Equality of what

What does this actual mean to people and to organisation?

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

When we talk about equality how does organisation 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?
• What do you think?
• Does it matter?

Is there emotional side to sectors within our society for example the Third sector, private sector and the Public sector is there a responsibility for

Business has become, in this last half-century, the most powerful institution on the planet. The dominant institution in any society needs to take responsibility for the whole.
Futurist Willis Harman (1918-1997)

A few principles that as all humans have basic emotional needs:

• Each of us has similar, but different emotional needs
• Emotional needs vary more in extent than in type
• Emotional needs vary more than physical needs
• Emotional needs are more basic and as important as "rights"

Negative feelings are indications of our unmet emotional needs

• Feelings are real and are not debatable.
• Invalidation damages self-esteem
• High self-esteem is needed for life’s pursuits, productivity, job satisfaction, and customer service
• Group harmony requires both shared need satisfaction and common respect of feelings.
• Importance of Emotions

Our bodies communicate with us and others to tell us what we need, the better our communication, the better we feel.

• Emotions help us establish our boundaries on certain subjects and our bonding and bridging.
• Emotions have the potential to unite and connect us on certain subjects.
• Emotions can serve as our inner moral and ethical compass on certain subjects.
• Emotions are essential for good decision making.
  

What doesn't feel good to us normally doesn't feel good to others. But to understand the importance of this, we must first be in touch with our own feelings.

So how do organisation assessed this human principles round equality and diversity, and what feelings are attached to equality and diversity within the organisation.

The key feelings you want your customers, clients or service users and citizens to have when engaging with your service is following with regard to fairness, values, beliefs. Is this a want to have or a need to have.

The following principles have to happen within the service provision:
Respected, Important, Remembered, Acknowledged, Satisfied, Helped, Understood. Basically the boils down to dignity and respected and choice and control and empowerment.

• What do you think?
• Doe’s it matter?

The emotional Leadership on Equality and diversity

Institutions that endure do not do so because of a single, charismatic leader, but because of a culture that fosters leadership throughout the system" - Max Weber, sociologist, 1864-1920

Three fundamental facts about human beings: exceptionality, essentiality, and equality.

Exceptionality means that all of us are exceptions to the rule. No two human beings are exactly alike.
Essentiality refers to everyone’s need to feel needed to feel essential, but not central.
Equality means that we each want to share our voices. People must feel that they have a right and a responsibility to lift up their visions of a better society.

How does it feel to realise that?

Is a great question to ask leadership whenever someone tells you about some ‘light bulb moment’ or a time when they made a real difference around Equality and diversity?

How many questions have been asked around how to truly embed Equality and Diversity within an organisation like the writing running through the middle of sea side rock? You can break it any way and get that theme running through it. That’s how Equality and Diversity should be.

• What do you think?
• Does it matter?
  

Do we want equality or is equality need?

As John Donne had it ‘No man is an island’ or if you prefer an even older source, as Cain asks God ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ and the answer of all world religions is ‘yes’ – we are here to look after one another, and not to ‘walk by on the other side.’

Our Prime Minster Gordon Brown is said to be fond of quoting this piece of poetry which for me sums it all up:

“It's the hands of others that grow the food we eat, sew the clothes we wear, build the homes we inhabit It's the hands of others that tend us when we are sick and lift us up when we fall It's the hands of others that bring us into the world and lower us into the grave.”

So, if you accept that people are not necessarily born with the patterns of inequality, injustice, unfairness, prejudice, ignorance, indifference, inaction, if most people prefer to live peaceably with their neighbours, why and how did we get to a state were in society we have lost our way on Equality and becomes so are we cut off from ethos Fairness, Rights, Equality, Discrimination, Autonomy.

The reason why equality in Britain is seen to be failing by some is not because there is not enough interest in it. It is because we haven’t really tried it yet. Or understand it yet.

• What do you think?
• Does it matter?

Managing diversity a growing challenge

MANAGEMENT of diversity and equality of opportunitiy already provides one of the greatest organisational challenges facing society if we look at the private sector, public sector, thrid sector.

And, with organisation increasingly watching the bottom line, is diversity simply a “need to have” rather than a “want to have”?

Where equal oportunties focuses largely on compliance with legislation, diversity is more about respecting and understanding differences while helping maximise potential.

The two are distinct issues, but neither can be looked at in isolation because one feeds the other.

From that standpoint, it is important to recognise that the incoming Equality Bill remains firmly on the UK Government’s agenda.

The three aspects of measurements that will include:

• Equality of Outcome
• Equality of Process
• Equality of Autonomy

For the most part, it is intended to simplify existing legislation, but will also extend the scope of certain discriminatory grounds.

For example, age will become a ground for challenge in the provision of goods and services, while the public-sector equality duties currently covering gender, race and disability, will be expanded to age, sexual orientation and religion or belief.

Though the private sector is not directly affected by the equality duties, they inevitably have a knock-on effect when private companies are involved in public-sector procurement processes. Organisations will increasingly be asked to produce evidence of their work on equality and diversity.

But the prospect of changes under the Equality Bill is not the only front on which organisations are coming under more pressure to improve their practices.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is about to place the financial services and construction sectors under the spotlight in two formal inquiries.

One will tackle alleged barriers to employment for ethnic minority employees in the construction industry and the other will concentrate on the apparently higher proportion of women working in some areas of financial services that are paid less than their male counterparts and suffer harassment at work.

Given the current downturn, the inquiries will examine whether redundancies are disproportionately affecting women and ethnic minorities.

The cost of getting it wrong, the Price of getting wrong are two different things as the emotional affect on diversity and equality of ingroance, indifference, inaction not only manifests itself in the potential for liagaition, but also in higher staff attrition rates, greater costs and more difficulties when trying to hire the best people.

On the other hand, investing the time to manage workplace diversity effectively can result in the creation of a more committed and loyal workforce, increased productivity and the provision of a better service to custormers and key stakeholders.

• What do you think?
• Does it matter?

Political parties of all sides voices fear over BNP victory

Political party of all sides have warned that the UK's main parties are "complacent" about the British National Party, after the BNP won a local election.

Labour MP Peter Hain told the BBC that Labour's own supporters were being targeted by the far right.

He said the government needed to make sure local, rather than foreign, workers were prioritised for jobs.

A BNP leader said the recession had helped the party win because potential supporters were being hit hardest.

Mr Hain was speaking after the BNP won a seat at a by-election for Sevenoaks Council in Kent

A Labour councillor previously held the seat, in the Swanley St Mary’s ward.

BNP candidate Paul Golding received 408 votes, beating Labour's Mike Hogg by 86 votes.

Mr Golding said local young people has voted BNP because they found it "almost impossible" to get a council house. He blamed a policy that allocated council houses to "foreigners and asylum seekers".

Mr Hain said: "All political parties, but especially the Labour party, have got to prioritise the fight against the BNP.

He said there was a "real danger" of complacency in the Labour party.

"It is areas when Labour has traditionally been strong - like Swanley where the BNP has been making a great deal of headway and exploiting fears, ignorance, indifference, inaction and spreading their racist and fascist beliefs."

"We need to take them on at the grass roots level and as a government we need to be making sure that we address the fears the BNP are exploiting."

BNP deputy leader Simon Darby said the recession and people's fears about the economy were the main factor in its victory - which the party has hailed as a "significant breakthrough" in southeast England.

Foreign workers

He said: "The credit crunch - or the depression as it now is, is no longer a spectator sport and it is starting to hurt our people very hard."

Mr Darby said the party - which says it has about 100 council seats in Britain - was looking forward to the European parliament elections in June.

"We will do very nicely indeed," he predicted.

Mr Hain denied that Gordon Brown's speech in which he promised "British jobs for British workers" had helped the BNP to win.

Instead he blamed the controversy over foreign companies who brought their own workers into Britain, rather than employing local people.

He said he "did not believe" assurances that the companies were not undercutting local wages and ignoring nationally-agreed pay and conditions agreements.

Giving local people the first chance to apply for new jobs should be a "priority" Mr Hain added.

The Conservative MP for Sevenoaks, Michael Fallon, described the BNP's victory as "worrying".

“Question for society and people “

When times get hard this is the time when equality and diversity should be discussed more Not fear and indifference, Ignorance, inaction. Difference is a way of coming up with different solution for the times however we need that common shared social glue that binds us as a human race.

• What do you think?
• Does it matter?

Pause a bit and check our emotions

“Real knowledge knows the extent of one's ignorance." — Confucius

I would venture to say that many, perhaps most of us working in the areas of Equality field of around age, gender, disability, sexual orientation, religious belief, or Human Rights field, Informal Logic and critical thinking like to think of the practice to which we are committed as progressive, as contributing to social betterment and intellectual advance.

We may prefer to imagine ourselves out toiling in those conceptual fields, boots immersed in the muddy waters, planting and grafting as well as pruning and weeding, and perhaps even harvesting a crop from time to time. I suspect that most of us, whatever our political stripe, would resist the idea that we are confined by the very nature of our disciplinary practice, to simply uphold and perhaps rearrange the status quo, either intellectually or politically.

My view of the matter, for what it is worth, is that there is no such thing as a logical method of having new ideas, or a logical reconstruction of Equality process. My view may be expressed by saying that every discovery around equality contains ‘an unfounded element’, or ‘a creative insight in the process.

As the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once put it: "The paradox is the source of the thinker's passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling."

·       What do you find inconsistent in your life and the activities around Equality issues?

·       What paradoxes can you share?

·       What do you think?

·       Does it matter?

Metaphors to describe what your organisation does around equality?

I love metaphors! When they're fresh, they ignite our imaginations and stimulate our creativity. One exercise we do with our workshop participants is having them make metaphors for their organisation around equality and diversity and human rights. I've found that the metaphors this exercise produces give me a lot of insight into the nature and morale of each organisation around ethos’s around equality. 

They also provide me with a pretty good sense of how well that organisation will do in the near term. Here are a few of them. You might even be able to guess their names. As you read along, ask yourself, "What's a good metaphor for my organisation to describe equality?"

• Our organisation when it looks at Equality it is like a super tanker. It's large and powerful, but moves slowly. Also, once the course is set, it's tough to change.
  
• Our organisation is like a winery on equality. We have different products and some vintages are better than others. We also have two kinds of users: on the one hand we have connoisseurs who greatly appreciate what we've done; on the other hand, there are "Ripple drinkers" who take our software and manipulate to their own ends.
  
• Our organisation on equality is like the sun shedding light on the computer world.
  
• Working within our organisation on equality is like a nightmare. You'd like to get out of it but you need the sleep.
  
• Our organisation on equality is like a galley ship without a drummer. We've got some people rowing at full beat, some at one-half beat, some at one-quarter beat, and some dead beats. Also, the captain is steering by the wake.
  
• Working here on equality is like urinating in a dark suit. It's warm and it feels good, but it doesn't show.
  
• Our organisation on equality is like a maze looking for a mouse.
  
• Our organisation on equality is like a giant human body. Administration is the guts. Sales and marketing are the mouth. Corporate management is the mind making decisions. Human Resource is the reproductive system. And the secretaries and technicians are the skeleton that supports the body.
  

Here's a challenge to you: What is your organisation like when you describe the work there do around equality? 

What metaphors would you use to describe your organisation? By all means, please share!

• What do you think?
• Does it matter?

Emotional fall out of the economy how and were will equality fit in?

Perhaps it was Francis Fukuyama who put it best: 

One of the most important lessons we can learn from an examination of economic life is that a nation’s well-being, as well as its ability to compete, is conditioned by a single, pervasive cultural characteristic: the level of trust inherent in the society.’

This trust, which lay at the heart of the flurry of useful, resistance of transactions that make up a market economy, in turn rests on the ability of communities to share norms and rules. 

In this sense, economic life, as Adam Smith well understood, cannot be divorced from culture. 

The model of neo-classical economics in which firms maximise profits and markets are perfectly competive, can’t explain the historical phenomenon that:

‘The greatest economic efficiency was not necessarily achieved by rational self-interested individuals but rather by groups of individuals who, because of a pre-existing moral community, are able to work together effectively. ’ 

As that great student of the Mafia, Diego Gambetta puts it:

‘Societies which rely heavily on the use of force are likely to be less efficient, more costly, and more unpleasant than those where trust is maintained by other means.’ 

Which is why the ideas, the culture – and yes, the influence of society around the value and belief around equality a shared vision utmost of importants – your soft touchy feely ideas if you like, I predict, will grow.

So, how do we know when it’s working?

When we see an investment in all of equality and diversity from all corners of society in Britain as more valuable than a short-term bet on American sub-prime debt.

When we find a way of putting opportunity on every corner of every community, and chance, across the country.

When we find a way of delivering life chances for life for all people.

When we find a way of harnessing the passion power that lives in all communities as a market force and a market mover.

This is where we want to reach to stretch.

Why? Because in January, government published an important blueprint for the future, of which we are an intimate part.

The New Opportunities white paper set out a vision for how we in this country should seek to capture a big slice of the 1 billion skilled jobs that will be created around the world in the decade to come, but to open those jobs to people from all walks of life and every corner of the community.

The Government said there wanted to see a step change in social mobility. 

Not by waving a magic wand, or wishing for a better world, or by organising some nice tokenism opportunities.

But by investing in individuals, and families and communities at every stage of life.

But you know as well as I do, that government alone cannot deliver this future. Business alone can’t do the job. Nor can civic society. And nor is it in skies of my world.

But together, a strong government and a strong economy and a strong civic society as well, together we have a chance.

This is what I see in my own community.

But, what has public service in Britain taught us is that in this future; we’re not going to have a performance that matches our potential unless we strengthen the ties that bind us.

We can do well in this new world. But not by turning our backs on it.

At the next election, whenever it is, it is quite possible for people to vote for a bit less open. For a bit more anti-Europe.  For a bit less foreign aid. For borders that are closed not carefully open.

If we want a different future and a future that is open to the world, then we have to win an argument that carefully open and is sensitive to issues and mediate open debate is better than hesitantly closed.

And that means we have to win an emotional argument about change and how we see the value of age, gender, disability, race, sexual orientation, religious belief.  The whole benefits of engaging in this as Francis Fukuyama says his argument is Aristotelian and that "Aristotle argued, in effect, that human notions of right and wrong and what we today call human rights were ultimately based on Human nature"

Regarding the recent financial crisis, Fukuyama supports supervision of this economic sector. "Financial institutions need strong supervision, but it isn't clear that other sectors of the economy do."

• What do you think?
  
• Does it matter?
  

Can words sharp us and define us does someone comment have Power on our emotions?

How important is emotion in everyday life?

People who witness crimes involving weapons tend to remember less about the perpetrator and context of the crime than those who witness crimes involving no weapons. This weapon focus has been theorised to be due to either the emotional associations of weapons or the novelty of weapons.

How is emotional meaning constructed through communication?

Is everyone upset about someone making jokes about someone else's race, disability or and nationality, or age, or sexual orientation, religious belief, gender?

Candace Pert made a breakthrough discovery that changed the way scientists understand the mind-body connection. She found the opiate receptor, the mechanism by which a class of chemicals (peptides) alters the mind and body. Her research led her to an understanding of the way emotions function as a regulatory system in the body.

Because of her work on emotions, Dr. Pert was featured in the film, What the Bleep Do We Know, and frequently speaks on the role of emotions in the mind-body. Pert's work helped shift the paradigm from "emotions as neuroscience" to "emotions as biology." In her new book, Everything You Need to Know to Feel Good, she's taking the science of feeling a step further to present "emotions as physics."

Emotions, Pert explains, are not simply chemicals in the brain. They are electrochemical signals that affect the chemistry and electricity of every cell in the body. The body's electrical state is modulated by emotions, changing the world within the body. In turn, Pert finds emotional states affect the world outside the body.

So in the case of Jeremy Clarkson in his interview were he is currently in Australia on tour, his commets about Gordon Brown disability and nationality running our country.

• Is the emotional meaning both personal and social?
• What basic message do people take from Jeremy Clarkson comments?
• Does his messages communicate any moral meaning?
• What do you think post your comments?

How do you take the need for individual ego and connection to a social pecking order and balance them in society and work place?

In society and work place you want everyone contributing and being respectful but at the same time you have a pecking order from the directors, managers on down. The director gets paid more therefore they are more valuable in the company's eyes then the cleaner who gets paid a lot less.

So how is individual value determined?

How would a truly classless culture or workplace actually work?

It seems there are two different things at work here core or the built-in value of every human individual and then there is another type value that comes from what is contributed to the whole of humanity by that individual. I can see it is a balance that is worth preserving.

·       What are people thoughts on this?

·       What do other of you think of the balance is it worth preserving.

·       In our society and what if we do nothing will equality be decide by fittest survive and just let nature take it course?

·       Does it matter?

 

What learning and development as people have we done on the emotional affects of equality?

Most of us grow up without ever learning what an emotion is, how to honour it, or how to feel it successfully. In fact, we get harmful messages to the contrary about "counting to ten" and bottling up our powerful feelings.

The truth about emotions is pretty straightforward. They're messages from the brain that are delivered in the body. To receive these messages we need to feel them where they arise.

If we're lonely, for example, the message might show up as a stab in the heart, a tug in the stomach, a welling behind the eyes, or all three. Counter to this it may seem, to feel a painful emotion fully, at the site of its delivery, is the best way to help it diminish. Not feeling the emotion, on the other hand, causes it to grow stronger, remain longer, and mess up our lives in many ways.

Often the message an emotion sends is unhelpful or just plain wrong - like buy this! Or be afraid of that! If I pause to feel such emotions fully, aren't I just encouraging them?

No, the opposite is true. To feel an emotion you must become aware of it. With that awareness you're best able to assess its soundness. Without it, you're only able to respond to the emotion unconsciously.

Let's say you're afraid of disability in what the relationship that is attached in the minds eye. We can't make our self-unafraid by trying not to be. But letting our self-experience the fear will reveal its origins from the past. You'll then be able to address and heal those earlier events. In the process you'll literally retune your emotional response. You'll become less fearful going forward, and only when appropriate.

Whenever you're not willing to feel an emotion, our choices and behaviours stem from our avoidance of that emotion. Our resistance then runs our life, and is directly contrary to our overall best interest.

Take the case of a person who's unable to feel inferior. This resistance is likely to make him sensitive to criticism. They’ll go out of their way to avoid criticism, or to deflect it, and will therefore deny themselves the chance to hear potentially crucial feedback.

Through a glitch in evolution, our brains are wired to perceive challenging emotions as life threatening. We respond the same way to loneliness, for example, as to footsteps in a dark alley. This then has issues to how we interact with people from different strand of equality, e.g. age, sexual orientation, gender, disability, race, and religious belief, what is your glitch in evolution within our brain on the subject equality.

But emotions are inside of us, so we can't actually run away from them. All we can do, therefore, is attempt to stuff them down or numb ourselves to their affects. In doing so we'll use anything at our disposal - alcohol, cigarettes, joining hate groups, violence, keep our self from knowing others, creating myth about different groups within society. Emotional suppression is a million pound industry with countless tensions reaching deep into every corner of our culture.

In truth, however, it's not really the substances and activities to which we're addicted. What we're addicted to, at our core, is emotional resistance of what equality means to what view of and what connections in our minds eye on the subject is it positive or negative.

• What do you think?
• Does it matter about this?

How would Mr Spock engage in the subject of equality?

My friend and me were yelling at each other today. About when we were youngster and when his father took him and me to our first football match. And what it was like growing up in 1970,1980 and about racism. I was telling him about the first time I went to a football match in the 1979, with him and his dad and the match was Birmingham City versus West Bromwich Albion. Team of the three degrees of Cuinningham, Regis, and Batson at the height of their fame their were parading the skill at St Andrew that day and I remember the day as it was yesterday. When the team took to the field the then crowd roared with abuse to the then three degrees and shower them with bananas and verbal abuse of go back were you come from and then started to sing that famous song that I never ever forgot there is “no Black on the Union Jack”. I remember this middle age white man sing this at top of his voice standing right next to me with his veins standing out and eyes wide and spit coming out of his mouth and then turning to me and saying not you son. I have to emit l was glad he said that to me because I was feeling pretty scared at this time and my friend at the time just carry on sing it. And said after the match that was a good match was it. I said to him what do you think of the chanting of No Black on the union Jack he said at the time it was just a bit of fun.

For me this reinforce to all black people that to remember our place in the pecking order of society. We were discussing our different viewpoints of living in the same time and location in the inner city of Birmingham and being form different sides of the fence so to speak I was Black of West Indian parents and him White of English parents and discuss some of social norm that we were brought up with like as a black man l would need to work twice as hard as a White man to achieve anything in this world. My parents try to help me and motivate me to take what opportunities that came my way. Think about the phrase for a minute “as a black man l would need to work twice as hard as a white man”. This was done with good intention not with malice.

However the affect did not really help the intended outcome what I witness reinforce what I saw so my educational years had a lot of challenges from both side of the fence for educational system and me and with the teachers. When I discuss with my friend I had to agree thing have improved hundred percent from that time my answers is yes. However to have a discussion about prejudice in Britain today is still seen as a taboo subject because equality as a subject has an emotional feeling attached to it and a lot of people forgotten this and think were just talking about equality like how Mr Spock would do in a episode of Star Trek. So I said to my friend if he remembered Star Trek the series and individual episodes made strong comments on sexism and feminism, racism and improving race relations, all major social issues during the late 1960's, and to a different degree, social issues of today. Of course not every single episode makes a social commentary, but throughout the series, characters, themes, and of course, individual issues were look at to begin with, the crew of the Enterprise was racially mixed. "The ship had to be interracial because it represented all of mankind. So how can the human race ever hope to achieve friendship within communities when we can’t even make friends with it self never mind alien races?

If Mr Spock were to talk about the subject of equality. He would probably respond by stating that there is nothing emotional about equality. Race relations have improved greatly, although problems still exist. Still, hate groups exist despite social and legal pressure to stamp them out. Tensions have eased somewhat among certain section of society, but possibility of conflict in neighbourhoods still exists. Star Trek reminds me that these social issues are timeless for our society, and if our society is to progress to the day when we can peacefully explore and co exist in society, these issues must be finally and absolutely resolved for all our sake.

• Lets us all start having open discuss about these issues?
• What you think?
  

What is emotional equality?

For me it started when I was a Children and I had issues with the education system with my dyslexia, the day I had my daughter and when I acquire my disability. The emotional, physical, and psychological stereotyping of those issues begins when the system says: you don’t fit in.

Emotional 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.

For many of us, given the social and personal cost of the emotional effect of equality and recognise the complexity of emotion this happens all the time when we probe into the subject of equality. In some people, this may be especially strong, so their emotions are being triggered in ways that prevent them having insight into what they are doing especially around the area of equality.

When we look at it in the emotional equality sense.

• When we see and read headlines like ‘White working class 'losing out'.
• White working class people are losing out on several fronts, from education to housing, a report argues.

The current school system is skewed in favour of giving more opportunities to middle class children, the report by the Runnymede Trust says. It says white working class children are considered more likely to fail and face more barriers to high achievement.

White working class ‘losing out’ were does this leave people marginalised and push to the arms of The "BNP threat cannot be ignored", their spread division and despair within society.

What is being triggered off here?

Just answer these following questions

• Do emotions reflect personal experience of circumstance of equality?
• Does everyone feel some emotion on equality?
• What shapes our canvass on equality?
• Does our experience alter how we perceive emotion around equality?
• How does emotion rule the brain?

Emotion rules the brain:

Emotion defines who we are to ourselves as well as to others. They are at the core of many psychiatric disorders and their can also alter our physical well being. If we look at the work of Paul Ekman carry this work on further. Contrary to the belief of some anthropologists including Margaret Mead, Ekman found that facial expressions of emotion are not culturally determined but universal to human culture and thus biological in origins as Charles Darwin had once hypothesizes.

All emotions are positive in the same way that happiness, pleasure, joy is. They are all there to push us towards either protecting ourselves, becoming more thoughtful, more honest, more balanced, more fulfilled.

There is no such thing as a “negative” emotion. An emotion is not a thought which can be wrong. But neither are emotions irrational they is what Antonio Domasio calls “somatic marker” Basically this mean they mark something out for your notice. In that way they serve the same role as the pain in your foot could tell you your shoes are too tight or the rumbling in your stomach that tells you it is time to eat.

So emotions are cues to action.

Now this is where some people can misunderstand or mismatch the emotion they mistake the out of place expression of the emotion which comes out of the wrong area of the brain for the emotion itself. We as people are conditioned into seeing emotions as “bad” or “wrong” because we have watched other people do damaging things when they get emotional. But emotions don’t encourage us to be destructive – just honest.

So when we look at equality how honest are we as people when discussing these issues. However, it is a wakeup call to stay on track with the strands of age, gender, race, and religious belief, sexual orientation.

Currency of measurement of Equality what are you measuring within your organisations.

“Although social change cannot come overnight, we must always work as though it were a possibility in the morning.”

Dr Martin Luther King, Jr

Equality and Decision Making on equality and diversity and measuring the effectiveness.

Clearly, the dynamics of individuals interacting in a group are complicated and complex and difficult to predict. Many factors naturally come into play, including attributes of the group, the group’s members, the nature of the group task assigned, the organisational context within which the group interaction occurs, and the structure imposed on the group’s interaction.

Two practical questions need to be asked about how we measure this:

• equality between whom?

Some of the parameters for the Equalities Review are already set. The basic comparisons will be between individuals in the UK according to their sex, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion and age. This identifies the relevant unit of analysis as the individual (rather than groups or nation states, for example); it identifies the relevant population as the UK; and it identifies the principal characteristics for analysis.

• equality of what?

Can be grouped under three broad headings, the distinctions between them are not always clear cut:

• equality of process
• equality of outcome
• equality of autonomy.

Nonetheless, organisations would be better served if a greater uniformity could be observed regarding the progressive realisation of equality measurements framework.

What are you’re understand of these terms:
(i) outcomes
(ii) processes (discrimination, dignity and respect)
(iii) autonomy (empowerment, choice and control)

How do you measure your progressive relalisation towards equality.

What do you think?

Does it matter?

Inequality in Britain the Spirit Level – a new book by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett – claims this is no longer true for developed countries.

More money won’t fix broken Britain, but sharing the money could. That is the conclusion of The Spirit Level, a groundbreaking study which concludes inequality is at root of all society’s problems, from violent crime to teenage pregnancy.

The UK ratio of 7.2:1 is one of the highest in the free world. Other market economies – such as Finland and Japan have only half as much inequality.

Britain is now used to being unequal, run for years on the assumption that rising prosperity at the top would eventually benefit all. Getting richer used to make societies healthier and happier.
The wealth of nations has little bearing on the great list of social evils examined. But in (almost) every case there is a link with inequality.

Take health. The (unequal) Americans have one third more income than the (equal) Japanese, and yet they die nearly five years earlier. It is well established that the bottom of the heap is an unhealthy place to be. But the Spirit Level shows that inequality does damage right up the social scale.

What is true of individual sickness also applies to social diseases, such as illiteracy and crime. Unequal societies have more prison, more mental illness and more illiteracy – often many times more.

Unequal societies record around three times more mental illness than equal ones. Anxiety disorders and addictions are among the conditions most closely linked to the income gap.
Is it just that diagnosis is more common in the English speaking world? Almost certainly not. Although cultural differences can never be eliminated, the data mostly comes from World Health Organisation diagnostic tests which ask comparable questions in different countries and then deploy common criteria to assess rates of mental illness.

In unequal societies, such as Britain and the US, psychiatric prescriptions are also particularly high.

Prison populations are up to eight times bigger in stratified societies as in equal ones.

Is it just differences in crime? In small part yes, as crimes such as murder are more common in unequal countries. But only 12% of the rise in US incarceration since 1980 is down to crime, and the recent doubling of England’s prison population has mostly occurred while crime has been declining.

The real explanation is that sentences are harsher in unequal countries. Separate analysis shows that more unequal American states more often retain the death penalty.

That Britain has seen inequality rise since the 1980s is widely appreciated, but it is less well known that the widening of the income gap was the sharpest in the developed world. This series from the Institute for Fiscal Studies measures the spread of incomes over time.

It is measured using the so-called Gini coefficient, with its value for each year expressed as a proportion of the reading for 1974. The fact inequality rose more rapidly than elsewhere in Europe suggests the rise was partly down to political decisions as opposed to global forces such as trade or technology.

How inequality was compressed during the 1974-79 Labour government, an economically turbulent era, but also a time of egalitarian incomes policies and increases in the pension.

Under Margaret Thatcher (1979-90) the income gap widened to a chasm, as top pay raced ahead and most benefits were frozen. Tax and benefit changes alone account for about a third of the total increase.

During the early 1990s recession inequality levelled off for a time, but with recovery it soon picked up again.

New Labour has funnelled money towards the poorest, lifting many children and pensioners out of poverty and closing the income gap between the middle and the poor.

But, in Peter Mandelson’s phrase, the party was intensely relaxed about the wealthy, and, perhaps as a result, they have raced ever further ahead of the middle. The combined effect has been to leave inequality broadly stable. By 2006, the most recent year for which data is available, it was close to a record high.

Just as the financial crisis has stoked up resentment about top pay, the Spirit Level provides new grounds for moving beyond the New Labour logic that holds there is no need to worry about overall inequality, as distinct from poverty.

The results may be of most obvious interest to the egalitarian left, but they should also worry liberals concerned with equal opportunity. For social mobility turns out to be undermined by income inequality – poor youngsters find it easier to climb the social ladder when there is less distance to travel.

Nor can more progressive Tories – who are frantically hunting out new ways to repair the social fabric afford to ignore the analysis.

It is hardly news that being poor is associated with disadvantage, but the real twist in the Spirit Level is its claim that the affluent also miss out in unequal societies. The chart on the right provides one piece of evidence. It records the literacy scores in four countries in descending order of inequality: US, UK, Belgium and Finland.

The chart shows that in all four countries people born of more educated parents are more literate than those from uneducated homes. No surprise there, nor in the fact that the effect of parental education on reading is most marked in the most unequal societies – thus the slope of the line is steeper for American than Finnish people.

More strikingly, though, the chart also shows that even those from the most highly educated families are more literate in the more equal countries. At every level of parental education, the rank ordering of countries is preserved – with the more equal countries doing better.

Cross-national comparisons in mortality also suggest the higher classes pay a price for inequality. The chart on the right, for instance, shows death rates for working age men in (unequal) Britain are more graded by social class than in (equal) Sweden. But it also shows death rates are higher overall, including for the top social class. Exactly the same thing is true when infant mortality rates in Britain and Sweden are compared.

Could it all be down to differences in health and education systems?

It seems unlikely, though with education it can be hard to unpick cause from effect because more equal countries invest more. With healthcare, the international statistics suggest extra expenditure has almost no effect on average life expectancy. Besides, the idea that inequality increases mortality for the rich as well as the poor is not some quirk of the countries we have focused on. The Spirit Level looks right across the range of poor and rich American counties, and discovers that while living in rich counties is always healthier, residents in unequal states live less long than those living in equally rich counties in more equal states.

Exactly why the affluent also suffer from inequality is still unproven, but one possibility is that an unequal society creates a great fear of losing social standing, a fear which takes its toll on everybody.

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The importance of social learning about Equality and Diversity as a factor in the making society equitable is an important one.

Learning about fairness

OBVIOUSLY, there are certain limits to the plasticity of us as human beings. Human beings cannot learn to go without the substances within our body need in order tosurvive. We cannot learn to live under water like fish or to fly like birds.Our structure imposes some restraints on our adaptability. A group that institutionalised universal celibacy as a way of life would soon die out.Even here, of course, we cannot predict easily what we the individual might do.

Physical survival is not the sole determinant for what a Human being can do.

Many human beings have learned to espouse death for ends that seemed more important than life itself. However, if as human beings we wish to survive, our bodysets the limits for this learning. Within these biological limits human being we learned an amazing variety of patterns of living, of behaving, and of feeling.

BEHAVIOURS, values, and relationships, which can be found among human beings in almost infinitely diversified forms, depend on socialisation for their formulation and perpetuation. In data provided by ethnologists, sociologists, psychiatrists, psychologists and educators, we find evidence to indicate that social behaviour is learned behaviour. Personality develop­ment and socialization are intimately related, since the course of one largely depends on the course of the other. The particulars of human being's biological organism apparently provide the only limits set on the poten­tial variety of patterning in the behaviour, beliefs, and relationships we may adopt.

• What do we actual understand about equality and diversity?
• Why does this matter?
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Genius the right mix of rebel to further the cause of Equality and diversity

The most rebellious minds aren't the ones who change the world. Outright meek ones don't either. The highly rebellious and highly meek can be equally corny. A true original thinker usually manages some mix of those two styles.

A genius on the one hand does need to be a bit dutiful or meek. Picasso, for example, spent a lot of energy learning realism before he mediated into abstraction. And Darwin thought deeply about Lamarckian evolution legacy before he hypothesized Survival of the Fittest. In other words, an original mind does need some agreement to authority or to what other people named "the rules" before she herself had a role in naming them.

That said, in 1998, psychologists Gregory Feist and Michael Gorman published a still foundational article on the personalities of successful scientists, concluding that "eminent-creative scientists" contain the following personality characteristics: dominance, arrogance, hostility, self-confidence, ambitiousness, focus on achievement, autonomy, introversion, independence, openness to experience, and flexibility in behaviour and thought.

But to be that sort of genius who changes history, you probably do need a delicate, odd mix of the two of independence and dependence. You need to be the sort of person who's invested in learning all that's happened so far and then equally anxious to change it.

There is, after all, a difference between more and less useful rebellion. Useful rebellion tends to come from someone who's committed to a community. Picasso was committed to art history; Darwin was committed to science.

A useful original mind has spent a lot of time digesting the scene he or she is in and feels invested in it. He or she is deeply curious about the world, and part of her own identity is tied up in her community. He or she might, of course, rip down old ideas out of some inborn rebelliousness.

An independent thinker often has a personality style that likes to kick against the pricks. But more importantly he or she has also wrestle with that personal rebellion to the goals of a larger community.

Purely selfish rebellion tends to be shallow and less productive. Think of someone who is just entering a job and doesn't yet have a commitment to it. He or she wants fame for fame's sake. He or she doesn't feel comfortable about they place in the world, and so can't love things in the world. Think of the original but non-social terrorist. Think of anyone who's is prone to destructive, rather than useful, unconventional behaviour.

Overpowered by self-interest, he or she is a reactionary rebel he or she rebels without digesting previous ideas, without committing to some society. That sort of rebellion tends to be quickly won and quickly overcome by the bigger forces of social concern.

Right now, I'm actually thinking of genius through the analogy of what happens in the Education systems in the UK. I f we look at it. Some students hate authority of any sort--and some of those students speak up a lot in class, making frequent comments, expressing their independence and ability to make judgments. They can do it without deeply considering the opinions already circulating in the class. Those are relatively selfish rebels. They like the effect of rebellion but haven't stitched that rebellion into the larger needs of the community.

Others speak up more cautiously many of them are still original, but the originality is tempered by a sense of the community. They've digested ideas from textbooks and from other students, and they speak in relation to what's come before.

The first type is an original thinker whose energy is still self-serving; whose ideas have a relatively shallow foothold. The second is an original thinker who is similarly driven by independence but has learned the history and direction of his or her community. His or Her comments answer to deep needs of the world around him or her and often deal with multiple problems at once.

So, that's one big characteristic of successful inventive thinkers. They learn the past in order to create a relevant new future. They have a mix of conformity and rebelliousness. Each of us can foster this personal style in ourselves by cultivating humbleness at the same time as we grow rebelliousness. Each is a blessing when the two come in tandem.

• How do you create a genius with the right mix of rebel to further cause of Equality and diversity within the organisation?
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The Human experience and the relationship with equality and diversity.

Human beings, unlike other species, are cursed with a conscious awareness of our own mortality. I believe that the tragedy of the human condition is that people's awareness and true self consciousness concerning this existential issue contributes to an ultimate irony, Human beings are, both’ brilliant and peculiar, sensitive and savage, graceful caring and painfully indifferent, remarkably creative and incredibly destructive to self and others.

The capacity to imagine and conceptualise has negative as well as positive consequences because they predispose anxiety states that culminate in a defensive form of denial. The tragedy is that the same defences that enable us to survive the emotional pain of childhood and existential despair are not only poorly adapted and limit our personal potential for living a full life, but they without doubt lead to negative behaviours toward others thereby making the cycle of destructiveness. Inconsistently, with our system of our social beliefs and religious beliefs that are a source of spiritual comfort, relief from a sense of aloneness and interpersonal distress also polarise people one against the other. Threatened by people with different customs and belief systems, we mistakenly feel that we must overpower or destroy them.

With all of the advances of science and technology, if one takes a proper look at the world situation today, one must consider it to be utter madness. Millions go hungry, genocide reaches epic proportions, ethnic strife and prejudice are universal, there is mass killing in the name of religion and warfare remains a viable solution to our differences. With better, more efficient weapons and less reason, and technology outrunning rationality, human existence on the planet may well be extinguished. Feeling and compassion are a significant part of our human custom, but when faced with overwhelming primal pain, we develop defences to minimise our suffering.

Cut off from our feelings, we are desensitised to ourselves and are more likely to become self destructive or act out aggression toward others.

To alter this negative legacy requires a depth of emotional knowledge and compassion as well as the belief and staying power to pursue this endeavour against all odds.

With a deep insight and feeling that we all share the same fate and recognition that death is the great leveller, there is hope for a one world view characterised by respect, love and concern for all of our fellows. Our faith is that by learning how people are damaged and later defended, gradually eliminating faulty parenting practices and developing a better understanding of human nature and weakness, we can significantly influence the fate of human beings in a positive direction.

In this regard, comprehending the issues involved in discussing about an ethical approach to life necessitates a deep knowledge of human mind and especially the importance of understanding defence formation. Defences formed in childhood as a necessity for emotional survival also preclude to varying amount the formation and living out of a truly moral existence. Personal damage caused by excessive criticality, rejection or outright hostility on the part of parents predispose children to become adults that are hurtful to others.

There is no way to become innocently defended unless a person lived in total isolation. Whether we are aware or not, the ways we distrust and distort other people does significant damage. It hurts those closest to us, in particular our children, and then extends outward. In conclusion, society represents a pooling of individual emotional defences, and it is these defences and their subsequent damage to other people that is perpetuated in the world at large. It is manifested in a failure to achieve empathy and compassion for others, outright prejudice, ethnic cleansing and religious warfare.

The appropriate education about our emotional defences, how they are formed and how they function is essential to achieving insight into the subject of equality and diversity. It is unlikely that a person, who lives tunefully within him/herself, is not defensive and respects other people; would raise a hand to inflict damage on others. People with an open, feeling and compass reading can shape a peaceful world that illustrates concern and equality for all.

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• Does this matter?
• Or just leave things as they are?