Finding the team, the ideas and the means to co-create a "more caring and sharing community"

Monday

Win Back Control of Hastings Pier in #2066

This film -“Hastings Pier -My legitimate co-claim via #2066Country - Part 1 @WPier2066”

https://youtu.be/QQcPjve8JdM
is best seen in context. It occupies a fulcrum position within the powerful (IMHO)playlist “Win Back Control of Hastings Pier in #2066Country”:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM4IagQQExozrNmDLpTw5yef5luL4litr

Please upload your own “Hastings Pier -My legitimate co-claim via #2066Country” film on YouTube & add your name (unless you upload anonymously obvs!). This film is my Part 1; in Part 2 I will reveal the inside story & extent of my involvement, policy making, provocation and investment with the HPWRT/Pier Charity . Also how this inter played with the Community Development in Hastings & St Leonards, not least of which was the #2066 Timebanking gallery at the Southwater Community Sentence (by St Leonards Warrior Square Station): some of the legacy & ongoing work which is at https://2066.info

The promised links/land (#2066Country) & more:

https://twitter.com/WPier2066

https://SussexCommunity.blogspot.com

https://additionalinfo.blogspot.com

http://m.hastingsobserver.co.uk/news/letters/we_need_to_act_if_we_want_justice_1_2756987

http://imperfectidealist.blogspot.com/p/chapter-2.html

http://hastingsjustice.blogspot.com/p/harmonisation-policy-for-hpwrt-provided.html

http://freelender.org

https://twitter.com/2066Country

https://twitter.com/HastingsJustice

https://twitter.com/MeditationL

https://twitter.com/caredotmov

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM4IagQQExozrNmDLpTw5yef5luL4litr

****************

Guesstimate the percentage of people around you who are....

- Time Rich and Money Poor?

Guesstimate the percentage of people around you who are....

- Time Rich and Money Poor?

- Money Rich and Time Poor?

- Time Poor and Money Poor?

- Money Rich and Time Rich?

How would you encourage people to better use their time/money to co-create a more caring and sharing community?

How about this approach to addressing the unevenness that creates so much (relative) misery?:

"No more do you have to save up for so many consumer items, the things you want and need are increasingly on streetbank.com or, for those not using the internet for sharing, People are now getting to meet their neighbours more and daring to ask to borrow stuff and help each other. Wonderful news, as long as it's done responsibly."

Skills get traded and new skills learned through your local Timebank.

This is how people can afford to get services from others that they couldn't before:

1) the philosophy is "your hour is as valuable as my hour"

2) you don't have to find a direct swap of services; the timebank broker finds creative ways you can earn your timebank hours, including for attending community meetings and delivering these leaflets or doing what you most love to do for others.

3) It's easier to earn timebank credits than you think.

I'm particularly interested to hear from you:

1) a view you have about your local community

2) something you'd like someone to offer to you

3) a skill you'd like to develop

4) a grief or grievance you have?

5) your first name (& first letter of your surname?)

6) your photo?

#CommunityDevelopment sayings

STREETBANK:

I'd like to make it easier for people to get hold of tools and DVDs and books and transport and party items on our street without buying them. That's only half of why I streetbank; the rest is all the wonderful connections and unexpected benefits that come from knowing neighbours better. (http://streetbank.com)

TIMEBANK:

I like what you do and I'd like some hours of your time, please. Do you #timebank and what is it that you want our timebank to do (for you)? I love how the Timebank events build local skills whilst banking hours that go to serve marginalised members of the community. Thus we prevent evictions, boost family life and direct where there is need the energy of the surplus hours we accidentally create just by doing what we love to do with others.(http://stleonardstimebank.blogspot.co.uk/)

CARE4CARE:

It's likely that I'll be older in the not too distant future and in need of help with shopping, cooking, caring in order to be fairly independent in the home I have. I timebank Care4Care hours and thus become a shareholder in Freelending Community Interest Company, in which I now have a vested interest to ensure this care service (that wonderful Heinz Wolff devised) rolls down from generation to generation.

- Money Rich and Time Poor?

- Time Poor and Money Poor?

- Money Rich and Time Rich?

How would you encourage people to better use their time/money to co-create a more caring and sharing community?

How about this approach to addressing the unevenness that creates so much (relative) misery?:

Skills get traded and new skills learned through your local Timebank.

This is how people can afford to get services from others that they couldn't before:

1) the philosophy is "your hour is as valuable as my hour"

3) It's easier to earn timebank credits than you think.

I'm particularly interested to hear from you:

1) a view you have about your local community

2) something you'd like someone to offer to you

3) a skill you'd like to develop

4) a grief or grievance you have?

5) your first name (& first letter of your surname?)

6) your photo?

#CommunityDevelopment sayings

STREETBANK:

TIMEBANK:

CARE4CARE:

Tuesday

“Brexit: An Uncivil Debate” reviewed

Review of the cultural, spiritual and healing potential of the drama: “Brexit: An Uncivil Debate”.

The fractious malaise of current times, underpinned by a lack of valuing and cultivating the skills of cross-tribe dialogue, action planning and review is the last thing I wish to perpetuate in reviewing the pithy drama: “Brexit: An Uncivil Debate”. It doesn’t even matter to me whether the key individual dramatised as the well-spring of the “leave” result, Dominic Cummings, was accurately portrayed. I do not wish to write about Benedict Cumberbatch’s acting for modern media is over-obsessed with actors etc rather than unfolding the themes to get at the underlying values and then holding these values up to the light of the standard of the highest an individual can become, which, for me, as a Buddhist, is a Buddha. First one needs to become a “true individual” and James Graham‘s drama was foremost for me a plausible account of what happened behind the scenes of the Brexit vote, showing the immense impact a “true individual” can make; in this case summarised as “the largest political upset since the fall of the Berlin Wall”.

I could just cut to the chase now and show that what we need for healing are more Dominics. I refer you to the work in Brazil etc of my friend Dominic Barter, recognised in the “Radical Efficiency” report as one of ten project leaders whose projects have cut through the conventional state/politician-led ways of working and found cheaper, more effective ways of working. Dominic Barter and Dominic Cummings (as portrayed in James Graham’s drama) are, for me, both archetypal examples of the application of the key concept in Stephen Covey’s culminating work, which added a third dimension to his previous blockbuster of living and working from deep spiritual values (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People). Covey’s swansong work was “The Eigth Habit”, which all too gliby can be summarised as “Find Your Voice and Help Others Find Theirs”. For me, this ideology of how to empower people was the strapline underpinning the drama “Brexit: An Uncivil Debate”. The tragedy of what happens when people rally round the concept of “Take Back Control” only to have Westminster politics undermine the kind of Brexit they had mythologised was the closing of this drama (set in 2020, when Dominic was being held to account in a fictional Independent Review of the Referrendum); and the rolling of the credits was preceeded by endnotes on Cambridge Analytica and another company engaged in “creative data use”(my phrase, seeking a better one), the funders and the election of Donald Trump.

To enhance this review, I may well follow the link to watch the programme on Channel 4 and pull out the quote from Dominic about how poor a form of politics a Referendum is, as it creates a false ‘black and white’, polarising much more nuanced matters to be worked through collectively. If you are watching the programme, I’d be grateful for your pulling this out, for me.

One of the compliments I value most highly in my 3.5 year relationship with my partner, who, like me, is not ashamed to declare her vote as having been Remain, as she sat watching Dominic ‘own’ the managing board that was attempting to sack him is that few people could handle a meeting like that but that I was the only person my partner knew who could do what Dominic did in this meeting; no spoiler alerts needed –but watch it if you ever intend to plan a coup or make any difference in the world (#Textbook).

What I take away from a night reflecting on this drama is the importance for healing dialogue of engaging respectfully with that theme that galvanised so many, and for which "Europe" (however understood) was just a symbol: Take Back Control. My intention dialoguing with Brexit voters is to talk more about the wish for and techniques of community empowerment. As for dialogues with the "rabble rousers", some as bizarre to me as Jacob Rees Mogg (to whom I was simply polite on my last encounter), I'm wondering how they can be spoken to more effectively in service of "Good Will To All Men"? (NB It was Christmas Day when I had my poignant hour with Jacob Rees Mogg…)

The Buddhist movement to which I belong runs retreats entitled “What the World Needs Now”, all of which arrive –spoiler alert- at a very different answer to John Lydon in his song with the same title. The political and economic (& dare I say ecological/spiritual) upheaval indicated by the Brexit vote has decades to run its course (which fits nicely alongside my plug to focus your energies as I attempt to on http://2066.info). My greatest of many mentors, Sangharakshita, effectively said that what we need are whole communities of “true individuals”, more Dominic Cummingses and Dominic Barters etc etc, not less: Look up on FreeBuddhistAudio.com “Evolution or Extinction?” and absorb and live this template for how we get out of this Brexit / Climate Change / power in the hands of e.g. Donald Trump, Vladimir Putins... Once this teaching is observed, and it will take decades, my greatest fear is voiced well in the Leonard Cohen “First We Take Manhattan”:

“You know the way to stop me, but you don’t have the discipline”.

Monday

Imagine this as a leaflet that you receive - or preferably deliver - with an open heart and a cup of tea

Dear Neighbour

I believe in community and with your positive response to my brother’s suffering we could have a wonderful community here at no cost; just a little mutual care.

My family is trying to get a bicycle for my brother for Christmas and it’s harder than you might think. Part of the difficulty is that he’s been diagnosed as having a type of terminal cancer that affects the choice of bicycle. Maybe he’ll be able to handle a mountain bicycle for now, but after the last attempt at surgery it will be a fold-up bicycle that will work best so that friends and neighbours can drive him to a favourite lake for him to cycle round as a break from being under mum’s roof all the time. You know how it is? Families under pressure? Anyhow, it’s not just a bicycle my brother needs; it’s a community and a community is, for me and him, defined by how much it cares and how much it shares.

I’ll be calling round to talk to neighbours about streetbank.com

This is a place where you can find whatever items and support you need for free; like a community tool store with advisors to hand. The problem is that the whereabouts of the bicycle racks for cars, camping equipment, fancy dress for parties etc is hidden until we put it on streetbank.com or freelender.org or similar. Then we not only have a local resource for unexpected needs, but we also get to meet each other and believe in each other again, for love grows from connections such as I’m suggesting.

Please don’t wait for me to call round about the availability of a bicycle at your house. Instead please give yourself this Christmas by opening the door of sharing and putting items that may be of use to others online. If you’re worried about what might happen to your stuff, take deposit money (or favours/work) from people until each person has established enough trust. If you don’t use the internet allow me to help add the items on your behalf that your neighbours will appreciate being behind a nearby friendly door at their time of need.

My name’s ... and my number is ... When we next meet I do hope it is to find creative ways to help all those in our neighbourhood who could benefit from just a little bit more caring and sharing...

http://streetbank.com

http://freelender.org

Saturday

The Director of Action for Happiness came visiting

- he was hoping to find a formula to copy the success of the local Action for Happiness group, and wider St Leonards Sharing Consortium, both of which I had founded. Before leaving he told me that he put the success down to “the Paul Crosland effect”. Over seven years later and I’ve still not been asked to begin a self-cloning operation!

At the time I was funded by a credit card & a benefactor who became that because of seeing how I handled criticism. May at least one of the half dozen projects alighted upon in this diverse group discussion relate to what you do for others ...and stimulate constructive dialogue between us (Text first please on Zero7807 066 202).
Anyhow, here’s the film from the heyday of my innovative version of Community Development Work (self-appointed!) in Hastings and St Leonards on Sea:

http://CommunicatingNeeds.org