12 « August « 2011 « creatingreciprocity

Image by Antonio Marano via Flickr

The best way to approach many issues, both in our private lives and our societies, is to spend some time examining the underlying principles that apply.

A principle is a fundamental truth or guideline that can assist us to make discrete decisions as we move from situation to situation. Unlike sets of rules, which can be rigid and need constant revision, principles are flexible and organic and they allow for both individual differences and change.

Take the principle of equality for example. Equality is not an easy concept for us. We have no real framework for equality so it is hard for us to work it out. We understand high and low, up and down, better and worse but equality – as in things being equal – is much harder for us to see.

Let’s imagine, for the purposes of this exercise, that we are running a country and that we all agree that everybody is equal and has an equal right to education.

Next we have to resource this educational system – so we divide up our education budget by the number of children to be educated. In other words we make sure that each child gets exactly the same slice of the pie. Seems equal so far?

Now, however, we discover that some of our children have learning disabilities and therefore more resources are needed for them if they are to benefit from our educational system. This means there is no way we can treat everybody the same and hope for the same outcome.

So we have to return now to our principle of equality and see what we must do so that each child has whatever he/she needs to be educated. If we fix our gaze on the goal – namely that each of our children has a fair and equal opportunity for education – and then we can work out what we need to do in order for this to happen.

This is an over simplified example but it does demonstrate the importance of principles. Without clear principles, we become bogged down in the ‘rules’ we have created and very often lose sight of our goals.

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