In class, we’ve been exploring “moral networks.” Earlier in the semester, our students mapped their networks, responding to prompts like What abstract moral principles seem compelling to you? and What personal virtues do you strive to develop?

Today they paired up, map in hand, and asked each other questions. What did you mean when you wrote that? How do these ideas connect?

After the conversations, we came back as a full group to discuss. Was this conversation like a one-on-one? We asked. Is it deliberation?

We also asked about spaces where these conversations can take place – and whether lack of such spaces has a negative impact on civil society.

“These conversations” would, of course, not literally be citizens coming together with diagrammed morals. But are there spaces where you can genuinely talk with others about what you believe and about what they believe?

Some people had these conversations. Many did not.

In Avoiding Politics: How Americans produce apathy in everyday life, sociologist Nina Eliasoph observes how people interact – constantly avoiding conflict. They may have passionate discussions around what type of cookie to sell at the bake sale, but the moment someone raises an issue of institutional racism the conversation gets shut down.

Problems that seem to hard, too solvable, and too likely to raise real debate are avoided in dialogue again and again and again.

Conflict avoidance isn’t the only barrier to authentic dialogue.

As Kenji Yoshino, describes in Covering: The Hidden Assault on our Civil Rights, people often hide their true selves – cover – in order to adhere to social norms. This covering, and this social pressure to cover, results in people burying their true selves, trying desperately to be the person they think society wants them to be – often with seriously detrimental results.

Yoshino argues that everybody covers to some degree, but looks particularly through the lens of civil rights. People of color who cover to fit a white social norm. Women who cover to fit a male social norm. Working class people who cover to fit a middle class norm.

You could add countless other forms of covering – the stigma around mental health, for example, leads many to “cover” those aspects of themselves.

Like Yoshino, I’m not intrinsically anti-covering, I’m okay with the guy who always says exactly what he’s thinking whether it’s a socially acceptable thing to say or not – but I don’t know that we all need to aspire to be that person.

But I do think covering is a problem. It’s a problem for the individuals who are unable to genuinely express themselves, and it’s a problem for all of us who lose those voices and perspectives from the conversation.

Covering diminishes all of us.

So, for yourself, try to push the boundaries of your comfort – try to trust people to accept you for who you are even if it seems impossible to imagine that they could. Even if you try just a little, its important to try.

And, more importantly, when you’re talking to others, know that they may be covering – that they probably are covering. They probably have thoughts and ideas and feelings that they assume you will judged them for. Pieces of themselves that they are unsure to share, but which are core to their identity, no matter how far they’ve tried to push it down.

A dialogue takes two people. It’s your job to not only to listen and talk, but to share your authentic self and to openly welcome others to do the same. A conversation isn’t about you, it’s about inviting the other person to share a piece of themselves – and, importantly, to accept and welcome the piece they share with you.

In theater classes we used to do exercises to help us get grounded.

We’d aim to be physically grounded – so we wouldn’t lose balance from an instructor’s gentle push. We’d practice drawing power from that grounding – not only using our diaphragm to project, but drawing strength – our character’s strength – from that grounding.

Find your center and use it, the instructors would explain.

In case no one’s ever told you to find your center (did I mention I grew up in California?), it’s round about your stomach. About two inches north of your belly button.

Years later in Aikido classes, we did similar exercises with a different twist. The “ki” in “Aikido” is a kind of…personal energy that you can control and direct. You may have heard of this as the Chinese “Chi.”

Aikido as an art is particularly focused on harnessing this ki. The name, in fact, means…”the way of harmonizing ki.” Using Aikido, a smaller opponent can defeat a larger opponent, a lighter opponent can defeat a heavier opponent.

There’s a lot of physics involved, of course – you use your opponent’s inertia against them. But power in the physical sense is important here, too. If someone comes at you with blind power, and you are grounded, centered, you can redirect that power to their detriment.

In the strength training I do these days, core is the buzz word of choice. Lifting heavy weights isn’t about having large arm muscles. It’s about tapping into your core strength. Focusing your energy on moving efficiently with a burst of power. It’s about taking one deep breath and using your entire body to meet one goal.

All of these exercises have a physical component – literally generating energy and power from your stance, breath, and movement. But many of them have a…metaphysical component for lack of a better word.

In theater, you use your grounding to power your character. To have stage presence. To own the moment.

In Aikido, you use your center to defect someone else’s un-centered power. To stay calm, powerful, and in control no matter what is thrown at you.

In strength training, you use your core to power the physical movement, but you use your resolve – your mental toughness as one instructor calls it – it focus all your mental energy on a simple physical action.

In those moments, your mind is blank. Or toughened. You are one with your movements and wholly engaged in one task. And through this grounding, you remain calm and focused through the physical strain. Centered.

And it’s remarkable what you can accomplish.

Tisch College, where I work, will host it’s annual Frontiers of Democracy Conference in Boston, MA on July 16-18, 2014.

Much of “Frontiers” consists of invited sessions planned by Matt Leighninger (Deliberative Democracy Consortium), Peter Levine (Tisch College), Karol Soltan (University of Maryland/Summer Institute of Civic Studies), and Nancy Thomas (CIRCLE/The Democracy Imperative). In addition, alumni of the Summer Institute of Civic Studies (that’s me!) are planning sessions and issuing a call for proposals.

To submit a proposal, share a 300 word abstract by March 31, 2014.

We’re intentionally keeping the call open – submit an idea you’ve been wrestling with or a topic you’ve been exploring. We can help match you with others interested in convergent topics as we put together, interactive sessions with plenty of time for conversation, moderated discussions, workshops, readings, planning sessions, or other types of events.

Frontiers of Democracy is not a typical academic conference, and many participants are practitioners. Therefore, interactive working sessions of various kinds are strongly preferred.

As the website elaborates:

Below is a list of potential topics, but we welcome proposals that fit broadly and creatively within the key theme of the conference, Who’s on the bus and where is it going? The State of the Civic Field. Both teams and individual scholars and practitioners may apply. Additionally, we may connect you with other presenters based on interest area.

Topics

• Citizens and Citizenship – What sort of citizens do we want? What knowledge, actions, and beliefs are important for strong citizens? What actions have citizens taken to actively engage in democratic practices? What institutional structures promote meaningful and engaged citizens? What knowledge, skills, and attitudes could transfer to global citizenship? Which may not? How does in-group and out-group status both define and limit citizenship?

• Scale – How can strong/successful civic practices be scaled up and out? Is this a useful focus for civic work?

• Civic Studies – What is the current state of the debate in the field? What controversies have emerged? Where is more research needed?

• Political Reform – What changes in laws and policies are needed to strengthen active citizenship? What should we do to achieve those changes?

• Democratic Practices – Sessions on particular practices or methods, which may involve – for example – community organizing, media production, deliberation, reflection, or service.

• Political Learning – How can we begin to address civic education in an era of education spending reduction, the Common Core, No Child Left Behind, and Race to the Top? What are the challenges and opportunities for higher education?

• Capitalism and Inequality – Is civic renewal compatible with capitalism? Is it hamstrung by inequality?

An item in my newsfeed caught my attention this weekend – 9 Reasons To Bring Back Cocktail Parties by  Brie Dyas in the Huffington Post.

The article itself is not that exciting. Spoiler alert: the author thinks cocktail parties should make a come back. But its opening lines seemed oddly reminiscent:

Your grandparents probably enjoyed one trend that has sadly since died a thousand deaths: The cocktail party. These gatherings dominated the 1950s and 1960s, then fell by the wayside for a variety of reasons. The hub of socialization shifted away from the living room and into bars…

I can practically hear a young, modern, hipster-style Robert Putnam bemoaning the death of social capital.

Citing a drop of about 30-40 percent in “entertaining friends at home,” Putnam argued in his 2002 article Community-Based Social Capital and Educational Performance:

Our use of leisure time has been substantially privatized, as we have shifted from doing to watching. Americans have silently withdraw from social intercourse of all sorts, not just from formal organizational life.

Putnam speaks more broadly than the death of cocktail parties – pointing to declines in going to bars, participating in sports, and, of course, bowling leagues.

But Dyas’ totally unscientific claim that “the hub of socialization shifted away from the living room and into bars,” invokes the spirit of social capital.

Going to a bar, as the article points out, is a totally different experience then entertaining in your home. There is, of course, a vast diversity of bars, all with different characters and ambiance. But, on the whole, bars are crowed, noisy, and more expensive.

You go to a bar to be seen and to meet new people. The later, of course, being somewhat ironic because it’s impossible to hear anything in a crowded bar.

Putnam talks about the decline of social capital as if it is universal to our experience. Once upon a time everyone was friendly and life was just swell. Then we all got sucked into our individual televisions and never spoke to another living soul again.

His data support this vision – there have been significant declines in organizational participation and other, informal, modes of socialization. But his video killed the radio star rhetoric always puts me over the edge. What if the story is more complex than that?

Perhaps it’s not our overall sense of society that has died, but just our time spent in small groups. Our time spent actually meeting new people – in venues where you can hear their name. And our time spent really getting to know someone by talking about their experiences of life, liberty, and pursuing happiness.

So perhaps the Huffington Post is right – it’s time to resurrect the in-home cocktail party. Putnam would surely want us to.

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

These ominous words from historian John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton have joined the canon of popular catch phrases.

And while some psychological studies argue that power simply “heightens pre-existing ethical tendencies” – bringing out a person’s best or worst morality – the idea that power corrupts seems to resonate.

The popular question, would you rather be forgotten or hatefully remembered? gets to this point as well. As if those are the only options. To be great – to be remembered – is accept your own corruption.

Conceptualized differently, power doesn’t necessarily corrupt so much as it deadens. When radical organizations come into power, they become institutionalized, bureaucratic, attached to the new status quo. What once was radical becomes entrenched and stagnate, needing a new radical wave to sweep it aside.

Much of my work ultimately comes down to questions of power. Examining power, mapping power, sharing power, building power.

But if power is so terrible, why should we fight for it so? And if power is destined to corrupt us, how do we escape that destiny?

Well, for one thing, even if “power corrupts” that is not sufficient cause to leave the corrupt in power.

And if we all shared equal power, or if at the very least if there was less entrenched unequal distribution of power – the ultimate goal of many I work with – perhaps that would mitigate the corruptive influence of power.

If absolute power corrupts absolutely, perhaps we’ll be saved by modest power corrupting modestly. The power of the people should always serve as a check on the power of authority.

And if power corrupts, how can any of us with even a modest modicum of power hope to emerge unscathed?

Perhaps we can’t. Or perhaps we’ll get lucky and power will just make us more ethical after all.

But neither conceding nor hoping sound like sufficient solutions.

Perhaps the best we can do is to be honest with ourselves. To regularly regard our morals, to check ourselves for corruption as we might check ourselves for ticks. To question ourselves, to doubt ourselves, to hold ourselves up to the light and invite honest feedback.

Perhaps what we must do is to acknowledge our own corruption and then join in the fight to stamp it out.

“Idealist” is a somewhat derogatory term.

There are, of course, those radicals who wear the badge with pride – flaunting their faith in hoping for the best in a world which seems to always be preparing for the worst.

But generally speaking, “idealistic” is often used as a synonym for “unrealistic.”

And perhaps it’s just the recent run of Man of La Mancha commercials, but this characterization seems somewhat unfair. I suppose it depends in large part on how you define an idealist.

Did Don Quixote de la Mancha try to reach the unreachable star because he thought he could? Or because it would be unchivalrousness to do less than try?

Should we be the change we want to see in the world, as Ghandi never actually said because that’s they only way to change the world, or because it’s our responsibility to constantly change ourselves to the best we can be?

In Albert O. Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, he outlines “alternative ways of reacting to deterioration in business firms and, in general, to dissatisfaction with organizations: one, ‘exit,’ is for the member to quit the organization or for the customer to switch to the competing product, and the other, ‘voice,’ is for members or customers to agitate and exert influence for change ‘from within.’”

For Hirschman, loyalty mediates these two options. If you’re loyal you will stay and fight (voice), if you’re not loyal, you will peace out (exit).

I’d argue that an “idealist” is loyal. An idealist doesn’t have to believe they will win. An idealist doesn’t even have to believe that it’s possible to win.

But an idealist believes that it’s their duty to try. To exercise voice and forgo the option of exit. To fight with every breath for what they believe in, even when no one cares to listen.

If “idealist” is derogatory, its because these knights put us shame as they tilt at windmills with buckets on their heads. Because so often we choose to exit – through apathy or pragmatism – rather than to voice what we believe.

The challenges we face are complex. The forecast for success is gloomy. But the idealist knows this for certain: exit will get you nowhere.

If you feel a duty to confront these challenges – to fight the unfightable foe – then voice is the only option. You must chose to run where the brave dare not go.

Wu-wei, a central concept of Taoism, can be literally translated as non-action or non-doing.

Yet, wu-wei more fully is an embracing of action in non-action. As the Tao Te Ching reads:

The Tao is constant in non-action
Yet there is nothing it does not do

Wu-wei is a natural state of being. It is being a leaf on the river, carried by currents through tumultuous times and peaceful times.

With unattached action, there is nothing one cannot do

I’m not sure these ideas translate well into traditional Western thought. The leaf on the river metaphor helps, but it seems detached in a negative way.

Why should people be at the mercy of the elements around them? Shouldn’t they have power and voice and autonomy?

I don’t think Taoism would disagree. But just as stubborn bows break and supple bows bend, but survive – wu-wei encourages a certain flexibility, a willingness to let go, that ultimately leads to greater understanding, and therefore, to greater autonomy.

If your car spins out, you turn into the spin. (Or so I’m told, I don’t drive.)

If you try to fight the spin out, try to force your will on the physics carrying the car – physics will win every time. But if you turn into the spin, you can let it carry you while maintaining control.

There are so many things in life that are outside your control. And if you fight the spin on all of them you’ll end up frustrated at best and crashed at worst.

Perhaps the closest thing from Western thought is Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

But even this does not deeply do justice to the spirit of wu-wei. A more Taoist version would read, perhaps:

Grant me the serenity to accept
There is nothing I can change
Accepting this
There is nothing I cannot do

I’ve been co-teaching a class this semester, Introduction to Civic Studies: Theories for a Better World. Today, we began discussing Saul Alinsky, and more broadly, community organizing.

But what is community organizing?

Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge, describes community organizing as: “a process where people who live in proximity to each other come together into an organization that acts in their shared self-interest.”

Well, I don’t know about you, but I find that entirely unhelpful. So, let’s move past the dictionary definition. Stories are more effective anyway.

I wouldn’t consider myself a community organizer, but I have been organized as part of my community. In that process, I’ve attended one-on-one trainings, strategized about issues, organized and attended rallies, protests, and speak out events.

I am, it would be said, a “leader” with Somerville Community Corporation’s Jobs for Somerville. I don’t know that I’d call myself a leader – I’m not a big fan of that phraseology – but that’s what it’s called when I’ve been organized sufficiently to organize.

That is to say – we’re all leaders. Not in an annoying, everyone wins a prize for showing up kind of way. We’re leaders because we’ve been drawn to an issue we care about. We’ve been trained in some skills, but, more critically, we’ve realized the skills we already have.

We’ve discovered the power of our own stories as well as power of hearing others’ stories. We’ve learned that we have a voice. We’ve learned that when we speak up, others will listen – and if they don’t, we’ll just speak up louder. We’ve learned that power isn’t something intractably bestowed upon a few, but something that is ours for the taking. With our voices and our stories, we build power.

I remember the first time an organizer invited me for a one on one.

I was surprised to get her call asking me to coffee. I’d met up with friends for coffee, but I’d only met this woman once. I didn’t understand why she wanted to talk with me.

I wasn’t anybody special.

Perhaps more surprisingly, when we met…she seemed genuinely interested in learning about me. It wasn’t a brief bout of small talk followed by a here’s what you can do for me pitch. She asked where I was from. She asked about my family. She asked if it was hard being so far away. She asked what I was passionate about. She asked why I cared. She shared some of her own story, her travels and tribulations.

We talked for an hour. I don’t even think there was an ask at the end. Isn’t there always supposed to be an ask at the end?

She said it was really nice to get to know me and that she looked forward to talking with me more.

She made me feel special. To her, I was special.

And thus I was organized, as I so gracelessly put it. And since then, I’ve learned to ask others out for coffee. To ask them their stories and learn from their experience. To treat them as special – not because that’s what nice people do, but simply because…they are special.

So what is community organizing?

I guess I would say – it means recognizing that every single one of us has power. It’s spread unequally and leveraged unfairly, but every person has power. Community organizing means recognizing your own power, supporting others in recognizing their own power, and doing everything, everything, within your power to share that power equitably.

My father always told me to never volunteer for anything.

This was something of a joke from the man who constantly found himself volunteering to build set pieces and school desks. Who led class field trips to lay track and who poured hours of (often unpaid) effort into historical interpretation.

Never volunteer for anything.

When I say this to other people, they often look aghast. Sometimes just confused. “Why would your father tell you such a thing?” they ask, as if afraid of what other dark life lessons might spring out.

Well. The wording of this has always been very precise for me. It’s not like he told me to never do something to benefit some else. Simply, never volunteer for anything.

It’s actually pretty good advice.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch because you’ll always have to pay for that lunch one way or another. With time if not with money.

Volunteering is not so different. You can never really do something for free, because even if you don’t get paid for your trouble, at the end of the day, it’ll still be something of a trouble.

My father grew up in the world of theater, where volunteering for something meant being the rube to raise his hand when the magician asks for some one from the audience. You may think you want to be that person, but really…you don’t want to be that person. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into when you shoot that arm into the sky.

Never volunteer for anything.

Perhaps this is why I find the concept of “public work” so appealing. Because working in the community is work. It’s a whole lot more than stepping up to the stage for a moment in the spotlight. Though it’s just as likely once you get there you’ll discover you just agreed to get sawed in half.

Never volunteer for anything means to always accept the cost of everything. It’s no free ride you’re giving away, it’s time, energy, and whole lot of effort.

And that work is worth it. There’s so much wrong with our lives, our communities, and our world. Or perhaps, more optimistically, so much opportunity for improvement. There is unspeakable injustice and shocking events and entrenched idiocy. And all of us must dedicate real time, energy, and effort in tackling those deep issues.

So never volunteer for anything. You may not get paid, but at the end of the day – the work is worth it.

Sometimes two ideas appear to be in conflict.

And not just two ideas held by two different people with wildly different backgrounds and life experience. Sometimes one’s own ideas don’t quite line up with each other.

I may be tired of the rain, but glad there’s not a drought. I may wish I had fight instinct when I actually had a flight instinct…or vice versa. I may crave other’s approval, but be determined to be myself – unmoved by what other people think. I may hold freedom in the highest esteem, but be willing to curtail my own and other’s freedom to things that would cause harm.

Life is complicated, and context is everything.

One of my favorite metaphors is light. Going back at least as far as the Greeks, there have been arguments over whether light is a particle or a wave. Aristotle envisioned light as a disturbance of air – a wave, while Democritus argued for discrete particles.

Experiments in the 19th and early 20th century provided conflicting results. Sometimes light acted like a particle and sometimes it acted as wave. Eventually, physicists pieced together an understanding of electromagnetism that explained how it was both a particle and a wave.

But wave-particle duality is no metaphor. It’s not just light that exhibits this duality – it is all matter. All matter. Everything. I am a particle and wave.

The metaphor, of course, is saying there is a duality. We understand waves and we understand particles, so while it may be confusing and complicated to say there’s a duality…that’s still easier than really understanding some third thing, just outside our mental grasp, that behaves like a particle and behaves like a wave.

I go on this tangent about wave-particle duality, because if all matter has this duality, isn’t reasonable to assume that ideas have a certain duality, or perhaps multi-ality, to them as well?

We think of morals as fixed, concrete things – perhaps with some flexibility or fluid properties – but essentially as particles, as discrete quanta that can be somehow measured and defined.

But if we look closer, perhaps we’ll see the wave interference patterns. We’ll see the seemingly inexplicable conflicts that make sense in our own minds, though we can’t begin to articulate it to others.

Perhaps if we look closer we’ll discover our own duality and embrace this so-called conflict. Not everything can be neatly defined as a particle. Sometimes, we must recognize the wave.