Where unfairness begins.

The truth about stereotypes.

Psychologists once believed that only intolerant people used stereotypes. Now the study of unconscious bias is revealing the unsettling truth. We all use stereotypes, all the time, without knowing it. We have met the enemy of equality, and the enemy is us.

Yet if we all took are own tests of unconscious unfairness. What’s known as automatic or implicit stereotyping, which, we find, we do all the time without knowing it. Though out and out intolerance may be on the decline, if anything, stereotyping is a bigger problem than we ever imagined.

Previously, researchers who studied stereotyping had simply asked people to record their feelings about minority groups, social discrimination and had used their answers as an index of their attitudes. Psychologists now understand that these conscious replies are only half the story. How progressive a person seems to be on the surface bears little or no relation to how prejudiced he or she is on an unconscious level so that a person with an open-minded person might harbour just as many biases as a BNP person.

As surprising as these findings are, they confirmed the hunches of many people of human behaviour. "Twenty years ago, psychologist put forward that there were people who said they were not prejudiced but who really did have unconscious negative stereotypes and beliefs. It was like speculating about the existence of a virus, and then one day seeing it under a microscope.

It presents the subject of equality with a series of positive or negative adjectives, each paired with a typically "white" or "black" name. As the name and word appear together on a computer screen, the person taking the test presses a key, indicating whether the word is good or bad. Meanwhile, the computer records the speed of each response.

A glance at subjects' response times reveals a startling trend. Most people who participate in the experiment even some African-Americans respond more quickly when a positive word is paired with a white name or a negative word with a black name. Because our minds are more familiar to making these associations, says Psychologist, we process them more rapidly.

Though the words and names aren't hidden, they are presented so quickly that a subject's ability to make deliberate choices is diminished allowing his or her underlying assumptions to show through. The same technique can be used to measure stereotypes about many different social groups, such as Gays, Bisexual, Lesbians, Transsexuals, Women, and the older people, young people, Disabled people, and other social groups.

• What is your unfairness based on?
• Does it matter?
• What do you think?

Work and equality and diversity the personalities clash.

One thing we all bring to the job and workplace is the self, making conflict inevitable. Seize it as a sign to look inward.

Wouldn't it be nice if people, other people came with an instruction kit?

Don't think that hasn't been tried.

It turns out that many companies had or are using every employee typed according to the beloved Myers-Briggs personality inventory. For the sake of efficiency, workers wore their personality descriptions as badges. That way no one had to waste time figuring anyone else out.

Sad or touching? Actually, humanly, a bit of both.

In the end no matter how we refine policies and procedures, no matter how well we train managers or finely construct a job description we still have to deal with other people. And, as Comical noted, other people are our hell. Surely we are referring to other people's personalities.

Personality, that quirky grab bag of traits, tics, reactions, and beliefs that distinguish one person's projected self from another's, is the wild card of the workplace. Whereas most of the stressors we encounter at the office, workplace can be scheduled, delegated, avoided, or at least reimbursed, the personalities of one's co-workers remain the uncontrolled variable.

True, that variable largely moves away, swept under by the conforming tsunami of office culture, professionalism, and sheer workload. Still, our selves sneak out, and when they do they often offend someone.

Of course, some selves are more offensive to us than others. Predictably, at one time or another you will share a work team, a station, or a reporting relationship with one of those that offends you. Then you will get to experience first-hand that most commonly reported office or workplace problem the personality conflict.

Consider as but one of many such examples the traditional office bad marriage between the sweeping big-picture person and the cautious detail person.

Remember, these roles occur across genders, age, disability, sexual orientation, and religious beliefs reporting relationships. What matters most is the personality variable.

Let's say the emotional, instinctive man is the boss, because, in fact, he often is.

He is action oriented, confident, and demanding. He worries about missing opportunities. This boss can't always articulate the basis for his decisions, which are part percentages, part gut. He doesn't bother to spell out exactly what he wants from his staff either, but he knows it and rewards it when he gets it. And he lets you know when he doesn't.

Mr. Big Picture's callous vagueness drives The Planner nuts. The latter has a more controlled, fact-driven personality, with more faith in data than in personal feelings. He worries about the costly mistake and takes a slow, thorough approach to policy change or project design.

Assuming that both these men are highly competent, why wouldn't they make a marvellous partnership, balancing each other's strengths and weaknesses?

They do, if they like and trust each other. But personality gets in the way of such respect. Instead of admiration, their personality differences may make men anxious about the other. And when someone makes us anxious, we figure there's something wrong with that person.

It's easy to imagine the many workplace scenarios that would set these men off. A deadline is being set. The big-picture guy feels it does not soon enough, whereas the planner resists, fear a rush to judgment. Money is being allocated. The instinctive person may want to bet the bank; Mr. Cautious is only comfortable diversifying. A new project is assigned. The boss resents giving so much guidance; his underling is frustrated that he is being given so little.

What do you think of the issues of equality and diversity has?
Does it matter?

The emotional effect within social discrimination

The Buddha taught that one of the sources of suffering is our failure to remember that we are all One. This separation of "me" from "you", "them" and/or "it" keeps us bound to the blind sense-mind of ego. Nowhere is this more apparent in modern society than in instances of social discrimination.

No one of us is better or worse than any other because behaviour does not define a person. The person defines the person and that "person" - that material living form - is always perfect. It starts perfect, it ends perfect and in the middle, well, it's perfect.

It is only the layers and layers of random social rule, as well as our own willingness to buy into that social norm and the degree to which we do so that separates us, not only from our true Nature, but also from one another and ourselves. When we see "another" as "other" -- as opposed to "another One" we get lost in the web of discriminative ego. This, at least from a spiritual viewpoint, is where prejudice is born

From a social point of view, this is also where prejudice is born. Prejudice and discrimination is about citing differences and exploiting those differences out of fear or anger or disdain or any other of a number of motivations.

It is also through the fantasy perception and use of differences that self-prejudice is born. Self-prejudice? - Indeed -- that little twinge you feel when you see Bob drive up the street in his Bentley while you're locking up the your battered ford fiesta, or that tendency you have to turn your boss into your mother when responding to his demands as you might hers at the age of 8 - that's self-prejudice.

Whichever tack you take, prejudice and discrimination are born of the discriminating mind - the blind mind-sense of ego. When we see "other" we tend to see either surplus or lack in that other, whether that "other" is in reference to another or to ourselves.

When we come to a place of seeing self-control, then discrimination and, with it, prejudice dissolves.

Try this - it's a little skill that I learned from my time though therapy. When you are interacting with people today, make an effort to pay attention to your perceptions of them. What are you seeing? Who are you seeing? Make a mental note of that, then set it aside and remind yourself that you are looking into the eyes of human being. If that's a bit too airy-fairy for you, then remind yourself that, in both essence and real meaning, you are looking at a version of yourself.

Instead of pushing back against race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, annoying, sticky, rude, cruel, soft, hard, bitchy or beautiful, blend with it. Bring that person into yourself and see them for who and what they truly are just another human being trying to do the best they can with the tools they have available to them.

What do you think?

The true concept of fairness.

What is this term?

As Humans being we are constantly comparing and judging creatures on the whole. We establish pecking orders over a wide range of human experiences and human differences. Development in human oppression work, which has been coined the “ism-ism,” is the drive in some quarters to assign value judgments to the various “isms.” This thoughtful development is that we attempt to assign value to degrees of pain and suffering caused by issues of oppression.

To treat people fairly you need to treat people differently.

For example, much debate now takes place about which is worse, racism or sexism, disablism and so on.

Other “isms” such as heterosexism or anti-semitism are also routinely denied or devalued as illegitimate. Pecking orders of oppressions are frequently established on the basis of visibility of source of the oppression (for example skin colour or sex, disability), the assumption of having a choice on the matter (of sexual orientation), or the ability to hide it (as in social “passing” by virtue of a hidden disability e.g. dyslexia). The establishment of formally ranked groups of oppressions is, fundamentally, a disagreement in terms.

Traditional economic commentators comment that institutions influence decisions by imposing constraints under which purely selfish individuals maximize their usefulness. There is plenty of evidence, however, that in many situations individuals are also guided by social norms or preferences such as equality. The worry with equality is since the worst thing that can happen in human relationships is to find oneself living at the mercy of another.

This is what commentators have observed is the state of nature.

Natural inequality – physical differences, age differences and race difference, and gender difference, sexual orientation difference leads to moral inequality, economic inequality.

Most humans have not experienced interactions based on this hard to pin down concept of equality. As a consequence, we lack a pool of experiences to help us establish relationships with one another that are not Darwinian in nature and about power (“up-ness”) and of less importance (“down-ness”).

Our real or perceived place on the human food chain determines our personal as well as combined worldview. The fortunate are much more likely to experience the world as being just and fair. The unfortunate are much more likely to experience the world as being unjust and unfair. This may also have an influence on hopefulness and distrust scales as it having relevance to entire societies.


We generally keep down one another around the areas of our biology, history, and culture the very areas that are central to our definition of self and identity in our society. In addition, the aspects of our human race that are most threatened in a given cultural, societal context also become the aspects that eventually form the very heart of our identity in that culture and society. For example, a person may define himself as a Black British in a given cultural context and as a British black in another.


All societies assign both unearned privilege (advantage) as well as unearned prejudice (disadvantage) to various aspects of our biology, our history, and our culture. We are generally more aware of the dynamics of prejudice in our lives than we are of the dynamics of privilege.

Ironically, many people feel excluded from equality and diversity agendas, example of this were in the media on White working class people are losing out on several fronts, from education to housing, a report argues.

Most organisations, or individuals for that matter, have not defined equality and diversity for themselves and or understood it with its deep implications. Basic use of inoffensive phase such as “celebrate human differences” or “celebrate diversity”, for example, do not take into consideration the fact that a certain section of the human family arrives on planet earth at different starting points.

As we struggle with issues of equality and diversity, we must question how much human diversity we are personally and institutionally willing to stand for and celebrate.
Like many other things in our human experience, the centre pieces of equality and diversity are contact, culture, complexity, and conflict.

People fear what is unfamiliar or what they do not understand. Within this context, therefore, there is as much “inequality” as there is equality.

Fear is the glue that holds prejudice in place.

As our shared morals awaken to the discovery and realisation of the multiple ways in which we dehumanise one another, our organisations.

• How do we uphold the potential of Equality of Opportunity?
• What do you think?
• Why does it matter?

The Naked Face of equality and diversity

Can you read people's thoughts just by looking at them?

When it comes to little e of equality of emotion.

All of us, a thousand times a day, read faces. When someone says "I love you," we look into that person's eyes to judge his or her sincerity.

When we meet someone new, we often pick up on subtle signals, so that, even though he or she may have talked in a normal and friendly manner, afterward we say, "I don't think he liked me," or "I don't think she's very happy."

We easily take in complex distinctions in facial expression. If you saw me grinning, for example, with my eyes twinkling, you'd say I was amused. But that's not the only way we interpret a smile.

If you saw me nod and smile exaggeratedly, with the corners of my lips tightened, you would take it that I had been teased and was responding sarcastically. If I made eye contact with someone, gave a small smile and then looked down and averted my gaze, you would think I was flirting.

If I followed a remark with an abrupt smile and then nodded, or tilted my head sideways, you might conclude that I had just said something a little harsh, and wanted to take the edge off it.

You wouldn't need to hear anything I was saying in order to reach these conclusions. The face is such an extraordinarily efficient instrument of communication that there must be rules that govern the way we interpret facial expressions. But what are those rules? And are they the same for everyone?

• Whats your naked face on equality and diversity?
• Does it matter?
• What is the underlining effect of this on communities and society?
• What do you think?
  

Personality qualities and how there affect our view on equality and diversity.

Particular tendencies to feel, think, and act in certain ways that can be used to describe the personality of every individual person’s personalities influence their behavior and approach to managing people and resources.
No single qualities is right or wrong for being an effective person we need to view it as better or worse.

Effectiveness is determined by a complex interaction between the characteristics of people and the nature of the actives and organisation in which we are taking part in.

Personality qualities that enhance effectiveness in one situation may actually weaken it in another.

Other personality qualities internal place of control for beliefs that we are responsible for our own fate. Own actions and behaviors are major and influential cause of life outcomes.

Other Personality qualities external place of control for believes that outside forces are responsible for what happens to and around us. Do not think our own actions make much of a difference. Self-esteem the degree to which we as people feel good about ourselves and our abilities. High self-esteem causes us as people to feel competent, and capable. A person with low self-esteem has poor opinions of themselves and their abilities. Need for achievement, the extent to which we as individual has a strong desire to perform challenging tasks well and meet personal standards for excellence. Need for affiliation the extent to which an individual is concerned about establishing and maintaining good interpersonal relations, being liked, and having other people get along with you. Need for power, the extent to which our individual desires to control or influence others.

Values, Attitudes, and Moods and Emotions.

If we look at Values, describe what people try to achieve through work and how they think they should behave at work.

If we look at Attitudes, capture people’s thoughts and feelings about their specific jobs and organisations.

If we look at Moods and Emotions, encompass how we as people actually feel when we are managing others.

When we look at our terminal values, a personal conviction about life-long goals, our sense of accomplishment, equality, and self-respect.

Then there is the Instrumental value, a personal conviction about desired modes of conduct or ways of behaving within the organisations, being hard-working, broadminded, and capable.

When we look at our value system, they are the terminal and instrumental values that are the guiding principles in our individual life.

When we interact with the organisational culture which has a shared set of beliefs, expectations, values, norms, and work routines that influence how members of an organisation relate to one another and work together to achieve organisational goals.

May have issues around a shared bonding and social capital around equality and diversity and the meaning of fairness.

What do you think?

Inequality emotion

A central theme to understand "doing inequality", that is, understanding how inequalities are created and repeated through interactive processes, systems in everyday life.

Emotion management of inequality generates uncomfortable feelings of shame, anger, resentment and hopelessness.

Power relationship within people, social structure of organisations.

We must not just pay close attention to how power is achieved in everyday circumstances, but how it is resisted through the action of ordinary people.

We must also pay attention to "manufacturing consent" that is, how ordinary people "give consent" to institutional, organisational systems which end up dominating them.

Is Fairness a Hard-Wired Emotion?

The belief that things should be divided fairly among members of a group isn't just a matter of culture or reason it's an emotion that's built into the human brain.

Is everyone sensitive to fairness?

The insights involving the insula, the oval region of the cerebral cortex involving the putamen and caudate which plays a key role in emotions, supports the idea, that emotion rather than reason is at the base of people's attitudes about inequality.

The study, by researchers at the University of Illinois and the California Institute of Technology, was published in the May 8 2008 issue of Science.

For the study, the volunteers were supposedly asked to distribute food to children in an orphanage in Uganda. The children would be given the cash equivalent of 24 meals, a "gift" from the research team to the orphanage.

But, a number of meals would have to be cut for some of the children.
So, the volunteers were given two options to deal with the problem.

In one option, 15 meals could be taken from one child, or 13 from another child, or five from yet another child, for instance. Choosing this option, the total number of meals lost would be less, but one child would suffer from all cuts. Efficiency would be maintained at the expense of fairness.

The second option reduced efficiency, but promoted fairness. In this option, all the children would be fed, but they'd share fewer meals.
The researchers found that the study participants overwhelmingly chose the second option. This finding echoed other studies that showed that most people are intolerant of unfairness.

During the experiment, the volunteers underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging. This allowed the researchers to determine which parts of the brain were most affected during decision-making.

The researchers found that regions of the brain called the insula, putamen and caudate were activated differently, and at different times, during the experiment. The insula responded to changes in fairness, while the putamen responded to changes in efficiency. The caudate appeared to blend both fairness and efficiency.

The insights involving the insula, which plays a key role in emotions, supports the idea that emotion rather than reason is at the base of people's attitudes about inequality. Also the studies had found that the insula is involved in deciding fairness. But, the putamen and the caudate are activated during reward-related learning the researchers noted.

"These results support the idea that people care about fairness at a very deep level”.


“When people see an unfair offer, they actually have a negative emotional reaction to it," the researcher said. "They have a gut reaction to unfairness."

What do you think?

Critical thinking on Equality

Critical Thinking is that we must be critical of our self.

We must question and understand what we “believe” in order to begin the process of becoming a fair-minded thinker, the very heart of Critical Thinking.

• What is fairness?

All’s fair in love and war.

• Is everything that is legal also fair?
• Why is fairness important?
• What is a fair minded thinker?

What means do we have to discover, to criticize, and to modify our biases, our prejudices, and our views that guide our everyday performance in the world?

If we look at the Metaphor we use in everyday speak about Equality issues?

Think that in order to study our speaking is a guide to the manner in which our unconscious is structured.

Our speaking the words we use can indicate the nature of the ideas that we have. Speech is a guide to the structure of our views held by us as people, which is the product of our past experiences and understanding, which in many cases is the result of many unconscious developments.

There's actually a cut off between things like 'metaphor' and intelligence.

The character portrayed in the movie 'rain-man' of Raymond Babbit (by actor Dustin Hoffman) was a man who could rattle off basically anything memory wise (phone book like) but if you said ‘get a hold of yourself’ he would grab his shirt.

I don't recall the name of the particular region responsible for extract the meaning behind metaphor, but its different from the brain regions responsible for memory and math.

The brain draws associations between all sensory systems that are why music moves us in movies. The thud of a boom excites hair cells in our ear in the same way a jagged shape or instant picture might excite shape cells in vision assign regions. The brain is an abstract artist, so metaphor is really picking up on that and it does have a brain biological basis just like art and music, which is beginning to be explored.

As for fairness, you can only really investigate the question when you perform studies, and patients with brain injury will make odd moral decisions, like seeing it as 'fair' to kill his sister to save 2 other strangers, most people won't do this, but this person might have some detachment relating to emotion.

There's a lot of interesting stuff if you’re interested in ethics (fairness) and the brain a guy named Joshua Green studies the relation for a living.

We use such metaphorical expressions as: Tomorrow is a big day. I’m feeling up today. We’ve been close for years, but we’re beginning to drift apart. It is smooth sailing from here on in. It has been uphill all the way. Get off my back. We are moving ahead. He’s a dirty old man. That was a disgusting thing to do. I’m not myself today. He is afraid to reveal his inner self. You need to be kind to yourself.

All of us use metaphors constantly and we all recognize the meaning of these metaphors when others speak them. This leads me to the inference that our everyday speech is a means for insight into our understanding of what we really believe. Most of these metaphors can be a guide to what our unconscious has stored up in our brain regarding the nature of reality. These metaphors can guide us into an understanding of where we are and perhaps why we are there (notice all the metaphors I use in trying to convey my general ideas). Metaphors provide insight to the self.

• What do you think?
  

Culture and Personality within equality

Every person is in certain respects like all other people, like some other person, like no other person. (Kluckhohn & Murray, 1948)

A person of personality can formulate ideals, but only a person of character can achieve them.

To try and explain culture lets use a metaphor. Let’s use Google Map and a Mind map.The Google map geographic one represents the internal maps people have of their cultural landscape, knowing that "the map is NOT the territory" that reality is always vastly more complex than our mental representation of it.

The other is a mind-map, which depicts the network of associative links in our minds knowledge triggered by a single word, for example, or the feelings and meanings we associate with a particular behaviour. These associations are partly personal, partly collective. Culture in this metaphor is the map of a group's shared meanings and connections.

General question that I would like all of us to consider, as people of varying cultures and ethnicities, how are we different and how are we alike?

How do culture and ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, disability, background and environment, shapes our identities and personalities on equality issues?

Race or Ethnicity.

Question for you:

• What the differences between these?
• How are we using Social capital?
• What is going on with Social mobility?

What do you think?

The world around us of inequality.

Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, academic epidemiologists at Nottingham and York universities respectively, are authors of The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better.

They explain why fairly unequal societies such as Britain and the United States are more likely to suffer from a range of problems, including low life expectancy, illiteracy, stress, and a high crime rate. Even climate change is less of a challenge for a society with a narrow gap between rich and poor.

We in Britain are rich enough. Economic growth has done as much as it can to improve material conditions in the developed countries, and in some cases appears to be damaging health.

If Britain were instead to concentrate on making its citizens' incomes as equal as those of people in Japan and Scandinavia, we could each have seven extra weeks' holiday a year, we would be thinner, we would each live a year or so longer, and we'd trust each other more.

The authors point out that the life-diminishing results of valuing growth above equality in rich societies can be seen all around us. Inequality causes shorter, unhealthier and unhappier lives; it increases the rate of teenage pregnancy, violence, obesity, imprisonment and addiction; it destroys relationships between individuals born in the same society but into different classes; and its function as a driver of consumption depletes the planet's resources.

They use the information to create a series of graphs whose patterns look nearly identical, yet which document the prevalence of a vast range of social ills.

This has nothing to do with total wealth or even the average per-capita income. America is one of the world's richest nations, with among the highest figures for income per person, but has the lowest longevity of the developed nations, and a level of violence murder, in particular that is off the scale. Of all crimes, those involving violence are most closely related to high levels of inequality within a country, within states and even within cities. For some, mainly young, men with no economic or educational route to achieving the high status and earnings required for full citizenship, the experience of daily life at the bottom of a steep social hierarchy is enraging.

The graphs also reveal that it is not just the poor, but whole societies, from top to bottom, that are adversely affected by inequality. Although the UK fares badly when compared with most other OECD countries and is the worst developed nation in which to be a child according to both Unicef and the Good Childhood Inquiry, its social problems are not as pronounced as in the US.

What do you think?

A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD

The same insincerity and hollowness of promise infect another formula that is popular with the equal opportunities crowd: the formula of the level playing field.

Here the argument usually takes the form of saying, "It is unfair to give one class of citizens advantages at the expense of other citizens; the truly fair way is to have a level playing field to which everyone has access and where everyone has a fair and equal chance to succeed on the basis of his or her merit."

Fine words but they conceal the facts of the situation: The playing field is already tilted in favour of those by whom and for whom it was constructed in the first place. If mastery of the requirements for entry depends upon immersion in the cultural experiences of the mainstream majority, if the skills that make for success are nurtured by institutions and cultural practices from which the disadvantaged minority has been systematically excluded, if the language and ways of comply with oneself that identify a player as "one of us" are alien to the lives minorities are forced to live, then words like "fair" and "equal" are cruel jokes, for what they promote and celebrate is an institutionalised unfairness and a maintain inequality.

The playing field is already tilted, and the resistance to altering it by the mechanisms of positive action is in fact a determination to make sure that the present imbalances persist as long as possible.

WHY ME?

When all is said and done, one objection to positives action is unanswerable on its own terms, and that is the objection of the individual who says, "Why me? Sure, discrimination has persisted for many years, and I acknowledge that the damage done has not been removed by changes in the law. But why me? I didn't own slaves; I didn't vote to keep women; not able to take home equal pay. I didn't turn society inaccessible to disabled people. Why, then, should I be the one who doesn't get the job or who doesn't get the opportunities or who gets bumped back to the waiting list?"

I sympathise with this feeling, if only because in a small way I have had the experience that produces it. Although I was disappointed, I did not conclude that the situation was "unfair," because the policy was obviously not directed at anyone group.


INDIVIDUAL MERIT

The point of fairness is not a difficult one to grasp, but it is difficult to see when scenarios are presented as simple contrasts between two de-contextualised persons who emerge from nowhere to contend for a job. But the sleight-of-hand logic that assesses events from behind a veil of wilful ignorance rests on another key word in the Equality legislation landscape. That word is "individual."

Now, "individual" and "individualism" have been honourable words in the British political vocabulary, but like any other word or concept, the word can be perverted to serve ends the opposite of those it originally served, and this is what has happened when in the name of individual rights, millions of individuals are prevented from redressing documented wrongs.

Bizarre as it may seem, individualism in this argument turns out to mean that everyone is or should be the same.

This dismissal of individual difference in the name of the individual would be funny were its consequences not so serious: it is the mechanism by which imbalances and inequality suffered by millions of people through no fault of their own can be sanitised and even celebrated as the natural workings of unfettered democracy.

"Individualism," "fairness," "merit", these three words are continually misappropriated by bigots who have learned that they need not put on Doc Martin boots and sing there is no black on the British flag, the National front now known as the BNP in order to secure their ends of hatred. Rather, they need only clothe themselves in a vocabulary plucked from its historical context and made into the justification for attitudes and policies they would not acknowledge if frankly named.

What do you think?

The emotion of language within British society

George Bernard Shaw probably got it right when he said,

“As soon as an Englishman opens his mouth, he makes another Englishman despise him”.

If we look closer to home as a Brummie myself how do the rest of the British society view us. Jasper Carrott has thrived on the comedic value of the drooping monotonic Brummie sound that us Brummies share, but company directors and politicians, people of the British Isles probably find it a tougher ride.

Why do we attach so much on language?

If we look at our accents they have always been as integral a part of our identity as our face and our clothes, and it's not all that surprising that animals pick up the sounds of their home environment just as we do.

Darwin's grand idea of evolution by natural selection is relatively simple but often misunderstood.

Natural selection according to accent probably isn't so strange either: According to surveys of which sounds we like best, Sean Connery’s Scottish lilt is the nation's favourite, while least popular are accents from Glasgow, Liverpool, and Birmingham. As people do you think we attach such value to language, pride and prejudice are often strange bedfellows when it comes to accent. So do you think our accents invite mockery from outsiders?

For example the Birmingham accent is often associated with intellect as people may think Brummies are a bit ”thick”.

Would such crude thinking drive people’s attitudes and behaviours to how people would view another?

What do you think?

The search for understanding of equality and diversity?

Recipe for change

Some thoughts on how to change things using this Metaphor of recipe and ingredients for change. I like especially like ‘hating the sin, loving the sinner'. It's easy to berate people for not getting your point of view especially on equality and diversity issues it's hard to figure out how to be more influential.

Recipe for a change maker:

Ingredients

A simple idea rooted in reality: Something simple dazzling real needs.

• Hope not ignorance: People will put a lot of effort in if they think there's a chance.
• Understanding: The more people understand, the more it frightens those that wield the power. Understanding the roots of the problem is the key to positive action.
• Trust and consistency not indifference: It's essential to inspire trust, which in turns needs consistency of principles at least.
• Action not inaction: It can be lonely, since you're up against the established views shared by most. If you threaten those in power, you'll be ignored by most. Be ready to take flak.
  
  Directions

Ask the right questions

Hate the sin, love the sinner: Lasting change means convincing the people who initially loathe what you stand for.

Be both patient and impatient: Be resilient and persist, but be ready to pounce on opportunities when they come and remember the complex details of equality and diversity are just simple in essence.

Work quietly: rather than seeking attention. You’ll be respected more for it in the end.

Where do we belong?

• Thatcher phrase: ‘There is no such thing as society; there are individuals and families and nothing else’. All main political parties now seem to agree that there is such as a thing as ‘society’; and words and phrases like ‘compassion’, ‘dignity’, ‘the essence of care’ are making a strong comeback.
  
  Of course, when governments launch value-driven policies and approaches, many of us with a historical perspective both applaud and weep at same time. This is because governments have, of course, to present these aspects as ‘new’, as though they have just been discovered and are a fascinating new initiative.
  
  So how are we as a society going to handle these strong values within society and bring them and embrace them with equality and diversity as a corner stone of our foundation.
  
  What type of conversation do we discuss around this subject or is it taboo within the workforce do we really engage in it or just talk about it like waves on the sea just touching the surface or do we go deeper like under the deepest of sea as a metaphor for conversation on this subject or are we still fearful of the subject.

• How will the Single Equality bill brings us closer together and what will the social bonding, and community cohesion look like?
• What do you think?
• How do you engage with the complex details and simple essence of equality and diversity?
  
  

Emotion

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, and that one is prepared in the end, to be defeated, and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals. - George Orwell (1903 - 1950)

Have you ever asked yourself the question, “Why did I do that?” Many times our decisions are based on emotions. Anger, jealousy, bitterness, and guilt are potential hazards to staying on course to equality.

Emotions are fundamental to human life; they define its quality and motivate action. Emotions make us human. Without emotions, we would perform like robots.

How many different objections are there to Equality? Probably too many to count.

Scientists have recorded the gentle flicker of activity that lights up the brain when we form our first impressions of people. The study shows how age-old brain circuitry that evolved to make snap decisions on the importance of objects in the environment is now used in social situations.

Previous work by neuroscientists has shown we form our first impressions well within 30 seconds of meeting people. Often, our opinion changes very little after knowing them for longer.

When you meet a person, they might say something, or look a certain way, or behave a certain way, but you have very little information on which to form an opinion, but it is almost instantaneous and you can't withhold from doing it.

What, how is our perception of the strands of equality and the emotion affect around this?

What word association do we get with Equality and Diversity?

Getting proper “PERSPECTIVE”

Perspective is the way in which we view our world, the circumstances in which we find ourselves in our world and our relationships with others as we try to figure out how the world works.

So first, let’s make an adjustment to our perspectives as I write this blog.

Perspective invites examination.

If your perspective can’t change, neither will your attitudes, your communications or your interactions.

Understanding equality and diversity means understanding ourselves.

It is about getting to know what causes conflict around Equality and diversity, how each of us creates our own conflict say around race, why gender conflict is an important asset to organisations and individuals. Why disability conflict should be accepted rather than rejected and welcomed rather than avoided. How we can benefit from more deliberate responses to and more constructive approaches with conflict around sexual orientation, religious and belief.

There is a quote by General Sun Tzu which says “To get to where you want be, you need to know where you are going.”

We are all on a path going somewhere, so we should each ask these 3 questions:

• WHERE are we going?
• HOW are we going to get there?
• WHO are we talking with us?

How do we reach agreement around Factual, statistical, information?

• What is rational and reasonable?
• Why the emotional and psychological affect on human potential matters?

Managing this conflict around Equality and Diversity

What and how are we negotiations, distributive, (traditional) Integrative, (interest-based) of shared social bonding within communities done.

Think about it!

• What are VALUES?
• How do they form? From where do they originate?
• What do values really mean to us individually and culturally?
• How do we encourage compliance with group values and discourage non-compliance with group values?
• Should group values apply to all individual citizens? Why? Why not?
• What is the difference between being a citizen and being a subject?

What are your thoughts on this?

What is the emotional effect of the provision of welfare?

In social policy

Social Policy is an applied subject; it was developed to meet the needs of people who would be working in the public services. Social administration is the area of the field concerned with the practicalities of service organisation and delivery. In the US, it is dealt with as 'public policy' or 'policy analysis'.

There are five main sectors:

• public sector (provision by the state),
• private (provision for profit by commercial organisations or individuals),
• voluntary or third sector organisations (provision on a non-profit basis),
• mutual aid (provision by solidarity) and
• informal (provision by friends, neighbours and families).
  
  For some the idea of the welfare state means the same as state welfare, and opposition is seen as a commitment to the 'private market'. This can be seen as false choice. The state is not the only provider of welfare in any country, and the 'private market' does not consist of activity for profit, but a wide range of different motivations. There is a mixed economy of welfare. The state does not operate in isolation; rather, it acts in conjunction with a number of non-statutory organisations. The state is actively involved in regulation, finance or subsidy, and direct provision.
  
  In this blog I am just writing about Public sector and the Private sector.
  
  If we look at the public sector there are four main arguments for public sector provision.
• Universal standards. The state is uniquely able to impose a general regime, and so can ensure uniform or minimum standards.
• Social control. Control is used where people need protection (e.g. child abuse), as punishment (like prisoners), and where control increases freedom (like compulsory education).
• Economic benefit the state may be able to perform the action more cost-effectively than is the case elsewhere. National health systems have proved to be cheaper than many liberal systems.
• Residual provision. The state may act as a safety net where other sectors do not provide.

The Three main arguments against are:

• Economic efficiency. State provision does not have clear incentives to reduce unit costs.
• Clientelism. State provision can be the source of patronage or corruption.
• Paternalism. States make decisions for people who could choose for themselves.

When we look at the private sector:

Economic liberals argue that the private market is the best method of arranging the distribution of resources. In Dr Arthur Seldon CBE argued before he died that the price mechanism leads to choice for the consumer a service led by the consumer rather than by the professions more efficient services at lower costs because this increases profitability responsiveness to need because their payment depends on it education of people as to the implications of their choices.

If poor people cannot afford services, we can give them the money to decide for themselves as we do with food and clothing; there does not have to be a publicly provided service.

The main arguments against this position are:

• Market failure. Markets do not work if people do not have choice (e.g. in health care), where there are monopolies, and if people do not bear the costs of their actions themselves.
• Exclusion. Markets exclude 'bad risks' and people with extreme needs.
• Social preference. Markets respond to individual preferences; social needs may be different.

What do you think on this?

Equality for me

Is about taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase. We only mention it when we encounter it. So just take the first step.

Equality of outcome or equality of condition is a form of parity

Common forms of parity, include economic parity, moral parity, legal parity, political parity, gender parity, racial parity and asset-based parity which seeks to reduce or eliminate differences in material condition between individuals or households in a society.

In theory, equality of outcome can be distinguished from equal opportunity.

Outcomes can usually be measured with a great degree of precision, opportunities cannot.

What is your opinion on this?
How’s your understanding?
Why do you think it matters?

Cultural Norms and the emotional misunderstanding

Every culture & subculture has norms which the members grow up immersed in, so they come to be second-nature, often confused with first nature or HUMAN NATURE

Examples:

• Should kids in trouble look their parents in the eye?
• Touching vs. non-touching cultures
• Americans drive on the RIGHT side of the road, us British drive on the WRONG? Or LEFT?

How do we think of this?

• Why?
• What conversation do we have with communities to understand each other?
• Is there a need to understand one another?
  
  

Belonging

Research commissioned by The Automobile Association highlights.

This report focuses on the theme of 'belonging' in 21st century Britain. The notion of belonging, or social identity, is a central aspect of how we define who we are. We consider ourselves to be individuals but it is our membership of particular groups that is most important in constructing a sense of identity. Social identity is a fundamental aspect of what it is to be human.

In Britain today there is public debate suggesting that we are losing this essential sense of belonging that globalisation, for example, far from bringing people closer together, is actually moving us apart.

We hear that our neighbourhoods are becoming evermore impersonal and anonymous and that we no longer have a sense of place. But is this really the case? Are we losing our sense of belonging, or are we simply finding new ways to locate ourselves in a changing society? This report seeks an answer.

On one level, belonging is certainly changing. While in the past a sense of belonging was more rigidly defined in terms of the traditional markers of social identity such as class or religion, age, sexual orientation, disability, people are now far more able to choose the categories to which we belong. We are now able to select from a wide range of groups, communities, brands and lifestyles those with which we wish to align ourselves and which, in turn, shape our social identities.

At the same time we may, or may not, remain rooted in our families or in the place in which we were born. The 'landscape' of belonging may have changed with much greater opportunity or disadvantages these days to opt in and opt out of various groups but we still want the same things from membership of whichever groups.

We have timeless needs for social bonding, loyalty, security and acceptance.

These have been with us since the Stone Age and throughout our history we have created social networks and groupings to serve these ends. So what does this landscape look like today? Is it that much different from that of the past?

Through Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) research has identified six key social identities in which people most frequently anchor their sense of belonging today:

1. Family. Despite public debate about the decline of the family in modern society, family remains the most important focus of belonging. Of respondents in the national poll, 88% chose family as the key marker of belonging. The ways in which families are structured has certainly changed in recent decades, but family remains the most important category of human social organisation.

2. Friendship. While the close proximity of a large extended family would have provided a structure for social support in the past, this function is now filled, at least in part, by an increasingly diverse and multi-layered network of friendships. Increased geographic mobility and interconnectedness through new digital technologies allow us to connect with people in new ways. In the poll, 65% of respondents saw friendships as being an essential part of their sense of belonging.

3. Lifestyle choices. In developing friendships and social networks we are also defining the kinds of lifestyle that we want to lead and the types of social capital and social status, shared values, and cultural practices – that go with it. We make choices about the kinds of activities that we are interested in, the kinds of products that we buy and the associations that these involve. Importantly, we also make lifestyle choices by choosing not to consume certain products or engage in certain types of activity. What we do not do is as important to our sense of belonging as that in which we actively choose to engage. For many participants in the project, thinking about lifestyle choices revealed a far more entrenched sense of brand and group loyalty than they had initially expected or were prepared to admit.

4. Nationality. Advocates of cultural globalisation point to the fact that national identity is on the decline. As the world becomes more connected it is increasingly common for people to pass through the borders of individual countries, both physically and virtually. While there is certainly a greater awareness of the flexibility of national identities, and the possibility of shedding one in exchange for another, there still remains a strong tie between individuals and the nationalities with which they are born. People may question what exactly it means to be 'British' or 'English' in the 21st century, but this is by no means the same as rejecting the idea of being British altogether. Over a third of all people claim their national identity as a major factor in defining belonging.

5. Professional identity. In a society where our social status is to a great extent measured by the work we do and, perhaps more importantly, the money we earn, it is little surprise that professional identity is an important focus of belonging for both men and women. It is, after all, often the first characteristic that people offer up when introducing themselves to others. While occupational mobility has certainly increased for many people, and 're-skilling' is a normal part of modern-day professional life, we remain tied to the social significance of what we do for a living. Our sense of belonging in this context is greater than the affinity we feel with members of our extended families. Team spirit and shared interests. For men, the football or other sporting team that they support provides a stronger sense of belonging than religion, social class, ethnic background or political affiliations. The clubs they belong to are also important sources of social identity. Both men and women view the hobbies and interests that they share with others as an important source of identity. For women, this sense of belonging is as strong as that associated with their nationality.

Are we optimistic about equality?

The damaging aspect of inequality is that the negative impacts and reasons for them are often multi-layered. Another issue is that many people just don’t want to deal with it effectively because doing so will mean taking off the rhetoric and revealing your inadequacies, prejudices or shortcomings as an organisation around equality.

If we look at the Social Issues Research Council has published a report, which suggests that, as a nation, Brits are more optimistic than we might believe. But, being Brits, we are very modest about this and don't really want to admit it.

This report presents the first findings of research conducted by the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) into the nature of optimism in 21st century Britain. The research, commissioned by The National Lottery, has provided a distinctive and definitive account of the role that optimism plays in the lives of the British public, focusing on the importance of optimism both as part of individual identity and personal outlook and as a central factor in social relationships.

Our ideas about optimism, and the extent to which we think optimistically, are formed both individually according to our personal habit and socially in relation to the social worlds in which we live. As individuals and in groups we learn on the one hand to be more wary of some types of risk and on the other to be more optimistic about particular outcomes or eventualities.

Socially contagious optimism

Thinking about optimism as a social phenomenon also allows us to consider how people experience optimism in relation to the people around them. This can be seen at a national level in terms of different aspects of social life, from collective or contagious optimism about the political future (see the recent example of the presidential elections in the United States) to the national economy (e.g. our current lack of optimism about the impact of the so-called ‘credit crunch’), to sports, weather, the impact of the media, etc. On a smaller scale, optimism plays an integral role in our social interactions with others, from motivating or being motivated by colleagues at work to nurturing positive social exchanges with friends or family.

Are you optimistic about equality and were it will be in five years time or ten years time?

Where do you think we will be?

Equality of what?

What does this actual mean to people and the organisation?

“Democratic system does not guarantee equality of conditions it only guarantees equality of opportunity.”

When we talk about equality how does organisations go about putting it into action?

And what does it gives us when we start asking question like equality to whom?

Where is our starting point for advantage and disadvantage of equality of opportunity?

Culture as emergence

According to the anthropologist Mary Douglas, culture is not static ‘thing’ but something, which everyone is constantly creating, affirming and expressing. She writes about, "the admonitions, excuses, and moral judgements by which the people mutually coerce one another into conformity." (Douglas 1985: xxiii)

In this view culture is not imposed from outside but exposed from within; any programme on equality which attempts to change culture in a planned way is likely to miss the mark.

What steps are organisations actual doing to implement equality in all its glory?

What steps are you taking to have a foundation of the principles of fairness, cross the strands of age, race, gender, disability sexual orientation, religious belief.

What is your starting point?

Emotions and Economics

Charles Pierce and William James tried to give consistency to a modern ‘risky’ world, moved away from mechanistic cause-effect laws to the ‘universe of probability’ and both also stressed emotions (abduction in Pierce equals optimism, creativity) and leap of faith by James.

Anticipatory emotions provide the momentum to decide, to act as rationally as possible, and reactions to outcomes are also emotional.

Cannot split emotions from rationality (practically) point is, emotions are unpredictable and uncontrollable, therefore play them down in public.

• People most readily accept that emotions arise in politics all the time
• Economics with exceptions Adam Smith, associates emotions with irrationality.
• Distinction is completely inconsistent with Keynesian uncertainty emotions revolutionary.

Example, USA; Alan Greenspan dour, pessimistic, yet celebrated dot.com boom ignore uncertainty in stock markets. Stockbrokers are as prone to error (in predictions) as Judges and surgeons, far more than weather forecasters.

Surveys on gut feelings and sweaty palms however ignore uncertainty.

Emotions of trust (for future gain) or fear of future loss arise because most ‘mistakes’ are due to the unknowable nature of the future and pretending that humans can rise above or use emotions in the modern hope for control.

Emotion leads to error investment analysis is a purely rational process.

There is a quote by W. Buffett that says.

“Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful”. Traditional view between rationality and emotionalism.

• Professionals have superior control over emotions.
• Professionals determine past trends more accurately.
• Professionals extract future trends more reliably.
• Professionals less subject to overconfidence.
  

Perhaps. Perhaps all of these things are true.

What do you thinks?