e utopia Principles
Just as in Dr. Suess’s Horton Hears a Who , though, it takes all of us. As I heard someone say once, everybody brings their piece to the puzzle. Nothing is more frustrating than a puzzle that is almost complete but missing just a few pieces. We need the piece that you bring. The community is a pretty big, interconnected system. As much as we may wish it, we can’t ignore the politicians to make Good Places. We each have our own jobs. If I don’t do mine, no one else will do it. Or, if they do, they will have to shirk some part of their job to do some part of my job. Often those we see as being Important People Who Get Big Things Done - they don’t actually do anything (or anything much) themselves. They lead or in some sense speak for hundreds or thousands of other people - who actually get the things done. The spokesperson is not the important one. Each of the individuals doing the work is the important one. The leader has an important role, too. But the leader of 1000 people cannot do the work of 1000 people. We need to keep that in perspective. We can get excited about the big vision, but the big vision only happens in small pieces - what one person can do at a time - whether on our own or as part of a group. We can’t live in a Good Place by fleeing the troubles on one side of town, setting up a gated community on the other side of town, then relaxing with our own personal little good place. A Good Place is not a plot of ground that you can build a fence around to keep everybody else out. We are not subsistence farmers, nor were meant to be. Each of us is connected to so many other people just to be able to turn on the lights, to get food out of the cupboard, to walk out the door and get in a car or a bus or a train. All the people with whom we share labor to make our places work are part of our lives, part of our places. If they don’t live in a Good Place then neither do we. As the old song says, With one of us in chains, none of us is free. John Perkins brings a strong message to this point. The people with resources need to live in community with people
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