Sean Kershaw's Weblog
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July 25, 2010
David Brooks and a "civic policy agenda"
David Brooks' speech at the Aspen Ideas Festival is fantastic. Many people have probably listened to it.
But listen especially starting at minute 44:00.
When we talk about a "civic policy agenda" -- Brooks is getting at what we mean. Policy has to speak to, and from, what motivates people. And we have to remember that this happens in the context of other people, institutions, and social/cultural/political systems.
P.S. I invited him to talk with us, but was politely declined. We'll keep trying.
Posted by Sean Kershaw at July 25, 2010 9:26 PM
Comments
Sean, I liked his speech as well. Aspen Institute now has a rough transcript of the speech now posted at:
http://www.aifestival.org/library/transcript/Aif10_066_David%20Brooks.pdf
The video of the speech is at:
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/video/aspen-ideas-festival-2010-educating-emotions-david-brooks
and the video has a slider that you can drag to whatever minute you want.
The transcript is not correlated with minutes so I'm not sure what section you're referring to. But it's a searchable PDF so you should be able to nail down which page you recommend people start at. I search for your quote "civic policy agenda" but didn't find it.
Griff
Posted by: Griff Wigley | August 3, 2010 7:02 AM
Thank you, Sean, for drawing attention to this important speech. I think you have missed the point of his speech, however. It's not that public policy happens in the context of institutions, other people, etc. I think his point is that so much public policy has failed to take into account or recognize the subtle messages that people receive and react to at the subconscious level and that it is why the policies don't have the intended effects of the policy writers. I believe that CL has the potential and organizational structure to look at public policy through this new and exciting perspective, but my actual experience with CL indicates that it is too tied to its past policy positions to be able to recognize the value this exciting new thought perspective could have on writing effective public policy and inspiring imaginations to develop new ideas and explanations as to why past policies have not had the intended effects.
Posted by: Ellen Hoerle | August 31, 2010 2:37 PM