Beware the Law-Disregarding Socialists

Who, you know, ignore the facts and do whatever the hell works for their special interest groups.  Then tar anyone who disagrees with them as being enemies of the state.

People like Rob Ford and Stephen Harper, apparently.

Contempt in Parliament

Bisson said the drafting of the report can be done when witnesses for whatever reason fail to show up.

"It's pretty clear from the evidence that I've seen within all of the testimony and what I've read there is clearly grounds for contempt here.  Who is named in those contempt charges, what the penalties should be will be entirely up to the committee.

The committee, which consists of partisan MPPs following marching orders from their Centres.

It's pretty easy to understand what the opposition Parties want; they want to make the governing Liberals look at bad as possible.  Why?  To try and encourage voters who previously supported the Liberals to support them or even stay home.

Perhaps it's because folk like Bisson have been in office so long that they don't see the big picture here.

So far as everyone who isn't a partisan is concerned, political people are all the same.  The more one Party bends over backwards to make their opponents (individually or collectively) look like demons from hell, the more voters give up on the lot of them.

It's sad, because there are capable people in our Legislatures.  When they put their heads together, they're actually capable of coming up with good initiatives.  When it becomes about partisan wins, though, it's not about democratic accountability with a focus on shared solutions, it's about smear campaigns and wedge tactics.

There's a lot of contempt in Parliament these days - sadly, it appears to be directed at our system itself.

Canada's Export to Westeros:

"Khaleesi, the Biebers of Ontario are notorious for peeing on prostitutes."

Sigh!

Consciously Succeeding: Open, Responsible and Empowered

The way businesses are being run is changing from containing employees to empowering them.

Each employee should be empowered to contribute to the success of their role and be the boss of their own role within the department.

This provides a healthy environment where workers get the opportunity to run their own venture within the company.  This empowerment puts the onus on integrity, ownership and accountability over their role and KPIs.

KPI being "key performance indicator."

To be brief:

- This is what smart business are exploring now

- This is what successful political parties/government are going to start doing, too

It's all about maximizing personal potentials - strong individuals for a strong society.

How do we get there?

- Understand behavioural economics and the science of empowerment/resiliency 

- Redesign work and workspaces with a focus on cognitive labour

- Open Data, Open Government, Responsible society.

It's about empowerment.  Leadership always is.

Looking forward to meeting the leaders out there ready to pave the way forward; we've got a lot of work ahead of us.

It's gonna be fun.

Conservative Apocalypse vs A Social Storm

What's it mean, Virginia?  It means honeymoons - Wynne's, Trudeau's - don't last forever.  He may have peaked too soon, and she definitely waited too long.

Warren Kinsella, author of Fight the Right: A Manual for Surviving the Coming Conservative Apocalypse, has blogged (sorry, web-paged) about more granular details of how politics works than 99% of us will ever know, much less understand.  He has lived, breathed and fought at the federal, provincial and municipal level for longer than the timespan of most political folks' careers.

He's worth listening to.

Kinsella understands better than most how bitter, brutal and short-sighted politics can be.  Whether left or right, Parties do tend to view the ascendancy of their opponents as some kind of apocalypse to be fended off at all costs.  Policies are designed for wins, rather than sustainability; relationships are used, abused and cast aside as though tomorrow will never come.  

As a result, Canadian politics at all levels has become increasingly tribal, insular and ineffective.  The people don't trust politicians, don't feel like their voice is being heard and sadly, don't believe our democracy is working.

This level of frustration, twinned with fear about loss - of jobs, opportunity, of social standing - is fertile ground for populism.  Populist politicians will push the fear buttons, focus on who's to blame rather than what a solution might look like.  They pour gas on an already blistering public.

But the public isn't interested in a Political Party's electoral fortunes; what they care about is the sustainability of their lives, maybe that of their children and their neighbours.  It's all connected, don't you know.

Let's say, for argument's sake, that the Harper Conservatives win another majority government.  They smile gleefully as Justin Trudeau's reputation as Canada's golden boy takes an irrevocable hit and then start looking across the board for who else deserves payback.  They ignore the lessons to be learned from their countless errors of entitlement because, well, they won right?

Let's say Tim Hudak wins a majority government situation in Ontario.  Finally, vindication!  After all he feels he's been through, after all the victories he feel was snatched from him by interest groups, he'd have his own chance at payback.  We know the sorts of policies he'd pursue; we also know exactly how he'd govern, which would be like an Opposition Leader.

Increasingly hostile policies and communication, a shrinking engagement pool and a growing enemies list would supplement further efforts to jig the system in a way that makes future Conservative wins more the norm.  To the victors go the spoils, after all.

But the people are more than consumers of politics; they aren't limited to the partisan brands on the ballot.  There are always other options.

I maintain that the more partisan all partisans get, the more they begin to look the same; tribal, short-sighted and narrow minded.  They don't nurture development, they run herds.  This is the opposite of progress.

Progress is dynamic and, like all growth, it doesn't flow from the top down, it's nurtured from the bottom up.

Which is exactly what's happening with the Open Government movement.  Which is slowly building bridges with the Occupy and Civic Engagement crowds.

While I don't relish the prospect of multiple levels of governments that view a majority of citizens as the enemy and conduct themselves as such, I understand where that sort of neo-feudal governance can eventually lead us.  

So I don't fear an earth-shattering apocalypse; instead, I anticipate a social storm.  Heavy rains will wash away old detritus, allowing for new growth in its place.  As always, society's true leaders will serve as gardeners, nurturing and supporting this growth.

I hope that, despite his constant exposure to the selfish, tribalized politics of our country, Kinsella never loses his faith in people themselves.  He's proven himself a powerful voice fighting against at the highest levels; just imagine the impact he could have standing for on the front lines of civic engagement.

Great Expectations

The fact that opposition parties have done little to raise questions about how the Liberals spend their legislative funds may have to do with their own use of them.  While fewer entries in the public accounts can be traced to New Democrats and Conservatives, which reflects the oppositions' smaller caucus budgets, the same lack of transparency applies - because of the $50,000 threshold, it is unclear how many smaller contracts they awarded.

Does this story shock, disturb or disgust you?

Honestly?  Why?

Political Parties are supposed to hold each other to account, right?  We expect them to pierce through data smog and put the information we need right in our inbox, n'est ce pas?  Maybe somewhere along the way they should be doing some consultation and research - including into each other, so they can do the hold-to-account thing effectively?

Of course we do.  The alternatives would be 1) for government to hold itself to account, which is silly or 2) for us to proactively engage with the system, but who's got the time to do that? 

 

On the whole, we sub-contract the management of our democracy out to others, because we don't want to do it ourselves.

 

We also respond to attack ads, which is why they keep getting funded.  If they didn't work, no one would be doing them.

The fact is that politics is often a nasty, elbows-up business that takes advantage of whatever resources it can and muscles the kinds of results that help further the interests of political parties.  Frankly, that's how business works, period. 

 

Competition is about beating opponents, don't you know.

I attended a webinar today that was all about helping corporations best position themselves to get public dollars through government funding programs.  If they get this money, other organizations don't. 

 

The people on the e-call were largely from big companies with lots of money already, but they got that money by playing smart, or at least playing smart towards the goal of increased profitability.

If government is looking to promote job creation or innovation or whatever and are offering money to achieve those goals, how is it wrong for financially successful businesses to become more successful by taking advantage of those funds? 

 

How is it different when partisan caucus bureaus are hiring the talent that can help them win?  By convention, that's their whole reason for being.  They get money so that they can fulfill their purpose; hiring consultants they know are good at what they do and trust (you tend to trust former staffers/people you've been in political trenches with because you have worked with them) is a means to that end.

 

This is the political sausage.

 

The reason we don't like hearing about what goes into this sausage is that we don't particularly want to know it's unhealthy; at the same time, we don't want to be bothered changing our own behaviours to make the system healthier.

 

We expect our politicians to be just like us, so as to reflect our views, but not to have human faults or try to get ahead individually, though that's kinda what we do.  We want our system to respect and respond to us, but without us having to do the homework and outreach ourselves.

 

This is why a consumer-based approach to politics and democracy fundamentally doesn't work.

 

What we want out of the system and what we're investing into the system don't add up.  The centre, as it were, can't hold.

 

If we want to solve and address the right problem, we need to identify the right problem. 

 

It's a bit of a Pandora's box we're opening with social media and open everything - but that's not entirely a bad thing, is it?

 

Social Emotional Resilience and the Psychology of Open Government

As any psychotherapist would say, the three leaders need to own up - and open up.

Under that shared spotlight, their political pathologies - and ideologies - will be on full display.  We'll see how they debate one another.

And how they interact with us as viewers and voters.  After all, we're also part of that group dynamic.


Sometimes, you can't but smile.

Martin Regg Cohn's article makes great points in and of itself, but there's something about it's framing that I particularly enjoy.

Dysfunctional government in need for group therapy to heal pathology/structural issues?

The notion of psychology - the study of the mind, i.e. mental health, being applied to social engagement in general and politics in particular?

And lastly, the whole idea of opening up, coming clean, being direct - and respecting each other and the public enough to maybe have an honest, rhetoric-free debate about the issues that faces us all?

How, pray tell, could such an ideal scenario be realized?

Funny you should ask, because there are people working on that right now.

You could be one of them.

To learn more about the emerging reality of mental health, resilience and productivity in the workplace, the changing (and improving) nature of communication and the massive potential of cross-sectoral, shared solution generation, stay tuned.

We've got something coming down the pipe that you're going to love.

Sins of the Father: Tribalism and the Armenian Genocide

"I'm sorry I don't know international law.  But I'm a councillor, for crying out loud, who makes $105,000 a year... so I apologize that I don't know, Mr. Chairman, I apologize for that; I apologize if I've upset anybody,  But I was elected to cut grass, fill potholes, make sure our curbs are in place, and to make sure my constituents are happy with the municipal level of government."

69 years ago, the Mayor of a town called Gotha hanged himself. 

He did this after being forced to visit to Ohrdruf, a labour camp not far beyond city limits.  This visit was demanded by one General Eisenhower, who at the time was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces. 

It was Germany, 1945 - the end of World War II.  Ohrdruf was a sub-camp of Buchenwald, one of the Nazis' infamous Concentration Camps and the setting of the attempted genocide traditionally referred to as The Holocaust.

I know a bit about Buchenwald.  In fact, I was there but a week ago, celebrating the 69th Anniversary of the camp's liberation by Eisenhower's forces.  My grandfather, as you may know, spent time in Buchenwald as an inmate. 

While other Allied soldiers experienced the atrocities of Buchenwald in the immediate aftermath (due to a very wise decision by Eisenhower), my grandpa was one of 168 Allied Airmen who were there at the peak of the Camp's operation.

I've heard the faith-shattering stories from many, many survivors: the inhuman conditions of the camp, the dehumanizing treatment by the SS and Camp Kapos, the illness, starvation and being worked to death.  And always, the constant plume of smoke rising from the crematorium's chimney.

Buchenwald rests on the far side of a hill visible from Weimar, once the centre of German intellectualism.  The smoke from that chimney would have been visible to the naked eye of the people of Weimar.  It's hard to imagine the gunshots from the hill wouldn't have echoed as far of the town as well.

The people of towns like Weimar and Gotha would have known, or at least have had ample evidence to piece together what was happening just beyond their borders.  Yet they chose not to see, not to hear - they didn't want to be responsible.

But they were responsible.  In turning a blind eye and by their inaction, they chose to do nothing and evil triumphed. 

At least for a time. 

The war ended, atrocities came to light and consequences began to be felt.  The people of Weimar were made to visit Buchenwald and see what exactly they'd turned a blind eye to.  When they could no longer deny what had happened - when they were forced to look upon the horrors they had permitted to happen in their midst - they wept.

Times have changed in Germany; now, the City of Weimar has pledged to condemn and fight against such tyranny in the future.  It doesn't matter whether such matters are federal in nature.  Matters of jurisdiction don't matter any more - what's morally just does.

The same holds true of a new initiative in Spain seeking to create a community of municipalities that declare themselves anti-Fascist.  Municipalities are realizing that, while their federal counterparts get mired in the complexities of foreign affairs and strategic diplomacy, they are unfettered in their ability to stand up for what's right.

Today, when my grandfather and other Buchenwald survivors from across the globe return to Weimar, they are greeted as friends.  These survivors, in turn, view the people of Weimar as friends.  In fact, some of the best friends we have are young Germans who volunteer their time to support commemoration efforts because they feel exactly the same way we do; the Holocaust happened, it was horrible, and it's up to all of us to remember the past and prevent it from happening again.

One of the most important lessons my grandfather has taught me is that it is wrong to blame the child (or grandchild) for the sins of the father.  It's possible that one of my German friends is the grandchild of an SS guard who worked in Buchenwald - I don't care.  I know who they are, what they believe in, and that's what matters to me.

The Armenian Genocide was just that - a systematic and intentional attempt to eradicate an entire people.  It was immoral, wrong, inhuman and those who perpetrated the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians deserve to be remembered for all time for what they did.

But it happened in 1915, a very long time ago.  None of the Turkish politicians fighting against the Armenian Genocide being called what it is were alive when it happened.  They are not to blame for the sins of a past generation.

Look, I get their concerns.  People by and large are still tribal - we generalize people all the time and heap whole hosts of assumptions and lineages of the past.  Politics in particular is bad for this - Parties will take credit for the work done a century ago by people who had completely different perspectives than they did, while equally tarring opponents with the negative legacies of anyone who shared their brand once upon a time.

In a tribalized view of the world, a Turk is a Turk and an Armenian an Armenian - ne'er the twixt shall meet, each generation carries the weight of their tribal past.  By the same token, in a tribalized view of the world, there's us, who are real people, and them, who aren't.  

The Nazis didn't view Jews or Poles or Homosexuals as fellow human beings - they dehumanized them, which is why they were able to to treat them like animals.  The same held true for the Turks who killed Armenians, or the Americans who massacred First Nations, or any other ethnic conflict anywhere in the world.  

Tribalism perpetuates false divisions and dehumanizes anyone you can describe as not like you, which is a group that invariably grows larger the more you pursue a path of exlcusion.

But the world isn't tribalized any more, is it?  There are children out there of mixed Turkish, Armenian, Dutch and whatever else descent who don't view themselves as the embodiment of one lineage, but the progenitors of something new.

My children are a mutt-mix of European lineages, plus a couple strands of East Asian.  How do they self-identify?  As Canadian.

To me, that's the whole point of Canada - we're not a competing tribe.  We're not a monochrome people.  We are a confluence of every ethnicity, every ideology, every religion and every way of looking at the world.

By virtue of being a bit of everyone, we don't have the luxury of cherry-picking arguments or picking one side over another.  The very mix of our population forces (or at least, should force) us to look at the bigger picture, empathize, take the time to understand and focus on what we can learn from the past to improve the future.

This has been a trend this week which has carried through writings by Don Lenihan and Andrew Coyne; we must get passed entrenched ideologies, we must embrace this thing called responsibility. 

Today's young Germans are no more the perpetrators of the Holocaust than today's young Turks caused the Armenian genocide or young Canadians build the residential school system.  But we do have responsibility to learn from these sad chapters of history so that we don't repeat the mistakes of our forefathers.

Fortunately, this is starting to happen.  In fits and spurts, the people are recognizing that they aren't tied to one history, nor one brand; even in Turkey,Young Turks are pushing back against the official denial of the Armenian Genocide.

It's unfortunate that we have a rising tide of politicians taking the "not my problem" approach once favoured by the Mayor of Gotha.  It's not going to work out very well for them in the long run.

Fortunately, we have a growing mass of individuals stepping out of the dark cave of tribal identity and seeing the world for what it is - a complex dynamic environment that doesn't live in the past, but rather evolves rapidly into the future.

As always, it will be our governments shaming us either through "strategic" positioning in places like the Ukraine or "strategic" ignoring of crises such as that in Syria or the Sudan.

It takes an engaged people who recognize that not knowing isn't an option to speak truth to power and break the sway of tribalism.

One day, we will be the mothers and fathers whose actions will be discussed by our grandchildren.  Instead of focusing on what someone did in the past, maybe it's time we start thinking about what legacy we want to leave behind ourselves.

Blood Economics, Social Conscious

 

"Are these workers truly needed in some sectors?  There's a tendency for non-economists to think of an economy as a machine, where if you're missing certain parts, the machine doesn't work, and certainly businesses want us to regard it that way.  But that's not always the case."

 

Nope.

 

Economies are circulatory systems, like blood flow.  And societies?  They tend to function a lot like organisms.

 

Something worth thinking about.

 

Progressively Growing Beyond the Short Pants

But it's a mistake to blame this on the boys in short pants.  They are the symptom, not the cause.  The deeper problem is that too much power is now concentrated at the centre, rather than shared with parliament.

 

This post on elected officials, accountability and social responsibility by Don Lenihan makes a great companion piece to Andrew Coyne's article on free speech and sociology-committing from yesterday.

 

Come again?

 

What's the connection between Parliamentarians speaking truth to power and everyone putting in the effort to understand each other?

 

Exactly.  We have a system that is increasingly slanted towards competition, which is not the same thing as debate.  When you're rushing to get ahead, you aren't interested in solving structural problems; you're only interested in getting what you can for yourself.

 

Parliament, for instance, has become steadily more competitive, with partisan tribalism usurping the democratic process.  Has it resulted in better solutions, greater civic engagement or even constructive dialogue?

 

Nope.  The reverse has happened; our democracy is actually atrophying as it is more and more neglected.  We're getting narrower solutions that serve smaller percentages of the population, leading to worsening outcomes and beyond that, more and more people tuning out of politics entirely.

 

Or worse - charting their own path outside our system without the checks and balances democracy provides.

 

We know what happens when too much power concentrates in one place, because we've seen it happen countless time before.  The inevitable result is the societal equivalent to an aneurysm that negatively impacts the whole system.

 

Which is the key word here - system.  Like gravity, it doesn't matter how much we choose to deny the reality that society is a system and we are all part of that system - it remains true nonetheless.  An objectivist view that denies there's any such thing as society theoretically fosters a competitive world where the strongest survive, but society isn't a food chain, it's an organism.  When parts of the system are neglected, the whole suffers.

 

You don't cure an illness by treating the symptoms any more than you solve lead poisoning without looking up the pipe to see where the lead is coming from.

 

It's not the boys in short pants that are the problem, nor is it the politicians or even the public.  People are people and, surprisingly enough, have a tendency to act like people.  We aren't rational super beings with an meta-conscious ability not to be impacted by biology and environmental factors - prick us and we bleed, wrong us and we'll seek justice.

 

But when a problem repeats itself, one-off justice won't be enough; we'll start looking for causes and solutions.  That's when competition starts to bleed into query and, eventually, comprehension.

 

Then, everything changes.

 

We're not quite at that point yet - but we're getting there.

Baby steps, don't you know.

Free Speech, Social Resilience

So far as we follow the opposite impulses in our private interactions with each other, so far as we attempt not to argue with others but to intimidate them, so far as we indulge the toxic nonsense that there is a right not to be offended, we undermine that consensus, and so in turn weaken our defenses - intellectual, political, legal - against the government doing likewise.

Positive Psychology, as a brand, still hasn't caught on yet - it sounds too airy-fairy, to pop-science. 

Self-regulation and social-emotional literacy, however, are terms that are steadily gaining traction.

In a nutshell, the purpose of such practices is this - to develop a certain amount of self-consciousness, understanding how and why certain external stimuli, like words said in your direction impact you the way you do.

Behavioural Economics seeks to do the same thing, but from a macro level.  So does industrial psychology.  

The goal is no longer to weed out the weak through tough competition; it's to support strength and resilience through education, relationship development and space/work organization.  Which is what design thinking is all about.

Does this trend make you anxious?  Does it feel like someone's slipping something into your water, trying to wrest your individuality away from you?  

I'm sorry to hear that and understand how discomforting that feeling must be.  If it makes you feel any better, that's a problem your grandkids won't have to deal with.

:o)

"In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him.  I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.  And then, in that very moment when I love them... I destroy them."

Think Before You Speak: ONW and the #onpoli NDP

The article published by Ontario News Watch is grossly inaccurate speculation.  It is a disservice to readers and is a poor reflection on Ontario News Watch.  It pretends knowledge it does not have.

Wow.  Just wow.

The article in question is a piece by Susanna Kelley that suggests the Ontario NDP have come to the conclusion it is no longer in their strategic partisan interests to prop up the governing Liberal Party.  It mentions specific rationale and references an email sent by the NDP to their local riding associations.  

It's pretty specific stuff that isn't too hard to fact-check.  Fact-checking, of course, is one of those things that journalists do.  Their integrity and relationship with their readers kinda depends on them being right.

So when Gilles Bisson suggests that the substance of Susanna's article is a complete fabrication, it's kind of a big deal.  

He is questioning her integrity and reliability - essentially, telling her audience that she has no competence to do the job she is paid to do.

And has done, for years.  Successfully.  Since before the NDP team bought their first copy of The War Room.

Full disclosure - I know Sue and consider her a friend.  I, like many in and around Ontario politics respect her a great deal.  She's been in this business for a lot longer than the NDP's current communication staff and has earned her reputation as an honest, dedicated journalist.

I have no doubt that the truth will out on this; emails will surface, other journalists will corroborate Sue's story and in a worst-case scenario for the NDP, someone in their camp is going to have to backtrack on Bisson's comments.

That's all a given.  What's more interesting to me is why on earth the NDP would have issued such a blistering response so quickly without having talked to Susanna herself first.

This hints at a trend in politics that communications folk should be paying attention to.

Whether it's Rob Ford lying about his crack use or any number of denials at the federal and provincial levels about who ordered who to do what, the truth keeps coming out.  

Invariably, someone in authority ends up with egg on their face and the public's disenfranchisement with politics as a whole grows.

Yet it doesn't matter how many other people get rolled over by their own spin - the communications whizzes in the backrooms of politics keep figuring they're too smart to get caught or everyone else is to dumb to catch them in the act.

I think this in no small part has to do with the fact that politics as a whole has morphed into an industry that's almost strictly about sales (instead of debate).  Whether it's talking points in Legislatures, fundraising letters to Party members or attack ads online, political messaging goes one way only, from the inside out.

The trend has increasingly been to hit fast, hit hard, never waver in your message and never give your opponent time to breathe.

We know what the problem with this model is; it's been widely recognized as one of the structural failings hobbling our society and economy, resulting in poorly-conceived policy decisions.

When your only tool is a hammer, you tend to view every problem as a nail.  War Room politics has essentially turned every critic, even friendly ones, into enemies to be hammered.  

It may be effective for countering foes in the short-term, but in the long-term the result is lost relationships, lost respect and as such, less opportunity to gain the meaningful insight that only comes through a healthy debate of the issues.

So here's a bit of age-old wisdom for partisan communicators - think before you speak.  Listen and consider before you react.  

And for God's sake, don't be afraid to talk with (not just at) the person challenging you.  They may have a point you haven't considered, and you might have one they overlooked.  Either way, you'll learn valuable lessons that could help you avoid such conflicts in the future.  You don't get that when you operate strictly in a vacuum chamber.

Oh - and you might just save yourself some embarrassment down the road.  After all, if you find yourself in the position of having to deny something that's true, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

A Chretien Quote for the Ages

I was surprised by that, but - when I sought his permission - Jean Chretien wasn't.  "Help them," he said.  "I don't want them to win anytime soon, but I don't want them held hostage by goddamn Nazis, either."

That line resonates with me on so many levels.  What I like the most, I think, is the idea of Kinsella asking for permission to do the right thing, but for an adversary - and his boss putting the common good above all else.

It could have been a golden opportunity to inflict all kinds of brand-damage on an opponent.  In today's political climate, it almost certainly would have been.

But that's not what leadership is about.  Leaders are never willing to put a short-term win ahead of the long-term sustainability of the whole.

There's a lesson in here for any aspiring political leaders out there.

That's what leadership is all about.