I believe that the revolution in personal connectivity and information technologies offers amazing potential. Many more people can now access much more knowledge and (lived) experience, but there has not been a corresponding change in civic or deliberative processes (if these are even defined in the public mind). During periods of rapid change, and technical progress, there is greater need and greater potential to make better sense of the world as individuals and better decisions collectively…But how?
I believe that ‘A crowd sourcing, sense making application, registering and reflecting on the things we care about, the things we do and how we affect others is the best way to prepare the ground for better collective decisions’. Where by ‘better’ I mean decisions which have a higher human value outcome.
Although I don’t think this belief is difficult or controversial, it is a principle of the approach I am taking that ‘a sound byte is not enough’ e.g. different individuals can say the same thing for different reasons and can have the same reasons for saying something different… So to collaborate constructively over ideas (beliefs, norms, expectations, world views) …it is best (to the extent practical) to understand and address those ideas in the context of each and every individual (something previously not possible).
In line with this principle (personalising understanding), I’m going to relate some of the insights and influences that have made my belief (in croud sourcing human values and sharing prospects in a social learning environment) so compelling for me.
NICE principles
I have a lot of respect for the process embedded in the UK National Institute for Clinical Excellence which allocates resources in the NHS in proportion to drug and medical treatment efficacy.
The proposed Value and Prospects system aims to evaluate and compare Prospects rather than treatments, but both systems seek to identify the best way to maximise the human value of outcomes.
By definition; ‘Economics is the study of the distribution of scarce resources’.
In both traditional market economics and the NICE system, resources are limited. However a Market system will tend to respond mostly to the demands from those people who have the most and can pay the most. In contrast the National Institute for Clinical Excellence applies an egalitarian-economic process in which medical resources are allocated in proportion to the expected benefit irrespective of the ability to pay of the recipient.
The NICE system depends on a calculation of the cost, per quality-adjusted-life-year gained (QALY). If there were an economics of human value ‘Valuenomics’ and a sub branch ‘Macro Valuenomics’ purely for issues concerning the whole lives of large numbers of people (say – over 10 million) then the NICE QALY could serve as a reasonable general unit of human value for large scale planning.
Considering so called ‘Soft Issues’
Often business managers initiate improvements that require significant mental effort, flexibility, enthusiasm, engagement and adjustment from their workforce. In this business improvement context, “Soft Issues” has become a term for the human-centred aspects of change management, such as employee behaviours, motivations, morale and organisational culture.
It now seems glaringly obvious, but many early Information Technology failures, resulted from inadequate consideration for (and consultation about) how users think and feel, how they behave, what they expect and their motivations. People, quite understandably, misunderstand, work around, complain about or simply reject, abuse and refuse to use… software and systems that do not ‘make sense’ to them.
A classic example of the failure to consider soft issues would be the building of high rise flats after the second world war – actually degrading the social lives of the transplanted slum communities they rehoused.
Soft Issues and scale: Within smaller groups (8 people say) there can be an unspoken, intuitive understanding of ‘soft’ issues facilitating initiatives. In small to medium scale projects it can be possible to ‘tag on’ a nuanced communications, training and education package to mitigate for their impacts. However a much more general and scalable option is to consult and engage the stakeholders…encouraging them to genuinely participate, contribute their learnings, steer those aspects that affect them directly. In workshops and communications they will hopefully be exposed to the people and situations where the new system will benefit others.
‘Progress’ is almost always about hearts as well as minds..
At large scales and for broad societal or civilisational scopes, we can move way beyond simply managing soft-Issues, as a means to an end (predefined by the management team or the business structure). At large scales (long time periods or large nmbers of people) it becomes appropriate to consult on the ends of the initiative as well as the means. Facilitating the social deliberation and sense making around what ends to persue and harvesting physical expressions of the human values and cultural movements that emerge from that deliberation is the purpose of the Value Prospecting process I want to denonstrate.
Proportionality and Justice
I spent a couple of years examining, re-programming and validating the legal agreements for allocating hydrocarbon revenue streams between groups of collaborating owner/producers sharing (commingling) production facilities (this can be called Hydrocarbon Accounting).
I have had to think about, and understand the ways in which commercial advantage, fairness and mutual benefit have been described in legal terms (sometimes obscure, sometimes technically challenging). And how these have been or can be translated into arithmetic algorithms.
It was not always clear to me whether these contracts were in principle distributing costs and benefits fairly and equally (‘cost sharing’, ‘mutually beneficial’, ‘equitable’), or whether at times the legal teams were negotiating competitively for teh (short term) advantage of a particular partner group.
There are some parallels in how we define and achieve social, inter-generational or resource justice. Rawls principle of difference (link) sets an interesting benchmark for comparison with purely commercial cost/benefit proportionality.
Shared Infrastructure Case study: Personnel tracking systems
Providing a public web application to support better shared decision making is just one example of the need for shared ‘whole system’ software based infrastructure. It is a theme of this post and site that there is a general need for more web based societal infrastructure and a systemic inclusive approach.
Infrastructure Case Study ‘Vantage POB’
In the UK North Sea context, the personnel tracking system called ‘Vantage POB’ is a very successful example of industry wide software infrastructure. I played a small part in the testing and rollout of this system.
Vantage POB was originally designed by North Sea operators following the deaths of 167 people in the Piper Alpha disaster in 1998. It replaced multiple propriety systems, using the best features of each, standardising, simplifying and adding important new systematic safety and competence functionality, for less cost.
Having a single central database is ‘holistic’, enabling the system to provide definitive lists of personnel for incident management across the UK North sea. It ensures the safety training and professional competence. Certification of offshore workers is kept up to date. It also ensures that offshore workers are being given sufficient time off for their well being / avoiding burnout and the increased probabiilty of (potentially fatal) mistakes. The working time directive (ensuring time off) is a UK (and I believe EC) legal requirement.
Shared Infrastructure: General Needs
I suppose the general question we need to keep asking is “Is there now or in the near future any software infrastructure we could build that :-
(1) Would improve things for society or the future
(2) That no one is taking responsibility for?”
For example, I would say that the case and potential for widespread public engagement in sharing our values and prospects on the web (‘social deliberation’) is clear and self evident. I am simply saying that we should be applying the wisdom of crowds to the concerns of society. Why would we not do that? If this prospect is so clearly worthwhile, then who is taking responsibility?
Are governments prepared to allow thinking, sense making and the public agenda on the web to be defined by private (for profit) corporations? Is that what we want? In a way that is what politicians are used to..
Of course the old media was not immune to headline seeking and political manipulation. We have to admit that politicians and newspapers in the UK (and elsewhere) do not act independently, but work as a system for their own mutual benefit in addition we hope to the public good.
Holistic solutions for Holistic problems
It seems almost essential to apply a systemic, holistic approach to global problems (stewardship, health, poverty, migration, climate, diversity) where these problems are symptoms of whole system constraints. It seems as though the best way to think about and describe solutions (Circular / Regenerative / Cradle2Cradle design) often involves a holistic perspective or paradigm. This Initiative seeks to represent the shared and long term human and societal values of everybody on earth. And to be extendible to provide some representation for the values of people not yet born, by assuming that some of their values are similar to our own for instance – their wish to have the opportunity of a lifetime.
The significance of Cultures and Behaviours
1995 was the time I started to accommodate the understanding that ‘the public good’ and decision making, within companies and communities, often depends on cultures, behaviours, habits, perception and expectation, occasionally overriding reasoned argument and the influence of the rational actor.
It had taken me a long time.
Whilst still programming for data analysis, I was (maturing) evolving, away from a purely technical task oriented focus, towards a people and process centered view.
Corporate or Company Values (General…)
In a systemic approach, Company values would be incorporated into a single system including Universal, Inter-generational, Global, Societal and Community values. A holistic approach would be capable of adjusting, reconciling, developing and integrating until a balance is reached between the values and responsibilities of the citizens, companies, groups and governments.
Publishing Company Values can be socially progressive
When businesses publish their values and mission statements, they effectively initiate (or at least invite) public discourse about the actions and decisions they perform on our behalf.
We should acknowledge that there is a ‘value landscape’ or context within which company values fit…
It would be logically inconsistent for a company to demand that its employees adopt and adapt to company values, if that company did not also adopt and adapt to societal values.
One way to do this is to simply include the public in the debate (‘building a relationship’). Giving the public an open channel not just regarding the company values, but regarding the products and services that align with those values. Including the public and employees in the generation of value aligned new products and services. Circularity can be applied to product and service ideas, being conceived by and for people, produced by companies and consumed by people.
The value debate can lead beyond activity modification to product and service innovation.
Inclusive collaborative public decision-making becomes a practical possibility, harvesting thoughts and ideas not just from employees and customers but from the public in general and giving a voice to all those (previously disenfranchised) affected by their operations.
Although these dialogs can or could be very inclusive they do not include future generations, who would need special provision if they were to be represented.
Corporate Values in Shell UK
Explicit, corporate, company values and mission statements first made an impression on me in 1995 nearly 15 years after I started work.
At this time, in response to the Brent Spar controversy, Shell invited a self selected group of 150 or so employees and contractors to a five day workshop. We had a blank sheet but the general objective was to outline and respond to the implications and meanings of ‘sustainability’ for the organisation.
This form of ‘grass roots’ initiative, the people and the work were exciting, life affirming and (I think) effective, especially in changing culture. It’s not a coincidence that the Value / Prospecting application is also a form of citizens assembly.
The Shell mission statement at the time ‘Helping build a better world’ must have made an impression on me too, being very similar to the URL chosen for the project website.
From 1995 onwards, Corporate Social Responsibilities felt increasingly prominent in all the large companies, internally and externally / publicly.
Ref: Shell: Struggling to Build a Better World? Tangen, Kristian The Fridtjof Nansen Inst.
I found the Shell work culture, professional, safety oriented, meritocratic and caring, they took stewardship and all their responsibilities deeply seriously.
Shell’s work culture contrasted with my personal impression of the public ‘zeitgeist’ throughout the 1980s in the UK (and I think America), i.e. that the acquisition of money and power by individuals (‘Greed is good’) were being promoted and celebrated politically (together with entrepreneurship) without a sense of any additional social responsibility, or any sense that more productivity might be a better source of wealth than simply taking from weaker elements of society.
Ultimately the public commitment to Social responsibilities and Sustainability perspectives by Shell empowered everyone.
If I could develop a sound business case which utilised Shell’s core strengths and would also ‘Help build a better world’…then because of the public commitment, I had direct access to and would get a fair hearing from the Shell UK head, Mark Moody-Stuart.
Mark, myself, his company and the protesting public now shared a commitment to universal human values.
I would argue that this form of public commitment, presented now by so many companies, is not as clearly present in the mission statements of UK government institutions (which itself lacks a written constitution). I would argue that this lack of any clear standard or measure by which our UK government can be assisted or held to account has been assimilated by the UK public, who reflect, to a certain extent, in their personal actions and global impacts, this same rootlessness and lack of overall purpose and intentionality towards others. Why not provide a safe space where those that wish to can express their individual values – in the same way that large companies are now expected to do.
Corporate Values And Innovation Harvesting in Maersk Oil
My second profound encounter with Corporate value systems, was with the Maersk Oil company in 2005. At this time, I was sent (as a contractor) on a weeks residential course in Denmark to assimilate my new company’s new values. Interestingly one of our values ‘Constant Care’ was based on letters exchanged between senior founding family director/owners in 1946.
Maersk Oil measured performance against the company values in their annual target review and reflected progress in annual bonus schemes. They were genuinely very committed. They took values very seriously, and my engagement reflected that.
Values such as Constant Care, Humbleness/Listening, Uprightness/Honesty, Employees and Name/Reputation felt classic, traditional, practical and worthy, but inward looking.
In adopting an introspective approach, Maersk Oil overlooked the opportunity to build rapport with the public, tune their approach to public values and harness or harvest a wider range of ideas, energy and emotions.
In being introspective the vital links between social values, personal values and company values were less prominent. The creative focus of employees and their capacity to align and refresh company products, services and practices was reduced to this internal relm at a time when fresh outward looking thinking might also have been ‘better for society’ (e.g. selling Carbon Capture Services to the (rich) Germans to mitigate for their use of coal and gas)
Maersk Oil, did not explicitly integrate or link their internal company values program to a consideration of external societal values. In their defense societal values they were no doubt considered elsewhere, less publicly and sadly – without engaging the employees or the public to the level available.
Maersk Oil values …development work.
The arrival of the values and especially their inclusion in our performance criteria and bonus systems did mean that there was a dialog with management.
At one assessment stage we (employees) marked down the company performance on ‘Sustainability leadership’, and oddly – in response, the leadership simply asked us to discuss the meaning of the company value involved at departmental meetings.
This seemed confused and I wanted to help, by being constructive.
Looking at the value system as a process, and as an application developer I wanted to define a simple behavioural model (how do we change, what do we change, why do we change) and see if there were any ways we could make the values themselves more effective, more compelling, more inclusive…
I decided to concentrate on (Daniel Kuhneman’s) ‘fast thinking’ (more emotional) component of human decision making, hoping to ‘prime’ the employees responses with frequent visual (or audio) cues presented instead of the computer screen saver graphic.
The method I wanted to use to engage stakeholders was to ask employees voluntarily to suggest pictures and snippets of sound that represented the company values to them, with an explanatory narrative and a supporting discussion / dialog / forum.
From this register of suggested pictures and sounds, we could all vote for and mark up (by doing what is now called ‘liking’) our favourites.
The company screensaver would display these pictures (maybe not the sounds) and a title whenever the screensaver was switched on (whenever we left our desks). Showing the most liked pictures most often in a randomised but democratic way.
This was a genuine attempt to redress the fact that the values had been assigned to us without consulting us. This was a way to make the values, relevant and compelling to the workforce, and to trigger ongoing reflection about their interpretation and meaning.
In case you are wondering, I did not address the slow thinking (rational) component of engineering decision making because, generally speaking, engineering design decisions defer to mature professional standards and written procedures which tend to be (in Maersk and Skandinavia in general IMO, like Shell) thoughtful and thorough.
All processes of design, change the designer, and my takeaway from this project was a feel for collective dialog, idea and the pro-social registration linking self expression and democratic engagement. Aspects of this sensitivity are present in the proposed Value Prospecting application.
Innovation Harvesting at Maersk Oil
Nearly all companies welcome innovation and many have formal processes to encourage and reward new ideas from within the company (Suggestion Schemes, Idea Boxes etc.)
Innovation Hubs develop this idea and bring together a mix of physical spaces, digital platforms, talent development programs, and innovation methodologies to foster a culture of creativity, experimentation, and entrepreneurship..
Quote from Maersk Innovation Hub
“Maersk is focusing on increasing its diversity of thought by attracting a new breed of talents from the widest possible pool”.
Here again we can see a commitment that logically extends to the inclusion of the public in contributing to and engaging in the design of products and services that ultimately are performed in-service-to-humankind..
In about 2015 all Maersk employees were invited to contribute to the interior design of their (cutting edge) Innovation hub in Copenhagen. I suggested agenda setting screen displays showing solution ideas and innovations alongside the key drivers or problems they addressed. These could be as general/conceptual as values or as specific as corrosion and dirty fuels in Shipping (which paradoxically kept the world cooler).
Although I did not emphasise it, my design was intended in principle to be shareable (electronically) in order to engage offshore employees, global employees, and ultimately the general public.
Of course the representation of Values and Prospects in the Value Prospect application takes these ideas a step further. It could be described as a twin (democratic) register of Values and Prospects with interlinking assessments, discourse and dialog alongside a largely schematic, non verbal InfoGraphic relating them.
Why promote Values/Deconfliction
Human groups seem (to me) to have a natural ability to interact collaboratively and (at other times) antagonistically (fighting). We might expect them to apply one or the other strategy (or a mix) depending on which was likely to be the most effective (all things considered).
In this project I am looking to identify how and how much emphasising common freqently shared (if not universal) human drives and shared individual and societal values.
I believe that when conflicts arise (over e.g. resources) we can often (with help) re-imagine the conflict scenario (de-polarising) using an uncontentious and ideally a pre-agreed framework (e.g. maximising the human value of outcomes). A bitterly divorcing couple may be reminded to take the interests of the child as paramount, finding in teh long run that it helps them too.
Have you ever told your Representatives what you want?
– and how would we do that anyway?
I want a government and administration that acts and allocates resources, rationally, proportionately and efficiently for ‘the common good of humanity’. It should be able to justify it’s actions in terms of benefits to current and future, national and global citizens, and identify any trade offs between these groups. I want my government to maximise national, global and future wellbeing – by securing and increasing sustainable living space in the long term and reducing inequalities and conflict. It should execute a measurable plan to treat increasing numbers of current and future citizens, increasingly fairly and justly over time and report on all the parameters stated here, annually, in a social impact assessment of it’s work.
Of course it is hypocritical of me not to act in the same way.
Lets separate two of the variables – dividing the things we want to say to our representatives into two parts. Defining outcomes that we wish to achieve (even if we don’t know exactly how to achieve them). Describing our reaction to concrete initiatives that are in the public agenda at this time.
So
SO: ‘What is ‘the common good’?
In this project the common good is a treated as a ‘cultural construct’. That is, we all contribute to defining it. One of the most important objectives of this project is to demonstrate how a picture of the common good can be constructed democtratically as an outcome of a dialog developing a shared register of things that everyone cares most about.
Even if we know what the common good looks like…Does any single individual have the judgement to evaluate all the impacts of all national projects, strategies and initiatives and rank them correctly for best outcomes (measuring against ‘the common good’)?
I suggest this is very rare. In most issues of national, international and intergenerational significance we need to collaborate, place some trust in processes that have a reasonably successful track record. We are probably going to that are probably going to involve people who are expert in the relevant fields., using processes that have a reasonably successful track record.
Weighing up all aspects and all probable impacts of national and global industrial development, infrastructural investment, education, support for sports and the arts, local charity vs international aid etc. is technically and ethically complex. Yet it is the commonplace everyday work of our political and economic systems.
In many ways for long term initiatives with large time scales and scopes, the language of values is better for defining the general intention, the desirable outcomes.
Of course it is possible to direct creative thinking, youthful enterprise, initiative and enterprise purely in a reaction mode, responding to problems as they occur. However directing these creative processes intentionally to ‘make things better’ involves knowing what ‘good’ is, knowing what is of value in the long term.
Weighing up all aspects and all probable impacts of national and global industrial development, investment, education and aid strategies is technically and ethically complex. Yet it is the commonplace everyday work of our political and economic systems. Do they distribute and allocate scarce resources efficiently, justly and effectively? How do they know where to invest, .
It is a balancing act which depends on the judgement of our governments about how selfish we are, and judging from their election campaigns they think we are materialistic, short sighted and mean.
If we would prefer them to get the balance right, we had better tell them what we think. To know what we think, we had better know how easily and how much we affect or could improve the lives of others…
We need to communicate and to educate ourselves collectively, that is what owning our agenda would look like, a fascinating, meaningful, relevant, emotional getting to know discovery of ourselves and others.
‘The public agenda’ or ‘Our public agenda‘
I am privileged to live in a relatively democratic country, where my politicians depend on popular support. In practice, this makes people partly responsible for developing the progressive ideas normally defered to ‘Leaders’. Our representatives cannot also be Leaders, because they are forced to follow public opinion in order to remain popular/garner votes.
Whatever sort of society (or change) we want, of course, we can and should tell our representatives. We also, critically, need to present our cares and concerns in the public arena wherein they can sink or swim in a ‘forum for fair and profound consideration’. So would an intenyionally designed ‘forum for fair and profound consideration’ be like? How hard would it be to promote fairer more balanced forums than the prevailing social media applications, saturated as they are with short term attention triggers and consumerist advertising.
One answer, the answer presented here is to provide a public space where concrete and conceptual projects and prospects can be presented along side the values which we wish our initiatives to express.
In values we can have agency and self expression without needing or impeding technical expertise.
So why don’t we try to describe our values rather than their policies
I want to live in a world that is fair and plans ahead. A world that maximises the number of beings that get the opportunity of a lifetime. Considering and planning to mitigate the existential risks to humankind over the lifespan of our ‘humanosphere’.
I want to live in a world that, in so much as it can, adjusts its lifestyles and material expectations to express as much as possible a form of love or caring. Caring for those born in poverty or pain, those born less fortunate, those that could be born but cannot be because we have used the necessary resources for something less important. I want to live in a world where the administration views the lives of other nationals, and of people who could live in the future, as equal in value to my own life, equal in value to the life of my children and my friends children’s lives.
Does this sound far fetched? What in practical terms am I asking the politicians to do, in terms of legislation, culture, action, spending?
!!!!UNDER CONSTRUCTION!!!!
As a cause and consequence I have never felt the political, business and cultural agendas of my communities to be fully effective. I believe that we are all or most, more or less intent on doing some good, not as far as we are aware, doing harm (or minimising it)..
And of course a great deal of what I (and many others) would call ‘good’ has emerged in those 66 years
Glasnost, Nuclear Disarmament, Civil rights, Poverty reduction, Global Stewardship, Science and technology (Genetics, cheap widespread Digital Communications and Information systems, Low pollution energy system options).
One of the lessons of old age is that you are and were, almost never alone.
BUT HOW DO YOU REPRESENT YOUR VALUES EXACTLY, can you say on any one policy issue, what should be, am I an expert in anything except perhaps myself and with some experience of some small part of the engineering world that I worked in.
My idea of a democratic decision is one in which all those affected by that decision have influence over the decision in proportion to the degree they are affected by that decision…So, let’s say I write that down and send it to my representative.
It is clear that this is a societal or civilisational objective or value (enhanced democratic rights, enfranchising the disenfranchised, providing rights to future generations).
It is extremely unclear though, how this translates into the sort of administrative, legal or societal norms or initiatives that a politician or administrator can implement.
What on earth am I asking my representatives to do exactly?
I don’t know.
I don’t have to know
Very personal perspectives / Early Influences;
Twenty three years before the first IBM PC, my life began, like everyone’s, with my family in Liverpool…
They were ‘Tea total’, ‘Non smoking’… I was encouraged to go to a Methodist church as an infant. It is a deliberately simple and plain church. I am still inclined personally towards a plain, minimalist, unadorned material life, seeking pleasure in outdoor leisure and meaning in service to others.
Sustainability and the circular economy were not the preoccupations of my childhood. More likely cultural influences were… The Cold War, residual Class wars, Mutually Assured Destruction, Third World poverty…The White Heat of technology, the Transistor radio, the Pill, the Beatles, Pop, Rock and Folk musical culture (Urban Poverty, Dust Bowl Protest songs), Woodstock, Oil price cartels, the Cuban Missile crisis, Men on the Moon, The Assassinations of John and Martin, the Korean and Vietnamese wars, Nationalism/Tribalism, Discrimination, Racism, Apartheid.
Key teenage influences
We moved to a small village in between Manchester and Sheffield when I was ten. It is a great place for an outdoor life (walking and rock climbing). Mum and Dad read the Guardian, but probably would have voted Liberal (I didn’t ask). I devoured the new scientist every week, read my way through Narnia, E Nesbit, Thomas Hardy, Tolkien laterly (any) Science fiction, the Russian Novelists (trying to understand), Kafka. The author I aligned with most closely pre university would have been economist Schumacher (Small is Beautiful. Intermediate Technology), together with Francis Moore Lappe (Diet for a Small Planet) and perhaps The Club of Rome (The limits to Growth). I ate vegetarian at school – to provide more living space / reduce resource footprint.
I was inclined to think that the developed world needed to adopt third world resource efficiency (that ‘we’ had something to learn from ‘them’). That ‘Intermediate Technology’ and a modesty in our personal material ambitions would be better for the overall global population.
I had interests and concerns related to energy sources and policy and about global and inter generational inequality.
I went to Uni to study Naval Architecture, because I love engineering, boats and the sea. With the short term (5 year plan)… to understand, investigate and promote ocean based ‘alternative’ energy systems (Tidal, Wave, Thermal, Ocean current).
Is there a ‘Human Project’? When did I decide to work for it? What is it?
I suppose that as a child and while at school, I (naively) took it on trust, that there would be a plan (what we now call ‘a road map’), laying out, roughly anyway, what we needed to do. What Britain needed, what humanity globally needed…
Billy Brandt (The Brandt Report) came closest with (IIRC) a commitment for the North/West to give 2% aid to the Third world. A commitment I’m not sure we ever met and even when money was ‘given’ with one hand – it often seemed to be ‘tied’, that is the money would be gifted provided it was spent on goods and services from my own country.
In part this ‘Human Value Prospecting’ application is my response to the disappointment of realising that no such intentional ‘Human Project’ plan existed then or now. If this project were even partially successful it would represent such a roadmap on it’s opening/splash page.
I feel now that the complexity, order and occasional elegance of the systems we perceive in industry and society are not, purely or even mainly, intentional. That they result from a mixture of (a) some intelligent and conscious intent, (b) ‘blind evolution’ and (c) the emergent properties of the cultural and economic systems that have condensed around us
Institutions with ‘human project’ agendas:-
Although not as obvious to me in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, there were and are plenty of people and institutions with ‘human project’ agendas similar to those I had hoped lay behind Society, Government and Commerce.
The UN Declaration of Human Rights lays out an agenda worthy of vigilance and effort by all people for all time. However I am interested in inter-generational justice which they do not address.
I believe most of the people and beings we impact upon, live in the future and are underrepresented. The Value Prospecting system will provide their perspective.
During my late teens and university years (where I was interested in economics) I came across two influential philosophical ideas that resonated:-
Theories of Justice –John Rawls (link)
I know little about John’s philosophy (which has continued to develop) and have read very little of his. Nevertheless I have always carried with me a picture of an inter-generational parliament, populated by representatives from all times and places who have drawn down his ‘veil of ignorance’. The ‘veil of ignorance’ is John’s description of a mental state that magically, means that none of the delegates know where and when they are from. They can have no self serving bias other than the values of their age. They must sit and decide and define universal principles that it would be fair and reasonable to apply to all peoples for all time.
Existentialism – Jean Paul Sartre
Again I have only dipped into the surface of Sartre and de Beauvoir’s works (Camus, Salinger, Kerouac and more recently the film of ‘No Country for Old men’). Perhaps because of my ignorance I have carried with me a simple idea that still resonates.
‘Existence before essence’
…for me reinforces my intuition that we (or some of us) can take responsibility for who/what we become. That there is an indirect and ongoing element of conscious navigation and choice.
That as societies and individuals we have agency and plasticity (perhaps particularly during adolescence). That we can prefer the behaviours, attitudes, ways of being and ideas that we then assimilate and come to embody. And I suppose, conversely, if we do not consciously steer this process, that we will inevitably absorb and come to embody to some degree, the characteristics and agendas pushed by others.
After Uni…the world of work…
I was only really disabused of my faith/trust that ‘there was a sensible overall plan’ when I left University. I was qualified to address what I believed to be the most important global and societal issues…from an Engineering point of view at least…
In the absence of this plan (or a group) I had to decide what I thought it ought to be, and work towards it on my own.
Providing the means to life (living space’) now and in the future is an easily stated and almost universally acceptable objective. An objective that requires Energy, Resources, Knowledge, Technology, Research & Development, Education, Understanding, Communication and good Decision Support.
As as second (but no lesser) objective I wanted and want to address the needs of the global poor. I have difficulty articulating a rational explanation for the attitudes and behaviours of my friends and family and for the people of my country (and other rich nations), in the face global inequality and the clear, desperate and easily resolved needs of the global poor. This in particular taking into account that compound growth has made me, my country and my generation about 4 times richer within my lifetime.
So we have four times the capacity to do good and we just buy more stuff. WTF.
My primary concern at the beginning of the 80s was to reduce demand for energy and resources, to increase the supply of non polluting energy sources. I didn’t feel confident that I could research effectively enough to remove grant money from other worthy causes.
I took a job (in the oil business) working 2-4 weeks at a time with 2-4 weeks off. This gave me the time and resources to freelance projects I could do and would enjoy. Starting with the most resource intensive sectors Housing (what would now be called eco-houses) and Transport (micro cars).
I was anyway living in my beloved Scotland, with good friends, climbing, walking, cycling and skiing – it has been and is a wonderful life. It have had a life of experiences, natural beuty and technical progress and potential beyond imagining.
Jumping forwards a few decades, I was writing, operating or configuring database applications. Some of these experiences are touched on above.
And Now…What Next
Happily concerns with energy and resource usage and wastage are now being addressed in the main stream. Housing standards have been updated, Renewable Energy sources (at least Wind and Solar) are being introduced, Space heating and transport are being electrified. There is even a drive towards low resource cost diets.
What we have not addressed yet is the way in which we make societal and civilisational choices. We have not addressed global poverty or inter generational justice. We are not applying knowledge to adjust civilisations course in order to pre-empt or mitigate for global constraints. Rather we are reacting to predictable emergencies of our own making. We are not applying resources rationally and proportionately for the maximisation of the good to humankind or to the good of all living beings.
Arguably the political ‘climate’ has regressed in the last 5-10 years, under stress, shifting towards a more dangerous, selfish tribal nationalism.
Arguably too on the web, the mixture of information and misinformation, the role of influencers, advertising and the emergence of an attention economy do not seem to have brought about an increase in global understanding or lifestyles that are kinder or more rational (or both).
What next – is up to us, to you and me.
Just in case it is not clear by now…My suggestion is that the most important thing we can do is to develop societal infrastructure on the web. Including deliberative tools that express human values, and prospects, and their impacts in a way that supports social learning and perspective taking….
But. What do you think? And more importantly. What do we think?
…and how would we know, what ‘we think’… without the proposed system or something like it?