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Thursday, October 16, 2014

UPG: Unconditional Positive Regard & Rankism

In medical situations, particularly in the area of mental health, ‘cares’ are required to have, need to have, productive and healing relationships with their patients /clients/ charges. This was once left to intuition and as something a ‘good care’ would innately know about and put into practice largely as an outcome of experience. Largely it is still the case.

Carers cannot ”love” their charges albeit that in some caring relationships it might be said that they do in a kind of way. Not romantic, erotic or spiritual love but something else.

What else? Increasingly ‘caring practices’ while regarding such emotional attachments between the cared-for and the carer as inappropriate/ unprofessional/ improper/ unhealthy, there was still a need to ‘theorise’ the ‘ideal relationship’ in a contemporary and professional context.

Thus UnconditionalPositive Regard (UPR), was the term that had some resonance, and that won some currency, in the increasingly intellectualised world of mental healthcare and other branches of healthcare.

The humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers is said to have coined the term to describe the basic acceptance and support of a person regardless of what the person says or does. Supposed a less complex and more easily applied concept than ”love” with all the baggage that idea carries.

By extension, UPR might well have some currency in regard to the world’s of governance and management.  It’d be not only unrealistic but also totality inappropriate to require politician to love their constituents. Nonetheless, in an ideal world both politician and constituent might well be expected to hold each other in ‘high regard’ and quite possibly in UPR.

Arguably when we vote, what we’re aiming to do is divine this UPR kind of relationship and vote accordingly. Largely it’s probably done intuitively and subconsciously. When we vote it might be useful, when looking for ‘accountability’, to look for the UPR factor, or its potential at least, when ranking the candidates.

In local government, a Council that had collective and mutual UPR for the constituency and visa versa would be utopian. It might be unlikely but it is worth shooting for!

And then there is “RANKISM”.  The author and citizen diplomat Robert W. Fuller says rankism is an assertion of superiority. It typically takes the form of putting others down. It's what "Somebodies" do to "nobodies." Or, more precisely, it is what people who think they're Somebodies do to people they take for nobodies… It turns out that rankism is the source of most man-made suffering.“

The prospect of governance unblighted by rankism and in a community where there is mutual UPR between governance and constituents is perhaps too utopian to count on but it is worth aspiring towards.

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