If you believe the hype about finding jobs, the economy improving, tra la la la la, personally I think you need to think again. The economy has been poked for a long time, if you hadn't noticed, and is just about as poked as it could ever be right now.
I'm no economist, hence the technical terminology, but what I do know for sure is that jobs as we know them will just get harder and harder to find. I told the NZ Welfare Working Group that according to the Zeitgeist Movement, it's likely the US unemployment rate will be 62% by 2030. They didn't include that in their report.
Technology, that thing we've been investing millions of hours and trillions of dollars in improving (particularly in the last hundred years, but actually since we realised we could smash stuff with rocks), is taking our jobs. Machines and computers, articulated vehicles, 3D printers. These marvellous inventions that we've deliberately created to make our lives easier are making our lives easier. Now.
At a meeting I attended today, a lot of discussion centred on a process for planning a consultation hui, which those at the meeting thought was excluding of their perspective.
It was, but more than 50% of the two hour meeting was spent talking about how bad, unfair, hurtful, wrong, etc, etc the exclusion was.
Maybe I'm getting too long in the tooth but I can't see the point of getting swamped in "should haves" and "shouldn't haves" in the past.
I love the idea of entropy, explained eloquently by the BBC's Dr Brian Cox. According to Wikipedia, "In statistical mechanics, entropy is a measure of the number of ways in which a system may be arranged, often taken to be a measure of "disorder" (the higher the entropy, the higher the disorder)."
Watch this video and then let's consider entropy from a social change perspective.
Hello, it's 2012 - hope you had a great break. So, are you ready for change?
Not cataclysmic, apocalyptic, chronomatic, revelational change.
I mean subtle, gentle, influential and revolutionary change. Like this:
Last night I dined in France with friends. In a little private courtyard, surrounded by trees. There was beautiful food, wine and we laughted a lot.
Actually, it was at an inaccessible restaurant in Long Bay, NZ.
But they were creative and generous and set up a table out the back. We used our imaginations.
People have asked me in the past, "What do you think you would be like if you hadn't been disabled?"
It's a bit of a silly question and I've often answered dismissively, "Like my twin brother."
But a question that has more interest to me is, "What could have happened differently, had I had common rather than unique function?"
I've been noticing this in so many people lately that I just have to rant about it: entitlement.
Why do people think they're entitled to anything?
Entitlement is arrogant. It is an unnegotiated expectation that someone else will fulfill your desires. It is a deliberate shirking of self-responsibility. It is a naive belief that you should have something because you think it's right. It's a total disregard for your own creativity.
This year I’m heavily involved in some exciting new and creative social change projects. I’ve been running the inaugural “Be. Leadership” programme since February; I’m designing an online social change toolkit with the Ministry of Social Development as part of the NZ Government's Campaign to Improve Attitudes and Behaviours Towards Disabled People; and I’m a member of a Ministry of Health National Reference Group to support a new model of delivering disability support. To top it off I’m a judge of Arts Access Aotearoa’s Big 'A’ Awards and have a huge bound volume of 22 applications sitting on my desk, begging me to wade through it.
The common denominator in these things is that, not only are most of the projects themselves firsts, but they are all areas of work in which, to a large extent, I’ve never been involved before. Hence there is the huge likelihood that things will go wrong. That’s had me feeling slightly on edge.
As luck – or destiny depending on your frame of mind – would have it, I happened upon a fantastic TEDTalk a couple of weeks ago by Kathryn Schulz, entitled “On being wrong” (embedded below). Schultz confronts directly the human need to be right all the time, exposing it as a fundamental flaw in logic. She acknowledges that, though we often grudgingly admit we learn from our mistakes, we still feel bad, embarrassed, even a failure, when we are wrong.
Most societies in the modern world invest a lot of time, money and importance in creating certainty*. Religious leaders preach about a certain god. Politicians debate over certain policy. Businesses plan for certain outcomes and profits. The media provides certain commentary. Accountants assure us of certain financial strategies.
Then Nature, in the form of weather, earthquakes and other events, says, "Just a second, let's get one thing straight. Nothing is certain."
We respond in shock, terror, disbelief and, sometimes, even outrage. How could this happen? What will we do? All our planning gone to waste. How dare our security be ripped from us, without warning, planning, consultation!
Last night I skyped with several artists involved in Liverpool's DadaFest and had a fascinating conversation about diversity, creativity, change and the arts.
This video begins at the end of my introduction where I talked about how I came to establish the International Guild of Disabled Artists & Performers (IGODAP).
