I suggest we find the common water table for conversation. The surface well opening certainly has to do with gun violence. I believe community safety is the common water table conversation. In the last several days when the Newtown tragedy arose in conversations, I shifted the conversation to community safety. I live in a very red area only 1 in 20 people has matriculated from a bachelor's program, a county where with one Episcopal Church and one Catholic (mostly Hispanic) 14 Methodist and 77 Baptist churches. I even hear banjos 10 minutes out of the city limits. Every time I shifted the conversation about the necessity of community safety I found I could have a civil interesting and sometimes profound conversation. During the Town Meeting Campaign, Joe Pierce and Jim Phillips were a team fund raising for TM 76. At one council Joe did a presentation on how to respond to the question of what the $1,600 dollars purchased. (I reflect in open mouthed amazement that the fee was only $1,600 by the way) At the heart of his presentation was the insight of the only way to have a conversation about whether or not that community wanted to participate in the TM'76 campaign -- was to shift the conversation away from a dollar by dollar accounting to the what the value of the outcome a Town Meeting could produce. Yesterday Mr. La Prick, (do the translation from French to English thank you Google Translate) of NRA association illustrated why if you start where he started, (the only way to defend against an evil man with a gun is a good man with a gun), a shift of conversation is reuired. To enter into a conversation about how we defend against an evil man with a gun, is to enter into a conversation of self defense. . . .quite a different conversation from talking about characteristics of safe community. Not to mention that one conversation could very likely not expand his grasp of the situation. If I were to enter into that conversation with him, I would begin talking with him with as closed a mind as I am certain he has. Where is the room for the conversation there? I believe that what is good for the community is good for each member of the community. And if anything is good for one, but not for the whole community; it is therefore in fact not good for any one member of the community. In the conversation of community safety, I would also like to explore if our community is safe, against what does the individual have to defend themselves? And what is the most effective way to do that? Three years ago I had a very intense conversation with one of my very best and oldest of friends. Unlike my brother and son who own gun arsenals, he only owned 4 guns, 2 of which are antiques and one of those is a flint lock rifle, hardly one to be used against an intruder. And his question of me at the end of our heated exchange was: "Don, if an intruder in the middle of the night threatened you with a gun, what would you do to defend you and your wife?" I thought about it a long time and here is my answer, I would attempt to talk my way out of the situation, and if I did not succeed, it would be what it would be. I happen to think my chances are as favorable as if I had to reach and risk killing another human being with my (currently non existent) bedside gun. And as a credential for those of you familiar with my own liberal personality: In high school I walked away from a challenge fight in each year of my high school career, in the midst of the embarrassment that was, because I had determined even then responding to violence with violence only determined who was the more violent. And since then lived through a robbery at gunpoint in Fifth City with George Packard, and more recently I have talked down two who were exchanging blows. I cite these not to claim some expertise or power, merely to say I have experienced some of the emotions that go with those threatening situations. (Not to mention reading the book Jon Jenkins found titled Men Under Fire) The necessity for having a plan for self defense and being prepared to implement it is a necessity in our times. I think it is also necessary first to think about the community context. I find the very language interesting, self defense clearly has as purpose, the defense of oneself. Community safety on the other hand has as its purpose the elimination of the need for self defense. I met Obama in Chicago when he spoke at the SCUPE conference I think in 1998. I almost dropped what I was doing at that moment in order to convince him to run for president. (Actually the second time I had that urge. The first time I acted on it and did have a conversation with Dick Celeste. I thought it to be a bold move, I had yet to learn that people in his position, have to listen to people who had way more financial and political clout than I will ever possess.) I believe he is exactly what we need at this moment, a leader who is passionate about the historic context of the constitution and a leader who attempts to convince all of us about the next pragmatic possible step we can take. At the time when we need someone who acts quite pragmatically, the very nature of the ideological standoffs works against our grasping how appropriate his leadership style is. I will be glad to use my one opportunity of access to Carolyn Lukensmeyer if I can go with a plan and a commitment. Peace On Dec 22, 2012, at 9:31 AM, James Wiegel <jfwiegel@yahoo.com> wrote:
Gordon and all . . .
Yes, and, aren't we blessed ones . . .
Born, like Gordon and others indicate, From such a different far off womb or culture or time To still feel and appreciate the warmth, The nurture that birthed and growed us up Not sugar coating (too much) the reality Of what we were born into
And yet to have been so blessed To have chosen / been chosen / launched onto This immense journey Into such a different era Remember The Snout?
As Joe Slicker says, sometimes, My, my, my, my.
Jim Wiegel Jfwiegel@yahoo.com
Joan Chittister “Christmas is not for children. It is for those who refuse to give up and grow old, for those to whom life comes newly and with purpose each and every day, for those who can let yesterday go so that life can be full of new possibility always, for those who are agitated with newness whatever their age.”
Partners in Participation Upcoming public course opportunities: ToP Facilitation Methods: Feb 12-13, 2013, May 21-22, 2013, Sep 17-18, 2013 ToP Strategic Planning, Oct 9-10, 2012 The AZ Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday (1-4 pm) of the month Facilitation Mastery : Our Mastering the Technology of Participation program is available in Phoenix in 2012-3. Program begins on Nov 14-16, 2012 See short video http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=55 and website for further details.
On Dec 18, 2012, at 21:37, Ken Fisher <hkf232@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you, Doris. Thank you, Gordon.
I love my 'cowboy' hats, be they Resistol-Texan or Akubra-Australian.
I was once a big fan of Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, the Cisco Kid, Have Gun Will Travel and The Rifleman.
Later it was Peter Gunn!
Time for a change.
Ken
Who would want to miss and episode?
On 2012-12-18, at 11:05 PM, Doris Hahn wrote:
We all grew up in a gun culture if we grew up in the U.S.A. (note Gordon's manner of speaking: "It's essential if we're to have a real shot at changing the images...." Earlier this evening I watched a Newshour interview with five or six people from Newtown who were meeting to decide how to respond to this latest horror, and one of them said something about "what we are shooting for...." It's small, but it's real and deeply imbedded; maybe we could say, "symbolic."
About 27 years ago, while I was visiting my mother, I decided to oil my old 410 shotgun (given to me by my dad on the occasion of my 11th birthday). Other family members wandered about the kitchen where I was sitting, and someone asked what I was going to do with the gun. My young nephew immediately answered, "shoot people," to which I quickly replied, "not people -- birds." My nephew responded with a pain-filled frown, "Why would you kill a bird?!"
It was probably about 1956 that I last shot that gun. In 2004, just before moving to Indiana, I took it to a local gun shop and sold it.
I believe the conversation has opened up again, and surely we can do our part in helping it to move along. I will be exceedingly happy if Feinstein can get her bill passed, and having the president do something radical would be helpful, but I think Gordon is right about what our job is, at least for now.
Doris Hahn
On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 4:52 AM, Gordon Harper <gharper1@mindspring.com> wrote:
Since I'm part of this problem and hopelessly complicit in sustaining it, I'll start with a little confession. Like many of us, I grew up in a gun culture, in my case as a Wisconsin farm boy. I loved the various rifles and handguns I accumulated over those early years, and I continued to sharpen my target shooting through college and graduate school and even as a young professor (never really had the heart for hunting). I was (full disclosure) a member of the NRA starting in high school, so that I could get my cases of 22 ammo for a pittance. (I dropped my membership while in college, when the organization started to morph into the right wing entity that we see today.)
When our family joined the symbolic order and moved to the West Side, I got rid of everything except for a special treasure, my Ruger Single Six (replica Colt six-gun) with its beautiful rosewood grips and fancy Mexican fast draw holster. Lane Erskine and I used to enjoy sharing our fascination with our handguns' workmanship. Unlike Lane, who was given to packing heat as he moved about in 5th City, I kept mine unloaded and in a locked case in our room.
After a few months, however, I became concerned that even with those safeguards, in our community, with the kids having easy access to everyone's rooms, it was too much of a risk. With great sadness, I took my beloved revolver and holster to a gun shop in Wisconsin and sold them, thus ending my gun ownership phase. When it came time, a few years later, to decide which of my siblings would inherit our father's firearms, I chose not to participate in the distribution.
I start with this to make the point that what we're dealing with in this gun culture lies very deep in many of us. I've had--and still have--a love affair with the classic American Western film. This is a tradition that exalts the single shootist, who is able to do good and make things right for others precisely because he has at least one sidearm and when necessary uses it well.
I see myself mirrored in the fascination of young people today for all the first person shooter games, battlefield adventures and standing one's ground against those hordes of attacking vampires. It's a manifestation of our special culture as Americans, with our frontier tradition and mythology. Which in turn is an aspect of what we sometimes refer to as the concept of American exceptionalism.
To deal seriously with gun violence, it seems to me, is to take on the challenge of shifting these profoundly rooted national and personal images and stories of who we are. They are so much a part of us that we hardly ever feel the need to talk about them--they're simply assumed, taken for granted as part of the common ground we share as Americans.
We all grieve when events like those of this past week occur, and we feel personal shock and pain when one of them hits close to home. At the same time, at some deep level we also find our way to accepting these occurrences as the tragic but necessary side effects of our special nature as a frontier people and the unique role of our nation in the world.
It's like the collateral war damage to innocent people that we've accustomed ourselves to living with. We lament it, and we truly want to keep it to the bare minimum, but we also feel that our historical role requires our paying this cost (a bit of White Man's Burden, redivivus). Theologically, there's a strong connection here with the myth of redemptive violence, which provides a religious rationale for many among us to accept the way things are and for at least part of the deep resistance we encounter to changing the gun laws.
I suspect that we will now begin to see some modest changes in access to semi-automatic weapons, some improvements in preventing, spotting and caring for mental illness, maybe even more support for our educational systems. I'm hoping it's also a point in time where we will see, in various formats and venues, the start of the conversation about our national identity and values that we very much need to have.
What I find myself looking for are ways to engage our neighbors and ourselves in surfacing and exploring together these largely unquestioned images and stories that so powerfully shape our behavior. What is really special or exceptional about America--the good, the bad and the ugly--relative to what is special and exceptional about any other nation and people? How are we to understand that exceptionalism, and what do we do with it in today's world?
Some of us might like to get rid of the whole idea of exceptionalism, but I think in this country, it's there, and we have to engage it. Doing so, it seems to me, is key to that long range and indirect strategy we've been talking about in this conversation. It's essential if we're to have a real shot at changing the images from which we continue to act and from which we and others continue to suffer.
Engaging these conversations, I'm afraid, means welcoming and listening deeply to those with whom we strongly disagree--sharing and discussing together what we think the times call us to preserve in our heritage, what to leave behind and what to recreate. If it's to work, it will have to be uncomfortably inclusive, in a big tent, as the Occupy folk like to say.
We could begin to start such conversations in our workplaces, our churches, our book groups, our community meetings, at the pub or coffee shop, over dinner with friends, on line, using all these wonderful social media tools. It's something each of us could tackle, if we chose to, without much of an organizational structure. Maybe down the road at some point, . . . .
Is this a tactic--and a conversation--we want to be part of?
Gordon
On 12/17/2012 1:45 PM, jlepps@pc.jaring.my wrote:
Colleagues
I'd like to add one more note to this lively dialogue (which I hope continues, and perhaps even begins to focus).
It's obviously the case that a change of heart is required in this situation. The question becomes how to make that happen, and I'm reminded of Martin Luther Kings's response to us WASPS who were opposing desegregation because "we need to have hearts change to support integration." To paraphrase him, "Laws can't make you love me, but they may prevent you from killing me." Strict gun control may be that kind of law. And, IMHO, whatever will prevent this sort of mass murder is worth doing. Also I've noticed that hearts are remarkably adaptable to their external situation.
In terms of luring the tiger, the question now that she's out of her lair (sorry Cynthia), what do we do: well perhaps something initial like forbidding the sale of assault weapons and mass magazines. That might be able to get some support from tigers. After all, we endure considerable inconvenience to insure safety on airplanes,, so perhaps the inconvenience of forbidding access to these instruments of mass destruction might be a possible first step.
I don't believe we'll be able to change tigers into lambs, but maybe we can help de-fang them!
John
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