Lots of good and constructive responses to how to nurture the health and integrity of the list.
This morning up popped this sobering Thought for Today A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them. -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr, poet, novelist, essayist, and physician (1809-1894) ----------------------- So like the myth of Sisyphus we continue. And where possible we try to recognize what is going on in us and what is going on in the world around us. And we try accept that there are filters that we know about and filters that we don't know about that cause us to interpret the world in one way or the other. arthur From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Gail Stewart Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2010 12:36 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] Lets get back to the future of work and away from pushing and shoving Hi Arthur and all, I'm uneasy with the notion of excluding people from the list, especially long-standing participants. On their behalf, I'd like to suggest that it is at first distressing and then perhaps increasingly irritating not to have one's perceptions or deepfelt convictions addressed, especially when the issues raised are clearly related to issues of work and hence the FW list, e.g. predators, on Chris's part, and cultural perceptions, on Ray's. While I don't pretend to have read everything everyone has said, I try to keep up with a general sense of where the discussion on FW is going. I don't recall seeing any sustained attempt to address Chris's "predators" whether psychologically, politically or economically (for example). We seem to have treated the matter more as a conspiracy theory personal to Chris. The theory is surely more prevalent than that in our society, although under a variety of names and is not irrelevant to "work and working." Maybe we could give it a more thorough going-over than has been done. Similarly, I think we have been rather dismissive of Ray's attempt to illuminate our understanding of his culture, tending often to see it as merely a variant of our own. (I hope I'm not being unfair -- it is at least my impression that we are not treating his participation as coming from a different (forgive me but the term may be more familiar as denoting radical difference) "paradigm." If I'm not mistaken, it is near impossible for those of us immersed in conventional Western culture to perceive the world as I suspect Ray must perceive it. Making a couple of guesses, I would suggest that, rather than seeing the environment as we do, as "out there," he may see it as context, so that all of us are "in here." I've known very few persons non-native to North America who can even glimpse that perspective, let alone sustain it. (My own glimpses of life lived that way around, which involve a Copernican shift in my "Western" outlook, have been few and unsustainable.) Similarly, human relations are perhaps perceived differently by Ray, his culture possibly being far more accepting of us (i.e. other persons) than we who are of Western culture are of other persons. Indeed the FW list is so biased itself in terms of the gender of its participants that dialogue with Ray comes heavily from the odd angle of male rather than Western culture more inclusively. (The list would of course be enlivened, made more intelligent and empathic with more balanced participation from both genders. But perhaps I'm biased myself. <grin>) A wise woman I knew insisted, "we are enriched by our differences." Rather than, on this list, trying to argue each other into abandoning other outlooks in favour of our own, perhaps we might re-embrace our current "transgressors," avoid an "our way or the highway" approach, value our differences -- and get back to discussing "work." Ray, would you please say something again about the perception of "work" in the community in which you grew up? A friend of mine, an aboriginal elder, shocked me when he insisted that, in his village, they didn't have an "economy" but only "a way of life." As an economist it took me a while to understand how it was possible not to have an economy, let alone the important implications of this for our Western concept of work. In a very practical way it seemed to me these implications might be used to strengthen the arguments for the basic income of interest to Sally and others -- and indeed could helpfully affect a number of our policies. All this said, I do deplore the decline in civility which has occurred and have been surprised and saddened by it. I hope that era is behind us. Regards, Gail P.S. Apologies for all the Western culture talk -- I wish there were a better term. Any candidates? ----- Original Message ----- From: Harry Pollard <mailto:[email protected]> To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2010 5:24 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Lets get back to the future of work and awayfrompushing and shoving My experience, Mike, is that when restrictions are placed on a list to make it better, it tends to disappear. We must be careful about any actions we take. Harry From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael Gurstein Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2010 9:38 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Lets get back to the future of work and away frompushing and shoving Arthur, What you seem to be suggesting for list governance is rather more of the "hidden hand" market place--bad actors will be shunned and correct their behaviour as a result. It appears that for whatever reason some of those in the marketplace don't respond to the same set of product cues in the same way as others do hence the bad behaviours are in many cases engaged with rather than shunned. If the list were in fact self governing rather than left to the laissez faire of the open market there would be some process of collective self-regulation/governance. Having been involved in several such efforts I know that they can be tedious in the extreme but perhaps as list coordinators you folks might like to suggest a few simple rules for collective self-government as for example along the lines of "formal complaints by two members of the group to the coordinators and then there is a public process of voting people "off the island" -- or some such. M -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2010 6:29 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION' Subject: [Futurework] Lets get back to the future of work and away frompushing and shoving I received this message from an active FWer. And I am adding my own plea to FWers below. ======================== Arthur, I won't participate in the futurework list as long as racist and venomous comments continue. This kind of "talk" doesn't contribute anything to the list but bile. ========================== My open plea to FWers. FW was set up to discuss the future of work but seems to go off track from time to time. The conversation soon leads to schoolyard type of talk "I said this, no you said that.you are a creep, no you are a creep". Pointless schoolyard pushing and shoving. If people want to engage in this virtual pushing and shoving please do it off list. One to one. So that others don't have to be party to what are private shoving (pissing?) matches. I have asked individual FWers to not respond to those FWers who provoke in this way (you know who you are) thinking that by shunning those who behave this way would cause them to change their ways or drift off to another list where this sort of behavior is tolerated. But for whatever reason a few (you know who you are) seem to want to pick a fight and so things heat up. Now is our chance to be a self-governing group. Let's not do or say anything virtually that we wouldn't say if we were talking face to face. I prize civility and exchange of ideas. How do other FWers feel about this? Suggestions and ideas welcome. Arthur _____ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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