The Common Sense of Community

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Demos, 1994 - 63 pages
 

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Page 4 - Give a man a fish, as the saying goes, and you are helping him a little bit for a very short while; teach him the art of fishing, and he can help himself all his life. On a higher level: supply him with fishing tackle; this will cost you a good deal of money, and the result remains doubtful; but even if fruitful, the man's continuing livelihood will still be dependent upon you for replacements. But teach him to make his own fishing tackle and you have helped him to become not only self-supporting,...
Page 15 - ... incentives that would make staying married and attending to one's children more attractive. And we should go after parents who cease to pay for their children after divorce, both because it is their duty and to make divorce less lucrative. My main concern, though, is not with incentives or punishments, but with the need for a change of heart: people need to enter marriage more responsibly and be more committed to making it work. Marriage and the Childless Couple So far the discussion has deliberately...
Page 41 - But it revolutionizes with technical means, in principle, as does every economic reorganization, "from without": It first changes the material and social orders, and through them the people, by changing the conditions of adaptation, and perhaps the opportunities for adaptation, through a rational determination of means and ends.
Page 4 - The best aid to give is intellectual aid, a gift of useful knowledge. A gift of knowledge is infinitely preferable to a gift of material things. There are many reasons for this. Nothing becomes truly 'one's own' except on the basis of some genuine effort or sacrifice.
Page 13 - Not even the family has been immune to the ideology of choice. In the 1960s and 1970s (but less so today) books were written advocating "alternative" families and "open" marriages. A couple could choose to have a trial marriage , a regular marriage but without an obligation to sexual fidelity, or a revocable marriage with an easy exit provided by no-fault divorce. A woman could choose to have a child out of wedlock and to raise it alone. Marriage was but one of several "options...
Page 37 - The neighbourhood officer's role might first be to help people to gain the confidence to formulate and express shared goals.
Page 15 - ... they come from. What Can We Do? What we need now, first of all, is to return more hands and, above all, more voices to the "parenting industry." This can be accomplished in several ways, all of which are quite familiar but are not being dealt with nearly often enough. Given the forbearance of labor unions and employers, it is possible for millions of parents to work at home. Computers, modems, up- and downlinks, satellites, and other modern means of communication can allow you to trade commodities...
Page 40 - The array of quangos and trusts have been rightly criticised as unaccountable to their local communities. But reconceived to embed them in the area they serve, with clear lines of accountability and clear rights for local communities to remove those that don't perform, new self-governing agencies have the potential to be much more responsive and entrepreneurial than when they were locked into the monopoly of local government.
Page 15 - ... and the presence of only one effective parent. And to reiterate, there are some marriages for which divorce is the preferred solution. The most reasonable conclusion, based on a whole body of data, rather than dwelling on this or that study, is that divorce should not be banned or condemned, but that it should be discouraged. Easy divorces for parents are not in the interest of children, the community, or as we shall see, the adults involved. Changing the Moral Voice There is no magic pill that...
Page 2 - It shows how, in place of the old model of a local authority as a monopolist of power, we can build networks and clusters of institutions - collaborating groups of self-governing institutions that can help communities cohere, and give them fresh purpose and pride.

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