Politics versus Public Health: we do not become stronger through lies

“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” — Admiral James Stockdale.

Stockdale was a prisoner of war. “I never lost faith in the end of the story. I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”

Who didn’t make it out of the camps? “The optimists,” he replied. “Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart …”

It’s plain that we will still be masking up and locking down for the remainder of 2021. In March 2020, I predicted that, no, the pandemic would not be over by January 2021. I did predict that the earliest we could expect vaccines would be the start of 2021 and that it would take months to roll them out – even if they were effective.

This isn’t pessimism, it’s reality.

The desire to have sweet lies whispered is anathema to the principles of public service and decency. Our elected officials and appointed bureaucrats must tell us truths rather than just telling us things that might make us sleep at night.

Business eye comments on the briefings by the Chief Medical Officer in Northern Ireland:

We’re not sure who gave Dr. Michael McBride a bit of bollocking on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. But someone must have. Because the Dr. Doom who spoke to the media on Tuesday was very different to the Dr. Hope who appeared alongside Robin Swann yesterday.

And that’s the power of politics.

That it’s better to lie to people now because you can always lie to them later. For the love of everything sacred, give me harsh truths rather than honeyed lies.

As a medical professional, did he not see the damage this kind of grim pessimism can do to people… lonely people, people separated from family, vulnerable people, young people?

See, this is false equivalence from people who don’t know better. It’s been said repeatedly that telling people they will be having a hard time will lead to them having a worse time. This sort of ideation of lowered expectations causes more mental health issues than the pandemic itself.

There may never be a vaccine that gives guaranteed protection. We may be wearing masks for years. We need to prepare for continued fatalities, secondary health issues, long term Covid-legacy sickness, mass unemployment, the entire collapse of the entertainment, travel and tourism industries.

Those who survive are the ones who are resilient, who are stoic, those who are perceptive and adaptable. This has been the history of humanity since the very beginning. We were not the strongest, nor the fastest, but we were the smartest. And you don’t stay smart by being lied to.

The Medium is the Message: Pedagogy, Paper and Politics

Wikipedia entry on Marshall McLuhan …content had little effect on society—in other words, it did not matter if television broadcasts children’s shows or violent programming, to illustrate one example—the effect of television on society would be identical. The point I would take away from this is that ‘television’ has had a much greater impact on … Continue reading “The Medium is the Message: Pedagogy, Paper and Politics”

Wikipedia entry on Marshall McLuhan

…content had little effect on society—in other words, it did not matter if television broadcasts children’s shows or violent programming, to illustrate one example—the effect of television on society would be identical.

The point I would take away from this is that ‘television’ has had a much greater impact on society than any content created upon it. Of course, as an enabling technology it can rely on the full gamut of visual programming over decades to enforce the effect.

As an Internet denizen for over 20 years now, I wonder how much we consider this when attempting to communicate with other sections of society.

PEDAGOGY

Education lags behind society because it must. The role of the teacher is to prepare the student for the world brut it is a very rare individual who can prepare another for a future that does not yet exist. We tie teachers up in a curriculum they must address, we check on their progress by subjecting students to exams which only serve to reinforce an ageing curriculum and we punish those who do not meet the arbitrary standards set by individuals who did not grow up in this world. Education prepares students to understand the past.

My son was diagnosed with ADHD and the response from the school was that his choices were medication or expulsion. His inability to focus on a task was disruptive to the class yet this same child can display razor-sharp focus to a task when it is presented in a different format.

The content (message) is much the same (the presentation of concepts, numbers, formulae) but the medium is entirely different. And the medium is more powerful and becomes an enabler, maybe even an amplifier) for the delivery of the message.

If our children are living in the most stimulating and distracting era in history, it is because they are being distracted by the medium, not the message.

PAPER

I love books. My library at home is brimming with them. And despite what many may think, I am yet to read a single book on an electronic device. But the Gutenberg press is nearly 600 years old and despite our advancements in technology, the printed book remains the standard in education media. I would imagine that the data created in audio, video and interactive forms far outweighs the data created in printed books – yet printed books are what we demand our children use.

Sir Ken Robinson:

Our children are living in the most intensely stimulating period in history, besieged by stimuli that distract them but we penalise them for being distracted – we want them to conform instead, to keep them bored, so we anesthetise them rather than release and harness their energy.

When a child has access to a device like an iPad which provides stimulation of multiple senses, of multiple regions of the brain, to entertain, to educate, to answer queries and foster curiosity, is it any wonder that teachers may have difficulties engaging with them using paper and a HB pencil? They’re used to exploring 3D interactive worlds, touching screens of light that make music, rearing dragons in fantasy lands and defeating goblin and skeleton hordes. Giving them a piece of blank paper and expecting them to tell a story is almost cruel.

It becomes equally nonsensical that our schools still use slips of printed paper to communicate with parents. And if you want further proof, why is it that so many ‘education’ technology tools model themselves after outdated technology (see ‘Blackboard’ – how many school children today have even seen a blackboard?).

POLITICS

I am faced with attempting to communicate the future to government. There is a cruel dichotomy in the way the digital industry works and the way government works. I was asked to describe the development of the marketplace up to the year 2030. Similarly, we have to respond to an industry that considers next year to be the far future.

Dealing with students who are forced to comply with paper is easy as they grasp new concepts easily and even as I stand in a class, charged with delivering a guest lecture on digital, trying to inspire a response from the sullen faces, I know they are texting and messaging and dreaming of being somewhere else. It’s why I often ask the students to turn their mobiles on and take them off silent.

But if education is lagging behind society, then politics remains in the Stone Age. This is an environment that lives on paper, whose establishment thrives on tradition, whose operations are restricted from embracing digital. How else can we explain the resistance of local government to open data? How else can we explain the continued investment in construction, agriculture and other dying industries (compared to under-investment in knowledge economy sectors). Dealing with government remains a paper-bound process and their selection of medium is their message.

Thorny Issues in Politics

Russell writes about the thorny issue of abortion. My bone of contention comes from the fact that the Parliment on England are trying to force this ammendment onto us, when all 4 churches and pretty much the whole Northern Ireland executive have said leave as is. There’s are two logical fallacies here, however: that any … Continue reading “Thorny Issues in Politics”

Russell writes about the thorny issue of abortion.

My bone of contention comes from the fact that the Parliment on England are trying to force this ammendment onto us, when all 4 churches and pretty much the whole Northern Ireland executive have said leave as is.

There’s are two logical fallacies here, however:

that any Church should have anything to do with the running of a civil government.
that the politicians in Northern Ireland have the best interests of humans at heart

I’m strongly Pro-Choice in this matter. It’s not something I choose for myself but until I’m able to carry a foetus to term myself, I’m not going to dictate how others choose to deal with unwanted pregnancies. I’d ask any man who has an opinion to consider not trimming any of his beard, toenails, hair, fingernails (or for that matter, ejaculate) for around 18 years before he considers the effects of bringing a child into the world. And even that won’t scratch the surface.

He continues:

My question is that, If we have (and its taken a long time to get) our own Northern Ireland executive with representives seated in the main UK Parliment, then why are the English trying to get invloved in our business? and force an ammendment our govenernment do not want?

This isn’t an English/Northern Irish thing. This is the government knowing that if we were left to our own devices our politicians would have us burning books and witches by the tonne. It has been shown time and time again that the political and social development of Northern Ireland is infantile in the extreme, that we permit dangerous memes of ‘difference’ and ‘culture’ which are divisive in our own communities: in short that we cannot be trusted to look after ourselves.

Don’t kid yourself; we don’t have a government. We have a couple of prefects looking after us and the teachers are hanging back to see what level of disaster we can make out of it.

I don’t want to live in a country that prides itself on bigotry and sectarianism but I’ve made my bed here and I’m kinda stuck. Northern Ireland has incredible potential because we have a lot of very smart people (I guess that proves that intelligence is recessive) but very few of the smart, educated people actually vote (and when they do, they don’t vote for big name parties).

The amendment is being forced because the people of Northern Ireland think with their bibles and not with their heads. And politicians pander to this weakness.

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PEDAGOGY

PAPER

POLITICS

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