I had an interesting conversation recently, with young people who felt disillusioned with the non-profit world after having the opportunity to work…in the non-profit world.

They were stuck by the scrambling for money, the disorder, the politics, and the in-fighting between seemingly like minded groups.

“I thought non-profit work would be all nice and fuzzy,” one person reflected, “But it’s not all sunshine and butterflies.”

A few adults in the group – who had experience working in non-profit and other sectors – reassured them.

“Before you get too disillusioned with non-profit work,” they said. “Remember that it’s basically the same no matter what sector you work in. It’s the same in corporations and the same in academia. It’s just human nature.”

I found that oddly…not reassuring.

If I was feeling more satirical today, I’d argue that we should emotionally scar all our young people – so they grow up healthy cynics prepared to take on whatever terrible things life throws their way. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and we do, after all, have a responsibility to ensure the strength and vitality of the generations that follow.

But I guess I’m feeling more practical today, because what I really want to know is how we can support people through these first forays into the real world. Prepare them for the “realities of office life,” as one person said, without brushing off all the ills of the world as inevitable.

More deeply, how can we all collectively – now and in the future – move towards systems and institutions which aren’t as corrupt, bureaucratic, or disorderly as they seem when you first encounter them? I can’t help but wonder if my years in the “real world” have dulled my senses to this behavior. Has some of this become so every day that I don’t think to question it any more?

No, it is not all sunshine and butterflies – not in the non-profit world, and not in life. Frankly, I am okay with that – I sunburn easily and “there is no sun without shadow,” as Albert Camus says.

But that doesn’t mean shouldn’t strive towards sunshine and butterflies. That sounds nice, doesn’t it? Even if we never get there? Even if we don’t really want to be there?

So today, I leave you with the absurd – shall we purposefully prepare ourselves and our children to strive for the unobtainable? And can we avoid burning out from certain defeat?

When I go to work, I am a professional. When I go to a community meeting, I am a citizen.

If I go to a community meeting for work, I’m a professional again. If I go to a community meeting representing an organization I serve on an unpaid board for…then I think I’m a citizen again? Unless I’m serving on that board for work…then I’m a professional.

It’s all very confusing.

Everyone wears many hats and has many different roles, but I find this gap between our professional identities and citizen identities particularly interesting.

I don’t strip my soul when I walk into work, nor would I be willing to.

Similarly, I like to think that the knowledge and perspective I’ve gained through my paid work brings value and perspective to my unpaid work as a citizen.

I know for sure that I appreciate it when some one stands up in a public meeting and says, “I live down the street and I’m actually a [fill in the profession], so I think…”

Albert Dzur, political science professor at Bowling Green State University, develops the idea of democratic professionalism. He is interested, as his website explains, in “how collaboration bridges the distance between professionals and the communities they serve.”

In Democratic Professionalism, Dzur frames this in terms of the Dewey-Lippmann debate:

[Walter] Lippmann’s realist argument held that the American public could not make rational contributions to the policy-making process because the time, ability, and interest levels of the average citizen were no match for the complexity of contemporary issues…A realistic view of public capacities would lead to a chastened democratic theory that emphasized the professionalization of policy making.

…[John] Dewey argued that public incompetence is not, as Lippmann thought, simply a matter of a lack of individual intelligence or rationality. True, a large number of citizens are unable to cope with the issues affecting them because they lack the time, information or analytic tools, but Dewey thought the underlying reason for this incompetence was a failure of social organization.

When I read these arguments and discussions about collaboration between professionals and communities, I can’t help but wonder – are the citizens and professionals different people?

It sure sounds like they are.

It seems to me that whether I think professionals are scallywags aiming to wrest  power from citizens, or whether I think citizens are incompetent and can’t be trusted with any serious issues…really comes down to a question of whether I think I’m a citizen or whether I think I’m a professional.

And I use the term “professional” broadly – to include so-called white color work and blue color work.

Now, there are some interesting questions around expertise in public settings. Co-founder of the Highlander School Myles Horton professes to have once refused to provide expertise to a community member even when threatened at gun point. His role, he strongly believed, was to educate – but to let people make their own decisions.

But I see expertise as being different from professional.

Expertise is a resource, something that must be cultivated and, in some cases, sustained. It’s something you gain, and generally something that isn’t diminished when someone else gains it at well.

A professional is a person. A person with expertise, no doubt, but a person none the less. And that person is part of communities and holds multiple self-identities. That person is a citizen.

So setting citizens again professionals – or even bringing the two together in collaboration – seems like a false dichotomy. Citizens are professionals. Professionals are citizens.

What we should really be asking ourselves is:
1) How can we help people bring their citizen and professional identities together, strengthening both their “work” work and their community work?

and, importantly:
2) How can we best share expertise? How can we all educate each other, and how can we build a society where people’s professional achievements are driven by their interests and passions, not solely by what doors weren’t closed to them?

If “professional” refers only to a certain class of people – whether driven by income, race, gender, native language or other factors – if “professionals” are a closed, elitist group – well, that is a problem indeed.

I don’t know much more about these efforts than what I read online, but they represent an interesting confluence:

• From Idealist.org: “The big day is almost here! We’re just about ready to launch the Idealist network—a new online and on-the-ground platform that will help people everywhere take action on the issues they care about. More than 20,000 people are set to learn more and join us [on] March 11 …. We’ll start with a live online presentation, take your questions, and then start building this network with you. Here’s some background about why we’re doing this, and why we need your voice in the conversation.”
• From Rich Harwood: “I’m glad to announce today [Feb. 19] The Harwood Institute’s plan to train 5,000 new Public Innovators by 2016. Public innovators are individuals with the mindset and skills to catalyze and drive productive change in communities and change how communities work together. We’ll also grow our Public Innovators Corps to 100,000 members – individuals who actively support this new direction and use our approach to better their communities, organizations and lives.”

Assuming no overlap, that would be 120,000 people. I admire the scale of these efforts. Of course, there are many more people already at work in civic networks–but additions are always welcome.

The post large-scale civic movements forming? appeared first on Peter Levine.

We’ve been mapping morals in the class I’m co-teaching this semester. As my co-teacher and colleague Peter Levine has shown, this technique can also be used to map literary characters.

So, for fun, here’s some mapping of Hamlet from three of his soliloquies.

We meet Hamlet for the first time in Act 1, Scene 2. At this point, Hamlet has not spoken to the ghost who walks the ramparts. But while Hamlet doesn’t yet consider his uncle to be guilty of fratricide, it’s clear there is little love lost between the two men – a little more than kin, and less than kind.

Thus, Hamlet’s first soliloquy, O, that this too too solid flesh would melt – or, as it’s more colloquially known, the frailty thy name is woman speech – serves as an introduction to the points of tension in the play. Or, as mapped:

The first act ends with Hamlet speaking to the ghost, who reveals itself to be none other than Hamlet’s deceased father. Not only dead, but murdered by his uncle. The serpent that did sting thy father’s life/Now wears his crown.

His father’s ghost urges him to act:
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
A couch for luxury and damned incest.

Hamlet isn’t sure what to do. He has a duty to his father, but he has a duty to the crown, and to the uncle who now wears it.

By Act 3, Scene 1, Hamlet is at a mental and emotional loss for how to handle the situation, delivering his famous To be, or not to be speech:

Simplicity is part of the beauty of this speech. Its essence is truly encapsulated by that first line – to be, or not to be.

At other times in the play, Hamlet rambles from one idea to another – the turmoil and confusion he feels expressed in the wandering of his words. But here we see him struggle with the same idea over and over. To be, or not to be.

That is, indeed, the question.

This is an important turning point in the play. While Hamlet finishes this soliloquy unresolved and convinced that Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, he also realizes that he will not act on his suicidal thoughts.

He spends the next two acts debating what to do, but at its core – the moment he decides not to die, the moment he decides to be, is the moment he decides to act on his father’s wishes – to act on life if not on death.

In Act 4, Hamlet becomes thoroughly resolved to avenge his father. He has determined his uncle’s guilt and, while he still struggles with the reality of what he feels he must do, Hamlet is convinced of the path he must take. In Act 4, Scene 4, Hamlet gives his How all occasions do inform against me speech. He reflects on the evidence, examines his own morals, and comes to the inescapable conclusion: He has a moral obligation to seek revenge.

All this mapping is, of course, quite subjective. I used my own judgement to pull out themes from the three soliloquies and my own judgement to estimate what ideas Hamlet was linking together.

But, I believe, there is value in this activity. Consider for a moment the above maps merged into one:

Repeated ideas here are considered to be the same node and nodes and edges are color coded by when they are mentioned.

This could certainly be helpful from a literary view – the network seems to capture many of the play’s key themes and shows Hamlet’s inner turmoil. But could this be helpful from a civic point of view?

What would happen if Hamlet met someone convinced that one’s only duty is to the living? Or someone convinced that existence beyond this mortal coil wasn’t something to be afraid of? How would Hamlet interact with that person? Would he be taken with their arguments?

The specific questions are beyond the point. The real question, of course, is this – how do your personal questions, beliefs, ideas, struggles and experience define who you are, and how does that shape your interactions with others?

For example, when you meet someone new, are you quietly thinking in the back of your mind: Like me, or not like me?

That is the question.