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Telling New Stories
I was in Ohio last week, meeting some of the people who have been working with The Harwood Institute on community engagement in communities across the state. These individuals have served as Centers of Strength for an effort to transform a dozen large urban high schools into over 60 autonomous small schools. As Centers of Strength, they have engaged parents, teachers, administrators, business leaders and other members of their communities in conversations about the kind of schools they want, and ultimately the kind of community they want to live in. These conversations are rooted in sense of possibility and help people with real differences find a common path.
By engaging in a conversation of possibility, these Centers of Strength have chosen a path that helps to repair the breach in public life. It has not been easy, and there have been many struggles to overcome, but in the end, each of these people can now tell a new type of story. These stories are much different than the stories that flood the media and the presidential campaign. They are stories that represent how we can imagine and act for the public good. These are the stories that need to be told.
We need more of these stories, stories of collective action that transcend superficial division.
Each one of us should start telling stories from our own experience that show this sense of possibility. Such stories could include bringing people from different neighborhoods together to restore a park, fostering cooperation between organizations that had been in competition, or simply finding common ground during a conversation with someone who disagrees with you. Every story we tell is a step toward creating a new story for our nation, and no step is too small. I hope you will share some of your stories with us in the comments section of this post. Just click on the comments link below. -
Engaging Imagination
There's more brouhaha over the "great divide" in America. Since writing last, I have continued to see a string of stories in the news on this topic.
With each story another observer comes forward with their own analysis, suggesting yet another division that plagues our woeful society. It's amazing the nation is still standing.
Here are a couple of examples to mull over as you try to keep the pieces of the divided nation together:
David Brooks in The New York Times explains his belief that the divide between "Managers" (Red People) and the "Knowledge Class" (Blue People) influences views on leadership.Knowledge-class types are more likely to value leaders who possess what may be called university skills: the ability to read and digest large amounts of information and discuss their way through to a nuanced solution. Democratic administrations tend to value self-expression over self-discipline. Democratic candidates - from Clinton to Kerry - often run late.
Managers are more likely to value leaders whom they see as simple, straight-talking men and women of faith. They prize leaders who are good at managing people, not just ideas. They are more likely to distrust those who seem overly intellectual or narcissistically self-reflective.
In other words, along with the policy and cultural differences that divide the groups, there are disagreements on these crucial questions: Which talents should we admire most? Which path to wisdom is right? Which sort of person deserves the highest status?
Kevin Drum had this to say about Amy Sullivan's account of making small talk about the Left Behind books at a cocktail party with Washington Evangelicals:I know the conventional wisdom these days says that the single most reliable determinant of voting is church attendance (the more you attend church, the more likely you are to vote Republican), but it's anecdotes like this that continue to convince me that the real divide in America is rural/urban, not secular/religious. Sure, you need to be pretty religious for the Left Behind books to appeal to you in the first place, but even at that its admirers are mostly in small town America. Urban folks, even the most strongly religious of them, are mostly too elite to be anything but embarrassed by this kind of stuff.
In fact, I often get the feeling that urban conservative intellectuals - i.e., most of the ones who actually write about this stuff - are faking it when they write about socially conservative causes. They may be able to peck out an austere intellectual argument that gays are bad and faith healing is authentic Americana, but they aren't true believers. They act like someone who extols the virtues of tofu burgers in public because they own stock in a tofu company, but then sneaks out to McDonald's when no one is looking.
I'm sort of rambling here. Sorry. It's just that this subject never really seems to get quite the attention it deserves. Among all the talk of liberal/conservative, religious/secular, east/west, and white/nonwhite, I still think the real core social divide in America is between big cities and small towns. Get a few beers into them, and even the urban conservatives would probably admit that they think their core supporters in Middle America are a bunch of hicks. And don't even get me started on what those rural hicks probably think of David Brooks....
Some of the stories on the divided nation have been quite good, serious and illuminating. Bill Bishop's articles in the Austin American-Statesman are great examples, and well worth taking the time to register on the site.
But, overall, it's time for most of us to get over this unproductive preoccupation. People will always be divided in one way or another. We live in different places; eat different foods; speak with different accents; pray at different houses of worship; do different things for a living; enjoy different hobbies. Of course, people are different! Is that a surprise to anyone?
The real problem is that given the incredible marketing techniques for divvying up people, we can slice and dice ourselves into oblivion. It's as if there are those people who now look for divisions because they can. What's more, lots of people make lots of money by playing off of these divisions.
But just because we can find differences among us doesn't mean we must be divided politically. But, for now, we're stuck in a master narrative of division, the refrain of which is, "We Are Divided!"
How to get beyond the current stalemate? The political dynamic needs a serious shake up. The core challenge is one of imagination. We must be willing to engage it. So, to help people imagine and act for the public good, there are three fundamental questions I want the news media, civic groups and political candidates to engage people on:
1. Can I see beyond where we are? 2. Is politics and public life more than just about me? 3. Do we believe in ourselves? Do we hold a civic faith?
Of course, none of this is happening in the presidential race. Instead, the campaigns, news media and others all constantly work to divvy people up and play on their differences. That's politics. But I'm hoping that one of the candidates, even more of the news media, and many civic organizations figure out that shaking up the current environment and exploring what binds us together is a better course than dividing us into fragmented armies of self-interested combatants. -
The Stain of Red and Blue
A column of mine on the growing stain of red and blue appeared in the Christan Science Monitor yesterday. You can read it here. As always, I appreciate any comments you have on the piece. -
Remembering Reagan
I will never use this space to spout off about politics.
But former President Ronald Reagan’s death makes me think of two important public ideas that seem to have been lost in recent times.
I never supported the policies of Ronald Reagan. In fact, I worked on the staff of the 1984 presidential campaign that opposed him. I was 23 years old, it was about my 23rd political campaign, and it was my last one. I swore off campaigns after that year because I didn’t believe politics gave people the sense of possibility they yearned for. Just a few years later, I started my present work.
Still, here’s the first idea I have in mind. I was always struck by how Ronald Reagan seemed to hold affection for public life. He valued his work; he was optimistic; he set out to do something – rather than just to oppose someone or something else. He cared about people, even if his policies, for some, seemed at odds with that notion.
USA Today reported this morning that “Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale hearkened back to a day when campaigns were more civilized. In the 1984 contest for the White House, challenger Mondale remembered Reagan as someone who aimed to ‘get elected with a strong majority of Americans that would allow him to unite the country and go in the direction he wanted to go.’”
We desperately miss that sense of affection for public life today. We are in need of it in the nation’s capital and in many communities. We can only find it within ourselves.
The second idea is that Reagan prompted enormous debate at the time. While many people remember his sense of optimism and charm, he presented an incredible clash of ideas with his opponents. I remember those fights well.
We miss real debate in this year’s presidential race – indeed, in much of public life today. This isn’t an academic concern; too many organizations have set themselves up merely to attack others in public life, rather than to build something in common.
So, let us mourn the death of a former US president. And let us recommit ourselves to two key ideas in public life that must be intertwined: exercising genuine, passionate debate, informed by a deep sense of affection for purpose in acting.
When we move toward these goals, we will regain a sense of possibility in public life.