Posts filed under 'Village Square 101'
I caught Sunday’s Meet the Press with Al Gore and thought I should look at what he said up against last season’s draft recommendations on “America’s Energy Future.” While googling the transcript, I found the transcript AND MORE.
Here are three reviews of the interview:
Take 1: “Watching this pompous windbag - who produces CARBON Dioxide - makes me want to poke my eyes out. It would be less painful. What a self-righteous hypocrite!”
Take 2: “Somewhere in the darkest recesses of the RNC (or from Norquist’s or Rove’s office, your pick) the fax machine was working over time making sure that Tom Brokaw had the latest GOP talking points to discredit Al Gore for his appearance on Meet the Press.”
Take 3: “… for a change, we got a TV talk show for grown-ups, where a burning issue of our time was discussed without a single gotcha moment.”
Hard to believe they all watched the same interview.
That got me thinking that the way we human beings choose and process information we use… it’s like drawing circles around the particulars of a situation we choose to assimilate. A conservative who doesn’t believe in man-made climate change picks out the parts of the interview that fall in his circle of concern, the liberal sees a whole different picture in the inkblot.
Of course, that’s simply human. Where the whole mess starts to get buggy is when we refuse to step outside of our circles, when we only listen to people inside our circles, and when we twist facts to shoehorn things into our circles that simply don’t belong there.
So, yeah… draw those circles, but I challenge you to be prepared to step outside of them. Or, better still, I challenge you to enlarge them.
Who knows what you might stumble over in the process.
July 23rd, 2008
The HBO Miniseries John Adams features in it a conversation between Dr. Benjamin Rush and Mr. Adams that probably never happened. They were discussing who should be told of Abigail Adams death (since Dr. Rush apparently preceded Mrs. Adams in death, it’s safe to assume the conversation is fictitious).
Dr. Benjamin Rush: What about Mr. Jefferson. Surely he will wish to share your sorrow.
Adams: If I should receive a letter from him, I would not fail to answer.
Rush: Perhaps if you were to write yourself?
Adams: The man did me and my reputation great insult. He honored and salaried every villain he could find who was my enemy.
Rush: Well that is why it is you who must show the magnanimity of great minds. I always considered you and him the north and south poles of our revolution. Some talked some wrote and some fought to promote and establish it but you and Mr. Jefferson thought for us all.
Thus, fictitiously of course, began the real letters between the “north and south poles” of our revolution that ended, poetically, in the death of Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson on the same day, the 4th of July, 50 years from the birth of the nation that they formed.
Adams wrote to Jefferson:
You and I have passed our lives in serious times and we have suffered ourselves to be the passive subjects of public discussion and reaped animosity and bitterness… But you and I ought not to die until we have explained ourselves to each other. As long as there is government, there will be differences of opinion… Whether you or I were right, posterity must judge, yet I ask of you who shall write the history of our revolution. Who can write it?
Who shall write the history of our revolution? Why, of course, it is no one but us.
Adams last words before his death were “Thomas Jefferson lives.”
Ironically, Jefferson had at that time already passed away.
But we live. The philosophical descendants of Jefferson and Adams are alive and well. The history of our revolution is still being written, this amazing experiment in “the course of human events.”
We write.
May 4th, 2008
“We describe ourselves very proudly as a democracy. The preamble of the constitution, which I think is a wonderful preamble. I think we ought to think about it almost literally everyday and ask, well, to what extent is government organized to realize the noble visions of the preamble. The preamble begins “We The People” it’s a notion of a people who can engage in self-determination.
What I have discovered is a real fear of popular government. I think that for a variety of reasons having to do with the nature of politics in recent years, there is this incredible mistrust of people who don’t share your views, and you think that they’re out in some ways to wreck the country. . .
If you actually talk to Americans in their own homes in their own workplaces, it’s not that everybody agrees, but they aren’t so polarized as our current political system is. And there really is the opportunity to create a more democratic politics but I think frankly ,and somewhat sadly, more and more people are losing that faith in popular government.”
- Sanford Levinson on PBS’s Bill Moyers’ Journal
December 22nd, 2007
“It seems to me that this country has become two choirs, each side listening only to its own preachers.” - Bill Moyers
December 19th, 2007
We’ve been thinking for a while now about just how this civility thing might go, and all that thinking has produced some ideas. Just to confuse you, here’s our tickler:
Bring your human brain.
Hold opinion lightly at times.
Eat potato salad, make potato salad.
Recognize horse manure before tracking it.
Find the wedge. Lose the wedge.
Fight like Founding Fathers.
Get (un)personal.
Lose the evil “they.”
Build your vocabulary.
Remove punctuation
Meet your batty brain.
Hold discomfort.
Be a comparison shopper.
Elevate substance over symbolism.
Err on the side of laughter.
Next week we will jump right in to discussion about bringing your human brain and leaving your lizard brain at home (when you come to the Village Square AND - we might humbly suggest as long as we’re being bossy - when you drive and when you vote).
October 26th, 2007
If you missed The Village Square on the NPR program Perspectives it is now up online here. Click on the “listen now” link for the September 27th show.
October 12th, 2007
Leading into our first big “Dinner at the Square” last Tuesday night, we did the press rounds and from that, I met a new friend who - after hearing us on the radio - sent me a link to a
New York Times op-ed by Patricia Limerick. Limerick writes, four months after her husband’s death, of my favorite Founding Father story - and so much more. . .
Founding a democracy, rather like living in a democracy, can be very tough on friendship.
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson began as friends. The tensions and frictions of the early Republic took care of that. Then, after years of silence between them, a mutual friend persuaded them to write to each other. In 1812, they launched into a correspondence that continued until it was ended by their deaths.
That ending point was on their minds and drove their correspondence. As Mr. Adams wrote Mr. Jefferson, “You and I ought not to die, before we have explained ourselves to each other.”
I fell in love with this quotation 30 years ago, about the same time that I fell in love with Jeff Limerick, and for some of the same reasons. Honest, self-aware and articulate, Jeff made “explaining himself” into an art form, but his performance soared past his fellow mortals when it came to the tougher side of this transaction. Jeff had a genius for listening and giving people the best opportunity to explain themselves and to become his friend.
On Feb. 1, 2005, Jeff died of a stroke. Having trained with a master, I carry on with the methods I learned from him.
When I find myself puzzled and even vexed by the opinions and beliefs of other people, I invite them to have lunch. Multiple experiments have supported what we will call, in Jeff’s honor, the Limerick Hypothesis: in the bitter contests of values and political rhetoric that characterize our times, 90 percent of the uproar is noise, and 10 percent is what the scientists call “signal,” or solid, substantive information that will reward study and interpretation. If we could eliminate much of the noise, we might find that the actual, meaningful disagreements are on a scale we can manage.
Limerick tells the story of a present-day seemingly intractable dispute, then admonishes, “It is surely time for lunch.”
A successful outcome would be a vindication of the faith held by Jefferson, Adams and Jeff Limerick. But even if I dine alone, I’ll still hold to the conviction that American citizens have the ability to explain themselves to one another, and to let friendship redeem the Republic.
I like to think that last Tuesday, inside one church, in one city, there were beginnings of just such friendships.
October 5th, 2007
One of my favorite movie lines is from The Year of Living Dangerously:
“You do whatever you can about the misery that’s in front of you. Add your light to the sum of light.”
The character speaking was Billy Kwan, played by Linda Hunt (cast alongside a young Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver). Though he was speaking of poverty in Indonesia, it doesn’t seem like a half-bad general admonition for a way to live a life.
At the foundation of The Village Square is the concept that, when it comes to politics, we’re in need of a bit of light right about now (and the big-for-our-britches ambition that we can contribute to the sum). Dr. Law, co-chair of our board of directors characterized us as seeking “less heat, more light.”
Of late, we’ve witnessed the growth of partisan online blogs, where people who generally agree with each other “talk” (and sometimes yell). This isn’t necessarily a bad thing - it’s civic engagement, it can be “light” but too often it turns into “heat.” Too many of us now belong to a side which pitches half an argument. Two sides with half an argument each is no substitute for citizens who understand a whole argument.
Here at The Village Square blog, we’ll strive for whole arguments. If we care about truth telling by public servants, we must care about truth telling by all public servants, on the right and the left. If we care about media accuracy, we must care about media accuracy whether it benefits the right or the left.
And as we launch our Village Square, we need to resist the temptation to vilify an average citizen on the “other” side, who is, in reality, our neighbor down the street, the nice woman at the bookstore, our kid’s softball coach. It’s so much harder to hate “people” when you meet them face-to-face.
That doesn’t mean becoming a doormat and failing to pitch or even appear to believe in your argument, as good argument is fundamental to The Village Square. But argument must incorporate a larger perspective that allows us to argue AND hold the tension of opposites at the core of our democracy. Maybe in these partisan times, our new forum will be our own version of “The Year of Living Dangerously?”
And, if there is anyone out there still listening to anything other than the sound of his or her own voice, maybe someone will notice.
July 22nd, 2007
In Thursday’s Tallahassee Democrat, Kim Williams (on the other side of the coal debate from Commissioner Katz) also authored a MY VIEW on lessons learned and the path ahead.
Mr. Williams reflected on his concern that tough fights like this tend to get unproductively personal and can degenerate into conspiratorial thinking, å la “the grassy knoll.” Mr. Williams’ take-home messages:
1. First, we still face an uncertain energy future. All of the “alternative energy” sources discussed to date simply will not meet our community’s growing energy needs. There is no simple answer, no magic potion or easy fix.
2. Second, we have to choose something, and we need to do it soon.
3. Third, we need to come together as a leadership community and solve this problem now. Understandably this issue can be an emotional and divisive one. But if we are to find a livable solution we must set aside our suspicions and our accusations and work to enlighten - not enrage - those who disagree with us.
Again, ignoring (for now) the “coal” part of our “coal postmortem,” heading straight toward process lessons learned, put into a Village-Square-ish context. . .
On “enlighten, not enrage those who disagree with us”: We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
While “. . . we need to do it soon” at first sounds contradictory to Commissioner Katz’s “slow down enough to make an informed decision” let’s go out on a limb and say that they’re each touching on aspects of good decision making. We have to take special care with facts, accurately understanding what’s in front of us. But we also have to take a look at what is around us. . . We have to care about context. Context can present real limitations on the time we have to solve a problem.
Maybe you won’t be surprised that it looks like we have more cornerstones for our Village Square:
1. Context matters.
2. Get (un)personal.
To recap all four:
1. Facts matter.
2. Context matters.
3. Get (un)personal.
4. Think twice, act once.
Stay tuned for more yammering on all of the above (and more).
July 16th, 2007
Tallahassee City Commissioner and Village Square co-chair Allan Katz had a MY VIEW last week in the Tallahassee Democrat, looking at lessons we might learn from the coal debate:
Now that the city of Tallahassee’s expensive flirtation with coal-plant ownership has been ended for us, it’s worth spending a little time reflecting on the lessons we should learn from the experience.
The city came dangerously close to living out the adage about marrying in haste and repenting at leisure. Our citizens, as the people who would have paid the price of repentance, have every right to demand better next time.
Setting aside Commissioner Katz’s comments on the content of the coal debate (to likely revive them when we talk “turkey” on this year’s Dinner at the Square topic: America’s Energy Future), there are Village Square lessons lurking in the points he makes on the process of the coal debate. While there is substantial disagreement even among our twelve member Village Square board of directors on coal, we’d likely find fairly round agreement on guidelines for making good decisions. That makes Commissioner Katz’s points on process lessons worth a linger:
. . . seek the facts. Don’t cook the facts. Don’t hide the inconvenient facts. Seek objective information, present it evenhandedly, completely and transparently, and trust the people to be smart enough to make an informed judgment without trying to sell them with a PR campaign.
. . .slow down enough to make an informed decision.
Here, Commissioner Katz has hit on two of a handful of founding concepts of the Village Square.
On facts: Good facts tend to produce good results and, well, vice-versa. While facts tend to be a little dull to wade through and don’t make for the sexiest advertising campaigns, even those on the “win” side of a PR-driven campaign tend to have to “pay later” if their position wasn’t originally grounded in an accurate assessment of fact.
On the point about slowing down: I’m reminded of the wise handyman adage “Measure twice, cut once.”
So, ta dah, our tickler for you on two cornerstones of our new Village Square:
1. Facts matter.
2. Think twice, act once.
July 16th, 2007
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