.
That is the only hope for beating the terrorists that lives within us.
So currently our diffused enemy we are told are vaguely the Taliban or Al Qaeda or Afghanistan with Pakistan thrown in for reserve or Usama Bin Laden or any mix or combination depending on the latest news. These terrorist put all our lives and families we care about at risk. So we are at war with these evil people.
Trouble is there isn't a hilltop, or a flag, or a strategic place or a town, river crossing, or army front line or airport or harbour that we can capture and say , yeah, we beat them. We have won. There is no identi-kit terrorist that you can instantly recognise by their speech, clothes, hairstyle, colour of skin as unambiguous give-aways. We live in diffused societies and no long, (for a very long time) do we live among kin that we know, recognise and can relate to. Praise be for the diversity it brings but the downside is our enemy is no longer definable.
Worse our enemy is now ideological. So that person sharing the seat on the bus, or on the train or that car coming towards you, may now be an ideological terrorist.
Institutions ascribe authority, control and technical competence to their actions which we, having or chosen to follow their lead, are happy to accept without too much questioning. So we accept the calm assertions that the State's surveillance, intelligence gathering, law enforcement and containment measures are more than adequate to curb any rogue terrorists cells that may exists within our communities, all we have to do is to grant even more extraordinary powers so they can get the job done.
No.
Because their competence is an illusion only matched by the bungling stupidity of those 'artful' terrorists we are told to live in fear of.
No
Because the only way to answer the ideology gap is by demonstrating, day to day, that democracy works, that free-speech is vital and that the State trusts and respects its citizens.
No
Because the only successful attack that can be made on terrorists and terrorism is for each one of us to engage and talk with that neighbour we are sharing space and time with. Not the State, not by more surveillance or more body checks, only by talking directly with them will we get to discover their extremists views.
Only by engaging in non-confrontational dialogue can we get them to expose and recognise for themselves the inadequacies of their ideology and by engagement can we hope to persuade them that there are real alternate strategies to achieve their goals.
That is the only hope for beating the terrorists that lives within us.
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