New Integrity: Respect (just a little bit...)

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January 12, 2006

Respect (just a little bit...)

Hip hoppers murmur ‘Respect’ as they extend their knuckles towards each other in a gesture of solidarity – but laugh at most spectres of authority. George Galloway names his anti-war party Respect but is never consulted on the national respect agenda. Caught cavorting like a pussy-cat on Big Brother he becomes the very symbol of the lack of self-respect endemic in our society. What is respect? What is its value in our society? How can it be engendered, particularly amongst the young?

There are many arguments about how a child grows into an adult. Most are dualistic – nurture v nature, predisposition v socialisation, internal capacities v external circumstances. Few parents would claim however, that there is only a single cause: at best, it is a complex mix of many inputs. Part parents, part child’s unique character and capacity, part local environment – school, neighbourhood - part government and social structure. And increasingly, part national and global environment – delivered to the child through media of all kinds. To place the blame on any single cause buys into victim-hood and encourages irresponsibility and worse, impotence.

An integral approach identifies four correlating focuses for a child’s development:

• Internal capacity: emotional, intellectual and spiritual literacy
• Behaviour: what they do with their time, particularly creativity, boundaries they operate within, freedoms they can exercise
• Culture: what are the values that operate in their environment, shaping their attitudes
• Structures and systems: both institutional and governmental that restrict or enable them

It is hard to imagine a change in one of those areas which doesn’t impact upon, or rely upon, a change in the others: a holistic approach is the only realistic option.

This is not the road to complacency: it is a cry for a far more honest and committed response from every stakeholder, every citizen, to create the kind of community – whether local or non-local – in which children are likely to grow up well. This may seem like a tall order – none of us can take control in all four areas. Nevertheless, all of us are ourselves living in this complex reality and how we respond to it will affect the society we live in, directly or indirectly.

Let me just reel off some of the absurd contradictions that we are currently happy to uphold on a daily basis.

• Most of us believe, that yes, parents can teach kids to be respectful: parents are the first programmers of the young child’s mind, their software managers and their role models. Unfortunately they’ve all been sent out to work and left their kids with nursery nurses who care less, have a fraction of the attention available and who have frustrations of their own which they may or may not take out on their charges.
• Kids of all economic means are being brought up by TV and video. Even the best of us allow our kids to spend hours in front of a screen in a bid to keep them a) in touch with current culture b) motivated c) quiet. Yet what we accept is on the screen is driven by lowest common denominator viewer ratings. Despite all our efforts to teach children values, we watch as they gather around Big Brother, East Enders, Little Britain, the Chris Moyles show and X-factor (where everyone can have a go at being humiliated, but only one ever gets to win). Their games are, with few exceptions, only about winners and losers, survival of the brutalist, or social irreverence. As a society we fight to keep our libraries and galleries free and spend fortunes on funding the opera and the National Theatre: but how much of it speaks to society as we find it? And how many of us have the time to find out anyway? The lack of relevant, inspirational arts – in any media - has much to answer for in the UK.
• Where can kids get an inspiring, consistent model of justice? We live in a country that has gone to war in the name of democracy. But everyone knows that it was an act of defiance to the United Nations – the very symbol (if not manifestation) of global democracy. Our PM, who is perceived as a liar and a hypocrite himself, demands that terrorists eschew violence. He cannot feel the violence of 30,000 civilian deaths caused by carpet-bombing and brutal occupation.
• Where do kids get a consistent model of equality and compassion – respect for those older, less advantaged, or weaker than oneself? In a society where pensioners are portrayed as an economic burden and consumers of our time and space rather than a joy and repository of wisdom? As the disparity between rich and poor grows incrementally, the government is portrayed (rightly or wrongly, but consistently) as fawning over celebrity and power, while snarling at the unemployed and incapacitated. Inclusion is a noble concept and a Labour mantra, but with lack of resources and superficial application, it has become a means to depletion (lowest common denominator education) not enrichment (complex services for diverse communities) of our social institutions.
• Most of all, where do kids get a consistent model of humility and the willingness to change oneself for the good of others? When faced with the world’s media finding them both guilty of going to war on false pretences, the consequences of which have been catastrophic, both Bush and Blair have faced the cameras with “Am I bovvered?”. Meantime, we, the electorate, have weighed up their deficiencies, condemned them, and – in the interest of a few pence on our tax bill - voted for them again. Watching the ongoing leadership spotlight - seized in turn by Blair refusing to go, Kennedy refusing to go (but eventually being pushed) and young Cameron, with little or no experience of grown up politics - is mostly a spectacle of children in the playground. Expand the spotlight to include the House of Commons and you see grown men jeering and booing each others’ efforts to contribute meaningfully to public debate. Respect? Yesterday Tony Blair claimed, in front of a global TV audience, that he could make or break a potential Lib Dem leader simply by getting the better of him in a joust. [get a link for that claim]
• Sadly, even Bob Geldof, when faced with a global response to the call to Make Poverty History, did not ask for any efforts whatsoever from the people gathered. No request to change our indulgent lifestyles, no demands for fair trade, no hints on how to save water even. Just have a good time, he said, to the passionate crowd, and tell them – the 8 important men - to sort it out. Where and how can we instil a sense of responsibility in our young people?

Where do we, collectively, look for change?

ASBOS and boot camps suggest that respect can be enforced. No doubt better behaviour can be taught and fear is a useful tool when social order is the goal. But respect is a much bigger goal and cannot be negotiated. Respect has to be inspired, earned, won; it is worth having because it is freely given. It not only delivers order but relationship – the real stuff of thriving communities. When a young hip-hopper murmurs “respect” while touching knuckles with his mate, it is a gesture of solidarity: it may not be 100% reliable, but it recalls an ideal society where all brothers are equal and ‘worthy’. He does not offer the same respect to public authority – he laughs at their antics and what he perceives to be empty promises and he knows he is not counted amongst their number.

Going back to the four focuses of integral development outlined above, there are at least four essential paths towards engendering respect in our society:

The first two focus on the ‘disrespectful’ individual, of whatever age:

• Provide the tools, build the capacity: Relationship requires dialogue, and dialogue is a skill. Aggression is regularly the result of an inability to express fears, desires, intentions. Emotional and spiritual literacy are now understood to be as vital ‘smarts’ as intellect for survival in 21C life. Let’s teach that at school, prison, hot houses. In addition, conflict resolution practice provides us with frameworks for listening properly.
• Enable new activity: That yobbish behaviour erupts in the absence of meaningful engagement with others is not news to us. Providing proper sports and leisure facilities at affordable prices for the energetic young has always made a difference in troubled communities. But there is another level of engagement that needs to be considered: if we want to learn how to be respectful members of a community, we can only learn that by being in a community. We cannot appeal to peoples’ sense of civic spirit if it was never instilled in the first place – the software simply isn’t there. A great example comes from the Chicken Shed Inclusive Theatre Company. By giving all sorts of excluded people a clear structure – in this case a theatre company - within which they can contribute meaningfully – in their case, a professional stage production - they help them to experience the creation of value, for themselves and others. A typical outreach project would give an opportunity for a young lad on the school exclusion list to take care of a boy in a wheelchair of the same age, both taking part in a demanding production. It’s a life changing experience for many.

The second tranche focuses on how we as a society can create the conditions for respect to emerge where it appears to be lacking right now.

• Carve a space for respect in the panoply of public values: if respect doesn’t exist anywhere in private life, it’s an illusion and we need not pursue it. If it does, give it some space in our soaps, our midweek dramas, our rolls of honour. Stop excluding respectful behaviour in the arts and media: suffering and selfishness are not the only reality that people want to watch.
• Link the political with the personal in a new way: it’s not all about me, it’s all through me. Gandhi had quite a lot of success with the phrase Be the Change – for more on that, see www.bethechange.org.uk. But it would be an unusual move for politicians to lead the way in humility: expect David Cameron to try that one any day now….
• Always partner punitive measures with increased resources for creative responses to anti-social behaviour, preferably identified through engaging with the community of interest. It is an axiom of respect that everyone has a perspective to offer and the potential to create value.

Posted by indraadnan on January 12, 2006 at 09:00 AM in Current Affairs, Integral View, Public Service Innovation, Respect | Permalink

Comments

Fascinating to see the interview with Richard Sennett today in the Guardian, chiming with a lot of your points. (Here's the link.). Some quotes:

...The professor came up with an intriguing theory when speaking to the BBC this week. "Is it any surprise to you," he said, "that a politician who elicits less and less respect from his public thinks that the public has a problem with respect? Blair wasn't worried about this in 1998."

...In consistently championing the notion of a meritocratic Britain (Blair first did so in a 1996 speech and again on Tuesday), the prime minister has unwittingly contributed to this scarcity of respect. "When we talk about opening up opportunities, which is basically the direction of New Labour, we don't take account of the people who get left behind. The unintended consequence, if you're not one of those selected, is that you experience a form of lack of respect. Nobody is telling you you're worthless, they're just not paying any attention to you.

"When government emphasises nurturing talent and focuses on the talented 10th, you've got a huge cultural and social problem about the other nine-10ths. How are they integrated, how you do that at schools?" Sennett lays down his pipe. "That's a question of respect as practised by institutions to individuals and, if I may say so, it's a bigger question than the one the government is addressing now."

These are exactly your points throughout - though it's interesting to note that Sennett does have some sympathy for the role of a more humanistic police in the monitoring of destructive behaviour in poor communities. "The police don't need more powers, they need a change o f attitude". Sounds like a possible convergence around the idea of a 'care professional'...

Somehow, Gordon Brown's top-down pitch for a new patriotism (same issue of the Guardian) seems like another far-off injunction: Britishness = the socially cohesive+integrative virtues. Is this a Britishness we have to respect? Or else?

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January 12, 2006

Respect (just a little bit...)

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