• Understand: learn about what we do and why we do it
• Observe: encounter what we do and how we do it in a hands on way
• Contribute: join in to what we do and become a part of the process
• Facilitate/Lead: take ownership of what we do and help make it happen well
• Change/Improve: challenge the way we do things and try to make them better, or look for entirely new things to do

(It isn’t always a linear progression; challenging and improving something often leads to resetting our engagement with it, returning to stages of trying to understand and observe.)

Another way to look at this journey is as one from being a passive participant to an active participant in the life of the company.  Businesses and organizations thrive when the people feel they are empowered, active agents of success.  Businesses and organizations stagnate or fail when the people are just passively waiting for things to happen, or don’t know how to contribute.

I realized that movement from passive to active is not just something we do as a part of learning a new job.

It’s a journey we’re on in almost all parts of our lives; in meeting basic needs (understanding why shelter is important, observing how other people build shelters for themselves, finding or building our own), relationships (understanding our need for community, observing how other people get to know each other, making friends or starting to flirt, discerning if we’re looking for a life partner and what qualities we want in one), and so on.  And just as businesses can thrive or stagnate based on how well those journeys are going, so can people.

Based on my experiences in training staff and managing a small business, and just my own life experiences, I think many of us are challenged by the later phases in these journeys, the ones that actually mean stepping more fully into an active role.  We get stuck.  For some, it’s a matter of fear or self-doubt.  For others, it’s a cultural understanding that life is something that happens TO us, not something we go out and actively live.  For still others, its simply not having the resources, tools or experience to become an “agent” of our own successful journeys, or even to know what success looks like.

I notice this reluctance toward an active role most in our use of language, perhaps because that’s where my own hesitancy and fears seem to be expressed.

When I don’t really want to or know how to be an active participant in some particular journey, I’ll use phrases like “sometime I’d be interested to work on that” or “I might be able to look at that and see what happens.”  When I’m active and engaged, the phrases are more like “I’ll be completing that task by Friday at noon” or “Yes, I can do that, I’m ready to get going on it!”

I’ve always thought of myself as a fairly direct communicator, but my propensity to take on a passive role when I was unsure of myself was never highlighted as well as during some recent travels in South America.  My Spanish is poor to non-existent, and when the staff at the hotel we were staying at indicated a willingness to attempt to understand my English, I blatantly abused that offer…and I made it really hard on them in my polite passivity: “Umm, hello, we are interested in the possibility of securing a ride to…” and their eyes were totally glazed over at “interested.”  I should have been bolder, more active and just said “How can we get a ride to…?”  Even after I realized this, I kept doing it along the trip. “Could you tell us about some of the options that might be available for dining in…”  Just spit it out, man!  “Where should we eat in…”

I notice this in relating to others, too.  If one of us doesn’t feel clarity about wanting or knowing how to be in some kind of relationship (professional or personal) with the other, we say tentative things like, “We should get together for lunch sometime and catch up” and then never seem to follow up to make it happen.  When we’re really clear about wanting to be in relationship, we make it happen: “Here are five days I’m available to get together – which ones work for you?”

My experience may not be universal, but when people only make vague statements of intention or communicate in ways that don’t actually make a real connection or call to action, I’ve learned that they’re probably stuck in some kind of passive role in some part of their own journey.

Modern culture makes moving from passive to active harder than it already is.  Human relationships and personal journeys are complex enough that learning to “do it right,” take leaps of faith, contribute well and become a facilitator of success is HARD on its own. This is not helped when we can convince ourselves that we’re being active by watching a TV show or movie that makes us feel like we understand something or have had a particular experience.  It’s not helped when we can click “Like” on Facebook and tell ourselves that we’ve had some sort of meaningful interaction with a friend.  It’s not helped when firing off an email or Tweet to someone putting the ball in their court is widely considered to be “getting things done.”  Many of the structures and tools of our modern society are encouraging us to be as passive and unengaged with reality and each other as possible, while simultaneously whispering in our ears that we’re living full, active, busy lives.

How do we resist this?

For me, it’s by raising my awareness of the areas where I’m passive and where I’m active.  It’s by trying to be as intentional and clear as possible about who I am, what I want, what gifts I have to bring, where I’m stuck or what things I still need to learn – and then acting out of that intentionality and clarity.

In relationships with others, it’s by avoiding statements that are ambiguous or disingenuous, instead giving honest engagement and asking for the same in return.

In running my business, it’s by asking and helping my co-workers to move into roles where they can actively live out their individual capacity and share their gifts, instead of waiting to be told what to do.

I try to practice these forms of intentionality, and I only succeed some of the time.  But when I do, and when I feel like I’m shaking off the fog of passivity and regaining a sense of full engagement with my life, it feels AWESOME.

Queries:

What does moving from passive to active look like in your life?

Are there habits, tools, relationships or places in your life that are holding you back, encouraging you to stay stuck or uncommitted to the things that really matter to you?

Are there areas in your life where you’re just waiting to see what happens, when you should be facilitating change?

What are you going to do about it?

Lawmakers and executive branch leaders across the political spectrum are acutely aware that they’ll never be criticized for “supporting the troops” that serve in these operations.  In his recent speech updating the world on the status of U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he also acknowledged the tenuous state of the economy, President Obama said that, “as long as I am President, we will maintain the finest fighting force that the world has ever known, and we will do whatever it takes to serve our veterans as well as they have served us.”  The finest in the world.  Whatever it takes.  These phrases mean something coming from the President of the United States.

Locally in my community, as our City Council debates questions of funding various departments and programs, shrewd Council members have learned that they can shore up support for cutting the funding of any given budget line item by raising the specter of having to cut back on law enforcement or fire-fighting personnel.  In a newspaper article just today, a Council member pits public safety against funding the local Human Rights Commission, because he knows public safety will always win: “When you are forced to get rid of police officers and firefighters, I’m sure human rights is going to come up for discussion again.”

Is that what it’s come to?  We will be asked to endure any cost, any sacrifice as long as we don’t have to cut back our spending on police, fire, and military?  Why is that?

Essential Services

These public safety jobs have long been described as “essential services,” things that you just don’t give up on unless you’re abandoning your very participation in civilized society.  We use tax dollars to train emergency/public safety/military personnel and equip them with expensive, high-tech gear that (in our idealized narrative, anyway) allows them to solve problems in ways no ordinary citizen can:

• If someone is threatening to harm our country, these people of courage and might can use unparalleled military force to stop them!
• If a fire is threatening to harm our household, these people of courage and might can use special fire-fighting equipment and training to put the fire out!
• If someone is threatening to harm us personally, these people of courage and might can use the threat of force – or actual force – to stop that person in their tracks!

Members of the military, fire-fighters, police officers, EMTs – these aren’t just people doing an everyday job; they’re out there saving lives.  Whether we think we’ve ever directly benefited from their work or not, they become our protectors, our heroes, our saviors.  They are something reliable, essential, rock-solid in a world where so much can change so fast.

So raising the question of reducing funding for these heroes is of course unquestionable.  How dare we even consider what it would mean to ask someone who has put their life on the line to look for work elsewhere?  Where is our loyalty to the troops?  Where is our appreciation for their sacrifice?

Just Another Job?

While it would be a stretch for anyone to say that these roles in our society are “just another job,” we do need to remind ourselves that those who find themselves in the military, in a police force, in a firefighting department have almost always chosen to be there voluntarily.  They are made well aware of the risks involved, and they are paid for their time and for putting themselves in harm’s way.  This doesn’t make their heroic actions any less heroic, but it does mean that our contract with them has some limitations.

When we as taxpayers choose to pay people to protect us, we are not also committing to their life-long, tenured employment.  We are not committing to never question the value or utility of a given public safety program weighed against other community needs, or to never ask what a reduction in forces might look like.  We are not blindly saying that we’ll always do whatever it takes to keep those public servants employed, no matter what.

After all, what kind of bleak existence would we have if we always gave absolute priority to defense spending and police/fire budgets?  When we’ve whittled away our budgets for maintaining a given quality of life, when we’ve closed all of our parks and our public spaces, when we’ve traded local control of services and programs that ensure our rights are protected and our voices are heard for the empty assurances of monolithic state and federal governments, when we’ve accepted that you don’t have to be well-informed about the news of the day or about how the world works as long as you can be entertaining, when we’ve given up on providing educational settings that enrich lives instead of preparing us to pass tests, when we’ve destroyed the natural landscapes of the Earth so that we can buy a Big Mac more conveniently…will it really be enough to know that there are police and firefighters and military forces patrolling our streets, watching out for our safety?

Is that really the best future we can imagine?

Or,

Another Way

Can we start to turn this conversation around?

Can we start to ask questions about how the money we spend on the military and public safety services fits in to our priorities as communities?

Can we accept that discussions about changing how we use our community resources does not equate to bashing the service or worthiness of the heroes who have put their lives on the line?  That in fact, we best honor those who serve our community by being good stewards of the community’s limited tax dollars?

Can we put aside the absolutes and the unquestionable statements of “whatever it takes” and instead allow ourselves to sit with complex needs in a complex world?

Can we ask ourselves what we might spend money on if we weren’t driven by fear – fear of not being re-elected, fear of being accountable to our mistakes, fear of that which we cannot control or that which is not familiar?

Several years back, at a town hall meeting here in Richmond, I watched Congressman Mike Pence use this hero worship against one of the heroes themselves.  A police officer from the Richmond Police Department stood up and asked a question about Pence’s views on, I believe, healthcare benefit funding for police officers.  The question was one that challenged Pence and demanded more than a sound bite answer.  So what did Pence do?  “Ladies and gentleman, first of all, let’s just all give this officer a round of applause for the service and sacrifice that he and his fellow officers make every day.”  The room erupted in sustained applause, and by the time it died down and everyone was sitting again, Pence could have answered any question he wanted any way he wanted – we’d all forgotten about the officer’s good, hard question.

Mr. Pence knew what he was doing, and indeed, he proceeded to not really answer the question, the officer unable to push him further without seeming ungrateful for the applause.  It was a scary moment, one when the power of this particular form of hero worship was hit home for me.

Up to us

I appreciate what the police officers in my community do for me.  I’m glad to know that I can call 911 and expect a fast response if I need a fire put out.  I’m immensely grateful and touched that there are those who believe so strongly in their job that they’re willing to risk their lives as a part of it.

So let’s not take that for granted.  Let’s not let politicians and uninformed fear-mongers create a false dichotomy when it comes to funding the work of the heroes in our community while also maintaining a reasonable quality of life that includes protection of civil rights.  Let’s honor the service of those involved in public safety by being willing to truly understand whether their sacrifice and risk is actually necessary in the context of the future we really want to create for ourselves.

In an article in today’s Palladium-Item about changes to Richmond’s zoning code that were passed last night, City Councilman Parker is said to have stated that, “he didn’t think the council should support something that might put someone out of business.”

Parker’s words are a manifestation of some of the more regressive and misdirected thinking that too often dominates in Richmond and Wayne County’s governmental leadership, but that is rarely verbalized so succinctly.  The statement was a reference to claims by Porter Advertising and their supplier, Productivity Fabricators, that the new sign ordinances included in the zoning code (which place some restrictions on billboard advertising) would put those companies out of business.

Why is this regressive and misdirected, and why is it good that the zoning changes were approved anyway?

First, let’s take the claim that the Richmond City Council might be putting someone out of business.  It’s certainly true that this government body has the ability to enact policies that could make it very difficult for one kind of business or another to do business in Richmond (and when it comes to humans rights organizations, look out!).  But that’s a lot different than implying that the Council is responsible for maintaining the financial health of a particular for-profit operation in town throughout all kinds of changes in culture, policy and governance.

When a City brings its community’s regulations up to modern best practices, be it in areas of safety, food service, transportation, health care or signage, it’s a given that business models of the past will need to adapt.  Big tobacco, tanning salons and the fast food industry know this very well.  It would be quite unfortunate if the folks at Porter Advertising hadn’t thought to learn how trends in community zoning and signage policies were eventually going to impact their business, and then prepared themselves to make changes accordingly.  But again, that’s their job to do if they want to succeed in the wonderful world of capitalism, not City Council’s responsibility as a government entity.

Secondly, even IF we accepted that City Council was indeed in danger of “putting someone out of business,” I’m still not sure that’s in itself a reason not to pass one piece of legislation or another.  This is the fear-based line of thought that keeps communities like Richmond stuck in the past: we’ll only allow things to change if they will create jobs (any jobs, no matter how low the jobs pay or how temporary they are), and we’ll fight against any change that might force someone to do something differently, or that might endanger jobs.

A basic function of lawmakers in a representative system of government is to encourage change that represents the diverse and changing interests of the community and discourage change that conflicts with the interests of the community.  If someone came to the City Council and requested legislation that would allow them to dump toxic waste in the middle of downtown, I would hope Council members would be okay with putting that someone out of business. I’m sure that in this town, if a proposed zoning change was going to encourage the flourishing of adult entertainment venues, the Council would fall all over themselves to put those operations out of business.

These may be extreme examples, but consider that it might just be a good thing for our community to have tighter restrictions on the size and placement of large commercial advertising signs throughout our landscape.  Is anyone else tired of only being known to strangers by the RV billboards that introduce us to travelers on I-70?

Maybe a Richmond skyline with fewer and/or smaller billboards is a Richmond that residents and tourists will enjoy more.  Maybe Porter Advertising and their colleagues in the industry can innovate, adapt, change, figure out what the global best practices are in tastefully sized and placed marketing tools that make an impact.  Maybe they’ll do MORE business with these changes – who knows?

I wonder what opportunities for community improvement might have been passed up over the years because a single, influential business played the “we might lose income if you do that” card?

Old minds think, “how can I stop bad things from happening?“  New minds think, “how can I help create the best possible version of the community I want to live in?“

In this case, I think City Council rightly considered the broader interests of the community to pass these zoning code changes – they may not be perfect, but as with this and other matters, we won’t know until we try something a little different.

1) The Pal-Item reports on a meeting happening today about technology in schools:

The Richmond Community Schools Board of School Trustees has scheduled a special meeting for Tuesday to learn more about the school corporation’s technology needs…Technology coordinator Rob Tidrow has reported to the board that the school corporation is operating with outdated technology, and in some cases, technology that is obsolete…School officials have asked the board to consider paying for the upgrades with dollars available in a rainy day fund or the school corporation’s savings account.

I support our schools having current technology so that students can be engaged with and knowledgeable about how to get the most out of these tools. In the past that may have inevitably meant running the latest version of Microsoft Windows on the latest desktops from Dell (although there are plenty who would have said there were alternatives then too).

But in an age where many technology tools and services are online, and aren’t tied to a particular operating system or hardware vendor, it shouldn’t be a foregone conclusion that a school has to spend large amounts of money on proprietary software licenses and cutting edge hardware, when low-cost or free software and older but perfectly usable hardware can do the same job. In a time where school budgets are being cut, it’s worth looking at other options before reinvesting in more hardware and software that may also become obsolete as quickly as what they are replacing.

I pointed Mark to this issue, and in response he wrote up one particular technical approach that RCS could take. There are others, too.

2) Jason Truitt writes in his blog at the Pal-Item:

Expensive new technology requirements for 911 offices have brought six area counties together in a search for solutions. Fayette, Franklin, Randolph, Rush, Union and Wayne counties all use the same [911 emergency] system now, but it will be obsolete next year and no longer supported by Microsoft.

There may not be any off-the-shelf open source offerings that will meet this need, but for crying out loud, don’t just sign up for the next Microsoft contract only to find yourselves back in the same position a few years from now. While they’re teaming up, I hope they explore what other communities are doing to get more value out of their emergency systems, whether it’s creating systems themselves that use more open standards, finding new uses for old equipment, or even challenging the expensive requirements that might not be serving community interests as much as they are guaranteeing income for influential vendors.

These two particular cases may be decided as they always tend to be. I hope that in general, local decision-makers will realize that there are other ways to go that save money and make better use of existing resources.

But one only has to look at the long list of community building organizations and entities in Richmond – and the overlap, duplication, and even competition that some of them represent for each other – to wonder if maybe this isn’t an area where we’re actually holding ourselves back instead of moving ourselves forward.

Consider, in no particular order:

• City of Richmond (including the Mayor’s office, City Council, various commissions and committees)
• Wayne County Government (commissioners, council, and related entities)
• Richmond-Wayne County Chamber of Commerce
• Main Street Richmond Wayne County
• Richmond/Wayne County Convention and Tourism Bureau
• The Economic Development Corporation
• The Richmond Depot District
• Richmond Art Works
• Wayne County Vision
• Neighborhood Services Clearinghouse
• Institute for Creative Leadership
• Preserve Richmond
• Wayne County Foundation
• WayNet.org
• United Way of Whitewater Valley

All of these organizations, while having some significantly different areas of focus and programming, are essentially working on the same core issue: how to make Richmond and Wayne County a better place to live, work and play.

They approach that question differently, for sure. Some are funded by taxpayer dollars while others seek membership fees and grants. Some have brick and mortar operations with paid staff while others are made up of a few key people who meet when and where they can. But all of them are trying to build up our community.

I wonder, then, if Richmond and Wayne County is benefiting from the work of these organizations as much as it could or should. If you add up all of the budgets and person-hours and fundraising galas and community events and networking gatherings and the like, are we really seeing the results that we should if those same resources were being put to work by a smaller number of organizations, or even one organization? Or is there some fragmentation, or even severe limitation, that comes from having so many proverbial cooks in the proverbial kitchen?

And the above list is just the organizations working on community building at a fairly broad level – if you start to look at organizations working on specific issues like environmental awareness and sustainability, education, youth programs, housing, or providing social services to those in need, you can make whole separate lists with all new kinds of overlap and duplication of efforts, all right here in one little city that doesn’t even have an Indian restaurant!

Sometimes the overlap is just logistical or administrative: everyone having their own calendar of events, for example, that the average citizen doesn’t have a hope of knowing to check when they want to find out what’s happening in town. Sometimes the duplication or perception of duplication is more substantial: every year about this time, small businesses start getting bombarded with letters asking for charitable gifts or membership renewals for the coming year, and they have to decide how best to support their community, hoping their dollars go as far as possible. In turn, the soliciting organizations have to spend their time and resources reiterating the value they bring to the area, just to make sure they aren’t lost in the noise.

This doesn’t seem like the most effective way to operate.

Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting that the work of any one of these organizations isn’t needed or valuable, or that their mission and approach aren’t sound. In fact, I support many of them with my time and dollars, and have been fortunate to call many of their leaders and advisers friends over the years. Some of them do collaborate and enjoy strong partnerships, and many of them can point to significant and lasting successes they’ve had here. Diversity of approach and funding, sometimes with a little duplication, can be essential.

But I also can’t help but indulge in some thought exercises:

What if some of these organizations were better at communicating openly and honestly with each other not only about shared values and goals, but about their concerns, egos and territorial sensitivities?

What if some of these organizations could truly collaborate, share resources, or even merge programs?

What if we didn’t take the impact and relevance of some of these organizations for granted, grilling some on why they’re still a good value, and praising others more for the under-appreciated work they do?

What if we decided that our community needed a new approach?

We are complex enough beings that we can simultaneously understand how our community is hurting in a lot of ways, and also how good we have it and much possibility there is for the future.

Old minds think: “How do we stop these bad things from happening?“

New minds think: “How do we make things the way we want them to be?“

Let’s make sure our community building efforts are actually working to make things the way we want them to be.

It is our human nature to be competitive, individualistic, and materialistic. Our well-being depends on strong leaders with the will to use police and military powers to protect us from one another, and on the competitive forces of a free, unregulated market to channel our individual greed to constructive ends. The competition for survival and dominance—violent and destructive as it may be—is the driving force of evolution. It has been the key to human success since the beginning of time, assures that the most worthy rise to leadership, and ultimately works to the benefit of everyone.

As Korten notes, this story makes a world of peace and sharing one that is just a naive fantasy, forever out of reach.

Is this why we don’t mind our police state so much? Why we make fun of people who don’t achieve through competition or power-grabs? Why we’ll go to any length to protect those “free market” forces?

Is this story true for you? How much of it do you encounter or even enact in your daily life? Are there other stories about who we are that you might want to tell instead?

• That we have to choose between a candidate from the Republican party and a candidate from the Democratic Party.
• That within a given political party, we have to choose a single candidate who is the best and only choice.
• That the party conventions are a time when the will of the people is represented and expressed in the form of a meaningful vote, and not just a time for the powerful and well-connected to party on someone else’s dime.
• That we have to vote for the person who can win, instead of voting for the person that best reflects our own values.
• That we must choose the candidate with the most political experience, since the presidency is no place for on-the-job training, instead of choosing a candidate who could be the most effective once in office.
• That we have to choose between efficient, accurate, secure electronic voting machines with no paper trail and slow, unreliable, corruptible traditional voting methods that leave a written record of our choice.
• That it is possible choose a President who will represent us individually and work to address the concerns that affect us on a day-to-day basis, instead of working on those concerns ourselves within our community.

What other false choices are we asked to make? Feel free to add your own in the comments.

Quinn, who I’ve mentioned here a few times, is an author who has spent much of his life writing books that try to show readers a different way of looking at the world and the story we tell ourselves about how the world works. In Write Sideways, Quinn essentially tries to answer the question, “once you have seen the world from a different perspective, how do you help other people see that same new perspective in a way that’s meaningful and lasting for them?”

As a man who often puts himself in the role of a teacher, Quinn also seems to be ever in pursuit of ways to explain his methods and process, perhaps in the name of passing on the practice of opening eyes and changing minds (his approach to world changing). But as he tells in Write Sideways, he seems to have some difficulty doing so effectively, at least based on the wild and strange questions he gets from his readers. This is not the first time he’s told his own story in an attempt to provide some context and background to his approach; in Providence: The Story of a Fifty Year Vision Quest, he recounts his life leading up to the publication of Ishmael, his most famous and impacting work. I was worried that Write Sideways would be a recycling of that information or of other parts of his writings, but despite some re-hashing of parts of the Ishmael novels, I would say it’s a self-contained and fresh take. (It’s not necessary to have read his other books, but you’ll get more out of it if you have.)

The book is structured as a conversation between Quinn and one of his readers, Elaine, who visits him for a few days in his home. It’s essentially a slightly edited transcript of the conversation, and so it reads quickly, as though we are sitting in on the conversation, turning our heads back and forth between Quinn and his guest. I thought one of the key points in the book came early on, when Quinn admitted that while he’s always avoided looking at himself as anyone special, he’s come to accept that he has a unique frame of reference on the world, and that getting to that frame of reference is a kind of skill and wisdom in itself. From there, Quinn guides Elaine through challenges and exchanges that attempt to help her do the same, often with questions from readers as exercises.

Each time I have encountered Daniel Quinn, he has always inspired me. At first it was Ishmael and his other earlier books that inspired me to look at the world in a different way, and to find other people who were doing the same. Since then, when I’ve met him, talked to him on the phone or heard him speak to groups, it’s been his process and approach so some of the world’s most vexing problems that have inspired me, as someone who seeks to do some eye-opening and mind-changing in my own life and work.

I’m not sure anyone will ever be able to truly replicate what Quinn does, but as I’m sure he would say, it’s not really about him, it’s about finding new ways for humanity to live that are sustainable. To that end, Write Sideways is a helpful contribution from someone who’s been pioneering those efforts in his own special way for quite some time.

If you missed it, you can also check out the Annual Holiday Bazaar happening next Saturday at the Clear Creek Food Cooperative, where you’ll be able to buy crafts, jewelry, pottery and other homemade items from area artisans. See you there!

It’s too bad, then, that we often seem to be trending toward the further diluting and replacing of a strong public life, especially for our younger community members. In Richmond, the Common Council recently decided to enact a new curfew that restricts people under the age of 18 from being out past a certain time of the evening, and threatens to fine the parents of those people progressively higher for each offense.

As with most laws that say “if you’re under a certain age, the government requires that you do or do not ____”, I think it’s yet another unnecessary and misguided transfer of a community’s power and responsibility to decide how it wants to live away from the community members themselves (especially parents and children) and to the government and accompanying police state. (Do we still honestly believe that the time elapsed since birth is such a precise measure of maturity, self-discipline, ethics or responsibility?) But in this case, it’s one of those particularly draconian measures that says “you, human, must stay in this particular physical space from this time of day to that time of day.” Do we really want that kind of imperative coming from lawmakers who don’t live with us, who don’t know what our private lives entail?

I know that one argument for this kind of curfew is that it helps keep order in the city, reducing the amount of policing that has to be done. The implication here is that (A) people under the age of 18 are the predominant cause of disorder, and (B) a form of order that involves restricting our public lives by threat of physical force and economic hardship is a desirable one. I would suggest that neither A nor B are generally true, and that by trying to relieve the burden of policing our streets during certain hours, we pursue outcomes that are far inferior to creating a community where the streets are a positive part of a healthy public life.

It’s putting a band-aid on symptoms and avoiding the deeper conversations we could have about why we don’t think we can live together well without a curfew. It’s an example of a world run by old minds that think “how can I keep these bad things from happening?” instead of new minds that think “how can we best create the world we want to live in?” And it makes you start to think about what other programs are in place that artificially hold us back or keep us confined, when there are much more important things we should be spending our time and energy on.