Ensconced at the head of an inlet in what has to be the most beautiful valley in BC. My commute yesterday to get here was a one hour flight from Vancouver over huge icefields, 9000 foot peaks, high mountain lakes and deep forested cirques. The landscape here is forbiddingly raw, and when the morning sun catches the blue glint of glacial ice in the cracks and crevacies on the icefall you are flying PAST (not over!) your heart just sings.
In this tight little valley – now rain soaked and cloud choked – a few thousand people live cheek by jowel. At one end, where the long inlet terminates, is the Nuxalk Nation where I am doing a little work, trying to bring some hasitily organized participatory process to a couple of pressing needs in th ecommunity. Today is basically about trying to host a community conversation that sees the good and the possible in a desperate and fractious context. In most First Nations communities, hurt runs deep and the kinds of dynamics that are at play here are deep currents that carry away optimisim, creativity and possibility. And yet, everyone I talk to here wants something different, a different conversation, a different wnay of looking at things. So today and tomorrow, using Cafe and Open Space, we are going to try that.
We haven’t had much time to prepare, and there is much working against making this an ideal situation, so I truly don’t know what will happen. I am just entering today as open as I can be to what’s possible, trying to embody what others are longing for.
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I’ve seen Van Jones speak, I’ve worked with people who have worked with him, and I take a lot of inspiration from him. Last year, when Obama was elected I thought immediately of him as a member of administration, the kind of person that crosses boundaries, that proposes new ways of addressing the old problems of social inequity, economic disparity, oppotunity inequality, global environmental crises and local public health and justice issues. He’s a smart guy, a funny guy and a guy who gets things done.
That he was torn apart by the right, that the Obama admininstration did not defend him and that the mainstream has pilloried him for having political views that are not the majority’s is a stunning indictment of the current US political climate. I fully fear for the Obama agenda. I had hoped that he would represent the best chance for real change in America, but now it’s clear to me that change will never come from Washington.
Sad.
I hope Van lands on his feet, as I know he will, perhaps back in Oakland making a real difference in the lives of people who need it. For that is where real change comes from, not from the bleating talking heads on FOX and MSNBC or the terrified co-dependant money addicts of Washington.
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Beware a rant.
I was in a conversation today with a friend of mine who is a true visionary. He is an artist who works with metal, rocks and even entire landscapes. He is a project manager and has overseen some of the biggest developments on our island, and some of the biggest ones in the Lower Mainland. He cares deeply about our shared home and sees all kinds of potential for Bowen Island to become a true innovative leader in the world. he knows the municipal tools inside an out, and looks at our official community plan and sees a joke. As an artist he sees our island in three dimensions, he sees our social landscape in terms of centuries, he sees possibility oozing out of every patch pf land, and every land use decision and every corner of the landscape, possibility that includes food production and long term restoration of old growth habitat and community cultural creativity and the chance to make a good, but modest living here.
Yet he isn’t bitter – on the contrary he is full of possibility AND he has a pretty good idea of how to get there. He understands chaos and complexity and living systems and how to create change without succumbing to control. As I listened to him speak about the small but very very deep shifts it would take to make our island truly self-sufficient, it occurred to me that without my friends visionary thinking and novel way of seeing, we are doomed as a culture. And the problem is that the kinds of tools that are available to us to plan and govern our futures are not about vision, they are about seeing.
Think about it. Most municipal governments are reluctant to say “let’s set aside that 200 acres of land for 300 years so that there will be old growth forest there in the future.” It seems pollyanna-ish. It seems like the kind of thing that is a good intention, but how could you ever do it, and what about the pressing needs of our people now? Never mind that it is actually easy and possible and wise, it is simply easier to look at what is around you now and manage what you have.
What does it take for organizations, communities and societies to recognize that a worldview based on vision is the way to secure a future, whereas one based on seeing is simply the one that got us to this mess in the first place. I note that the Liberal leader, positioning himself for an election victory, has chosen to make his campaign about restoring economic growth. With everything happening in the world right now, with the demand for leadership that takes us beyond the worldview that has mired us on the brink of economic and environmental catastrophe, Michael Ignatieff’s postion is that he will restore something that is bound to come around sooner or later in a cyclical capitalist society.
The reason he does this is because the mind set of measurable, observable short term results is king in this society. No one is going to get elected talking about stopping rampant economic growth and stopping the more is better mindset. Even if we are engaged in long term projects, someone always wants an indicator to know that we are on the right path. The management mindset has trapped us in the ever present short term. We are like a cigarette smoker dying of lung cancer who keeps having one last butt.
What does it take to do something with no expectation for gain, recognition or results? Just to do it because it restores more life to the future than we have now. A basic principle: leave more for the future than you took for the present. Could we be that mature? How much longer with this childish obsession with consumption and instant gratification go on?
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Harvested this week:
- Jeremy Hiebert reflects on the life and death of Oliver Schroer.
- Alex Kjerulf finds a beautiful film about passion for work – in a specialty soda store.
- Mushin is building a mind map to look at reall community building.
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As summer begins to close here on the west coast of Canada, I’m starting to head back to work, digging into to 20 or so projects that will unfold in the next nine months, which will take me across Canada, the US, Hawaii, Estonia, Denmark and Australia. And as I look ahead to my work year that is restarting, I notice that this is the tenth time that I have done this.
Indeed ten years ago this day, as a precocious 31 year old fed up with travel (ironically) and the various despairs of working for the federal government, I quit my job and hung out a shingle. August 31 was my last day of employment. My first contract was a retainer with the BC Assembly of First Nations, working with Chris Robertson and the then vice-chief Satsan (Herb George). Chris and Herb were (and still are) both enamoured with Open Space Technology and were wondering how we could use it for various organizing around Aboriginial rights and title. That retainer – for which I will always be grateful – gave me a start in the freelance world that was all I needed to build a pretty solid little practice. Since then, I have facilitated literally hundreds of gatherings from two person retreats to international conferences using a variety of participatory methodologies.
In the ten years since I went out on my own, I have been anything but lonely. I have worked with people from various communities of practice, including Open Space, World Cafe, Genuine Contact and most deeply, the Art of Hosting. I have, in the words of song writer Dougie MacLean “moved and kept on moving, proved the points that needed proving, lost the friends that needed losing and found others on the way.” It has mostly been an incredibly rich journey,working with tiny communities and huge coporations, young and radical youth and wise Elders. I have friends and colleagues in dozens of countries on every continent, and count myself lucky to be in their embrace.
There is no way there was a strategic plan in place when I left my job ten years agao. I have mostly survived by holding questions, opening myself to learning, and reminding myself that I don’t have to be the expert all the time. I could never have said that where I started ten years ago would leave me here, typing a blog post outside my favourite cafe on my home island.
I have met and worked with literally tens of thousands of people over the past ten years and as I sit here and picture many of them, I feel immense gratitude for their patience, trust, support and deep friendship. Thank you to you all (and please leave a comment here saying “you’re welcome!”). My partner Caitlin and our two kids are foremost among them, for it was to spend more time with them that I originally left my job, and if there is to be one regret, it’s that travel takes me away from them too much these days. So that’s my edge to work on for the future.
And who can know what I’ll be writing about on August 31, 2019, in my 51st year, as I catch myself surprised at all that has happened.