Category Archives for "Purpose"

0 Spiritual Awareness

I can remember Alistair Hardy’s book, “The Biology of God”, published in 1966.  I must have read it in the early seventies and I read it because it had the word Biology in the title.  If memory serves it relates stories of spiritual awareness and argues that spirituality is biologically determined.  This does not imply the truth of any particular tradition, just that there are biological reasons why we have such experiences.

Awareness

David Hay mentions Hardy in his paper “The Spirituality of Adults in Britain – Recent Research” , one of the references in Gordon Ferguson’s recent comment on my post Spiritual Assets.  Gordon writes:

Spirituality is not just about ‘paying attention’ or awareness, but about the response to what the attention reveals – spirituality is relational. David Hay called spirituality ‘relational consciousness’ … and contrasts it with individualism.  The individual stops with just the attention and then leaps straight to the political.

In my reply I suggested paying attention, or awareness, is an essential precursor to caring or love or empathy.  I’ve given this more thought and wish to shift my ground somewhat.

Awareness is a single act, not the first step in a chain of activities that results in caring.  Gordon refers to a Wikipedia entry about the Ethics of Care.  This mentions Tronto’s four ethical elements of care: attentiveness, responsibility, competence and responsiveness.  I don’t think this is a sequence, they are four elements that need to be in place for care to happen.  The problem with such lists, apart from the polysyllabic psychobabble, is they break down what is essentially a single act.

Caring or Loving?

Gordon argues:

The response that spirituality brings is one of ‘care’. … I think ‘care’ is better than ‘love’ since the word ‘love’ has been far to abused and misused. ‘Care’ is also the term used by feminists – it is men that leap straight to the political – women, routed in caring community, are more sensible.

So, the argument seems to be paying attention brings something to mind and then the observer makes a choice to take a political or a caring route.  Gordon implies caring can be followed by politics but politics alone does not hack it.

The inadequacies of the English word love have often been highlighted.  New Testament Greek has three words for love.  Translating all these using one word makes nonsense of some passages.  I’m not sure any of the three readily translates as caring but there you go.  I would not use caring to describe this response or outcome of awareness.

Obedience

The word I would use to describe the response to awareness is obedience.    There is another issue with translation here.  The word obedience has a Latin root that means to listen.  The opposite of obedience is not disobedience but it is to act inappropriately as a result of not paying attention.  Obedience is not about doing as you are told but it is to respond appropriately to the situation, which might include someone barking orders at you.

Awareness demands obedience.  When I walk past someone begging in the street, I see them and avoid them.  If I was truly aware of their humanity I would do something for them.  So, paying attention or awareness is not passive, it demands obedience and that obedience is at the same time caring and political.

Christians would argue you can see this radical obedience in the stories of Jesus.  We see it too in the painstaking experimental approach of the scientist and where those who see something is wrong set out to fix it.  Sometimes circumstances force awareness onto someone, who might lose a loved one and fight to make sure the cause of their loss does not endanger others.

Mutual Affection?

One special case is those who notice how our landscapes slowly change over the decades.  The elderly may reminisce, indulge in nostalgia but I suspect many wrestle with working out how the world has changed.  We do not see how money leaves the local economy because many of us do not remember a time when it was different.  This motivates those who do see it and there are many ways to the same conclusion, to seek ways to change the status quo and find ways to retain money locally.

Is this the same as Hay’s “relational consciousness”?  Well holy obedience is certainly relational, it is a life lived for the good of community, nurturing the relationships that build community.  But as Hay puts it:

Spirituality demands more than functionality and organisation, it can only flourish in an atmosphere of mutual affection.

3 A Brief History of Computing

Today I’m moving to a new topic, still under the general heading of spirituality. The new theme is the relationship between spirituality and computing. Whilst I will dwell on the Internet in later posts, it is important to understand what computing actually is. Hence I offer today a brief history of computing.

A computer is something that computes. What we call computers are a special case of something far more important to human society. People compute and one big advantage they have over machines is they (usually) understand what they are doing.

Indeed there would be no computing at all if people didn’t do it. So, everything we might call a computer is in fact an aid to human computing. Without us machines would have nothing to do!

Number Systems

Number systems are not machines but they are a great help to computing. They help us follow consistent rules and that means it is possible for machines to follow them.

People still use many simple number systems today. Various tally systems (sometimes called five barred gates) through to elaborate counting systems such as the one in the video, are still used and always will be.

Many counting system are based on letters of the alphabet. The Roman number system is the best known letter-based system. It is still used on some clocks and ordered lists. The main problem was some complex calculations, eg division!

I understand the Arabic number system originated in North India, developed by Hindus. The Christian Church of the East took it into the heart of the great Islāmic empire in the Middle East. From there Islam carried it into North Africa and from there to Spain. Europeans first encountered it as the Arabic number system.

We can see in this story the degree of collaboration between different cultures, as they improved their computing skills.

Engineers also benefitted from mathematical progress. Until pocket calculators and personal computers, engineers, scientists and teachers often carried a slide-rule in their pockets. These used logarithms and at school we had to understand them, laboriously converting maths problems into logs, adding or subtracting and then converting them back again.

Computing Machines

The other thing we might associate with these times is computing machines. The abacus was essential because the Roman numeral system made paper calculations too difficult. The abacus was actually rather efficient and big computations could be done by simply linking together several abaci and their human operators.

We should not make the mistake of thinking people were unable to carry out complex calculations. Computation might take longer and need a lot of people but it could be done.

Another mistake to avoid is the idea that there is straight line evolution of computers. Many machines in the early industrial revolution were programmable. Punch cards controlled some looms, for example, just like the earliest computers.

Indeed Ada Lovelace, the world’s first programmer, helped Charles Babbage program his first difference engine and it is likely programmable looms inspired her approach.

Babbage’s difference engine was in principle the first computer, although in practice it was difficult to build because he could not manufacture the parts to the required tolerance.  His later analytical engine proved impossible to build for the same reason.

Later developments included mechanical and electromechanical calculating machines.

Early Computers

The earliest computers used valves and later solid state circuitry. The problem was heat and while in principle it was possible to reduce the size of a university computer to that of an orange, it would need to kept in liquid nitrogen! Silicon chips in the late seventies changed all that and paved the way to personal computing, the Internet and mobile phones.

Next time I’ll look in more depth at how computers work.

In the meantime, share any thoughts or ideas about the history of computing here.

3 Spiritual Assets

In the last six posts I have drawn on my experience of community development to discuss the six kinds of asset identified by Asset Based Community Development (ABCD).

Maybe they don’t mention spiritual assets because all assets are spiritual. However, spirituality is important to help us find assets in our communities.

One common mistake is to think of spirituality as something inchoate, out there. Spirit floats around, influencing us in certain difficult to define ways.

Paying Attention

This is fantasy, not spirituality. I’ve suggested in a previous post that spirituality is paying attention. Perhaps we could say spirituality draws our attention to things and embodies meaning in things. Science often gets the blame for disenchanting the world. Science works because scientists pay attention.

No, it is the false spirituality that opposes the spiritual and material that disenchants the world.

It is easy to plan bleak housing estates through utilitarian analysis, where everyone gets exactly what they need to be happy. It doesn’t work and never has.

So, what does work? People live meaningful lives in communities where people work together to contribute to their local economy. The neo-liberal mindset associates wealth with the corporations, who draw wealth out of our neighbourhoods. They don’t see the sustainable wealth rooted in every neighbourhood.

Unstructured Meeting Places

The first priority of every neighbourhood is to provide the spaces in which community takes place. Unstructured meeting places allow people to identify problems and new opportunities. It is where care for those who need it can be worked out.

This is not to say we must isolate every neighbourhood from the world. Each neighbourhood has its unique combination of assets and these form the offers it makes to other neighbourhoods. Residents work in other neighbourhoods and contribute to their local economies.

We must see the economy not as corporations and financial markets. An economy that supports everyone is fractal. Each small part has smaller parts that contribute to the whole. This way we have an economy able to withstand fluctuations; the failure of one business should have a limited impact.

Spirituality and Economics

It is interesting that as we understand spirituality as immaterial and somehow out there, we do the same to economics. These days we conceive it as something that happens between stock exchanges and mediated by machines. We see “boom and bust” market fluctuations and think they are a law of nature.  “Boom and bust” is inevitable if unaccountable people gamble on financial markets.

How can we help local economies resist the fluctuations generated by the formal economy? There are experiments with local currencies and other approaches to make an economic space in which local economies can grow.  These are the means to can capitalise on previously unrecognised local assets.

If they are going to work, it means we need to pay attention to the local assets that can build each neighbourhood into the new national localised economy.

If you know of any experiments designed to support local economies, why not share them here?

0 The Stories and Heritage of Local Places

This is the final post in a sequence where I’ve drawn on my community development experience to consider six categories of community assets.  It focuses on the stories and heritage of local places. You can find the full list of categories towards the end of my post, What Are Community Assets?  stories and heritage

Of all the six types of local assets I’ve considered, this one most directly addresses my underlying theme of spirituality. It’s not that stories and heritage are more spiritual than the other types of asset, so much as we tend to associate stories with spirituality more than we do hillsides or buildings.

Stories

I have discussed the value of stories in earlier posts and so it should be no surprise that just as businesses benefit from a story they use for their branding, so neighbourhoods benefit from the stories its residents and those nearby tell about it.

Pitsmoor

I live in a neighbourhood with two names. People who live in Pitsmoor use its original name, although it has a poor reputation. No-one wants to live in Pitsmoor because it is a place where there is crime, mostly related to drugs. Not so long ago South Yorkshire police had four armed response vehicles and assigned one to be deployed solely in Pitsmoor.

A few years ago the city’s newspaper had a front page headline that said the police has advised a potential house buyer not to live in Pitsmoor. It turned out it was a lay receptionist who had said this and arguably the vendors did more damage than the people who pulled out of the sale, by going to the paper.

But the residents of Pitsmoor tell a different story. It is a community that welcomes immigrants and refugees. This means part of the population constantly turns over but many people commit to the area for life and positively love living here.

Burngreave

Burngreave on the other hand is a well-to-do place and this can be seen in the many town houses that used to be owned by owners of the steel industries that surround the area. There is an air of faded gentility about the place.

Burngreave is the name of the ward and residents are sometimes chided for not respecting the area by calling it by its proper name. When the national government decided to spend £50 million on the area, it went to Burngreave and not Pitsmoor, even though the money did not go to all the Burngreave Ward but pretty much solely to Pitsmoor.

Stories Matter

I don’t expect you to follow all this. The point is every neighbourhood tells its own story. The story of Pitsmoor is further complicated by the many migrant communities. Some are new and others have been there for generations. Each brought their own stories into the area and has a story to tell about their experience of life in the area.

All these stories matter. They have a direct impact on the area. When the local paper tells people not to live in Pitsmoor it makes a difference. Whether that is a positive or negative difference is hard to tell.

The Wicker Arches, Sheffield’s Brandenburg Gates!

Note there is a difference between the stories told from outside the area and those told by local residents. The Wicker Arches are sometimes called Sheffield’s Brandenburg Gates, separating wealthy from poor Sheffield. I remember standing with my mother in the town centre, when I was very young, pointing towards the arches and asking “what’s down there?” “Nothing”, she answered.

That nothing is where I live now and pretty much everything to me.

Heritage

Heritage is the stories we tell about our neighbourhoods’ histories. Buildings and the spaces where buildings used to be, the routes of the roads; all embody the heritage of their place. The Roman Ridge, is a Roman thoroughfare that passes through Pitsmoor from the city centre to Greasborough in Rotherham.

Heritage is in the rivers and the associated industry. Thus Pitsmoor is a steel community and there are many clues in the buildings to its past glories. Some people remember a lot of this and others have memories imported into the area. Memories of persecution or of other cultures, other places with their own memories or heritage.

Heritage is the shared identity, an identity that belongs to everyone who lives here. Of course it is possible to live here and not be aware of its heritage. It is possible to shuffle past the buildings and never look above the thresholds of the shops and wonder when and why they were built.

Compare Sheffield with Scunthorpe. Scunthorpe is small-scale. It looks as if the town centre is a temporary place, where any day the population will up sticks and move on. Sheffield feels as if it has put down deep roots. Its city centre dwarfs Scunthorpe’s in every way.

But compare Sheffield with Manchester. The size and opulence of Manchester’s Centre makes Sheffield feel like a minor place.

Neither comparison is a value judgement. The differences originate from the histories of these three places. It is possible to prefer any of the three over the other two. But they are different and it is these differences that contribute to their identity.

History Matters

Sheffield’s history matters. The Hallam constituency, entirely within the city boundaries, is one of the wealthiest in the country. Why? Originally it was the captains of the steel companies and perhaps now the university and teaching hospital contribute. Does this wealthy area bring new industry to the city?

These massive contrasts of wealth and poverty across the city contribute to its local economies. Their influence  cannot be denied.

They are part of our heritage and form the stories we tell of our city and its neighbourhoods. Telling compelling stories about our neighbourhoods allows them an identity, drawing interest from businesses and customers.  It is important we tell the right stories that draw and don’t repel.

Can you tell stories of your place? How do they impact upon the local economy?

0 Economic Resources of Local Places

I’m drawing on my experience of community development to consider six categories of community assets, and the fifth is economic resources of local places. You can find the full list towards the end of my post, What Are Community Assets?

“Economic resources” is gloriously vague and so it’s worth asking what do we mean by the economic resources of local places?

Community development workers in England have not shown much interest in economic regeneration. Community audits rarely acknowledge the local economy. When people mention it, the focus is usually on community initiatives such as social enterprises.

Perhaps the radical 60s and 70s account for the origins of community development. Activists viewed the economy as a source of injustice. The economy certainly is a source of injustice, more so today than in the 60s and 70s. Perhaps things would be better today had we paid more attention to the economy in the past.

So, let’s take a look at some local economic resources, many perhaps peripheral to our understanding of our neighbourhoods.

Natural resources

Some places benefit from local natural resources, most notably perhaps in the coal communities that until recently were dependent on coal for most local income. They fought for a decent income from work in difficult and dangerous conditions over decades and in the UK coal imports wiped out most of these communities.

Steel communities grew from nearby reserves of wood, iron ore and water to power the earlier mills. These industries too were wiped out by cheaper imports.

Farming communities benefit from proximity to a variety of sources of income and so they are perhaps more robust. They are however similarly vulnerable to cheap imports. Older readers may remember Guernsey tomatoes being advertised. Today, if you travel around Guernsey you see empty greenhouses, their tomato industry is no more.

Perhaps ports and other centres of communications are beneficiaries of natural resources. Liverpool for example used to be wealthy through imports and is now not so wealthy as imports have declined.

Recent history suggests international trade is not always good news for communities. This is one reason many economists worry about the decline of manufacturing, which means there is less to export.

Parks, woodlands and other tourist attractions can also be seen as natural resources. They bring trade into an area.

Local Businesses

Large-scale industry is another source of local wealth. Billingham was for many years a relatively wealthy town, when ICI was the dominant industry. ICI is no longer there, although replaced by several smaller chemical factories. This has resulted in long-term unemployment in the area.

Note this started as a local business that combined with others to form ICI and so decision-making left the area. For several decades the economy in Billingham was pretty much dependent on ICI and the decline of the chemicals industry was a disaster.

The problem with many larger businesses is their locality becomes dependent on them and suffers when they are withdrawn. A more diverse local economy is likely to be more stable.

The success of small and medium-sized industry will depend upon the extent to which businesses can support one another. This is another reason a more diverse economy can be beneficial. Remember, smaller businesses are likely to have a shorter lifespan and so there will be a higher turnover.

Traders

Traders are often the first to spring to mind when we think about the local economy because they are visible businesses. People do not leave their homes to visit business parks but they may enjoy shopping in local centres where they meet friends and relax. Traders are just as dependent on industry as everyone else of course. Mass unemployment in a small areas is likely to put many retail businesses out of business as people spend less.

Traders are the backbone of any community. Other activities gravitate to the shopping centre so that residents can attend to other aspects of their lives in the same place. This has been the purpose of the marketplace for centuries and why large-scale out-of-town shopping centres seem so dead. Where shopping is the sole activity, there is little sense of community life. These centres draw people from all over, so it is less likely they bump into someone they know. They draw custom out of local centres and so put local traders out of business. This reduces the activity in local marketplaces so that many neighbourhoods seem dead.

Freelancers

Freelancers are often not noticed because they are not visible. Shops can be found in shopping centres, businesses in business areas and parks but freelancers often work from home and have little local presence.

If they are doing well and spend some of their income locally, they will have an impact on the local economy. Furthermore, if they seek out and support other local businesses, they may have an economic impact on the area beyond their apparent size.

The thing is freelancers are experimenting with new ideas. Many will not succeed but it is from small beginnings that significant businesses can grow.

Trade Associations

Associations of businesses are important because they are opportunities for businesses to meet that would otherwise never find one another. There are several kinds of association and I shall mention two.

Referral marketing associations are where smaller businesses can support each other. They are open to any business although there are associations specifically for larger businesses.

These are usually national organisations so that businesses can build relationships locally through meetings and nationally through online contact.

Local associations are where traders (usually) in a single centre meet to support each other’s businesses. Hunters Bar, for example, has an established traders association that does what it can to support small enterprises in the area.  Also freelancers who produce saleable products can sell them through the local shops.

Local associations may have a role to play in wider neighbourhoods. Hunters Bar’s community organisation, with the traders, organises a quarterly street market. The community association has their own agenda but recognise the contribution traders make to their neighbourhood.

Is it possible for community and business organisation to become natural allies? Share in the comments interesting examples you know about.

0 Physical Resources and Ecology

I’m drawing on my experience of community development to consider six categories of community assets, and the fourth is physical resources and ecology. You can find the full list towards the end of my post, What Are Community Assets?

Of course, physical resources include buildings and I wrote about buildings as assets in the first of this sequence. So, I will not explore them further here. Let’s turn instead to …

Geomorphology

Land

This includes the shape of the land; its hillsides and plains. If you don’t believe this is important, consider the plight of those who are experiencing repeated flooding. Flooding is to do with the shape of the land and land use.  This may have an impact on other areas. So, poor land use in one neighbourhood might lead to flooding in another.

The shape of the land determines its use.  Its shape determines routes through the land and the positions of buildings.  On hillsides, the larger houses will often face across the valley whilst poorer housing faces other houses along the hillside.  The well-to-do get better views, often at one time over the industry they own in the valley below.

Parks and views enhance neighbourhood identity and attracts visitors. Good walks can bring people into an area and local businesses benefit from their presence.  Sheffielders will tell you their city is built on seven hills.  I’m not sure how many hills there are but certainly walking the city, there are always interesting views across the valleys.

Rivers and other waterways can often form a focal point for an area. Canals always have a bridal path alongside and rivers are often associated with walks. These are good for pedestrians and can link neighbourhoods together. Waterways are usually closely related to the industrial history and heritage of an area and I’ll look at this in more detail in a later post.  Trying to track the course of a river and its tributaries can make for an interesting few hours, often leading into unfamiliar places at the back of the familiar.

Climate

Prevailing winds also decide the positions of housing.  Industry is often found downwind of better housing.

Land use is central to so much of our experience of a neighbourhood. The layout of the roads may help movement around the neighbourhood. Impassable multi-lane roads can break up a neighbourhood or cut it off from other neighbourhoods.

Urban Environment

It may be worth looking at the significant buildings in your area. If significant buildings are close together maybe they form a focal area for your neighbourhood. Are there ways in which that area can be made more attractive to new enterprises or businesses?

Industrial areas can be a blessing and a blight. Older industrial areas can be a fascinating resource of vernacular architecture. Buildings erected before prefabrication often display ornate brick and stonework under the grime. But more recent business estates can be, well, boring.

Example of street art by Phlegm, by the River Don.

Street art, not to be confused with graffiti, enhances many disused buildings. Street art is often practised inside disused buildings and what we see from the streets is usually there by arrangement with the owners. Perhaps the most famous street artist is Bristol’s Banksy but in Sheffield we enjoy the works of artists including Phlegm, Kid Acne and Faunagraphic. Whilst most people don’t travel to view street art, it enhances appearance and so adds to that sense of community identity.

The second part of Julian Dobson’s book, “How to Save Our Town Centres”, looks in some detail at the various types of land use that can make up a healthy town centre. Much the same applies to any neighbourhood.

Ecology

Pollution

Another issue in industrial areas is pollution. Perhaps we think of pollution as immediate and indeed it can be quickly distributed by waterways or in the air. However, polluted land can be most pernicious. In effect it restricts possible uses of the land. Polluted ex-industrial areas cannot be used for housing and so where there were large-scale factory areas, there is little that can be done to return them to residential use.

A challenge many communities face is the uses they can make of the spaces between. Polluted land limits these uses and land ownership can be a real headache. However, it is possible for communities to do a great deal with determination and otherwise limited resources. A good example is Todmorden’s Incredible Edibles, where local people grow food in any spaces they can find.

Trees and Plants

Indeed with guerrilla gardening, it is possible to find fruit trees and the like springing up in unexpected places. Cuts to local government services means local authorities sometimes need unofficial help to maintain flowerbeds. Whether they appreciate it is another matter.

Another great amenity is wayside trees and in Sheffield at present there is a massive struggle between the local authority and residents determined to save Sheffield’s trees. Wayside trees have a massive impact on the health of residents, their value is not just in their appearance. Sheffield is one of the most tree-lined cities in the country. Unfortunately, the Council has entered into a PFI contract with a company that cuts down mature trees, replacing them with small trees that won’t get in the way of their equipment. Currently residents are contemplating challenging the Council in the courts.

Deregulation

The problem here, as with so many corporate activities, is they subscribe to a narrow understanding of economics. The narrow view seeks to maximise profit to shareholders by making activities as economic for the company as possible. You would think the Council’s role would be to represent the interests of all who have an economic interest in the area and not only the interests of a single company.

Whilst it seems many people agree that there should be less red tape and theoretically believe regulation is a bad thing. When confronted with specific examples of what regulation protects, they often see the value of it. The assets of any neighbourhood do not lie solely in the activities of businesses. Maintaining and supporting land use that may seem unproductive can bring other benefits in the long-term. It may be easier to argue for areas such as ancient woodland but the same is true of oases of green in primarily urban and industrial areas.

If the bureaucrats win the argument and cut down most of Sheffield’s trees for reasons of economic efficiency, they will have changed the character of the city forever. They close off possibilities for the future so that they can save a few pounds now. Indeed we don’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone.

If you keep your eyes open, you will find many examples in your place of good and bad management of local physical resources and ecology.  Why not share them here?

1 Resources of Public, Private and Non-Profit Institutions

I’m drawing on my experience of community development to consider six categories of community assets, and the third is public, private and non-profit institutions. You can find the full list towards the end of my post, What Are Community Assets?

Last time I suggested local associations can be assets or liabilities and so can other organisations active in a neighbourhood.

If a neighbourhood has a social enterprise based there, committed to working for the benefit of the area, the chances are it will have extensive networks into all three of these types of organisation. Local partnerships can marshal resources and enable all interested parties to contribute to a single plan for the area. Find My Three Function Model for more details.

Community Plans

The Local Government Act 2000 in the UK required local authorities to publish a community plan. As far as I can tell no later Local Government Acts rescinded this legislation, although there is variation in the extent to which local authorities carry them out.

These community plans theoretically bring together all sectors, including community associations, to plan for their local area. What forms a local area, seems to vary from council to council. Some produce a single plan for the local authority area. Others base this plan on plans for neighbourhoods within the Local Authority.

These local plans are an opportunity to get all the sectors around the table to work out the best ways to deploy public sector resources. This may work if the local authority puts resources into making it happen; perhaps less likely to happen in this era of austerity.

It is harder to start this type of planning at neighbourhood level, because community associations and social enterprises do not usually command the resources local authorities can bring to the table.

However, creative community organisations and social enterprises can bring together partners to work on specific projects.

One of the dilemmas facing many community organisations is mission creep.  If an external organisation brings assets into a neighbourhood, how can the priorities of local residents be honoured under these circumstances?  Can you share stories of creative cross-sectoral work that affirms local priorities?  How did you get back on course after the inevitable drift away from local priorities?

0 Local Associations and the Power They Exercise

I’m drawing on my experience as a community development worker to consider ABCD’s six categories of community assets, and the second is local associations. You can find the full list towards the end of my post, What Are Community Assets?

I note that ABCD adds to local associations “and the power they exercise”. It is easy to experience the power local associations exercise as a liability. So, I’ll start with what can go wrong and go on to explain how their power can be an asset.

Where Does Their Power Come From?

Associations are essentially powerful and the power they exercise is through human minds. The Old and New Testaments identify this power as spiritual power. Angels and demons are not, as most people seem to think, independent beings living in some spiritual realm. They are manifestations of human organisations.

A healthy organisation has a healthy angel and an unhealthy organisation has an unhealthy angel or demon. If you are interested in exploring this further, try Walter Wink’s trilogy of books about the Powers.

The ancients understood the power of organisations in the sense that they empower or possess their members. A healthy organisation strengthens its members and enhances their lives but an unhealthy organisation can be demonic.

How Do Things Go Wrong?

I have seen this many times where the original aims of the organisation are a given and its members cannot see the reality they are in. They genuinely believe they are working for the ends they started with but they no longer know the truth of their activities. When challenged their response will be aggressive, because reality has to be kept at bay to maintain their vision.

Churches are prone to this and if you believe God is on your side, it is immensely difficult to jettison that delusion. To do so is, it seems, to stop believing in God; it is atheism. Atheism of course has its own demons. Not believing in them doesn’t mean they go away!

OK angels and demons may not be your cup of tea (they’re not really mine) but it is helpful to understand what they were before Medieval theologians and Hammer’s House of Horror got hold of them.

So, associations lose power through

Mostly organisations that lose power in these ways become unable to do anything significant. I’m sure much of the violence we see is such unhealthy activity of nations or organisations.

What Does  a Healthy Association Look Like?

0 Local Residents’ Skills

These posts draw on my experience of community development to consider six categories of community assets. This first starts with local residents’ skills. You can find the categories listed towards the end of my post, What Are Community Assets?

Skills Audits

Local residents’ skills might be the most obvious source of community assets, after buildings and equipment. They are in some ways harder to identify, let alone quantify. Here are some reasons for this:

Skills audits are an unmitigated pain. A pain for those who complete the skills audit form and even more of a pain for those who must analyse and make sense of the answers.

Usually you select skills from a long list, based on the needs of some other group of people. You stare at a sea of tick boxes and find you can find hardly any that you can do. You imagine that everyone else is ticking scores of boxes and you are the only person totally lacking these skills.  (The omnicompetent can happily tick all the boxes in certain knowledge they’ll never hear about the form again!)

Furthermore some organisation selects the tick boxes, presumably based on what they think they need, as if skills are somehow independent of the person who owns them. But someone may understand double entry bookkeeping but be unable to add columns of figures or use a spreadsheet; or they might be dishonest and not safe around cash.

Tasks Not Skills

There is a better way. Stop thinking about skills and start to think about the tasks. If you ask someone to do a job, you’re asking a human being with a history and their own specific take on the task at hand. What actually needs doing and who can do it? People who know the tasks that need to be done can offer to have a go.  And of course, and perhaps even better, you can approach people who wouldn’t think of taking on a task and ask them to consider it.  You need a reason for choosing them but it can be inspiring to chosen for who you are and not because you ticked the right box in a skills audit.

Of course, this person may not have all the necessary knowledge, skills and qualities to complete the task. How do you acquire these without opportunities? People can learn and if they take on a task they have an incentive to learn.

Another issue is when you discover they are not doing the task properly. I can remember taking on some jobs and being drowned in masses of information about how to do the job. I couldn’t possibly take it all on board. And most of the information was about the way my predecessor did the job and not particularly necessary.  I needed to work out my approach to the task.  (Predecessors have been very helpful but it does not follow every detail of their approach will work for me.)

You see, the issue is not really about individuals’ skills so much as the way an organisation gets the best out of people.

Sloughing

There is an insight from citizens’ organising, called sloughing. The word is normally used of snakes, when they grow by removing their outermost layers of skin. The idea is that any task in an organisation is an opportunity for someone who is less experienced to grow into. So, you seek someone challenged by the task.

Once they become adept at the task, it is time to move onto another. They move onto a new challenge and vacate the role for someone else.

This may not be possible for every organisation but it is worth some reflection. If you are interested in increasing community assets then don’t look at peoples’ achievements, look at their potential. Maybe not everyone will step up to a challenge but how many skills are never discovered because no-one ever tries to find them?

0 Spirituality in the Radical Agora

I’ve written about the Radical Agora in earlier posts and here I explore the idea in more depth.

The Radical Agora brings together the strands in this blog; community development, marketing and online presence.

I’ve been a community development worker for over thirty years. Apparently, the word community had over 150 definitions in the 1980s and whatever the number is now, it means our understanding of community is contested.  In particular, the local economy rarely figures in assessments of what counts as community.

Agora is Greek for marketplace and I use it because neo-liberals have hijacked the word marketplace. They speak of the marketplace as something in the ether and they use it of transactions between corporations. Let’s dwell on this for a moment and try to understand what’s at stake.

The thing that distinguishes corporations from local businesses is ownership. Corporations belong to shareholders. This means their owners do not run the business. They appoint directors who usually employ a Chief Executive. Their sole task is to increase the value of investments for their shareholders. Profits go to shareholders and often they are tied up in stored wealth.

This is important because this model of ownership has become normative.  The idea that the sole purpose of business is to generate profit does not allow businesses to have other purposes.  Any business person who simply wants to make a living and would plough profit into some benefit for the community will be either suspected of being a secret grasping capitalist or, if they do live up to their declared intentions, they’re not a serious player.

Local businesses may have a variety of ownership models and their transactions are likely to support other local businesses. A greater proportion of their income is likely to be invested in staff.  Paradoxically their small-scale brings greater benefit to the community than profit-generating corporations

I’m using Agora to distinguish between the marketplace based on transactions between bureaucrats that enrich the already rich and powerful and the traditional understanding of marketplace as primarily a place where community develops through financial and other transactions.

The word Radical derives is from radix that means roots. The roots of the marketplace agora are in community, in building relationships. The Radical Agora grows primarily through building relationships.

If the Radical Agora is funded through the local economy, it is sustainable.

Spirituality is important because it describes our presence in the marketplace. We are not there primarily as consumers but as participants in a specific  community.

The marketplace provides space in which unstructured encounters can lead to relationships. It draws people in for all sorts of reasons and they make purchases as they go about their activities.

We all need to be present in these spaces for the benefit of all, assuming these spaces exist. To take part is not solely about financial transactions, although financial transactions are an important way of being present. All activities have an economic dimension and as they draw people into participation in the Agora, they build community and support its infrastructure.

We have been careless about what makes our communities live. We have allowed outsiders to invade and take away community in the name of consumerism. We are compelled to visit leisure centres full of shops on the outskirts of our cities, making purchases that mainly benefit those who own the centres and shops.

The challenge is how to re-build our communities. That will be the next theme after the Christmas break!