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Keith E Rice's Integrated SocioPsychology Blog & Pages

Aligning, integrating and applying the behavioural sciences

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Believing in Britain – Crisis of ‘British’ Identity

by Rachel Castagne I am honoured to publish this  ‘guest post’ by Rachel Castagne,  director and co-founder of the Centre for Human Emergence – UK – the foundation of which I wrote about in Britishness’ at the Regent’s College Summit. I am reading Ian Bradley’s book on ‘Believing in Britain’. I used to think it was ‘just me’ or that I was in a minority when I didn’t consider myself British (being born in Trinidad gave me the perfect excuse!) or want to, was in fact ‘ashamed’ of being British. When my daughter came home from school a few months ago and said she was ashamed of being British, I wondered if I had ‘passed on’ the sentiment, like a hereditary gene – although I knew she hadn’t always felt that way, she’s become aware of ‘Britishness’ as a national identity in her adolescence. Turns out, its not ‘cool’ to be Brit – turns out she’s not the only teen that feels that way…. In fact Bradley reports some interesting stats:- 2005 Social Attitudes Survey found 44% of the population said ‘British’ was the ‘best’ or only way of describing their national identity, as against 52% ten years earlier. Amongst those… Read More

Yesterday I met Zulfi Hussain MBE

Well, no, I didn’t actually get to meet Zulfi Hussain to say ‘Hello’ – but we were in the same room and we made eye contact and he will know who I am because I was the guy going on about the importance of values in understanding diversity. (“Hey, Zulfi, that was me…Keith Rice!”)   If I sound unusually humble and maybe even a little subservient – fawning, even! – not at all my usual pompous and arrogant self…well, I spent some time yesterday with one of those rare people who just make a difference in the world. Almost just by who they are. You just know, being with them, that you are in the presence of someone special – very special indeed!   I can probably number on one hand the people who have made me feel that way previously: Spiral Dynamics co-developers Don Beck & Chris Cowan, Meta-States developer L Michael Hall, ‘Inner Child’ specialist Penny Parks, maybe former Hidden Resources head honcho John Lavan….   The occasion was a get-together yesterday morning of some of the speakers and committed participants in the ruins of the 6th annual Yorkshire Leadership Conference. The Conference, so successful in previous years, had… Read More