Last night I couldn’t stop watching a Frontline episode I missed when it came out a couple years ago. The one about the rise and impact of Facebook and what it’s leadership thinks they can do to fix the problems it causes (they were vague on that point).
Here’s the link to that episode if you missed it too:
While trying to go to sleep afterward the thought that keep oozing back into my mind was how idealistic the founding group was and how determined they were to make the world a better place. A few of them still believe that. It reminded me of Google’s tag line “Don’t Be Evil/” They dropped that not long before covid I think. Somehow the big bad corporate system sucked both of ’em in and hollowed out the idealism in favor of profit. Big, successful world-changers being tested and found wanting again.
The thought that haunts me the most, as a local-sized world-changer in my own back yard, is the question of just how we’re supposed to make this a thriving world if they big projects fail so spectacularly? Is there any real hope in this? I’m coming around to something I read awhile back by a demographer whose name I don’t remember. He was talking very matter of factly about the collapse of economies and cultures, and how we were going to survive climate change. The thing he closed his book with was to say that the global-scale systems were just too big for any one person or group – even nations or multinational corporations – to really control. The only hope for lasting change was for small groups to choose their future strategically based on the outcome they wanted, and to work “modestly at the margins” of the mega-system to nudge it in the direction they longed for. The final outcome would depend on how many determined small groups are nudging in the same direction.
“Modestly at the margins” really sticks in my mind as we watch the battles royale’ going on for global domination by all the big dogs in the fight. When progressives say “they’ve’ got the money but ‘we’ have the people,” it’s time to pull the people together and really mean it.
But how do we do that? I’m humbly suggesting that Omni’s plan for a time bank in Northwest Arkansas is a way to pull people together.
Your Time Exchange NWA Facebook page
It may look like a nudge modestly on the margins, but it has the potential to link communities to nudge powerfully. It’s something that’s worth a try.
This is how your lawnmower comes into this. When you spend an hour mowing the lawn for a neighbor, the time bank awards you a time credit and you use it for something else you want. A massage or something. But the real reward is that you and the neighbor are connected better. And the connection weaves a more connected and cohesive Community that’s nudging in a positive direction.
Others might suggest that taking care of our homeless population – the most vulnerable of the vulnerable – would solidify the dynamic of care and connection that we most want to encourage in our fair city. Many studies show that in crisis and catastrophe, its the connected and caring communities that survive and thrive. That’s a game we’d like to win on.
We can also deepen our local connections by shopping local, and nurturing friendships with new people… people who speak a different language, people who have a different skin color, people who belong to different religious or civic groups, people who’s beloveds are the same sex they are… lots of diversity out there to choose from. All that works to make a community more connected and cohesive when push come to shove.
By working together to make those local connections deeper and richer, we can make Fayetteville, or Westfork or Knob Hill one of the cities who thrive while Facebook and Google burn down the global order with the help of major corporations and politicians.