Holy and Holey

I work on a sense of union, so I can view everybody's worldview as a part of mine. Even just a part to understand. That means practicing constantly letting go, because the parts I didn’t understand are who I used to be. 

The goal being to build up resilience by unpacking my identity. Unpacking the things that I hold on too tightly to. Constantly coming back to working on the skill to adapt, adjust, and accommodate. “When events change, I change my mind. What do you do?” said Paul Samuelson. 

You will have no choice. You will have to adapt. The world changes and there is nothing you can do about that. Sometimes the harder we hold on to things, the more likely we are to lose them. 

I am the worst version of myself when I am desperate. My sense of humour goes, and I become earnest and intense. Building a capacity to accommodate the views of others, and changing scenarios, is ironically an easier way to hold on to the things you really care about. A way to pick your battles. Building resilience is a way not to put at risk the things that really matter, for the things that ultimately don’t. 

Having a good sense of the few things that are important, which allow you flexibility with awareness of barriers, boundaries, and borders around your core. 

You can keep some things holy, as the base of your story. Allowing you a calm foundation. Keep the rest holey, to let the air in for breath. To feed the flames of creativity.

Jonty Dive

Less than a once-off answer, financial planning is like going to gym to build your risk tolerance. Initial conversations are about seeing where you are, and what your goals are. Then you exercise. Lengthening and strengthening your muscles. 

As we get older we tend to (sometimes) pick one sport. Kids do everything, and movement is built into their curriculum. Bar the times they are forced to sit on their hands in classrooms that ominously precede office work. Instead of walking down corridors, kids run. Sprinting even if it is just between the toilet, lounge, kitchen, and bedroom. I used to do “Jonty Dives” by running down the passageway and jumping onto my parent’s bed. Kids are always learning. 

As we get older we tend to be pickier and get swallowed by narrowing responsibilities. Then when things change, we struggle. Even when adults are fit, it is often in a particular way. With children, the variety maintains options. Like the Greek athletes of old where they did all the events. 

Today our athletes specialise. Long-distance runners have short torsos, long legs, and are very light. Swimmers have long torsos. Sports get dominated by particular physiques. In real life, the sport changes. As time moves on, the sport is changing more regularly. 

Plan for change.

Ready to Move

Beautifully Chaotic

Consider the sheer volume of life that comes out of a jungle or a rain forest, rather than a mono-culture farm. Where there are rows and rows of green, but it is dead. Diversity and imperfection adds life cycles that cope. That reinvest and reinvent and relearn. Changing form like the water cycle. Max Planck talks about science progressing one funeral at a time. Specific solutions running their course is a feature, not a flaw. If you want to be part of the journey, you have to hold on to specific containers lightly. Thriving involves not being too deeply connected to a solution that can’t accommodate change. Risk is proof of life. You can’t remove risk any more than you can remove a pumping heart. You can manage risk... reduce it, mitigate it, transfer it, allow for it. Risk is the fact that we live in this chaotic place. This beautifully chaotic place. A lot of financial planning is about determining someone’s risk appetite. Which is why generic financial plans aren’t helpful, because when you sit down with a financial planner the first topic of conversation is not about the solution. It is about you. The most important part of a financial plan is that ongoing conversation. 

 

Subtle Change

Stilling the waves of money anxiety starts with understanding your relationship with money. With the stories you tell yourself, and the daily practice you create around that. How you wake up. What you choose to do. How you choose to think. What new information you expose yourself to. What areas of embodiment you are exploring. The movement, you are creating. The flexibility, you are creating. The strength, you are creating. The control you have over how you move. Your autonomy. Your transitions.

Understand the situation that you are in, and the situation you want to be in. Understand the path, and the required skills and knowledge. That starts with paying attention to where you are, reflecting on it, and seeing what your choices are. In a way that you are fully present and able to grapple with that with a sparkle in your eye. To see a point in subtle change. To celebrate marginal progress that adds up. That powers small achievable steps every day.

Detail from "The School of Athens" Raphael

Euclid studying Change

Adapt

Investment Analysts build models of businesses to help understand complexity. The point of the model is not to be correct or not. You know in advance that you cannot have an accurate map of the future.

Nature does not subscribe to the simple cause and effect story that we use to try control the world. The point of any of the models in our toolbox is simply to help us make sense of things in a human way. To add a story. To add meaning. Like other tools we have made up – countries, words, money, political parties, ideologies, agreements. They sit on top of reality to process our controlled hallucination.

Personal Financial Plans are similar. They are not fixed in stone. They are not correct or wrong. They are an ongoing conversation. The only thing you can truly plan for is things not going according to plan. A good plan starts with a picture of where you are. Then builds towards capacity to adapt, adjust, and accommodate. As you change. As you live. As you add meaning.

adapt for specific uses

Complex Web

What you see is not all there is. Even if you know more than the average bear. No one understands. No one can. We live in a complex web of relationships, where every action has knock-on effects and unintended consequences. In a pass-the-parcel economy where we live hand-to-mouth, there is reduced capacity to pause. The strength of a business to survive isn’t evident in the size of their offices, and the image of success presented by their sales staff. You have to look at the Balance Sheet. The Cash Reserves. The Cash Flows. The Pipeline of Sales. The endurance and resilience of their suppliers, customers, competitors, and regulators. The laws can change. The technology can change. The people involved can change. Sustainable Creativity doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It starts by shifting from a consumer mindset to a custodial one. How do you maintain awareness of a complex environment? Gentle trial and error with fire breaks and retreats for when you misstep. A balance of conserving what you love and chipping away at obstacles that aren’t completely understood.

Monday Feeling

I am highly suspicious of transformational events. Let's see. Books like "The Happiness Hypothesis", "Blink", and "Thinking Fast and Slow" talk about our intuitive and conscious decision making and behaviours. We tend to identify with the Narrator in our heads. The voice that is a combination of lawyer, a PR officer, and a grumpy old man. Our interaction with the world is significantly more deep soaked than that. We carry with us people and events from the past. Friends of mine with kids talk of remembering childhood engagement with their parents while playing with their own kids. Situations they haven't experience for decades are now repeated from a different perspective. Words and phrases are gradually layered with meaning as they connect us to the world. Then covered up. Then popped up. Much of our behavior becomes automatic. So when anything "changes", I am keen to wait till Monday to see. Then next Monday. Then Monday a year from now.  Meaningful change is seldom fast.

Let's See

I have always been skeptical of Epiphanies. Less so when they are events in our past we reflect on. When we realise that years ago, a breakthrough experience changed the path of our lives. I do believe in the Butterfly Effect. That everything we do matters, and nudges the world onto a different path. We just have very little idea of the unintended consequences of our actions. The pumping heart of valuable change is sustainability. Not whether you can do something today, but whether you can do something every day. Whether you can still do it tomorrow. Whether you can still do it in ten years. Change compounds through repetition. Through practice. Through deep soaking. Till the change becomes a part of who we are. The correct response to most Ephiphanies is, "Let's See".

Ephiphany

De (Chinese)

Pronounced like 'Duh' in American, De (德) is something like charisma and confidence... but deeper soaked and with less to prove. Someone with De radiates an infectious and effortless sense of calm. It is a dancing partner of the Chinese concept of Wu Wei. Action through Inaction. It starts with deeply embracing things as they are. Letting go of the gap/chasm that normally exists to how we want them to be. Replacing the intense effort to cross that gap. Embracing spontaneity, suddenly everything that seemed to be a struggle starts to flow.

Problem Solving

Social Activism and Money Making have common ground. They are both essentially focused on Problem Solving. One is focused on what is wrong with the world, and the other finds value propositions. This is not right and I can fix it. The challenge is both are based on discontent, and neither will ever be finished. There will always be injustice in the world. There will always be needs and desires that mean what you have isn't enough. If you strip that discontent, the fear is that you lose action. You lose the incentive for change. I believe it is possible to choose a different set of incentives. To detach from the madness. Not because you don't care, or can't see the problems. In caring for the things you love, and in protecting the beauty that already exists, there is action. It is just quieter. Silence echoes.

Real Change

Be very sceptical of get rich quick schemes. Particularly if they rest on secrecy. My favourite ideas are ones that everyone knows work - but seem too hard. Does your idea work if everyone could copy you? Want to run the Comrades Marathon? Train. Want to be healthy? Eat well, exercise, and learn to breathe properly. Out the box thinking and being different aren't always necessary. Sometimes, you just need to be willing to do the work. Think inside the box. Put in the time. 'We overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years, and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten' (Bill Gates). Real change is slow. Real change compounds.

Real Change Takes Time

Different Beauty

The beauty of conservatism lies in protecting the things we love. In keeping them holy. With less questioning, and more trust, we can build. Lean in. Go deep. Rather than poking and prodding the foundations to find weaknesses, we can refine the structures. By trusting what has come before, we can move forward. The constraints allow for creativity by cutting off the stress of which path to choose. There is one path. Continue.

The beauty of change lies in the new. In possibility. In multiple paths. In keeping life holey. In tearing down the structures that had held us back, and starting again. Choosing new constraints, or throwing constraints away altogether. Rather than building consensus, change can empower us to strike out on our own. To make decisions without permission. To redefine the impossible. To run. To scream. To cry. Start.

Self-Reflection

There are things we can change. There are things we can't. Things we change are one step away from our current world view, which is why two people create change. (1) We create our own change, and (2) people who genuinely see us, help us change. Reality is a controlled hallucination. Our minds combine what we have taken in from the world, and piece it together slowly through trial and error. That process never jumps. It can't. It can only combine things that are there. In our head. In our heart. My things are not your things, and so you can't change them. Unless you see them, because then they become your things too. That is when things change. If you want someone to change, they have to be part of you. You have to be part of them. See.

Why There?

Why do we live where we live? Daniel Gilbert talks about the three biggest determinants of our happiness being where we live, what we do, and who we marry. We used to live where we were born, do what the parent of the same gender did, and marry someone from the neighbourhood. Ken Robinson says 7 of his 8 great grandparents were from the same area. That isn't how it has played out for me. We live in the age of the escape hatch. Some time ago I had to accept permanent uncertainty. I can't choose to live near friends. They move. Family moves. Jobs move. If I like my colleagues, they to move on. I am a self declared Liberal. I love change. I love discomfort. I fully get Conservative love of protecting things as they are. People don't move easily. It is normally because of a big life decision. Left or right. The reality is when people throw their worlds up in the air, they leave a bit of themselves behind. It isn't always by choice. Life makes a lot of decisions for us, and all we can do is choose how to respond. We cope.

A stretched Global Local Boy

Faith

Constraint has value. Escape hatches have real costs. I value change, and critique, more than I value faith, but I see the value in faith. It can be beautiful. I can't sufficiently contain my curiosity in some areas to sustain faith without challenge. In other areas I have forced myself. Built trust in others. Choice can be as much of an impediment to understanding as blind faith. To go deeper, at some point you have to accept an end to going wider. Call that faith. Call that trust. We will always be ignorant. All we can do is choose our basket of ignorance. Strong relationships, founded on trust, let us go further as we expand our idea of who we are. Placing faith in those relationships, and making the choice to work at never letting them break is the choice I make.

Order v Movement

If the world is divided simplistically into Conservatives (Order) and Liberals (Movement), I would normally fall towards the choice of movement. In truth though, I am actually quite a rule abiding guy. I drive like Miss Daisy, more keen on getting myself and my passengers to the destination alive than fast. I am very punctual, not wanting to waste other people's time by being late. I don't swear in front of friends who don't swear. I adjust my behaviour to be polite to whoever I am with. 

A great example of where I see value in Conservatism is the choice of Yoga I do. Sivananda Yoga is very traditional. Loose fitting clothing covering shoulders and ankles. The room is not heated. The 12 core postures practised in the Asana classes are simple and the same as have been done for thousands of years. They aren't looking to change. The lessons are the lessons that have been built up slowly and patiently. The only concession the Swami who brought the style of Yoga to Europe and North America made was to shift the breathing exercises from the end of the standard class to the beginning. This was because too many students who were just keen on the 'physical exercises' would get up and leave.

The most difficult students to teach are the ones who have learnt other styles of Yoga and come in very resistant to any correction. Unless they are disrupting a class, there is no real point in trying to teach them anything else. It is best to just let them be. There is no attempt to say 'this is a superior way'. It is just the way things are done at the Sivananda centres. It is a beautiful way. If however, you choose another way and you aren't hurting anybody... it's all good.

I do like the fact that there is a place I can go to practise my yoga where there is no alcohol, no meat, no loud music, no sexy clothing and a sense of pervading calm. I do drink. I do eat meat. I like music. I love sexy clothing. The reality is that some things are best kept holy. I don't think holy has to be synonymous with true. I think it is a form of consistency. A form of value. Like we don't mix all our favourite foods in a bucket with a wafer thin mint.

Yummy Meat Free Food

Order and movement don't need to be in opposition. It shouldn't be a simplistic either or. The world is more grey than that. They world is more beautiful than that. Somehow we need to find a way to listen to each other and build a world that considers us all. Not a world where we impose ourselves on each other when we are positioned to dominate.

A world where we empower each other.

Needing Problems

'The Luddites were 19th-century English textile workers (or self-employed weavers who feared the end of their trade) who protested against newly developed labour-economising technologies, primarily between 1811 and 1816. The stocking frames, spinning frames and power looms introduced during the Industrial Revolution threatened to replace them with less-skilled, low-wage labourers, leaving them without work. The Luddite movement culminated in a region-wide rebellion in Northwestern England that required a massive deployment of military force to suppress.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

The lesson I have learnt from some of the smartest business people I know is that ownership matters. The nature of work in a company with owners and workers is that the workers get a salary, and the owners get what is left. If you are paid a salary, you get a commitment from the owner to a degree of stability. Largely independent of the fortunes of the company, as long as it survives, you will get your salary. In new companies, the owners will be sweating over meeting the wage bill. They may not receive anything for a while in order to pay for workers.

If a company is small enough, the owners probably know the workers. The owners probably are workers. As they grow, things become more abstract. Workers become an input into the process. Salary doesn't depend on the success of the company. It depends on cog value. Your manager will be doing some figuring in their head to pay you enough that you won't leave. That figure will depend more on what alternatives you have than how much the company could afford to pay you. 

This is because there is no 'right price'. Capitalism doesn't solve the question of what the right price is. What it does is trade. If you stay in your job, you are saying that you are being remunerated enough to stay. The manager will also be comparing what they get from you to what they can get from alternative hires. These hires may be in other countries or they may be machines. If a machine can do your job for less, or someone in another country will do it for less, there is a big incentive to go in that direction. 

Capitalism is effectively a massive incentive to solve problems. I have had bosses tell me to 'make yourself redundant, so you can move onto more interesting problems'. I loved that advice. If you can take a job that used to need doing and solve the problem so that it no longer needs doing, you can really see the value you have added. The problem with that is obvious. If you are not the owner, you are really trusting that there will be another job for you.

The Luddites spotted the Industrial Revolution and the coming of the machines as destroying their jobs. They were right. Their jobs were being made redundant. The big bet was that there would be other jobs to replace those jobs. The problem there, again, lies in trust.

You can turn your labour into food, housing, clothing and security. You can also turn your labour into capital. In both cases you can be solving problems. The advantage of slowly turning your labour into capital is that once that problem is solved, you aren't left with the problem of survival. Your capital still has a job. You aren't left with a situation where you actually needed the problem.

Living hand to mouth and not saving puts you at incredible risk in an economy that is evolving at pace. Retirement used to be about saving for the day when you couldn't work. When things change at the pace they do now, saving and more importantly investing becomes a case of ensuring you aren't left in the lurch when work changes. You can't assume your job will still be a job that needs doing.

I believe in a Universal Basic Income. Effectively, this is a dividend on the conversion of the labour of our shared ancestors into capital. We have two parents, four grand-parents, eight great grand-parents, and so on. You don't have to go to far back before you realise we are all family. 30 generations back, we had a billion ancestors in the same generation. There weren't a billion people on the planet at that time.

I don't think most people are going to save. The figures I used to know in South Africa were that around 1% of people could afford to retire at their same standard of living. About 6% of people could afford to retire at all. A UBI allows a buffer for change. It allows people to retrain, to study, or to spend their time on pursuits which don't generate money. 

Change is scary if change means you are stuffed. A little breathing space benefits everyone and stops us needing problems.

Up in the Air

I have been lucky to have fantastic colleagues. Smart. Interesting. Interested. Caring. Creative. Business was personal. I cared. The teams never stayed the same though. Someone needed to move city. Someone felt they need a role change to stay learning. Partners careers are taken into account. I couldn't ever hold onto a team that I was loving. The teams changed. The same is true of friends and family in a scattered world. It now turns out it is the same in terms of countries. Nothing stays the same. If we are looking for consistency, we need to look deeper. We need to appreciate each moment, because at any point everything can be thrown up into the air.

Up in the Air

Words to Life (with Brett)

Brett:

Hey Trev, it feels like it's time we had another of these conversations. The thing that comes to mind is the idea of a Words to Life ratio. i believe words are important because they can help begin difficult conversations, they can make people aware, they can get wrestling started on necessary and important conversations. But the problem, as we can see fairly clearly in what has been termed online slacktivism, is that people can get stuck there. Jump onto the internet, have your say, click like or forward and job done. Do you have any thoughts about the kind of balance needed between writing words and changing the way you live, or at least making sure that the life you lead backs up the words you write?

http://brettfish.co.za/

Trev:

The parable of the log in the eye springs to mind. One of the most powerful images I have seen was the picture of the current, and most recent Pope, sitting on their respective thrones. I don't agree with Pope Francis on heaps of things, as I don't agree with the Dalai Lama or Desmond Tutu on everything. These leaders earn the right to words through actions which give Moral Gravitas. A big part of those actions is sorting out your own stuff first. If you live a life of conspicuous consumption, or you don't think of situations in which you need to support others in their troubles (i.e. you only focus on your own issues), then words tend to ring hollow. Some of the most heat gets spent on higher order problems. There is a lot of agreement on some of the basic things that need doing. Rather than waiting for permission or a higher authority to force everyone to do something, we just need to crack on.

Spot the Difference

Brett:

i agree with you there, although i do think words are important as well. i think action is probably the strongest way to draw other people into action, but for some people words are what start them thinking. Someone who is never going to engage with the action might be opened to it by having their mind massaged by words that help bring clarity, or invite wrestling. i think some people are also better at words and some at action, but think both should probably do a bit of both. But major in the area they are stronger in. Also, some people see to get stuck in the places where the words inhabit (like Social Media) and so it might take the words to help get them off of the chair, and out into the world where the action takes place. Needs to be a good relationship between the two. But agree with you on not waiting till we have it all together before we start doing something. We all need to be getting to the 'do something' as quickly as possible to start the momentum.

Trev:

Yes, I can't exactly write blog posts every day and then claim that I am an anti-word advocate. We can constantly refine our thinking be reading the words of others and looking for better questions. I am just challenging some of the the 'advocacy' side of things, versus writing as a collective way of teasing out catalysts and appreciation. A lot of conversation is broadcast. I wish there was a different word for 'follower' for example. 'Friend' isn't an accurate reflection, but I think the idea is to engage people. Part of why this doesn't translate into action is we get very complicated. Far from where people are. We deal with huge ideas that often get very philosophical. Very aggressive. If we bring it right back to simple things like fighting absolute poverty, and providing access to words and conversation, then the bigger problems will slowly unwind. But we need to do it.

Brett:

Simple things like fighting absolute poverty? i'd love to hear more how that is simple, unless you mean in concept. i agree with you on the 'Follower' vibe for sure as i imagine that gives people an increased sense of self-importance which is probably not all that helpful. Some kind of more neutral word perhaps. But getting back to the simplicity of fighting poverty, the word i would associate with poverty would more likely be 'overwhelming' especially in the South African context. It is just so huge and vast and deep that almost anything you do feels insignificant in terms of making any helpful contribution at all. Do you have a differing way of seeing it that you find helpful? Even the idea of 'I'm just doing my part' can be an excuse for a lot of people to not get more deeply involved, and it's certainly an expression of privilege that we get to choose how much we give to what causes, if we give at all. i have found that one of the best ways of transforming that dynamic is to bring the rich and the poor together. Once there is connection and relationship, then 'choosing to help' becomes so much more of an obvious decision and action.

Trev:

There are some people doing some great work. GiveDirectly.org (https://givedirectly.org/) sends money directly to the extreme poor. They have started in Uganda and Kenya and work with the communities to find those most in need of help. A bottom up approach. They started there because of the large populations living in extreme poverty, but with access to mobile payment systems. The transfers go directly to people's phones. I would love to see this extend to South Africa, but I also think the Global Context of looking how people everywhere are, is important. The colonial borders are random. Borders are random. Global Apartheid must fall. People will rise if we start to see them as part of us rather than someone else's problem. If we recognise what we can learn from them too. It isn't about the rich helping the poor. That is where building relationships helps. Sport helps. Stories help. Art helps. Words help. Just chipping away at the idea of them and us.

Brett:

Absolutely. My wife works for an organisation called Common Change which is one such way to meet the needs of people through relationships. One of the things i like about the story of Common Change was their understanding that it's not that the rich don't like the poor, but that they don't know the poor. For the most part, giving has been reduced to a middle man mentality via church/ charity/ non-profit and the relationship suffered. It's sometimes easier or less commitment-inducing to toss a few coins into the plate. But one thing Common Change does is it brings giving back to relationship and so instead of just meeting needs, every time a gift happens, it is the idea of someone in your group committing themselves to walking on a journey with the person in need who is receiving the gift and where relationship already flourishes (www.commonchange.com). In the South African context, it is like a more directed version of the stokvel. Another idea that i really enjoy with CC is that it encourages collective wisdom - the idea of thinking together to come up with better solutions as opposed to necessarily just going for the obvious route which a lot of time is money. So time and resources and networks all get brought into that, and the generosity becomes a lot more communal, which benefits on so many other levels as well.

Trev:

There is definitely something to consciously building more tangible communities that break us out of our bubbles. That put faces to some of the abstract challenges we otherwise outsource. It is tough though. Most of us struggle even to find time for our close friends and family. Most people I know in my bubble tend to cull relationships as life get in the way, rather than pushing themselves outside their comfort zones. They are in the fighting fires stage of life, so a few coins here or there is what they have to give. The challenge with purely financial gifts is that it creates a form of hierarchy in giving. Giver and Receiver. Most valuable exchanges are relational rather than financial. Bother parties learn from each other. Great teachers are always learning from students, ironing out their thinking. Parents continuously learn from children. They see their prejudices distilled and mirrored back when kids parrot them. I like the idea of finding ways to build respect for people. To remove obstacles, but not see one group as superior to others. People who are wealthy can learn a lot from people who are struggling financially about what the things are that really matter.

Brett:

i love that last sentence. i think we have lots to learn from each other, which given what you just said about the time and the busyness suggest that each of us takes on one or two relationships and dive more deeply into them and a longer companionship of mutual generosity (finding different ways in which we can meet each others needs - one might be money, one might be wisdom, or time etc) rather than trying to meet all of the needs. Then alongside that would come the need to try and get one or two mates to do the same and hope for a kind of Pay It Forward or exponential increase vibe. I think sharing stories can become crucial here. It's a fine line between "Hey look at me! Look at what I did!" and "Hey, look at what I did - you can do the same" and I think we need to see more of those kinds of stories which is what I love about our blogs - spaces to share the kinds of stories that will hopefully motivate others to respond with, "Oh, that's so easy. I could do that." and then find their own two people and start journeying...

Trev:

Apart from the need to turn words into action, I also think we need to appreciate the world as it is. We can get a little fixated on where we want things to be, and how to get there. The idea of progress. Of one state, age, place or time being superior to another. This sort of comparison to goals can stop us from really savouring the good stuff for its own sake. Building relationships outside or bubble isn't just a way of helping. It is a way of accessing flavour we haven't been able to savour. Our words and actions don't always have to be about moving things. They can be about recognising. About seeing. So we can start the journey, but do it so that each step matters as much as the destination.

Other conversations with Brett

Breaking Bread - Hearing Listeners - Finding Words

Standing Back

One of the lessons I learnt from last year's #FeesMustFall campaign was when to stand back. It was clear from the start that while students appreciated support, they did not want Politicians to give voice to their concerns. A problem with politics is similar to the problems of businesses that aren't really good at what they do. Ugly business can descend into a defence of 'why we are better' through attack. I have seen 100 page vitriolic attacks on competitors. Departments of 'Competitor Analysis' where the task is to finding talking points to bring the competitor down. Each new product release is similar to each new issue that raises its head in the public debate. Instead of trying to solve the problem, it becomes an opportunity to distinguish themselves. In business, to create a competitive advantage. In politics, to increase the partisan divide.

Students said no. They said they would take care of it. They didn't want to provide soapboxes or to divide themselves. They were from all sides of the political spectrum and didn't want reasons to build walls. They wanted to be heard. They didn't need representation.

No walls of soap boxes thank you.

I also had a chat with someone who is a leader of a very conservative community. He had expressed the start of doubts about the way the Church was dealing with homosexuality. He also expressed that he himself did not know many same sex couples. This is not surprising given how conservative the world he provides care to is. The simple act of expressing doubt raised the heat in the room for him in both directions. The uber-conservative elements doubting his ability to lead if he was even raising questions. The liberal friends he had outside his circles angry that it wasn't obvious to him that people should be treated with kindness.

The likelihood of productive conversation between the people on either side of emotional issues is slim to voetsek. Change happens amongst the doubters and wobblers. For me as my blood started to boil in the infamous comments section, I briefly broke my rule of responding to what I consider trolling. I tried to engage.

But trolling isn't trolling if a person actually believes what they say. Take the king of Trolls, the Donald. We don't know what the Donald believes. He doesn't aim for ideological consistency. He figures out what people want to hear and says it. If that isn't working, he says things that people find offensive but some people believe. Once he becomes the champion of people's deep dark secret prejudices, they will stop hearing they stuff he says which they disagree with. We ignore our hero's faults. We ignore our enemy's strengths.

The King of Trolls

When people are talking about their genuine beliefs, the only people who are likely to really understand them are people the believe to be on their side. People listen to people who are mostly on their side.

The thing with that Church leader is that he is mostly on my side. He is also mostly on their side. Me attempting to change the view on the other side is almost completely pointless. There needs to be common ground first. It's not my fight. Not in the sense that I should let it be. But if what I want is progress rather than just the righteous high ground, the best thing I can do is step back where there is more heat than light. To continue the conversation where it is productive.

You can't change anyone's mind until you are on their side. Until you change together. If you aren't in that position, it is best to stand back.