50 ideas for the new city: #2 | Common destinies

"In some ways, it's almost like building a new city."

 

 

Any vision worthy of this opportunity will look to every place in this city and see to the lives of each of us in all these places.

The vision that will do the greatest justice to this opportunity will be the one that creates a destination for all our destinies.

50 ideas for the new city: #1 | Year Zero

"In some ways, it's almost like building a new city."

 

 

The history of Rochester is now marked by two dates: August 21, 1883 and May 20, 2013.

 

Any calendar that would claim to mark a course for this community should rightly (and wisely) be reset to Year Zero.
 





Natality

Hannah Arendt

Comments from a recent e-mail related to a beginning coincidental with a birth:

There is a strong and necessary generational element to this undertaking. There are some of us at the actuarial edges of being able to enjoy the shade of the trees being planted here. More importantly, what changes ever happen without the impatience, impudence, and impiety of a rising generation? Certainly no transformation happens without it. Advocacy is required to be sure, as has been and will be some agitation.  Having said so, I hope you see that this “long circuitous road” also allows for ample opportunities [not just for the status quo to be defended but also] to challenge the status quo. Those prone, prepared, and positioned to do so need to be engaged and stay engaged in those places where actions are deliberated and taken.....

I close with this thought, apropos of what is most important in your life right now. It is from Hannah Arendt about whom I have been thinking lately, “the new beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew….”

When transparency goes wrong

 "... a promotional shirt to get people excited about the project."

 "Mayo is too corporate"

Five.Oh.Seven. 

Who's up for a little crowd sourcing fun?
Well, earlier this afternoon we received a phone call from the team over at 'Destination Medical Center'. Through a pretty exciting initiative, their plan is to invest $6 billion dollars into Rochester infrastructure over the next 20 years. This project will create growth, jobs and opportunity like this area has never seen. It's a very exciting thing for those in the area.
Ready for the crowd sourcing part? The DMC wants Five.Oh.Seven. Clothing to collaborate with them to create a promotional shirt to get people excited about the project. In their words, "Mayo is too corporate", so they've come to the incredibly cool people in our network!
What are your ideas? What will make people talk, engage in conversation, and hopefully support this great initiative?

Let's hear your ideas! 

 - Source: https://www.facebook.com/FiveOhSeven 05.16.2013

Well, here's my idea (see above).

UPDATE:

Here's the final design:

"And we can't let avarice get in the way."

Avarice - commonly not a mortal sin

Chairwoman Ann Lenczewski, DFL-Minneapolis, told members of the tax conference committee that time is running out. In an interview afterward, she said she is particularly frustrated that Mayo is trying to get around a requirement that the city issue all the bonds — something all parties agreed to previously. 

"We started with a concept that couldn't work and was never going to happen to we're almost there," she said. "And we can't let avarice get in the way. It's called compromise around here. It's not winner-take-all."

- Post-Bulletin, 05.16.2013 http://bit.ly/12eEA1n

"Avarice," there's a word you don't see used much anymore. Merriam-Webster Online defines the word in this way: "excessive or insatiable desire for wealth or gain."

The Catholic Encyclopedia elaborates thus:

Avarice (from Latin avarus, "greedy"; "to crave") is the inordinate love for riches. Its special malice, broadly speaking, lies in that it makes the getting and keeping of money, possessions, and the like, a purpose in itself to live for. It does not see that these things are valuable only as instruments for the conduct of a rational and harmonious life, due regard being paid of course to the special social condition in which one is placed. It is called a capital vice because it has as its object that for the gaining or holding of which many other sins are committed. It is more to be dreaded in that it often cloaks itself as a virtue,  or insinuates itself under the pretext of making a decent provision for the future. [emphasis added] In so far as avarice is an incentive to injustice in acquiring and retaining of wealth, it is frequently a grievous sin. In itself, however, and in so far as it implies simply an excessive desire of, or pleasure in, riches, it is commonly not a mortal sin.

Here's a thought experiment:

With several billion dollars on the table, is it possible for avarice to get in the way? Is avarice a retardant or an accelerant?  Obstacle or object?

Gut check.

Not just growth, but "just growth"

We argue, however, that the usual tools of progressives have focused primarily on ensuring that poor people are getting more of their fair share of the “economic pie”. Equity advocates have had little success, and in many cases little interest, in contributing to job creation or economic growth per se, or even to paying attention to selecting among equity strategies those that have the highest pay off in terms of increased economic performance.

But this is the other half of just growth – you need a compelling economic growth agenda as well as a commitment to fairness. You can’t assume that the proper balance of policy is struck in the balance of politics – that the business sector will worry about economic growth, that community advocates will worry about “the people,” and that politicians will sort out the differences. You cannot press for equality in a stagnant economy – as we have seen in dramatic fashion recently, when the economy doesn’t work, people don’t work. Moreover, poor people are most dependent on economic growth and most in need of the jobs created by a region’s economic drivers. Equity proponents, we would suggest, need a clear economic growth model and agenda and this is often missing in (in)action.

- Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor, "Just Growth and the Future of the Next Economy"

 

"Just growth" is at the core of the tension - potentially creative - of saying "yes, and..." to DMC. It is the broader, deeper conversation we should have. It is the means by which we create a destination for all of our destinies. If it cannot be embraced in the governing structure of DMC legislation, it must be reflected in its operational values. This reflection can only be mirrored in an image of a future that encompasses both growth and equity.

One among us striking at the root

"...and to live among monsters is to live on the edge of hell." - Kenneth Burke

 

 

From her, I receive dispatches. These reports I would craft into parables as if each were a lesson rather than a summons. By transforming them into arcs of hope perhaps her stories will not break me. But they should. And I should let them. Not only break, but shatter.

 

"...The more we remind ourselves to think positively, the more immersed we are in the business of denying our despair at the struggles we see around us. We decide to move far enough to the edge of our culture to see it clearly. What is the norm and normal does not serve us well. Many of us have tried to live a "normal" life, and how is that going? I have taken vows that I have broken, I have hurt people that I have loved, and there is no self talk that will change that. If I can accept these struggles in myself, then my chances of seeing the struggles of others compassionately increases. This means we have to be abnormal and imperfect. We have to be willing to see clearly and to question what others seem to condone...."

- Peter Block, The Answer to How is Yes

 

 

So, she tells me, this night, in this city, there is a child with cause to fear her father. This fear she has in common with her mother as she has in common with her mother the same father.

Now: how is it I can think of anything else? I do, of course, but how is it that I do?
 

I recall a night when I was a child coming to an epiphany. The word for it came much later, but what came that night as I wondered if anyone else was laying awake in the dark was a certain, laughing realization that of course there were others. If not in the house, then somewhere. A somewhere that night that expanded beyond the house and out into a world that I knew to be round, where the sun was always somewhere rising and somewhere setting. A big thought.
 

Then came a bigger thought. Somewhere someone was getting up and someone was going to bed somewhere. Someone was eating breakfast. Someone lunch. Someone dinner. Right then. All this was happening. Even when I slept, it all was happening. All the time, somewhere. All the time we have in a day and all the things we do in a day was happening somewhere.
 

Not that night, but some other night: Somewhere all the things that happen to us is happening. Someone being born. Someone dying. All manner of births. All the ways we die. All the things we do to each other, somewhere is being done. Somewhere all the things we say to each other is being said by someone to someone. On and on.

Not that night, but yet another night: All the time, all the time we have and all we do or are is happening, now. There are so many of us that all of what we are must be happening somewhere. An incomprehensible din of all of it.
 

Not that night, but later: Only god could comprehend it. All creation happens at once. In any moment, all is available for review. All virtue. All sin. All the time. One constant hiss of everything, always. What more could god possibly need? What is god waiting for?
 

"...A demon denies time, change, growth, dialectic, and says at every moment: This can't go on! Yet it goes on, it lasts, if not forever, at least a long time....(Reasonable sentiment: everything works out, but nothing lasts. Amorous sentiment: nothing works out but it keeps going on.)

To acknowledge the Unbearable: this cry has its advantage: signifying to myself that I must escape by whatever means, I establish within myself the martial theater of Decision, of Action, of Outcome. Exaltation is a kind of secondary profit from my impatience; I feed on it....

Once the exaltation has lapsed, I am reduced to the simplest philosophy: that of endurance....I suffer without adjustment, I persist without intensity: always bewildered, never discouraged; I am a Daruma doll, a legless toy forever poked and pushed, but finally regaining its balance....This is what we are told by a folk poem which accompanies the Japanese dolls: Such is life/Falling over seven times/And getting up eight."

 

 

- Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse

 

 

 And that's how I do it - think of anything else. Baffling reminiscence. Brooding "archetypes of instrumentality and desire."
 

So, she tells me, this night, in this city, there is a child with cause to fear her father. This fear she has in common with her mother as she has in common with her mother the same father.
 

In Walden, Thoreau writes, "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
 

This night, in this city, she is striking at the root.
 

____________________

(originally posted elsewhere April 4, 2010)