I remember having to sit through sermons and the like in church or other variations of christian assembly and feeling interminably bored. I think the biggest problem I had was that the source of shared story-telling sounded like insensible news from about 2,000 years ago. I find large assemblies of people to this day "hard-work" and feel queasy at them, the exception being when everyone is seated and listening attentively then the size matters not, so long as the "business of the day" or subject matter is interesting and intelligible. Of course I realize the "coming together" of similar people (similar shared interests and expectations and social norms) is valid even if the actual literal business is nonsense.
Recently I've been keeping tabs on the developments of various committee meetings and reported news of various different spokespeople on the subject of Brexit.
I have to point out a couple of common descriptions:-
- The size of the congregation gives the designated speaker the platform to speak
- The designated speaker replaces the congregation's voices the more the forum (or house of worship) becomes esoteric to the ordinary understanding of the congregation rather than representing them directly. Or indeed the forum itself purports to represent such a quantity of people of variable norms as to be unrepresentative of more than less.
- The consensus between designated speakers allows them to build "barriers to entry" to other potential speakers, perhaps from the ranks of the congregation? Perhaps the formation of dynasties, bubble effects and various other forms of upper echelon nepotism forms: Namely the relationships between (across) this tier is represented more than below?
- The designated speakers whether priests or politicians develop their own liturgical language as a component of such "barriers to entry".
- The interests of these "priests" who "lead" congregations are vested within the fact they hold a platform built on top of their congregations and hence their core interest is in preserving such power over these people for their own eminence.
- Likewise, other such "priests" both in the shared motivation and the shared language of coordinating congregations spend more and more time and focus on this activity effectively the "bartering" of assumed expectations between different congregations and within congregations, to summarize this:-
- Within Frame Shared Expectations
- Between Frame Shared Expectations
- Because of this process, it appears to me that politicians, priests become less and less leaders based on a particular expertise in a particular domain of knowledge or indeed less and less representative of their congregations (one of them) but become more and more actors who possess the trappings of leadership, the pretence of symbolizing family connectedness to the congregations and hence shared communal forums to promote the functions of democratic decision-making between individuals and collectives in various spheres of activity - this is displaced: The framing of expectations either within (see Labour atm) or Between (see Remain vs Leave for example) becomes far more encompassing a motivation of this class of people.
- Modern culture itself takes on these trappings of breakdown in democracy and in fact we could potentially extrapolate this further: The decay of civilization's progression: Celebrity promotion, Excessive investment in distractions of a cultural and mass appeal, an inability to reformulate decision-making when alternative evidence is submitted to the leadership etc.
I'll use the three broad categories in the final bullet point above:-
(1) Celebrity Promotion
If we first look at the intervention of Nicola Sturgeon, then we can summarize the nonsense of liturgy she spews out using Scribblings From Seaham's blog observations to back this up: Talking Heads
Strugeon's motivation is I think quite likely to follow the "model" proposed above: Her platform must be asserted and she must appear to be producing value back to it to sustain her elevation. Does it really follow that Brexit will sabotage the Scots' destiny as a people as Sturgeon would have her followers in her congregation believe? Far from it. But the two priests above must appear to be powerfully talking to each other for the benefit of both the media (personality mania) and hence the congregations low-information and even lower information reporting of personalities let alone voices of argument from the two celebrities above.
Here is a back-up of "Laura Kuenssberg" "media personality" reporting of the priests in action (see the subscript description and her tweets). Secondly it's interesting to notice the spiked online Article 50 clamour vs May's delay on it.
Edit-Update: Just caught (21:30) Daily Politics21/07/2016 and the surreal squeals of delight concerning the sex of the above leaders... imho it suggests that appearance has superceded substance: They have nothing of value to say (the commentary) - not triggering Article 50 prematurely could be explored far more fruitfully if there was real knowledge operating...
(2) Excessive Investment in Forms of Distraction
I really don't know where to begin with this suggestion? I guess the most effective description would be that this is the product between celebrity obsession (to use a headline tag) over attending to alternative evidence when it becomes available? I suppose it may be a case of "choose your preferred poison as per your own personality preferences:-
Greenpeace Repaints Vote Leave Battlebus To Correct Brexit Campaign ‘Lies’
There's a couple of possible motivations here:-
- It just FEELS so good doing something like this, a stunt of sorts?
- Stunts capture the imagination all the better to stoke congregations' emotions with? In fact the appearance of doing something that appears good outmatches in terms of popularity the actual functional work of doing something effective? Who could argue against the lies of Boris' "blunderbus"??
- If you take this stunt at face value it's hard not to feel sympathy for the sincere attempt to recorrect a sense of unfairness in the campaigns, but this fails to realize that the performance of both campaigns remain and leave is so perversely dislocated from the results which require much deeper and extended research to understand (hint hint: The Great Deception).
- It may help understand this type of emotional error more via comparison to such a similar error or displacement ie heavy investment in distraction from the other "side of the divide":-
There's nothing uniquely moronic about Greenpeace's particular choice of actions, they are, as indeed are Politeia, "Reverting To Type": In the latter's case you can see that this Think Tank demands prestigious economic "magic" and hence sources them appropriately in the selection of curated authors above. Again it seems that this feels good for these people (perhaps partly because of the money, prestige, authority that this line of argument seems to generate successfully for this Think Tank (as per their own admission/boast/assertion)). Why? It's clearly more successful than Greenpeace's efforts for the people in this Think Tank; though Greenpeace seem also to have been successful with funding and lobbying from the EU, not to be sniffed at either(!). I would guess it comes back to the idea of politicians as priests and requiring "material for sermons" which sway the most people or sway most powerfully most of the time when needed, the various congregations of people? And this, ladies and gentleman means MONEY Time.
What seems very noticeable is that trying to educate all these disparate congregations with "Between Frame of Expectations" is very unlikely to work. The sermons by our modern priests, our politicians therefore must adapt as described in the above bullet points to uphold their positions: The Economy and riches is one strand of thought that seems to provide political power very successfully.
Nevertheless, this bypasses what's so noticeable recently, using various examples:-
Scientists:-
Farmers:-
(3) Inability to reformulate decision-making according to alternative evidence
You can see that politics becomes bogged down with the different congregations run by priests/politicians who then put their own particular priorities in place as a consequence - but at what cost? We shall see now:-
I cannot do better than list EUReferendum.com past number of blogs:-
| Brexit: a failure to plan | 21/07/2016 |
| Brexit: unlimited dishonesty | 20/07/2016 |
| Brexit: in for the long haul | 20/07/2016 |
| Brexit: opportunity knocks | 19/07/2016 |
| Brexit: free movement and the Single Market | 18/07/2016 |
| Booker: does Brexit mean Brexit? | 17/07/2016 |
| Brexit: Treasury Committee – oral evidence | 16/07/2016 |
| Brexit: in the hands of fools and knaves | 15/07/2016 |
And secondly, more difficult to follow, Pete North I think I am right in suggesting (up to a point) is sometimes considering a similar "cost" at Global Level in the communication and functioning of furthering Trade in some of his recent blogs (a lot of background that I've not done so hence out of my depth speaking here for sure):-
- Brexit: taking the power back
- Brexit presents a massive opportunity for global t...
- Global trade: don't get excited just yet
- Brexit is far more than just a trade deal
- It takes more than five minutes to understand Brex...
- Treasury Committee: further thoughts
- Treasury committee: first thoughts
During General Elections the holy word is "Economy", it seems the post-Referendum holy word in our sermons must be "Trade". This is all well and good sounding, but is it also more than sound and more than appearance alone?
Well a quick look (please look at it's sections in detail in your own leisure) at:-
European Union Committee The process of withdrawing from the European Union 11th Report of Session 2015-16 - published 4 May 2016 - HL Paper 138
Some random excerpts:-
The likelihood of the two-year time limit being extended
42.We asked our witnesses how likely it was that the two-year time limit would be extended. Professor Wyatt thought that an extension would probably happen. The incentive was “£8 billion a year in net contributions, and access to the UK market for workers and for motor cars. All the Member States in the EU believe they benefit from the internal market.”
43.Professor Wyatt warned, however, that “there will be huge national self-interest in moving forward in a very considered way without jumping the gun in directions that could torpedo the negotiations before they start”. He saw “huge risks” to this not being achieved: “If, for example, the UK were to … insist on imposing unilateral restrictions on immigration while negotiations were going on, the climate would disintegrate.”
Two agreements, rather than one
31.Article 50(2) TEU requires that the withdrawal agreement “take[s] account of the framework” of the withdrawing Member State’s “future relationship with the Union”. Sir David said that the German language version of Article 50 made plain that the “structure of future relations will already have been established at the point when withdrawal takes place.” Professor Wyatt agreed. He did not think that the withdrawal agreement would be able to “accommodate all the details of the future trading relationship”,
There is a growing suspicion that the high priests want Brexit in a form that they can successfully sermonize to the disparate congregations. Secondly many many of those congregations are so low information that any attempt to communicate educationally with them may indeed be foolish anyway: Just look at a great deal of UKIP or Minford style expositions of Brexit, more dangerous than the sibilant lure of "Association Membership" of the likes of CER and Mr. Springford and his deceptive ilk.
The scope of the negotiations
37.Neither witness could be certain about the form the UK’s future relationship with the EU would take. Professor Wyatt told us: “My suspicion is that it would actually be an association agreement of some kind, because we would end up with a fairly complex comprehensive agreement that would involve co-operative machinery of some sort.”
And finally because of the dishonesty and rent-seeking and indeed self-seeking of so many politicians and the various congregations, there is fertile grounds for a complete lack of "WITHIN Frame Shared Expectations" of Brexit leaving the march more challenging and "problem-producing" "BETWEEN Frame Shared Expectations between dozens and dozens of cosy little and ignorant congregations, all the better for the priests/politicians to sermonize DOWN TO.
Alternative evidence is surely heretical to be burnt at the stake...
