Learning to Question

When we have claims or proposals put to us, it matters if we accept them on good grounds or not.  And to establish their acceptability, we need to question them properly.  The problem is that questioning, if done arbitrarily, is no better than blind acceptance or kneejerk rejection.

Our response to a police investigation, a proposed medical treatment, a politician’s claim, or a report on economic trends, can have significant consequences for ourselves and others.  So how should we go about questioning them when no one can possibly possess the expertise to assess the myriad factors involved.

 

One thing that all citizens should learn, beyond the areas they have acquired specialist understanding about, is how to gauge the reliability of assertions when they do not possess the relevant expert knowledge themselves.  This would broadly encompass three areas of general assessment each with three tests to be applied: 

 

Structure of Content

[1] Clarity

Is what is said sufficiently clear?  Do we really know what we are being asked to give our backing to?  Is it actually fully of pseudo-profundity?  What is the substance beneath the rhetoric?

 

[2] Coherence

Does it make sense?  Does it in fact contain contradictory elements which leave it with no coherent assertion?  Can it be rephrased to that what it claims or demands is unambiguously set out?

 

[3] Correctability

Is it a circular statement in disguise?  Does it beg the question by offering, not an answer, but simply an assumption that the question has already been settled?  Is it framed in such a way that no evidence can count as disproving it?

 

These tests can reveal if any claim is ultimately vacuous, or if it has real content that one can consider with the help of other assessments.

 

State of Mind

[4] Deceitful

Are the people making the claim known for their honesty or deceitfulness?  Are they more prone to lie and misdirect to gain advantage for themselves at the expense of others? Are they accusing others with contrary views of being deceitful when past fact-checking would undermine that stance?

 

[5] Delusional

Are there signs that the people in question are susceptible to imagining what is not there? Are they known for sincerely believing what is overwhelmingly contradicted by the evidence?  

 

[6] In Denial

Have the people invested so heavily in a set of beliefs that they cannot bear to face up to the fact that those beliefs are unfounded?  Do they react in frustration and anger if any fact or argument is cited that goes against those beliefs?

 

These tests can reveal if any claim should be taken seriously, or if it should be treated with caution because of its unreliable source.

 

Standard of Reasoning

[7] Expertise in Assessment

What relevant expertise is possessed by the people making the claim? If they do not have the requisite expertise, are they drawing on what is set out by experts with an established record in the field in question?

 

[8] Evaluation System Robustness

Are there evaluation systems in place – peer reviews, watchdog, investigative reporting, audit arrangements, further research, appeal processes, etc – that can check on the robustness of the claims under consideration? Are those systems respected and operating well in the given case?  Or has the claim been made in a free-for-all forum with no independent evaluation at all?

 

[9] Evidential Support 

Is the claim backed by evidence?  How does that compare with the evidence that may support what goes against that claim? Is the evidence subject to examination? Is it open for further evidence to be obtained?

 

These tests can reveal if any claim has a high or low degree of reasonable support based on current levels of expertise and findings.  Together with the other tests mentioned above, they should be applied to claims and assertions that are put to us, especially in politics where our subsequent action (or inaction) can have major consequences for our lives.

Insanity, Terrorism, & Callous Endangerment

Does it make sense to divide people who are disposed to cause callous endangerment to others, into the distinct categories of ‘insane’ and ‘terrorist’?  We are talking about people who are prepared to end other people’s lives regardless of the arguments that go against such a course of action.  They simply shut out any objective information which shows that those they endanger ought not to be so treated.  Their empathy and reasoning have been short-circuited.

 

There is a significant overlap between the those who threaten others as a result of their coming to imagine that the murder of certain innocent people is desirable, and those who threaten others as a result of their embracing some doctrine that declares that the murder of certain innocent people is desirable?  Why should we classify a person as insane if he insists that he must kill because a voice in his head tells him to, but classify a person as a terrorist if he insists that he must kill because his God commands him to? There is no coherent basis for regarding the motive to sacrifice others for the glory of a mighty deity as a terrorist ideology, but the motive to sacrifice others for the sake of appeasing a merciless devil as a mentally disturbing fantasy.  In both cases – unless one accepts the absurd premise as a rational one – any person acting on it has to be considered as dangerously deranged.

 

Subjective intent is not relevant either.  A person acting out some deadly fantasy may think he is saving people from a corrupt world by locking them in a burning building.  Another person may think he is following the teachings of a holy figure by ending the mortal lives of a group of people he has recruited so that they can attain eternal joy more swiftly.  It is the objective harm such people can bring that must be anticipated and prevented. 

 

What about the ‘lone wolf’/‘loyal soldier’ distinction?  If the issue is the scale of operation needed to tackle the threat, then an individual acting on his own with no connection to any wider network might be easier to stop than an organisation with many members involved in multiple plots.  But depending on the weapons and the targets of attacks, one individual could in some situation pose a greater threat than a group of people.  It should also be noted that ideas that feed callous endangerment do not necessarily follow direct command structures.  Ideas that promote blind hatred and remorseless violence can encourage individuals with no formal links to organisations propagating these ideas, to vent their anger and hurt others.

 

The insanity/terrorism demarcation seems to imply that while the former is an illness that should be dealt with through psychiatric treatment, the latter is carried out on the basis of a rational commitment.  In other words, if someone commits an apparent terrorist act because of his insanity, then he is not really a terrorist.  But we understand that many who are manipulated into carrying out terrorist acts are radicalised into embracing notions that they would otherwise have rejected. Indeed, there cannot be many simpler tests of a mind’s soundness than to check its readiness to terminate the lives of innocent people [Note 1].  The extent to which the propensity for callously endangering others can be cured (deradicalised, or de-cultified) will vary in different cases.  What is needed is a unified system to identify, assess, counter, contain, and treat (if that is an option) anyone who exhibits such propensity.

 

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Note 1: One can legitimately debate if, for example, shutting off one section of a submarine knowing that would lead to ten people being trapped behind and drowning, when it is necessary to save the whole boat from sinking and killing the entire crew of sixty on board.  However, the losing lives/saving lives issue does not apply when the ‘benefit’ invoked to justify the loss of lives only exists in the mind of the killer.

The Basis for Developing Communities

Community development has a key role to play in bringing about more inclusive and cooperative communities.  However, it is often overlooked and underfunded.  One underlying problem is that commentators, policy makers, and the general public do not readily see what basis there is for changing societal structures and relations in line with community development practice.  This can be rectified through four strands of activity: 

Making the Argument

Political discussions cover many views about what communities should be like.  At one end of the spectrum there is the individualistic conception of community as a loose collection of people who look to their own interests, and rely primarily on the market and charities to deal with unmet needs. At the other end there is the hierarchical model wherein dominant groups will determine the ‘traditional’ rules and customs everyone else should have to follow.  In between these conceptions, the case for what community development aims to achieve needs to be made.  Cogent arguments should be put forward for nurturing social relations in the direction of mutual respect and thoughtful cooperation.  

(For example, see: Communitarianism: a new agenda for politics and citizenship ; and The Evolution of Communitarian Ideas )

 

Raising Awareness 

By its very nature, community development requires people to play an informed role in shaping their communities, and this will not happen if people think it is some marginal process that has little to do with them. All too often, people have insufficient understanding of how wider policies and practices may impact upon them, or worse, they are misled into supporting what are in fact damaging for them. We should raise public awareness through a variety of means - lifelong learning, satirical literature, social marketing, imaginative campaigns – to stimulate interest in questioning prevailing societal arrangements, and exploring alternatives for bringing about more satisfactory outcomes in terms of fairness, contentment, progress and sustainability.

(For example, see: The Anti-Con Novels;  

‘Kuan’s Wonderland: a novel exploration of inequality’ ; and the group learning resource, What Should Citizens Believe )

 

Improving Community Engagement

The degree to which members of any community can influence the key activities affecting that community is down to the effectiveness of engagement arrangements put in place.  Large groups of people, with diverse ideas and concerns, constrained by the time and resources they have, are unlikely to be able to deliberate and arrive at informed views about what is to be done for their common good – unless they are supported by the most appropriate community engagement practices in resolving their differences and exploring shared objectives.  We should ensure lessons from what works (and what does not) in the design and implementation of community engagement are taken on board in giving people a meaningful say about collective decisions that affect them.

(For example, see: ‘Together We Can: a resource guide’ ; ‘Cooperative Problem-Solving: the key to a reciprocal society' ; and Tomorrow’s Communities: lessons for community-based transformation in the age of global crises )

 

Tackling Inequalities

Inequalities have a major impact on how individual citizens can participate in exerting collective influence.  Those with more power in terms of wealth, status, and connections can push their preferences with no regard for what others might think, while many others, as a result of their socio-economic, physical, and/or cultural predicament, possess little power to make their concerns count.  It is essential to curtail the concentration of power in those who can increasingly dictate terms to others without being held to account, and to improve the conditions for those who are held back by the disadvantages they have had to endure.

(For example, see: Against Power Inequalities ; and Time to Save Democracy )

 

State Expectations: contrasting left and right

At their extremes, what ‘left’ and ‘right’ designate can border on the indistinguishable. The authoritarians who want to rule without constraint in the name of the people, and the authoritarians who want absolute control for the sake of the nation, are as oppressive and unaccountable as each other.  On the other hand, the anarchist left and libertarian right both want to do away with being monitored and regulated by government.  Neither want to be told what to do by others – whatever the consequence.

So, are the labels of left and right redundant?  Well, for the majority of people who don’t subscribe to extreme views, what they generally think their government should do (or not) – their ‘State Expectations’, if you like, goes some way to characterise their political dispositions as Left or Right.

Let us look at five sets of issues and consider how those on the Left and Right are likely to respond to them in terms of the role they feel government institutions should play: 

 

People disadvantaged by particular conditions

The issues: people are disadvantaged by poverty, their isolated location, their disability or fragile health, or the discrimination they face as a result of their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, customs, or religion.

Left: The government should protect people from the consequences of being so disadvantaged, and help them secure equal respect and adequate support in overcoming the disadvantages in question as much as possible.

Right: The government should leave these people to sort out their own problem. It is down to them to make a living for themselves, and to fit in with how others are inclined to interact with them.

 

Threats posed by corporate practices

The issues: many corporations enhance our social and economic wellbeing, but some pose a threat in the way they mistreat employees and suppliers, promote and sell unsafe products, or harm the environment.

Left: The government should support the business sector to develop responsibly and bring in appropriate regulation to deal with those which might otherwise hurt others for their own gain.

Right: The government should leave businesses to make their own decisions and deal with the consequences themselves.  Government intervention will more often than not end up damaging the business sector.

 

Foreign relations

The issues: concerns are raised when the governments of other countries engage in activities that may be at odds with our country’s own interests; any increase in the number of immigrants and refugees may lead to tension in some areas; and foreign religious ideas may clash with our prevailing culture.

Left: The government should differentiate between what ought to be welcome and what needs to be guarded against, and act accordingly.  It should tackle real threats but also ensure that what are harmless or indeed beneficial should not be opposed.

Right: The government should be wary of foreign influences – be these commercial or military problems posed by those in another country, or instability fuelled by immigrants and refugees, and their alien customs and beliefs. The government should take a tough stance in curtailing any form of foreign intrusion into our way of life.

 

Standards in quality of life

The issues: People want access to decent health service, housing, transport, dependable utilities, protection from crime and pollution, and good education for their children. But these are not always readily available.

Left: The government should ensure sufficient resources are invested in providing and improving vital services so that everyone can have a minimally acceptable quality of life.

Right: The government should cut taxes so that businesses and individuals can thrive and look after themselves.  The less the government is involved in public services, the better it is for everyone.

 

Control over individual behaviour

The issues: No one can have the absolute freedom to behave irrespective of the impact on others.  From taking others’ property, injuring them physically, to causing emotional distress, or driving recklessly, there must be limits to individual behaviour.

Left: The government should identify unacceptable behaviour – based on the likely harm it would cause – and introduce policies that will be strictly enforced to minimise its occurrence.  The measures to be deployed – fines, incarceration, restitution, rehabilitation, treatment – are to be guided by what-works evidence.

Right: The government should do as little as possible about people smoking, drinking, spreading a dangerous virus (through not wearing a mask), speaking as they wish about minorities, or [in the US] buying guns. But the government should use as much force as possible to tackle thieves or drug users, do more to stop abortions, and [in the US] be prepared to sentence people with mental disability to death.

 

In conclusion

On the whole, people’s State Expectations point to their Left/Right orientation.  Those who would like to have a responsible government that will support people in attaining a better quality of life – especially those who are disadvantaged by factors beyond their personal control – lean left.  Those who would prefer to have a tough government that will on the one hand be inclined to use force in dealing with foreign powers and resort to severe punishment for criminals, and on the other, be resolute in not interfering with inequalities, business practices, or individual behaviour that is ‘traditional’ – lean right.

Abusivism: the politization of nastiness

In politics, ‘isms’ used to consist of doctrines setting out why and how society should be steered towards a better future.  People backed or opposed particular political parties because they broadly subscribed to those doctrines.  Sometimes, when circumstances change, people might come to lose confidence in a given doctrine (e.g., when it turns out that lowering taxes repeatedly do not lead to the creation of well-paid jobs; or extending prison sentences in general does not reduce crime rates).  But the clash of isms was on the whole based on disputes over ideas, which were subject to challenges from reasoned analysis and objective evidence.

One of the most disturbing development at the dawn of the 21^stcentury was the displacement of political ideas by the politization of nastiness.  Abusivist (to coin a term) politicians began to present their wild rants as ‘plain speaking’.  They style themselves as ‘ordinary folk’ who dare to talk back to ‘the establishment’. They despise reason, experts, evidence, compassion, empathy – for all they care about is what they ‘know’ to be the ‘truth’, and that ‘truth’ amounts to nothing but abusive attacks on any vulnerable group they feel like picking on.  

 

The targets of their groundless vitriol share one core characteristic – their plight stokes a twisted sense of self-righteous validation in people who, unsurprisingly, admire the ‘no nonsense’ aggressiveness of abusivist politicians. In general, anyone with a modicum of empathy wants to see help given to victims of domestic violence, immigrants desperate for a better life; refugees escaping from wars and chaos; people disadvantaged by their disability or poverty (or both); or individuals harassed and discriminated against as a result of their religion, race, gender or sexuality.  By contrast, followers of abusivist politicians get angry when they learn of these people getting help, and they want to retaliate – which their leaders promise to deliver for them in the form of laws and policies that not only cut any help provided, but would make vulnerable people’s lives even harder, especially through propaganda that misrepresents them as liars and threats.

 

Abusivism does not pretend to operate through reason, and it does not attempt to be civil. It labels as enemies those least able to defend themselves and proceed to attack them – both by promoting distrust and hatred against them, and by using the power of the state wherever possible to hurt them.  It dismisses people who care as ‘do-gooders’, ‘politically correct’, and despairingly ‘woke’. It rallies its supporters to obstruct and intimidate them in the name of some ‘culture war’.   

 

Theresa May once warned about the Conservatives becoming the Nasty Party, but when she had the power to chart a new course, she introduced the ‘Hostile Environment’ policy to drive immigrants away. In the end, she merely paved the way for Boris Johnson, whose casual abusivism has been a defining feature of his career.  In the US, Donald Trump has dedicated himself to reducing the Republican Party to nothing but the Nasty Party.  Not all conservative politicians go along with abusivist politics.  But if they want to save their party’s soul, they had better take action soon to pull it back from the brink.

Community Development & the Struggle Against Powerlessness

For people who have been extensively involved in community development, it is no doubt an approach that can empower communities to improve their lives.  However, for others who know little about it, it conjures up images of residents complaining about their areas and delaying projects that were meant to benefit them.  This knowledge gap, one might think, would have been closed by the impact community development work has achieved over time.  Unfortunately, the majority of policy makers and funders still seem to have a complete blind spot when it comes to the value of helping communities build their collective influence.

An underlying problem is that public bodies, which should be welcoming and supporting community development, often view it as merely an instrument in aid of getting top-down targets met.  When those targets end up being questioned, the processes for attaining them are challenged, and alternative plans are sought, those in charge of setting and meeting their own organisational targets are not happy.  What they don’t realise is that the central issue here is power – the power of people living and working in various communities to deal with the problems they face.  Targets, objectives, outputs, etc. need to relate to communities’ experience.  Problem-solving must connect with people’s understanding of possible options.  If solutions and programmes are imposed on people without their informed involvement in shaping them, it exacerbates their powerlessness, and leaves them more disillusioned than ever with how things are organised around them.

 

To appreciate the real importance of community development, one should see it in the historical context of collective struggles against powerlessness.  The driving force has always been the refusal to accept an unpalatable state of affairs as unalterable.  From racist practices, appalling housing conditions, neighbourhood crime and disorder, to widespread poverty, diminishing employment prospects, and environmental degradation, whenever communities are galvanised into working together to formulate and press for better outcomes, community development takes another step forward.

 

Looking back, the closest community development came to be recognised by any government as a core discipline in empowering communities was when the Labour Government established the Civil Renewal Unit (CRU) in 2003 which went on to promote the community development ethos and the adoption of diverse engagement techniques across local and central government, in partnership with the community sector.  CRU established a network of Civic Pioneers to widen local authorities’ engagement with local people, a series of Take Part hubs to help people exert greater influence over public policies and services, and a group of Guide Neighbourhoods to facilitate peer-to-peer learning amongst communities in shaping local priorities and strategies.  It acted as the government sponsor of the Community Development Foundation, and ran national and regional ‘Together We Can’ awareness-raising campaigns to encourage collaborative working between community groups and statutory bodies.  It also invested in dissemination infrastructure to increase the take-up of practices such as participatory budgeting, neighbourhood plans, and community asset transfers.

 

Yet despite the impact of these activities in raising community confidence and satisfaction in a wide range of areas across the country, it was still all too easy for a different political regime to dismantle this structure when it took over from Labour in 2010.  Coordinated and long-term support for community development activities ceased, and the Community Development Foundation itself was closed down.  At one level, this might be regarded as myopic policy making – opting for short term cuts over more durable community improvement.  But at a deeper level, it reveals a callous disinterest in addressing the problem of powerlessness in society.  Shallow rhetoric about ‘Taking Back Control’ will not get us very far (or worse, it covers up even greater loss of power).  History tells a clear story – for the struggle to secure a fair share of power for all, we need sustained community development.

 

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David Boyle has written an essay on the history of community development, which provides a decade-by-decade retracing of community development in the UK and US.

It can be accessed via Local Trust: https://localtrust.org.uk/insights/essays/a-history-of-community-development/

 

The Problem with History-Blind Judgements

Should individuals of an earlier era be criticised for holding certain views that in later times would come to be considered wrong?  There is a crucial difference between someone who believes in what the vast majority of people at that time routinely believe, and someone who refuses to question an idea when many have begun to cast doubt on its acceptability.

 

It’s understandable why someone living in the 10th century BC might assume the earth was flat, yet anyone holding such a view in the 21st century would arouse suspicion about their capacity for learning.  Similarly, we would not chastise a European cartographer whose 5th century map omitted the Americas, but we would not excuse a 19th century mapmaker who displayed a similar lack of knowledge.

 

Our judgement of people from the past ought to be based on how far ahead or behind they were in comparison with their contemporaries.  Furthermore, one could be ahead in many significant ways while lagging in some areas nonetheless.  Newton, for example, is rightly considered a great scientific thinker who led the world in advancing our understanding of many aspects of physics, even if he subscribed to a few spurious astrological ideas prevalent in the 17th century.

 

Unfortunately, when it comes to the social understanding of other people, it seems that the level of comprehension that has been attained here and now is used by many as the standard to judge the moral quality of people regardless of what historical period they actually lived in.

 

There were people who were cruel and callous by the prevailing standards of their times, and their attitudes and behaviour should be frowned upon. Instead of celebrating them as heroes, they should be seen as contemptible figures.  However, there were also many who had grown up with assumptions common in their times about others with a different ethnicity, nationality, gender, religion, or social status, and even though they might have gradually discarded some of those prejudices through critical reflections, they did not shake off every last one of them.  Should they be singled out as vile reprobates, or should we recognise that they had managed to move forward in some areas, and the direction of travel of their ethical thinking was towards the further elimination of prejudicial thought even if they had not got there completely?

 

In fact, can any of us say that we have got there ‘completely’ in terms of thinking appropriately about everything that matters in life?  As the 18th century Enlightenment taught us, the key is to keep learning, reviewing, discovering, so that we may move forward from mistaken assumptions of the past.  So long as we are making a real effort to improve, and encourage others to do likewise, we should not be faulted for not eradicating all errors in how we think – if indeed that is ever possible.

 

Ironically, many leading thinkers of the Enlightenment have been attacked for holding particular prejudiced views at some point in their lives even though overall they devoted themselves to combating bigotry and dogmas on numerous fronts.  The problem with history-blind judgements is that all too often they savage those who were seeking improvement, and divert attention from the incalcitrant reactionaries who genuinely deserve to be censured.