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Review: Community of the Future |
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Written by Wei-Jing Zhu
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Various contributors offer invaluable insights to six areas that communities should reach. Amazon allows Search inside this book.
Chap 4: forces to transform society
- Aging of the Baby Boomers (continue to be the main trend setter)
- Emergence of the "Next Church"
- Rise of the Social Entrepreneur - not just charity, but transformation from success to significance
Chap 5: Steve Covy (7 habits of highly effective ...)
Create Connections:
- join a cause
- be a volunteer
- tithe your time (social problems lead to economic, political, and
health problems, and best dealt with through individual volunteerism.)
- adopt a cause
Common elements of ideal community:
- one standard: principle-cnetered goodness
- one heart: vision and direction.
- one mind: purpose, mission, and unity, not uniformity; oneness, not sameness
- economic equality: no poor among them
Chap 6: Wisdom Capital
Uninformed by the wisdom tradition, data, information, knowledge,
intellect, expertise, strategies, and even family or social groups can
be organized to exploit, degrade, or violate.
What makes a community is its common commitment.
Building the new community:
- cynicism is the enemy. Sustain member's faith in the core values
- Aspire new members to heroes, values, and history of hte community
- tell stories of members in meetings, to create bond
- learning and teaching a part ofhte community life
- avail humane skills (negotiation, listening, team building) to members
- encourage everone to act as spokespeople
Chap 8: Gandhi once listed the causes of all violence in human life:
- wealth without work
- pleasure without conscioence
- knowledge without character
- commerce without morality
- science without humanity
- worship without sacrifice
- politics without principle
- rights without responsibilities
Chap 9: phone as intrusive, email as asynchronous communication
Chap 10: Community of the past, whether based on geography, religion,
culture, profession, volunteer service, or areas of interest, were like
monopolies, with little or no competition. Future communities (of
choice) will have intense competition for members.
Chap 11: Howard Rheingold on Virtual Community
- compare to the transition from village life to "nation/state"
- medium where our minds can meet, ideas are honored, and bodies are left behind
- group mind: questions answered, support given, inspiration provided
- advantage: less prejudice on physical appearance, race, gender, age, or national origin.
- members are software agents helping each other cope with information overload
- Yet all the positive can become negative: anonymity without trust
can become danger, asynchronous communication means email not answered
immediately,
- Unique: many-to-many, a public sphere
Chap 12: Workplace
Social systems are built on 3 types of relationships:
- based on power of command
- based on voluntary exchange (trading and buying)
- giving without expecting return (community)
The gift economy: science as an example. Community spirit is a manifestation of love.
Creating an organizational community:
- create common purpose
- support the gift economy
- establish a shread environment
- move toward equality
- create internal not-for-profit entities
- provide safety, security, and love
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