The movement . ARC The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship
More on me here https://manyadvisers.blogspot.com/2025/02/its-not-all-about-me-but-to-start-us.html
For nearly 5 decades many of us in the caring professions have seen a substantial erosion of respect for both the basics and the best and highest aims of our callings.
So what if ARC can't do everything we want to it to . Its great relief to find we are not the only ones banging our heads against brick walls!
Get this . I don't know anyone who ever succeeded in their work expected to have to defend the foundations of our faith ; this recent era of having to defend our old vehicles and our effective working tools of trade; and to have to fight off incompetence and careless criticism . It would have seemed absurd to us early in our careers as practical helpers that our society would ever try to pull the road from under us after giving us the impression ,as young graduates ,that we had chosen the very best of professions. Do these dilatants know what they are doing ? The answer in No and we haven't got time here to say why the cynics, the careless and the half baked get to dominate in public debates. Some sites for reference
But this erosion happened. More in some areas than others. The younger the profession ( Conservation of natural resources in my case) the more the foundations of our work have been undermined by fears of wasted effort , landslides, worry and mismentored efforts to fund "better solutions ".What we carers see as a challenge many see as a blocking device that justifies either doing nothing or wasting public money on half baked solutions that simply don't work. .
The paradox is of course is that our work , even when done very well , is not final . For many its easier to adopt the Dalek solution .
This is not the time to list the reasons for this trend , except to note that the West has, ever since it took the mantle of Christ's calling, tried to push against the pricks . This high road not only the road less travelled but the road that appears to be all uphill. Naturally a lazy thinking and lazing acting generation find the Dalek solution very attractive . What solution will work in our failing democracies ?
Why care ?
Why care then ? Let's examine what might be the opposition . "We all die and its much more efficient to let the unfit fall by the wayside. Is it not a form of kindness to let the aged and infirm go free? Why not let the strong win over the weak. Surely its only natural to let the new god of our age Nature take over. ? "I don't have any stock answers here , but just for the moment, let me ask you to think of Chesterton's line that "Nature is not our mother but our Sister."
Lets face it . Now is not he time for either you or me to discuss this enormous landslide in our thinking in our time . We don't have time here to explore the huge number of the many mind and faith and habit games that must have helped us stay on the once beautiful highway of care we all started on .
Half baked concerns and half baked solutions
We know that all caring costs and if that cost is increasingly being born by taxes, it may now be unsustainable .We know some book keepers in charge can only see columns . I pray for the day when all economists and the ecologically educated allow for externalities on nearly every line and column.
The forces against us
We also know that caring may not make sense to a large group lot of people who have tried and failed in some way in some areas. We know that the very simple thought of more immigrants grows the ranks of the cynics as it seems to bring forward the most efficent of all solutions ; remove the problem the Dalek solution . We oldies know from our own grief at losing things that the ranks of cynics grow each day with our ageing mates in the ageing population of the West. The cynics ranks grow with the many indulged persons whose own ideas of caring for themselves has failed ( their blinkered self centered ideas of ecology, role and place . We all seem to have a lot to learn about our own place of refuge , let alone the place of refuge for others .
Lots to think about . Lots to think more deeply and clearly about. Where are our educational institutions on this ?
A basis for hope? I hope for a day when the future is seen , not in simple self centered terms, but in more fully ecological terms
Where to from here TODAY ?
Now is not the time for depressing news. Now is the time to celebrate the arrival of a movement that restores some of the genuinely productive substance that still makes caring that grand calling.: We might not talk about them enough but for me there are lots of hints of lots of the externalities that the merely efficient mind might hit us over the head with.
Congratulations : We are back on the highway ( at least in mindscape terms) and , yes we might even give our children back the hope them denied by the careless dilatants , skeptics and cynics; the recruiting sergeants ( Chesterton ) who lost their legs and have never seen, or have forgotten, the view from the top.
Personally
I am going along to my first ARC conference in February . here are just a few things I hope will come up for discussion - Love to catch up with anyone who is interested in discussing these broad challenges as they might be addressed by ARC while we are in London in the third week of February (or on Net )
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