I will now introduce what I consider to be a very striking paradox – the paradox of corporate closed-ness.
Despite the openness of our modern Western democracies, in an environment where dissent and debate is allowed, where there is no apparent (or obvious) rigid hierarchy, and where we are free to make choices about what we do and don’t do, or what or who we agree or disagree with – the very opposite to what I have just described as the norm in the totalitarian state – relatively small numbers of wealthy, powerful and privileged people still seem to be able to impose their will on us all.
(I will be developing this theme further in the next post).
While we are on paradoxical matters, and looking at openness within the Pillars as we defined them already, one might intuit that the public service and the body politic would lean towards closed-ness, and the media and academia would tend towards openness.
However here are some examples of closed-ness in Media:
Editorial bias, and bias towards sensationalism – closed to the whole truth as it might not be exciting enough, but mainly, closed to points of view that challenge the ethos of the owners or the people/parties, or entities/industries etc. that the media outlet is there to support and the ideology that they promote.
And here are examples of closed-ness in Academia:
Closed to non-formal learning, bias in curriculum, lack of creativity, insistence on grading students in examinations, fixation on competitiveness, adherence to academic rank and ritual, sense of entitlement, sometimes superior attitude, to mention but a few areas that put a considerable brake on the ability or willingness for academia to be open.
Of course, like all collections of humans, all of the Pillars are open entities, interacting with their environment, changing it, and being changed by it.
However they usually make strenuous efforts to resist changes that they fear, or will disadvantage them, or that might be initiated by others, and they will normally close ranks when threatened by what they consider to be too much openness.
So – and this is important – because of this apparent contradiction, or paradox, between what the Pillars profess to be, and what they are, I believe that it is very helpful that we community workers – who protect vulnerable children in modern, open democracies – examine wider societal, sociological and economic factors both in our own country and globally and how these factors influence methods favoured by the Pillars in respect of alleviating the hurt of children who suffer a lot, and struggle to belong in mainstream society.
In doing this – as I stated above – we will develop awareness of where power and control lie in our Western democratic society where we pride ourselves on being civilised, having political accountability and transparency with free and fair elections at the core, on upholding universal human rights for all citizens, and on ensuring that all people are equal.
Personally, I find it impossible to do this kind of work without having a deep awareness firstly of the issues themselves and secondly the importance of the awareness of the issues to practitioners.