Well, Santa has been and gone. I hope it was that we have all been good little girls and boys over the past year so the patron Saint of Mercantile Magic was not required to leave Carboniferous anthracite in anybody's stocking?
No!? Good, then it's time to get on with the next stage of this drawn out solstice festival and start pretending we are going to refurbish body and soul with a complete set of new good habits. I used to do that - make new year's resolutions - and then forget about them. About a decade ago however I thought "Stuff that silly process!" and made my last ever new year's resolution. I decided to be a reasonable optimist, and it was so. Now I just have to remember this, any time of year, not just the beginning of January, and it is so once more.
Part of being a reasonable optimist involves thinking about why it is reasonable to 'think about the bright side' and 'see that the cup is half full'. I maintain it is very reasonable so long as we seek to know the truth about our world and not just listen to the opinions of others. Sure, everybody has a right to have their own opinion and be allowed to say what it is if they so desire; that is what democracy is about, amongst other things. One could even say it is almost a sacred duty to have an opinion, so long as it really is one's own opinion and not just an uncritical regurgitation of somebody else's thoughts.
To really have one's own opinion however requires a skeptical approach to the world. Being truly skeptical is not about being always negative and cynically disbelieving everything, but wanting to know what is really true; it is about habitually asking oneself: How do I know if this is true or not? How do I know this is not make believe?
If you stop to consider it, this process of questioning what is true is the very foundation of scientific method and the application of scientific method in the last four hundred years or so has brought about more change in human culture than occurred in the previous 40 thousand years. So skeptical method is not something trivial nor is it bad, quite the opposite; skepticism is a very powerful tool which can contribute mightily to keeping us safe, healthy and reasonably prosperous.
And here is the connection of all this to bureaucracy in contemporary Australia, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. If you must make a new year's resolution this coming Sunday, why not resolve to find out about Karl Popper! He was one of the great minds of the Twentieth Century and provided us with some really important conceptual tools for understanding how to get the most out of civilised life. I don't mean how to take as much as we can but rather how to understand what is needed to really contribute to the common good and what is needed to really release the potential for creativity and productive effort of all the people of [pretty much] any society.
Karl Popper wrote some big books about the nature of science and knowledge and about what is needed for maintaining a free and open society. Luckily there are many places now on the Internet and in other books and journals where one can find information on his ideas. And indeed Popper himself, over time, found better and easier ways to convey the essentials of his ideas so that later editions of some of his most important books have the essential concepts spelled out in a foreword, or in footnotes. One can find references to these on Wikipedia and other places.
An example:
Wikipedia - Karl Popper
another:
Wikipedia - Open Society
It is about time that Honchos of the Sausage Factory gave some thought to the theoretical underpinnings of open communication provided by Karl Popper.
Ignorance of Karl Popper's contributions to civilised life is probably not sinful but it sure ain't something to be proud of!
Mark Peaty
No!? Good, then it's time to get on with the next stage of this drawn out solstice festival and start pretending we are going to refurbish body and soul with a complete set of new good habits. I used to do that - make new year's resolutions - and then forget about them. About a decade ago however I thought "Stuff that silly process!" and made my last ever new year's resolution. I decided to be a reasonable optimist, and it was so. Now I just have to remember this, any time of year, not just the beginning of January, and it is so once more.
Part of being a reasonable optimist involves thinking about why it is reasonable to 'think about the bright side' and 'see that the cup is half full'. I maintain it is very reasonable so long as we seek to know the truth about our world and not just listen to the opinions of others. Sure, everybody has a right to have their own opinion and be allowed to say what it is if they so desire; that is what democracy is about, amongst other things. One could even say it is almost a sacred duty to have an opinion, so long as it really is one's own opinion and not just an uncritical regurgitation of somebody else's thoughts.
To really have one's own opinion however requires a skeptical approach to the world. Being truly skeptical is not about being always negative and cynically disbelieving everything, but wanting to know what is really true; it is about habitually asking oneself: How do I know if this is true or not? How do I know this is not make believe?
If you stop to consider it, this process of questioning what is true is the very foundation of scientific method and the application of scientific method in the last four hundred years or so has brought about more change in human culture than occurred in the previous 40 thousand years. So skeptical method is not something trivial nor is it bad, quite the opposite; skepticism is a very powerful tool which can contribute mightily to keeping us safe, healthy and reasonably prosperous.
And here is the connection of all this to bureaucracy in contemporary Australia, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. If you must make a new year's resolution this coming Sunday, why not resolve to find out about Karl Popper! He was one of the great minds of the Twentieth Century and provided us with some really important conceptual tools for understanding how to get the most out of civilised life. I don't mean how to take as much as we can but rather how to understand what is needed to really contribute to the common good and what is needed to really release the potential for creativity and productive effort of all the people of [pretty much] any society.
Karl Popper wrote some big books about the nature of science and knowledge and about what is needed for maintaining a free and open society. Luckily there are many places now on the Internet and in other books and journals where one can find information on his ideas. And indeed Popper himself, over time, found better and easier ways to convey the essentials of his ideas so that later editions of some of his most important books have the essential concepts spelled out in a foreword, or in footnotes. One can find references to these on Wikipedia and other places.
An example:
Wikipedia - Karl Popper
another:
Wikipedia - Open Society
It is about time that Honchos of the Sausage Factory gave some thought to the theoretical underpinnings of open communication provided by Karl Popper.
Ignorance of Karl Popper's contributions to civilised life is probably not sinful but it sure ain't something to be proud of!
Happy New Year
