Unfortunately it probably won't make enough difference. But do note that the figures go a long way to towards the 90bn shortfall being predicted.
"Byers has long supported both identity cards and the nuclear deterrent but said he could not justify to vulnerable constituents the respective £5bn and £70bn bills when basic public services were threatened by the economic crisis."
27 April 2009
Wisdom is proved right by all her children
Or: what coaching could do for bishops ...
Some of this article uses parts of my MA dissertation on Life Coaching, Spiritual Direction and Culture. It seeks to reflect on ministerial formation in office and to suggest that some life coaching insights could usefully inform our thinking and ministerial development.
I write this because I think that it is more important than that and can offer to the church much of value. First let's review the difficulties with investigating it. Life coaching (“LC”) has no commonly agreed corpus of knowledge, it is a relatively new 'profession' which has not yet produced an extensive academically rigorous literature or research. There are few books dealing with it that are not self-help or for training coaches in the perspectives and methods of particular coaching approaches. Therefore I have used various web sites for coaches and coaching organizations to document life coaching.
These sites give us a direct access to coaches' own definitions of what they believe they are offering and doing in Life Coaching and while they are doing so for the commercial purpose of recruiting clients, this bias can relatively easily be allowed for. In order to understand what we might learn from life coaching it seems wise to offer an orientation to help unfamiliar readers to grasp what it is and how it operates. Beyond that orientation we will need to look at why and how we might relate to it theologically and also to identify ways in which it may inform ministry and mission.
I am an Anglican Priest living in England. My connection with life coaching came as I became aware of it in about 2001. I became intrigued and on investigation found something that seemed familiar but somehow different to things I already knew. Since then I have taken course in Life Skills coaching and been involved in a coaching course run by Staff development at a University as well as offering life coaching to the staff of the University as part of my ministry. Some of this article is adapted from my MA dissertation on 'Life Coaching, Spiritual Direction and Culture'.
Thomas Leonard identifies Socratic dialogue and Buddhist teaching as precursors of coaching methods and Werner Erhard as first using the term during the 1970's in a way recognizable by life coaches today2. Many websites also refer to NLP [Neuro-Linguistic Programming] and the work of Anthony Robbins as an influence on the practice of coaching and there are certainly a good many coaches and coaching practices today that are either NLP practices or for whom NLP is one of the 'styles' of coaching on offer.
David Rock3 sees the precursors to LC mostly originating in the 1950's and afterwards and briefly explores a number of them including personal development, emotional intelligence, adult learning theory, sports psychology, mentoring, NLP, management development, training and creativity. Thomas Leonard himself began as a financial planner whose approach began to develop in a way that would now be recognized as coaching by broadening some of the kinds of things he would do in financial planning to other areas of life as a result of client demand [op cit]. This client demand itself seemed to be, in part at least, a result of patterns of work and life among executives and the trend within the business world to restructure in such a way as to place workers in need of new skills and perspectives to cope with a more fluid and transitional working environments4.
Most sources seem to agree implicitly or explicitly with the proposition that LC, as such, began in the mid to late 1980's in the USA5 and that the term appears to come, unsurprisingly, from sports coaching6. The latter probably reflecting, in some way, the importance that the "Inner Game" approach to sports coaching which Timothy Gallwey discovered and popularized in his book The Inner Game of Tennis, and applied to organisations by Sir John Whitmore and others. Then there is the contribution of a cultural trend we might label 'self-help': "Ten years ago we saw a boom in the self-help industry. As time has gone by it's become much more socially acceptable to access self-help initiatives such as executive or personal coaching. There is clearly a growing trend for individuals and organizations to employ professional coaches to help them reach their personal and work-related goals."7.
It is probably true, then, to say that LC came into being in the 1980's from the coming together of a number of strands from business, education and psychology driven by a particular set of cultural circumstances. Most of the techniques and skills it calls upon are not exclusive and all of them are older, some considerably, than the label 'life coaching'. Life coaching presents itself as a profession, though it is to be doubted that at present it merits that description; Dr Anthony Grant in a helpful guide to the issues facing the coaching industry 8 stated that, strictly speaking, coaching should not yet be called a profession since it lacks key defining characteristics of a profession: having significant barriers to entry; a shared body of knowledge; university-level qualifications and regulatory standards or disciplinary bodies. At present LC has none of these things. He calls for a model of coaches as scientist-practitioners, who may or may not do research but are nevertheless equipped to be "informed consumers of it". He points out that the proprietary nature of coaching schools in relation to their training and materials is a significant barrier to a professional body having or gaining a common body of knowledge.
There are, of course, a number of things that are relatively common to the various definitions offered. The words 'goal' or 'goals' are used in most referring to what the client wants to achieve, either with their life or in a particular part of their life. Although more poetic language may be used as in, "enable and support people to achieve their dreams"12. it is clear that the individual is to decide for themselves what goals they should make their own. The lack of specification of goals is precisely because LC is predicated on the autonomy of the individual and therefore the necessity for the individual to decide for themselves what goals are desirable.
LC is distinguished from other activities such as counselling and consultancy and the distinctions made are also illuminating of what LC is. "Coaching is different to consultancy in that it sees the solution lying with the client "13. This emerges from the commonly-held view in LC that "The client is naturally creative, resourceful, and whole." [Whitworth et al. p.3], so the answers must come from the client since to allow otherwise would be to disempower the client and disable their learning and progress. In keeping with the valuing of client autonomy, non-directive approaches are preferred. The distinction between LC and either counselling or [psycho]therapy is a theme that emerges quite often in the texts.
Downey sees counseling as "remedial": helping the client towards wholeness and social integration14 whereas LC has more orientation to tasks and work engaged in15. Other sources distinguish between a past orientation in counseling and a future/ goals orientation in LC16. Others would note that counseling deals with people who are in some way not well-functioning and suffering emotional disturbance whereas LC is dealing largely with well-functioning people who are not dealing with symptoms of emotional distress17.
However some view the connection with counseling as closer. Downey states "The core skills involved in counselling and coaching and even mentoring, are very similar, if not actually the same. These are principally the skills of listening and of asking questions. They are the skills towards the non-directive end of the spectrum of coaching skills. ... For this reason, coaching and counseling are difficult to differentiate."18 and while he goes on to provide some differentiation, he does so in a context of acknowledging many similarities. And Thomas Leonard even speaks of LC in these terms: "We are watching the birth of a new breed of counselor who will help people get more out of life."19 and in so doing affirms both similarity and difference.
The author of the wikipedia entry on LC describes LC in terms of it being a form of counseling20. And one website aims to recruit therapists as life coaches "because they already have the requisite skills for effective coaching (such as listening, building rapport, encouraging, facilitating change, empathy and objectivity) that they can easily translate into coaching"21.
In short; LC is a profession-in-the-making which aims to facilitate clients' progress towards fulfilling goals in such a way as to respect their autonomy and honour their innate abilities and resources. Its chief tools in this mission are counselling skills such as listening, reflecting, creating empathy and questioning and a commitment to the client's agenda.
In this view, then, it is important to work with clients' deeper motivations and aspirations. In fact when dealing with matters that touch so vitally on motivation, ephemeral desires and superficial wants simply do not give sufficient personal commitment and energy to effect the lasting changes that LC seeks to facilitate.
The intense focus on the client's agenda and the refusal to offer advice in favour of using questioning to draw out the client's resourcefulness can be consonant with fundamental Christian commitments. As Christians we can surely affirm both the aim of serving the client and also the desire to give them the dignity implied of recognising their capability, indeed some Christians would want to strongly affirm the recognition of personal responsibility and dignity implied in LC's stance. We serve, in fact love, the client in the paying of close attention to what they say and what they speak with their body and also what they do not say.
Such intense and close listening requires discipline and indeed is part of what training is about. It is intended that close attention, empathy, affirmation, feedback and questioning should convey an unconditional regard which forms the bedrock for an emotionally safe space to explore issues that are important. In writing this, I could be describing counselling, and indeed the skills needed are fundamentally the same, it seems to me. As we noted above, it is the focus which is different. What we need to recognise here is the attitude of love, expressed primarily as service and respect that lies at the heart both of the endeavour of LC and of Christian ministry.
Furthermore, the attitude that the client already has the perspectives, resources or abilities that they need, mirrors Christian beliefs about the image of God and the work of the Holy Spirit. One of the retrievals made by the charismatic movement was of the idea that every believer is gifted by the Holy Spirit and that the task, therefore, of the church is to enable to expression of that giftedness. LC offers ways to help that expression to take place. It helps firstly at the level of discovery or recognition of vocation, secondly at the level of identifying ability and gifts and thirdly at the level of fostering confidence and faith that those abilities and gifts can be used.
In writing about those three levels of help, I am aware that there are possible skeptical responses. One such response might be that it is all very well talking about giftedness as spiritual gifts among Christians but the normal LC context is dealing with natural gifts among many who are not Christians; the gifts are natural gifts. There are a number of responses that could be made to such skepticism. One is to question whether we really want to make such a sharp distinction between natural and 'supernatural' gifts since both ultimately trace their source to God either in creation, as a common grace gift, or in redemption as a 'spiritual' gift. The more important issue is the use of such gifts for the glory and purposes of God and the welfare of what and who God loves.
Another sceptical response might be that the fallenness of humanity renders all such confidence as LC seems to possess in the abilities of people to help themselves, somewhat suspect. In other words, LC seems over-optimistic about human potential. I think that this is quite likely a knee-jerk reaction on our part as Christians and needs careful exploration. It needs care because it may reveal to us an adherence to a misguided interpretation of fallenness and also because as a critique it may actually be too broad.
To take the latter point first: it seems to me that it is hard not to apply the same argument to education in general or to working for justice or for better social and economic conditions. All such endeavours are likely to be undermined by the human capacity to allow greed, or apathy or pride into the driving seat. However, we do not cease to educate people because we think that this will only make them cleverer in evil-doing (which it does) because we are educating people because it produces good things directly for those educated and less directly for the societies in which educated people live and work notwithstanding the potential for misuse of learning. Similarly, on the whole we do not decry efforts to create greater justice or to make opportunity for people to improve their conditions because we think this implies an optimistic view of human nature.
I think that it would be unfair to single LC out for believing that humans may have the capacity to better themselves individually and as societies. The more substantial issue is that of how we interpret fallenness in respect of human potential. It is important to understand fallenness to affect every dimension of human being for Christological as well as harmartological reasons. However this is not necessarily to say that every part of every dimension of a human being is evil. To do so runs the risk of seeing evil in a decontextualised way that tends towards manichaeanism; a dualism in which evil has no real relationship to good except oppositional. Whereas, to believe in a world and a humanity that were firstly created good and blessed and that evil consequently is a perversion and parasitic on the Good (to use CS Lewis' evocative and helpful characterisation).
Thus there is a goodness that continues underlying evil, evil does not obliterate the good but inevitably carries at least a trace of the Good. This, taken with an understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit as working within creation and human cultures to bring about ever greater goodness, truth and beauty, lays a foundation for blessing the work of people who work to enable other human beings to flourish. We routinely affirm the work of educationalists, medical workers, those involved in the administration of justice and good government, I want to add to that list (which could be much longer anyway) the work of life coaches.
That is not to say that there may not be coaches who do have extremely optimistic views of human nature that may seem to be unrealistic. However, over-optimism need not be an article of faith for a LC practitioner. It does seem to me that the presentations of some, perhaps most, life coaching at present seems to suggest that people can do anything they want. No doubt some of this is the kind of hype that is necessary to be heard when selling services in a marketplace of personal services like that in the USA, but not only there.
However it also worth noting that the practice is more 'realistic' than the publicity might suggest. The quotation above about 'progress to a deeper definition of fulfillment' and it not being 'about what fills the client's pockets or closets but what fills the client's heart and soul', implies that it is not really about helping people to gain a PhD in Nuclear Physics when they are actually unmathematical, or to run a four-minute mile when they are sixty and left with half a lung after an operation for cancer. Rather it is about helping people to accommodate to and to value both who and what they are and to encourage them also to move beyond self-limiting beliefs which are not the truth about their capacities and capabilities or to challenge 'can't do' attitudes with the real possibilities of what can be done.
This can be seen in a further rhetoric-practice comparison: the stated promotional attitude of many life coaches seems to be that each of us has the resources to do anything, in practice a lot of coaching comes down to helping people recognise how they might acquire resources to do what they have come to believe they can and should do. Thus a session might deal with encouraging a client to identify how they might find out which courses available at a local college might equip them for the next step in their developing career plan, or what the options are for developing the necessary interpersonal skills to handle difficult colleagues. In practice there is a trialogue between capability and resources and something very akin to vocation.
The implicit challenge to Christians is to note and respond appropriately to the cultural trend to see human beings in terms of capability rather than disability. LC also tends to take a holistic approach to human being. As Christians we would want to affirm this recognition of the many aspects of being human and that these aspects are all interrelated in various ways. Also personal growth and greater self-awareness are key to LC and hardly inimical to Christian concerns.
In ministerial formation we are surely seeking to co-operate with God so that a person becomes ever more fully the person they are called to be to fulfill the roles and ministries they are called to exercise. If we place this agenda at the heart of what we do with a candidate for ministerial training or even someone in continuing ministerial education, then the coaching disciplines of listening deeply, intuition, curiosity, self management and commitment to learning come into play.
LC is used by many in the secular world to facilitate the development of executives, managers and other workers. It is particularly suitable for work where there is a high degree of personal initiative required and where many varied situations are encountered and in which flexibility and constant learning are at a premium. Such conditions are descriptive of much Christian ministry.
Part of the impetus behind the recognition of the potential value for supervision and appraisal in Christian ministry is a recognition that such learning should be going on. I want to propose that the basic strategies and skills of life coaching provide a far better basis to achieve the aims of ministerial formation than the kinds of supervision currently being explored. To be sure, it would require that we consider the ways that we structure learning and supervision but it would do so in ways that are consonant with the best of our traditions in such things as spiritual direction and episcopē.
One of the important things about it is the emphasis on the client's agenda. We know that for any learning motivation is important and that for adult learning the recognition of prior learning and making connections with that prior learning is most effective. For this to happen, clearly, the more personal the learning programme is, the better. Life coaching is nothing if not an intensely individualised learning enabler. At present much of our training apparently begins with programmatic approaches and curricula. The challenge of LC is to move towards more fully learner-centred approaches. This need not exclude courses and the like but it would place them as servants rather than drivers of learning and the way that they are carried out could be challenged also by a LC approach.
LC used alongside courses might enable students to make sure that they were able to make the best use of the possibilities and content offered to them. The role, therefore, of personal tutors could be considerably enhanced by a LC approach. This begins to sound expensive in proposing individualised learning and the concomitant extra hours it would require to deliver it. However, the point would be to so disseminate the basic skills and approach of LC among those who have supervisory roles, that such learning would become increasingly part and parcel of the way things are done. In fact it could be that the dissemination of basic LC could be an key factor in the making of a learning organisation. Once that kind of coverage is achieved, learning and training probably becomes cheaper as a result of greater effectiveness and clearer focus.
Imagine a ministry of oversight that was focused on listening to the 'overseen' in an encouraging and empathetic way open to intuitions of mind and Spirit so as to enable a deeper listening on the part of the 'overseen' to their circumstances, communities, churches and among all of that to the call of God in it all and to their own vocation. Imagine further a commitment by those exercising oversight to developing the capacity of ministers and congregations to listen and respond and to identify what they next need to do or not do and to hold that agenda with them and sometimes for them.
I believe that LC would help bishops and other diocesan-level staff to do these things. It would make it possible to bring together spiritual discernment and direction with some of the managerial concerns that impinge upon diocesan-level ministry. What LC could do for episcopē is to give shape to ministries that genuinely recognise the giftedness of all and are collegial and collaborative.
The disciplines it calls for of close listening and supportive approach would do a great deal both to create confidence and to enable a genuinely bottom-up dimension to diocesan or parish ministry. The emphasis on personal responsibility coupled with genuine empathy should help develop and maintain mature adult-adult transactions between those exercising episcopē and those benefiting (it is to be hoped) from it. In addition, those exercising oversight gain better and fuller insight into the training and pastoral needs that they need to be most concerned with.
Of course, the restraint it implies on advice-giving and top-down planning may be challenging for some and difficult in some situations. However, the returns in the longer-term of greater learning, enthusiasm and life-givingness are worth striving for.
There are quite a few concerns in common, in practice, between LC and spiritual direction. I would like to pick up just a few things that I think that could be usefully and intentionally included in spiritual direction. Of course, many are doing so already. LC emphasises the importance of listening at various levels both to what is said and also to what is not said and to the less tangible and noticeable signs and 'voices'. This much is familiar in spiritual direction, however what I find in LC is a commitment to learning how better to listen at the 'deeper' levels and the training that takes place for that purpose.
My impression is that we don't offer to people who are engaged in such ministry much by way of systematic training, rather we tend to trust to native ability and more haphazard learning. Of course there are exceptions to that, but I would propose that some insights from LC could well be incorporated into courses on spiritual direction, soul friendship, Christian listening and the like.
The holistic approach of LC reminds us that when we deal with a person's prayer we are actually implicating the rest of their life. It is probable that here are few involved in spiritual direction who do not acknowledge this. However LC can help us to see what' holistic' can mean and to draw on all aspects of someone's life and experience for learning about any other aspect and not to fall prey to an idea that, for example, spiritual principles must always inform emotional learning and not really the other way round. Many spiritual directors already know this and act accordingly but it is no bad thing to open us up to a resource that could help some to grow in their service and to others to explore it in a more initial way.
LC is often concerned about self-awareness particularly in relation to issues that might in Christian terms be labelled 'vocational'. Thus the ways that LC goes about the tasks of uncovering personal motivation and listening to the deeper cries of the human heart are of interest to those engaged in the various facets of spiritual direction whether personally and explicitly labelled or simply as part of pastoral ministry and leadership.
Given the confluence of interests and techniques that are common between LC and spiritual direction, I wonder whether LC holds out also the hope of a way round the terminological difficulty many involved in spiritual direction feel about the term 'spiritual director' and '~direction'. They are felt, with good reason, to be far too hierarchical and authoritarian in their connotations to be comfortably used, and yet coming up with something more suitable is hard, in part because of the felt need to keep a label that refers to the history of the ministry. I wonder whether using the term 'coach' and 'coaching' may help: 'spiritual-direction coach' '~ing', or even 'spiritual-life coaching'.
If it is true that our culture is becoming one where we can less and less presuppose that there is any meaningful exposure to and understanding of key Christian narratives and concepts, then we must be prepared to examine carefully our catechesis and evangelistic methods, formed as they have been by hundreds of years of major Christian input into our cultural background and heritage.
If it is true also that religiosity and spirituality are very popular in our culture but largely disconnected from Christian institutions and ideas and if it is true that indivualisation now vitally shapes our social experience (and if that's not an oxymoron), then we need to be finding ways to engage credibly with individuals in their spiritual searching. It may be that the growth of life coaching with its readiness to explore issues of meaning is something that we should take note of not only as a potential resource for Christian formation but as a sign of the times we are working in.
There is reason to think that the growth of spiritual direction is also a sign of the individualisation of spirituality and of the inadequacy of the kind of 'mass delivery' we have hitherto used to meet the needs of Christians, including through such things as Alpha. In a culture increasingly marked by customisation and personal service, it is hard to expect that people are going to be impressed by having their deeper questions and spiritual sensibilities processed through a mass system that has no space for their individuality and uniqueness. In LC we see a valuing of what people bring to the process of being coached, and in education we find a recognition of the importance of learning already attained, so we distinguish the contours of a cultural mood that is impatient with being treated as tabula rasa.
Now this is nothing new, but it should alert us to the importance of developing evangelism which takes seriously the spiritual searching and the insights already gained and to do so personally and individually. In other words at least some of our evangelism should look a lot more like spiritual direction and life coaching. Perhaps 'look' in that last sentence should read 'be'. To explain that further, there should be in our evangelism a deliberate setting aside of effort to listen. Listening first of all to the person before us: what is their history with or without God? What signs do we find of God's work in their life? What are the insights we can affirm? What might need challenging at some point? What about the gospel is likely to resonate most deeply? What images of Christ seem to be most important to present? How do we encourage this person to listen for the call of God and to hear it? What kind of learning style do they have and how does that affect the way that they seek and the way that we accompany them?
Life coaching, in majoring on questioning, valuing the other, listening at several levels, encouraging curiosity, offers tools to help us to do these things well (and tools to enable us to continually improve too). These skills can also be employed in group work though I would recommend that we should gain some proficiency in using them one-to-one first. Clearly too they are tools that can be used for mission in the wider sense too: listening to a community in order to discern its needs,aspirations and to bolster its sense of resourcefulness; engaging with an institution through its members and workers.
I am aware that the skills and insights of LC are not really new; what is exciting and helpful about life coaching, however, is the orientation to positive change and the emphasis on existing resourcefulness along with the strong personal support of the coach. This is a combination which enables people to make changes in very empowering ways that build personal capacity. I am also aware, in writing this, that there is little by way of programmatic changes offered. This is because the process, I believe, should be of a piece with the goals; we should implement this change by doing it and in the listening that it requires discover and encourage the next steps forward. I actually hope that doing so will begun to fashion a vocation-shaped church.
Andii Bowsher, (cc)You may reproduce this in part, not for profit, with attribution and permission of the author.
Chicago Citation details:
Bowsher, Andii. "Nouslife: Wisdom is proved right by all her children: Life Coaching, Christian ministry and mission | Ourmedia." Nouslife. http://nouslife.blogspot.com/2005/04/wisdom-is-proved-right-by-all-her.html
APA citation details:
Bowsher, A. (2005, April 9). Nouslife: Wisdom is proved right by all her children: Life Coaching, Christian ministry and mission | Ourmedia. Nouslife. Retrieved May 4, 2013, from http://nouslife.blogspot.com/2005/04/wisdom-is-proved-right-by-all-her.html
Footnotes
Some of this article uses parts of my MA dissertation on Life Coaching, Spiritual Direction and Culture. It seeks to reflect on ministerial formation in office and to suggest that some life coaching insights could usefully inform our thinking and ministerial development.
Introduction
There have been increasing numbers of books published in the last few years with coach', 'coaching' or 'life coach' in the title, mostly of the self-help variety. I have seen at least one television series which regularly featured a life coach and I am aware of several television and radio programmes that have featured it in some way. It is clearly at least fashionable, perhaps more than that. It is also treated by some with a degree of wariness because it might just be yet another transatlantic fad which will go the way of most such fads; into the recycling bin of cultural history.I write this because I think that it is more important than that and can offer to the church much of value. First let's review the difficulties with investigating it. Life coaching (“LC”) has no commonly agreed corpus of knowledge, it is a relatively new 'profession' which has not yet produced an extensive academically rigorous literature or research. There are few books dealing with it that are not self-help or for training coaches in the perspectives and methods of particular coaching approaches. Therefore I have used various web sites for coaches and coaching organizations to document life coaching.
These sites give us a direct access to coaches' own definitions of what they believe they are offering and doing in Life Coaching and while they are doing so for the commercial purpose of recruiting clients, this bias can relatively easily be allowed for. In order to understand what we might learn from life coaching it seems wise to offer an orientation to help unfamiliar readers to grasp what it is and how it operates. Beyond that orientation we will need to look at why and how we might relate to it theologically and also to identify ways in which it may inform ministry and mission.
I am an Anglican Priest living in England. My connection with life coaching came as I became aware of it in about 2001. I became intrigued and on investigation found something that seemed familiar but somehow different to things I already knew. Since then I have taken course in Life Skills coaching and been involved in a coaching course run by Staff development at a University as well as offering life coaching to the staff of the University as part of my ministry. Some of this article is adapted from my MA dissertation on 'Life Coaching, Spiritual Direction and Culture'.
Orientation to Life Coaching
Life coaching ['LC'] in most respects is a relatively recent phenomenon. However it is probably true to say that much of what it involves is not particularly recent or new. The components of life coaching are mostly older, it is their coming together in the environment that is called life coaching that is new. David Rock1 identifies the skills used in parenting and business leadership at their best as life coaching skills. He even sees life coaching themes in some mythological stories especially those dealing with heroic journeys.Thomas Leonard identifies Socratic dialogue and Buddhist teaching as precursors of coaching methods and Werner Erhard as first using the term during the 1970's in a way recognizable by life coaches today2. Many websites also refer to NLP [Neuro-Linguistic Programming] and the work of Anthony Robbins as an influence on the practice of coaching and there are certainly a good many coaches and coaching practices today that are either NLP practices or for whom NLP is one of the 'styles' of coaching on offer.
David Rock3 sees the precursors to LC mostly originating in the 1950's and afterwards and briefly explores a number of them including personal development, emotional intelligence, adult learning theory, sports psychology, mentoring, NLP, management development, training and creativity. Thomas Leonard himself began as a financial planner whose approach began to develop in a way that would now be recognized as coaching by broadening some of the kinds of things he would do in financial planning to other areas of life as a result of client demand [op cit]. This client demand itself seemed to be, in part at least, a result of patterns of work and life among executives and the trend within the business world to restructure in such a way as to place workers in need of new skills and perspectives to cope with a more fluid and transitional working environments4.
Most sources seem to agree implicitly or explicitly with the proposition that LC, as such, began in the mid to late 1980's in the USA5 and that the term appears to come, unsurprisingly, from sports coaching6. The latter probably reflecting, in some way, the importance that the "Inner Game" approach to sports coaching which Timothy Gallwey discovered and popularized in his book The Inner Game of Tennis, and applied to organisations by Sir John Whitmore and others. Then there is the contribution of a cultural trend we might label 'self-help': "Ten years ago we saw a boom in the self-help industry. As time has gone by it's become much more socially acceptable to access self-help initiatives such as executive or personal coaching. There is clearly a growing trend for individuals and organizations to employ professional coaches to help them reach their personal and work-related goals."7.
It is probably true, then, to say that LC came into being in the 1980's from the coming together of a number of strands from business, education and psychology driven by a particular set of cultural circumstances. Most of the techniques and skills it calls upon are not exclusive and all of them are older, some considerably, than the label 'life coaching'. Life coaching presents itself as a profession, though it is to be doubted that at present it merits that description; Dr Anthony Grant in a helpful guide to the issues facing the coaching industry 8 stated that, strictly speaking, coaching should not yet be called a profession since it lacks key defining characteristics of a profession: having significant barriers to entry; a shared body of knowledge; university-level qualifications and regulatory standards or disciplinary bodies. At present LC has none of these things. He calls for a model of coaches as scientist-practitioners, who may or may not do research but are nevertheless equipped to be "informed consumers of it". He points out that the proprietary nature of coaching schools in relation to their training and materials is a significant barrier to a professional body having or gaining a common body of knowledge.
Towards a definition.
A survey of books and websites will produce a number of definitions: "Coaching is the art of bringing out the greatness in people in a way that honours the integrity of the human spirit. It is both an innate human capacity and a teachable skill which has now become a profession and an industry”9 or "A commonly used definition of coaching is Coaching is the art of facilitating the performance, learning and development of another. ... Development is about personal growth and greater self awareness."10 or a simple "It involves clarifying and then planning to achieve goals".11There are, of course, a number of things that are relatively common to the various definitions offered. The words 'goal' or 'goals' are used in most referring to what the client wants to achieve, either with their life or in a particular part of their life. Although more poetic language may be used as in, "enable and support people to achieve their dreams"12. it is clear that the individual is to decide for themselves what goals they should make their own. The lack of specification of goals is precisely because LC is predicated on the autonomy of the individual and therefore the necessity for the individual to decide for themselves what goals are desirable.
LC is distinguished from other activities such as counselling and consultancy and the distinctions made are also illuminating of what LC is. "Coaching is different to consultancy in that it sees the solution lying with the client "13. This emerges from the commonly-held view in LC that "The client is naturally creative, resourceful, and whole." [Whitworth et al. p.3], so the answers must come from the client since to allow otherwise would be to disempower the client and disable their learning and progress. In keeping with the valuing of client autonomy, non-directive approaches are preferred. The distinction between LC and either counselling or [psycho]therapy is a theme that emerges quite often in the texts.
Downey sees counseling as "remedial": helping the client towards wholeness and social integration14 whereas LC has more orientation to tasks and work engaged in15. Other sources distinguish between a past orientation in counseling and a future/ goals orientation in LC16. Others would note that counseling deals with people who are in some way not well-functioning and suffering emotional disturbance whereas LC is dealing largely with well-functioning people who are not dealing with symptoms of emotional distress17.
However some view the connection with counseling as closer. Downey states "The core skills involved in counselling and coaching and even mentoring, are very similar, if not actually the same. These are principally the skills of listening and of asking questions. They are the skills towards the non-directive end of the spectrum of coaching skills. ... For this reason, coaching and counseling are difficult to differentiate."18 and while he goes on to provide some differentiation, he does so in a context of acknowledging many similarities. And Thomas Leonard even speaks of LC in these terms: "We are watching the birth of a new breed of counselor who will help people get more out of life."19 and in so doing affirms both similarity and difference.
The author of the wikipedia entry on LC describes LC in terms of it being a form of counseling20. And one website aims to recruit therapists as life coaches "because they already have the requisite skills for effective coaching (such as listening, building rapport, encouraging, facilitating change, empathy and objectivity) that they can easily translate into coaching"21.
In short; LC is a profession-in-the-making which aims to facilitate clients' progress towards fulfilling goals in such a way as to respect their autonomy and honour their innate abilities and resources. Its chief tools in this mission are counselling skills such as listening, reflecting, creating empathy and questioning and a commitment to the client's agenda.
Affirming and critiquing Life Coaching
As we review the outline of LC as presented above, no doubt a number of resonances and connections have been made. In the spirit of both discerning the good and rejecting the ill I would like to make some positive evaluation and some negative. I will deal with topics in such a way as to discuss their compatibilities and also their difficulties for Christian ministry because some of the affirmations re-frame the difficulties and vice versa.Affirmations and reservations
As a result of the prominence of 'goals' and the client's agenda, it would be easy to dismiss LC for merely opening up a way of pandering to selfish or venial forces in human personalities. However, LC in practice is not usually about helping people to achieve fairly arbitrary goals or fulfilling relatively shallow ambitions. "A life-coach gets you absolutely clear about what it is you really want out of life."22 which implicitly acknowledges that there may be a difference between what a person may have been socialized into desiring for themselves, or superficially to crave, and what is more central to them and probably more deeply desired. "In most cases the coaching will quickly progress to a deeper definition of fulfillment. It's not about having more -it's not about what fills the client's pockets or closets -it's about what fills the client's heart and soul."23 Later on the same authors state: "One of the main reasons people come to to coaching is a search for answers about fulfillment."24.In this view, then, it is important to work with clients' deeper motivations and aspirations. In fact when dealing with matters that touch so vitally on motivation, ephemeral desires and superficial wants simply do not give sufficient personal commitment and energy to effect the lasting changes that LC seeks to facilitate.
The intense focus on the client's agenda and the refusal to offer advice in favour of using questioning to draw out the client's resourcefulness can be consonant with fundamental Christian commitments. As Christians we can surely affirm both the aim of serving the client and also the desire to give them the dignity implied of recognising their capability, indeed some Christians would want to strongly affirm the recognition of personal responsibility and dignity implied in LC's stance. We serve, in fact love, the client in the paying of close attention to what they say and what they speak with their body and also what they do not say.
Such intense and close listening requires discipline and indeed is part of what training is about. It is intended that close attention, empathy, affirmation, feedback and questioning should convey an unconditional regard which forms the bedrock for an emotionally safe space to explore issues that are important. In writing this, I could be describing counselling, and indeed the skills needed are fundamentally the same, it seems to me. As we noted above, it is the focus which is different. What we need to recognise here is the attitude of love, expressed primarily as service and respect that lies at the heart both of the endeavour of LC and of Christian ministry.
Furthermore, the attitude that the client already has the perspectives, resources or abilities that they need, mirrors Christian beliefs about the image of God and the work of the Holy Spirit. One of the retrievals made by the charismatic movement was of the idea that every believer is gifted by the Holy Spirit and that the task, therefore, of the church is to enable to expression of that giftedness. LC offers ways to help that expression to take place. It helps firstly at the level of discovery or recognition of vocation, secondly at the level of identifying ability and gifts and thirdly at the level of fostering confidence and faith that those abilities and gifts can be used.
In writing about those three levels of help, I am aware that there are possible skeptical responses. One such response might be that it is all very well talking about giftedness as spiritual gifts among Christians but the normal LC context is dealing with natural gifts among many who are not Christians; the gifts are natural gifts. There are a number of responses that could be made to such skepticism. One is to question whether we really want to make such a sharp distinction between natural and 'supernatural' gifts since both ultimately trace their source to God either in creation, as a common grace gift, or in redemption as a 'spiritual' gift. The more important issue is the use of such gifts for the glory and purposes of God and the welfare of what and who God loves.
Another sceptical response might be that the fallenness of humanity renders all such confidence as LC seems to possess in the abilities of people to help themselves, somewhat suspect. In other words, LC seems over-optimistic about human potential. I think that this is quite likely a knee-jerk reaction on our part as Christians and needs careful exploration. It needs care because it may reveal to us an adherence to a misguided interpretation of fallenness and also because as a critique it may actually be too broad.
To take the latter point first: it seems to me that it is hard not to apply the same argument to education in general or to working for justice or for better social and economic conditions. All such endeavours are likely to be undermined by the human capacity to allow greed, or apathy or pride into the driving seat. However, we do not cease to educate people because we think that this will only make them cleverer in evil-doing (which it does) because we are educating people because it produces good things directly for those educated and less directly for the societies in which educated people live and work notwithstanding the potential for misuse of learning. Similarly, on the whole we do not decry efforts to create greater justice or to make opportunity for people to improve their conditions because we think this implies an optimistic view of human nature.
I think that it would be unfair to single LC out for believing that humans may have the capacity to better themselves individually and as societies. The more substantial issue is that of how we interpret fallenness in respect of human potential. It is important to understand fallenness to affect every dimension of human being for Christological as well as harmartological reasons. However this is not necessarily to say that every part of every dimension of a human being is evil. To do so runs the risk of seeing evil in a decontextualised way that tends towards manichaeanism; a dualism in which evil has no real relationship to good except oppositional. Whereas, to believe in a world and a humanity that were firstly created good and blessed and that evil consequently is a perversion and parasitic on the Good (to use CS Lewis' evocative and helpful characterisation).
Thus there is a goodness that continues underlying evil, evil does not obliterate the good but inevitably carries at least a trace of the Good. This, taken with an understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit as working within creation and human cultures to bring about ever greater goodness, truth and beauty, lays a foundation for blessing the work of people who work to enable other human beings to flourish. We routinely affirm the work of educationalists, medical workers, those involved in the administration of justice and good government, I want to add to that list (which could be much longer anyway) the work of life coaches.
That is not to say that there may not be coaches who do have extremely optimistic views of human nature that may seem to be unrealistic. However, over-optimism need not be an article of faith for a LC practitioner. It does seem to me that the presentations of some, perhaps most, life coaching at present seems to suggest that people can do anything they want. No doubt some of this is the kind of hype that is necessary to be heard when selling services in a marketplace of personal services like that in the USA, but not only there.
However it also worth noting that the practice is more 'realistic' than the publicity might suggest. The quotation above about 'progress to a deeper definition of fulfillment' and it not being 'about what fills the client's pockets or closets but what fills the client's heart and soul', implies that it is not really about helping people to gain a PhD in Nuclear Physics when they are actually unmathematical, or to run a four-minute mile when they are sixty and left with half a lung after an operation for cancer. Rather it is about helping people to accommodate to and to value both who and what they are and to encourage them also to move beyond self-limiting beliefs which are not the truth about their capacities and capabilities or to challenge 'can't do' attitudes with the real possibilities of what can be done.
This can be seen in a further rhetoric-practice comparison: the stated promotional attitude of many life coaches seems to be that each of us has the resources to do anything, in practice a lot of coaching comes down to helping people recognise how they might acquire resources to do what they have come to believe they can and should do. Thus a session might deal with encouraging a client to identify how they might find out which courses available at a local college might equip them for the next step in their developing career plan, or what the options are for developing the necessary interpersonal skills to handle difficult colleagues. In practice there is a trialogue between capability and resources and something very akin to vocation.
The implicit challenge to Christians is to note and respond appropriately to the cultural trend to see human beings in terms of capability rather than disability. LC also tends to take a holistic approach to human being. As Christians we would want to affirm this recognition of the many aspects of being human and that these aspects are all interrelated in various ways. Also personal growth and greater self-awareness are key to LC and hardly inimical to Christian concerns.
Spoiling the Egyptians
Christians working in and through the churches in our normal and established ministries may learn some important things from LC that could have significant impacts on the shape and content of our ministries. This is not an exhaustive summary but merely an attempt to identify some key possibilities with some insights that may help us to make the best use of those possibilities. As I write I am conscious that there is much in LC that is not new, what is being offered is consequently not revolutionary but simply an approach which brings together a number of insights and disciplines in a way that enables an effective transfer of knowledge and skills and a means of managing a process effectively.Teaching, learning and ministerial formation
LC is very much a learning strategy, or perhaps a cluster of strategies. Part of the ongoing methodology is to reflect on what has happened and to use that reflection as the basis for planning for the next episode which is then carried out and reflected on again in course, and so on around the learning cycle (or pastoral cycle; if that is more familiar a term). The important thing is that the focus is on the client's learning and the strong discouragement of the coach to do anything that gets in the way of the client's learning. This is so strong a principle that some coach training goes as far as to say that there is no place for the coach in their model; it is all about the client and their learning for the coach's role is to 'create an environment in which clients focus entirely on their fulfillment, balance and process'25.In ministerial formation we are surely seeking to co-operate with God so that a person becomes ever more fully the person they are called to be to fulfill the roles and ministries they are called to exercise. If we place this agenda at the heart of what we do with a candidate for ministerial training or even someone in continuing ministerial education, then the coaching disciplines of listening deeply, intuition, curiosity, self management and commitment to learning come into play.
LC is used by many in the secular world to facilitate the development of executives, managers and other workers. It is particularly suitable for work where there is a high degree of personal initiative required and where many varied situations are encountered and in which flexibility and constant learning are at a premium. Such conditions are descriptive of much Christian ministry.
Part of the impetus behind the recognition of the potential value for supervision and appraisal in Christian ministry is a recognition that such learning should be going on. I want to propose that the basic strategies and skills of life coaching provide a far better basis to achieve the aims of ministerial formation than the kinds of supervision currently being explored. To be sure, it would require that we consider the ways that we structure learning and supervision but it would do so in ways that are consonant with the best of our traditions in such things as spiritual direction and episcopē.
One of the important things about it is the emphasis on the client's agenda. We know that for any learning motivation is important and that for adult learning the recognition of prior learning and making connections with that prior learning is most effective. For this to happen, clearly, the more personal the learning programme is, the better. Life coaching is nothing if not an intensely individualised learning enabler. At present much of our training apparently begins with programmatic approaches and curricula. The challenge of LC is to move towards more fully learner-centred approaches. This need not exclude courses and the like but it would place them as servants rather than drivers of learning and the way that they are carried out could be challenged also by a LC approach.
LC used alongside courses might enable students to make sure that they were able to make the best use of the possibilities and content offered to them. The role, therefore, of personal tutors could be considerably enhanced by a LC approach. This begins to sound expensive in proposing individualised learning and the concomitant extra hours it would require to deliver it. However, the point would be to so disseminate the basic skills and approach of LC among those who have supervisory roles, that such learning would become increasingly part and parcel of the way things are done. In fact it could be that the dissemination of basic LC could be an key factor in the making of a learning organisation. Once that kind of coverage is achieved, learning and training probably becomes cheaper as a result of greater effectiveness and clearer focus.
Episcopē
For the purposes of this article, I take it that the point of episcopē is to make sure that ministry is appropriate, responsive, growing, resourced and accountable. Once it is stated in that way it is easy to understand that LC could play a vital role in the effectiveness of episcopē. These concerns are not so different form the concerns of managers in business and public services that their usage of coaching is something that we should ignore. Especially given, as noted above, the compatibility of LC with some fundamental Christian principles relating to ministry.Imagine a ministry of oversight that was focused on listening to the 'overseen' in an encouraging and empathetic way open to intuitions of mind and Spirit so as to enable a deeper listening on the part of the 'overseen' to their circumstances, communities, churches and among all of that to the call of God in it all and to their own vocation. Imagine further a commitment by those exercising oversight to developing the capacity of ministers and congregations to listen and respond and to identify what they next need to do or not do and to hold that agenda with them and sometimes for them.
I believe that LC would help bishops and other diocesan-level staff to do these things. It would make it possible to bring together spiritual discernment and direction with some of the managerial concerns that impinge upon diocesan-level ministry. What LC could do for episcopē is to give shape to ministries that genuinely recognise the giftedness of all and are collegial and collaborative.
The disciplines it calls for of close listening and supportive approach would do a great deal both to create confidence and to enable a genuinely bottom-up dimension to diocesan or parish ministry. The emphasis on personal responsibility coupled with genuine empathy should help develop and maintain mature adult-adult transactions between those exercising episcopē and those benefiting (it is to be hoped) from it. In addition, those exercising oversight gain better and fuller insight into the training and pastoral needs that they need to be most concerned with.
Of course, the restraint it implies on advice-giving and top-down planning may be challenging for some and difficult in some situations. However, the returns in the longer-term of greater learning, enthusiasm and life-givingness are worth striving for.
Spiritual direction
There are quite a few concerns in common, in practice, between LC and spiritual direction. I would like to pick up just a few things that I think that could be usefully and intentionally included in spiritual direction. Of course, many are doing so already. LC emphasises the importance of listening at various levels both to what is said and also to what is not said and to the less tangible and noticeable signs and 'voices'. This much is familiar in spiritual direction, however what I find in LC is a commitment to learning how better to listen at the 'deeper' levels and the training that takes place for that purpose.
My impression is that we don't offer to people who are engaged in such ministry much by way of systematic training, rather we tend to trust to native ability and more haphazard learning. Of course there are exceptions to that, but I would propose that some insights from LC could well be incorporated into courses on spiritual direction, soul friendship, Christian listening and the like.
The holistic approach of LC reminds us that when we deal with a person's prayer we are actually implicating the rest of their life. It is probable that here are few involved in spiritual direction who do not acknowledge this. However LC can help us to see what' holistic' can mean and to draw on all aspects of someone's life and experience for learning about any other aspect and not to fall prey to an idea that, for example, spiritual principles must always inform emotional learning and not really the other way round. Many spiritual directors already know this and act accordingly but it is no bad thing to open us up to a resource that could help some to grow in their service and to others to explore it in a more initial way.
LC is often concerned about self-awareness particularly in relation to issues that might in Christian terms be labelled 'vocational'. Thus the ways that LC goes about the tasks of uncovering personal motivation and listening to the deeper cries of the human heart are of interest to those engaged in the various facets of spiritual direction whether personally and explicitly labelled or simply as part of pastoral ministry and leadership.
Given the confluence of interests and techniques that are common between LC and spiritual direction, I wonder whether LC holds out also the hope of a way round the terminological difficulty many involved in spiritual direction feel about the term 'spiritual director' and '~direction'. They are felt, with good reason, to be far too hierarchical and authoritarian in their connotations to be comfortably used, and yet coming up with something more suitable is hard, in part because of the felt need to keep a label that refers to the history of the ministry. I wonder whether using the term 'coach' and 'coaching' may help: 'spiritual-direction coach' '~ing', or even 'spiritual-life coaching'.
LC and mission
If it is true that our culture is becoming one where we can less and less presuppose that there is any meaningful exposure to and understanding of key Christian narratives and concepts, then we must be prepared to examine carefully our catechesis and evangelistic methods, formed as they have been by hundreds of years of major Christian input into our cultural background and heritage.
If it is true also that religiosity and spirituality are very popular in our culture but largely disconnected from Christian institutions and ideas and if it is true that indivualisation now vitally shapes our social experience (and if that's not an oxymoron), then we need to be finding ways to engage credibly with individuals in their spiritual searching. It may be that the growth of life coaching with its readiness to explore issues of meaning is something that we should take note of not only as a potential resource for Christian formation but as a sign of the times we are working in.
There is reason to think that the growth of spiritual direction is also a sign of the individualisation of spirituality and of the inadequacy of the kind of 'mass delivery' we have hitherto used to meet the needs of Christians, including through such things as Alpha. In a culture increasingly marked by customisation and personal service, it is hard to expect that people are going to be impressed by having their deeper questions and spiritual sensibilities processed through a mass system that has no space for their individuality and uniqueness. In LC we see a valuing of what people bring to the process of being coached, and in education we find a recognition of the importance of learning already attained, so we distinguish the contours of a cultural mood that is impatient with being treated as tabula rasa.
Now this is nothing new, but it should alert us to the importance of developing evangelism which takes seriously the spiritual searching and the insights already gained and to do so personally and individually. In other words at least some of our evangelism should look a lot more like spiritual direction and life coaching. Perhaps 'look' in that last sentence should read 'be'. To explain that further, there should be in our evangelism a deliberate setting aside of effort to listen. Listening first of all to the person before us: what is their history with or without God? What signs do we find of God's work in their life? What are the insights we can affirm? What might need challenging at some point? What about the gospel is likely to resonate most deeply? What images of Christ seem to be most important to present? How do we encourage this person to listen for the call of God and to hear it? What kind of learning style do they have and how does that affect the way that they seek and the way that we accompany them?
Life coaching, in majoring on questioning, valuing the other, listening at several levels, encouraging curiosity, offers tools to help us to do these things well (and tools to enable us to continually improve too). These skills can also be employed in group work though I would recommend that we should gain some proficiency in using them one-to-one first. Clearly too they are tools that can be used for mission in the wider sense too: listening to a community in order to discern its needs,aspirations and to bolster its sense of resourcefulness; engaging with an institution through its members and workers.
Final remarks
The main thrust of what has been written here is to introduce life coaching to those engaged in Christian ministry and mission with the strong suggestion that it has many positives potentially for the exercise of key dimensions of Christian ministry especially in regard to oversight and initial and continuing ministerial formation. Indeed, it could be a valuable tool if key skills and attitudes were sufficiently 'cascaded' to clergy and others in leadership in the development of lay participation and lay-ministerial growth. I would like to encourage the church as a whole to investigate LC and to begin to use it and apply its insights and techniques in mission and ministry, training and development.I am aware that the skills and insights of LC are not really new; what is exciting and helpful about life coaching, however, is the orientation to positive change and the emphasis on existing resourcefulness along with the strong personal support of the coach. This is a combination which enables people to make changes in very empowering ways that build personal capacity. I am also aware, in writing this, that there is little by way of programmatic changes offered. This is because the process, I believe, should be of a piece with the goals; we should implement this change by doing it and in the listening that it requires discover and encourage the next steps forward. I actually hope that doing so will begun to fashion a vocation-shaped church.
Andii Bowsher, (cc)You may reproduce this in part, not for profit, with attribution and permission of the author.
Chicago Citation details:
Bowsher, Andii. "Nouslife: Wisdom is proved right by all her children: Life Coaching, Christian ministry and mission | Ourmedia." Nouslife. http://nouslife.blogspot.com/2005/04/wisdom-is-proved-right-by-all-her.html
APA citation details:
Bowsher, A. (2005, April 9). Nouslife: Wisdom is proved right by all her children: Life Coaching, Christian ministry and mission | Ourmedia. Nouslife. Retrieved May 4, 2013, from http://nouslife.blogspot.com/2005/04/wisdom-is-proved-right-by-all-her.html
Footnotes
2http://www.brilliantissimo.co.uk/coaching/history.htm , accessed: 04/29/04
3Op.cit.
4see
http://www.lifecoachtraining.com/personal.html
accessed: 04/29/04
5http://www.4change.info/life%20coaching.htm, accessed: 04/29/04
6http://www.byregion.net/glossary/lifecoaching.html , Accessed: 04/29/04
7Anthony Grant, http://www.pr.mq.edu.au/macnews/ShowItem.asp?ItemID=146, accessed: 04/29/04
8http://www.psych.usyd.edu.au/coach/ICF-USA-Research_Keynote_AMGrant_NOV_2003.pdf , accessed 05/05/04
9 David Rock , op cit
10 p.15. Downey, Myles. Effective Coaching. London, Texere 1999, reprinted 2002
11Christopher
Aune,
http://www.lifeskillspro.com/about.asp?Q=10http://www.lifeskillspro.com/about.asp?Q=10
12Marilyn Comrie, director of communications for national life coaching service Excelerate
13http://www.byregion.net/glossary/lifecoaching.html Accessed: 04/29/04
14p.25 Downey, 1999, reprinted 2002.
15ibid p.26
16http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/features/2004/01/14/life_coach.shtml and http://psychologydoc.com/executive_&_life_coaching.htm Accessed: 04/29/04
17http://psychologydoc.com/executive_&_life_coaching.htm and http://www.lifecoachtraining.com/personal.html Accessed: 04/29/04
18 p.25, Downey,
19http://www.brilliantissimo.co.uk/coaching/history.htm Accessed: 04/29/04
20http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Coaching Accessed: 04/29/04
21 http://www.lifecoachtraining.com/personal.html Accessed: 04/29/04
22http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/insideldn/insideout/lifecoach.shtml Accessed: 04/29/04
23p.7. Whitworth Laura, Kimsey-House Henry , Sandahl Phil: Co-Active Coaching, New Skills for Coaching People Towards Success in Work and Life. Palo Alto, CA, Davies Black Publishing,1998. First Edition 1998.
24Ibid p.115
25p.12 Whitworth et al. Op cit.
Technology to watch for helpful environmental impacts ...
This looks really quite a good thing. I was skeptical because incineration hasn't been good news, but this actually looks like it could be a good system. And scalablity is not a problem in the sense that small systems can work, it seems. "Keeping the system small and avoiding the expense of creating plasma makes it affordable for businesses to deploy: excluding the gas burner, the system costs $850,000 and, according to Haber, will pay for itself in four years through savings on electricity, heating and waste disposal charges.
Haber says the entire system can save the equivalent of about 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year through reductions in landfill gases, fossil-fuel use and the transport of waste. Haber also claims that, compared with traditional incineration, the quantity of toxic gases produced by the GEM system is negligible. 'It's really a night-and-day difference,' he says."
However, the real issue would be about making sure that the products of the process are properly scrubbed -cleanness is not inherent. And also anything that runs on rubbish tends to encourage or at least not discourage the production of the same or at least perhaps the non-recycling of it. So some careful monitering and regulation would be needed to make it work for the benefit of all.
Read all about it: Could your trashcan solve the energy crisis? - tech - 22 April 2009 - New Scientist:
Haber says the entire system can save the equivalent of about 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year through reductions in landfill gases, fossil-fuel use and the transport of waste. Haber also claims that, compared with traditional incineration, the quantity of toxic gases produced by the GEM system is negligible. 'It's really a night-and-day difference,' he says."
However, the real issue would be about making sure that the products of the process are properly scrubbed -cleanness is not inherent. And also anything that runs on rubbish tends to encourage or at least not discourage the production of the same or at least perhaps the non-recycling of it. So some careful monitering and regulation would be needed to make it work for the benefit of all.
Read all about it: Could your trashcan solve the energy crisis? - tech - 22 April 2009 - New Scientist:
New short vowel discovered: ver funn
Language Log � New short vowel discovered: "the duration of the /Ih/ vowel, already known for its very short length in languages like English (to say nothing about it’s tremendous importance in Finnish), is produced in .11 hundredths of a second by a small band of speakers of Kwatnaksa, who live on an otherwise unoccupied island in the Indian Ocean. Well, at least linguists thought the name of that language was Kwatnaksa, but never before had they noticed the very short /Ih/ squeezed between the /t/ and the /n/, ... an abundance of very brief /Ih/ sounds in the middle of what the research team had hitherto believed to be consonant clusters. Intensive research quickly followed, revealing that the name of that language is actually Kiwatinakisa"
Please note the dtails of the piece, partcularl the date of t.
Please note the dtails of the piece, partcularl the date of t.
26 April 2009
Deadly new flu virus in US and Mexico may go pandemic
I saw this on Friday night. By Saturday morning it had made the national news. Shucks, I should have blogged it Friday ...
Worrying.
Deadly new flu virus in US and Mexico may go pandemic - health - 24 April 2009 - New Scientist: "A novel flu virus has struck hundreds of people in Mexico, and at least 18 have died. It has also infected eight people in the US, and appears able to spread readily from human to human. The World Health Organization is calling an emergency meeting to decide whether to declare the possible onset of a flu pandemic."
Worrying.
Deadly new flu virus in US and Mexico may go pandemic - health - 24 April 2009 - New Scientist: "A novel flu virus has struck hundreds of people in Mexico, and at least 18 have died. It has also infected eight people in the US, and appears able to spread readily from human to human. The World Health Organization is calling an emergency meeting to decide whether to declare the possible onset of a flu pandemic."
25 April 2009
Letter to Bishops Final 23 April 2009
Here's one for my clergically inclined readers.
I've just received papers explaining more about the changes to terms of service almost certainly about to take place for C of E clergy. And if you click on the title of this post you'll be directed to the 'commontenure' website, set up by the CofE.
On it we're told:
2 A list of actions in dioceses required to implement common tenure,including (a) structures (b) policies and procedures (c) practical arrangements for common tenure (d)training
3 An example of the statement of particulars that the regulations will require you to issue to all clergy in common tenure appointments
I've just received papers explaining more about the changes to terms of service almost certainly about to take place for C of E clergy. And if you click on the title of this post you'll be directed to the 'commontenure' website, set up by the CofE.
On it we're told:
Since 2002, the Church of England has been reviewing the terms of service under which clergy hold office. New terms and conditions will be conferred on clergy through Common Tenure. It preserves the historic office holder status of parochial clergy, whilst giving them rights broadly equivalent to those of employees
February
2010 – Amending Canon 29 will return to General Synod for
final approval and the capability and grievance procedures will also
be considered by General Synod.
Information pack about common tenure
We attach an information pack consisting of the following items.
1 A model letter that you can adapt and use to update clergy in yourdiocese on the progress of the Terms of Service legislation3 An example of the statement of particulars that the regulations will require you to issue to all clergy in common tenure appointments
Communication
We are sending a hard copy of this letter and the information pack to your diocesan secretary and the chairs of your diocesan houses of clergy and laity. We are also sending the pack by email to the following
CME officers, Diocesan directors of ministry, Diocesan directors of ordinands, HR advisers
Please feel free to share this material with anyone else who needs to know, for example, all members of your staff council.
In addition, we are putting the information pack on the Church of England website, where information on the new terms of service arrangements can now be located more easily by going direct to the new domain name www.commontenure.org
Members of staff and the Terms of Service Implementation Panel are very willing to come and talk to your diocesan synod or staff meeting if you would find that helpful. Please contact Patrick Shorrock AT cofe.anglican.org for further details.
In addition, during the course of 2009, the staff at Church House will be providing further material to support dioceses, and will be running some further training events, as dioceses start to put the necessary arrangements in place.
This work on terms of service has taken a long time to reach this stage, and we should like to take this opportunity to thank you for your patient engagement with it. Now that the Royal Assent has been received to the Measure, we are in a position to make detailed plans on implementing a project that will help us all in the service of Christ by providing greater clarity, fairness and support for those engaged in ministry.
Just how rich someone on £150k pa is ...
Well, I've seen the threats about a brain drain and driving away the financially very successful. And it may be true. But apparently polls show that most Brits seem to support a 50p tax rate for earnings over 150k. And the reason we've heard the downsides first may not be hard to find: "Highly paid editors and proprietors do not much like the idea of being hit in the wallet, and will seek to convince readers that the move is a dangerous one. But there is also a more general failure on the part of the elite to grasp just how exceptionally rich someone on £150,000 - the new rate's threshold - really is."
Quite, and if you need more convincing, just look at the rest of the article. Remember the typical in UK is £16k. The real difficulty is that at 1%, the numbers earning £150k-plus are not great and the revenue is likely to be small (and perhaps shrinking if the 'brain drain' predictions are right). But let's recall that there is a moral case for progressive taxation. Part of that case is that it builds infrastructure that all benefit from, including the wealthy. Another part of the case is the research that shows more equal societies are happier. Another dimension is that by helping the poorer members of society there is a degree of enlightened self-interest for the rich: it helps reduce crime and envy on the one hand and to help make sure that the guilt/yuck factor of having to drive through squalor and deal with smelly people is reduced ;)
Budget 2009: Alistair Darling's 50p tax for high earners 'welcomed' | UK news | The Guardian:
Quite, and if you need more convincing, just look at the rest of the article. Remember the typical in UK is £16k. The real difficulty is that at 1%, the numbers earning £150k-plus are not great and the revenue is likely to be small (and perhaps shrinking if the 'brain drain' predictions are right). But let's recall that there is a moral case for progressive taxation. Part of that case is that it builds infrastructure that all benefit from, including the wealthy. Another part of the case is the research that shows more equal societies are happier. Another dimension is that by helping the poorer members of society there is a degree of enlightened self-interest for the rich: it helps reduce crime and envy on the one hand and to help make sure that the guilt/yuck factor of having to drive through squalor and deal with smelly people is reduced ;)
Budget 2009: Alistair Darling's 50p tax for high earners 'welcomed' | UK news | The Guardian:
24 April 2009
RIFD + NIR = BB
Updating on an earlier post. I sent a modified version of the letter/email to my MEP's. It's a bit more 'me' than the suggested one a couple of posts back.
Dear Stephen, Martin and Fiona,
I have recently been finding out more about this issue and I am very concerned by the European Union’s proposals for RFID and the Internet 3.0. This is unacceptable privacy-invading technology with safeguards that wouldn't be worth much in practice.
I am very concerned that none of our MEPs appear to have spoken out about this. I will be using this issue as a litmus test with regard to my voting next time and encouraging my friends and colleagues to do likewise. Because this is an issue so open to subversion by commercial and certain political agendas, to be credible, I need to hear pro-active
proposals to block and prohibit, or at least effectively neutralise (outside of the stores) RFID product tagging. I wary too of RFID being put in government documents.
I also need to hear you will stop EU funding for research on RFID and the Internet of Things unless it be for things that will effectively enable us to escape the privacy invasion represented by RFID. I have come across the EU proposals for privacy protection and I am not impressed. Even 'Opt-in' is not enough to preserve our privacy. We should not be building an infrastructure for tracking people because once it is in place -unless there are effective counter measures- it can be used criminally and the temptation for governments to use its
revenue potential will be too great at some point in the future.
Yours sincerely,
nonsuch: RIFD plus NIR equals big brother
Dear Stephen, Martin and Fiona,
I have recently been finding out more about this issue and I am very concerned by the European Union’s proposals for RFID and the Internet 3.0. This is unacceptable privacy-invading technology with safeguards that wouldn't be worth much in practice.
I am very concerned that none of our MEPs appear to have spoken out about this. I will be using this issue as a litmus test with regard to my voting next time and encouraging my friends and colleagues to do likewise. Because this is an issue so open to subversion by commercial and certain political agendas, to be credible, I need to hear pro-active
proposals to block and prohibit, or at least effectively neutralise (outside of the stores) RFID product tagging. I wary too of RFID being put in government documents.
I also need to hear you will stop EU funding for research on RFID and the Internet of Things unless it be for things that will effectively enable us to escape the privacy invasion represented by RFID. I have come across the EU proposals for privacy protection and I am not impressed. Even 'Opt-in' is not enough to preserve our privacy. We should not be building an infrastructure for tracking people because once it is in place -unless there are effective counter measures- it can be used criminally and the temptation for governments to use its
revenue potential will be too great at some point in the future.
Yours sincerely,
nonsuch: RIFD plus NIR equals big brother
22 April 2009
Google, tax avoidance and why it matters
Vince Cable puts his finger very nicely on why tax avoidance matters: "'Google seems to be one of a number of companies that are based here, have UK employees and use local services and infrastructure but try to pay their taxes elsewhere when they think they can get away with paying less tax. The government needs to be much firmer in stopping it,' said Vince Cable, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats.
'The reality is, the more tax that companies like Google avoid, the more the tax burden falls on the rest of the public. It is clear that while Labour and the Tories have been embracing Google as the paragon of a 21st-century company, it has been running away from the taxman,' he added."
Google is accused of UK tax avoidance | Technology | The Guardian
'The reality is, the more tax that companies like Google avoid, the more the tax burden falls on the rest of the public. It is clear that while Labour and the Tories have been embracing Google as the paragon of a 21st-century company, it has been running away from the taxman,' he added."
Google is accused of UK tax avoidance | Technology | The Guardian
19 April 2009
RFID plus NIR equals big brother
I got this email as someone potentially interested in the privacy issues raised. I'm still deciding how I feel and think about it: some of it comes over as borderline paranoid; but just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you! So I'd love some thoughts from you readers; either comment-wise or more one-to-one (I know some of you don't want to sign up to comment, and I don't want to be dealing with loads of spam comments by opening up comments to all-comers).
A new system to track your movements, as they happen
Imagine a world where you are allowed no secrets.
Imagine a world where everywhere you go is logged, recorded and posted on the internet, immediately, as soon as you arrive.
Imagine that every time you enter or leave a building, you are scanned and that a full report of everything you are wearing and carrying is posted instantly on the internet - intended to be accessible, so lots of people can read it - yes, even your underwear, what you have in your pockets, your bag or briefcase. All this information will be available to corporations (or potentially anybody).
They will know what clothes you have on (and maybe who paid for them!), when you last changed them, how much soap powder you buy. They will know if you have a condom in your wallet, or a tampon in your bag, whether you are carrying an adult magazine or haemorrhoid cream. And they will have a complete record of everything you ever bought.
This isn’t science fiction, but a new European Union policy
The EU want to authorise an electronic system that would do exactly this, and may legislate within months to make it happen.
All this can be verified from the European Commission’s own website.
This can still be stopped, but you have to do something - now, today.
This is an appeal for help, to lobby MEPs, in the lead-up to the election to the European Parliament, on 4 June 2009. (This letter gives MEPs emails and all the information you need - scroll to the end).
If you forward this message to 5 friends, like a chain letter, you can help ensure this EU measure gets exposed and defeated - even if you don’t write to your MEP yourself.
So, what is this tracking system?
Welcome to RFID
RFID is a system for tracking people and their possessions 'in real time'.
Tiny radio transponder chips will be placed in everything you buy, each carrying a unique ID number. That number can be scanned from a distance of up to a few feet.
RFID is intended to replace bar-code scanners, anti-theft barriers at stores - and do a whole lot more.
The ‘Internet of Things’ (also called ‘Internet 3.0')
This is the system that will allow RFID data to be posted on the internet, immediately.
In the ‘Internet of Things’ every object will have its own internet web-page, with its RFID number being its web-address. Every time an object is scanned by an RFID reader, the time and place will be logged on its web-page, together with other information, such as purchaser, etc..
Tracking
The record of the object’s movements will also be a record of its owner’s movements, and it will be a simple matter to cross-reference to identify all a person’s belongings.
Items such as shoes and underwear generally are used by only one person and rarely swapped or shared.
Tracking these objects’ history, on the Internet of Things, they will have tracked all your movements, your entire life. In fact, IBM already have a patent on this (US #200220165758 - ‘IDENTIFICATION AND TRACKING OF PERSONS USING RFID-TAGGED ITEMS’).
Turning numbers into names - ID cards and the National Identity Register
Ultimately, the system needs a cross-reference to turn those numbers into a name and address.
Stores could capture your name if you use a bank card to pay at some time. (And some banks have experimented putting RFID in payment cards).
The ultimate answer, however, will be ID cards and the new government identity database that will go with them. Britain's (and soon, all of Europe's) ID cards will have an RFID chip implanted in them - just like new passports - that's EU policy.
Your identity will be for sale to corporations. That's going to make it child's play to identify anyone as soon as they walk in. It's so useful, you would almost think that's what ID cards were always intended to do - to identify you to corporations.
Profiling - Analysing your behaviour and personality
So, once they have gathered all of this data, what are they going to do with it?
Marketing has spawned a whole huge industry of gathering personal data, and analysis systems, to identify big-spenders (and discourage bargain shoppers) to increase stores' earnings per shopper.
Corporations have sophisticated software that can analyse your purchases and habits, to ’profile’ your personality and psychology, for marketing purposes - to assess your weaknesses and suggestibility. It works and it’s very effective.
There will be software to analyse your movements and any patterns in them. They are going to know if you go shopping with your family, or with someone else. They will be able to guess if you are seeing someone other than your wife or husband. They will be able to guess the names of all your friends, and know where they live, what they do and any affiliations they have.
All this is also going to be available to the government, your local council, your employer - and to potential blackmailers.
Employers
Imagine a world where corporations profile their staff, and every year ‘rotate’ (i.e. fire) a percentage of their employees, to get a workforce with the ‘right’ profile, the right attitudes (Some companies already do this). Imagine how RFID tracking and profiling could facilitate a corporate culture like that.
Some public employers, in USA, have already started dictating diet and lifestyle strictures to their employees, with dismissal if you don’t comply. Your employer would know what you eat, whether you drink, whether and how often you go to the gym.
Nothing will be beyond examination
Corporations even want to put RFID scanners in your home - in your fridge and other appliances - that could see who goes to the fridge, how often, and what they take out.
RFID spychips have been placed in many new domestic ’wheelie bins’. This is to facilitate proposed charging by weight, for refuse collection. That means your waste bin (and hence your refuse) will be RFID scanned at collection.
The EU want to track RFID in refuse, to help recycling (See the official EC website page How can the Tags improve your life?). Who knows, that could mean, if you have put things in the waste bin that should have been recycled, you could be fined, automatically.
And corporations already pay for information about the waste in people’s bins, so they can see how quickly you consume their products.
Nothing will be beyond examination.
The aim of the RFID project is ‘Total Mobility’ - tracking all movement.
This is equivalent to total surveillance or total control.
Still can't believe it?
Want to read more? Here are a couple of independent articles on the subject: -
The Register
Scientific American
This is not science fiction. Some stores are already starting to fit equipment ready for RFID scanners. The only ‘science fiction’ about this is in the proposed ‘protections’ they are going to give us.
Who wants RFID?
There is an industry association, promoting RFID.
Global corporations that have wanted to introduce RFID include IBM, NCR, Intel, Procter and Gamble, Unilever, Gillette, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Wal-Mart, Tesco, Phillip Morris, Kodak, etc..
However, industry's own research showed that 78% of the public are opposed to RFID.
What is the EU proposing to do?
The EU see this not as a nightmare but as a tremendous business opportunity.
The EU is proposing legislation and regulations, under 'harmonisation' rules.
Harmonisation means, if the EU permits RFID, then it is binding on everyone - individual member nations cannot opt-out or prohibit it. European legislation may be only months away.
Is this EU policy? Read for yourselves on the official European Commission website and a pdf here.
The EU are already financing this with millions, in support, and funding research at European universities.
This can still be stopped, but you have to do something - now, today.
EU proposed privacy protections
If you write to your MEP, they will tell you about their proposed (supposed) privacy protections. These sound great at first: -
* ‘Opt-in‘ privacy, meaning RFID tags would be automatically disabled at the check-out, unless you opt to keep them live.
* Prohibition of junk mail and marketing, unless you opt-in.
* Existing EU regulations, on the storage and processing of personal data.
These protections sound good, but are they as good as they look?
1. The privacy proposals aren’t firm yet - they are still 'evolving' and may not be confirmed.
2. One powerful reason things might change would be the proposed international treaty on data privacy, which will include USA. The US treats personal data as an important commercial commodity. Even our current protections could be up for re-negotiation.
3. The EU wants to make you carry RFID you can't disable, by putting it in all government issued documents, passports, 'entitlement cards' and ID cards. Even if RFID tags in purchased items are disabled, there will still be plenty more tags to track us.
4. You are probably already carrying RFID - in things you would never think of - library cards, photocopier cards, ‘Oyster’ cards for the London Underground, etc.. There are items industry sneaked in while you weren't looking. Let’s not build the infrastructure to track these.
5. Disabled tags may not be ‘dead’ but merely ‘sleeping’. Somebody may be able to reactivate your tags without your knowledge. RFID tags can be programmable and capable of being turned on or off, given a new number or extra new information - even viruses. RFID technology can be hijacked for unauthorised uses and by criminals.
6. The EU want to track RFID in refuse, to help recycling (See the official EC website page How can the Tags improve your life?). How will they do that, if RFID tags are disabled? The tags can’t be both turned-off and yet still working at the same time. Something’s got to give, and it’s probably going to be your privacy.
7. Turn off the RFID chips and you could lose all right of refund or product guarantee.
8. RFID tags are only the first step in a much larger plan. The EU is pouring millions into research on RFID and ‘sensor networks’ (EU - The Future of the Internet, p98). They plan for RFID in everyone's homes. Does this sound like they want to let you turn it all off?
9. The tremendous money-making business opportunity that the EU hopes RFID will bring can't happen if the tags are turned off, or if all that data just sits inert in storage - it has to be analysed and exploited, and it appears intended it will be.
10. Systems like this are fundamentally compromising. Privacy regulations are worthless in the face of hackers and organised, international cyber-crime. If we are serious about privacy, we would never allow such data to be gathered, let alone put on the internet.
11. None of these regulations will stop foreign governments looking at the data. The US bought up information about voters, from private sources, in 11 different Latin American countries. It was alleged this could be used to influence electoral rolls, hence elections (by determining unfriendly voters and having them struck off the register) as has been alleged to happen in US domestic elections. And that's before we mention Russian and Chinese hackers. Or blackmail for espionage.
12. So, you won't get junk mail. Junk mail is just one impact of your personal data being visible to marketing analysis. It's more significant if your employer may be able to track your lifestyle, through the same data, out of sight.
The EU has a bad track-record on privacy and rights -
The EU has introduced a series of privacy-invading surveillance and ‘security’ measures
* A new five year plan for justice and home affairs that emphasises the surveillance state and keeping digital records of all citizens' activities
* Plans for database registration of all citizens and universal biometric ID cards, with RFID
* The EU directive (2006/24/EC) on 'data retention', creating a database recording all communications, phone calls and emails (incidentally, approved by the European Parliament)
* Introducing databases tracking political activists even before 9/11.
* The willingness of the EU to compromise to the US on privacy, shown in the release of airline passenger data to USA, with inadequate privacy protection.
* Plans to fingerprint all children, compulsorily over the age of 12
* An EU initiative to continuously track the speed and position of vehicles, about to go on trial in the UK
* An EU-funded pilot scheme in Romania to put RFID into all government documents
The EU wants to know everything about you
- but you aren't allowed to know anything about them!
The EU has a poor record of transparency.
EU decisions are taken in secret.
Votes at the Council of Ministers are secret - you aren’t allowed to know if your nation has voted for or against a new law.
EU finance is secretive. It has been plagued by fraud and corruption. It has failed audit for several years.
So, what can you do?
1) Tell your friends
This is the most important thing you can do.
If you have friends in (or from) other EU nations, it is especially important that you forward this message to them, so they can lobby MEPs in their own country.
But please, please try not to pass your friends' email addresses to strangers -
put people’s addresses ‘bcc’ and, before forwarding, delete any addresses that shouldn’t be seen.
2) Write to your MEP
Follow the steps on this website - it will tell you how to contact them
UK Office of the European Parliament
http://www.europarl.org.uk/section/your-meps/your-meps
Unlike the British Parliament, each Euro-constituency in Britain has three MEPs, not just one. We each have three different MEPs representing us, perhaps from three different parties.
Here’s a hint : - We have seen lots of replies from MEPs - most just waffle, and avoid any commitment to doing anything. When you write to your MEPs, it is important to use language that does not allow evasion.
Here is a suggested text: -
Dear MEP,
I am appalled by the European Union’s proposals for RFID and the Internet 3.0. This is unacceptable privacy-invading technology.
I am very concerned that neither you nor any other MEP has spoken out about this.
Unless you promise to vote against this, I won’t vote for you. And I'll tell my friends.
In fact, to believe in your sincerity, I want to hear pro-active proposals to block and prohibit RFID product tagging. I don't want RFID to be put in government documents.
I also want to hear you will stop EU funding for research on RFID and the Internet of Things.
Yes, I have heard about the EU proposals for privacy protection and, No, I am not impressed. Even 'Opt-in' is not enough to preserve our privacy. We should not be building an infrastructure for tracking people.
Yours,
3) Consumer protest
Supermarkets and corporations are hoping to introduce RFID with or without government help. Yes, we need to defeat the EU proposal, but we also need to stop the supermarkets.
Supermarkets and corporations may be powerful multi-billion dollar enterprises, but they are really scared of consumer pressure - and that’s where you come in.
Consumer protest has already stopped RFID in USA, the home of corporate power. That's why industry has now turned to Europe instead.
So, what is ‘consumer protest’?
It can be as little as telling your friends about a boycott of a store or a product that has introduced RFID.
4) Join CASPIAN (it’s Free!)
CASPIAN - Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion And Numbering - is the main campaign against RFID
The CASPIAN newsletter (by email, monthly, free) will tell you what‘s going on and give you suggestions about what you can do.
You can sign-up for the newsletter on the same site as CASPIAN membership: -
CASPIAN is a consumer group rather than a political organisation, even though this issue has a political dimension. CASPIAN is not aligned to any political party.
If you want more information, have a look at their website www.nocards.org
Sent by: Nathan Allonby
nathan.allonby(at)tiscali.co.uk
A new system to track your movements, as they happen
Imagine a world where you are allowed no secrets.
Imagine a world where everywhere you go is logged, recorded and posted on the internet, immediately, as soon as you arrive.
Imagine that every time you enter or leave a building, you are scanned and that a full report of everything you are wearing and carrying is posted instantly on the internet - intended to be accessible, so lots of people can read it - yes, even your underwear, what you have in your pockets, your bag or briefcase. All this information will be available to corporations (or potentially anybody).
They will know what clothes you have on (and maybe who paid for them!), when you last changed them, how much soap powder you buy. They will know if you have a condom in your wallet, or a tampon in your bag, whether you are carrying an adult magazine or haemorrhoid cream. And they will have a complete record of everything you ever bought.
This isn’t science fiction, but a new European Union policy
The EU want to authorise an electronic system that would do exactly this, and may legislate within months to make it happen.
All this can be verified from the European Commission’s own website.
This can still be stopped, but you have to do something - now, today.
This is an appeal for help, to lobby MEPs, in the lead-up to the election to the European Parliament, on 4 June 2009. (This letter gives MEPs emails and all the information you need - scroll to the end).
If you forward this message to 5 friends, like a chain letter, you can help ensure this EU measure gets exposed and defeated - even if you don’t write to your MEP yourself.
So, what is this tracking system?
Welcome to RFID
RFID is a system for tracking people and their possessions 'in real time'.
Tiny radio transponder chips will be placed in everything you buy, each carrying a unique ID number. That number can be scanned from a distance of up to a few feet.
RFID is intended to replace bar-code scanners, anti-theft barriers at stores - and do a whole lot more.
The ‘Internet of Things’ (also called ‘Internet 3.0')
This is the system that will allow RFID data to be posted on the internet, immediately.
In the ‘Internet of Things’ every object will have its own internet web-page, with its RFID number being its web-address. Every time an object is scanned by an RFID reader, the time and place will be logged on its web-page, together with other information, such as purchaser, etc..
Tracking
The record of the object’s movements will also be a record of its owner’s movements, and it will be a simple matter to cross-reference to identify all a person’s belongings.
Items such as shoes and underwear generally are used by only one person and rarely swapped or shared.
Tracking these objects’ history, on the Internet of Things, they will have tracked all your movements, your entire life. In fact, IBM already have a patent on this (US #200220165758 - ‘IDENTIFICATION AND TRACKING OF PERSONS USING RFID-TAGGED ITEMS’).
Turning numbers into names - ID cards and the National Identity Register
Ultimately, the system needs a cross-reference to turn those numbers into a name and address.
Stores could capture your name if you use a bank card to pay at some time. (And some banks have experimented putting RFID in payment cards).
The ultimate answer, however, will be ID cards and the new government identity database that will go with them. Britain's (and soon, all of Europe's) ID cards will have an RFID chip implanted in them - just like new passports - that's EU policy.
Your identity will be for sale to corporations. That's going to make it child's play to identify anyone as soon as they walk in. It's so useful, you would almost think that's what ID cards were always intended to do - to identify you to corporations.
Profiling - Analysing your behaviour and personality
So, once they have gathered all of this data, what are they going to do with it?
Marketing has spawned a whole huge industry of gathering personal data, and analysis systems, to identify big-spenders (and discourage bargain shoppers) to increase stores' earnings per shopper.
Corporations have sophisticated software that can analyse your purchases and habits, to ’profile’ your personality and psychology, for marketing purposes - to assess your weaknesses and suggestibility. It works and it’s very effective.
There will be software to analyse your movements and any patterns in them. They are going to know if you go shopping with your family, or with someone else. They will be able to guess if you are seeing someone other than your wife or husband. They will be able to guess the names of all your friends, and know where they live, what they do and any affiliations they have.
All this is also going to be available to the government, your local council, your employer - and to potential blackmailers.
Employers
Imagine a world where corporations profile their staff, and every year ‘rotate’ (i.e. fire) a percentage of their employees, to get a workforce with the ‘right’ profile, the right attitudes (Some companies already do this). Imagine how RFID tracking and profiling could facilitate a corporate culture like that.
Some public employers, in USA, have already started dictating diet and lifestyle strictures to their employees, with dismissal if you don’t comply. Your employer would know what you eat, whether you drink, whether and how often you go to the gym.
Nothing will be beyond examination
Corporations even want to put RFID scanners in your home - in your fridge and other appliances - that could see who goes to the fridge, how often, and what they take out.
RFID spychips have been placed in many new domestic ’wheelie bins’. This is to facilitate proposed charging by weight, for refuse collection. That means your waste bin (and hence your refuse) will be RFID scanned at collection.
The EU want to track RFID in refuse, to help recycling (See the official EC website page How can the Tags improve your life?). Who knows, that could mean, if you have put things in the waste bin that should have been recycled, you could be fined, automatically.
And corporations already pay for information about the waste in people’s bins, so they can see how quickly you consume their products.
Nothing will be beyond examination.
The aim of the RFID project is ‘Total Mobility’ - tracking all movement.
This is equivalent to total surveillance or total control.
Still can't believe it?
Want to read more? Here are a couple of independent articles on the subject: -
The Register
Scientific American
This is not science fiction. Some stores are already starting to fit equipment ready for RFID scanners. The only ‘science fiction’ about this is in the proposed ‘protections’ they are going to give us.
Who wants RFID?
There is an industry association, promoting RFID.
Global corporations that have wanted to introduce RFID include IBM, NCR, Intel, Procter and Gamble, Unilever, Gillette, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Wal-Mart, Tesco, Phillip Morris, Kodak, etc..
However, industry's own research showed that 78% of the public are opposed to RFID.
What is the EU proposing to do?
The EU see this not as a nightmare but as a tremendous business opportunity.
The EU is proposing legislation and regulations, under 'harmonisation' rules.
Harmonisation means, if the EU permits RFID, then it is binding on everyone - individual member nations cannot opt-out or prohibit it. European legislation may be only months away.
Is this EU policy? Read for yourselves on the official European Commission website and a pdf here.
The EU are already financing this with millions, in support, and funding research at European universities.
This can still be stopped, but you have to do something - now, today.
EU proposed privacy protections
If you write to your MEP, they will tell you about their proposed (supposed) privacy protections. These sound great at first: -
* ‘Opt-in‘ privacy, meaning RFID tags would be automatically disabled at the check-out, unless you opt to keep them live.
* Prohibition of junk mail and marketing, unless you opt-in.
* Existing EU regulations, on the storage and processing of personal data.
These protections sound good, but are they as good as they look?
1. The privacy proposals aren’t firm yet - they are still 'evolving' and may not be confirmed.
2. One powerful reason things might change would be the proposed international treaty on data privacy, which will include USA. The US treats personal data as an important commercial commodity. Even our current protections could be up for re-negotiation.
3. The EU wants to make you carry RFID you can't disable, by putting it in all government issued documents, passports, 'entitlement cards' and ID cards. Even if RFID tags in purchased items are disabled, there will still be plenty more tags to track us.
4. You are probably already carrying RFID - in things you would never think of - library cards, photocopier cards, ‘Oyster’ cards for the London Underground, etc.. There are items industry sneaked in while you weren't looking. Let’s not build the infrastructure to track these.
5. Disabled tags may not be ‘dead’ but merely ‘sleeping’. Somebody may be able to reactivate your tags without your knowledge. RFID tags can be programmable and capable of being turned on or off, given a new number or extra new information - even viruses. RFID technology can be hijacked for unauthorised uses and by criminals.
6. The EU want to track RFID in refuse, to help recycling (See the official EC website page How can the Tags improve your life?). How will they do that, if RFID tags are disabled? The tags can’t be both turned-off and yet still working at the same time. Something’s got to give, and it’s probably going to be your privacy.
7. Turn off the RFID chips and you could lose all right of refund or product guarantee.
8. RFID tags are only the first step in a much larger plan. The EU is pouring millions into research on RFID and ‘sensor networks’ (EU - The Future of the Internet, p98). They plan for RFID in everyone's homes. Does this sound like they want to let you turn it all off?
9. The tremendous money-making business opportunity that the EU hopes RFID will bring can't happen if the tags are turned off, or if all that data just sits inert in storage - it has to be analysed and exploited, and it appears intended it will be.
10. Systems like this are fundamentally compromising. Privacy regulations are worthless in the face of hackers and organised, international cyber-crime. If we are serious about privacy, we would never allow such data to be gathered, let alone put on the internet.
11. None of these regulations will stop foreign governments looking at the data. The US bought up information about voters, from private sources, in 11 different Latin American countries. It was alleged this could be used to influence electoral rolls, hence elections (by determining unfriendly voters and having them struck off the register) as has been alleged to happen in US domestic elections. And that's before we mention Russian and Chinese hackers. Or blackmail for espionage.
12. So, you won't get junk mail. Junk mail is just one impact of your personal data being visible to marketing analysis. It's more significant if your employer may be able to track your lifestyle, through the same data, out of sight.
The EU has a bad track-record on privacy and rights -
The EU has introduced a series of privacy-invading surveillance and ‘security’ measures
* A new five year plan for justice and home affairs that emphasises the surveillance state and keeping digital records of all citizens' activities
* Plans for database registration of all citizens and universal biometric ID cards, with RFID
* The EU directive (2006/24/EC) on 'data retention', creating a database recording all communications, phone calls and emails (incidentally, approved by the European Parliament)
* Introducing databases tracking political activists even before 9/11.
* The willingness of the EU to compromise to the US on privacy, shown in the release of airline passenger data to USA, with inadequate privacy protection.
* Plans to fingerprint all children, compulsorily over the age of 12
* An EU initiative to continuously track the speed and position of vehicles, about to go on trial in the UK
* An EU-funded pilot scheme in Romania to put RFID into all government documents
The EU wants to know everything about you
- but you aren't allowed to know anything about them!
The EU has a poor record of transparency.
EU decisions are taken in secret.
Votes at the Council of Ministers are secret - you aren’t allowed to know if your nation has voted for or against a new law.
EU finance is secretive. It has been plagued by fraud and corruption. It has failed audit for several years.
So, what can you do?
1) Tell your friends
This is the most important thing you can do.
If you have friends in (or from) other EU nations, it is especially important that you forward this message to them, so they can lobby MEPs in their own country.
But please, please try not to pass your friends' email addresses to strangers -
put people’s addresses ‘bcc’ and, before forwarding, delete any addresses that shouldn’t be seen.
2) Write to your MEP
Follow the steps on this website - it will tell you how to contact them
UK Office of the European Parliament
http://www.europarl.org.uk/section/your-meps/your-meps
Unlike the British Parliament, each Euro-constituency in Britain has three MEPs, not just one. We each have three different MEPs representing us, perhaps from three different parties.
Here’s a hint : - We have seen lots of replies from MEPs - most just waffle, and avoid any commitment to doing anything. When you write to your MEPs, it is important to use language that does not allow evasion.
Here is a suggested text: -
Dear MEP,
I am appalled by the European Union’s proposals for RFID and the Internet 3.0. This is unacceptable privacy-invading technology.
I am very concerned that neither you nor any other MEP has spoken out about this.
Unless you promise to vote against this, I won’t vote for you. And I'll tell my friends.
In fact, to believe in your sincerity, I want to hear pro-active proposals to block and prohibit RFID product tagging. I don't want RFID to be put in government documents.
I also want to hear you will stop EU funding for research on RFID and the Internet of Things.
Yes, I have heard about the EU proposals for privacy protection and, No, I am not impressed. Even 'Opt-in' is not enough to preserve our privacy. We should not be building an infrastructure for tracking people.
Yours,
3) Consumer protest
Supermarkets and corporations are hoping to introduce RFID with or without government help. Yes, we need to defeat the EU proposal, but we also need to stop the supermarkets.
Supermarkets and corporations may be powerful multi-billion dollar enterprises, but they are really scared of consumer pressure - and that’s where you come in.
Consumer protest has already stopped RFID in USA, the home of corporate power. That's why industry has now turned to Europe instead.
So, what is ‘consumer protest’?
It can be as little as telling your friends about a boycott of a store or a product that has introduced RFID.
4) Join CASPIAN (it’s Free!)
CASPIAN - Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion And Numbering - is the main campaign against RFID
The CASPIAN newsletter (by email, monthly, free) will tell you what‘s going on and give you suggestions about what you can do.
You can sign-up for the newsletter on the same site as CASPIAN membership: -
CASPIAN is a consumer group rather than a political organisation, even though this issue has a political dimension. CASPIAN is not aligned to any political party.
If you want more information, have a look at their website www.nocards.org
Sent by: Nathan Allonby
nathan.allonby(at)tiscali.co.uk
18 April 2009
JUST JACK Embers
click through to here: JUST JACK on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Videos and make sure you listen to the Embers track.
City Living Trims GHG
Check it out; I've already mentioned this research but this time Worldchanging has picked it up here. Worldchanging: Bright Green: Does City Living Trim Greenhouse Gas Emissions? And the headline info: "downtown residents use radically less energy, and consequently emit about two-thirds less climate-warming CO2 than their suburban counterparts."
We need to think about this missionally: to me this sounds like a call to urban new monasticism (and the Beguine movement of the thirteenth century looks like a good reference point for that). And also for a relocalisation of suburban communities which is a community development task, but a missional one at that. It's interesting, having read placement reports from students attached to suburban churches that local community is a real issue. That said, there are not always easy ways to address it, but it must be done.
We need to think about this missionally: to me this sounds like a call to urban new monasticism (and the Beguine movement of the thirteenth century looks like a good reference point for that). And also for a relocalisation of suburban communities which is a community development task, but a missional one at that. It's interesting, having read placement reports from students attached to suburban churches that local community is a real issue. That said, there are not always easy ways to address it, but it must be done.
Obama Outlines Plan for High-Speed Rail
After I visited the states the last time and travelled from Washington DC into the heart of Virginia by train, I felt that there was money to be made in the USA having a faster rail network. 50MPH top speed is a joke for a national passenger rail system. No wonder flying is a national pastime there! I think I blogged about it. The positive side of that, though was that it was a comfortable journey: there was lots of leg room and the drinks car was a real social centre it seemed. Anyway, it seems the president has been seeing sense: Obama Outlines Plan for High-Speed Rail | Autopia from Wired.com: "Obama outlined a strategy that focuses on 10 rail corridors that slice through regional population centers across the United States. Each state would compete for a chunk of the $8 billion in stimulus money that will be distributed to rail projects in the next two years. Another $1 billion will follow over the next five years. Funds will be awarded according to each states' plan to develop and improve the rail corridors."
I note that one of the rail corridors is pretty much one of those that I rode on back then. I think I mentioned it in a blog post.
I note that one of the rail corridors is pretty much one of those that I rode on back then. I think I mentioned it in a blog post.
Easter ‘with Taliban blessing’
If you're not a subscriber to the Church Times, you probably won't be able to see this article for a couple of weeks. Church Times - Easter ‘with Taliban blessing’ The thing may look at first encouraging: "The Taliban, who are very visible and easy to contact, had been contacted in advance, about a week before Easter, by a group representing the churches, and they said: ‘Go ahead with the services. We totally want you to have your services.’” It could be read as a commendable step in the right direction by a hardline Muslim organisation. But, recall, this is in line with Qur'anic and sharia principles: the Christians are regarded as dhimmi -a protected minority. We're not told whether these Christians are yet being 'asked' to pay a jizya (tax on dhimmis)The ominous indicator of what is really going on is here: "Dr Gosling said that the Taliban had told them: “Have your services, and give us a list of anybody who doesn’t attend.” ". In other words, the taliban are quite willing to work at their version of religious apratheid. The dhimmi status, historically speaking erodes the 'protected' communities because they are prevented from making disciples from outside their own community and the social and marriage rules of dhimmitude tend to attract the less committed to convert to at least nominal Islam. However, once through that religious boundary, the rules make it nigh on impossible for a person, a family, to return. It's a semi-permeable membrane allowing osmosis in an Islamic direction, but not in reverse. So while it's nice that Christians have been able to celebrate Easter in this part of Pakistan, the longer term implications are that this is the 'sweetener' for the osmotic Islamic religious membrane.
17 April 2009
Somali Piracy -the bigger picture
Imagine yourself living in this society, not as wealthy, but as ordinary and poor: "Somalia is one of the poorest, most violent, least stable countries anywhere on Earth. It suffers from severe drought and its people face hunger and violence on a daily basis. This is not a new situation, Somalia, especially the south, has been in this state for many years." To provide for your family, avoid hunger, what might you consider doing? I'm not condoning piracy, but I am saying that aggressive crackdowns are not going to help, the money would be far better spent on good aid, infrastructure and the support to rebuild civil society. Do we imagine that Somali culture venerates theft and violence? On the whole, no it does not. Let's help the nation to help itself. Quoting from the BBC story again: "In the face of overwhelming adversity they have created thriving businesses, operating entirely in the informal sector, and hospitals built and maintained with money sent home by the diaspora." -There *is* something to work with.
The story is here
BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Piracy symptom of bigger problem:
and the chance to do a little something about it is here: "Next week there is a UN-EU emergency meeting on Somalia. This is a significant opportunity and a massive global response could have a major impact on its outcomes. We need to stop piracy - and tackle its root causes. Sign the petition ... and we will deliver it at the emergency meeting." The 'we' is AVAAZ.
The story is here
BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Piracy symptom of bigger problem:
and the chance to do a little something about it is here: "Next week there is a UN-EU emergency meeting on Somalia. This is a significant opportunity and a massive global response could have a major impact on its outcomes. We need to stop piracy - and tackle its root causes. Sign the petition ... and we will deliver it at the emergency meeting." The 'we' is AVAAZ.
Imagination's power
As a some-time life coach, it's intriguing to see something that has at least anecdotal evidence to support it now has a fig-leaf of scientific respectibility: "'an idea that has long been espoused by motivational speakers, sports psychologists, and John Lennon alike: The imagination has the extraordinary capacity to shape reality.'" It's about imagining yourself doing things successfully helping to improve your success rate.
I think I'd relate this to a couple of things theologically: one is the Lord's prayer, the final clause about 'not into temptation', if prayed imaginatively (as I encourage in my book on the prayer) then this would seem to indicate that it could activate a psychological mechanism which would aid the prayist -leaving aside any divine help.n So that's maybe worth considering further.
The other thing would be the connection to language and imagination borne out of reflecting on Genesis 2 and blogged elsewhere this blog ('homo loquens').
Power Of Imagination Is More Than Just A Metaphor:
I think I'd relate this to a couple of things theologically: one is the Lord's prayer, the final clause about 'not into temptation', if prayed imaginatively (as I encourage in my book on the prayer) then this would seem to indicate that it could activate a psychological mechanism which would aid the prayist -leaving aside any divine help.n So that's maybe worth considering further.
The other thing would be the connection to language and imagination borne out of reflecting on Genesis 2 and blogged elsewhere this blog ('homo loquens').
Power Of Imagination Is More Than Just A Metaphor:
15 April 2009
Rwanda and forgiveness
I've been, in odd moments, trying to reflect on forgiveness, with a view to producing a bottom-up theology of the cross which takes in the realities of human forgiving and anger. I intuit that this may help us to get beyond the current atonement wars. Anyway, here's another case-study to add to those I've already blogged about. Nothing new in many ways except that it's a tragedy for yet someone else. It contrasts somewhat with that I blogged about following watching the 'Miracle in Rwanda' play in Edinburgh a couple of years back. It's a long article from the Guardian. Ros Wynne-Jones meets R�v�rien Rurangwa whose family was slaughtered in the Rwandan genocide | World news | The Guardian: "He has no forgiveness to offer the man who killed his family. He is not interested in convenient western constructs such as closure.
'How could one pardon someone who has never asked to be pardoned?' he says. 'It's not up to me to propose this to them; people who killed night and day for three months. People who were tired from killing. People who still want to kill me today. People who don't have any regret. How can one pardon these people?'
Nor has he found any peace or salvation in the Catholicism he was born into. 'My mother died praying to God. Where was He? Why didn't He do anything?' He laughs, a dry sound in his throat. 'When you see the local priests coming with the machete and killing ... When you see a church where 25 Tutsis died is cleaned up, and that the ones who pray in that church are the ones who killed ... I am finished with God.'"
All very understandable and very saddening.
The thing that it brought home to me was the sheer eventually mundanity of genocide: it takes hard work: it's not a crime of passion; it has to be sustained by ideology and indoctrination (supported by a willingness to grant the premises) in order to sustain in turn the systematic and close-to-the-victim 'work' of killing. It seems from the outside so alien and so distant from our experience. Yet we should recall that supported by various plausibility structures, most of us westerners are quite comfortable with buying goods that are produced by slave labour (in effect) or with continuing to pollute the life out of the planet. Okay, not as direct, but similar social-psychological mechanisms support our complicity. And that's a disquieting thought because it really means that, given the 'right/wrong' circumstances, it really could be us.
'How could one pardon someone who has never asked to be pardoned?' he says. 'It's not up to me to propose this to them; people who killed night and day for three months. People who were tired from killing. People who still want to kill me today. People who don't have any regret. How can one pardon these people?'
Nor has he found any peace or salvation in the Catholicism he was born into. 'My mother died praying to God. Where was He? Why didn't He do anything?' He laughs, a dry sound in his throat. 'When you see the local priests coming with the machete and killing ... When you see a church where 25 Tutsis died is cleaned up, and that the ones who pray in that church are the ones who killed ... I am finished with God.'"
All very understandable and very saddening.
The thing that it brought home to me was the sheer eventually mundanity of genocide: it takes hard work: it's not a crime of passion; it has to be sustained by ideology and indoctrination (supported by a willingness to grant the premises) in order to sustain in turn the systematic and close-to-the-victim 'work' of killing. It seems from the outside so alien and so distant from our experience. Yet we should recall that supported by various plausibility structures, most of us westerners are quite comfortable with buying goods that are produced by slave labour (in effect) or with continuing to pollute the life out of the planet. Okay, not as direct, but similar social-psychological mechanisms support our complicity. And that's a disquieting thought because it really means that, given the 'right/wrong' circumstances, it really could be us.
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