Gender Dynamics Redux

Following my post of Nov 30 (Gender Dynamics in Cooperative Groups) I received three comments. They were so interesting that I've decided to keep the dialog going...

Anonymous wrote:
It might be interesting to look at the research about how women and men resolve arguments. Men seem, according to this research, to leave an encounter where some agreement has been reached with an ability to leave it behind; women tend to come back minutes, hours, or days later with "and this is a pattern of yours" to restart a broader discussion. It's not over for them. When I heard this I was in the car with my ex-husband, who is now in a committed relationship with a man, and he was somewhat offended because he said his husband is definitely more female in that way. Of course I recognized myself and him in the examples. We were trying to think of an evolutionary advantage to the female behavior and we could come up with only the hunter vs. gatherer advantages...being able to kill and eat something differs psychologically from growing or gathering edibles...and what roles that meant "feminine" gay men and butch lesbians did in early society. But maybe it's more about creating community and resolving issues....somebody has to say "it's done" and somebody has to remember for next time.

While I'm not an anthropologist (and therefore don't know jack—or jill, for that matter—about the evolutionary explanation for different gendered responses to arguments), I can build a picture about why relational people (who may be women) tend to hang onto disagreements that results-oriented people (who may be men) claimed to have moved beyond. If the argument ends without an energetic resolution, the dynamics persist. Relational people know this, and therefore attempt to engage in a holistic way (even if they're not particularly distinguished as problem-solvers). However, if the other person isn't emotionally articulate (or even available), this may not go well. In such cases, all parties may reach an acceptable rational solution, but everyone doesn't feel heard or "done." Those aware of the unfinished business are likely to cycle back to it.

All of that said, in the community context it has not been my experience that women tend to hold on to hurts any longer than men, or, for that matter, that women are any less quick to be ready to move on.

Abe wrote:
I have had a lot of experience visiting communities and hearing this bigoted viewpoint about men being one way and women being another way. I mean, I hear it outside communities as well, but I would have imagined more critique of the concept of the gender binary or the idea of gender being anything more than a concept in our heads, in communities. I have heard quite a bit of critique of these ideas of men are this and women are that in the circle of Acorn, Twin Oaks, and Living Energy Farm. Still, there is a womyn's gathering and a womyn's collective at Twin Oaks.

I remember, at an early Gaia U board meeting, there was a proposal to divide the Board by gender (just women and men, no one else). It was decided there be two heads of the board, because, you know, "you have to balance the feminine and masculine energies" and "men and women have a different way of looking at things."

What does this idea that men and women think and do things differently serve? Let's say it's not being said from a biological perspective of sex, rather than gender, and you're only talking about the cultural norms and how people were raised. Even then, what can this thought even serve? First, it is said from a cisgender perspective speaking only of women and men and no one else. It excludes intersex people. It excludes transgender people. Beyond that, what do you do with an idea like that? You apply it to the people around you and make judgments on individual people based on what your belief is about people of their gender. The problem with prejudice like that is that there is no way to take a whole classification of people and accurately apply it to any one individual within the classification.

I wrote the original piece because I believe there are important differences in the way that boys and girls are conditioned in the mainstream culture. It was not my aim to encourage stereotyping or to promote the assumption that all feminine-presenting people act one way and all masculine-presenting people act another; it was to describe a gulf that I see played out repeatedly in cooperative group dynamics and which I believe we must learn to recognize and develop the capacity to bridge between.

The most important part for me is the ways in which cooperative culture differs from competitive culture with respect to how it solves problems. In the wider culture, we venerate rational problem solvers and systems thinking. In cooperative culture those qualities are still an asset, yet so is the ability to work relationally and empathetically.

What was intriguing for me about my friend's observation (which was the inspiration for my Nov 30 blog) was: a) that both styles persisted in his well-established community; and b) that the clash between the styles was the major impediment to peaceable resolution of conflict. I was not so interested in the analysis that women were never strident, or consistently did a better job of setting aside their egos to think of the whole, yet I was interested in how gendered cultural conditioning could explain what my friend observed. That's exciting because it means that there is every reason to believe that if all children were trained to be skilled at human relations, then we could all be better cooperative problem solvers.

MoonRaven wrote:
I hear your [Abe's] frustration with the division by gender raised by this article. I also realize how much I appreciate the issues raised by the article. Rather than proving the point of Laird's 'thoughtful friend' (since I'm a cisgendered—and an old white guy at that) by drawing 'positional lines' (and I could—I still have those testosteronal reactions), I'd rather try to look at the truth of what you're saying as well as the truth of Laird's post. There is a good bit of truth in each.

First, I want to acknowledge that many individuals do not fall within the cultural norms of their gender—and many also fall outside gender norms at all. But I also think it's important to look at what is perhaps the heart of what Laird wrote here, his list of relational skills. I think that anyone using these skills, whether cisgendered, transgendered, genderqueer, or intersex, any human being using these skills will further the building of communities. I also think that we need to encourage anyone who is quick to speak up (regardless of gender) to wait and step back and encourage the quiet people to speak up so that all voices are heard.

Personally I would like to live in a community with more strong women and less strong men (I've seen what's been described too often for my liking), and definitely with more queer folk of every type, with many people who flout and challenge gender norms.

And I agree that we need to look at each individual as their own unique self. I think there is a place for looking at gender dynamics and a place for looking beyond gender dynamics.

I'm wholly in agreement with MoonRaven's concluding paragraph. However, I want to comment on the admonition that those who are quick to speak up should step back, and the idea that groups may be better off with fewer strong men.

I believe what we need are groups where all members are strong—by which I mean articulate, unafraid to voice their views (even if unpopular), able to take full responsibility for their feelings and their actions, and possessing a strong enough sense of self that they do not feel unworthy or damaged as a consequence of others disliking their words or behavior. (Note that I am not equating strength with stridency or obstinacy.) The meek or insecure do not, in my view, get strong as a result of shackling others. That's coddling.

As a professional facilitator, here's the way I prefer to handle the dynamic where air space is unevenly distributed in open discussion (which only happens all the time). I have two main strategies. First, if I notice that a minority is dominating the conversation (or that there are a number of people who have not yet spoken), I will often offer an observation along the lines of, "We have had an animated conversation the last 15 minutes and a number of useful ideas and concerns have surfaced. I notice though that a few people have spoken a number of times while others have not spoken at all. For the next while I'd like to make room to hear from those who have not yet contributed to the conversation."

This does a number of things all at the same time:
o  It honors the contributions received so far, which means those who are quick to speak or are less daunted by speaking in front of the whole group are not punished or made to feel bad. (While I don't want to celebrate being rash, it's fine to be quick.)

o  It expressly encourages those who have spoken a lot to sit on their hands. It's now other people's turns.

o  It creates an explicit opening for the shy or the more deliberate thinkers to step up. Don't come back later with the complaint that there was no opening.

Note that this approach does limit the quick for a time, but only after they have already contributed, not before.

The second strategy I employ to equalize participation is to mix up formats. Instead of relying solely on open discussion—which is often the quickest way to get at things—I intentionally use a variety of other approaches. Here are three:
—Go Rounds (where no one speaks twice until everyone who cares to has had a chance to speak once).
—Small group breakouts (where it's easier for people to test out their ideas).
—Individual writing before sharing in the whole group (some are more articulate that way than orally—why not occasionally give them a format at which they excel?).

All together, these are strategies for getting everyone into the conversation without gagging the strong, which, by the way, has nothing to do with gender, yet has everything to do with getting everyone's wisdom into consideration—all the while encouraging all participants to get stronger without pretending that we're all alike.

Voting and Cooperative Culture

I'm in Ann Arbor right now, where I participated over the weekend in the annual conference of the North American Students of Cooperation. Sunday morning I did a 90-minute workshop on Consensus, during which I was asked to contrast how voting differs from consensus in terms of its effect on the group's culture. What a good question!

While student co-ops are invariably dedicated to making decisions democratically—where everyone has a voice in what happens—there's a large difference between doing that through voting, which is essentially an adaptation of our mainstream competitive culture to ensure a fair fight, and doing so through consensus, which represents a cultural sea change. 

As it happens, many student co-ops use voting, which is understandable when you take into account that for most of the members it's their first experience with cooperative living and voting is the decision-making process they know best. Thus, it's appealing to take what you know and try to make it as open and as even-handed as possible. 

Further, it's no small matter to understand consensus and get good results with it. It requires unlearning competitive conditioning that runs deep, and it can be especially challenging to access your new-found cooperative intentions when the stakes are high and you have a strong view about what should happen.

All of that said, it's important to grok that in sociological terms, competitive culture is the opposite of cooperative culture, and if you're seeking to move from one to the other, you need to think through how your decision-making process reinforces or retards that transition.

Does voting have to be adversarial and competitive? No, but it often is. Witness the divisive dynamics of voting in the US government, which have taken a marked turn for the worse (by which I mean less civil and less collaborative) than a generation ago. Today, it's the norm to hear vicious public statements from elected officials about those who hold differing views, negative ad campaigns are depressingly common, and suggestions for bipartisan actions are seen as a sign of weakness. Yuck.

Even though cooperatives are committed (presumably) to cooperation, voting does not tend to reinforce that commitment. Let's break it down, starting with the assumption of good intent on everyone's part (I know that sometimes there's hanky panky, stuffed ballot boxes, backroom deals, and outright misleading statements, but let's set all of that nonsense aside).

The interesting case is when the vote is not unanimous. Voting advocates like this because it allows the group to move forward when there is substantial support for a particular course of action, yet everyone is not aligned. In consensus you would not have an agreement; with voting you do. While this undoubtedly saves meeting time (you reach the finish line sooner), it comes at the cost of an outvoted minority that may feel disenfranchised, run over, or otherwise unhappy, which can manifest in sidewalk grumbling, halfhearted implementation, and even sabotage. 

Mind you, I'm not saying that losing minorities are always disgruntled (in fact, I reckon they're "gruntled" more often than you hear that label applied), yet it isn't rare, and it can be the very dickens for losers to distinguish between their views being: a) blithely disregarded (because they don't have enough votes); or b) disagreed with though carefully considered.

With voting you run the risk of tyranny of the majority, where a determined and cohesive bloc can run roughshod over the outnumbered; with consensus you are susceptible to tyranny of the minority, where an obstreperous few can hold up the many.

With voting it's all about aggregating enough votes to prevail. With consensus you need to slow down enough to get all legitimate concerns on the table and addressed. For consensus to work you need to create an environment where openness and even disagreement are encouraged (so that you can explore how people got to different points of view, which can illuminate nuance—ultimately strengthening the final proposal about how best to respond). With voting you sometimes make a strategic choice to not speak if it looks like you have no chance of prevailing and want to conserve your social capital for a more propitious time. In voting, there is a tendency to stop listening closely once you've secured enough votes to pass your proposal. In consensus you have to work the whole room.

While I've tried to outline above some of the unwanted cultural consequences of voting, I have sympathy for student co-ops that are hesitant about using consensus. In addition to the non-trivial commitment to culture change, you have to cope with a constantly changing membership (almost all of whom will need training in consensus if you expect them to use it well), and the need to be careful about membership selection both so that prospectives know what they are signing up for and can be screened for alignment with the group's common values and agreements extant. All of this is work and it's understandably tempting to be less careful about who you let in (so long as their rent checks are good) with the strategy that you can manage difficult members by outvoting them.

In summary, consensus, if done well, will tend to engender more cooperative culture than voting, but you need to be diligent about process training, clear about common values, and careful with membership selection in order to harvest that result. Some groups would rather just vote.

Being Agreement Prejudiced

This past weekend I facilitated a series of meetings in Boston (at Jamaica Plain Cohousing), and I started my work —as I always do—by asking for permission to operate under a set of Ground Rules that I've developed over the years. Among them is the group accepting my being "agreement prejudiced."

As that may sound like an odd request—a) why is that noteworthy; and b) is it OK to be "prejudiced" about anything?—it occurred to me that it would make a worthy blog focus to explain why I go there.

Almost without exception, people who have been raised in the dominant culture have been conditioned to think first in terms of how they are distinct from others, rather than how they are the same. To a large extent, our identities are associated with differences more than with similarities, and you know yourself most surely by the ways in which you stand apart from those around you. Certainly that was true for me. (Note that from an anthropolocigal perspective that all cultures aren't like this. In Inuit society, for example, individuals develop a much stronger sense of "we" than "I.")

Mind you, I am not saying that we have been raised to be cantankerous, or iconoclastic (although some, of course, turn out that way). Rather, I'm saying that when someone says something with which we are in partial agreement (which happens "only" all the time) our overwhelming tendency is to focus our initial response on the ways in which we disagree, rather than on celebrating the ways in which we align—even though they are equally valid responses, and one isn't more true than the other.

This is, I believe, a direct consequence of a culture that hero worships the rugged individual (think of it as the intersection between John Wayne and Ayn Rand). We are a competitive society that is founded on the notion that the best thinking is that which survives a fair fight; that rigorous and dispassionate debate exposes weak thinking, casuistry, and unsubstantiated rhetoric. After four decades of cooperative living, I've come to deeply question whether that strategy is superior. Though it's unquestionably what we know how to do, I no longer believe it leads to the best results.

First, a lot of people are uncomfortable speaking in public at all, and will avoid doing so even if there were a guarantee that people would respond favorably.

Second, there are many who would rather keep quiet than risk having their ideas attacked (or even questioned) in public. It can be downright humiliating. 

Third, if you think that there is already too much momentum moving in a different direction than the one you favor, in a competitive dynamic you may strategically decide to fold rather than raise, keeping hidden your preference so as to not squander social capital on a lost cause. Better to save your chips for an issue you might "win."

To the extent that these dynamics sound familiar, you can begin to appreciate how much a competitive environment does not particularly bring out all the ideas. In fact, it often suppresses them. Further, brisk competition tends to promote counterattacks and defensive responses rather than thoughtful reflections and an atmosphere where people can gracefully change their position.

More excited by the potential of cooperative culture—which is the essence of community living—I've trained myself to respond differently to disagreement, and differently to the presence of tension.

Now, when I encounter alternate views, my first thought is to wonder how the other person got to a different conclusion. What factors are they looking at; are they weighing things differently than I am? If you have two different ideas about what to do and you keep the focus on what action to take, the proposals will be in dynamic tension. Typically this will lead to a competition, a virtual tug-of-war.

In order to shift this dynamic, as a facilitator I try make sure I understand the root concerns or interests that undergird the conclusions and then legitimatize (if possible) the reasonableness and appropriateness of those concerns being in play. Then I invite ideas about how to bridge these different interests (which are almost never directly in opposition), rather than how to find a middle ground between proposals.

In my experience, it is much easier for people to stretch to accommodate the concerns of others if they feel that theirs have been fully recognized. Then it feels like a collaboration—rather than a competition, a compromise, a conquering, or a capitulation.

Unfortunately, the field is frequently more complicated than that. If, for example, there are significant tensions or heightened emotions present as well, then you need to pause the consideration to recognize those and explore what they mean before proceeding with the identification of interests and underlying values. 

Essentially, strong feelings correlate highly with distortion, and you cannot do solid work unless you're able to deescalate reactions to the point where people can hear accurately. Attempting to plow ahead anyway—perhaps because you don't know how to deal with feelings, or are afraid that their examination will open Pandora's Box and lead to chaotic, uncontrolled accusations and name calling—will result in exhaustion, damaged relationships, and brittle conclusions with weak buy-in. Yuck!

(Note that the poor outcome I've projected above for failing to work with strong emotions is independent of whether you're attempting a cooperative or a competitive approach. While I don't think it's a simple matter to learn how to do this well, any group not doing this at all is already incurring a stiff price.)

• • •

To the community's credit, the members of JP Cohousing "got it" why being agreement prejudiced is valuable. What's more, they had humbleness about how hard it is to access that mind set in the heat of the moment. That's why they hired me, to help them navigate a large issue where the group needed to bridge between: a) a core concern about affordability and the need to be prudent about living within one's means; and b) a core desire to be bold and inspirational when presented with a unique opportunity to use one-time money to enhance the quality of community life.

When I'm brought in as an outside facilitator, I tell groups that I'm ruthless about agreement, by which I mean that I'll offer it up for consideration as soon as I smell it, which is typically before anyone else in the room. The reason my skill in this stands out is not so much that I'm a superior problem solver, as that people tend to find what they're looking for, and by virtue of having trained myself to look for common ground I'm often better at finding it. 

The bad news is that not that many have done the work needed to be proficient in thinking this way in the dynamic moment—even in community. The good news is that anyone can learn this skill—you just have to want it bad enough and be willing to put in the work.

Consensus Challenges: Redirecting Competition

This is the continuation of a blog series started June 7 in which I'm addressing a number of issues in consensus. Today's topic is Redirecting Competition.

I. When do you know enough to act? [posted June 7]
II. Closing the deal [posted June 10]
III. Wordsmithing in plenary [posted June 16]
IV. Redirecting competition
V. Bridging disparate views
VI. Harvesting partial product
VII. When to be formal
VIII. Harnessing brainstorms
IX. Coping with blocking energy
X. Defining respect
XI. Balancing voices
XII. Knowing when to accelerate and when to brake
XIII. Knowing when to labor and when to let go
XIV. Accountability

• • •

One of the core challenges with consensus is committing to culture change. With rare exception, people who have made the choice to live in intentional communities—or to be part of cooperatives of any stripe—have been raised in a competitive culture that's adversarial and hierarchic. Just because we've got it in our heads that it's a good idea to move toward cooperation does not mean we'll behave that way when there's disagreement and the stakes are high. 

In fact, as a group process consultant for 25 years I'd say that the single most common dynamic that I'm hired to help groups work through is the tension that arises from members behaving uncooperatively when they don't see eye to eye on core topics. To be fair, this is hard to do. Unlearning deep conditioning is not for the feint of heart, and it is a rare bird indeed that welcomes critical reflections about their ruffled feather behavior in the heat of a cock fight. (Even though it was supposed to be a compassionate and dispassionate exchange of ideas, it turned into a passionate and tense exchange of salvos).

While it's all well and good to aim for cooperation, what are your options when competition emerges from the cave of our reptilian brains and seizes control of the energy in the room? How do you manage the monsters and get back to where you meant to be?

In my experience it's helpful to see people in competitive mode as under strain. While their behavior may be experienced as aggressive, manipulative, or otherwise unpleasant and/or disrespectful, it's more constructive if you can imagine them as fighting for air space rather than fighting to dominate. An image I rely on a lot (especially if emotions are running high) is that the upset combative person is drowning, and in that dynamic nothing matters to them more than getting oxygen. In the extreme that person does not care a whit what damage they inflict on others in pursuit of getting air, and civility is (at least temporarily) lost as a consideration. They not even be aware of what they're doing.

While it's certainly not always like that, it can be, and you need to be prepared for that possibility. Never mind how they got so triggered, they are. While it could be less wild and urgent than I've described, let's assume it is for the purpose of handling the most extreme case. (I figure if you can deal successfully with 500-pound gorillas then negotiating with gibbons and chimps will be a walk in the park.)

There are two main approaches to authentically deescalating this dynamic, and the order in which you employ them is important.

First, you need to build a bridge to the gorilla's emotional state (rather than commenting on the gorilla's destructive behavior). This means being able to reflect back to the upset person what they're feeling and what it's tied to (somebody said or did something, or someone didn't say or do something, that triggered this response—make sure that's understood). When doing this, it's important that you are able to give a summary that the upset person recognizes as accurate. 

Caution: It's typically inadequate to simply say, "I understand how you feel and what your reaction is about." It is not enough to have a sympathetic look on your face, you have to be able to give them phrasing they recognize and you need to be able to do this with an affect that comes across as matching. 

When done well, the distress should immediately start to diminish (everyone likes being accurately heard). This contradicts the tendency for the upset person to feel isolated and misunderstood (or uncared for), and is the essential starting point for redirecting competitive energy.


Second, go on to explore why this matters to the person (the upset is a sure sign that the stakes are high) and then make an attempt to bridge between this person's personal desires (which are certainly in play) and group values or norms. The point here is to legitimize why this person's point of view should be taken into account. In effect, you are trying to guarantee them air space—so they will no longer need to fight for air to breathe.

As an example, I had a conversation last week with a woman who wanted my reflections about a longstanding upset she has had with her fellow community members over what she considered were niggardly and fear-based rules that sharply limited visitor access to community facilities. Note that these rules applied only to strangers, not to members' personal guests. The woman (a friend) was focusing on her desire that the community be a gracious host that welcomed people exploring community life. It was embarrassing to her that the community was being so inner-focused and small-minded. This dynamic was tying her in knots and she wanted my thoughts about how she might untie them.

I started by giving her back a summary of what she felt and why it mattered, thereby establishing that I was holding her accurately and validating the relevance of her concerns as a group issue—by which I mean, that the community's public image and its commitment to helping to promote community living were reasonable group values, not just her personal agenda.

Having established that rapport, I then proceeded to imagine what the feelings and underlying concerns were for the people on the other side, even though none were present for this conversation. As background, the community is located in a dense urban area and has had some history with break-ins and theft. My speculation was that the people advocating strict rules for visitors were focusing on community values as well—just different ones than my friend. My grope was that they were concerned principally with safety and a sense of home and hearth. It was a primary concern for them that their whole property—not just their apartments—be a safe place where they didn't need to be on guard, something rare in their urban setting.


When put that way, my friend could see it, and her knots immediately started to loosen. She wasn't, after all, anti-safe or anti-home; she was pro-hospitality and pro-outreach. 

While there is yet an important and not necessarily easy conversation to have about how to appropriately balance the values of safety, home, hospitality, and outreach, that conversation cannot proceed well until the players have first figured out how to not see the dynamic as a battle, where those with different views are the enemy, blocking your access to oxygen.

Hopefully, this exchange will lead to there being more breathing and more cooperative energy for the balancing conversation—while the monkey brains can play outdoors. 

Dimensions of Community: Party of One

For the next stretch of blog entries, I'll be presenting a series on the Dimensions of Community. It was inspired by an animated plenary conversation on Creating Cmty Where You Are during the last day of the FIC organizational mtgs—just concluded at Hummingbird Cmty in the rarified air of northern NM. (If I'm any good at channeling the ideas and excitement of that conversation, perhaps, at least this once, you won't have had to have been there.)

• • •

For this series, I will not be using "community" as shorthand for "intentional cmty." Instead, I'll be purposefully exploring and defining cmty in its fullest and broadest sense. So think expansively (I am). As part of my FIC elevator speech, I tell people that, "We're in the cmty business." This series is meant as a journey of discovery about all that that can mean.

In essence, cmty is about association. It's about connection and affiliation. While it implies consciousness and reciprocity, I will assume neither.

• • •

This first offering will focus on community and the individual: Party of One

For a connection to occur, two (or more) things need to be linked. One end of that is yourself, and today I'll confine my remarks to just that single terminus. What does it take to be available for cmty?

Premise #1: Cmty is strengthened and enhanced by self-awareness. To be sure, the "knowing" may come in a wide variety of intelligences: the main channels being rational, emotional, intuitive, spiritual, and kinesthetic. And the permuttations explode when you take into account that these are often packaged in combination.

Almost immediately, this leads to two underlying questions: 1) How do you know you know?; and its corollary, 2) How do you accurately assess self-awareness in others? While it is relatively common to judge another's understanding of self based on their ability to articulate what they know about themselves, one's ability to describe or communicate their self-knowing is not at all the same as their self-knowing. Your knowings may be of different kinds; you may be using different "languages"; you may be assigning different meanings to similar terms—there are all kinds of ways that people can miss each other in the attempt to understand. If you rely on other's reflections to refine your sense of your own self-awareness, you must wrestle with distinguishing between the extent to which you are blind or ignorant, versus misunderstood or projected upon. The waters muddy quickly.

A spin-off of this first premise is that you can be desirous of cmty, yet minimally available for it. Tragically, you can know that cmty will be good for you, yet not present a terminus that is easily built to or from. (Some of the most trenchant and poignant dynamics involving difficult people in intentional cmty are of this nature.)

The more you know yourself, the clearer you'll be able to send out signals, both about who you are and about what you want. The more accurate your signals, the better the chances that you'll attract beneficial connections. Among those who understand this principle, the opportunity to enhance self-knowing is one of their prime motivations for seeking cmty.

Premise #2: Humans, as a species, are hard-wired to crave connection with our own kind. That is, we are born wanting cmty. Unfortunately, that does not mean we are born knowing how to get it. Worse, our mainstream hierarchic and competitive culture actively interferes with our ability to accurately connect. We live in a society that emphasizes differences above similarities; that rewards individual initiative ahead of collective success.

The desire for connection can come from many angles. Those seeking safety, recognition, or identity through cmty tend to pursue a buy-and-hold investment strategy. The key trap for these folks—please note that this is not inevitable—is the temptation to bolster their sense of connection through creating an us/them dynamic, which the mainstream adversarial culture will happily reinforce. It's dangerous because it's a sense of "us" pumped up on steroids, an enlarged self image that comes at the expense of increased alienation from those labeled "other." It sets up a fight (which tends to be a distraction, a distortion, and an energy sink), plus, it diminishes your options for cmty downstream. Yuck.

On the other hand, those approaching cmty looking for inspiration, insight, or stimulation are buying a different package.They're looking for return on their investment. Maybe immediate income; maybe long-term appreciation; maybe both.

It boils down to: are you seeking cmty to look good, or to look for Good? While the motivation for most of us is a mix of the two, it's important to be sensitive to this interplay—because, if you don't have a clue that it's there, you'll never see it.

Premise #3: Connection can be established unilaterally. While that may not be its fullest potential, it may be no less real or valuable for the projecting person. The key thing to understand here is that the individual has complete control of what they intend and it's possible to realize substantial and genuine benefits from such connections, even if the others being connected with have no knowledge of this happening, or actively reject the association from their end.

Please don't misunderstand this point. I am not saying it's better to establish connections unilaterally; I'm only saying it's possible. For most of us, it's a superior experience to feel that connections are reciprocated, yet you still have choices even when your hopes in this regard are not met.

• • •

In sum, I'm trying to make the case that cmty is:
o Enhanced by self-awareness
o Universally desired
o Desired for a mixture of reasons
o Accessible unilaterally