Jan24

Saving Capitalism & Spinning Jargons

Posted on January 24, 2012 by caribleaper

Capitalism is dead – long live capitalism! The funeral has been announced and postponed as there is a dispute over the cause of death and whether it is really dead And since no will or testament has been written, there is a problem of the estate and the many debtors lining up to make their claims. While we await an inquest, some of the key worshippers and high priests of this once mighty god is now calling for a “responsible” off spring to step in and “run things”. There is a strong belief in some form of a resurrection and theologians are wrestling about the implications of this for faith.

In the meantime the merchants of capitalism’s death – those very greedy earners of meteoric sums of money continue to grease their palms and pockets with extravagant amounts in bonuses. These are very happy people. Many others are unhappy having lost their jobs or source of income, unable find work and are faced with mounting debts. Would the bonuses make these human beings better bankers with a heart for the common good? Perhaps they will prove philosopher Jeremy Bentham right in his suggestions that if you want to know the right thing to do,: ask yourself what will increase the happiness of most people, and decrease pain.

In the meantime, I have been wrestling with some of the economic jargons we are bombarded with and associated with the deep mess we are in. Here are some, with my own attempts at busting these, just to decrease pain….for the fun of it!

AAA-rating: means that there is still some time before the battery life runs dry. Like the 3 A* you will need to stand a chance for Ox-Bridge, welcome to the world of privileged!
Administration: means that when the crap hits the fan, rescue will arrive in a form of directed supervision to help you out of the mess. The courts will be calling the shots!
Assets: that which will provide income -cunning ingenuity to beat an oppressive system
Austerity: economic policy aimed at only one group of people – the already poor!
Bailout: frantic struggle to rescue that which is sinking or already sunk.
Bankruptcy: having you assets devalued in order to be liquidated (see administration).
Bear/Bull Market: has nothing to do with animals though they conjure images of altar and sacrifice.
BRIC: has nothing to do the construction business. It stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China – the rising [by the way not a new horror film ]
Capital adequacy ratio: can be compared to a sponge: it estimates the ability to absorb losses!
Credit crunch: has nothing to do with abdominal exercises, though its effect may spell forced starvation for some and natural weight loss/shrinking stomach for others.
Credit default swap (CDS) is a sophisticated way to speculate on the misery of borrowers unable to repay
Currency Peg: a fixed furnishing on which to hang out your devalued or worthless currency. This mechanism collapses when the currency in the central bank dries up!
Core inflation: is another way to underscore that we continue to be screwed, with central bankers, starting to eat more than fingernails.

Ambrose Bierce (The Devil’s Dictionary) observed that “there is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don’t know.” It may be the case that the jargons we are bombarded with merely serve to cover up our ignorance and our inability to name the monster before us. Fancy and technical language aside: one word – greed – sums it up!

Jan15

Being Downgraded, Anomie & Fairness

Posted on January 15, 2012 by caribleaper

Being Downgraded, Anomie & Fairness

All is not well with the “body”. I am not referring to my body, though I will do well with getting in shape and healthier. I mean our “body politics” and “body economics”, if I may coin these words. France has been downgraded, losing its triple A credit by the ironically named Standard and Poor’s (S&P) credit rating pundits. Italy, Spain, Cyprus and Portugal were made even lower (one notch lower than France) with Cyprus and Portugal given “junk” ratings. What have they been eating (pun) to get so out of (economic) shape?

One cannot help but think of Durkheim’s idea of anomie to describe our present state of affairs. The sudden change and breakdown of things, rules and systems that hold us as a society together cause a state of anomie. And this state can happen in both prosperity and in serious economic depression. Can it be that our financial crisis can serve as a necessary catalyst to mobilize us to initiate a different set of actions across all fronts? Or it may be that what we have before us is an opportunity to check ourselves from plunging into a state of anomie!

In the midst of all these developments, the notion of “fairness” is finding interesting ways to be raised in our consciousness by politicians, media reporting and by commentator. I am interested in the rhetoric around “fairness”, especially since it seems to be applied selectively and only in certain areas of our political and economic life. For those feeling the long end of the present government’s “castration complex” tend to be the most vulnerable in our society!

We need to scrutinise the use of “fairness” in these political conversations among the above. We may wish to ask: What is their understanding of fairness? Who determines it? Should it not apply across the board to all the other parts of our political and economic life? Is it fair that the taxpayers should pay for the follies of those who gambled away billions of pounds, and yet received (and are receiving) mind-boggling sums of monies for their incompetence? It is ironic that “fairness” (not justice) tends to be always articulated by privileged people (who rarely disclose their interest). Usually when those who are most vulnerable take to the streets or let their views be heard by protests they are branded as anarchists, selfish, ignorant of the complexity of issues and of not having the common good at heart.

Justice as fairness (Aristotle) must be affirmed. Perhaps what we need is to inject our “body politics” and “body economics” with more oxygen that will propel us to strive for fairness that is linked to the common good where the focus is on ensuring that the outcome is to the advantage of all. And perhaps what needs to underpin this is a virtue approach where we deepen habits that enable us to be and act in moral/ethical ways that will release and develop the best that is in all of us. This means that the Chancellor and all of us should be asking ourselves in these circumstances: what kind of person should I be? What will promote the best in me and hence my community and the common good?

Something is wrong with our politics and economics. And we can do something about it. As Margaret Mead once observed, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” In these anxious times, we need leadership that will calmly act to enable some radical reorientation to get the “body” back into shape and towards a more flourishing purpose. Can we live in such a way that when our children and their children (our grandchildren) think of fairness, justice and integrity, they will think of us and rejoice?

Jan2

Speaking in Tongues: Accents, Cognitive Fluency & Prejudice

Posted on January 2, 2012 by caribleaper

Speaking in Tongues: Accents, Cognitive Fluency & Prejudice

It was Mark Twain who noted: “I have travelled more than anyone else, and I have noticed that even the angels speak English with an accent.” An assuring insight when your accent may be considered wildly out of place! I have lost count of the number of times people comment (in their own accent) on a lack of understanding of what was said or being said because of the speaker’s “heavy accent”. Of course, an accent is a way of pronouncing a language. It is therefore impossible to speak without an accent. Yet, one cannot help but consider whether there is some form of bias (knowingly or unknowingly) when it comes to the comment about not understanding someone because of their accent!

Is there a bias against particular accents and especially foreign ones or that which marks you out as different? Can this be considered a form of prejudice? How often in a conversation and especially if you look visibly different, you are asked where you are from? There is, of course, no reason why someone cannot ask that as a reasonably way of showing interest in you. It becomes uncomfortable, however, when you are the only one being asked while the others in your group are clearly not local and like everyone else speaks with an accent.

In the context of the vocation of ministry it is not uncommon in training, formation or being interviewed to work in the British context, for the matter of accents of overseas (meaning especially African, Indian, Korean and Caribbean) to become one of the most critical issue around which many are discerned as not having the calling to work in British Churches. Candidates, however, who are native speakers, are not considered or evaluated for their accent, even though churches may have a problem in understanding some of the regional accents. This is beside the point that some of us do need coaching to use our voices to maximum effect in the context of a gathering. In a work in which communication skills are essential, it seems as if the yardstick is often only applied to those who are considered non-native English speakers and foreigners.

Prejudice, according to some recent research, is only part of the problem. There is also the matter of class and snobbery. Moreover, it has been discovered that non-native accents is much demanding for those who are native speakers to parse and thus affects their ‘cognitive fluency’, pushing them into uncomfortable zones, experiencing a sort of displacement resulting in fear and insecurity! Because the brain is challenged to process what it hears as a result of the accent, it quickly doubts the accuracy of what is said, if it is not the familiar accent. I wonder if this is why at meetings my contributions are often neglected until someone makes the very contribution and all “ears” are then tuned towards that person!

In our world where data is now processed in small and imaged bites it is not surprising that more and more prefer to work with that which is easy and simple on their thinking. Research has shown that in judging a statement’s accuracy, amendments, corrections or manipulations that make the statement easier to mentally process can alter people’s judgment of its truth, along with their evaluation of the intelligence of the author/presenter and their confidence in their own judgments and abilities. This may be a clue for all those church resolutions, how they are crafted and who present them! It may be that the difficulty in understanding accented speech lies in the complex relationship between prejudice and cognitive fluency associated with processing speech.

The implications for all native speakers are large and demanding. They need to look self critically as to why they find the heavy, different or foreign accent to understand, while doing some serious intensive work on their verbal reasoning skills. After all Mark Twain may just be right: “even the angels speak English with an accent” and it would be wise to question the veracity of their instructions!!!