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Welcome to my world.
I have been on the move the past year returning to the teaching and world weaving work I have done most of my life. The times feel urgent and yet it also seems like the time to step way back and see our human position from the long view.
Over the past year a small community of conscious and awake people have gathered around our introduction to The Circle Tool. We want to grow and foster this community, so if you are intersted in seeing what we are up to, just sign up for my email list. Join me in exploring current times and our place within it. I am doing some online exploratory cohorts, meeting wonderful people and we are digging in to support the transition.
What World?
During my graduate program many years ago I did a deep dive into what it means to belong--what it gives us, what it costs us, and how we work with that deep seated human need to belong. I wrote a positon paper. The paper is fairly densely academic and heady but carefully thought out. I am adding it here for those of you who thrive on digging deep. If you stumble on it, and if you actually read it, send me your thoughts and lets explore it together.
Here is the Position Statement in short form.
Belongingness is a greater force in human behavior than we may realize. It exists at the level of instinct, organizing our behaviors and our choices in powerful ways. It exists at the level of physiology, determining our neurological development, health, and strength…or lack of. It exists and influences all social bodies from the smallest playground clique to a war between two nations.
This paper examines our social and ethical responsibility, both individually and collectively, to become conscious of our belonging and the ways in which we select membership in our chosen groups. Using this perspective, we will examine two things. First, the historical and the current tendency of proponents of behavioral and scientific families to form, maintain, and defend their own camps.
Second, the effect this has on the greater transfer and exchange of knowledge necessary to build a world that works together to find creative solutions to humanity’s most serious issues. Throughout, we will also explore the position that each of us has but one tribe to which we truly belong (the family of origin); the way in which unresolved bonding and belonging within the family of origin is a causal factor in creating reactive, responsive patterns that lead to a blind rather than conscious belonging in later group formation.
Here is a link to the page with the full position paper.
