## Metadata - Author: [[Miki Kashtan]] - Full Title: Reweaving Our Human Fabric - Category: #books ## Highlights - I see more and more people drawn to becoming agents of love in the world without any sense of fairness, without any sense of what’s right and what’s wrong, without attachment to outcome, and with full passion and conviction about what we are aiming for.[16] Instead, our love can be motivated by a sense of being so privileged and blessed to have been given the gift of consciousness, and by wanting to share the gift with others, to fill in the holes and the voids of love until other people can do it for themselves – and all this without giving up on ourselves. ([Location 552](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=552)) - Gandhi worked tirelessly to maintain respectful, open, trusting relationships with everyone, regardless of how much he opposed the position, policies, and actions of whoever he was in struggle with. He was uncompromising in this commitment. Here’s the way one of his students described the regard Gandhi always held for his opponents: “It was not forgiveness, but whole-hearted acceptance by him of their standpoint as their truth which for the time being held the same place in their growth as his truth in his own, and thus entitled to equal respect” ([Location 611](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=611)) - British historian Arnold Toynbee summarized the effect of years of satyagraha: “Gandhi made it impossible for us to continue ruling India, but at the same time, he made it possible for us to abdicate without rancour and without dishonour” ([Location 713](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=713)) - On the one hand (symbolized by a hand firmly stretched out and signaling, “Stop!”) I will not cooperate with your violence or injustice; I will resist it with every fiber of my being. And, on the other hand (symbolized by the hand with its palm turned open and stretched toward the other) I am open to you as a human being. ([Location 738](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=738)) - “Satyagraha is an all-sided sword… it blesses him who uses it and him against whom it is used.” ([Location 754](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=754)) - For as long as those who promise us, say, a way to find and live out our true gifts don’t, at the same time, have a plan for who will collect the garbage and how that will happen, the result can only be that some people will be barred from access to a meaningful life because someone will need to collect the garbage. ([Location 884](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=884)) - in order to create change on a level beyond our personal lives, I don’t see a way other than working with others to transform organizations and systems directly, and to do so in a way that minimizes the risk of getting lost in our internalized version of the very thing we are trying to change. ([Location 950](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=950)) - Because there is so much that needs to be changed on the outside, there is all of that to be changed inside us. ([Location 962](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=962)) - we need to transform our consciousness and liberate it from the legacy of separation, scarcity, and powerlessness that have been the mainstay in our world for several millennia. ([Location 968](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=968)) - I am reminded of a story that my mother told me many years ago. In the story a man comes every day to the plaza at the center of town, stands in the same place, and tells stories. He is all alone, there is no audience, and he does it day in and day out. One day a small child comes to him and asks him why he continues to tell his stories given that no one comes. He responds: “I used to tell my stories in the hopes that others will hear them. Now I tell them to make sure I don’t lose them and listen to the other stories.” ([Location 973](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=973)) - In the absence of vision, social change work runs the danger of becoming an ongoing struggle against whatever the latest horror happens to be. Continually working against something leads both to burnout and to loss of effectiveness. ([Location 979](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=979)) - Even when the actions we take are in and of themselves obstructive in nature, such as acts of civil disobedience, we can model these actions after Gandhi’s and King’s examples – focusing on civil disobedience that models the world being created rather than being entirely an act of protest. ([Location 981](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=981)) - When we create and work toward a vision, in some small measure we begin to live in the world we are creating, and experience the beauty and sense of possibility that come with that dipping into the future. That, in itself, takes us out of the anguish and grief of living in a world that doesn’t work for most people, and buoys us toward a possible future in which we can rest. ([Location 985](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=985)) - Empathy for the oppressor calls for an integration of self at a higher level. To use the example of gender, just as much as there is nothing “natural” about women that makes us carriers of connection or gives us a better perspective on reality, there is also nothing about being male or white that gives a group a monopoly over violence or injustice. It is excruciating for any of us to realize that with different birth or social circumstances our group could be engaging in atrocities just as easily as another group now oppressing our own. So painful is this realization, that for many Israeli Jews it is still impossible to recognize the particular role that Israel is playing in the Middle East, or the fact that Israeli soldiers have engaged in direct torture in the West Bank, or that Israel has been supplying arms and training to some of the most brutal regimes of the world. To be able to integrate that level of understanding means being more fully aware of the entire complexity of what it means to be human. ([Location 1074](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=1074)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Demonizing “the enemy” leaves no real grounds for hope. It is only a deep understanding that the advantages of privilege come with a package of disadvantages, and that to become an oppressor we must first have been oppressed, that can sustain the hope for a change that will benefit all. ([Location 1089](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=1089)) - Tags: [[blue]] - When we transcend our own enemy images so that we really experience the humanness of the other, we can truly show people that we care about their needs. When that happens, they are then usually more open to consider ways of meeting their needs that are not at the expense of other human beings’ lives, the planet, and other values of theirs. ([Location 1175](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=1175)) - For a number of years I was supporting the campaign to establish a federal-level Department of Peace by offering monthly coaching calls to volunteers and activists. One key take-home lesson I got from this work was confirmed many times over since then: activists are trained to speak, and not trained to listen. The idea remains solid in many movements that the path to change involves convincing people to change their minds. A conversation focused on convincing is dramatically different from a dialogue. Philosophically, entering dialogue entails a willingness, however small, to be changed by the process. Convincing presupposes that my position is right and unchangeable. Dialogue is a conscious invitation into mutuality and exploration, leaving the outcome unknown until sufficient connection has been established. ([Location 1330](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=1330)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The most productive kind of dialogue develops when we speak authentically based on what we want rather than on what we consider to be “right” or “fair” or “just.” ([Location 1352](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=1352)) - Tags: [[blue]] - People move, spontaneously and smoothly, towards greater capacity in three different areas at once: choice and inner freedom; willingness to care about the effects their actions have on others; and resilience for handling the effect that others’ actions have on them. ([Location 1703](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=1703)) - Collaboration is a very exacting discipline, and rests on only one uncompromising commitment: to attend to everyone’s needs. ([Location 1782](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=1782)) - Expecting fairness interferes with the possibility of collaboration. Instead of thinking about what’s fair, I think about what’s possible in any situation given the level of skill and interest of all the players. Sometimes this may be more than I want to do, in which case I may choose not to collaborate. I still know that it’s my choice, and not the other person’s limitations, that ends the collaboration. This orientation has helped me tremendously, to the point of carrying no resentment to speak of, even in situations that break down. ([Location 1804](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=1804)) - “Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic. Only then does the necessity for interdependency become unthreatening.” ([Location 1854](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=1854)) - There is no way to hold on to any comforting conception of nature, reality, unity, without thereby giving in to the tradition of domination. ([Location 1860](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=1860)) - In the absence of a great deal of mindful practices about how to be in community, the combination of the need for others and the fear of others may easily result, for those of us who are accustomed to privilege, in an attempt to impose our ways on others. ([Location 1865](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=1865)) - Too little space for connection, and we lose the person as well as the trust in the room. Too much space for connection, and we lose sight of why we are together in the first place. ([Location 1906](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=1906)) - I think of it as a deep discipline to be willing to let go of whatever no one is willing to do. I was inspired in that growing commitment by the words of Thomas Merton: “To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence.” ([Location 1942](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=1942)) - my vision and dream, and complete conviction, is that we can make the entire world work by willingness alone. There have been so many times when I have seen, on a small scale, evidence of this fundamental goodwill and capacity for stretching once the guilt and fear factors are removed. The solutions are often more creative and piecemeal: one person will take the notes, and another will type them up, for example. We learn to work together and do what we can without harming ourselves and others. ([Location 1959](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=1959)) - The essential tools are the capacity to identify and create collective ownership of needs, and the skillful application of a search for willingness rather than preference. The underlying principle is the unwavering commitment to having everyone matter, holding everyone’s needs with care. ([Location 1976](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=1976)) - In our staff meetings about a third of our time together was focused on celebrating what we are doing. ([Location 2106](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2106)) - I want to start by offering a simple and neutral definition for power: the capacity to mobilize resources to attend to needs. ([Location 2165](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2165)) - For some years now one of my biggest longings has been to find ways of offering internal resources to people who lack external resources. Ironically, my own and my organization’s lack of sustainable access to external resources has been one of the obstacles to a widespread program along those lines. ([Location 2179](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2179)) - The fundamental choice we make with regard to our power is whose needs we are going to serve with our resources, and how much of a say others will have about our own choices. ([Location 2184](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2184)) - In blunt terms, having structural power means having the option of attending to my needs without including others’ needs. ([Location 2255](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2255)) - Can we transform power dynamics so that the statement that “power corrupts” no longer appears so completely like a truism? Another way of asking this question: What does it take for any of us to become “incorruptible,” meaning being so strong in our inner practice that we can withstand the allure of power? I want to believe that we can operate in a way that diminishes and eventually makes obsolete the responses of submission and rebellion. ([Location 2265](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2265)) - I am a relatively small fish in the large order of things. I have fewer than 800 subscribers to my blog, for example. The team that supports me at work consists of about four employees, all but me part-time, and I have at most a few hundred former and current students who look to me actively as their teacher. Nonetheless, I am quite aware of at least some of the dynamics of power within which I operate, and have intimate knowledge, even on the small scale at which I work, of the dilemmas and complexities that come with power. ([Location 2268](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2268)) - The terms power-over and power-with were coined in 1924 by a woman who has mostly been forgotten – Mary Parker Follett – while writing and lecturing about management theory and practice. ([Location 2377](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2377)) - The art form, what makes this tragic awareness humanly bearable to me, is to maintain the true humble understanding that it’s our own limitations that make it necessary to exclude someone, not any fault of that person. ([Location 2419](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2419)) - when we trust that our needs matter, we are much more flexible not only about how they are going to be met, we are also more flexible about whether they will be met. Think about it: if I know and trust that you care about my needs and you go ahead and take action that doesn’t work for me, I am way more likely to be fine with it than if you do the same action and I think you don’t care about my needs. ([Location 2467](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2467)) - This has led me to believe that in order to solve the decision-making dilemma, it would be important to create structures and processes that institutionalize the experience of mattering. That is the path that can lead to collaborative decision-making that doesn’t by necessity require everyone to participate. ([Location 2471](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2471)) - I am indebted to Marshall Rosenberg, inventor of NVC, for the profound insight that the most important decision to be made collaboratively is the decision about who makes which decisions. ([Location 2483](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2483)) - One other insight I’ve had in my years of working with groups is that most people will form an opinion about something if asked for one. At the same time, we don’t necessarily want to form opinions about everything. ([Location 2484](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2484)) - it’s entirely possible to reach a collaborative decision efficiently, precisely because we can uncouple the core needs we have from the millions of strategies and opinions that we create to meet them, as well as separate the needs from the people who happen to have them, and therefore we can come up with a coherent list of criteria for a decision that doesn’t depend on everyone continually defending their position. ([Location 2494](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2494)) - If anyone is particularly interested in this part of the topic, I would urge you to familiarize yourself with two resources. One is a particular process called Dynamic Facilitation, invented by Jim Rough, and the other is a website full of resources about groups, decision-making, collaboration, democracy, wisdom, and much, much more: The Co-Intelligence Institute, Tom Atlee’s organization, about whom I speak more shortly. ([Location 2497](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2497)) - Because I work with people at so many different levels within organizations, I know, for a fact, that the people at the top, more often than not, care about the needs of those at the bottom, more than is evident to the latter. Often, they act counter to their care because they lack imagination, vision, or knowledge about how to do things differently, not because they don’t want to. When I offer them the option of acting collaboratively without a loss in effectiveness and results, many take the offer with relief. Therein lies my hope. ([Location 2528](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2528)) - Defining power, simply, as the capacity to mobilize resources to attend to needs, makes it neutral, in addition to being necessary. This definition separates power from how it’s being used: despite our general use of language, power-over is not something we have; it’s something we do – it’s our choices about how we use the power we have. ([Location 2539](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2539)) - Using power with others is difficult to define or describe in part because our linguistic models of power are completely steeped with the power-over model of power as quasi-synonymous with power itself. The key feature of that model of power that makes it so challenging to present something else as power is the zero-sum aspect: if one person has power, another doesn’t; the more power I have, the less power someone else has. The very notion that it’s possible for more people to have more power all at once challenges our habitual ways of thinking. ([Location 2557](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2557)) - Using power with others, for me, is about attending to more needs of more people, thereby adding both to their power (their capacity to mobilize resources to meet their own needs) and to the whole – time and time again I am astonished by seeing that bringing in more needs results in solutions that tend to be more creative and more robust. I mourn how many people live and die without having this magical experience, because explaining it takes the life out of it, and because I find it so nourishing and trust that many others would, too, if they could only accept the apparent initial loss of control (which we never have in any event). ([Location 2562](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2562)) - The way Julie characterized the problem was that people didn’t make a clear enough distinction between what she referred to as empathy circles and action circles. The difference between the two is a difference in purpose, not in who is present – the same group of people can sometimes come together as an empathy circle and sometimes as an action circle. In fact, that was one of her clear recommendations to people gathering to make things happen – to have some meetings that are purely designed for relationship-building and empathy. ([Location 2642](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2642)) - which needs we attend to, and to what depth, has to do with what the purpose at hand is, and what we – collectively as a group, or as facilitators of a group – decide is consistent with that purpose. ([Location 2691](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2691)) - Whether the group as a whole, using whatever decision-making process they use, decides, or a facilitator guides the group in deciding, I see it as indispensable for any group to have clear agreements about when it meets as an action circle to attend to tasks, and when it meets as an empathy circle to attend to people and relationships. It’s just as challenging for a group when someone insists on taking action when the group is meeting for connection as it is for the opposite. ([Location 2702](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2702)) - Whether in a teaching context, when facilitating a business meeting, and even in a two-person mediation, if my commitment is to holding everyone with full care and to maximize choice and participation, then I will in some ways prioritize the needs of the person with less power even while holding those with more power, also, with full care. ([Location 2741](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2741)) - The form may be different and adapted to the context. The principle is clear to me: I use my own power as a facilitator to support people with less power to have more choice and voice than they might otherwise. I don’t mean I support them in having more than others, just more than they and the circumstances would allow them without my intervention. ([Location 2747](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2747)) - I mentioned earlier that I am not so keen on the idea that power corrupts. My difficulty with this framing is multiple. For one thing, this saying maintains the pervasive belief that power is bad in and of itself, a belief that can only result in perpetuating itself, since it will keep many people away from taking power lest they oppress others. ([Location 2880](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=2880)) - Tags: [[blue]] - As Martin Luther King, Jr., said: “The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But, the way of non-violence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.” ([Location 3067](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=3067)) - Tags: [[blue]] - One of the ways that privilege works is that we are accustomed to knowing the answers and leading the way, and we continue to act in those ways. Without intending harm, just following our habit and what’s familiar, we create conditions that reinforce the power dynamics that are invisible to us and intolerable to others. By learning to follow others’ lead, we change the dynamics and learn to work together. ([Location 3125](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=3125)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Our general training in nonviolence can always help, especially the deepest and repeated re-commitment to connection before outcome, to everyone’s humanity no matter their actions or positions, and to doing the inner work necessary to show up for these dialogues with our full humanity. ([Location 3173](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=3173)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Along the way we acquire more ease in noticing our inner experience and softening it, so we can open our hearts, and reopen them when they close, so that when we get triggered we know it’s an opportunity for learning about ourselves rather than an indication of a problem with the other person, and we learn to recognize that agreement with our position, however “factual” our position appears to us, is not our goal; connection is our goal. ([Location 3175](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=3175)) - Tags: [[blue]] - As I sketch out a framework for looking at these questions, I want to start by naming what is so dear to me: nonviolence is ineffable. It cannot be defined; there is no language that can describe nonviolence with simple words. I honor the wisdom that says that nonviolence can only be described as what it is not. For me, as I said, it’s a combination of love, truth, and courage. Force is simply not what nonviolence is about, not by fundamental design. It becomes the material outcome of what we do when we stand, courageously and lovingly, for what is true for us. This is how I understand Gandhi’s term “truth-force” – as his way of trying to differentiate between “regular” force and what he was doing. ([Location 3289](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=3289)) - Tags: [[blue]] - When we can achieve our aims through dialogue and connection, there is less of a chance that the other party will harbor resentment and look for the first opportunity to reassert its control. The possibility of a future that works for all is enhanced the more voluntary the change. ([Location 3323](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=3323)) - Tags: [[blue]] - This is also why I take issue with the language of making demands, even though Gandhi used that language in working to achieve independence. Demands give us the illusion of power. Do they necessarily create change? Part of what I want to bring to any work or project that I take on is the humility of knowing that nothing we can do is certain to achieve results. As soon as we use the language of demands, we increase the chances that the other party will experience us as trying to force a solution on them. ([Location 3326](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=3326)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Since I learned of Nonviolent Communication, I have been working steadily to free up my consciousness from the traps I have inherited. I relentlessly make the effort to remove from my language words that point to certain ways of thinking such as “should,” “can’t,” “have to,” “I don’t have time,” and all war metaphors. I make deliberate choices that are at odds with the addiction to convenience, an addiction whose pull I recognize within myself. I consciously choose to interact with people I don’t know so as to challenge the notion that anyone is a “stranger.” I reveal in public and even in writing aspects of my experience that I would have felt far too vulnerable to share earlier in my life, but which I do happily now in part in order to affirm my continuity with others. I continually challenge myself to question anything that appears like accepting others’ deference to me because of the position of partial power in which I find myself. I regularly make a conscious attempt to understand people whose actions are incomprehensible to me to increase my capacity for empathy and my ability to hold needs with care. I walk directly towards emotional discomfort again and again so as to create true freedom in myself to live as I want. ([Location 3637](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=3637)) - Tags: [[blue]] - “you can’t evict an idea whose time has come.” ([Location 3945](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=3945)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Full commitment to nonviolence on the basis of values, whether spiritual or secular, means maintaining a nonviolent stance even if it doesn’t seem to work, even if the goals never materialize, even if the movement is crushed by force. This is an extremely challenging position to take. I cannot imagine asking this of anyone whose life has been affected by trauma, severe deprivation, pervasive discrimination, police brutality, poverty, or any other kind of structural ongoing violence. Those are the classic conditions that breed violent uprisings, terrorist activity, or, in less extreme situations, anger or even hatred. The level of internal resources necessary for a full commitment to nonviolence, especially in the face of potential or actual repression, cannot easily be available under such conditions, because those conditions erode the human spirit. ([Location 4059](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=4059)) - Tags: [[blue]] - When we wake up to our human needs and to our power to take actions to meet them without an awareness of and practice in engaging with our interdependence, we are then most likely to advocate for our needs rather than take on the complex art of balancing our needs with those of others. Simply put, our collaboration skills have been stunted by centuries of focusing on competition and individualism. As a result, for many of us waking up to our needs means increased conflict in our lives. ([Location 4088](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=4088)) - Tags: [[blue]] - When we recall powerful people to their own deep values, we offer them a gift in return for their giving up significant elements of their power: the gift of their own full humanity in the form of their own ethical and spiritual consistency. ([Location 4215](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00TQ564J6&location=4215)) - Tags: [[blue]]