power with | The Direction of Intention

Arrive Again [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on July 25, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Deadheading the day lilies, the afternoon sun pouring through the branches, I realized that I’ve walked a circle and arrived again at the starting point. After fourteen years, I’ve returned to the origin-thought of this blog.

I started writing the direction-of-intention after a conversation I co-facilitated. It was a day exploring and discussing diversity, equity, and inclusion. The group’s conversation veered into questions about power. That day I realized that I had an overabundance of thoughts and questions that I needed to study. My very first post was almost a thesis statement; it was an attempt to capture the essence of what I shared with the group: power-over others is not power at all. It is control. Power, real power, is something that is created with others. Control over. Power with.

I did not return to the beginning without help. The current political reality has drawn me like a moth to a flame back to the topic of power. Our two parties live on opposite sides of the line. The red hats are a case study in Control-Over. The Democrats operate on the principle of Power-With.

Control-Over is distinct in the necessity to blame. It is a victim’s game. It is an abdication of responsibility. It demands lock-step adherence and fears counter-point-perspectives. It evades giant swatches of its history. It pretends to hold all the answers and doesn’t tolerate questions.

Power-With is distinct in the necessity to choose. It seeks responsibility and participation. It thrives on counter-point-perspectives and demands collaboration and compromise. It needs to consider and reconcile with its full history, the good and the bad. It asks many questions and eschews the notion of a single answer.

Control-Over is essentially hierarchical. Caste. Fixed. Rule by one.

Power-With is essentially egalitarian. Relational. Fluid. Rule by the many.

It turns out there’s never been a better time to return to the root of my original inspiration. It is, I’ve learned the original root of our nation’s nearly 250 year conversation. The essence of the democratic ideal.

Today we stand squarely at the crossroads:

One choice continues to follow the complex path of power-with.

The other is a hard right onto the powerless path of control-over, not a step back in time as it pretends.

It’s our choice. It is our direction-of-intention.

From the deep archives: Angel? Oil on canvas

read Kerri’s blogpost about SUN THROUGH TREES

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Filed under: DR Thursday, Edges, Identity, Perspective, Seeing | Tagged: artistry, authoritarian, begin again, caste, control, control over, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, DEI, democracy, Diversity, egalitarian, equity, hierarchy, inclusion, inspiration, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, participation, perspectives, power, power with, questions, relational, responsibility, seeking, story, studio melange, the melange, two party system | 1 Comment »

Unfurl [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on April 30, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

I’m proud of her. Twice this week Kerri has fact-checked friends on FB who posted articles riddled with misinformation meant to rile. It took her less than a minute each time. In posting a link to the fact-check, she wrote, “Please check your information before you pass it on. xo”

It seems like such a small thing but it’s lately apparent that it’s becoming everything:

We forget that democracy is not a thing. It is an idea. It is an action rather than a noun. We forget that our democracy is young. Very, very young.

It worries me when I hear politicians making laws placing limits on the discussion of ideas at school. It worries me when I read that parents want teachers to teach “only the facts”. In today’s bubble-discourse it is a valid question to ask, “Whose facts?” Discerning between fact and fiction requires minds and hearts capable of questioning, capable of challenging the “facts” they are being fed. The notion of the purpose of education as a feeder-of-facts is nothing less than a sign of moral and mental decay. This is especially true in our great age of information with its ever-present shadow of rampant misinformation.

Democracies collapse when ideas and ideals are no longer debated, when winning-at-any-cost overshadows compromise, when respect for divergent points of view is overrun by intolerance. Healthy democracies are an ongoing tug-of-war; creative tension generated by a lively and respectful exchange of perspectives. This requires a system of education that nurtures these qualities and capacities.

Democracies collapse when they aim for an end result rather than steward a living process.

The point of education in a democracy is to consciously and carefully unfurl young minds so they might become active questioners, expansive thinkers, participating citizens in an ongoing experiment in a complex system called democracy, capable of stewarding their communities forward through an ever-changing world toward the promises inherent in the IDEA: equality, inclusion, governance by the people, for the people.

I would hope that we become capable of grokking governance-by-the-people which necessitates a people educated in ideas, reinforced in their curiosity and capacity to question, to converse and debate complex issues, capable of discerning ruinous power-over-agendas from the central idea enlivening their budding democracy: power with.

read Kerri’s blogpost about FERNS