6. Fractal Three: The Distal Community (or, Collaborating for Change)

Social psychologist and researcher Jonathan Haidt gave a TED Talk in 2008 that proved to be a defining moment in my shift toward understanding the relationship between individuals, trust, polarization, and politics. Called “The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives,”[1] the Talk offered accessible metrics about the various moral capacities and trends in liberals and conservatives, based on research that revealed 5 moral roots that humans and other higher mammals seem to be born with, regardless of culture or language. Given the Business Insider research I mentioned in Part 1 of this series, it seems more important than ever for us to rediscover how to relate to each other more than competitively, since unchecked competition presupposes that someone loses.

Considering Maya Angelou’s wisdom that “[N]o one of us can be free until everybody is free,” critical competitiveness (polarization) is ultimately a failure method. Haidt’s research helped me frame a relationship between liberalism and conservatism that points toward collaboration and mutuality in a way that many find difficult if not impossible to imagine anymore.

It would require a coordinated effort of hospitality originating with liberals[2], because, based on Haidt’s research, liberals excel at openness to new experiences and innovation. Within my constructive theology, this positions the liberal mindset as the one needed to become the seminal hosts, extending invitations first in any efforts towards hospitableness. That shift in behavior would probably not come from those with a conservative mindset, because even though that value set potentially understands hospitality better due to high valuing of in-team loyalty, a conservative person is less likely to seek change or to transgress perceived team boundaries (the necessary step to build hospitableness in a polarized context).

Process theology is relevant here, in terms of Whitehead’s idea that creative tension is held between stability and novelty. Given Haidt’s terminology, it is barely a stretch to align the moral underpinnings of conservative thought with stability (security, in-team loyalty, etc), and those of liberal thought with novelty (innovation, independence, openness to new experience). With the political polarization evident in the US today, it seems obvious that mutuality has been forsworn for competition, but if there is only stability, there is stagnation, and if there is only novelty, there is chaos. Both are important to a life-affirming model.

If we are to envision a hospitable political realm in which disparate moral, spiritual and physical needs are considered and honored, then a blend of both stability and novelty must be employed. In so doing, we may find ourselves moving out of a capitalistic competitive commercial framework that informs classist and isolating tendencies, and more into, for example, smaller-scale regional pastoral governance (this is only one example...there are others).

The culture of hospitable governance might take on the flavor of the culture one might find at a high school sporting event: where team loyalty can be found in harmony with good sportsmanship, where friendly competition exists complementary to the ability to honor skill of players regardless of teams, and where a sense of good humor and participation pervade, creating a sense of togetherness that limits and contains the polarizing aspects of difference.

To begin to rediscover intercommunal hospitableness via a ministry of small things, especially in an era of deeply divided politics in complex relationship with commerce, classism, and more, could look like finding those communities that are proximal to each other like churches and non-profit service agencies, and beginning to facilitate justice-centered, relationship-developing work between them that surpasses the common but more superficial outlet of mere charity.

Fostering relationships and interdependence among communities that already have certain ethical alignments will create anchor points of growth with the potential to expand outward towards the next-adjacent communities, and the next, and the next. To build trust and collaboration in this way involves a certain plasticity of response that can flex with regional and cultural and institutional differences, but that nevertheless coheres, akin to a starling murmuration, another fantastic emergent metaphor by adrienne marie brown.

These insurrectionary ripples then necessarily coalesce into systemic change.

One of the key aspects of a telos of hospitality at this level is that it does not always require deeply engaged therapeutic work or intense moral evaluation, though any formal or informal covenants arrived at among collaborators would do well to be trauma informed. It requires a commitment to hospitableness, which may come more easily at a level of simple conversation (versus deep inquiry). Faith leaders are well-positioned to facilitate the scaling up at this level while maintaining a mitigating pastoral influence, a focus on mindfulness, and a calling for all participants to inhabit our best selves in this praxis. Faith leaders are also connected to a deep history and precedent of culturally significant, pastoral hospitality, as evidenced multiple times in the Tanakh, the Christian Scriptures,[3] and undoubtedly more traditions than I can mention.

This is the sixth installment in a multi-part series on the constructive theology behind a "Ministry of Small Things." Read Part 5. Next, Part 7 in the series, "Fractal 4: The Global Community – Climate Hospitableness."

[1] I cannot overstate the value of this talk in helping liberal folks gain some perspective and begin to come to terms with our growing edges and prophetic responsibilities with regards to supporting democracy from within.

[2] An exception might be neoliberalism, subscribers to which seem to unilaterally evade systemic factors and accountability in favor of a hyperindividualism that resists deep collaboration.

[3] Hebrews 13:2 in the NRSV among many others: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers foor by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” From a less absolutist perspective, one can couch the notion of angels more in terms of a divine spark we all carry.