The Price We Pay For Our Politics

“Argumentative” is what the call might be of  Thursday night’s Coffee House Conversations by Conference Call discussion. Slated to follow our online Possible Society In Motion Radio Show; debating and arguing, as we were beginning to do, was the direct antithesis of our intent. Our agenda was to produce  a community enhancement forum.

Not me! I don"t wanna be
like these guys!

This definitely was not it! Rather, this time, we were rife with polarization!

Whoops! “What is going on here,” asked one astute observer of the tangle we were creating.

Thus prompted I pulled myself out of the brewing antagonisms enveloping our discussion.  Using my rich community development – and – violence prevention skills, I might add, to determine my personal perspectives on what was happening, almost instinctively I became more an observer of the process we were in. Just enough to see we were headlong into the problem we’d been discussing since the very beginnings of our Possible Society In Motion Radio Show; polarization!

Yes indeed, there we were heading into the kind of morass we’d been intent on overcoming, serving up, in our discussion forum, the same as our daily fare of online and offline hype that our media sources feed us.

Having already established that our radio show and the conference call forum that follows it have a community development agenda it was an easy shift for our meeting group to take a pause in the heat of the battle we were engaging in, shifting, at once, into each one of us present being both observer and participant. We are that much of an exemplary group!

Almost immediately well-meaning voices rang out asserting that it was “Politics that did it to us! We must stay away from politics and religion! That much is clear!”

With equal immediacy I heard myself say, “Wait a minute. That’s not what New Horizons’ sponsored programs are about; limiting our freedom of speech, not on your life, not on a New York minute.  New Horizons follows the principle that anything and everything is gist for the proverbial mill. If transforming ourselves and our lives (and maybe the culture around us???) is our intent; lead into gold, all the way. And then some!”

So I asserted, “I, Anastasia, Chief of New Horizons and all that we do, will guide us to higher ground out of these choppy waters we are presently in.

Thus it came to be that soon our Coffee House Conversations by Conference Call wound down, leaving each of us to consider what we thought about what had gone on here. And, me, especially, to contemplate the pit into which we had fallen and what I knew about avoiding it -- or at least transcending pitfalls such as the one into which we had inadvertently fallen. 

Certain of one thing, if no other; it was our own free will that had gotten us into the stew. And, if nothing else, it was going to be my free will that was going to lead us out; that – and – the willingness of the others to allow me to lead.

How very exciting!  What an opportunity!

I was – and – we were, likely, positioned to reach the higher ground; “awe” is what we call it at New Horizons!

Come along for the adventure, if you dare!  Discover with us, Jack and myself on the Possible Society In Motion Radio Show, along with our other discussion contributors, the challenges - - and the joys and “awe” of discovering how to talk about politics, religion, race and any other hot button topic without polarizing.

Anastasia knows the trail – and – you, too, already know a bunch of good stuff to add to the mix. So come along with us.

Next radio show and Coffee House Conversations by Conference Call, Thursday, August 27. Watch for details on this site and at New Horizons Small “Zones of Peace” Project blog site and The Possible Society In Motion Radio Show.

We are intent on getting our monies worth for the “Price We Pay For Our Politics.”  Maybe this time around, "Election 2016," some of us can learn to, collectively, not allow ourselves to be victimized by it all!

Or should I say by "all" of them to whom we might otherwise fall prey; Donald Trump, Hillary, Bernie, the media and on and on ad nauseum.