Ninenty Nine Percent
Got an email this week from John, our man in Darfur, Sudan. I say “our man” because he grew up in South Melbourne. Rough and ready too was John. He loved the Army reserve unit and joined at his earliest opportunity.
Over the last few years he’s replaced reserve army service with professional relief work in places such as Angola, Liberia, Kosovo, East Timor and Afghanistan.
He was back in Australia earlier this year, got sick, got well again and signed up for the Sudan.
I’ve tried to get him to contribute to this blog so you could get a closer look at what happens in places most of us can only read about. I’ll try him again. Oh, I left Iraq out of his tour of duty!
I guess you can’t expect too much detail from overseas correspondents. Negative criticism might infotain you and me but it might, also, put the informant’s job at risk if he/she gave an eye witness account of oppressive measures taken by a military junta in country A or repulsive behaviour by UN troops in country B.
And, it’s not only writers from overseas who are at risk, but also, social reporters here in good old Oz. Lots of social workers employed by charities, partly funded by government, have to be extremely selective in what they say publicly. It can be a case of “tell the truth, lose the funding”.
I know there’s legal, contractual issues here. But, say, I’m a social activist working for an ngo without government funding. Then the ngo wins funding. I was an advocate for “excluded” people before funding then was a silent witness because of funding.
Occasionally, a government, commonwealth, state or local, bravely states that funding needn’t silence the recipients. That policy nearly always has to change as analyses from ngos in the field conflict with government officers’ own reports.
Never forget, comrades, that 99% of us are in “the field”. 1% of us are staff officers.
HQ staff, whether government, church or corporate, has one job – help field workers get the job done. How often, however, does the 1% turn into an elite to be served by the 99%, not vice versa?
In a pluralist society, or a secular humanist democracy or whatever we’re now calling ourselves, public or civil servants have “vocations” not just jobs. This latest (blessed?) stage in the evolution of “how are we to live together” humanity, requires 1% to offer themselves to enable the 99% to get on with living life to the full, not just inhaling and exhaling lives of quiet desperation.
That’s where social reporting comes in. We need to keep an eye out, locally, regionally and globally, and nudge the 1% to earn its money and relative security. All these one percenters are power over others. Even the humblest tram driver has power over others. The 1% needs to know it has been empowered by the 99%, not the owner or the CEO, but “we” the People.
I write this stuff with one eye on civil society and another on “ecclesial” society, i.e. the body corporate known as Church.
Elitism, in the form of clericalism, has been around, within Church, forever. People are the Church 99%. Clerics are the 1%. I’m on infallibly safe ground when I say that the clerical 1% has a vocation, not just a job, to serve the 99% lay people.
I won’t go on about this here. It might bore non-Church readers. However, I do believe that if only the Church 1% would recommit itself to the service of the 99%, then Church could show the way to a secular humanist society like ours.
That’ll require a metamorphosis, a change in structural shape. Australian secular society has its paradigm the Commonwealth – not a republic or monarchy – but, first and foremost, a Commonwealth.
Church in Australia needs to change from the hierarchical “trickle down” shape to the communitarian “trickle up” shape where the 99% empowers the 1%, “under God”, of course. Our man John in Darfur can only dream of such an outcome.
R.J.M.
Over the last few years he’s replaced reserve army service with professional relief work in places such as Angola, Liberia, Kosovo, East Timor and Afghanistan.
He was back in Australia earlier this year, got sick, got well again and signed up for the Sudan.
I’ve tried to get him to contribute to this blog so you could get a closer look at what happens in places most of us can only read about. I’ll try him again. Oh, I left Iraq out of his tour of duty!
I guess you can’t expect too much detail from overseas correspondents. Negative criticism might infotain you and me but it might, also, put the informant’s job at risk if he/she gave an eye witness account of oppressive measures taken by a military junta in country A or repulsive behaviour by UN troops in country B.
And, it’s not only writers from overseas who are at risk, but also, social reporters here in good old Oz. Lots of social workers employed by charities, partly funded by government, have to be extremely selective in what they say publicly. It can be a case of “tell the truth, lose the funding”.
I know there’s legal, contractual issues here. But, say, I’m a social activist working for an ngo without government funding. Then the ngo wins funding. I was an advocate for “excluded” people before funding then was a silent witness because of funding.
Occasionally, a government, commonwealth, state or local, bravely states that funding needn’t silence the recipients. That policy nearly always has to change as analyses from ngos in the field conflict with government officers’ own reports.
Never forget, comrades, that 99% of us are in “the field”. 1% of us are staff officers.
HQ staff, whether government, church or corporate, has one job – help field workers get the job done. How often, however, does the 1% turn into an elite to be served by the 99%, not vice versa?
In a pluralist society, or a secular humanist democracy or whatever we’re now calling ourselves, public or civil servants have “vocations” not just jobs. This latest (blessed?) stage in the evolution of “how are we to live together” humanity, requires 1% to offer themselves to enable the 99% to get on with living life to the full, not just inhaling and exhaling lives of quiet desperation.
That’s where social reporting comes in. We need to keep an eye out, locally, regionally and globally, and nudge the 1% to earn its money and relative security. All these one percenters are power over others. Even the humblest tram driver has power over others. The 1% needs to know it has been empowered by the 99%, not the owner or the CEO, but “we” the People.
I write this stuff with one eye on civil society and another on “ecclesial” society, i.e. the body corporate known as Church.
Elitism, in the form of clericalism, has been around, within Church, forever. People are the Church 99%. Clerics are the 1%. I’m on infallibly safe ground when I say that the clerical 1% has a vocation, not just a job, to serve the 99% lay people.
I won’t go on about this here. It might bore non-Church readers. However, I do believe that if only the Church 1% would recommit itself to the service of the 99%, then Church could show the way to a secular humanist society like ours.
That’ll require a metamorphosis, a change in structural shape. Australian secular society has its paradigm the Commonwealth – not a republic or monarchy – but, first and foremost, a Commonwealth.
Church in Australia needs to change from the hierarchical “trickle down” shape to the communitarian “trickle up” shape where the 99% empowers the 1%, “under God”, of course. Our man John in Darfur can only dream of such an outcome.
R.J.M.
Well said Bob. I have often wondered if the church is slow to change because change is mainly dictated by the heirarchical elite who through being "office bound" are in grave danger of being out of touch with the reality that is society. With the best will in the world it's hard to empathise with someone when you effectively live on another planet.
Posted by: Mid Life Crisis Man | June 03, 2008 at 07:53 AM