Today was a day of hosting on webinars, with a group looking at the emerging edges of the non-profit sector in BC and with a group od UNited Church ministers and lay leaders who are hosting transformation and learning together in a community of practice. At the end of our second call, this Thomas Merton quote was shared with us:
“Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”
This resonates strongly with the tack Meg Wheatley takes in her no book, So Far From Home, which is a call to spiritual warriorship, despite everything.
Several really stunning insights fell at me feet today, from this five hours of online discovery. Forexample, a friend working with victims of sexual abuse in northern BC talked about how people who do this work are not burnt out by the work – humans have been caring resliiently for each other for eons. What burns them out is maintaining the systems that formalize that work of community. As humans we are easy in relationship, but our energy and lives are sapped by turning away from what nurtures us and tending nto a system of professional practice, regulations, administrative accountabilities and resource deployment that leaves us tapped out.
Or another insight today that the real practice of making change is making space for dissent so that there can be an authentic yes from the centre of the work. Or that evolution is a difficult metaphor for change work, because so much of what we are aiming to change has been put in place intentionally and which purpose.
We are one learning journeys with these groups, and these little insights trickle in like sunlight when you are listening openly and sharing in each other’s discovery. Nice way to end the week.
Here on Bowen Island, we are still small enough and friendly enough that stuff like Bowen LIFT can get started relatively easily. Bowen LIFT is trying to help people self-organize transportation options to complement our limited but excellent public bus service. This morning on CBC Radio, our LIFTers got a lift of their own. Listen to the podcast here.
It’s an old saw with me, but Dave Snowdon puts it very nicely and succinctly:
Numbers are good, but they are never the whole picture. Its easy to focus on them, they give the comfort of apparent objectivity and used to support human judgement they have high utility. The problem is when they replace judgement rather than supporting it. Of course in the ordered aspects of any enterprise statistics and numbers can do a lot of the work for you, but in a complex situation they can be dangerous. Applied to ordered aspects (boundary conditions, probes and the like) they have utility, but for the system as a whole they are more problematic.
Yes.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog post advocating that newspapers should close their comments sections. In the days since then I have heard from many people agreeing with me, and no one has disagreed. I have had a twitter conversation with a National Post reporter whose piece about the breaking of a copper on the steps of the Victoria Legislature was – as is typical – hijacked by racist comments. In that Twitter conversation, Tristin Hooper, the reporter stated that there is nothing he can do to influence this conversation and that “freedom can be an ugly, ugly thing sometimes.”
Well no doubt. But in pondering this situation more, I am left to conclude that newspapers are actually trafiicking in racism. Take for example this really interesting Globe and Mail piece about the spiritual side of Idle No More. This is a good discussion where people actually learned something in the conversation. And then you get comments like this:
“What a load of crap. With the chiefs, elders and anyone directly related to them on the take the two spiritual sides of ‘idle no more’ are 1) Hand over more cash,2 ) and dont even think for a second we want to work at an 8 to 4 job. Oh, and add the mantra of Accounting? Accounting? Thats a white mans distraction.
If you dig back far enough you will find the simple hunter-gatherer approach to understanding the cosmos. Toss in the guilt ridden white mentality and the stone age vision of the world becomes an all encompassing stewards of the land ‘religion’. The only way this all flies is that modern society buys into the idea and pays for it.
Settle directly with everyone covered by the Indian Act bypassing the chiefs and elders completely. Give them their home and the land it sits on fee simple, a wad of cash and that is the end of it. It would be way cheaper then continuing this on for ever!”
So.
The Globe and Mail has a polcy at the top of its comments page that reads:
Editor’s Note: Comments that appear on the site are not the opinion of The Globe and Mail, but only of the comment writer. Personal attacks, offensive language and unsubstantiated allegations are not allowed. For more information on our commenting policies, please see our Community Guidelines page, or read our full Terms and Conditions. If you see a typo or error on our site, report it to us. Please include a link to the story where you spotted the error.
The comment above contains two of these three violations and elsewhere in that same comment section Teresa Spence is referred to as “Thief Spence.” The editor’s policy may be that these are technically violations, but they are allowed to stand. To make matters worse, replies on the Globe and Mail website are collapsed in threads, making it impossible to address this information and have your objections seen. Not much of a free market of ideas. A false comment gets more visibility than the reply that aims to correct it. Want to create a set of misperceptions of First Nations? Just write all manner of comments. No one will read the replies.
So what is going on here? The Globe and Mail does not enforce its own polices, or at least does it completely arbitrarily. An interesting read on the spiritual side of Idle No More gets poisoned by racism, personal attacks and unsubstantiated allegations, and we just keep looking.
The editorial policy says that the opinions in the comments are not the opinions of the paper. But by leaving comments sections like this open to this kind of abuse the Globe and Mail is sharing an opinion with you. It is stating that “it is the opinion of this paper that comments like the ones below are not in violation of our policy and contribute to the conversation.”
Furthermore, according to the Globe’s own terms and conditions, when you upload anything to the comments boards at the Globe and Mail you give the Globe and mail a license to use the material any way they want. By leaving it on their site, they are using comments to drive traffic to their advertisers and therefore earn revenue. Comments, and especially outrage, represents real cash money. Racist speech, unsubstantiated allegations and personal attacks all drive comment threads that are hundreds of comments long. More readers = more revenue. Racism sells.
Furthermore, also from the Globe’s Terms and Conditions:
When participating in a Forum, never assume that people are who they say they are, know what they say they know, or are affiliated with whom they say they are affiliated. The Globe and/or its affiliates and licensors cannot be responsible for the content or accuracy of any information, and will not be responsible for any reliance or decisions made based on such information. When using a Forum, you may not post, transmit, link to, or otherwise distribute any information, materials or content that do not generally pertain to the designated topic or theme of the particular Forum. Use of a Forum for commercial purposes of any kind is strictly prohibited. Please note that The Globe reserves the right to refuse to post or to remove any information or materials, in whole or in part, that, in its sole discretion, are unacceptable, undesirable, or in violation of these Terms and Conditions.
This is no about restricting freedom of speech. This is not about stopping a conversation in society on First Nations issues. Quite the opposite in fact. Every single person who posts in a comments thread has the freedom to start their own blog and post anything they want. What it is about is this clever dodge that papers use to hide behind the guise of freedom while trafficking for money in hate speech and libel. And the sheer volume of it plus an insubstantial disclaimer protects them from legal action.
So is there hope for a conversation with editorial boards on the merits of comments sections? Are their editors who agree with me? Are their journalists out there who consider this worthy writing about? Or are we just too tied to the money to turn off the tap?
Public conversation, and by extension, public policy suffers for this rhetoric.
PS…bonus link…the Globe and Mail allows a personal attack to stand in an article about one man who is addressing racism on Craigslist. WTF?
PPS…The Globe and Mail has, since its inception, had this quote on its editorial page: “The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures.” Going to war against arbitrary measures was the paper’s founding principle. I wonder if people still talk about what that means around the editorial board?
Got a bunch of work done today so to celebrate I headed out on my SUP for an hour long paddled from Tunstall Bay to Cape Roger Curtis across pristine shoreline teeming with life. Gulls eating starfish and anemones, oystercatchers with their high pitched calls skimming the top if the way. Eagles soaring over the trees.
Only the slightest hint of a headwind outward bound but glassy still on the return leg. It’s so quiet out here today.
And the beauty of living on the South Coast of BC in winter is that Sunday I will go skiing with the kids over at Cypress Mountain.
Beach in Friday, ski hills on Sunday. Winter ain’t so bad after all.