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greenspringvalley
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greenspringvalley
Member since : May-28-2009 (Verified)
2 Ideas, 22 Comments, 25 Votes
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I'm not at all sure if this is a good idea myself, but it did cross my mind. Lots of people who live on shoestring budgets are stuck in jobs that don't exactly jive with their personal conscience. Everyone benefits from ethical factories. Unemployment gives people a chance to pursue other lines of work. Under the current system, if a minimum wage worker is asked to dump oil in a river, he may not feel that he has a choice. That's kind of a wierd system. If he quits for ethical reasons, he can't draw unemployment, and will likely end up jobless in an economy without jobs. Anyone who is stressed because of conflicting values is probably a fairly good person. I don't know the math, but I'm thinking that these kinds of subtle considerations will probably help the economy in the long run, since a house full of honest people will have more stuff than a house that doesn't give a darn.
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"Blinking Words" (an MIT term) are words or phrases that take on many possible interpretations, and where definitions blink between different meanings depending upon who hears it. Ambiguities in language can lead to variation in public action.
A SIMPLE Open-to-the-Public Dialogue web project inviting the public to list ALL blinking words (surrounding specific areas of public action and public money) could make the extent of this problem visible. (Imagine a resource, all gathered from public input, that lists all ambiguous terms and contradictory definitions.)
This is a VERY simple thing to do.
For example, a public website announces the "Blinking Words Project".
For example, the first participant adds three entries as "blinking words":
"community building", "Dialogue", "engagement"
Other participants add additional interpretations to entries, or add new entries. Public discourse is an essential element.
An exploration of "Blinking words" is an excellent focus for this. Blinking words are NOT simply standard homonyms, since alternative interpretations can include unofficial definitions, sales speak, newspeak, etc.
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