The Black Dog barks again

I’ve not posted for a full four weeks. Let me try to explain my silence. Some knee problems caused me to seek some help from the local physiotherapist who warned me that the blood-thinning (Xarelto) I used for my atrial fibrillation required him to treat me with a lower dosage than normal. But my third treatment produced an incident which put me in a hospital for a few hours – and has triggered a dark mood which has brought this silence.Far from being the “cruellest month” of TS Eliot’s famous poem, April was (in the late 1980s) when I emerged from what was almost like a hibernation. Ever since then, however, I have had great sympathy for those who suffer from de[ression – the most prominent Brits being Winston Churchill, Stephen Fry and Alistair Campbell. At that time Philip Toynbee was about the only prominent person admitting to the condition (I remember reading his “Part of a Journey – autobiographical notes 1977-79”) although Dorothy Rowe’s Depression – the way out of your prison Depression – the way out of your prison;(1983) became, deservedly, a best-seller.

As I have slowly slid into retirement, it is not surprising that the black dog sometimes barks. So “Reasons to stay alive” (2015) was a useful reminder for me – although I was disappointed with its self-indulgence and consider Hari’s Lost Connections (2018) is a more useful read – with

chapters on the suggested reconnections focus on: a) other people, b) ‘social prescribing’, c) meaningful work, d) meaningful values, e) sympathetic joy and overcoming an addiction to the self, f) acknowledging and overcoming childhood trauma, and g) “restoring the future” (??).

This is a good review – and this a video of the author making a presentation about the book which I simply cannot put down, it is such a gripping read as he traces his journey from a decade of popping pills, followed by several years of asking questions, reading research and tracking down what seemed to be the people and places to help him answer the questions....On the way he targets myths, medics and the pharma companies and comes up with deeply political answers about the power of collective action (the book van be accessed in the link on the title in the liast below)
The Novel Cure – an A-Z of Literary Remedies is a delightful compendium of reading recommendations for those suffering from various travails….

Resource on Depression (starting with the oldest)

Depression – the way out of your prison ; Dorothy Rowe (1983) One of the few books which was around in those dark ages, Rowe was a journalist and “agony aunt” and has a very easy tone

Life – and how to survive it ; John Cleese and Robin Skynner (1996) definitely one of the most helpful books of the decade ! A therapist and leading British comic (!) have a Socratic dialogue about the principles of healthy (family) relationships and then use these to explore the preconditions for healthy organisations and societies: and for leadership viz -

- valuing and respecting others
 - ability to communicate
- willingness to wield authority firmly but always for the general welfare and with as much consultation as possible while handing power back when the crisis is over)
- capacity to face reality squarely
- flexiblity and willingness to change
- belief in values above and beyond the personal or considerations of party.

Malignant Sadness; the anatomy of depression ; Lewis Wolpert (1999) Looks quite excellent

The noonday demon – the atlas of depression ; Andrew Solomon (2001) A much praised book, I must confess that I found its discursive style off-putting. Solomon is an essayist – although fully one third of the (large) book consists of notes. But no attempt is to break the relentless text up into headed sections to give us a hint of where the text is going

The Compassionate Mind ; Paul Gilbert (2009) This is also a bit forbidding with almost 600 pages but is well structured

Reasons to stay alive ; Matt Haig (2015) A bit too self-indulgent – but read for yourself Its short

Rip it UP – the as if principle ; Richard Wiseman (2016) One of the quotes which adorn my blog is from William James - “I will act as if what I do makes a difference”. In this entertaining and original book, Wiseman sets out a philosophy that encourages us to discipline our minds

Lost Connections ; Johann Hari (2018) I came to this book prepared (by Hari’s reputation for plagiarism) to dislike it but was completely won over by the author’s journey from a decade of popping pills, followed by several years of asking questions, reading research and tracking down what seemed to be the people and places to help him answer the questions....On the way he targets myths, medics and the pharma companies and comes up with deeply political answers about the power of collective action

How to be Depressed; George Scialabbas (2020) a terrific short read which records how the medical establishment have dealt with the author since the 1960s and offers a harrowing series of advice notes which made me realise that my present condition bears no comparison with his. Reviews are here and here

The new wave of Artificial Intelligence

Something called GPT-4 was released some 3 weeks ago and is being hailed as an innovation that rivals the atom bomb in the scale of its significance. The Center for Humane Technology puts it thus - “imagine that 50% of the engineers who built tha plane you’re stepping onto tell you that there is a 10% chance of it crashing. Would you board?”. The Centre is a much-needed body which has been running since 2018 and has some 65 podcasts to its credit – which are also available as transcripts For those who prefer a more light-hearted approach, here is a journalist’s account of a week spent with the device.

At the end of last month, top-level people in the field published an open-letter seeking a six-monthly moratorium on research in the field in order that the dangers can be properly assessed – in the absence of which recommending that government steps in. The Centre for Humane Technology brings in Robert Oppenheimer to make the point that the threat of the atomic bomb was defused by test-ban treaties. As an example of the capacity of the new device, it has managed to co-author a recent book “Impromptu – ampflifying our humanity through AI" by Reid Hoffman and...AI (2023)"

"The Guardian" newspaper has today a useful article on how it has identified a couple of articles which seem to have been written by GPT-4 and the steps it is taking behind the scenes to avoid this - but the speed with which the device is being taken up and the scale of resultant plagiarism is deeply worrying. 

There are very few of us who dare to challenge technological change. Most of us fear the ridicule involved – being the targets of taunts of being Canutes or Luddites. It, therefore, took a lot of courage for Jerry Mander in 1978 to produce Four Arguments for the elimination of television and for Neil Postman to follow this up in 1985 with “Amusing Ourselves to Death”. And, with his “In the absence of the sacred – the failure of technology” (1992) Jerry Mander took his critique our technological society even further. In this provocative work, Mander challenges the utopian promise of technological society and tracks its devastating impact on cultures worldwide. The Western world’s loss of a sense of the sacred in the natural world, he says, has led us toward global environmental disaster and social disorder - and worse lies ahead. Yet models for restoring our relationship with the Earth exist in the cultures of native peoples, whose values and skills have enabled them to survive centuries of invasion and exploitation.

Far from creating paradise on Earth, technology has instead produced an unsustainable 

contest for resources. Mander surveys the major technologies shaping the “new world 

order”, computers, telecommunications, space exploration, genetic engineering, robotics, 

and the corporation itself and warns that they are merging into a global mega-technology,

 with dire environmental and political results. Needless to say, none of such book were 

taken seriously. 

It took perhaps a BBC television series of technological dystopia Black Mirror 

– which first hit screens exactly a decade ago – for us to begin to realise that technology

 (in the shape of the social media) has its perverse side.  And here’s a useful
discussion with Yuri Harari about AI

More recent texts
Impromptu – ampflifying our humanity through AI" by AI and Reid Hoffman (2023) 
The Age of AI; and our human future H Kissinger, E Scmidt and D Huttenlocher 2021
Ten Arguments for Deleting your social media right now; Jaron Lanier (2018)
Utopia is Creepy; Nicholas Carr (2016)
The Internet is not the Answer; Andrew Keen (2015)
From Guttenberg to Zuckenberg – what you really need to know about the Internet; John Naughton (2013)
To Save everything click here – the folly of technological solutionism; Efgeni Morozov (2013)
The Shallows - what the internet is doing to our brain Nicholas Carr (2010)

Change for the Better?

"clear ideas" Renee Magritte (1958)
 

I'm just finalising my latest book which bears this title and, as subtitle, "a life in reform"

It's a mix of genres - but most decidedly, as Magritte himself might have put it, "this is not a text"! 

Although it's not quite finished, I've put it up on the list of Ebooks you will find in the top-right column when you scroll down. BUT IT HAS A NEW NAME - "The Search for Democracy"!

Warning to Reader

• People do not normally read a book about reform with any expectation of pleasure

• Such texts will normally figure as required reading in student courses, for example, in public administration reform.

• But this not a textbook on administrative reform….

• It is, rather, the story of an academically-inclined person who got involved, in the late 1960s, in community politics - and quickly rose to a position of strategic influence in Strathclyde Regional Council (Europe’s largest) for 16 years.

• On the basis of the innovative strategies I helped develop in a Regional authority covering half of Scotland, I then found myself working and living for the next 20 years in Central Europe and Central Asia - as a consultant in “institutional development”

• This is the story of how and what I have learned as a result of those endeavours in about a dozen countries

• I’m fed up with books which have unrelieved text – so have tried to liven things up a bit by the use of tables and boxes and the odd diagram

CONTENTS

Preface - in which I recall how a radio series first aroused my interest în organisations; reflect on this book’s origins; and why I think it may be of interest

1. The state of the State is chapter One in which I explain my first encounter with the deficiencies of local administration in 1968. In 1990 many of us were forced to start rethinking the role of the State - privatisation had, in the 1980s, left us wondering how far this development could redefine its role; and the unexpected fall of the Berlin Wall and of communist regimes then had us concocting pathways to capitalism and democracy.

2. Administrative Reform in the new millenium - captures one man’s attempt in 1999 to convey to a foreign audience his understanding of the organisational changes which had taken place în the 30 years from 1970 to the new millennium – particularly în the 1990s

3. Impervious Power – the eastern approaches reflects on the experience of western con-sultan..ts in central Europe and central Asia aș they wrestled with the transition to what their tiny minds assumed to be democracy and free markets.

4. Question Time A little British book about “the attack on the state” provoked me in 2018 into exploring some questions about the huge literature on public management reform (mainly academic) which has developed since the 1990s. include the following -

- How do countries compare internationally in the performance of their public services ?

- Has privatisation lived up to its hype?

- what alternatives are there to state and private provision

- why do governments still spend mega bucks on consultants?

5. The Management Virus The private and public sectors alike seem to have been taken over in recent decades by hordes of managers. How has this happened? How do we stop it? This chapter and its reading list can be viewed here

6. The echoes of Praxis As someone who has straddled the worlds of politics, academia and consultancy, I am disappointed by the sparseness of the practitioner contribution to the literature. By default we are left with academics who interview those în government and sometimes train them and consultants – allthough the former are the more voluble

7.Take Back Control? Which explores the implication of the quotation which adorns the book’s cover and asks how exactly might democracy improve the operation of our public services? Is this just a question of giving local government more power, as some would argue – ie giving a greater voice to the local public through their local representatives having a stronger legal and strategic role? Or does it require a more open and participative process – as many would argue? Or does it perhaps mean a greater say by the workforce in the everyday management of public services? Or a combination of all the above? Hilary Wainwright is amongst the very few who have taken this question seriously – although the Dutch, with the Buurtzog model, are now exploring the question

8. Theories of Change în which I question the compartmentalisation of the subject of change into studies of psychology, technology, organisation and society and offer an annotated bibliography of some 80 books

9. Inconclusion 

Just Words – a sceptic’s glossary (2023 updated version) it’s 60 pages so best read separately (my answer to Ralston Saul’s more voluminous “The Doubter’s Companion” 1994)

Deepening Democracy?

Henry Mintzberg is a Canadian management professor who, in many ways, can be regarded as having inherited the mantle of the most insightful management writer Peter Drucker. He has the same integrity and clarity that the Austrian emigre brought and, as he has aged, has become increasingly critical of the excesses of modern capitalism and has produced a little book about this - "Rebalancing Society – Radical Renewal; beyond Left, Right and Center" (2015) which argued that we had got it wrong when we imagined that capitalism had won at the end of the 80s

It was balance that triumphed in 1989. While those communist regimes were severely out of balance, with so much power concentrated in their public sectors, the successful countries of the West maintained sufficient balance across their public, private, and what can be called plural sectors. But a failure to understand this point has been throwing many countries out of balance ever since, in favor of their private sectors.

And it was deindustrialisation which destroyed that balance – more specifically the power which working class people had been able to exercise in that period through votes and unions - has been undermined. In its place a “thought system” developed - justifying corporate greed and the privileging (through tax breaks and favourable legislation) of the large international company which I have summarised thus -

• All political parties and most media have been captured by the “thought system” which now rules the world

• People have, as a result, become cynical and apathetic

• Privatisation is a disaster – inflicting costs on the public and transferring wealth to the few

• Two elements of the “balanced system” (Political and legal power) are now supine before the third (corporate and media power). The balance is broken and the dominant power ruthless in its exploitation of the excesses to which it can now give vent

• It is very difficult to see a “countervailing power” which would make these corporate elites pull back from the disasters they are inflicting on us

• Social protest is marginalized - not least by the combination of the media and an Orwellian “security state” ready to act against “dissidence”

• But the beliefs which lie at the dark heart of the neo-liberal project need more detailed exposure

• as well as its continued efforts to undermine what little is left of state power

• We need to be willing to express more vehemently the arguments against privatisation - existing and proposed

• to feel less ashamed about arguing for “the commons” and for things like cooperatives and social enterprise (inasmuch as such endeavours are allowed)

But the elite - and the media which services their interests - noticed something was wrong only when Brexit and Trump triumphed – in 2016. But that was simply the point at which the dam broke – the pressure had been building up for much longer.

If we really want to understand what is going on we have to go much further back – not just to the beginning of the new millennium when the first waves of populist anger started - but to the 1970s when the post-war consensus started to crumble – as Anthony Barnett, for one, most recently argued in his superb extended essay “Out of the Belly of Hell” (2020)

The demos have been giving the Elites a clear warning – “your social model sucks”. So far I don’t see a very credible Elite response. Indeed, the response so far reminds me of nothing less than that of the clever Romans who gave the world Bread and Circuses. Governments throughout the world have a common way of dealing with serious problems – it starts with denial, moves on to sacrificial lambs, official inquiries and bringing in the clowns - and finishes with “panem et circenses”. But my argument was too cynical. It failed to offer a way out.

For more than a decade, people in different parts of the world have been working on what is various called “deliberative democracy” or citizen juries which offer inspiring examples of that way out. Two shortish articles offer the best introduction to developments in this field - first this and then then the second part here

Some people would argue that this is just a fleeting fashion and that a more effective path would be to -

• increase local government power – ie giving a greater voice to the local public through their local representatives having a stronger legal and strategic role?

• Or does it require a more open and participative process – with deliberative democracy and citizen juries?

• Or does it perhaps mean a greater say by the workforce in the everyday management of public services?

• Or a combination of all the above?

Hilary Wainwright is amongst the very few who have taken such questions seriously – with her “Public Service Reform – but not as know it” (2009) although the Dutch, with the Buurtzog model, are now exploring the question. Cooperatives, social enterprise and worker-owned companies may employ only a tiny percentage of the global workforce but offer huge advantages to the increasing number of people looking for work which gives meaning to their lives.

Background Reading on the growing recognition of the need for greater citizen input

• https://howtosavetheworld.ca/2023/05/13/ready-for-civilizations-collapse/

• Response from Sottish Government to 2021 Report on Citizen Assemblies March 2023 – 14 page response hot off the press

• Metasurvey of deliberative democracy (American Pol Science Review 2023) a typical dry and academic article which may be of use to academics

• Citizen Assemblies in Scotland – report to Scottish Government (2021) The Scottish Government asked 100 Scots to act as a citizen jury on the future of their country. This 250 page report was the result – telling you everything you need to know about the operation of such a jury – lovely vignettes of both the participants and their advisers

• Catching the Deliberative Wave (OECD 2020) Executive summary of recent important book Innovate Citizen Participation and new democratic institutions - catching the Deliberative Wave which tries to help the global elite make sense of the latest challenge to their rule

• Macron’s Grand Debat; useful 2019 article about the French approach

• Citizen jury experience (2016) german; rather academic

• Creating Freedom – the lottery of birth, the illusion of consent, the fight for freedom Raoul Martinez (2016) Fascinating book which starts from the proposition that the current failure of our social systems must lead us to question our foundational beliefs

• Waves of Democracy – social movement and political change; John Markoff (2015 2^nd edition) looks a pretty definitive approach to recent developments – by a Pittsburgh political sociologist with a strong background in history and in other cultures – and a very good writing style

• Can Democracy be Saved? - participation, deliberation and social movements; Donatella Della Porta (2013)Too much of the discussion on democracy is conducted by anglo-saxon political scientists. Here an Italian sociologist makes the connection to the social movement literature, offering 4 models of democracy. The writing style is a bit too academic for me

• Democracy at Work – a cure for capitalism Richard Wolff (2012) a famous economist makes the case for increasing the power of workers

• Employee Ownership Dave Erdal (2012) short article by someone who transferred ownership of his company to his workers

• Power in movement – social movement and contentious politics; Sydney Tarrow (2011 edition – first in 1994) one of the key writers about social movements, he manages to cover a huge literature in a very clear manner.

• Democratic innovations – designing institutions for citizen participation Graham Smith (2009) who was the research direcctor of the famous UK Power inquiry of 2004.

Finally, for those who want to know more about the operation of citizen juries, here’s the site of The Deliberative Democracy Journal whose articles are free (eg this one about different German approaches) and The Citizen Convention for UK democracy