22. End piece
Shame, pity and guilt in public policy
Love and service. Martin Luther King’s words, and Tavis Smiley’s request that we be more King-like. Maybe that is the right place to end this first conversation on the place of emotions in public policy.
There will be neither summary nor conclusions. That is not in the nature of these R Word conversations. The idea has been to open up, to peel away at the surface of a subject that has been closed, buried beneath a skin of bureaucracy, strategies, targets and visions. The excavators, the philosophers, communicators, scientists, activists, innovators, and policy wonks have been digging around, pulling out something different, fragments, the start of something new.
The idea has been to open up, to peel away at the surface of a subject that has been closed, buried beneath a skin of bureaucracy, strategies, targets and visions.
We still live with the old, and so find it impossible to escape metrics. A lot of people, not many people, just over 2,000 so far, have started listening in. What does this number mean? Not much, except that the conversation really is on the periphery. But the interest, particularly in Australia, some parts of Europe and the United States. This, coupled with the kinds of people who are joining in seems to suggest that the search for something new, something beyond the dominant paradigms of outcomes and new public management, something that fits with what health scientist and administrator Don Berwick calls the ‘moral era’ is underway.
The R Word is closing this particular strand of conversation, but next week it will open up another. And, if people keep reading and joining in, new lines of thinking will follow. More opening up, more peeling away.
Love and service. Maybe we will get comfortable with those words. Even then we know that systems don’t do love, and the quality of their service is defined by and in the language of the bureaucracies. How do we get beyond that?
