[Dialogue] Springboard studies A way to accelerate development of common memory? summer reading??

Sat Jun 13 14:27:17 EDT 2009

Over the past year, an assortment of the larger "us" have been reading books / studying them together.  Limits of Power, Hot, Flat and Crowded, Community, The Outliers to name a few.  We have both used events (early mornings at the ToP Trainers meetings) and "free conference" phone calls to get together.  
One of the strategic intents coming out of the recent ICA Community strategic thinking weekend is "Accelerating development of common memory".  One simple way to do this might be to (a) share our reading lists and recommendations with one another and (b) choose some books to study together in some simple way.  This will enable some common language and images about what is going on that can give us more in common when we talk, plan, work together.
The Big Sort is a recommendation (see below).  I am sure there are others.  If there are enough people interested, and with the book, we can start a conference call study group this Tuesday evening at 5:00 pm Pacific time.  Want to participate?  Email me.  I'll get it started.  1-269-320-8400.  access code 881373#
What other suggestions do you have?

THE BOOK

THE BIG SORT (Houghton Mifflin, May 7,
2008) is the landmark story of how America came to be a country of
swelling cultural division, economic separation, and political polarization.

Going far beyond
the simplistic red state/blue state divide, journalist Bill Bishop (in collaboration with sociologist and
statistician Robert Cushing) marshals original data and incisive reporting to
show how Americans have sorted themselves geographically, economically, and
politically into like-minded communities over the last three decades. 

Homogeneity may be
a perk of the unprecedented choice our society offers—but it also breeds
economic inequality, cultural misunderstanding, political extremism, and
legislative gridlock. This is the story of our times, and its reality poses a
profound threat to democracy, but no one before now has seemed to notice, let
alone been able to describe, its causes and consequences. 

The nation we live
in—our culture, economy, neighborhoods, and churches—has been sculpted by the
Big Sort over the past thirty years: 

•People with
college degrees were relatively evenly spread across the nation's cities in
1970. Thirty years later, college graduates had congregated in particular
cities, a phenomenon that decimated the economies in some places and caused
other regions to flourish. 

• The generation
of ministers who built sprawling mega-churches in the new suburbs learned to
attract their stadium-sized congregations through the "homogenous unit
principle." The new churches were designed for cookie-cutter parishioners,
what one church-growth proponent described as "people like us." 

• In 1976, only
about a quarter of America's
voters lived in a county a presidential candidate won by a landslide margin. By
2004, it was nearly half. 

• Businesses
learned to target their marketing to like-minded "image tribes," a
technique used by Republicans in the 2004 campaign. 

Living in
politically like-minded groups has had its consequences. People living in
homogenous communities grow both more extreme and more certain in their
beliefs. Locally, therefore, governments backed by large majorities are
tackling every conceivable issue. Nationally, however, Congress has lost most
of its moderate members and is mired in conflict. 

Like Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, Richard
Florida's The Rise of the
Creative Class, and Thomas Frank's What's
the Matter with Kansas?, THE
BIG SORT explores the
connection between cultural evolution, economic change, and the power of place. THE BIG SORT, however,
is the first account that systematically ties cultural and economic evolution
to the changing political landscape of America. 

And when you have
finished reading, the country—its conflicts and turmoil—makes a new kind of
sense

Jim Wiegel

If anyone tells you something strange about the world, something you had never heard before, do not laugh but listen attentively; make him repeat it, make him explain it; no doubt there is something there worth taking hold of.  --  Georges Duhamel.

401 North Beverly Way   

Tolleson, Arizona 85353-2401

+1  623-936-8671

+1  623-363-3277

   jfwiegel at yahoo.com

   www.partnersinparticipation.com

--- On Thu, 6/11/09, James Wiegel <jfwiegel at yahoo.com> wrote:

From: James Wiegel <jfwiegel at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Springboard] Wonder where we are in the Springboard studies?
To: "Springboard Dialogue" <springboard at wedgeblade.net>
Date: Thursday, June 11, 2009, 4:42 PM

I just got back from the library with The Big Sort

Jim Wiegel

If anyone tells you something strange about the world, something you had never heard before, do not laugh but listen attentively; make him repeat it, make him explain it; no doubt there is something there worth taking hold of.  --  Georges Duhamel.

401 North Beverly Way   

Tolleson, Arizona 85353-2401

+1  623-936-8671

+1  623-363-3277

   jfwiegel at yahoo.com

   www.partnersinparticipation.com

--- On Thu, 6/11/09, Richard West <rwestica at ms69.hinet.net> wrote:

From: Richard West <rwestica at ms69.hinet.net>
Subject: [Springboard] Wonder where we are in the Springboard studies?
To: springboard at wedgeblade.net
Date: Thursday, June 11, 2009, 3:41 PM

Sorry I missed the last one, but am interested in continuing.  Is there a new decision?

Dick
-- Richard West        ICA Taiwan
3F, # 12, Lane 5, Tien Mou West Road
Taipei, Taiwan 111
T) 8862-2871-3150
F) 8862-2871-2870
email) rwestica at ms69.hinet.net
skype)  rwestica

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