Some of Ben Roberts' favorite quotes from Community, by Peter Block
Part of"DandDTrans," a"community of inquiry and action" regarding the role that dialogue and deliberation can play in addressing the mega-crises of our time
Here are a bunch of my favorite passages from Block’s Community: the Structure of Belonging, which has inspired me and informs much of my hosting work, including what I am seeking to accomplish in DandDTrans.
Invitation as a Way of Being
Invitation is not only a step in bringing people together, it is also a fundamental way of being in community. It manifests the willingness to live in a collaborative way. This means that a future can be created without having to force it or sell it or barter for it. When we believe that barter or subtle coercion is necessary, we are operating out of a context of scarcity and self-interest, the core currencies of the economist. Barter or coercion seems necessary when we have little faith in citizens’ desire and capacity to operate out of idealism. The choice for idealism or cynicism is a spiritual stance about the nature of human beings. Cynicism gets justified by naming itself“reality.”
A commitment to invitation as a core strategy is betting on a world not dependent on barter and incentives. It is a choice for idealism and determines the context within which people show up. For all the agony of a volunteer effort, you are rewarded by being in the room with people who are up to something larger than their immediate self-interest. You are constantly in the room with people who want to be there, even if their numbers are few. The concern we have about the turnout is simply an expression of our own doubts about the possibility that given a free choice, people will choose to create a future distinct from the past. p.117
The Radical Aspect of Invitation
If the essence of community is to create structures for belonging, then we are constantly inviting people who are strangers to us, and one another, into the circle. An invitation is the antidote to our projection onto those we think are the problem. We take back our projection by extending ourselves to strangers. We make the invitation, in the face of our own isolation, having been waiting to be invited, wanting others to take the first step, wanting others to reach out to us, to acknowledge us and give us the gold star that never came at the right moment. This will never happen, so we are obligated to take the first step.
Invitation may seem simple and straightforward, but it is not. Especially for introverts like me. I have never attended a party without wondering if I had the right night, and have never given a party without believing no one would come.(p.116)
Advice
Create an Advice-Free Zone.We need to tell people not to be helpful. Trying to be helpful and giving advice are really ways to control others. Advice is a conversation stopper. In community building, we want to substitute curiosity for advice. No call to action. No asking what they are going to do about it. Do not tell people how you handled the same concern in the past. Do not ask questions that have advice hidden in them, such as“Have you ever thought of talking to the person directly?”
Often citizens will ask for advice. The request for advice is how we surrender our sovereignty. If we give in to this request, we have, in this small instance, affirmed their servitude, their belief that they do not have the capacity to create the world from their own resources; and more important, we have supported their escape from their own freedom.
Advice also weakens relatedness, even if people ask for it. Urge citizens to ask one another instead,“Why does that mean so much to you?” When they answer, ask the same question again,“And why does that mean so much to you?” The goal is to replace advice with curiosity. The future hinges on this issue. Advice, recommendations, and obvious actions are exactly what increase the likelihood that tomorrow will be just like yesterday.(p.109)
Sidebar quote on p.109:
One of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed is prescription. Every prescription represents the imposition of one individual’s choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed to into one that conforms with the prescriber’s consciousness.
Paolo Freire, The Pedagogy
of the Oppressed
Leadership
In communal transformation, leadership is about intention,
convening, valuing relatedness, and presenting choices. It is not
a personality characteristic or a matter of style, and therefore it requires
nothing more than what all of us already have.
This means we can stop looking for leadership as though it were scarce
or lost, or it had to be trained into us by experts. If our traditional form of
leadership has been studied for so long, written about with such admiration,
defined by so many, worshipped by so few, and the cause of so much
disappointment, maybe doing more of all that is not productive. The search
for great leadership is a prime example of how we too often take something