The importance of being Ernie

Timebanking is all about co-production so it stands to reason that a Timebank should be for the members, by the members. In essence its members should guide its light. Ta Dah.

Ta Duh. People are busy, they don’t ‘have’ to take part in another project, another meeting, another round of introductions when nobody remembers your first name let alone your job title. Getting people together in the name of co-production can be tough.

We have been trying to form a ‘core group’, almost a ‘steering group’ to have input into the project. Not just input but a real say on its design and delivery.  This was suggested by one of the organisations we met with to join the Timebank. They thought that this would be the only way to go,  I agreed.

This one person has grown into ‘literally’ twelve people. The problem has been trying to get everyone in the same room at the same time, it hasn’t happened unfortunately. I don’t think it is because people are not interested, from what can gather (I leave the mind reading machine at home, it freaks people out) they seem to be. I think it’s because people have other things at the top of their list, it’s something that essentially is ‘nice’ in theory, but if you don’t attend, the world or your business doesn’t stop turning. The person running the project simply steps in and picks it up. After all that’s their job.

David Boyle talks about ‘Super Catalysts’ in his thought provoking book ‘The Human Element’. These are people who are brilliant at dealing with other people. They get things done, ignite the imagination and don’t accept defeat. They enhance people’s lives. I’m sure from time to time we all have come across such people. I have come across a few ‘super catalysts’ whilst trying to take forward the Timebank, they are willing to help and are very much onboard with the idea.

We will try again to get everyone sat down together, harnessing the potential and hearing the diversity of opinion (other clichés are available). Without doing this the project is preaching but isn’t practising, which doesn’t feel right. If a Timebank is a form of co-production then it needs to be co-produced.

An administrator in a bureaucratic world is a man who can feel big by merging his non-entity in an abstraction. A real person in touch with real things inspires terror in him.

Paperwork, red tape, bureaucracy, officialdom and paper shuffling. Never words that fill people with adrenaline or create the ambience for a little bit of innovation. With respect to timebanking, the case has been made that when ‘professionals’ become involved, bringing with them their barrows full of bureaucratic  burdens, then the scene can change for the worse. Some take it further and don’t believe that professionals should be involved at all. If people within timebanking and co-production are saying that it’s within communities, not public services, where the answer to many problems lie, then the question arises, how do professionals and communities find common ground to deliver projects like timebanks or to work together on achieving co-production?

It’s a difficult question and one that I am facing in trying to set up the timebank. I believe that too often paperwork and bureaucracy can become a barrier for people getting involved with lots of things. I do think that 9 times out of ten bureaucracy should not only be cut, but slayed. However In timebanks, particularly ones being set up by the public sector then there is a balance to be achieved between legal responsibilities and safeguarding, and encouraging people to join in, contribute and more than that, deliver and design. I remember a very impassioned person at the Timebanking conference in 2010 talking about how if he heard the word ‘CRB’ again, he would scream. Earlier on I had asked him about how he dealt with CRB’s and safeguarding within his timebank and I think I pushed him over the edge! The point being made was that he was fed up with questions being asked in regards to how timebanking can be delivered by twisting the current safeguarding paperwork. He didn’t think it was the way to do things which coming from a community standpoint, I could understand. Timebanks aim to build up trust by encouraging people to engage with one another and he felt that CRB checks started from a distrustful point of view, rarely achieved what they set out to do and ultimately had no place within real communities.

Trying to build up trust and knock down bureaucracy alongside a safeguarding/CRB system is not an easy fit to make. Some organisations go for the blanket CRB check system and some timebanks have done 4 CRB checks in as many years. Things are different within parts of the public sector and will be different in my opinion if timebanking and co-production in a wider sense is to be scaled up. The challenges are huge and involve a cultural shift away from centralisation, back and front office professionals not working together and professionals doing rather than facilitating.

As there are very few timebanks set up by local authorities it’s not been easy to learn from others as to the best way to approach safeguarding, paperwork and CRB checks. In some respects perhaps this is a good thing. It’s taken me back to the very people who will be using the timebanks to ask them, and the message is fairly clear. People want the paperwork to be simple, and short. They want the people who use the timebanks to be safe and they see the value in CRB checks when working with older, younger and vulnerable people. These messages fit within the framework that I am working and although I saw some of that framework as being a potential barrier or even bothersome to those who want to become involved. Those who want to become involved don’t see it as a barrier at all. Another surprise and the difference between trying to start a project in isolation and in trying to start a project alongside the very people who will use it.

 

Do you really think its a good idea? really ?

It seems to be catching on, and it’s not a hard sell either. This timebanking malarkey seems to appeal to people right across the board. I have been meeting some great organisations and people recently. Organisations that seem to recognise that there is much more to be gained by putting our collective heads together to solve problems. There has not been any negativity towards the idea and on a couple of occasions there has been real excitement which shocked me to be honest. I’m sold but I guess I never expected other people to have the light bulb moment regarding co-production in front of me.

Ownership will be key if the timebank is to succeed, and if I was to give any advice to people looking to set up similar projects it would be to meet people in person to sell the idea. So much more has come from face to face meetings than ever would from a round robin email. The point being that just like timebanking itself you never know what can come from an hour’s meeting, a little enthusiasm and people believing that it is possible to do things differently

Is there really a true act of Altruism?

Why do vampire bats share blood, mouth to mouth, at the end of a night of prey with members of the colony who were less successful in the hunt? Why do sentry gazelles jump up and down when a lion is spotted, putting themselves precariously between the hunt and the hungry hunter? And what do all of these have to do with morality in humans: Is there, in fact, a natural origin to our own acts of kindness?”

George Price may not be a name many people outside of evolutionary genetics will be aware of, but his findings and the life he led were of interest to me, and perhaps to those interested in timebanking and the idea of Altruism.

At the age of 44, George Price quit his job at IBM (he has previously worked on the Manhattan Project, and designed the concept of CAD Computer Aided Design) to ‘take up’ evolutionary genetics. I at the age of 39 have just ‘taken up’ making cakes, the very thought of even reading a book on evolutionary genetics makes me want to cry, so even before we get into his findings, the fact that he ‘took up’ this area of work at 44 is an inspiration to us all.

Price made three outstanding contributions to the conceptual structure of evolutionary genetics during the brief period between 1970 and 1973, he died in 1975. It has been said (by the community, yes they exist) that to make one contribution is outstanding, make three and you’re a genius. He wanted one great discovery, in fact he made quite a few.

Prices first contribution was the Price Equation a formal method for the hierarchical analysis of natural selection.

Darwin recognised the horror of suffering in nature but also that it was intrinsic to nature, that it must happen. It actually made him loose his faith. It all sounds a bit mean doesn’t it? The question is, if the world is so cruel, how do we account for acts of kindness and altruism?

George Price was looking for a question to answer and he started looking into, ‘why family?’ Why do humans, males particularly care for children? It led to wider question, why does anybody help anybody? If survival of the fittest means making babies and staying alive, then why are there examples in nature when this doesn’t happen.

Why do amoebas build stalks from their own bodies, sacrificing themselves in the process, so that some may climb up and be carried away from death?

In the 1960’s scientist started to look at altruism in another way. Imagine a flood occurring, you’re with your sister and you and your sister are both drowning, if you save your sister and die in the process, your genes are gone. However as your sister has 50% of your genes if you rescue her, 50% survives, if you save a brother as well another 50% survives, you mathematically rescue yourself. If you rescue 8 full cousins you rescue your own genome.

Price’s ‘mathematical’ theory of altruism reasons that organisms are more likely to show altruism toward each other as they become more genetically similar to each other. The theory then holds that the farther genetically removed two organisms are from each other, the less likely they are to show altruism to each other. If true then altruistic (kind) behavior is not truly selfless and is instead an adaptation that organisms have in order to promote their own genetic heritage. In other words it is ‘selfish’.

The maths has already been done. Evolution has turned the maths into an instinct. The instinct to save your family. Your instinct to save your sister should be greater than the instinct to save your cousin.

George Price came up with a mathematical equation to show why the above altruism occurs; in fact he walked into the University of London as a complete unknown, and asked “is this new?” A Professor ‘Smith’ looked at it, and gave him an honouree Professorship on the spot, as well as a job in one of the best evolutionary departments in the world. When I worked at Pizza Hut I did once suggest a recipe for a new pizza, entitled the ‘big breakfast’ containing sausage, egg and bacon. I was sacked not long after.

George Price started to consider his theory and didn’t like the results. The results being that his equation shows that if altruism can be attributed to ‘saving yourself’, to helping your genes, then the world is a terrible place. It means that there can never be an act of true selflessness.

George quit his job to prove that there was true selflessness. He started to introduce himself to the homeless, inviting them into his home, giving charity, clothes and money. Within a few months he was broke. He wrote to his friend saying ‘I’m down to my last 15p, and I can’t wait to give it away’. Perhaps he was fighting his self preservation instinct? Paradoxically George was a poor father by his own admission and couldn’t help those closest to him, his own children for example whom he had abandoned when leaving America years earlier.

Sadly George killed himself, alone and penniless in a London squat ending an amazing life in which  he contributed so much, but only recently has been credited with doing so. His friends said that he killed himself due to his inability to help the homeless anymore.

William Hamilton, who identified Price’s body, has described the scene:

“A mattress on the floor, one chair, a table, and several ammunition boxes made the only furniture. Of all the books and furnishings that I remembered from our first meeting in his fairly luxurious flat near Oxford Circus there remained some cheap clothes, a two-volume copy of Proust, and his typewriter. A cheap suitcase, and some cardboard boxes contained most of his papers, others were scattered about on ammunition chests.”

George Price is buried in an unmarked grave in a Camden cemetery. I didn’t know much about George Price until a year ago but his story is one that shall remain in mind for a long time.

The most important asset, being human.

I’m drumming up business, but not in an economic sense. I’m setting up a timebank on behalf of the local authority where I work. My days at the moment are filled with meetings were by I talk about timebanking, trying  to encourage organisations to not only think about the skills and assets that they can share i.e. space and work related knowledge,  but also trying to get them to think about the other assets they have. The things that make them the person they are, the things that are in an economic sense worthless.

The first part isn’t hard. We all are accustomed to thinking about what we can offer in relation to the work that we do. I’m still waiting to go to a party and over a sausage on a stick for someone to ask me about the person I am, the things that matter to me, the relationships I value, it’s never happened. What does happen all the time is that people ask me about the job that I do and as more alcohol is consumed somewhere in the room you will hear people talking about how much money they earn. These are the things that people want to know, what you do, and how much you earn. Getting people to think about the skills they can offer in relation to their job title has been so far easy.

The conversation starts to slow down a bit when I talk about the other things we can all offer. The invisible operating system, the things that we should value about being human. Its reminding me of when I was studying counselling (one of the many half hats I own) and one of the first things that we would do in class was to talk about who we are. People really struggled to come up with three words to describe who they are. When I say people I include myself. It was hard and it took some real thinking and ingrained within that thinking was a sense of sadness. Sad in the sense that after 24 years I couldn’t come up with a few words to describe who I was. I could tell you about the work that I was doing, the things I wanted to buy etc but the important stuff, the human elements weren’t easily found.

It struck me that perhaps this is why people struggle to think about what they can offer (outside of their jobs) within a timebank. Perhaps it’s because we don’t think about who we are, and what we can offer on a humanistic level enough. Taking time to reflect is like finding time to do anything, for some people its just seems very hard. I know a couple of people who take 30 minutes out each day to reflect on themselves and the day they have had. They are some of the happiest people i know. I imagine that they could come up with three words to describe themselves instantly. With that being said it may be time to change the presentation that I carry around with me to include a couple of very important prompts as to what people can offer …………………kindness, resilience, love, optimism, respect, presence, care, and time.

Take the risk of thinking for yourself, much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.

A slight diversion. Christopher Hitchens came late to me in life, but at least he came to me, unlike so many other things……….Below are a few extracts which resonate with me. A great loss to the many,who have learned so much from him.

There have been moments of reverie, wreathed in smoke and alone with a book, and moments of conversation, perfumed with ashtrays and cocktails and decent company, which I would not have exchanged for a year of ordinary existence

That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence

Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay

My fathers name was dad, my mothers mum and without them i would not be here. We ‘ALL’ have value and no one ever makes it without any help. I’m interested in how we can work together ‘simply’ as well as innovatively to create better communities and public services. My blog is called one whistle, one bell as that is what i have to offer. What we have to offer ‘together’ is a whole different proposition.