Message-ID: <9902259199.AA919965900@hud.gov> Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 12:55:09 -0500 From: mailto:michael_o._patterson@HUD.GOV Subject: Re: Position in NIPFP, New Delhi, India RESPONSE To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
"Michael O. Patterson" writes: >
Respect is the center of the circle of community. Cooperation is its lifeblood. This is so true, it drives tears into may eyes. If the World Bank and its offspawns just realized it. YOU WILL NEVER SEE IT IF YOU DON'T PRACTICE IT. LET'S TRY A GHANDI QUOTE: YOU MUST BECOME THE CHANGE YOU WISH TO SEE> How is this series of messages getting anyone closer to their goals?
Anyone? It drives home that their staff are arrogrant, ingorant affirmative acction appointments. THE FIRST RULE OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IS TO WORK WITH WHAT YOU HAVE. > An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
Personally I'd think you'd first check out who you are talking with, before you utter this intellectually challenged effluent from the read end of a large horned animal usually ridden on by professional cowboys at rodeos. IT'S A GHANDI QUOTE, HOPE THAT'S OK WITH YOU. > Please, let's just let this one go.
Why? Don't bite hand that feeds you? HOW ABOUT BECAUSE RESULTS ARE THE ONLY REPORT CARD?
But your venom does provide this list with a major learning opportunity. I was set me a task 2 years ago: find a cheap way to deal with the bickering, quarreling, factions, and so on, that happen in housing. I set to my subconscious the question, "How can that be done?", and forgot about it. Asking questions is the most powerful thing you can do, because if you're patient and aware, you always get an answer. At a seminar of the CT Storytelling Center, Manitonquat, an elder and storyteller of the Wampanoag Nation, demonstrated how to do it.
Two people work together. One agrees to be the speaker, the other the listener/ drainer. The speaker speaks for 5 minutes, on whatever is important to them, whatever has "juice", whatever is bothering them, whatever comes up. The listeners have the more important job: they listen to everything said, with the body language of total interest. Lean forward slightly, make eye contact, follow what is said. The most the listener can say is "hmmm", or "oh". After 5, or 10 minutes, the roles reverse. It is best to pick whoever is most "different" from you, people you don't know.
I introduced the exercise at a training I did. I made the mistake of not saving the exercise for the end. I couldn't get people to come back; they were enjoying the exercise too much. Why couldn't organizers just share this exercise with a few residents? Once it catches on, well, isn't that exactly what we need? A cheap method where residents can "drain" each other of their resentments, at no cost except time? I've been to SO MANY meetings in my life where somebody had as their mission venting all the poison from their entire life. Venting poisons meetings. Also it is grossly disrespectful. Draining is best done one-on-one, or in groups of 3. The organizational alignment from a "drained" group of people, working on a mission, has to be seen and felt to be believed. [further info available from his nonprofit, StoryStone, 173 Merriam Hill Rd, Greenville, NH 03048, 603 878 3201]
A COMMUNITY IS THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF THE QUESTIONS ASKED ABOUT IT: SO YOU FORM THE COMMUNITY WITH YOUR QUESTIONS
Perhaps you could take a few moments to ponder these questions:
o What else is a community to you?
o In your ideal community, what would you see, hear, and feel? What is missing from what you have now?
o How could you have fun helping to create a little bit of that ideal community right now?
A very common question that I get, asked or unasked, when I work with people in communities, is "Why doesn't anybody care about our problems?" What a worthless question! What would you do with the answer to that question, even if you got it? See, you always get answers to your questions. QUESTIONS CREATE YOUR REALITY. Think of your mind as a genie- which always answers your questions. Feel the following worthless questions:
Why am I fat? Why am I so dumb? Why am I always broke?
Those questions feel sick- because they are sick. You'll get answers, too, and they will be depressing. Wouldn't it be more fun to focus your attention on more exciting questions? Like:
What can I do to make sure this never happens again? How can I have fun losing weight? Or better yet How can I have a blast losing weight, improving my health in dynamic ways while really having fun? [Now doesn't that feel better?] How can I learn lots of new, fun, exciting things, now? How can I learn many new things that will increase my delight in life, joy, vitality, and happiness? What would I really enjoy doing, that would dramatically increase my income?
Somebody always says, "Well, that may work for you, but my situation is different. OK, fine. It would be pretty bad to be in jail, right? Tortured? Colonel Rowe, U.S. Army, thought so. As a POW in North Vietnam, he was really depressed by it, and was ready to die. Then he noticed a mouse, in his cell. Having nothing else to do, he watched her. She was feeding her children. There wasn't a lot of food, but she was going out and finding it. He noticed that she was missing a leg- that she was getting around on 3 legs. Well, that's pretty bad, he thought. He studied how she moved, and realized that she was also blind. Here was a blind, 3-legged mouse, in an area with not much food, continuing her mission. He decided that if she could do it, so could he. And he started climbing out of his depression. It's all in the "frame" you put around events. I personally set the thermostat in my room at 40 deg. F. in the winter, and use one thin blanket, to increase my resistance to cold. I like that. For some readers, that would be agony. A friend of mine became the buyer for a major restaurant chain, at 20 years of age. He negotiated with people who had more years of experience than he'd been alive. He asked a very simple question: "What is the lowest price you could give me, where you would still want to do business with me?" It worked well for him.
Your situation is probably not that bad. So, it is a lot easier for you to ask this question: "What's fantastic about my situation?" Hey, ASK THE QUESTION, with deliberate, genuine intent. You will get an answer, that's just how your brain works. Ask questions that cover the entire process. "How can I be sure my Christmas cards are out on time?" is not the same as "How can I be sure my Christmas cards are received on time?". Why questions are for philosophers. Ask "How.?" and "What.?" questions, they are a lot more practical. Here's a few more power questions:
What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? How would you act? What would you see, hear, and feel if that were true?
Life is short, my friend. How would you live your life, if you knew you only had 24 hours to live? Because, you know, you really don't know how much time you have. All the "things" people say they want, are only a means to an end. What use is a car if you can't drive it, for example? People want "things" to help them achieve peak experiences. So. how can you make your life a succession of peak experiences, as you have fun improving your community, yourself, and your family?
How could you make your goals so exciting, enticing, seductive and alluring, that you just spent all your available time going after them, doing everything you possibly could to attain them? Virginia Satir used questions in a powerful way. Some years ago she worked with people on welfare. She wanted to show that everyone can be self-sufficient. She asked the county to pick a random group of people on welfare. She saw them as a group for three hours once a week. She also got some petty cash to work with [this whole story is a good model for successful community programs, with the petty cash playing the role of grants].
The first thing she asked after shaking hands with everybody was what their dreams were. They looked at her as if she were nuts. "Dreams? We don't have dreams.", they said. One woman said, "I don't know what you can do with dreams. The rats are eating up my kids." Virginia asked, "How can we fix that?" "Well", she said, "there are holes in my screen door that need fixing." Virginia asked, "Does anybody here know how to fix screen doors?" A man in the group said, "I used to do things like that, but now I have a bad back, but I could try." She gave him some money to buy screening to fix the lady's screen door.
The following week, she asked if the door was fixed. It was. "Then we can start dreaming, can't we?", said Virginia, and the woman smiled. Virginia asked the man who did the work how he felt. He said, "Well, you know, I'm feeling a lot better." The group began to dream. Seemingly small steps began to get people to see and feel that something really could happen. Virginia asked other people about their dreams. One woman always wanted to be a secretary. Virginia asked, "What's stopping you?" (That's always her next question). She said, "I have six kids, with no-one to take care of them." Virginia asked, "Could anybody here take care of six kids for a day or two a week while this woman gets training at the community college?" One woman said, "I got kids, but I could do that."
Everyone found something. The man who fixed the screen door became a handyman. The woman who took in the children became licensed to do foster care. In 12 weeks all of them were off welfare. Virginia did this not once, but many times- with questions.
I'd like to pose some questions: Most goals in America are "negative", like how can we reduce crime, say. What is the positive alternative? What is the exciting goal so compelling that violence just isn't interesting any more? Ask questions- the universe always answers them. If you don't like your life, ask new questions. Questions structure awareness, and action, and in time everything else. The Wampanoag Nation elder and storyteller Manitonquat says the creator put fun on the earth to mark correct solutions.
*How can we have more fun, healing our communities, through our work? How can we so fascinate people with community building efforts, how can we help them have so much fun, that they forget about TV and the other time wasters they engage in, and just pitch in and create their communities as a paradise?
*Who doesn't fit into our community? How can we bring them in, so they can have fun expressing their unique gifts? What you put your attention on grows. *How can we find great fascination in learning to use our attention, and respect, to bring a new world into being? *How can we harmoniously withdraw our attention from the old system, so it can return to the Void from whence it came, and gracefully attend to the new system, so it can achieve full potential in a beautiful way? *Since we needn't walk in the footsteps of the masters, how can we seek what they sought? How can we exceed their performance? *How can we, instead of wiping tears away, fascinate and inspire people, with better stories and respectful attention, so that they laugh and play again? How can we apply the lessons of the Dolphin, of play in work, of going with the flow, of the joy and power of the system of community? * How can we serve more people in a better way that is more fun? More effortlessly? How can we help change society's "channel selector" to the joy, happiness, and love channel, instead of the nightmare channel it seems to be on now? How can we help wake up the entire planet, to the Eden that our planet once was, and can be again? * How can we inspire people to go inside themselves, for the great reserves of strength, character, and energy there, so that they abandon their illusions of powerlessness, and heal society, by using the power of cooperation, fascination, and feeding interest? How could we so inspire people, that they just abandoned all the negative things they do, because they just weren't interesting any more? How could we create an economic system so compelling, so fascinating, so inspiring, that the negatives in our present system just vanished for lack of attention? *How could we create that same economic system, in the next 5 years, so that everyone has a job, housing, good food, is incorporated into a healthy community where their needs are met, and interests fed, and the opportunity to pursue happiness? *How could that societal system be so powerful, so enticing, that violent and immature people recognized that it was just a lot more fun to mature, and work with others? So powerful that people just enjoyed and learned from each other, in fun ways, and grew to spiritual levels that we cannot dream of at this time? *Since beauty is food for the soul, how can we add more beauty in our lives? In Bali there is no art, they just try to do everything well, in a beautiful way. How could we do everything we do in a beautiful way? *How can we have fun creating sparkling, harmonious, joyful, healing beauty in everything we do? It is a known maxim in community development that more than enough resources exist to solve all problems. That is true here. How can we reconnect the healthy systems of the earth, then, so that every nightmare people live now becomes a forgotten memory, preserved only in dusty archives? Everything necessary to create this is already in existence, now. How could we have more fun growing into awareness of this? How could we help every living being realize their heart-felt dreams, effortlessly, joyfully, and lovingly, as we realize our own?
This is nothing out of the ordinary; healthy indigenous communities were run this way far longer than our own ephemeral culture. Myths of Eden are a forgotten memory of such cultures. Tamarack Song's "Journey to the Ancestral Self", Manitonquat's "Return to Creation", Dhyani Ywahoo's and Twylah Nitsch's works all point the way, along with other books.
Thing is, we don't have any choice but to ask these questions, as our culture is dying, and we must birth its replacement. The only way out is through. Just try not to have too much fun...
When you want to do something locally, ask people "gee, who do you go to for help? Who plans the parties, and social occasions? Who runs the church functions?" Get names. Go to these people, get their interests in advance, if you can. Ask, for example, "Sure would be nice to have a computer center for the kids, to keep them out of trouble, wouldn't it." You'll get a yes. Ask, "I wonder who in the community would like to work together to make it happen?" Don't ask for help directly, not at first. Get recommendations. Welcome volunteers, of course. Note the power of your questions- especially when aligned with other people's interests.
------------- And, Eberhard: how could you have more fun, in a "win-win" way, that benefits people, that would accomplish your goals more effectively than your present method of pouring out venom?