Thank you for this wide-ranging, deeply grounded meditation—and for the footnotes, which do more than document; they illuminate. They’re a reminder that ideas don’t float free. They walk around in books, movements, assemblies, and people—people still trying to live into the future they hope to see.
William, thank you so much for your close read. My working theory (maybe a positive form of germ theory?) is that good ideas are like good poems: they seek out willing hosts over time and distance and media to communicate them.
A benevolent contagion, then—though I’d add: the best ideas don’t just infect; they incubate. And sometimes, if we’re lucky, they mutate into something interesting.
The pre-figurative, acting on the now and not yet (one of my favorite theological concepts) is beautifully illustrated in this piece. I love how you show OWS in a long contour of American history, recognized long ago by Emerson and Tocqueville. I was working as a community development banker by the time OWS came along; my study of people‘s movements in the US had focused more on the 60s, the Panthers, etc. Thank you for sharing your deep research and reading.
Cort, thank you so much. All I know about community development banking is by possible analogy to the work a friend of mine has done in Thailand years ago as a micro-lender. He once told me that the default rate was around 3%. Extraordinary. It's interesting to me that your preparation for that profession would involve social movements.
I’d love to get a theology of community development thread going on S/S. From comunidades de base to community based development. Visions of change and opportunity. The political economy of now and not yet. Prophetic pragmatism. I like the connections you’re making in that context, esp the learn from experience, pulling on the American grain of pragmatism. cf R. Rorty on optimism and hope. Now and not yet. Evidence and belief.
That does sound like fun. One person doing a great job with aspects of a theology of community development is Elias Crim at Solidarity Hall on Substack -- not sure if you've run into him yet. I'm not well versed on the economic end of things and got Elias to give me a good book to start with: Social Entrepreneurship by J. Howard K archer and Stephanie E. Raible. I also keep up with Elle Griffin's The Elysian on Substack, which covers some of this territory. I'm a big fan of Charles Peirce, the "father of American Pragmatism."
The algo has introduced me to all of them, and I met Elias, who shares my son‘s name, sometime ago through other channels — tho it has been fun “seeing“ him on S/S. I will push harder, be more overt. I see these connections b/c I lived it, eg, 1st cent house churches led by women and the lending circles at the core of Mohammed Yunus’s Grameen bank. What they have in common is community — working together actively to live out just hospitality, a lived engagement with questions of debt and trespass. But I have yet really to articulate a theology. Thx for encouragement.
The link between first-century house churches led by women and the lending circles at the core of Mohammed Yunus’s Grameen bank seems like a wonderfully suggestive way to illustrate a possible theology of community development. I look forward to reading your explorations and hope that it becomes part of a community of fellow explorers that you would love to see.
Talk of Sennett and children’s games also has me remembering the basketball I used to play with my son. Started out with handicapping me – I couldn’t shoot from inside and was limited on how I could guard – which constraints were lessened as he grew both physically and as a player, ultimately to tell me that he didn’t want to play with me anymore; it was no longer a challenge.
Thank you, Cort, for telling this story. It makes me think that it's much better to negotiate the handicaps into rules, as you do here, than to try to lose (or maybe worse, almost lose) in games with their fixed rules that we play against our children.
I'd like to learn more about indigenous cultures and their healthier view of play, particularly how it often continues into adulthood. Here's an excerpt from the anthropologist Colin Turnbull's work about his time with the Mbuti:
"[When the men and boys start to win], one of them will abandon his side and join the women, pulling up his bark-cloth and adjusting it in the fashion of women, shouting encouragement to them in a falsetto, ridiculing womanhood by the very exaggeration of his mime. . . . [Then, when the women and girls start to win] one of them adjusts her bark clothing, letting it down, and strides over to the men’s side and joins their shouting in a deep bass voice, similarly gently mocking manhood. . . . Each person crossing over tries to outdo the ridicule of the last, causing more and more laughter, until when the contestants are laughing so hard they cannot sing or pull any more, they let go of the vine rope and fall to the ground in near hysteria. Although both youth and adults cross sides, it is primarily the youth who really enact the ridicule. . . . The ridicule is performed without hostility, rather with a sense of at least partial identification and empathy. It is in this way that the violence and aggressivity of either sex “winning” is avoided, and the stupidity of competitiveness is demonstrated." (Quoted in Narváez, Darcia ; Topa, Wahinkpe. Restoring the Kinship Worldview: Indigenous Voices Introduce 28 Precepts for Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth, 104-105.)
Both the adult culture exhibited here and the play that prepares the young for it--in which the adults participate--seem much healthier than most of what I've seen in the U.S.
Thank you for this wide-ranging, deeply grounded meditation—and for the footnotes, which do more than document; they illuminate. They’re a reminder that ideas don’t float free. They walk around in books, movements, assemblies, and people—people still trying to live into the future they hope to see.
William, thank you so much for your close read. My working theory (maybe a positive form of germ theory?) is that good ideas are like good poems: they seek out willing hosts over time and distance and media to communicate them.
A benevolent contagion, then—though I’d add: the best ideas don’t just infect; they incubate. And sometimes, if we’re lucky, they mutate into something interesting.
The pre-figurative, acting on the now and not yet (one of my favorite theological concepts) is beautifully illustrated in this piece. I love how you show OWS in a long contour of American history, recognized long ago by Emerson and Tocqueville. I was working as a community development banker by the time OWS came along; my study of people‘s movements in the US had focused more on the 60s, the Panthers, etc. Thank you for sharing your deep research and reading.
Cort, thank you so much. All I know about community development banking is by possible analogy to the work a friend of mine has done in Thailand years ago as a micro-lender. He once told me that the default rate was around 3%. Extraordinary. It's interesting to me that your preparation for that profession would involve social movements.
I’d love to get a theology of community development thread going on S/S. From comunidades de base to community based development. Visions of change and opportunity. The political economy of now and not yet. Prophetic pragmatism. I like the connections you’re making in that context, esp the learn from experience, pulling on the American grain of pragmatism. cf R. Rorty on optimism and hope. Now and not yet. Evidence and belief.
That does sound like fun. One person doing a great job with aspects of a theology of community development is Elias Crim at Solidarity Hall on Substack -- not sure if you've run into him yet. I'm not well versed on the economic end of things and got Elias to give me a good book to start with: Social Entrepreneurship by J. Howard K archer and Stephanie E. Raible. I also keep up with Elle Griffin's The Elysian on Substack, which covers some of this territory. I'm a big fan of Charles Peirce, the "father of American Pragmatism."
The algo has introduced me to all of them, and I met Elias, who shares my son‘s name, sometime ago through other channels — tho it has been fun “seeing“ him on S/S. I will push harder, be more overt. I see these connections b/c I lived it, eg, 1st cent house churches led by women and the lending circles at the core of Mohammed Yunus’s Grameen bank. What they have in common is community — working together actively to live out just hospitality, a lived engagement with questions of debt and trespass. But I have yet really to articulate a theology. Thx for encouragement.
The link between first-century house churches led by women and the lending circles at the core of Mohammed Yunus’s Grameen bank seems like a wonderfully suggestive way to illustrate a possible theology of community development. I look forward to reading your explorations and hope that it becomes part of a community of fellow explorers that you would love to see.
Thanks, Bryce. I know a community is already forming around your liturgies, a great idea and practice, praxis, if you will.
Talk of Sennett and children’s games also has me remembering the basketball I used to play with my son. Started out with handicapping me – I couldn’t shoot from inside and was limited on how I could guard – which constraints were lessened as he grew both physically and as a player, ultimately to tell me that he didn’t want to play with me anymore; it was no longer a challenge.
Thank you, Cort, for telling this story. It makes me think that it's much better to negotiate the handicaps into rules, as you do here, than to try to lose (or maybe worse, almost lose) in games with their fixed rules that we play against our children.
I'd like to learn more about indigenous cultures and their healthier view of play, particularly how it often continues into adulthood. Here's an excerpt from the anthropologist Colin Turnbull's work about his time with the Mbuti:
"[When the men and boys start to win], one of them will abandon his side and join the women, pulling up his bark-cloth and adjusting it in the fashion of women, shouting encouragement to them in a falsetto, ridiculing womanhood by the very exaggeration of his mime. . . . [Then, when the women and girls start to win] one of them adjusts her bark clothing, letting it down, and strides over to the men’s side and joins their shouting in a deep bass voice, similarly gently mocking manhood. . . . Each person crossing over tries to outdo the ridicule of the last, causing more and more laughter, until when the contestants are laughing so hard they cannot sing or pull any more, they let go of the vine rope and fall to the ground in near hysteria. Although both youth and adults cross sides, it is primarily the youth who really enact the ridicule. . . . The ridicule is performed without hostility, rather with a sense of at least partial identification and empathy. It is in this way that the violence and aggressivity of either sex “winning” is avoided, and the stupidity of competitiveness is demonstrated." (Quoted in Narváez, Darcia ; Topa, Wahinkpe. Restoring the Kinship Worldview: Indigenous Voices Introduce 28 Precepts for Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth, 104-105.)
Both the adult culture exhibited here and the play that prepares the young for it--in which the adults participate--seem much healthier than most of what I've seen in the U.S.