Still Thinking

I love it when my personal reading places me firmly on the sacred ground of all of my interests. When the signal is so strong, it leaves no room for doubt. In my re/forever reading of belonging: a culture of place by bell hooks, I came across this passage referencing the essay "Local Matters" by Scott Russell Sanders, found in his book Secrets of the Universe: Essays on Family, Community, Spirit, and Place:

It is rare for any of us, by deliberate choice, to sit still and weave ourselves into a place, so that we know the wildflowers and rocks and politicians, so that we recognize faces wherever we turn, so that we feel a bond with everything in sight. The challenge, these days, is to be somewhere as opposed to nowhere, actually to belong to some particular place, invest oneself in it, draw strength and courage from it, to dwell not simply in a career or a bank account but in a community...Once you commit yourself to a place, you begin to share responsibility for what happens there.

Within these words is great responsibility yes, but also the promise of hope and liberation that comes from making a choice.

Eager to read Sanders' essay, I did a search and stumbled upon "Finding Our Place" a 2010 blog post written by Curtis Ogden for the Interaction Institute for Social Change. I stumbled upon this reflection – a statement about the class privileged consumerism of places – and a question that consumes me that I wish consumed others more...

I’ve been thinking that there is a big difference between residing in and inhabiting a place.  And I believe this difference has a lot to say about whether we are simply consumers or also creators, observers or also participants, and if we are in this for the long haul.  I’m feeling the need to dig in more deeply.  You?  What’s the place of place in your own change efforts?

Further exploring Curtis's work, I discovered this treatise or values set on network-weaving: 20 Behaviors for Strong Network Culture and “Net Effects”. All are excellent, but here are a few that really stand out to me with my notes in end parentheses.

• Weave connections and “close triangles”. Closing triangles means introducing people to one another, as opposed to networking for one’s own self – creating a mesh or distributed structure rather than a hub-and-spoke structure with you at the center. (Maximizes your impact whilst deconstructing your power, and ensures organic continuity.)
• Create connections across boundaries/dimensions of difference. Invite and promote diversity in the network, which can contribute to resilience and innovation.
• Think, learn, and work out loud, in the company of others or through virtual means. This contributes to the abundance of resources and learning in the network. (It also vanquishes shame and embarrassment, which is especially important to model when working with youth – but also, everyone!)
• Promote others and their work.
• Create and use platforms (in-person convenings and virtual sites) that allow people to find one another, create new connections, match interests/offers with needs, and share information freely. (Artifacts or it didn't happen. Data of all kinds is being erased by people in power. It's critical that artists, creators, and practitioners of all kinds create mini-libraries of information.)
• Support, encourage, and practice self-organization (letting people organize their own work and decisions, rather than directing it from the top). (Model and trust, model and trust.)

Also, The Curse of Linearity in a Networked World (and the Gift of the Meandering Path, which serves up the helpful reminders on the meaningful inefficiencies inherent in organic network (and life) building.

Those who struggle tend to expect change to happen in a straight line: set a goal, make a plan, execute it step by step. Networks rarely work that way.

Another powerful aspect of networks is what is called “emergence” – innovation and new forms of organizing that result from diverse members interacting with one another without too many constraints. New thinking and insights come from the meeting of different fields, experiences, and perspectives. Creativity often comes through initially expanding options and inviting divergent thinking, which takes us away from the initial impulse to control.

The inconvenient truth is that networks, like Life itself, are…inconvenient. When we work hard to try to control and simplify them into linearity and predictability, we end up taking the vitality and potential out of them. While that may give us a short-term sense of being on top of things, the messiness will find some way of getting to us.