Do No Harm

Either I am totally lost or I am on the verge of some great personal discovery. You make the call.

I’ve been a little bit quiet lately. For about eighteen months, I had a lot to say about land use planning, the growth of our town, and our plans about how it all should happen. Make no mistake -- I still have a lot to say -- but I’m just not sure how to say it.

I spend a large portion of my day on the internet. That gives me access to lots of points of views, news stories, videos and opinions.

Yesterday for example, I ran into a YouTube video of a college event on a big field. Lots of students and partying going on. It looked like a sports event. For some reason, a guy decides that it makes sense to take off his clothes and hang out naked.

Three uniformed police officers respond -- as professionally as possible -- to encourage the guy to put some clothes on. It escalates to the point where the naked guy says that he is not going to put clothes back on and that there is nothing that the uniformed police officers can do about it. Of course, the officers have no choice but to “enforce the law” and you end up watching a video of a naked guy getting “tasered”, tackled and handcuffed by the three police officers. (A taser is an electronic gun which sort of electronically stuns.)

I was unable to watch the second half of the video. It’s just too painful for me. Everywhere I look, I am seeing the violence that goes with our current notion of being human beings.

It’s not the police officers. It’s not the naked guy. I mean, it’s just us. I’m talking about all of us. I’m talking about me.

The very last piece that I wrote here in the Post, was an article where I took the Town Council to task for rejecting attempts to unify some Planning and Building services of the Town and the County. I accused -- point blank -- the Town Council of actively reinforcing the mentality of “division” within our already functionally unified community, That somehow there really is an “us” downtown and a “them” uptown.

I mean, maybe that is how it was once upon a time. But the fiction of a “tale of two towns” is not the reality on the ground today. It’s just not.

But of course, the real problem is that my language and my speaking about “the problem of divisiveness” was clearly divisive and harmful in and of itself. I was complaining about the harm someone else was inflicting but I was doing it by inflicting harm.

Ouch.

So, now I am wondering about what’s it going to take for me to communicate in a way that “does no harm”. At the same time I want to completely tell the truth (as I see it). How do I share my perspective with the community without turning it into another opportunity to hit somebody over the head?

That goes back to my feeling of either being totally lost or just on the verge of some great personal discovery.

If I didn’t know any better, I would just become comfortably numb. But, I do know better. It’s a bit of a challenge for me but somehow effective communication has got to be an option. Like most people, I spend a lot of time staying distracted, being off point, and generally not being focused on what is really going on here and now.

Right now, there is almost nothing that our community leaders can do without provoking an outcry or attack from the “public”. There is almost nothing that the public can say without attacking the leadership.

It is fascinating to watch the gut level, visceral attacks that come upon a new president of the United States. When a “Republican” becomes president the attacks come from people who say that they are “different thinkers”. When a “Democrat” becomes president the attacks come from people who “think differently”.

Never mind the fact that the liberal and conservative points of disagreement actually all exist in a fiction from the past and have absolutely nothing to do with what is going on right now -- today.

For example, the federal government is not really run on “tax dollars”. The United States budget is primarily funded by money literally printed out of thin air. And that, my friends, is neither a “liberal” nor a “conservative” problem. It’s a very much bigger problem. (More on that topic, later.)

But of course, it is entertaining to distract ourselves with heated banter about who’s a liberal and who’s a conservative. That’s a whole lot easier than talking about the end of free market capitalism and the looming destruction of our currency. Our supposed “two-party” system of government in the United States and all of the chattering of the talking heads “is a tale … full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.”

Our current community dialogue must be what Don Miguel Ruiz (author of books including “The Four Agreements“) was talking about when he said that humans all live in a dream. We all live in a collective dream that we call “reality”. But actually the dream is a nightmare called “hell“.

Apparently, this problem has been around for a while. I like this 2500 year old verse from Lao-tzu:

Governing a large county
is like frying a small fish.
You spoil it with too much poking.

Approach the universe with the Tao
and evil will have no power.
Not that evil is not powerful,
but its power will not be used to harm others.
Not only will it not do harm to others,
but the sage himself will also be protected.

If only the ruler and his people would
refrain from harming each other,
all the benefits of life would accumulate
in the kingdom.


Empires rise and empires fall. National currencies get stronger then they collapse and disappear.

Vibrant communities are led by vision and hope. Communities contract underneath the weight of their own fear.

Sometimes I can communicate and help lead the community forward. Sometimes my opportunity to lead gets lost in my reptilian instinct to attack, defend, and become numb.

In my speaking, I am a painter with a brush. My carefully chosen words, consciously placed upon the canvas of the community conversation have the power to create something new. I can paint a positive vision of tomorrow or I can kick the canvas in frustration.