[Oe List ...] A Matter of Human Rights

[LAURELCG at aol.com]

Thanks, David. I found this very helpful. Jann
 
In a message dated 9/3/2009 9:31:19 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
dmdunn1 at gmail.com writes:

 
In a message dated 9/2/2009 5:07:30 P.M. Pacific  Daylight Time, Susan 
wrote:
 
Government  has of itself no particular character or personality or ethics 
-- it is  a thing,  without consciousness or  conscience.


I'm inclined to believe that  this image of government is precisely the 
root cause of many of government's  failures. 


I prefer to think of government  as "WE, governing ourselves." That's why I 
voted for Colorado's US  Representative Diana DeGette: she holds values and 
undertakes projects that  reflect my values and priorities—my conscience. 
If government is behaving like  a thing without conscience, it's because we 
have not elected people of  conscience capable of effectively managing the 
public systems we expect to  work for our benefit.


The image of  "government as a thing without consciousness"—I'd nail  that 
as THE contradiction in our society vis-a-vis governance—is  surely at the 
heart of why so many of the systems that we expect our public  sector leaders 
to manage for our benefit, fail in their missions. Regrettably,  we have 
not been able to transform them into self-conscious systems. That's  what a 
learning organization or metanoic organization is. (see quote  below)


My point is that since "back in the day" we've all been  working at helping 
people who live or work together—from villages to  corporations to public 
agencies—become conscious of themselves as systems:  participatory, 
cooperative, and entrepreneurial; continual quality  improvement, continual 
self-evaluation, bench marking and best practices; in  short, conscientious, 
self-transcending human systems that serve the  collective good.


But there's the rub, how to get  the public sector systems to act with as 
much conscience and consciousness as,  say, World Vision, the Episcopal 
Church in the USA, Rotary International, or  Bread for the World.


That's our challenge: how to  create societies whose governments are 
self-conscious about formulating and  embodying the consensus of conscience its 
citizens require in order to fulfill  the promise of life, liberty and the 
pursuit of happiness.


I got to get back to  work.


David



 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/oe_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20090903/39e65861/attachment.html>