RicHARD ~The Anointed One~ Makepeace (CCAL30) (2360)

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Drives-by Builds Community: Or Living Up to the Grimes "Reputation Points" Legend (GRPL) (About 1200 words)

Posted to: RicHARD ~The Anointed One~ Makepeace (CCAL30) (2360) by RicHARD ~The Anointed One~ Makepeace (CCAL30) (2360), Thu, 29 Mar 2007 08:18:37 PST
Edited: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 17:36:58 PST
Feedback score: 5 (* * * * *)
Comments: 31 by 7 members
Viewed: 194 times by 27 members

Since personalizing Mark's comment about Drives-byes here at p'omidyar, I’ve been thinking about community -- A LOT!!

I am like a dog sucking marrow from a bone when I get an idea. We used to have a class of people called “intellectuals” with a sub-class called “philosophers.” This, now lost, class of folks, used to think about things. You know, back when thinking wasn’t WRONG.

Even lower than intellectuals and philosophers, we had, and fortunately still have, an almost completely useless, alien, nearly subhuman group called “writers.”

Most folks would agree that intellectuals, writers and other academic-social trash are not as important to building community as healers, plumbers and fellas who make the traffic lights work. I don’t think this is true and respectfully disagree.

All my life, I have been filled with wonder.

I do not know whether or not, I remember my first trip to the store, but I do remember the first time I remember being in the store and being completely gripped by the shiny talons of wonder and awe: Not to mention Amerikan consumerist brainwashing. Like a skinny, blond magpie, overwhelmed by odors and sounds and the thousands of shiny objects that even then comprised an American shopping experience, joy and delight slowly crept over me. That astounding moment, and millions and millions of others, has never left me. They are wrapped up in my brain like gin-soaked cotton.

Memory, conscious and unconscious, guides, but does not dictate.

The World is a very astounding place.

What does any of that have to do with Drives-by Builds Community?

Before I finally got free of my parents' clutches, at fifteen, I attended seventeen different schools. That doesn’t sound like too many: Seventeen in ten years of school, a couple each year. No problem. The ratio of schools to years grows when I add in attending grades one through three and the first five weeks of fourth grade at the same school: Miller Elementary, where I met the legendary Mrs. Eva Hard. With that addition the number of schools-to-years ratio changes to sixteen schools in six years. A ratio like that represents a whirlwind of movement that is fairly common to many kids in Amerika, even today.

It is common for migrant children and other children of the poor to go to many different skols during their confinement within OUR educational system. In Uh-mare-ree-kay, this is thought to be better than many places where kids get no education at all.

MY parents were not migrants, nor were they exceedingly poor. MY parents were penny-ante, grifters and smalltime con-artists. So was I. By the time I was seven or eight, I could take advantage of most adults, and ALL inebriated adults.

I grew up in bars and poolrooms and in the back seat of various automobiles. MY favorite being a 1959 Nash Rambler.

My family moved to shake down various charitable organizations and others of compassion and good will. We moved to avoid being jailed. We moved thinking that a different place would solve all our problems.

MY childhood was a very astounding place. I did not form regular habits as a child and I do not have them now. MY upbringing was probably different from YOURS.

That’s a GOOD thing.

What does any of that have to do with building community.

Showing up every day at a new skol, or anywhere else, that a whole group of people have a set of rules, habits, customs and practices teaches a skill set that most sedentary, habituated people never have to encounter. When the first day of skol can be every day, or any day, one’s world view is changed and not always for the better.

Even the idea that one set of social skills is BETTER than another set when both have good and bad parts illustrates a cultural bias toward people who live in one place and who go to school and work every day. The cultural bias WE have for the ordinary and the regular is also a bias here at p’omidyar where middle-class values, language and thought rigidly predominate.

The idea of what constitutes GOOD and valuable behavior here at p’omidyar is exactly the same, for the most part, as the dominant values, language and thought that prevails in our culture at large. The same predominantly middle-class cultural bias that exists at large in America prevails here. We will not change our culture until we change our biases.

According to the social conventions, and the popular wisdom here at p'omidyar, regularity in participation and contribution, and the physical expressions of regularity, the habits of middle-class people, are more important and more meaningful in building community than the habits of those who are not middle-class.

I do not believe the above bias to be true: Whether a jackass, or a genius tells you that your house is on fire doesn’t matter unless you stubbornly insist on ignoring the fire.

Einstein said, "Problems cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them." I declare and assert that I am someone who is constantly challenging the status quo and raising human consciousness: Both here and in meat-space.

I agree with Mark that “Action Jackson, moving things from theory and talk into reality” is critically important, but I would caution as Hemingway did to “Never mistake motion for action.”

I would also offer that much that looks like it is only “theory and talk” is in many ways more adaptive, more supportive, and active than much of what WE call “reality,” or certainly, what we would call, ineffective action. With so many active people, why don't we have peace, better schools, or gay marriage? Because most so-called, action is ineffective movement.

Ask Norbert!

I am not just talking about cheerleaders and therapists here, though most of the folks on this board need both, rather glaringly. I am not just talking about those among us, writers, philosophers and other intellectuals, who work to redirect our thought and who bring sunlight and water to help new ways of thinking unfold and blossom. I am not just talking about pompous windbags like myself who only finger-point and pontificate.

I’m talking about ALL those here, and out in meat-space, who move and learn slowly, who need to be cultivated and encouraged, who need to know that someone trustworthy and patient is gonna be there for them when they flop: When they say, or do, something incredibly stupid, or just innocently step outside the lines of the terrifically narrow, rigidly enforced, middle-class social mores that we all have to deal with at p'omidyar and in meat-space.

Finally, I am talking about those who see the World differently and who have the self-esteem and the courage and the Power to stand up and say, “Hey, what about this . . .?” Or even: “What the fuck?”

They also serve, who only sit and wonder. Or complain.

I contend that I carry a very important message here at p’omidyar AND in meat-space. I hold that I have supported and helped countless people and projects here. I declare that anytime, anyone at p'omidyar has asked me for ANY help, not related to speech, that I have given MY assistance freely and cheerfully. I hold NO grudges.

I also assert that participation in seemingly useless strings here like Word Association, once upon a time and What Are You Reading at the Moment, that look like time-wasters, are important too, at least in the sense of, All Work and No Play makes for dullness.

I invite ALL of YOU who support me and who feel supported and loved by ME to contribute to this string because I do think that I am worthy enough to be one of Mark's 250 point persons. I am. I am. I am!

I know that I am good enough to be a 100 point person. I mean, at least, a 25 point person, wouldn't ya think? Please help me? Circulate a petition, have a demonstration, occupy Mark's home, for Christ's sake, I just can't take it. Please, please help me!

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By nmw (1876), Thu, 29 Mar 2007 09:12:44 PST
Comment feedback score: 5 (* * * * *)

RicH,

as I was greedily sucking up the knowledge in that post I came up against a road block:

Ask Norbert!

RicH, I was in the middle of learning something -- and then you go and give me a blue screen?!? ;D

Now what is it that you think is undervalued? Your personal profile? This "personal news" item? Or how about your ego? That's what I think. I think you are pretty smart -- and I want you to use your smarts to improve yourself, your world, my world, omidyar.net's world -- heck, why not improve everything?!?

So the next time I give away a feedback point, I will think of you -- because I read your post and because it was (mostly [except for the "blue screen"]) inspiring!!

:D nmw

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RicHARD ~The Anointed One~ Makepeace (CCAL30) (2360)

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Drives-by Builds Community: Or Living Up to the Grimes "Reputation Points" Legend (GRPL) (About 1200 words)

Comments « prev page [1] 2 next page »page 1

Comments « prev page [1] 2 next page »page 1