Micro conversations can be a counterpart to micro credit: what if we could encourage people to converse in little groups, to take charge of their lives, jointly, in little snatches, and spread these micro conversations to thousands and thousands? Here is where the pyramids and circles work, because there is an infinite set of permutations and each one is creative (not additive, not multiplicative, not geometric). It is not zero sum, where one gathers at the expense of another: all benefit. Not just individually but in our interwoven whole.
Just host a little conversation, do it deeply and with intent, but not a big deal…on the bus, at lunch, at the Art Gallery. Harvest something and get something started, or just inspire.
Micro everything…enough of that and macro starts to feel it.
More on action systems, but this time from a poet, Anais Nin:
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
That describes shift perfectly…when the status quo becomes more painful than the move.
[tags]anais nin, transformation[/tags]
Photo by Ernie*
“We all fight on two fronts, the one facing the enemy and the one facing what we do to the enemy.”
–Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road, p. 301
I wish I could find a more coherent way to talk about this, about the complex set of emotions I feel in wearing a poppy and believing in peace. Joseph Boyden’s quote reminds me about the humanity that is at war. Whenever humans are involved in something, it’s never simple, so bear with me. I am trying to write about something that lives strongly in my heart, and heart language and word language are different beasts…
Rememberance Day is coming and I choose to remember the men and women that I am paying to fight in Afghanistan. I am not a friend of war, and especially not a friend of this one, and I desperately wish for these men and women that if they have to confront these two fronts that it be rather in the service of a better story than the one we are being told about terror.
Every year at this time I have a deep remembering of the First World War, the Great War, in which Canadian boys – officially children – signed up to fight for honour and die insanely on the fields of France and Belgium. The 20th century produced a brief period where war went from professional skirmishes, to massive conflicts between amateurs and willing volunteers to its current shape – the slaughter of civilians by professional armies. Soldiers die in these conflicts but not in anything like the proportion of civilians that die. It is innocents who are mostly killed now in Iraq and Sudan and Colombia and Afgahnistan.
And why?
The sooner we can bring our young men and women home from central Asia, the better. I have no doubt that they feel like their mission is noble and important. My wish for them is that we as a country find a better use for that willingness to do the dirty work of doing good. They are willing to kill and die for us. They are willing to suffer the inflictions of fighting on these deeply personal fronts to be of service. It is a screwy way to be in the world, but what higher calling can there be than be prepared to offer your life to an ideal?
What else could we ask them to do? What do we wish for them when they come home to their families full of the residue of those killing fields? Even those of us who oppose this war must remember them.
My call for us to leave Afghanistan is not a call to run scared from a foe. It is rather a call for a reasoned use of our troops. There is no exit strategy for this war (and I doubt whether we even have a foe there that we wouldn’t have if we weren’t there). Our political leadership has refused to ever contemnplate negotiating with the enemy. Even at the end of World War ii we negotiated with the enemy. If you refuse to talk to the enemy, you are committing yourself to fight until either of you are dead. We will never kill every Taliban soldier. For thousands of years, Afghans have fought and defended their lands. Are we going to “win?” And what does “win” mean? And anyway, just what are the conditions under which we will leave Afghanistan?
Committing the lives of young people to a mission so vague and hopeless as this, without supporting the troops by telling them what set of conditions they are fighting for borders on criminal in my opinion. And so I wear a poppy today to remember the soldiers that we have sent there to fight a hopeless war with no prospect of victory. They will not return having vanquished a foe, decorated and lauded for using force to defend a true threat to our country and way of life. You will not see scenes like we saw at the end of the last century’s wars when our troops came back having won, having liberated people who were forced beneath the jackboots of facism. We will be bringing home brave and promising Canadians who have fought for a political cause and have suffered life long scars for poll points, opinions and home front glory for those too scared to go themselves.
This is also not to doubt the work that our soldiers are doing. There is no doubt in my mind that it is possible to be in Afghanistan and do good work, and we are also doing that. But we could do it anywhere, and with much more effect. Why are we there?
I wear a poppy today to remember those that are caught in these conflicts – the innocents and those we pay – and to remember that when they come home we owe them wholeness and a responsibility to help them heal themselves from the wars that they fight, on both fronts.
More on the war:
- Previously argued on Parking Lot
- Afghanistan: Wrong Mission for Canada
- Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan
[tags]war, peace, rememberance day, poppy[/tags]
Photo by striatic
I am trying to book a flight from Vancouver to Penticton. The Air Canada website is giving me all kinds of errors tonight and I have been ploughing away for about 45 minutes trying to secure a booking.
In an effort to just cut to the chase, I called the reservations centre. They normally have a $20 fee for booking over the phone, but I assume that they will waive that to get me a booking as the web site is clearly down.
To my faint surprise and astonishment, Kevin, the reservations agent, says he can’t do it. He suggests I call Air Canada tech support and get them to phone him to tell him that the web site is down so that he can waive the fee. That strikes me as not my job.
Here’s a better way to handle it, Air Canada. Trust your customers, especially your frequent fliers. Isn’t Aeroplan a “loyalty program?” Is loyalty one way? When we tell you there is a problem, believe us, make the booking and sort it out at your end. If I’m lying, you’re out $20 (but you have my fare), and you can put a note on my Aeroplan file saying I’m a scam artist. It would save you having a blog post written about you at 1:41 in the morning by a tired and irate customer. Also, trust your staff to make the call to waive the fee without someone in tech support okaying it.
If WestJet flew to Penticton, this would not even be an issue. They would have had my $472 in a flash and they don;t charge a fee for phone bookings. For want of a $20 fee, Air Canada sends me packing. When I told Kevin I would call Westjet (just out of sheer frustration) he said “Sorry we can’t help you.”
Yeah, well. I’m still stuck needing to take your airline to Penticton. Cold comfort.
[tags]air canada, customer service[/tags]
I was reading the striking conversation between Jimmy Wales and Dale Hoiberg, from Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica respectively, and I suddenly had the strangest thought.
These two publications represent completely different creations stories.
Britannica is the Garden of Eden, a perfectly designed place that can only get worse as people tamper with it. It is the “order to chaos” model and so it is surrounded with protection to keep it in it’s pristine form.
(I was also surprised to read Mr. Hoiberg’s comment that the Britannica endeavours to represent all of human knowledge. That seems absurd to me.)
Wikipedia is the Ojibway creation story worldview, the one in which the animals help Giizhigokwe make a new world out of some soil and a turtle’s back. In this model we move from chaos to order by inviting as many people as possible to come and contribute, knowing that things can only get better in general.
I hadn’t thought of these two efforts as inhabiting the archetypes of world creation stories before. I probably need to get out more!
[tags]wikipedia, encyclopedia britannica, creation stories, jimmy wales, dale hoiberg[/tags]