The previous Chapter, Getting The Pillars To Believe proposed that we community workers need to be willing to engage with workers within the Pillars who are empathic with and supportive of different ways of working that are inclusive of very hurt people in the Focus Group.
In doing that, this website promotes collaboration and partnership.
Implicit in it is a desire to improve systems and processes that protect children and other vulnerable members of our society whose distress is often hidden. Creative alternatives to current methods are proposed which include working with organisations whose norms and practices may have been, traditionally, based more on the coercion and obedience model than on the invitational one proposed.
This will, of course, bring a lot of challenges. I am sure that there will be uncertainty in our commitment to uncertainty!
And I believe that the biggest challenges are transformation and dialogue – as distinct from trying to force change – within an environment of trust and uncertainty.
Transformation implies that we have a willingness to adjust our beliefs and certainties and accept new developments as well as ancient wisdom. The coercion and obedience (and the fear that often accompanies them) can all be challenged by compassion within a trusting relationship.
We do not want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, (as is often said), or try to construct some unattainable Utopia.
Dialogue implies creativity and complexity, respect and trusting the other, and (our two old friends at this stage) two-way knowledge flow and emergence.
Our work needs to acknowledge that the low-level conflict within the Pillars (that I mentioned in this post) exists, but we need to take great care, in our dialogue, firstly to be understanding and not to be drawn into it – and the competition and comparison that always seems to accompany it.
Even basic knowledge of anthropology will alert us to the fact that our evolution happened because of our overwhelming desire to further our education in the broadest sense.
What we aim for is generation of new thinking and action which focuses on our humanity and all the positive aspects of same – particularly emotional and relational.
Natural selection reinforced and affirmed the traits (which we may also call gifts) to do this and it is very foolish and wasteful of us to ignore them when it comes to helping people in distress.
What might emerge is shaking up of old and apparently conflicting perspectives and forging a new approach that involves courage and patience.
Now I said a number of times that I would try and focus on the positive and I’d like to finish on a positive note!
In Ireland, in respect of protecting the vulnerable, we are not at all the worst in the Western World. Imprisonment is always a good indicator of a population’s attitude to such matters. And in Ireland we have about half the imprisonment rate as our nearest neighbour, England, and one-eighth the rate of another of our major cultural influences, the USA.
For some reason we seem to resist the binary approach of these countries where different belief-systems, traditions and stances on important issues of social justice and human rights are diametrically opposed to each other, thereby making progress in either area very difficult. I don’t really know why this is. Perhaps there is something positive in our much criticised ah-sure-it’ll-do culture. (Though Japan – which can hardly be described as an ah-sure-it’ll-do kind of country – has half our rate of imprisonment again)!
It is also heartening for me as a practitioner who has toiled away in the voluntary sector for many decades to have met and worked with people within the Pillars (of whom there are many – and some in very senior positions) who are enthusiastic about solutions. And it is particularly heartening to see how many younger people are enthusiastic and open to creative ways of working.
In this, I believe – as I have said already – that we on the community side have an opportunity, (and I know this sounds a bit heavy) but sometimes I feel that we have a responsibility to offer our assistance and promote our solutions.
Shakespeare notes in his oft-quoted phrase that there is a tide in the affairs of men.
Despite my fears expressed in the post on modern trends, I believe that the tide of complexity and interconnection, uncertainty and ambiguity, networking – and communication on a level never thought possible – has now turned and is coming in – and will not turn in the foreseeable future.
This is good news for our work in communities – and it is up to us to make the most of it!