Process

Last evening I was speaking with some people about group process. Basically, process is the journey to any result. It is my belief that the process, if nurtured and utilized for its own value, can exceed the value of the result for its participants.

My personal genetic and environmentally produced, intellectual wiring tends toward the pragmatic, organized and concrete. Goals, destinations, finished products....these are a few of my favorite things. However, my work in psychiatric wards with acutely dysfunctional and impaired patients in crisis several decades ago taught me an important lesson about process and its power.

Here's a simple example. Let's say a small town loses its flagpole on its town square during a wind storm. Its ornate granite foundation was damaged and needs to be rebuilt or replaced. The goal may be to replace it, but let's say the town budget is a mess, and the mayor leaves it to the residents to resurrect the flagpole. Suddenly, the townspeople are entrusted with a community goal without any recent experience at funding and constructing a town monument as a group.

The mayor calls a special town meeting. The turn out is poor, but a committee of volunteers is assembled to address the issue. They agree to meet weekly. It takes several meetings for them all to get to know each other's strengths and specific interests in addressing the issue. One is related to the owner of the hardware store. Another is a contractor, who cannot afford to do the project for free. Another is a pastor of a large congregation in the town. Others have no demonstrable material skills or resources, but they have energy and commitment to help out in whatever way they can.

Eventually, these townspeople get to know each other better by attending weekly flagpole meetings. Most of them look forward to meeting night. It enhances their sense of belonging in the community where they have lived less connected lives for many years. The committee itself becomes a small community in itself.

Soon the townspeople hear about the flagpole committee's plans to actually improve on the old town square through articles about their ideas, written by a committee member in the local paper. The newspaper donates ads for fundraising with ideas about how individual citizens can help out. Some volunteer hands-on services. Others run bake sales. Others set up a town flea market to raise funds for the project. Soon, a larger community of townspeople develops around the flagpole committee.

The flagpole committee publishes three proposed designs for the new town square project in the newspaper, after soliciting ideas from the town in the paper. Townspeople are given a phone number to call with their votes. One design wins by a mile. The buzz about the design selection process has pulled the entire town into the project. The flagpole committee proceeds after funds are secured. It contracts the work. Work on the town square begins and causes some major inconvenience for businesses, pedestrians and drivers, but there is no uproar, because everyone knows what it is about and is interested in seeing the project's completion.

The new town square is rebuilt with its new flagpole at its center. And so is the town, through the process of doing the work. The greatest gain for the town is not the new improved square with its flagpole. The greatest gain is the process of being engaged and involved as a town for a common good.

Taxes

This year, paying taxes will seem more painful to many people. It is obvious that government has let people down all over the planet. Here in the US, government has mismanaged the nation's financial regulatory system with disasterous results for the majority of American citizens and taxpayers.

Complacency among the electorate is just as much to fault as the greedy manipulations of financial mathematicians, who played a shell game with themselves and brought down the capitalist system. From the Madoffs to the Greenspans, the lack of foresight and oversight will have implications for years to come.

Paying taxes without being involved with government as an active observer and critic is simply stupid. It is like handing money to a drunk or a compulsive gambler without conditions.

I consider it part of my life practice to stay informed, to correspond with representatives and to voice criticisms and kudos equally. As a person who believes that life is simply what it is, bettering my life and those of other human beings is a matter of each daily decision and action. Right action, for me, entails being a responsible citizen and taxpayer.

Education

There is a current debate about the costs of college education in the US. The education industry (yes, it is an industry in the full corporate sense) has worked with government and professional interest groups to degrade public education in favor of private education, which costs a lot of money and makes a lot of money for a lot of people.

The focus of the current debate is the college loan scam, which has become a lucrative business for banks. High interest rates, bankruptcy-free guarantees of full repayment, thanks to bought-off legislators who have supported the gutting of public-financed educational loans over two decades. Another ruinous part of the Reagan legacy.

Education, I believe, ultimately has little to do with a degree from a college. Degrees are tickets to job interviews. Education is something else altogether and usually ensues with effect long after a student gains a degree.

However, shouldn't an intelligent government, self-proclaimed as a democracy, wish to be representative of an intelligent constituency? The quality and quantity of free public schooling in the US are inferior to the quantity and quality of free public schooling in most of the other wealthy world democracies. It is shameful. It is contributing to the corrosion of the quality of American life, and life around the planet.

Meanwhile, those who make over $250,000 per year in the US are wailing at the prospect of paying increased taxes. This group is 1.5% of the US population. And, for the last 8 years they have been calling the fiscal shots for the government of the US. Do you call that democracy? Are you happy with the results?

Part of practice is understanding the world around us. This is called 'study' in Buddhism. Traditionally, when there were very few literate people in society, Buddhist monks carried the burden of literacy and the arts in many cultures, as did Christian monks, imams and rabbis in the West. Today, dedication to a Middle Path entails study of all of society and understanding one's place in it. It entails placing one's steps along the correct path to further personal and human evolution.

Those who begrudge free education of all human beings by refusing to contribute to that cause do not practice. They are consumed with greed and blinded by nearsightedness which comes with addiction to personal pleasure at the expense of the greater society. It is the responsibility of those who do practice to try to show those who are so obsessed with greed the way to a life which can bring greater happiness to all.