Member Care and Member Tear

Orwell in October--Part 2

We are exactly the people and organisations we have become.

[Animal Farm and 1984] can be read…as a strong preventive medicine against the mentality of servility, and especially against the lethal temptation to exchange freedom for security; a bargain that inevitably ends up with the surrender of both…
Christopher Hitchens, 2003, Introduction.

**Servility is a dysfunctional form of the servanthood extolled in the New Testament.
**Exchanging freedom for security is a dysfunctional form of laying down one’s life extolled in the New Testament.

Both involve the loss of the rights and responsibilities:

to speak and think freely

to tell the truth and to be told the truth

to require accountability and to request change.

Servility and the loss of freedom dehumanise us.

They necessitate self-deception and other-deception.

Organisations/groups tainted with such dysfunctions and which remain unchecked, increasingly become unsafe places to work.

Ultimately, these dysfunctions tear the members apart.

Let's call it Member Tear.
How endemic and/or epidemic is this in the mission/aid sector?

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Animal Farm
Note: The context for the next five paraphrased quotes involves naivete, manipulation, and lies:

1. "Loyalty and obedience are more important than bravery."
2. "You have probably only dreamed these things, comrades.
…the animals were content to think that they had made a mistake in their thinking."
3. "I can't believe that this would happen here on our farm. I don't get it. We must be wrong. I am just going to have to work harder to solve this."
4. "The animals were one again bewildered, but with the able convincing of Squeeler they once again believed that it was their own memories that were faulty."

5. "It was easy to prove to the other animals that there was plenty of food, in spite of the actual appearances."
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And now the ending of Animal Farm:
"Twelve angry voices were shouting, each of them like the other…pig shouting at man, and man shouting at pig, and pig at man again; but it had already become impossible to tell them apart. "
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Reflection and Discussion
**The essence of Member Tear is to distort the truth in a way that hurts others. Comment on this assertion.

**Pigs become humans and humans become pigs. For Orwell, this means that people can and do have the propensity to become evil and exploit others. Comment on why this propensity—Member Tear-- might be hard to understand, accept, and to change.

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Note:

"[Animal Farm, published in 1946] is an allegory in which animals play the roles of the Bolshevik revolutionaries and overthrow and oust the human owners of a farm, setting it up as a commune in which, at first, all animals are equal. However, class and status disparities soon emerge between the different animal species. The novel describes how a society's ideologies can be manipulated and twisted by those in positions of social and political power, including how a utopian society is made impossible by the corrupting nature of the very power necessary to create it." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm

Member Care and Human Rights--2

How is member care (MC) related to human rights (HR)?

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http://www.un.org/av/photo/subjects/30.htm
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1. How does HR provide a foundation for our responsibility
to manage and support our mission/aid staff?

2. How does HR provide a foundation for our responsibility
in mission/aid work to help vulnerable populations
who have experienced human rights abuses?
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I believe the answer to these two core questions is found in the opening statements of the Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Note the powerful contrasts that are used—e.g., recognise vs disregard; progress vs oppress, promote vs contempt, reaffirm vs outrage, freedom vs tyranny, peace vs fear.

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"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
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Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
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Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
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Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,
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Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom…"

Historical note from: http://www.un.org/av/photo/subjects/hrhis.htm

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"The Convenant of the League of Nations, written at the end of the First World War, was silent on the issue of human rights. In 1941, the "four freedoms" were proclaimed as the objective of the Allies: freedom of speech and worship and freedom from want and from fear. The Allies repeated that commitment in the 1941 Atlantic Charter." The above photo shows the signing of the Atlantic Charter on the HMS Prince of Wales--Churchill and Roosevelt are present (seated in the upper left).

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Reflection and Discussion
Here are four applications of the Preamble to the mission/aid community—people’s rights and responsibilities! What do you think? Any other applications for relating MC and HR?
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1. We recognize the dignity and rights of our staff and of the people that are the focus of our services. Freedom, justice, and peace are core values and goals.
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2. We promote friendly relations, social progress, and better standards of life within our organisations and within the people that are the focus of our services.
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3. We are outraged when basic rights are disregarded within our organisations and within the people that are the focus of our services. We seek to protect people’s rights and we oppose (rebel) against those entities that stifle freedoms of speech and beliefs and the freedom from fear.
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4. We reaffirm our ongoing commitment to these basic human rights in both our organisations and in the people who are the focus of our services.