Words, meanings, context, understanding

In the book, the Social Animal by David Brooks, the author draws on the experiences of a central character and writes:

On his wall, Harold had tacked another quotation, from Benjamin Disraeli, 'the spiritual nature of man is stronger than codes or constitutions.  No government can endure which does not recognise that for its foundations, and no legislation last which does not flow from this foundation'.

Everything came down to character, and that meant everything came down to relationships, because relationships are the seedbeds of character.  The reason life and politics are so hard is that relationships are the most important, but also the most difficult, things to understand.

In short, Harold entered a public-policy world in which people were used to thinking in hard, mechanistic terms.  He thought he could do some good if he threw emotional and social perspectives into the mix. 

Socialism 

As Harold worked his way through the process of discovering how this basic supposition applied to the world of politics and policy, he came to lament the fact that the word 'socialism' was already taken.  The nineteenth and twentieth-century thinkers who had called themselves socialists weren't really socialists.  They were statists. They valued the state over society.

But true socialism would put social life first.  He imagined that the cognitive revolution could foster more communitarian styles of politics.  There would be a focus on the economic community.  Did people in different classes have a sense they were joined in a common enterprise, or were the gaps between classes too wide?  There would be a focus on the common culture.  Were the core values of society expressed and self-confidently reinforced?  Were they reflected in the nations institutions?  

This led me to reflect on a recent discussion with a doctoral student focusing on remote education.  We talked about the political priorities expressed through our leaders.  One leader continually emphasised school attendance as the key priority.  Time and time again, the importance of full attendance was honed in.  This was re-enforced by countless media reports and references.

Whilst important, I was told that even if full school attendance was achieved this would not be sufficient.  The 'socialisation', as was put to me, was so vastly different between the students and their future world, and between the Aboriginal and 'other' world, that the capabilities and tools which are ordinarily learned in schooling held value which looked different to the way we perceive it.  The act of discipline, for instance, is structured very differently.

To me, the complexity of remote education became apparent.  The distance between the understandings of a nation looking 'in' and the experiences of a person with interest looking 'out' appeared wide.  I was struck by the reference to 'socialisation': how it is not commonly used, how I initally (mis) interpreted it, how it means different things to different people (and contexts), how its meaning finds traction to other associations and patterns of thought.