Care and Order
This article first appeared in the Minden Times and Haliburton Echo in July 2026.
I was listening recently to a press interview with a mayoralty candidate, and marvelling at the mismatch between the questions asked and the answers (if they could be called that) given. It tipped me into thinking about how we can learn the things we need to know about the people for whom we will or will not vote come next October.
And that made me revisit my doctoral research, where the primary challenge was getting relatively inarticulate (or at least unpracticed, unheard) youth to tell me what I needed to know to say something intelligent about the nature and functioning of their world.
It was a humbling and instructive journey, chewing at (I won’t say solving) that problem.
Here’s what I learned that I think is relevant to our current circumstances, where aspiring politicians are not as articulate as we need them to be to make a well-informed choice about how to exercise our right and duty to vote next October.
First, that there are two languages (or ethical orientations) used to describe human conditions. One is Order and the other is Care. Both are valid. Neither, on its own, is sufficient. A good candidate is one who is bilingual, that is, can speak either language, and also knows which language is appropriate to apply to which situation.
For example, in the interview I was listening to, the reporter asked an Order question – What do you think about strong mayor powers? – and the candidate answered in Care language – I’m not in favour; democracy is important to me. So we learned nothing about what they know or understand about strong mayor powers and only that they believe it to be antithetical in some unarticulated way to whatever they think democracy is.
To back up for just a minute and characterize these two languages: Order is law-ish. It references Roles, Rules, and Reciprocity (more frequently these days called transaction). It asks what’s your job, what are the rules as they apply to that job, and how can you manipulate those rules to get the desired outcome. It presumes winners and losers.
Care is psycho-social-ish. It references Inclusiveness, Responsiveness, and Minimizing harm. It asks who all plays a part in this situation, how are their actions responsive to circumstances, and how can the harm of any decision be minimized. It presumes mediation, give and take, negotiation. Win-win as best can be.
Lest you think I’m saying Order is bad and Care is good, not at all. I have often sat on boards or committees where everyone cares passionately about the matter at hand, but the structure and procedures for who does what to get from where we are to where we want to get to is not on the agenda. We wallow for weeks in indecision and ineptitude, everyone pulling valiantly but not in an agreed-upon direction, playing power games, flashing penalty cards. A tower of Babel. I homicidally search for my ice pick.
I have also worked for most of my professional life in environments that are so rigid and regulated that wringing humanity out of the options available is nigh onto impossible. Where if you care about the intent of your job you finagle, you manipulate, you are creatively truthful. You play the system – which is an order orientation.
But here’s how bilinguality works: you play the system with the system, not with the people. With the people you are inclusive, responsive and minimize harm, knowing that some harm to some one is inevitable in pretty much every situation. We are always balancing this against that. No free lunches.
So back to mayoralty candidates: what we’re looking for bilinguality, someone who can demonstrate that they know the rules, roles and reciprocity of the system within which they will work, and can articulate how they will work that system in a way that is inclusive, responsive and minimizes harm.
Government is, after all, a legislated system, a network of rules and regulations, tiers of organizational authority and accountability, intersecting mandates and methodologies. The Haliburton Highlands Healthy Democracy Project is doing excellent work to educate us about these complexities.
But if the people in these elected positions of power do not also care about the impact of their exercise of power, we can only hope they see us, individually, personally, as winners rather than losers, at least some of the time. Rather than holding them accountable (because in the Order framework, that is our role only at election time), we can make nice or make bad, kiss ass or complain. Neither particularly pleasant nor productive. (We may recognize this reality in our current geopolitical world.).
And expressions of Care need to have the specificity of inclusiveness, responsiveness and minimization of harm. ‘I care about Democracy’ doesn’t cut it. Including who, in what circumstances, and how are the benefits and cost of a decision to be shared? What does win-win look like in x situation?
Go for it! Assess responses in upcoming conversations as ‘care’ or ‘order’, and where you hear one orientation, ask about the other. It’ll be humbling and instructive, I promise.
