Friends,
As the weather and leaves turn toward fall, with weekend crowds and busy calendars, I’m thinking about our community.
Humans have gathered in communities since our farthest past. Clans in caves. Tribes roaming forests or plains. We live in groups.
Yes, today’s communities typically dwarf past clans or tribes – in modestly sized Bloomington, most community members are strangers to us personally. And yet, doesn’t something about belonging to a community like Bloomington feel right?
More than a nation or a state, isn’t a community really our home, where we connect with and emotionally relate to fellow residents? A community fills our daily lives -- who we see at the stores or on the sidewalks, eat with or walk with, work with or play with.
My eight years as mayor have given me a front row seat to see so many Bloomingtonians doing wonderful things every day to make our community better. Helping a neighbor. Going the extra mile volunteering for an organization. Donating money. Doing hard things.
I’ve also had a front seat watching trust and civility erode. Seeing hostility rise, mistrust or malignant rumors spread, and character aspersions and divisive feuds grow. Conspiracy theories sprout like weeds.
Some of that is media – local and national, traditional and social – that thrive on negatives. Some of it is national politics, I think. It’s hard for humans to look away from the salacious or scandalous.
But we do need to look away – often and deeply – to focus instead on what holds our community together, and how to move forward together.
Communities are built on trust and respect, and a sense of common purpose. Ancient clans didn’t last long if riven by mistrust, rumors, or feuds. We don’t need to agree on everything; indeed, we are better with real diversity. But we do need to agree on mutuality. And we have to nurture the precious asset of trust.
Someone suggested that every interaction between two people either builds or erodes the trust between them. I think that’s true, whether in a workplace, a family, or a community. Even in small things. A smile to a stranger on the street. A pleasant exchange with a merchant. A polite act on a roadway.
And it’s true in big and difficult things too. As a community, are we building trust in how we make our community livable for all who reside here? Do we recognize how many people are working hard to improve living conditions for all? Do we notice how many people work so hard daily to keep us all safe?
Two caveats:
First, it’s fundamental to acknowledge that trust, in the past, very often derived from exclusive groups – mostly white men – who trusted each other and wielded power to protect highly damaging and unjust ideologies and ways of life. Thankfully that is changing, bit by bit, with growing diversity and commitments to more just empowerment.
Second, trust does NOT mean complacency. Advocacy for change and justice and better outcomes is essential. We must welcome challenges to power structures and old ways of doing things.
Trust does mean recognizing that many well-intentioned people can disagree. Or come from such disparate backgrounds that common understanding is difficult and can take time and work to achieve. And it means that a bedrock mutuality, our sense of relationship and a shared future, must underlie our community.
Healthy human communities have to manage the complex balance between a culture of advocacy and agitation for change, with a sense of common purpose and shared destinies. Like most communities, Bloomington tries to manage that balance. Some days we do it better than others.
One of our local songwriters, Carrie Newcomer, reminds us “you can do this hard thing. It’s not easy I know but I believe that it’s so, you can do this hard thing.” (Link to song.) I agree. Bloomington can do hard things. We have, and we will.
English philosopher F.H. Bradley, paraphrasing Goethe, once said “you cannot be a whole, unless you join a whole.” (Link to essay.) I hear that to mean that no one of us can be a whole person without being a part of a larger assembly of people. I think that’s true, and it’s reflected in humanity’s deep pattern of living in communities.
Indeed, could we adapt that adage about how to be a decent person: “Everything I needed to learn, I learned in kindergarten”? Could we say, everything we need to learn about how to be a part of a whole, we learn in our community?
Look for the helpers and the doers. Communities are full of them. Bloomington is full of them. Build up trust with and among them. And don’t be overwhelmed or distracted by the latest splash or slurry of negativity. Progress is possible. It’s happening. And you are helping make it so.
Democratically yours,
John Hamilton
P.S. An exciting next step in activating our Trades District and accelerating our thriving tech sector happens this Thursday, October 5th at 4pm: the groundbreaking of the new Tech Center, across from The Mill. Part of Innovation Week at the Mill (link to this week’s events). I recommend attending any or all of the events!
P.P.S. If you want a dose of young local helpers and doers, check out the S.W.A.G.G.E.R. awards coming up. “Students Who Act Generously, Grow, and Earn Respect” will be recognized this Friday, October 6th at 7pm (reception at 6) in the atrium at City Hall. Always a good time.