On the issue of engagement and of choosing to trust the leadership of a woman you say you respect and choose to, in this small way, heed:
Across various platforms, here, my personal space, Medium, and Twitter, we have over 4000 unique followers.
Which matters not one whit.
What matters are the people who actively come and contribute and engage, which is actually abut 5 percent of that. The other 3800 can fall away, and we can still do good work with those that are left.
Which is the issue, actually. Even with those 200, that pales in comparison to the over 600 unique people who chose, of their own accord, to be ‘All In’, from the All In post, the Books post, the Moving post, this most recent dialog What’s in a name post, and the three queries given last week. That’s still a 12 percent response, but it’s a lot more than those who have actually stepped up.
Part of stepping up is active engagement, and that includes not expecting FB to spoon feed posts to you. Nothing is hidden. Even when a post is no longer pinned, it can be found; and people have no problem finding the easier posts. This is a matter of will, persistence, and congruence to stated values.
How will you do that? Why are you here in this laboratory? Do you feel that my requests are onerous?
There are literally thousands of spaces in FB as well as on the internet, where you can do what you are used to doing.
We are new people doing new things in new ways. That includes how we engage with each other and with the material presented.
There is a reason I am insisting on a ‘no spectatorship’ ethos. And reasons I am actively discouraging rote hearts and likes in favor of active engagement, and of steering you to important posts.
It is to instill a discipline not usually found which will be needed to do this work well.
It will only become more intense, and these basic skills will be even more important as we get into the hard work of internal processes, and behavior that will lead to effective outward practice. It will be so very important as we go into the election.
Most of you have been here for months, if not the full year we have been a community together. You self selected in. You have agreed to the mores of this space.
We are on a journey together, and it is my privileged burden to walk with you.
But you need to walk with me too.
This learning how to engage fully and mindfully is way harder than it needs to be. I understand that I am asking more of you than in most places. By purposeful design. Because the stakes are so very high, for each of us, as well as for the people we say we stand with each and every day.
How can you stand with those people, how can you durably and reliably accept the leadership of women of color in your offline lives if you are loathe to do it here, in this relatively risk free laboratory?
There is so much material I want to bring to you. But it is imperative that you are ready for it.
What have you learned in this past year, months, weeks?
What are you willing to do to seriously further your growth?
Is it asking too much of you to treat this space with the same intention and import that I do?
Comments, please. No hearts or likes.
I truly want to see no fewer than 200 considered comments. This is a fraction of the community. I truly want more, but for now 200 would be a significant leap forward.
We need to be the people we say we want to be. And it starts now.
Edited to add this:
About 40 responses in, I am noticing that most people responded without actually considering or answering the queries posed; basically variations on the theme that it’s hard, and there are competing forces, and that they don’t know what to say.
Stipulated.
I am asking that everyone, including those who have already responded to return to the post, truly read it with a minimum of reactiveness, and truly respond to what the post is saying, rather than your feelings and resistance about the post and what it is asking of you. This is the work, pushing past and pushing through activation and defensiveness.
Two other things: one, that references yesterday’s post and everyone talked about algorithms–I see stats. With this post so far, 444 people have seen it; 179 have actually read it. Only 40 have responded so far. That’s not Facebook.
And this: we have already lost people, as we do every single time I ask you to live up to commitment. Really really consider that.
