On the precarious situation of the civil service
I recently read an interesting look at how the stable, impartial civil service was created, and how it was different from the partial, ever-changing system of government workers before it—and how it’s slowly being dismantled by the Trump administration.
Essentially, the old system used to prioritize jobs for allies and friends of the elected officials, which understandably led to turmoil and upheaval when new people came into office. In order to have a more efficient and effective public service, there needed to be a nonpartisan and impartial group of experts who would prioritize service to citizens and residents, rather than simply serving the whims of whomever was in power. Hence the introduction of the civil service as we know it now.
As a career public servant, I’m extremely proud of what I do: providing excellent service to the people of this province no matter who is in charge politically. It’s extremely hard to hear people talk poorly about civil servants because all the ones I work with and know work incredibly hard to make lives better for others.
Most of the work I’ve done in government has been in the sphere of talent: how we ensure that we have the right people in government to best deliver services and create good policy, and then how we create the conditions where those people can grow and thrive and feel belonging and investment. People are the backbone of the civil service—the government could not run without the right people working its machinations—so working in talent has been a passion of mine over the past decade. Maybe that’s why this article resonated so much: in order to have a functioning society, we need to empower public servants rather than malign them:
The country's civil service could use reform--to empower it. Right now, Washington's bureaucrats are mired in bureaucracy, tasked with meeting strict and onerous procedural requirements rather than achieving the government's policy goals. Hiring rules make it hard for Washington to poach experienced workers from private industry; procurement rules make outsourcing over-common and expensive.
There’s a lot we can do to make government service delivery and decision-making more effective, and most of that comes from strengthening the civil service rather than dismantling it. (And why I’m committing my career to making government better.) That’s why it’s disheartening to see what’s happening in the USA, and what’s being threatened here in Canada too; tearing down the systems and structures that serve citizens and residents will make life worse for everyone.
All that to say, take a moment to reach out and thank a public servant if you get a chance. It isn’t always easy to be one these days.
Gina Trapani made a week-by-week map of her life, and I think it’s fantastic.
I wish I had records or memory of what I was doing every week of my life—it’s such a fantastic way to visualize a life well lived and a pretty amazing legacy to leave for future generations too.
There’s a book I’ve been meaning to read by Oliver Burkeman called Four Thousand Weeks that outlines the incredible brevity of human life when we look at it through the lens of weeks lived. I hear it’s more of a time-management, self-help-like book, but the idea of it is interesting to me; it’s so easy for a week to fly by without really feeling like we’ve fully lived it. If we only have four thousand of them, there’s an important impetus to live each one with intention.
Gina links to the Your Life in Weeks post on Wait But Why which essentially says the same thing:
It kind of feels like our lives are made up of a countless number of weeks. But there they are--fully countable--staring you in the face.
There’s a concept in blogging called weeknotes that is actually a really great way to think about taking stock of the week that just went by. (My friend Lucas does something similar—though he doesn’t call it weeknotes—with his excellent weekly Hit & Miss newsletters.) It’s a habit that I might take up (not on my blog, but in my personal journal) to help me remember that each week is precious and should be accounted for.
The past week has been a hectic one: returning from vacation, catching up on work, and taking care of our daughter when she was home from school for two days because of snow and sickness. It has felt like it has flown by, but I’m also reminded that we’ve done a ton of fun things—hung out at the Children’s Museum, decorated cookies, celebrated Valentine’s Day, gone swimming, played in the snow, eaten at an amazing restaurant, spent time with my parents and brother, and so much more—that have been invigorating and joyful. A week well lived; here’s to many more.
A poem
Make the Ordinary Come Alive
William Martin
Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples, and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.
(thanks to Mehnaz for sharing this with me)
Some links
I don’t have many links to share today because I spent most of my time online reading and reflecting on one piece: Ed Zitron’s polemic on the Rot Economy and how the technology that is pervading (and ruling) our lives is intentionally making things worse for us. I strongly recommend you read it if you’re at all interested in society, culture, technology, the economy, or even basic human dignity. It’s a long read, but every minute is worth it:
The picture I am trying to paint is one of terror and abuse. The average person’s experience of using a computer starts with aggressive interference delivered in a shoddy, sludge-like frame, and as the wider internet opens up to said user, already battered by a horrible user experience, they’re immediately thrown into heavily-algorithmic feeds each built to con them, feeding whatever holds their attention and chucking ads in as best they can.
Reading Ed’s piece made me think of Nicholas Carr’s new book, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart, which piqued my interest when I read this excellent review of it by Philip Ball in the LA Review of Books:
With older media, the friction of the interface provided some space for reflection and hierarchizing significance. What was on the front pages or what led the news bulletins was what we heeded most. Music had to be sought out and didn’t come with an infinite stream of more. Digitization has become a “universal solvent” for all information, fed to the same device on the same platform with a convenience and ease that becomes a curse. We have evolved to seek, says Carr, but with the internet, there is no natural curb to that desire, and never any sense of satiation. Reality can’t compete with the internet’s steady diet of novelty and shallow, ephemeral rewards. The ease of the user interface, congenial even to babies, creates no opportunity for what writer Antón Barba-Kay calls “disciplined acculturation.”
Kevin Kelly just posted a list of travel tips from 50 years of travel and there are so many excellent pieces of advice in there. Worth reading now, and while you’re planning your next trip.
Turns out having a “second stomach” for dessert is kinda scientifically accurate.
Enjoyed this piece by Jaya Saxena about “childish” comfort foods:
Americans have never not wanted things like mozzarella sticks and chicken tenders. But lately there has been an air of fervor around the simple, the lightly childish, the don’t-make-me-think-too-hard foods. The reverence for craft, artisanal, personal foods has led to a certain exhaustion with fussiness, and an embrace of what is good and uncomplicated. We don’t want to be challenged. We don’t want to think. We just want to laugh at the sheer stupidity when we see the menu. This is LOLfood.
I think a lot about retirement these days: not just how I will be financially prepared, but about how to pass the time, when to retire, where to find fulfillment, and even if my career will be able to take me into retirement age in a world where a younger workforce is desired over an older one. This piece by Cathrin Bradbury on the end of retirement was a sobering look at what work — and retiring from work — will look like as we age.
I’ve read quite a few great things about parenting over the last few years since becoming a father, but this short paragraph by gowns (via Kottke) made me tear up a little and it’s worth quoting in full:
man the crazy thing about babies is that like, some people would think that reading a baby a book about farm animals is teaching them about farm animals, but really it's teaching them about the concept of a book and how there's new information on each page of a single object, but really, beyond that, it's teaching them how language works, and beyond that it's really actually teaching them about human interaction, and really really it's them learning about existing in a three-dimensional space and how they can navigate that space, but actually, above all it is teaching them that mama loves them.
Our little one isn’t a baby anymore, but reading to her is still one of my favorite things to do.