Being Accountable

Let me clarify. I do not believe in free enterprise. Our human desires and the consequences of achieving those desires requires to be tempered, we each have to exercise restraint. Or have restraint imposed on us. Neither do I believe in some centralised state control, equality for all. We are all too varied in our needs, access to resources and aspirations. No, what I been flogging over many of these blogs is the need to get back to belonging to a community. A caring community that is accountable and responsible to those that relate to it. A community that is meaningful and able to better the quality of life for each of us that belong to it. In this globalised world we exist within, this matrix society, we may belong to a duplicity of communities with varying degrees of weak to very strong bonds. Our membership maybe often be transitory but in key communities membership is non-cancellable, it is lifelong. Our life has to governed by the communities we bond with, with the obligations, responsibilities and expectations that their membership entails. You cannot be honourable and a freebooter. Holding your head up amongst your peers seems to be a core value requisite in each of us as members of a civilised society. Whichever way you frame it, membership has its price but also returns in kind.

Tythings I knew of as a word. I have just finished a book where, for the first time, I encountered an explanation where the full significance dawned. A tything was a medieval unit of ten households where the heads of house looked out for each other head of house and was held to account for any misdoings by anyone within that tything. Not just his own household but anyone properly tied to the group. A collective reprimand for any one individuals failings but also a caring supportive framework for each group member. An automatic support response, regardless of status, wealth or worthiness, just dependant on degree of need.

In arriving at a new definition of community, relevant to our century, we too could do with a tything concept. A core group we are responsible and accountable too. A group of peers bound by familiar circumstances and backgrounds. Able to relate, respond and reprimand as the occasion demands without judgement or censure. Membership where the group can achieve far beyond that of any one individual and can reach out and be significant in a much wider network of like minded groups. That is beginning to sound like a community structure where we can have a voice, a voice that counts, a voice that is tempered by consensus, a voice able to give as well as receive, a voice that can rebuked if too extreme. No room here for smug pleasure seeking self-satisfaction and gratification. Time to stand up and be counted.

Staking out who we are

In a barely scientific article I am indebted to the New Scientist "Imagine there's no countries" for opening up a new horizon for me. Enabling me to draw together several strands of posts that related but didn't appear to gel. In essence, the article proposes that, the idea of having a Nationality is a construct only a couple of hundred years old. Self identity is all about the pool of people you directly relate to and the lower echelons in the hierarchy of authority you are required to respond to. As Society became more complex, with the growing industrialisation and the Empire, so the need for an ever expanding bureaucracy. The idea of Nationhood emerged to symbolise this overarching administration. You deferred no longer to the Squire, or the Church or the local Lord but to Government. It hardly matters whether or not you accept this premise. Suffice that it raises the subject that there are alternative ways to view allegiances. What ties those allegiance's together is not some despot figurehead but the necessary administrative functions. What keeps the wheels turning, bringing in the finance, making laws and enforcing the rules of conduct. That is at the core of what bonds us, you to me and us to all the rest we recognise as being part of us. Our acceptance of being an essential cog in this great mesh of things that keeps us all healthy, safe and secure.

My fundamental starting point is that we are now a Matrix Society. Our allegiances are now multi-facetted between work, leisure, entertainment, family, friends, education, sport. Not one encompasses all our out there network of known people with all the separate obligations and expectations that arise out of all these disparate networks. Each facet will have its own distinct feel and set of rules. Where now our sense of one Nation?  In my Posts I keep coming back to exploring how we can have any sense of community, how that community has to learn to work together and how being a community can be the only answer to Totalitarianism. Just  dip into some of my past Posts that range over exploring different aspects of Community, living with each other:

• Keeping to Rules
• Checks and Balances
• Held to Account
• In Whom we Trust
• Centre Revolution
• Power to the People
• Of the Community

So the revelation is that we give up this novel idea of belonging to one particular Nation, it is far too limiting and restrictive. Instead under the umbrella of a European Convention we move in and out of differing communities. For example, our work world maybe global and that governs the where and how's of doing business. Our home life maybe regional and we look to the macro Region Administration for the provision of services we rely on. Our children's welfare and education may be District based providing the necessary access and contacts whilst our leisure maybe entirely local dependant on the immediate surroundings network of contacts. Each person with their own unique blend of communities, no rigid boundaries, differing sets of obligations and requirements applying to each community that in turn rely on its own specific authorities. Gone one Nation, welcome to a meld of Regions and clusters of Local Areas. Welcome to this New World.

Matrix Society

Once apon a time your community was where you were born, lived, worked and died in. It defined you and you were defined and known by it. Within the community, which had known defined limits as to who was within it and who was outside of it, there were smaller cliques. Cliques of churchgoers, the pub regulars, your school year mates and so on, many faceted loose cliques ebbing and flowing but within the all embracing sense of the known community. Of course there were exceptions people had to move about or married into new communities, but, by and large, these small discrete communities shaped the fabric of our Nation. It was the norm, there was no other model to comprehend, that was how life was and out of it emerged our civil structures of law and order.

Times have changed and very recently too. What was, is now no longer. We all are now members of multiple communities, loose communities with ill-defined boundaries and even more amorphous membership. We belong to so many discrete communities, where we live, where we work, where we spend our leisure, where we shop, where we receive education and so on. Each area of activity on the whole disconnected from any other, but of course, depending on the degree of geographical ranging, with lots of overlaps and possible interconnections. Loose memberships, drifting in and out without often without any conscious recognition by any. Not particularly bound by any loyalty to it and with little desire to make connections. Life is too busy to make meaningful contact with such a wide and diverse range of encounters with an expected short contact duration time.

This is the society that we now find ourselves living within. A matrix society with very wide but superficial connections. Yet our ideological model still assumes the tight-knit community of yesteryear when we talk about society and working together in community driven undertakings. The challenge that lays before us is to make sense of this matrix society, find ways that strengthen our membership of all the various communities we enter and work towards replacing a detached aloofness with instead a commitment and obligation. No easy task. What is sure is that we have to reestablish contact with ourselves, in all our different interconnections, if we are ever going to be able to resist this ever onward move to totalitarianism.