Civic Engagement and the Restoration of Community: Changing the Nature of the Conversation Peter Block (2007)

Overview

This booklet is written for citizens who care for the well being of their community. It is for those people who want to live in a neighborhood and a city that works for all its citizens and who have the faith and the energy to create such a place. It is for those of us who long for a positive future for the cities and neighborhoods within which we live.

The challenge for every community is not so much to have a vision or a plan or program of what it wants to become, it is to discover and create the means for bringing that vision, or possibility, into being. To state it more precisely, the book is about the methodology for creating a future for our community that is distinct and not predicted by its past.

Creating a future is different than naming a future. Most communities have at some point named a vision for themselves. The new millennium was a great occasion for this. These visions are important in that they bring many people together in their development and they give form to the optimism we hold for ourselves.

Most visions are based upon what we know constitutes an ideal or healthy
community. There are many wonderful books that describe what a great community looks like. Jane Jacobs crystallized our thinking about the power of street life. Robert Putnam raised our consciousness about the centrality of social capital. John McKnight has detailed the limitations of human systems’ capacity to care and also shifted the community conversation from deficiencies to the assets and gifts of citizens. Based on the insight of people like these, a community, usually through the combined leadership of business, local government, foundations, education and other key institutions, produces a vision for itself. Often this, in turn, produces a neighborhood-by-neighborhood master plan for translating that vision into streets, buildings, services and public spaces. Our communities have elected officials, corporate and public leaders who are on record in supporting these visions and plans.

The reality, however, is that while visions, plans and committed top leadership are important, even essential, no clear vision, nor detailed plan, nor committed leaders have the power to bring this image of the future into existence. What brings a fresh future into being are citizens. The investment of people, leaders not in top positions, who are willing to pay the emotional and economic price that really creating something new requires.

The promise of this booklet is to be very specific about what is required to create an  alternative future for our community.

The belief is that the way we create conversations that overcome the fragmented nature of our communities is what creates an alternative future. This can be a difficult stance to take for we have a deeply held belief that the way to make a difference in the world is to define problems and needs and then recommend actions to solve those needs. We are all problem solvers, action oriented and results minded. It is illegal in this culture to leave a meeting without a to-do list. We want measurable outcomes and we want them now. What is hard to grasp is that it is this very mindset which prevents anything fundamental from changing.

We cannot problem solve our way into fundamental change, or transformation. This is not an argument against problem solving; it is an intention to shift the context and language within which problem solving takes place. Authentic transformation is about a shift in context and a shift in language and conversation. It is about changing our idea of what constitutes action.

This booklet therefore presents a way of shifting our thinking about building community. It is disguised as a set of tools designed to restore and reconcile community. The shift in the way of thinking is to recognize that creating an alternative future rests on the nature of our conversations and our capacity to relocate where cause resides.

This different way of thinking is embodied in the tools we use. Tools give form and methodology to our way of thinking and being. Ultimately these offer the means to shift the nature of our public conversation. The public conversation includes the conversation we have with ourselves, the ones we have when people are gathered and the ones that occur in the media. The shift we seek in the public conversation is from speaking about what others should do, to speaking into the possibilities that we as citizens have the capacity to create.

The shift in beliefs is to invert our thinking about the location of cause. This has us believe that audiences create performances, children create parents, students create teachers and citizens create leaders. It is not that this shift is necessarily true, but this shift gives us the power to create an alternative future. In every case it puts choice in our own hands instead of waiting for the transformation of others to give us the future we desire.

The outcome this provides is the means to create communities that live into an alternative future. If our intention is to create the possibility of an alternative future, then we need a future that does not continue the past, but one that breaks from the past. To do this we must not only shift our conversations, but also face the limiting nature of our stories, for it is the stories of the past that prevent the creation of a future distinct from the past.

This will occur when we create a public conversation based on communal
accountability and commitment. This is the essence of what restores community. The most difficult challenge is to create accountability and commitment among those people and in those places where history and the past seem overridingly restraining.

Accountability

If we want to change the direction of our community, then we must create restorative conversations. The dominant existing public conversation is retributive, not restorative. It is void of accountability and soft on commitment. This is true both in the conversation played out in the media and in the private conversations occurring in smaller gatherings.

The existing public conversation claims to be tough on accountability, but it is unbearably soft on accountability. It keeps screaming for accountability, but in the scream, it exposes its weakness. The weakness in the dominant thinking about accountability is that it thinks that people, citizens and leaders, can be held accountable. The current conversation believes that retribution, incentives, legislation, new standards and tough talk will cause accountability. One example of this is the belief that incarceration can eliminate crime.

The existing public conversation drives us apart, it does not bring us together. The media exploits the wounds of community by over-reporting fear, dramatizing opposition and headlining retribution. The existing conversation nurtures entitlement and individual rights, not accountability and community.

One limitation of most conversations in smaller gatherings is our desire to talk about people not in the room. We seek to change, persuade and influence others, as if  their change will help us reach our goals. This conversation does not produce power, it consumes it.

The power to create a future requires us to choose to be accountable. To be
accountable, among other things, means you act as an owner and part creator of whatever it is that you wish to improve. In the absence of this, you are in the position of effect, not cause… a powerless stance. To be accountable is to care for the well being of the whole and act as if this well being is in our hands and hearts to create. This kind of accountability is created through the conversations we have with each other.

We also restrain our power through our obsession with a narrow view of action. We think that by focusing on concrete steps, milestones and measures that the future will shift. If we are too concerned with immediate actions and outcomes, we will seek only small changes and the past will remain intact. The action that leads to large changes is indifferent to speed and problem solving, it hinges on accountability and how that is created by a focus on language, relatedness and purpose.

Commitment

To be committed means we are willing to make a promise with no expectation of return; a promise void of barter and not conditional on another’s action. In the absence of this, we are constantly in the position of reacting to the choices of others. The cost of constantly reacting to the choices of others is increased cynicism and helplessness. The ultimate cost of cynicism and helplessness is we resort to the use of force. In this way the barter mentality that dominates our cultures helps create a proliferation of force. The use of force is the essence of the past we are trying to transform.

Commitment, the antithesis of entitlement and barter, is to choose a path
independent of reward. It is a choice made in the absence of reciprocity. This is the essence of power.

To summarize, this booklet and the learning experiences within which it is used, are designed to identify the thinking and tools to transform the nature of our conversations in the direction of accountability and commitment.

Authors

• Peter Block

Paper

• Civic Engagement and the Restoration of Community

Being Silenced and Silencing Others: Developing the Capacity to Speak Truth to Power

Connect, Connect, Connect

•  Choose to Be Accountable Peter Block
•  Reversing Cause and Effect The conversation creates the speakers