Face to Face Rational Action

Being based in London for the working week these days, it’s maybe apparent from the blog that I’ve been taking advantage of attending cultural and intellectual events of various kinds in the city.

Multi-discipline public presentations from academic institutions like ICL and UCL, public speaking engagements by “celebrity” expert “authorities“, talks and meetings of particular societies, BHA, CLHG, CFIUKConway Hall / The Ethical Society, New Humanist / Rationalist Association, and more. Apart from the specific content of the particular meeting, the big plus of such events is the face-to-face time of new (and existing) contacts and discussion conducted for the past 15 years primarily by blogs, social media and mailing lists.

Several of these events I’ve already blogged reports, and several more I have bookings for the future.

One particular novelty for me, despite 14 years of active blogging & social media on these topics, has been “MeetUp“. Despite being set-up to organise diaries around attendance at physical meetings, many of the participants, use MeetUp itself as the blog – posting the online agenda – and discussion forum – the online comment thread, associated with the MeetUp topic.

Like all such vehicles there are good and bad examples of use; you know the kind populated by trolls for whom “giving offence” is their perceived basis of the right to free speech, and “to grow a pair” as the London Active Atheists Group would have it – active as in the indiscriminate one-dimensional “shrill” voices of anti-faithism, anti anything that’s not ‘ard enuff, on my limited exposure so far. And yes, since I do “ave a pair” I will plan to attend at some point, sadly this last one fell on the same evening I had an appointment to see an apartment. (Compare WHC2014 declaration on free speech, where “no right not to be offended” is one selected part of the creed, along with positives like support and restraint.)

One example that, despite having its fair share of conspiracy-theorists and free-critics, seems to maintain a constructive balance is GlobalNet21 – a group which seems to have several active sub-groups. Blogged one group event already – “the state of traditional democracy” – and another – “new enlightenment” – I’ve not posted here until now, but posted links and feedback into the MeetUp thread at the request of the organiser Kathryn Best. [Post Note : several other overlapping sources and resources in this “new enlightenment” session – Snowden’s Cynefin view of complexity, Maslovian motivation and other incentivisation theories and practice, and several others – need to collect the links posted on MeetUp and construct a coherent essay on this one too.]

GlobalNet21 is particularly interesting for me in that it is clearly actively facilitated by Francis Sealey, and that it represents in the face-to-face domain exactly what I was trying to achieve with Joining Up The Dots / “Dots’n’Threads” and eventually throwing in my lot with the practically moribund “The Global Circle“. One to watch.

The Future of Democracy

Very interesting session in the Wilson committee room at Parliament’s Portcullis House last Tuesday 9th September. It was a MeetUp organised by GlobalNet21. I was busy with several other events last week, so taken until over the weekend to publish my notes.

Peter Hain (Lab) and John Mann (Lab) as the main speakers. [Caroline Dinenage (Con) had to pull out due to constituency business.]

Both MP’s Hain and Mann contrasted their own political careers – starting out locally engaged and (single) issue focussed, and finding themselves drawn into the process of democratic government – with those of modern “career” politicians. Typically starting with a politics related degree, internship experience with party or offfice, working in related politics or journalism field until securing candidacy (council or parliament), thereby becoming MP, junior minister, spokesperson, minister and finally PM. So many candidacies actually go unopposed. Coming from and becoming part of the Westminster press / academic / government “bubble” – and in so doing, reinforcing the bubble. Reinforcing the detatchment of polticians from “real life” of their constituents.

In parallel was the apparent decline in voter engagement and turnout statistics over the decades, though there was some suggestion these things did go in cycles. The idea of Halcyon days is simply nostalgia. Interpretations of current low levels could be an apathy due to most things being comfortably OK (the normal interpretation), or a specific message of public dissatisfaction with the political process and arrangements (though no-one felt the need to mention the Russell Brand effect even once during the whole evening).

Counter-intuitively, career politician or local activist, the time for working on engagenment is not necessarily in the run-up to elections, where both lobbyists and candidates understand the game of securing maximum counts for least effort, least commitment and minimum difficult, complex debate.

Similarly, engagement is not necessarily through policy setting and agreement. Strategic policy may often be the window dressing – the language and narrative expected by “the bubble” – but tactical action, using actual power to address specific value-adding issues is what draws public support for specific MP’s and hence their parties. Mann challenged the academia members of the bubble to use his advice as a case study for what it really takes to secure votes.

Parties and the “two-party system” were a topic too. Despite much wrong with the byzantine machinations of party organisations and activities, and with the effect of casting all issues adversarially, parties do in fact perform a valuable function in providing the platform, advice and vehicle for raising individual constituent issues into the government political process, getting both active individuals and their issues on to the agendas for debate, decisions and action.

In these days of ubiquitous electronic media, it is the otherwise most disenfranchised that are, relatively speaking, most empowered. Anyone however “ineloquent” of whatever social status can and will add their voice to a debate, a campaign, a petition. The downsides however are the ease with which cynicism and reactive or simplistic positions can spread, and given that real life is limited by resources and priorities – not everything can be most important or “paramount” – the empowerment to communicate raises expectations that can easily lead to disappointment, frustration and reinforcement of the said cynicism. A vicious circle I call “the memetic effect” in this blog – the catchiest but not necessarily the best ideas capture maximum attention.

There is a sense in which the public needs to understand that limited resources, conflicting priorities and unintended consequence over different levels and timescales mean not every issue can be solved by simple yes / no decisions. Basic “civics” education is so important for public understanding of the complexities, though clearly the more transparent and honest political dealings can be, the complexity needn’t be over-complicated. Explaining the difference between complexity and complication is err … complicated. Real priorities can be more readily apparent, the more people appreciate the real processes needed.

Interestingly, despite the counter-intuitive rejection of the value of “policies” per se, it is nevertheless clear that agreed values and shared human aims are fundamental to achieving consenus and focus on real priorities. Value itself is created by action, whereas policy statements of value simply support the process, and rationalise the decisions.

Many other specific ideas for improving the process came up. In no particular order:

Open primaries for candidate selection were recommended and a number of MP’s including Mann had used and promoted this concept. They are not a silver bullet – by the very virtue of being open – they are open to abuse and manipulation, but they are part of the reforms needed to encourage two-way engagement – candidates with the public and the public with the process.

There semed to be implicit consensus that larger constituencies with some form of proportional / AV representation really was overdue, and disbelief that the recent opportunity to enact this had been rejected. The simplistic first-past-the-post within arbitrary constituencies was part of the adversarial election-winning distraction from real value-adding action.

Quite mixed views on an elected second chamber. Clear objective for some. General agreement on the total numbers in the two houses has become too large. Personally, I believe reform in combination with the AV ideas above, does also need some “conservative” meritocratic appointees with timescales and policy horizons beyond the next election term office. It’s not so much that the elected individuals have selfish short-term vision, but that the process can artificially impose the term timescale. Conversely several mentions of checks and balances in any system, such as “recall” being essential.

Finally, in addition to the mentions of the empowerment of participants by ubiquitous social media, several mentions of electronic voting and also the voters responsibilities to vote, including some discussion of legally mandatory voting. No time for these to be aired fully. Enforced voting was generally rejected, certainly not without actual voting choices include concepts like “none of the above”. Electronic voting perceived by many as too open to manipulation by those parties providing and running the systems, but in fact my objection is that to maintain its value, voting mustn’t be made too easy – a click from the armchair, like any other two-bit quiz or feedback form.

Overall, an excellent session. Covered a lot of ground, but necessarily couldn’t do justice to all topics. Personally, I’m already sold on the need for increased engagement. Positively inspiring to encounter real values and practical wisdom “in the flesh” – all too easy to criticise those “in power” from afar, and demand the baby is thrown out with the bathwater. Also particularly note-worthy of this event was the fact that it wasn’t run as a debate requiring yes or no agreements, but a conversation topic where the potential for change and improvement was a given from the off.

[Post Note : One to read later – hat tip to Sam @ Elizaphanian – particularly the comment thread from those “scientistic” types who see no value in “wishy-washy” topics like PPE anyway.]

Scarily Arrogant Wolpert

Just a holding post for now. Will have to digest and comment on this later, but first impression is disbelief. (I recall being unimpressed by Wolpert when I saw him in a debate a couple of years ago, must dig up the blog.)

[Post Note: I did in fact go back to try to make some specific comments, but found myself just as speechless at the pure arrogance of the man, that it hardly seemed worth the effort to construct any arguments – far more fruitful avenues for dialogue. What I did pick up was this lone comment, which says pretty eloquently all that needs saying:

AvProtestant on 11/09/2014 10:00pm – Reading Wolpert’s comments I’m reminded of what J S Mill said of Jeremy Bentham: 

“[He] failed in deriving light from other minds. His writings contain few traces of the accurate knowledge of any schools of thinking but his own; and many proofs of his entire conviction that they could teach him nothing worth knowing.“]

[Post Post Note: Also as promised I went back to dig out my previous Wolpert encounter. Amusingly, the previous encounter was exactly like this one – so abysmal I could’t be arsed to digest and comment. The previous encounter I was thinking of was this one, and even then the best I could manage was that …

The scientists [inc Wolpert] were frankly embarrassingly arrogant in seeing no alternatives to scientism, despite significant definitional debate around narrow and broad conceptions of objectivity, empiricism and methods of science in “the view from nowhere” and truth defined anywhere from “objective fact” to pragmatism. Embarrassing that they see only scale and complexity of detail in the ultimate tractability of everything falling under science, ignoring the paradoxes (eg in the zombie thought experiment) and non-linearity in the position of game-changing intentional consciousness in the game of life as we know it.

Also spookily close to my current readings of Nagel, in the next post. The language, years apart, is so …. identical.]

Therapeutic Psychedelics

It’s been said before, but here a Grauniad Science Blog by Moheb Costandi with a link to this full issue of The Psychologist which is devoted entirely to therapeutic psychedelics with an introduction from the now infamous David Nutt.

Powerful stuff. Part of a collection, for research purposes, naturally.

[Post Note : And nice to see Sue Blackmore still hanging in there.]

A Positive Universal Project – Zizek

Zizek, starting with the Rotherham case, but pointing out that it is just an example – some would say political correctness – where the elephant in the room needs to be addressed for what it is. (The Ashya case too, it is quite apparent that the religious connection is being played down, not even mentioned in BBC stories, lest it be proven not relevant – damned if you do, damned if you don’t – as Michael Cashman tweeted.)

At this level, of course, we are never tolerant enough, or we are already too tolerant. The only way to break out of this deadlock is to propose and fight for a positive universal project shared by all participants.

In my own agenda: “I’m against religious fundamentalism, because I’m against fundamentalism of any kind, including scientific (scientistic) fundamentalism. I don’t define myself by what I’m against, I define myself by what I’m for. So, more specific than mere “tolerance” is respect … ”

[Post Note : And a powerful follow-up from Sam @Elizaphanian.]