From: Tom Lane
Columbus
There are no winners on the path we are on. The election is over, and each side holds on to the sweet taste of victory or the anger of defeat. Both do not work to make the world we live in better. It is a recipe for disaster.
For a system to work well, (and yes, we live in a connected system) we have to have all the participants playing their part, doing their best and helping make things work. Fighting makes the system collapse.
This all reminds me of my consulting work, (sorry to all those folks who seem to hate me using my past to make my point) when I worked with companies that were on the verge of collapsing, and at the heart of all that was a nasty labor/management struggle. The workers and the management preferred to create a standstill rather than work together to make improvements that could make the company more competitive. Both sides were willing to sacrifice the goose that was laying the golden eggs.
When I went into these situations, I had to get both sides to first agree that they were in this together. If you cannot make that happen, then they both go down in flames, and all the way blaming the other side. It is not pretty.
I am concerned that we now have a population that has lost this feeling of “being in this together.” Bob Pitman’s recent letter to the editor pointed out this divide. We need a common source of information that both sides agree on. But, we also need a common vision of what we are striving for.
That is a difficult conversation in the political world. “Hope” and “Make America great again” are not visions, and neither are all the slogans and talking points. This is a problem we have now. We seem to have a populace who live by sound bites.
A real vision is an in-depth conversation about where we want to go. It requires talking about the system we live in. It requires that everyone involved will take the time to try to understand, and not react to the first word they disagree with. It requires that both sides relinquish their bias, hold back their anger and resentment, and seriously attempt to clarify what kind of world we want to create for ourselves.
The opportunity we have, here in Columbus, is that we are living in one of those visions. Where we live is not an accident. It was shaped by a powerful vision of J.I. Miller. Having the power and control and money to do that is rare. Now, we need to come together and do that again.
All parties will make this happen. What do we want to create beyond parties and factions? It is up to us.
