Listen Dumbo, Get out of my Face - A Call for an Increase in Common Sense

I recently sent through a strategy document that focused on social development and received a very polite, ‘thank you very much but we don’t think you are qualified to advise’.  That’s the politically correct version, of “Listen Dumbo, get out of my face”.  The funny thing about strategy is that it needs to address the question at hand and I think the biggest and most common mistake that we make is asking the wrong questions and as a result; we define the issue incorrectly. 

It would appear that I continue to have some of my least intelligent conversations with experts. 

I dread a conversation with ‘experts’.  

I swear that something must happen after someone is handed their PhD papers.  The brain goes on leave or something.  They are the quickest to power play and seldom answer my questions (my assumption is that their expertise has run out – their assumption is that I am simply so not on their level).  Whatever the cause, it seems almost impossible to teach an ‘expert’ anything or get a straight answer.    

  

My latest conversation with a so called ‘expert’ went something like this;

“So let me understand this, you want to increase the regulation and policy on a trade that is already illegal”...

“Yes.  In order to better manage the current situation we need to focus on the policy, legal and judiciary aspects of the trade.” 

“Okay, but the trade is already illegal and statistics indicate that this intervention strategy has had little to no effect to date.  So the fact that the trade continues means that the people who are engaged in trading have little to no regard for the law, which would suggest that making more laws will have little to no impact... Thus the definition of ‘illegal’...”

The dialogue degenerated rapidly from there.  Am I the only one who thinks that making more laws to manage people who simply disregard law as a waste of time, money and effort?  Why is it that when ‘an expert’ is not able to answer your questions your qualifications and title becomes automatically relevant.  

      

One of the biggest questions that is seldom asked is:  Is it working?  Are we getting the results that we are looking for?  What is the bottom line or cause (politically correct for ‘why’?)?  

  

And so having this experience regularly has highlighted another question; what makes somebody qualified?  Somebody with experience...  Somebody with knowledge...  Somebody with an education in the field...? 

These so called ‘experts’ that we hold in high esteem are often well equipped with knowledge.  They hold a piece of paper which they earned by researching a subject that is narrow in focus and makes them a specialist in a very specific field; a ‘paper’ which somehow in today’s society places them as an ‘expert’ in some field.  But somehow, possessing knowledge and the application of knowledge seem to be different activities all together.    

There are a few more things I think should be asked of someone when holding ‘experts’ in high esteem and those are:  What is their track record?  Do they hold a stake in the outcomes that are being sought?  How do they weigh the significance of result and process?  (Working hard and producing nothing, nor should getting the results at all costs be held in high esteem)  What are their intentions insofar as contributing to the matter at hand?  Do they actually care to use their expertise in a way that contributes positively to society and achieve the results that have been prioritised?   

When a position held or expertise sought is to attain money and power... whatever the decisions, the outcomes will generally not be ones that will benefit the majority. 

This way of thinking is not new and is bound to reoccur in a society that holds in high esteem; money, position and power.

 

Another conversation of note with an ‘expert’ concluded something like this...

“Please excuse my wife as she is just not that educated you see.”  A statement followed by a condescending little pat on her arm and a flicker of hurt on her face.

 

                A statement said to the same wife who raised his children while he pursued his PhD.  A statement to the same women who got pregnant in high school with the same man and who paid her in dues in lost opportunity and a life time spent with a man who now looks down at her.  A woman who, even though he is the reason why she never had the opportunity to pursue her own dreams, is the reason he has a PhD today. 

“Yes, there we agree.  There is a fool in the room.  But it’s just not your wife” I think to myself.

Thus, my conclusion on the matter is quite simple.  There is a big difference between knowledge and wisdom and an educated fool is simply that: a fool with a bunch of papers. 

That being said, isn’t it time we start addressing the issues and the outcomes?  

Please!?!

...

- END - 

 

The Need to Know Who... Well sort-of!

 ‘Hey, whose going to be the leader if you’re leaving,’ one of the girls called anxiously as her pigtails bounced.  My daughter at age seven diligently appointed a leader and climbed into the car ready to depart from school while I stifle a smile, my desire to laugh out loud and the urge to roll my eyes.  Not only did she have to make the decision, she already had a full five year plan on who was going to be the leader of their little primary school group of friends as they transitioned from grade one to grade five. 

A plan which she diligently followed as she got older and threw her support behind whomever was allocated ‘the leader’ for that particular year.  A plan which regularly provided me with high levels of amusement as she faithfully talked about the leader over the years not realising that she was orchestrating the dynamics of the group from the back. 

A plan that still makes me chuckle to this day and I periodically remind her about. 
 
To her credit, she strove to be faithful and fair to all the members of the group; an endeavour that did make me somewhat proud of the person she is. 

When I started this blog, it was my hope that people would follow ideas and not the person behind the scenes and thus deliberately left my name out of the site.  And while I do understand the hesitancy..., a great deal of hesitancy, I would like to know why is it that we follow people we perceive to know because we simply recognise their face from some magazine, seen them somewhere, or admire their talents, or they hold a position of power, etc,

Or why is it we are much more willing to follow people who simply tell us what it is we would like to hear instead of the truth or what we need to hear. 

We seem content to settle for an illusion of knowing someone rather than an understanding of what that person stands for or represents.   

I worry about this concept of ‘follow...’  The word has come to represent a passive activity despite its active contribution towards some of the greatest human rights violations and atrocities in history.  Its passivity allows events to happen that never would have if people understood that following should essentially be an active activity.  An activity whereby one should continually evaluate the vision and merits of the person being followed and as a result, makes an active decision to put their support behind that person because they agree with what the person stands for and what they intend to achieve.   

And so the tendency to passively follow is perpetuating a language and a culture of power.  We follow people because of their monetary worth, beauty, status, position, or what we stand to gain by aligning ourselves with those who hold a degree of power due to circumstance; ... a circumstance subject to change. 

I, the chronic sceptic that I am, cannot imagine placing my support behind someone who has no vision of what they intend to achieve and who leverages their ‘power over’ instead of seeing value in anyone else... simply because they hold a position of power (for the moment).       

So rooted deeply in my cynicism, I am in search of a leader...  one who has a vision for this country.  Someone who holds fast to the principle that humanity has value by virtue of it being a common humanity; a leader whose moral compass is not shifted by the relativity of the time and who stands for something worth standing for and not the accumulation of personal wealth and power. 

A leader whose absence seems to be increasingly apparent...   

An absence that active followers and general citizens should become increasingly concerned about... because it is seldom leaders who pay for their mistakes, but rather the followers who take the brunt of their leader’s poor decisions. 

Just ask those at Marikana...

 

 

 

 

Those Waves of Change

At the beginning of the year, I had four garden chairs and a table...

But it has been a rough year for garden furniture.  Well – my garden furniture anyways.  You see, the plastic table and two chairs were stolen about three months back, a feat which left two wooden chairs as they were unable to be hoisted over the fence in a hurry, as they were a little bit heavier than the plastic ones.  Now plastic chairs are not usually high on the list of thievable items of choice, so imagine that those were not the initial target when the plan for theft was being hatched.  

That said, it left me with two chairs, and I was thankful that they were the better quality items of the garden furniture.  The thankfulness stems from a South African tendency to always try and consider the worst. ‘Wow, sorry about your _________ (fill stolen item in blank), at least no one was hurt’ – standard encouragement, albeit absolute bullshit, to stifle the irritation of living in a high crime zone.  So that’s nice and all, but what about my chairs?

So like a well indoctrinated local, I was thankful until a few weeks back when the river came for a visit in the form of a flood ... So while the wooden furniture was too heavy to hoist..., the same wooden furniture floats!

And my thankfulness somewhat dissipated ... 

But while sloshing through the rubble in my goulashes, I found one of my chairs tangled up in the vegetation of the neighbour’s yard, covered with mud...  and there in the back of my mind the urge to be thankful begins to show signs of life...  But no, it was immediately squashed and a basic life question... at what point do we bury the urge for gratitude and replace it with a life draining cynicism that seems to serve the embittered so well? 

The irony of life is that disaster and opportunity are often presented as the flip sides of the same coin.  Disaster is the presentation of a situation in which change is thrust upon people, unasked for and usually unwanted – but generally unavoidable. 

The question is – are we in tune enough to recognise the presentation of opportunity in the midst of it or are we too focused on what we had and the desire to go back to where we come from?  Sadly, embitterment only ensures that the coin is never flipped over.

The problem with going back is that we are assuming that there a space for the ‘back’ in the future; which by its very nature should sound the alarm bells of impossibility in the depths of rational thinking. 

But as human beings we tend to be less then rational and emotionally carry a desire to retreat to a time in which we felt ‘safe’ or at least had an illusion of agency and influence in our world.  

Ironically the life journey, no matter to what point, always begins at its present moment.  That said; I cannot help but wish for the time when the complex boundary walls were once intact as we wait with consternation the outcomes of insurance claims which seem to be taking longer than necessary...

In the mean time, it should be acknowledged that it took the river about an hour to demolish over 200m of infrastructure, a feat which will take probably about six months to recover from.        

So on the flip side of the disaster coin, there is usually opportunity.  It is just that one needs to have the courage to turn the coin over and consider the other side.    

Thus, for the moment, all I can do is simply relax with a good cup of coffee and a clean garden chair while I contemplate what could have been, but wasn’t, in the midst of broken walls, muck, make shift fences, razor wire and plants that are struggling to recover from their unanticipated mud bath.

And when that has been fully considered, take some time to deliberate what opportunity it may provide to change things that we would have been unable to change, if all was intact as it once was...

And six months from now, when all has been rebuilt better than before, I might even be thankful. 

Until then, that niggling gratitude will have to be kept to a bare minimum while I am forced to start each day with the walls down, until that too, changes.