## Metadata - Author: [[Shawn A. Ginwright, PhD]] - Full Title: The Four Pivots - Category: #books ## Highlights - Most of our work is focused on eliminating those things that cause us harm. Addressing racism, fighting sexism, and reducing violence are all important, but reductions in these things are not victories in and of themselves because eliminating things that harm us is not the same as creating things that heal us - Trust, vision, wholeness, humane relationships, and hope are the real lifeline of movement building. This means working on self-transformation, healing, hopefulness, and cultivating a vision of possibility. Yet these spaces do not exist in our work as we now know it. As a result, this absence has been the Achilles’ heel of our efforts to engage in social change in a deeper way - Fear, scarcity, division, distrust, isolation—all are at the root of many of the world’s problems. Rather than trying to heal fear, scarcity, division, distrust, and isolation, which is really hard, we choose instead to address the symptoms of these more fundamental problems. We can address racist policies but never address the xenophobic fear that created it. - , in most cases my students don’t really indulge themselves in dreaming about what they want and instead just want a good map detailing what they should do, without a clear destination of where they want to go. They want a precise map to a vague destination - How do I cultivate the ability to still see the humanity in those whom I vehemently disagree with - No human is intrinsically better or worse than the next. While it’s true that the conditions of our lives are different, we should be careful not to confuse the quality of conditions of a human with the quality of the human themselves. We are all flawed—and trying desperately to hide it. - The process of healing is often counter to our common sense. More loving when we are hated, more generous in times of scarcity, more inclusive when we want to close ranks. This is the greatest challenge in our journey toward justice. - A pivot is a small change in direction from a single point where we are. It means that through one small change in direction, over time we can get to where we want to be. A pivot is not a complete abandonment of what we know, but it braids together what we know with how we feel and who we wish to be - When a player has the ball, they pivot in order to advance the ball down the court. This pivot requires that (1) they stop momentarily and reflect on what is happening, (2) they have awareness of the relationships of other players around them, (3) they maintain focus on the goal without distraction, and (4) they calmly and confidently flow into another direction - A pivot involves renewing our sense of possibility, transforming how we see the world, and shifting the values of our culture. This can only happen when we foster a collective imagination that restores communal wisdom that embraces both imagination and engagement, empathy and power, reflection and action - But taking the time for reflection isn’t expensive—it’s a matter of priority, not price. This leads to my second lesson working with organizations and people, which is that using a mirror is really hard work, and it’s a process, not a quick fix. It’s easy to say, “Hey, we all need to take time to do mirror work,” but it’s much harder to actually do it because it requires vulnerability and honesty, two things we just aren’t that good at as a society - Activist and scholar Grace Lee Boggs reminds us that social change is fundamentally about individual and collective responsibility for creating, imagining, and relating together in new ways - The wrong first question is, What do we need to do? The right first question is, Who do we need to become? - perhaps the most important question we need to ask ourselves, “How do I have to be as a human being for someone else to be free?” - this old-world view is based in scarcity and fear, and therefore we commodify everything ranging from people to time. We tell ourselves that there is not enough time to treat human beings like human beings because we’re experiencing pain. We convince ourselves that there are not enough resources to do it because of scarcity, so all we can do is what we have always done, dehumanize others so we can get relief. But that is how the system actually perpetuates itself - This is the time for us all to realize that there is another way. The systems and structures of our society were created out of individualism, fear, and scarcity, and they can be refashioned based in collectivity, love, and abundance - Systems-change researchers have done a good deal of research on ways that we can build our ability to have perspective in the work we do to change our society. Systems-change researchers have identified five conditions that allow leaders to cultivate perspective. The best way to imagine these conditions is to imagine an iceberg with four levels. At the tip of the iceberg are events, things that happen in systems. The next level down is patterns, which are trends that occur over time. Going deeper, the next level of the iceberg is structures, which are the relationships that create the patterns. Finally, at the deepest level of the iceberg are mental models, which are the assumptions, beliefs, and values we hold. - Note: Reminds me of the 4 elements of NVC - For those of us working to improve our society, we have to take seriously our capacity to see beyond the challenges we face and the problems we need to solve. It is critically important that we dream and imagine as well as fight and resist - There is an important distinction between interpretation and perspective. Interpretation occurs when we assign meaning to something and accept it as the entire truth. This is what happened with Nedra and the Lyft driver. Perspective, however, is an awareness of our and other viewpoints, and it means that we bear witness to other potential interpretations without judgment. Perspective means that we become the observer, the watcher of our own and others’ potential interpretations. - There would be no human progress without our collective social problem solving. But we often see problems more clearly than we can imagine solutions to them. It’s often easier for us to name, identify, discuss, and articulate problems than it is for us to imagine entirely new solutions. Trista Harris, author of FutureGood: How to Use Futurism to Save the World, calls this “problem loving,” which is the tendency for leaders to assume that awareness of the problem is the same as solving it - The conditions of oppression and the challenges of everyday life force us into daily survival mode and ongoing crisis management. Survival caused by oppressive conditions renders our imagination inert. We are all in an abusive relationship with oppression, and rather than leaving the relationship altogether, we choose to fight it. Oppression says to us, “All you can do is resist and fight me. But you will never leave me altogether,” and this is precisely what we unconsciously do, unaware of our abusive relationship with oppression - I’m not sure how many of us really contemplate freedom, because so much of our time is focused on solving intractable problems and fighting for justice. But our inability to contemplate freedom and lean into a possible future is one of the most significant barriers we face in creating justice. Somewhere along the way we have learned to talk about problems, measure the problem, and finally define the misery that comes along with the problem itself. Lateefah’s story shows us that while violence, poverty, and oppression impact us, they should never define us. The struggles that people face are real, yet our histories do not determine who we are nor limit our agency. We can create the future we wish to see rather than simply eliminating the present conditions we need to change - Grace is giving ourselves and others undeserved permission to be human - Dancing between accountability and grace is an art form. Without grace, accountability becomes social confinement, and without accountability, grace can become sentimental surrender - we have to learn that grace is something we give ourselves and others when it’s not deserved. Grace is a reckoning with mercy, and time after time I’ve learned that it is the only way to walk through the wilderness toward justice. - Grace Lee Boggs reminds us that over her years of addressing the harm done to workers, people of color, Indigenous peoples, women, gays and lesbians, and the disabled, she’s seen a dark side in our work that leads us to “think of ourselves more as ‘determined’ than as ‘self-determined,’ more as victims of ‘isms’ (racism, sexism, capitalism, ableism) than as human beings who have the power of choice” to thrive in our efforts to create a more just society. “For our own survival we must assume individual and collective responsibility for creating a new nation