First--Kahane is a white male and although we don't know much about his family background or class, his is a privileged perspective. But does this invalidate the concepts or ideas that he is presenting and the work he is trying to do in the world?
As part of the dominant paradigm that holds a lot of power in the world, he is being reflective about this power on both an individual level and in his thinking about social change. His brand of social change doesn't come from his own actual hunger and thus has a synthetic quality to it that may or may not be truly effective. It is hard to understand this from a book and his talk of change labs etc. So while he may not be coming from a place of oppression himself, he is coming from a place of power and with an apparent desire to be part of a process aimed at empowering others. While we can't say his is the most effective approach, it is a lot better than being in part of the dominant paradigm and continuing to support the status quo. Whether or not we like his tone or his perspective, can we see value in the tools that he is presenting--the model of power and love as a way for thinking about the forces within ourselves and in the world. Are we creators or are we destroyers? Can we recognize and better "harness" these drives?
Begin to reflect a bit, using the text, on what you have experienced so far this semester and how you see this paradigm. Kahane writes, "Our capacity to address our toughest social challenges, depends on our willingness to admit we are part of, rather than apart from, the woundedness of our world" (132). Of course this is daunting and fear-producing, and all of you are only just starting your life journey. But, in a sense, Lynne and I are trying to provide a way to learn together how we might begin to address issues--we are doing this within the safety net of a class and maybe this issue still isn't real to you but the opportunity is real. Have you utilized your own generative power and love, even on an internal level? How might you move forward with what you know now? Is fear an issue? How can we step forward as individuals and as a group, in this class? How can we lead through the swampiness, through the process of having to move forward even though we can't see the way clearly? It is because we are trying to do something real that we don't have all the answers.
Love and power are put to use almost everyday because there are things you have the power to change and something’s you just have to accept. It takes a lot of love to learn to accept difficult things and a lot of power to make changes in your life. It also requires both to take little steps to make things greater. Learning to face and accept challenges can help anyone move forward in life, we all just have to take it step by step and also have the patience to keep going. As a class, we can make little changes by bringing awareness of the issue and also listening to what others have to say. “’I was surprised by the fact that after two and a half days, some sort of shared understanding has emerged despite us coming from very different backgrounds. I think part of the reason for this is that there has been among the team a very high level of willingness to learn and listen to other people’” (Kahane p.105-106). Listening and learning are some of the steps that would help us continue to move forward. Learning how to use love and power together and the willingness to listen can give a small group of people more power to understand and help one another. While reading the conclusion, Kahane had used the South African Dinokeng team as an example of their approach to effecting social change “Walk Together“
ReplyDelete(Kahane p.127). No change is greater than with a group of people supporting you and your beliefs. Many people have different view and ways that they believe would be helpful to take steps in fixing the issue of food poverty and by working together, it may be possible. Moreover, volunteering at the Marin Gardens such as we did can help move us forward to because we are actually taking action in what we believe in. Although we never know what will happen as we move forward, we have to stay strong and be willing to accept the challenges ahead of us. We all understand that nothing ever comes easy and it is our job to face it and accept the outcomes.
Living in It
ReplyDeleteWhat Kahane does as his life’s work is admirable. It does not matter what walk of life he comes from. He has a passion to better the world with his love and his power. He has a drive that moves him and others forward toward change and a better existence. Not everything may work; he falls, stumbles and learns to walk over and over again. He shows us that we have always had the ability to be pure creators. In being creators we also have the ability and choice to destroy. Our gift of creation is inherent in all of us, however I feel that our ability to destroy is something taught and is picked up throughout life. It is great when we use this ability to abolish and destroy systems in which are not working for the greater good, but in many cases our destruction becomes an ability that is exercised for power-over rather than power-to. It is a singular/ personal decision to harness these drives of both power/love and creation/destruction. There is always room for improvement in these fields and much of it comes through simple recognition.
In terms of change there will always be fear. It is what we do with fear that will determine the outcome of our actions. We cannot become submissive to our fears; we must acknowledge them. We as humans are moving beings and to become stagnant is to give into fear and comfort. “There is no way to change the status quo without discomforting those who are comfortable with the status quo” (116). One can see this concept not only when trying to change a group but also when trying to change oneself. I feel that the best way that sums up how to move forward was said in Kahanes summation of Karl Weick’s statement, “People find their way forward not because they necessarily have a good strategy or map, but because they “begin to act, they generate tangible outcomes in some context, and this helps them discover what is occurring, what needs to be explained, and what should be done next” (121).
In conclusion, we possess all we need in us to live our lives in a way that promotes a flourishing being. We must learn to trust in the universe that we have this. We do not solve life, we live it.
We are creators.
ReplyDeleteWe must all work collectively to create something new. Even situations and issues which we are now living in were at some point created by our generations before. We all have the power to change and create something better or worse for ourselves. “To contribute to co-creating new social realities, we have only one instrument: our selves. We cannot rely on others to effect change for us; nor can we, without violence, get others to change (127).” I see these issues come up in our class projects. I know my love has been reflected in my past with my yearning to want to go to speak about these social and food issues to others who might have no clue, but it wasn’t until this class that I actually had the power to go and act on these feelings of love. With the power from this class I have been given an opportunity to go to County Community School and talk with high school students about these important issues. I also have learned from this class I, and only I can change the things I desire. Sitting in a classroom for hours a week and just discussing these issues really don’t do anything; but our class projects have empowered us to be able to go out and actually do something. These efforts and effects have started within our class room. They started with us, and us taking action.
I have really enjoyed learning about the similarity and contrast between the two empowering emotions of power and love. The repeated theme of the book about power and love could not have been better explained than how Kahane explains: “Our power makes our love empowering instead of sentimental and anemic. Our love makes our power unifying instead of reckless and abusive (138).” Both power and love are needed for an actual change. This has been proven through Kahane’s real life examples and experiences. We could love what we are learning about in class and just sit there and talk about it all day, or we can embrace our love for the subject and our power of the institution to make an actual change. Also, we need our love for the issue of change or else we just try and over power everyone into changing, and that clearly would never work. People need to see that we are passionate about it as well. We are all creators and need to remember that making a choice, or even not making a choice, is still a choice that is made and comes with effects.
Decisive Love
ReplyDeleteIn order to move fluidly, one cannot get distracted by their previous steps, or they will forget to continue. One must also be wary of not excessively anticipating the coming steps, or one will surely fall. Moving fluidly is not something easily maintained in practice due to the attachments people create around their memories as well as their dreams. That is not to say that memories and dreams are merely obstacles, or a childish phase that functional adults should be ashamed of indulging in. On the contrary: without memories there is no context or foundation, and without dreams there is no motivation, making life not only dull, but highly primitive. Dreams and memories prevent one from stumbling along and forgetting the feeling of stillness; contemplation. The vital distinction lies in the awareness required to move fluidly. Kahane references Aikido Master Bob Wing as stating that, “what we aim to do is be powerful and loving at the same time. Power does not mean hitting another person, and love does not mean giving up and hoping that the other will take care of us.” (Kahane, 135) Just as power and love inform one another, so does the dynamic past, present and future; or memories, actions, and dreams. It is a sophisticated existence, not without fear, that can feel a lot like balancing on a tight-rope. But instead of possibly falling to the right or to the left, the balancer also risks falling up and out. One must practice forgiveness for themselves and others when fluidity becomes foreign. As I have personally concluded: the past must be viewed with appreciation, the present with direction, and the future with hope. Honesty in all three, and judgment lost.
When I first started reading “Power and Love” I thought it wasn’t for me, but as I continued reading I realized things about myself that I never really thought about before. “What holds us back from exercising all of our power and all of our love? Fear. Because we are afraid of offending or hurting other, we hold back our purposefulness and our power. Because we are afraid of being embarrassed or hurt we hold back our openness and our love.” (132) I find myself stuck in this dilemma. I realized that fear is a huge issue for me. I am afraid to use my power because I do fear what other people think about me and I take others feelings into consideration when thinking about my actions. I don’t like hurting other people’s feelings or like making someone upset through my actions. I don’t allow myself to fully love because I’m afraid to get my feelings hurt so I keep my guard up most of the time. Although I may lean more towards one more then the other, the important thing to do is to keep moving. As long as I keep moving forward and work on using both love and power together things will improve.
ReplyDeleteThe concept of moving forward and not standing still is the approach we should use as a class and in moving forward to obtain our common goal, which is food justice. By watching what we buy in the supermarkets, making sure we do not buy GMO foods, continue gleaning, and talking to other to spread the word brings us closer to our goal. If we don’t continue and just stay at a stand still we will go nowhere. Even though we don’t know if the outcome of our efforts will lead us to success or failure, it is important that we keep moving forward so one day we can see what our outcome will be.
The Elements Of Change
ReplyDelete"When I look back on the diverse social change teams I have worked with over the past twenty years, I notice one conclusion on which they all agreed: the complex and vital challenges we face cannot be addressed effectively by any one leader or organization or sector, and so we need to build our capacity for co-creation.”
I read this quote and it reminded me of our trip we took monday to the Garden of Eatin' and this is basically what the person who was running that project had to say as well. He is just one person and though he can effect a few people, he can't change everything all by himself, it takes a few people in order to get change happening. You can't just put it all on one leader and expect everything to change just because of him. This is true for any social movement. Sure they had a leader that everyone could recognize, but without all the individual members doing there part the change would never have happened. It takes everyone to make a change. As the author says. “But we cannot walk far and fast collectively if we cannot walk individually, on our own two feet. To contribute to co-creating new social realities we only have one instrument: our selves” Everyone plays there part in change, and if on person stumbles and falls, it could cause the person next to them to fall as well. I also like how the author talked about how in order to change the world we must be willing to change ourselves. If you just stick to one idea you will not get anywhere because everything is changing around you and you have to be able to adapt to that. Only after you combined all these elements within yourself, then combined them with everyone is, is change possible. You can't do it alone, but you can't leave yourself out of it either.