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We are, almost all of us, quietly wounded.
Kindness is fundamental to human nature.
An unkind human being is, to a greater or lesser degree, a reaction to pressure on an unhealed wound – with a list of pressures that turn neighbor against neighbor.
There are those who use that pain to their advantage, to separate us.
The best weapon we have to fight with is coming together.
In small groups, of small groups, of larger groups demanding our voices be accurately reflected with immediate consequences for not carrying out the will of the people to represent/
Pretty simple.
Democracy and reaching consensus is messy and it takes time, but it is far better than the alternative.
The most radical thing you can do this week to support your community is meet and really get to know the stories of 3 strangers this week.
Around the world, small voices are speaking about the damages of inequality.
The oppressed are finding voices in the public square again, as though the printing press has been reinvented and paper is free.
The power is there, all we have to do is reach for it and yield it wisely.
And to use it wisely, all we need is to be gently deprogrammed away from fear and hatred, and reminded to take enough measured risk to trust the stranger and see what she might have to share.
Just that. Share our Strengths. Our joy. Our hope!
In this historic moment, I am going to attempt to place my stick in the place where my sort of voice will have the greatest leverage – while asking others to do the same. Because diversity of voices is the point.
Even scientifically, which of course we are not taught, 100 totally random people will solve any problem better than 100 specialists alone. In a simple example,100 random people guessing the accurate weight of a single pig will give wildly divergent and inaccurate answers. But funny thing happens when those numbers are averaged, they are nearly spot on.
Same with building a bridge. If all the people in the room are engineers, they will be talking about metal and materials and load bearing and math.
Once you bring in a farmer, the bamboo grower, a farmer, a mother, a grandmother, care givers, those able and disabled who have to traverse the bridge, a forester, a laborer, a driver of vehicles that delivers things, walkers, people who manage budgets, watershed and habitat – fishermen and folks that want clean water – then labor time required measured against benefits, and then you have all the ingredients to create a functional, lasting plan for a solution that exists for a season or a century depending on the community’s actual needs. Experts give expert solutions. Communities create consensus solutions. Are these the “best” decisions? Who outside a community knows best what is good for that community?
Roman roads lasted thousands of years beyond their empire. What a marvel. They were not built for trade or even to benefit the communities they plowed through. They were built for armies to transport troops, conquer, and then return with captured humans and plunder, while establishing “governors” to plunder more resources and soldiers to serve Rome.
Maybe we don’t build things like we used to.
But perhaps we should be building them as we need them to be – for us. For here, for us, our children and their children and the rest of the life we would like to sustain us in this region.
What if we know that best where we are? Why aren’t you asking before you ask for my vote?
Oh, you are afraid to show up?
She wasn’t. She wants to hear my story. She is listening. She showed up. You didn’t. Not only that, but she talked to my neighbor, and his neighbor, and their neighbors, and she sat down and listened.
Do we have to move so fast? Why do we have to work so many hours to survive in such a rich country? Who set this up? We didn’t. How did we get here? Why don’t we have the time for conversation and agreement?
I have found some towns that have designed these for modest budgets – wanna pool our money, visit and see what they know?
Whadda ya say?
Wanna invent a new future?
This is America baby. If we dream it, we can build it. The great experiment.
Time to take it back again.
Multiple groups of people all around the world are solving local problems ingeniously in this way. But who reports these stories?
I want to.
They are proof that we are not born to be selfish.
Can we live within at least a moderate compromise that we invent to satisfy and therefore preserve the needs and managed ambitions of all life in a balanced, healthy way?
It’s been done before. By most, for likely 200,000 years.
Love,
Sarah