The current economic uncertainty here and in Europe, and what the UK might do to 'grow its economy' enough to be able to pay off its debts is a key challenge at the moment. I get a sense many people feel that a return for the UK to manufacturing (beyond our reliance on 'banking and finance') is considered key - following the trend set by Germany over the last few decades. From reading the papers and watching the news on TV, I understand we're good at high-tech manufacturing ( - like Formula 1 racing cars), and also innovation in 'bio-technology', and computing.
So what do we need to do to enhance such 'high-tech-ness' and innovation? Steve Jobs (Founder etc of Apple) talked about 'staying hungry, and staying foolish' which I heard on Radio 4's Today Programme, the day he died - on the 6th October. This might have passed me by except that later in the programme there was a feature on a new play opening at Hampton Court Palace entitled 'All the King's Fools' exploring the relationship between Henry VIII and his court jesters, or fools, whose role "was not only to entertain the king but to bring him truth, (given) the fools were thought to be conduits to the divine - able to channel the word of God to the monarch" (BBC News online). According to Dr Lipscomb (Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia) the "natural fools" in the king's court "might well equate to somebody with learning difficulties or learning disabilities today".
So, are there any 'natural fools' that Steve Jobs might have referred to, to exemplify what he meant? He might have mentioned Bill Gates of Microsoft who is autistic, or Albert Einstein with Aspergers Syndrome, or Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, who had a learning disability, as did Thomas Edison who invented the electric light bulb. In addition both Henry Ford, and Leonardo da Vinci had dyslexia.
(Look also at a blog I wrote in 2009 entitled 'Boppi's song and Darwin's survial of the fittest': http://nigelfenner.blogspot.com/2009/09/boppis-song-and-darwins-survival-of.html )
Today though in our society, it strikes me that having a disability is by definition viewed negatively, so that there is little opportunity for disabled people to develop any capacity to be 'conduits to the divine', and / or become the next generation of innovators needed at this time in the UK.
I hope though at Hertfordshire PASS we give people with a 'learning or physical challenge' ( - the term that the PASS staff who are disabled prefer to call themselves) opportunity to innovate. This comes from being user-driven so that now we have staff in place who lead on pioneering innovative solutions promoting independence for their (disabled) peers. Such innovations we can boast include an apprenticeship programme resulting in Hertfordshire PASS being one of only two charities listed in the Top 100 Apprentice Employers in the UK for 2011 by City & Guilds, and the National Apprenticeship Service. We're also pioneering the first ever (so we are told) apprenticeship in 'being an employer of personal assistant(s) / carer(s)' so enabling (disabled) people to live independently, rather than being taken into care by the local authority.
I'm not saying that what we're doing can solve the UK's current economic woes, but with economists and politicians 'scratching their heads' regarding what should be done, we do feel we have something to offer.
An update about fools from Radio 4's Today programme 'Thought for the Day' given By Clifford Longley - 31st October 2011
"Good morning
I came across a track-suited Jimmy Savile in the flesh in London in 1982, during the visit of Pope John Paul II. He was fooling around, telling people where to stand to get the best view of the Holy Father, as he called him, as the Pope went past. But Jimmy himself wasn’t stopping, as he wanted to race the Popemobile to the next papal engagement.
Jimmy Savile was a man of faith as well as a keen marathon runner, and he was awarded a knighthood by the Pope as well as by the Queen. Equally proud of both, he insisted his title and the initials KCSG, his papal honour, appear on his television credits.Probably he thought it was all slightly ridiculous. If we wanted a category to put him in, it would have to be as a “holy fool.” This is an interesting and remarkable group of people that includes St Francis of Assisi and even John the Baptist. We encounter “holy fools” in various novels by Dostoevsky, and in the Russian Orthodox Church they even had a special name for them - the yurodivy.
The idea comes originally from St Paul when he wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians “We are fools for Christ’s sake...” and later “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight.”
There is no room for holy fools in the wisdom of the world, which tends to take a cynical view of anyone remotely eccentric. So Jimmy Savile had to endure endless media insinuations about his private life.
That was the cross he bore. But it did not stop him becoming one of Britain’s greatest philanthropists and money raisers, who lived frugally and gave away 90 per cent of what he owned.
His gift was to see the humanity even in the most marginal sections of the community, such as the inmates of Broadmoor with which he developed a strong association. He was drawn, it is said, to anybody in a wheelchair, and he surely ought to become the patron saint of Stoke Mandeville Hospital, for whose special injuries unit he raised millions.
In the Bible it is not St Paul who best puts his finger on the holy fool phenomenon, however, but Jesus himself, when he declared “Anyone who humbles himself as this little child, will be greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
There was something very unselfconscious about Jimmy Savile. It was not so much a pathological refusal to grow up, as an unwillingness to let go of the natural simplicity and humility of his own childhood personality - and the spontaneous pleasure of living without anxiety from one moment to the next. And foolish or not, that is close to holiness."
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