TRIBES AT WAR
// April 2nd, 2010 // No Comments » // General, General Blog
Having watched Pat Kenny’s “The Front Line” last Monday night, it seems that it might be fair to conclude that the “Tribes are at War”. Well, a verbal war, but a war nonetheless.
It is a war where each side has a particular verbal ‘weaponry’.
One, the public tribe, draws on quite specific, personal story as its means of engagement. The stories are invariably tragic, “my dead mother/father” and the storyteller very understandably emotional. As communication, it largely works. There is no response to these stories but sympathy. The other tribe, the management, draw on an abstracted generalised form of discourse, to do with performance, the system, and well, management. Response here is difficult, especially without access or inclination to the facts and figures. As communication, in that forum, it largely doesn’t work.
Anger, hurt, (even) hatred and rage at war with fact, system, figure and process. The weapons are thrown. Most seem to miss the target. Neither side can use the means of discourse of the other. And so it goes on and on and on. It is easy to feel sorry for the sufferers. It is less easy to feel sorry for the management. But they look like really pleasant honest folk! (more…)
