We need more than orthodox science

 

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Unsustainable society is insanity

"Our attitudes toward consumption and material goods and our apparent lack of interest in curbing waste at a time when our resources are running out is clearly insane"

Edward T Hall, Beyond Culture, 1976.

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What is education for?

Learning is an innate human drive - absolutely necessary for the survival of an individual, and our culture, and the human species.

But Westerners assume that our reality is THE reality from a superior system of thought. This then gives us the right to free others with inferior thought from their ignorance and make them more like us.

Thus we try to solve problems created by this stance with the very thinking that is the cause.

Conventional science has become dogma.

Isn't it a worry that much of our education stifles the learning we need to improve the habitat and society we depend upon? We've bureaucratised beyond the true purpose. Mass education shoehorns people into the system instead of serving their interests as citizens. Where is the service ethic? Are we clear about the major problems that universities are capable of solving?

Professors are inefficient when their work is overly structured - teaching mostly educates professors!

Timetabling bears no known relation to what is necessary for a flourishing society.

Participation is necessary for productivity, contentment, social conscience, and responsibility of citizens. Or we just spend lots of scarce resources on conformance to tests of knowledge transmission.

Bigness and growth is a pernicious - largely unrecognised - pervasive disease, and works against all we know about what it takes to produce better citizens. Factory education isn't the right way to organise learning.

To build resilience in the way we respond to the sustainability of society imperative, we need a transformation in culture, not more of the same.

Eco-consciousness and true democracy, not conservatism and reductive science.

Lester Milbrath urged us to "learn our way out" of the crisis. Marshall McLuhan wanted to "escape into understanding". Are we ready and capable and willing?

Are we reflecting on the way we look at things, how we behave politically, how we make decisions, how we prioritise, how we organise our lives, and how we think? That is the important impetus for learning.

 

 

 

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Portrait of a man

“Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.”
― Samuel Butler

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University students can be change makers

Isn't that the true purpose of higher education, to foster change for the better?

Photo from Dr Michael Pirson, taken somewhere in the New York region

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Violence or social conscience?

Neoliberal ideology is physically different thinking from collaborative thinking

This has implications for assumptions about markets operate

See the TIME report on new neuropolitics research here

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What's needed for professional action?

This diagram shows the multi-faceted understanding of personal attributes, knowledge and understanding, and skills

 

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Is Marketing killing us?

I went to listen to Bryan Gould, once almost PM of the UK and former VC of the University of Waikato, speaking in Hamilton last night on "Democracy Hijacked". He thoroughly and eloquently laid out the story of 40 years of big business supplanting elected democratic government, and the dire consequences for the majority of us who are cast as consumers instead of citizens.

His new book sets out the details - to be published later in the year. I will be reading it as soon as I can.

I am struck by how little a part of the total world economy is product-based marketing. Most so-called wealth - for the already rich - now comes in trading money rather than making things and doing things that serve real basic needs.

Marketing is a powerful apparently democratic idea if taken back to its roots - going to market to buy and sell surplus outputs. It is a massive lost opportunity to make lives better if marketing is reduced to the easy path of finding ways to sell people what they want - we deserve - and need - better than this.

Service for reward is the authentic purpose for modern commerce, otherwise the cost of profiting is just too high.

Bryan Gould consistently talks sense on things that matter in our society. He is evidently a good man, with good intent. He urges us to talk deliberatively on important matters.

See www.bryangould.net

I also recommend Marvin Brown's book "Civilizing the Economy: A New Economics of Provisioning".

 

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Make or buy decision

We're faced with this problem many times each day, and have become conditioned to default to buy.

What if we reset to make, and then buy is a special case?

Intrinsic satisfaction, less waste, stronger relationship with our habitat, and needs emphasised over money making. Activity focused on making, then less sense of hollow leisure time (much time saved is wasted, and much of which is spent shopping!). Basically, must makes more sense.

Neoliberal market thinking says exchange efficiency matters (profiting is the purpose), whereas resource efficiency leads to a very different outcome (careful use to meet needs).

{market-enablement and market-dependence}

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When a C doesn't equate to an A

Have you ever been told by a student that your grading isn't "satisfactory"?

Here's an explanation

Last year a student told me that she wasn't satisfied with her grade (we had been discussing customer satisfaction in class!). I asked her to what extent she had met the learning outcomes for the class. I didn't get any further comment.

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Money-making at the expense of meeting needs

Ask any diligent marketing student and they'll define marketing as managed activity to meet needs and wants for a profit. Now for how much longer will we allow some super rich speculators to profit at the expense of the needy poor?

See the latest sickening story here

We need regulated markets that prioritise need fulfilment ahead of making money at someone else's expense.

Markets that don't make a net gain for the many, if not all, participants are surely inefficient?

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Fracking hell

More evidence of the rampant industrialisation of our habitat here

The real value of celebrity is demonstated here in the bringing of attention to what citizens need to know aboute

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Enticements to annoyance

Bond and Bond running Tv adverts that offer mega price deals on white ware. We need to replace two appliances, so off we trot only to be met by indifferent staff who know little about the products they want to sell. Sharp exit to Heathcotes where the guy is friendly, attentive, knowledgeable, and fault free. Again, we choose who to spend our money with. B&B now further down the list - almost with Harvey Norman as a retailer we prefer to not deal with. The Heathcotes deal was better anyway! Running out of options for good service, so actually the job of retail buying is getting easier.

Update, Monday - Heathcoate's customer service office have now called twice today to arrange delivery and installation on different days and at different times. Supremely attentive or service failure? Confidence dented a little bit. Let's see what happens on Wednesday.

Further update, Wednesday - the dishwasher was installed nicely by a knowledgeable and polite man first thing in the morning, as promised. The dryer wasn't delivered until 8:15 PM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The guy had to go back for it and drop it off on his way home because it wasn't despatched by the service department.

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Hunters or Farmers

Returned the Edifier TickTock clock alarm radio to Farmers 'cos it was just way to hard to set up and get working reliably, and the user manual didn't give full details for using the rather unintuitive setup menu. Frustratingly the sales clerk tried her best to avoid taking it back and refunding. "We don't take electrical products back" and "I'm not authorised to give refunds". Poor product and disappointing service - all about attitude really. Will think thrice about buying from Farmers. I've been a regular customer nine years, but this not considered. Once again a one-sided corporate deal. Annoying that unilaterally imposed restrictions that favour the seller are not apparent during purchase, and that staff seem unaware of or to disregard Fair Trading and Consumer Guarantees legislation. Disappointing.

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Turn it down, please!

Seems that Harvey Norman is one of the vanguard retailers that is showing us the excesses of consumerism and thus a better way. They are being cruel to Kiwis to be kind. Either that or they are persisting with a dinosaur business model that continues to oversell fashionable 'hot' products to replace last season's hot product - always bigger and better? - with money that hasn't been earned yet (50 months credit, so that the product fails before it's fully paid for). Time to move on or stand aside, I say. Let the enlightened firms do better business that really does make our lives better.

The full story as reported by the New Zealand Herald:

The advertising watchdog has dismissed a complaint that Harvey Norman's television ads are too loud, saying it has no jurisdiction to dictate ad volume or frequency.

Viewer C Kenneth wrote to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) complaining the "shouting" advertisements were "truly irritating and tend to invade my home environment".

The complaint was filed in December, after television networks agreed to tone down their commercials by January 1 to appease viewers, with TVNZ the first to adopt quieter ads in November.

C Kenneth complained last month that although ads were said to be quieter, the Harvey Norman commercial "still seems to be louder than other advertising".

"I have taken to switching my television off when this ad is played and I feel that I should not be assaulted and feel that I must do this in my own home," the complaint said.

The ASA chairman ruled that although there was no power to dictate ad volume, there was a responsibility for advertisers to make commercials that didn't breach the "social responsibility required".

The chairman ruled there was no breach and subsequently there were no grounds for the complaint to proceed.

The complainant's submission finished with the warning that they were not enticed by Harvey Norman's sales being yelled through the television.

"In fact, these ad types are turning me off from even visiting Harvey Norman stores," C Kenneth wrote.

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Tell, explain, demonstrate, or inspire?

1. A mediocre person tells.
   

   A good person explains.

   A superior person demonstrates.

   A great person inspires others to see for themselves.

   

   Harvey Mackay on how to take it east in life .....

 

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