Matthew Taylor's Blog
Hi All
I'm going to add a new link in the Blogs section (well, in a minute or two I will anyhow).
I was doing a little research after reading an article about Matthew Taylor the new Chief Exec of the RSA. He's new there (November last year I believe). So I goes along and takes a look at the RSA site while I was at it; get some contact details and the like. Lo and behold there's a link to Matthew's Blog. Well it struck me after reading a bit that there's a lesson here: Matthew Taylor as of last year worked for the Labour party as Chief Political Advisor to Tony Blair, that makes him one of 'them', 'they', those faceless people (truth is we don't even think of them as human most the time) whom we refer to collectively as 'the government'. Come on lets be honest, the faceless, inhuman 'they', do bad things to us all the time, well don't they? Then there's this blog; a human being, talking about football clubs and feeling wanted when people like his speeches and the like. A human being just like the rest of us, struggling along in life trying to do stuff.
Read some. . . try him on Tony Blair's legacy
So I'm wondering, something is happening here on the internet. The 'they' are coming out from the shadows of our collective imaginations and presenting themselves as real people, with worries, with emotions, with real lives just like our own.
I've always known this but so many people don't know this and so they continue to debate things, in their own minds and with others, without really understanding that we are all in this together, trying to make the most of our lives, trying to help each other. If we continue to think cynically, as if so-called institutions and organisations have a life of their own, that they can talk and act and make decisions, we will never fully understand the power that each of us as individuals hold to change things, our society, our living; The system will continue to reign over us, and as the system does not in-fact exist, I wonder who so many people think is actually running this country, and running not just the government but EVERYTHING.
Thank you Matthew, it's nice to meet you.
posted by RayM @ 15:46
5 comments
5 Comments:
Then as I delve a little deeper (checking links and comments on Matthews Blog) I find there are others out there who have indeed abandoned the idea that the system exists and, have replaced it with the idea that ALL politicians, business leaders, and any one else at all in a position of influence or control are worse than animals, hell bent on the destruction of human society as we know it and do absolutely nothing other than that which serves their own selfish means and ends.
Oh my goodness I really do wonder where the middle 'intelligent' ground exists for us human beings.
When the collective whole is unable to change it's trajectory towards disaster, we say it's the 'system'. Yet when we all moving towards success we refer to it as 'we all worked really hard'.
Although 'the government' is indeed populated by individuals, collective justification of a questionable moral compass does make them collectively wrong, therefore the 'government is bad'. Take Nazi Germany for example. The sum of their atrocities could be blamed on individuals, but we are more likely to blame the system, especially if it is a charismatic one. Mass judgments and opinions effectively squash individual sentiments, either by preventing it from surfacing in the first place, or drowning it out under the strength of so many voices.
You've gone far too deep me thinks. I was first commenting on the fact that it was refreshing to see an influential person blogging about his life and his living for us all to read. Secondly I was remarking that, although there is nothing wrong with cynicism per-se, sometimes, some persons, and especially media persons tend to get carried away and assume that no one, not anyone, especially those so called 'in power' have anything other than selfish motives in mind. By the law of averages this simply cannot be, hence my reference to the intelligent middle ground, which incidentally does exist, of that I am certain.
I was just cutting to the core of the problems in governments in general and peoples perception of those governments and their actions. No good musing over the top of a problem. It's like arguing with your wife over who left the cap off the toothpaste. That's not really what you're arguing about.
Ah, the age old conundrum of the collective -v- the individual.
Perhaps it is simply fear on the part of the individual that allows the system to take on a seeming reality. I remember the song by Donovan: The universal soldier, that says that without the individual nothing can happen; no soldier doing war, no war.
To my mind the system is an imaginary, fabricated thing we use to describe a general movement of individual actions or, inactions.
Mia culpa
This is my philosophy
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