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I'm in maroon this
time.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2003 12:42
PM
Subject: This sceptred compost heap (was
Re: [Futurework] Education
Ed,
Thanks for this. I've read three different
summaries of this same OECD report this morning!
I've just come back
from a dogwalk and still dwelling on what I wrote after sending you my
previous posting. What was occurring to me is that the reason for a number of
the arguments we have is that our societies are much more different than we
might imagine -- or at least I might imagine anyway. Time and again, I
describe things going on here and I get the impression from some of your
slightly nonchalant responses sometimes that you might be thinking that I am
exaggerating. I also get the impression that you live in a much more laid back
-- indeed much happier and less stressed -- society than here. Hitherto, I've
regarded the difference as a personality one. However, during the dogwalk --
and I hope you don't think I'm being patronising here -- I think our society
is more complex than yours because we have so many layers of history. Please
don't think I'm trying to show off -- but consider. We were building quite
complex stone buildings at the tip of Scotland and in the south of England
before the pyramids were built. By 1,000BC we had probably the most complex
bronze technology in the world (apart from China's), using tin from Cornwall
and copper from north Wales, with, correspondingly, a very advanced mining
technology (scores of tin mines stretching for miles under the sea bed in
Cornwall and over 50 miles of recently discovered tunnels in north Wales from
that date -- made with bone and stone tools), and with significant
manufacturing areas somewhere in between (not yet discovered) to actually make
the bronzes (of different blends for different purposes) and then trading the
products over thousands of miles from the Baltic through to the Mediterranean.
Then we've been invaded by the Romans, and the Saxons, and the Vikings and
Danes, and the Normans with their advanced feudal system followed by the
landowning classes. We were at the back-end of the Mediterranean Renaissance
but one of the first into long-distance trading with Asia and big trading
companies, the first into the Western Scientific Enlightenment and then the
Industrial Revolution, and the first into the computer revolution. We are the
third/fourth largest exporting country in the world -- not of products (we're
mined out of almost everything we ever had by way of resources), but of a
variety of services. In short, we probably have the most mature job and social
structure of anywhere in the world. We live by our wits. We may not have the
sheer mass, momentum or technological products that the Americans have got but
I think we lead the world in the acquisition of problems, strains and stresses
from all this historical/technological development. We're a well-rotted
compost heap, showing extremes of anything that can be discussed in terms of
job structure and society. In addition, we're also geographically small enough
to have started the most comprehensive welfare, educational, social
services, health and transport services in the world and now we're the
furthest advanced in showing that they're breaking down -- that the welfare
society is absolutely cram full of problems and we're showing them all in
abundance, so much so that even a Labour government is trying to privatise as
much as it can get away with (albeit in more cunning ways that Thatcher did).
The only other country which has had such a complex history as ours, running
through the whole gamut of every type of economic and technological
development is China. I cannot think of any other with such a varied
experience and with so many historical residues which are still fermenting
away.
A couple of points,
Keith. One is that, for most Canadians, your history is also our
history. Whenever I've been to Europe, I've felt quite at home because
my people shared in the building of your ancient civilizations and the
monuments they left behind just as your people did. When we were in
Ireland a couple of years ago, we visited a famine burial ground in the far
west of the country. My wife's and daughter's ancestors could have
been among the famine victims buried there. We visited Knouth and
Newgrange which could also have been their ancestral burial grounds.
Then in County Carlow, we visited the gravesite of my wife's multi-great
grandmother, who was buried there in 1799. We also visited Vinegar Hill
in Wexford, where a multi-great grandfather was killed. But it doesn't
end there. Both the multi-great grandmother and grandfather (different
families) were British landowners who had likely migrated from Somerset.
I think you get my point. Your history is also our history.
However, it goes well beyond that. Our institutions, our laws and indeed
our democratic processes were inherited from you. They were modified to
suit our purposes, but they differ only in detail and
degree.
The other point is
that I cannot see our society as being less complex than yours. With
perhaps the exception of some Tibetan monks living in the most isolated of
monasteries, we all share the world and it is not a simple world. Like
England, we too have comprehensive health, education and social services that
are in various stages of growing, maintaining a stability or declining.
The socialist ideals of 19th Century Europe caught on here and flourished into
a society that has tried its very best to provide good services to its
citizens. Margaret Thatcher's neo-conservative ideals also caught on
here so that one lot of politicians is trying to take apart what another lot
built up. We are in a continuous process of reappraising our health,
education and social services, and coming to any real conclusion about what
they should be like and who they should serve is still a distant dream and
will probably remain so.
I don't think we
will ever really know whether we are a mature society or not. I would
suggest that it really doesn't depend much on history, but on how we are able
to handle our problems in the here and now. You are suggesting that
England has a difficult time in coping with the provision of its various
social services. You also seem to suggest that Canada may have less of a
problem. Does that make Canada a more mature society
than England? Perhaps, but I really don't think so.
I'm very probably over-egging the pudding (once again without wishing
to be patronising in any way at all) but, in comparison, Canada's (and
America's) social, economic, historical, cultural problems are somewhat
simpler than ours. I'm not suggesting in any way that you are personally
naive, but I think that your problems can be stated (and solved) in much more
simplistic terms than could be done here. However, I believe that many of the
trends and problems here in England that I am writing about will come to you,
too, in due course -- because we are much further on in what I believe to be
the decline of the industrial revolution.
I've dealt with this in the foregoing. I can't for one
moment think that any country's problems are more simple than any
other's. Each country has its unique characteristics, but to
classify these as more simple or more complex is a bit of a stretch.
Speaking of compost heaps, we are currently into an election here in Ontario
and will probably be into a national election soon.
Ed
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