Community-building as a Process of End Products

I have this theory, which, lucky for me, is a focus of Frances Moore Lappé's book Getting a Grip. Our theory is that the solution is community-building. The solution to what? Everything.

"Our planet's survival therefore depends on whether we can make the break--whether we can affirm or not, as I've stressed, the goodness of human nature but the richness in human nature. Nature, as it turns out, has equipped us with just what we need to make this great turning: our hard-wired needs and capacities for community bonding, for meaning and efficacy beyond day-to-day survival, for fairness." (p. 132)

The more I feel a connection to my community, the better a citizen I become, the more aware I am of other people; of physical, of intellectual, and of mental spaces; of concrete ecological processes. Participating in making connections with others and facilitating others becoming connection-makers themselves, as I do at the Friends of the Fells or I have in my role as a teacher, is incredibly rewarding. I like doing good works. It makes me feel alive, complete.

Theory, theory, theory, practice ... oh, I have to implement now? I have come to realize that there are three types of people in the world: (a) implementers, (b) idea people (often managers), and those who have made the bridge between a and b. I would like to think that I fall into the last category, but that I haven't found the language to bridge both societies yet. I would like to be the "manager" that implements. The person who behaves as if there is a hierarchy, but speaks to team members as if there is no hierarchy. This requires a great deal of skillful communication, including getting people on board with ideas and decisive action items. Where do I get this language? Where do organizations get this language?

Lappé has something to say to me, and to us.

"To avoid the unintended backfiring of 'helpful' acts, we can dig to root causes, always asking: How am I interrupting a negative cycle that creates suffering or reinforcing a positive one that contributes to new, life-serving rules and norms?

To answer this question, for me it's helpful to distinguish between 'issues' and 'entry points.'

'Issues overwhelm. They hit us as distinct problems, piles and piles of them. We hear about child slavery, violence against women, hunger, of HIV/AIDS, deepening inequality, pollution and global heating, depression, failing schools ....

I feel buried, smothered under a mountain of problems. I want to cry uncle.

'Entry points' are very different.

Entry points we can detect because we're weaving a theory of causation ... They are deliberate actions that strengthen the flow of causation, putting in motion the Spiral of Empowerment ..." (p. 136-137)

Lappé is not suggesting we make action alone. She suggests we use groups and human connection to empower ourselves and others to make lasting change in the world by tackling our concerns head on. Entry points are theoretical planning strategies around which to organize honest, collective action. The planning is an end product, the relationships that result are end products, movement towards change is an end product, as is the change itself. Success can be measured on any one of those end products, even if we hope for all of them.

Again, Lappé teaches me to honor the process because this is the best way to prepare for future community work.