Creating Community
Lawyers Assistance Program
Harrison Retreat 2011
Facilitated by Robert Bircher
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Creating Community
• This workshop is based on the
book The Different Drum by Scott
Peck (author of The Road Less
Traveled) and my own personal
experiences of community.
• All quotes are by Scott Peck
unless otherwise indicated
• Peck uses the word “Community”
in a very specific way and by his
definition genuine community is
uncommon
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Describing Community
• We will be talking about community
building(a process),a community(a
group of 2 or more people) and
being in community(a state of
being)
• One definition is “a group of people
who, regardless of the diversity of
their backgrounds, have been able to
accept and transcend their
differences, enabling them to
communicate effectively and openly
and to work together towards goals
identified as being for their common
good”
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Describing Community
• “Reaching community is both
intentional and challenging. The
group process requires that an
individual give up learned defenses
and habitual ways of behaving.
Through increased responsibility,
risk and vulnerability of its
members, a group develops into a
safe place providing an environment
of acceptance, appreciation of
human diversity, and nurturance of
personal growth, healing and self
discovery”
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Describing Community
• “Community involves learning to
live in terms of an interconnected
“we” more than an isolated “I” .It
involves making choices which
reinforce the experience of
relatedness and foster the sense of
belonging and
interdependence”(Margaret Betz)
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The Fallacy of Rugged
Individualism
• We live in a culture that highly
values being self sufficient, not
needing anyone else
• Books and movies honor the rugged
individualist-superheroes don’t need
community
• This denies the reality that all of us
are weak and imperfect beings who
need each other
• The pretense of “having it all
together” requires that we hide our
weaknesses and failures and be
ashamed of our limitations
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Rugged Individualism
• This effort to protect a false image of
ourselves is alive and well in much of
the legal community-keeping up
appearances is the order of the day
• I was at a wellness fair recently catering
to Lawyers in downtown Vancouver and
they diligently avoided the LAP booth,
even moving away from the table when
they passed it, eyes forward-none
wanted to be seen anywhere near the
table or even picking up a brochure
about “needing help”
• I was in a room full of rugged
individualists!!
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Rugged Individualism
• “Trapped in our tradition of
rugged individualism, we are an
extraordinarily lonely people”
• Many cannot even acknowledge
their loneliness to themselves,
much less others
• In most groups you will see “sad,
frozen faces all around
you…souls hidden behind masks
of makeup, masks of pretense,
masks of composure”
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Rugged Individualism
• There is great liberation in finding
an environment where we can be
truly ourselves and share our
weakness, our incompleteness,
our imperfection, our inadequacy
and our lack of wholeness
• I’m not OK, and you’re not OK
but that’s OK-in fact it’s fabulous!
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True Community
• In a culture of rugged individualismin which we dare not be honest
about ourselves-we use the word
“community” very loosely
• We apply it to almost any collection
of individuals-a town, a professional
association, a strata complex –
regardless of how poorly those
individuals communicate with each
other
• In this workshop we are going to
discuss a much deeper form of
community
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True Community
• “Genuine community involves a
group of individuals who have
learned to communicate honestly
with each other, whose relationships
go deeper than their masks of
composure, and who have developed
some significant commitment to
rejoice together, mourn together,
and to delight in each other, and
make each others conditions their
own”
• It is tough to define-it is more than
the sum of its parts-true community
is “mysterious, miraculous and
unfathomable”
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Dimensions of True
Community
• True Communities are inclusive
• Not only inclusive as to gender or
race but allowing the full range of
emotions-tears as well as laughter
• True communities transcend
individual differences-in fact
differences are celebrated as giftsthis often occurs in very
successful marriages-a
community of two
• True communities require a
commitment to coexist
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Dimensions
• This process takes time and usually
requires some structure to create the
level of intimacy necessary
• True communities are realistic-multiple
points of view produce better solutionsthis the opposite of “Mob Psychology”
which blindly pursues one point of view
• Humility is an important aspect of
community-when you appreciate the
gifts of others you appreciate your own
limitations
• Witness others share their brokenness
and you can more easily accept your
own inadequacy and imperfection
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Self Awareness
• Real community is contemplative
and self aware, self examining
• This self examination is the key to
insight, which is the key to wisdomwhen problems develop
communities are self healing
• Real communities are safe places for
their members-there is a real feeling
of safety.
• In most other groups vulnerability is
usually met with fear, hostility or
simplistic attempts to heal or
convert
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Safety
• Vulnerability in real community is
contagious, valued and appreciated-As
walls tumble, fear is replaced by hope
• In true community healing can take
place
• Paradoxically, a group of people become
healing and converting only when
people in the group have learned to stop
trying to heal and convert.
• Community is a safe place precisely
because no one is trying to heal and
convert you
• In a community you are loved and
accepted just the way you are
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Fighting with Grace
• In genuine community there are no
sides-they have let go of cliques and
factions
• Genuine community does not mean
there will be no conflict-it means it
will be resolved without emotional
bloodshed and with wisdom
• In fact it is my view conflicts can
only be successfully resolved to the
degree that community has been
created-in my mediation practice I
spent whatever time it took to
create a sense of community before
the content of the conflict was even
addressed
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A Group of Leaders
• Once a group becomes a
community(which by the way is
quite rare) decisions can be
reached by consensus-and the
possibility exists of excellent
decisions
• The expression “a camel is horse
designed by a committee” does
not mean group decisions are
inevitably clumsy and imperfect-it
means few committees are true
communities
• A true community is a spirit
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Spirit of Community
• This is not the way the familiar
phrase “Community Spirit” is
usually understood-which is a
competitive or jingoistic type of
spirit “The riders are the best CFL
team” is by definition not a
statement about a communitycompetitiveness is always
exclusive
• When a group enters community
there is a dramatic change in spirit
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Genesis of Community
• Sometimes the genesis of community is
crisis-the Chilean miners that recently
spent 69 days underground, troops in
wars, a group that rescues people after
an earthquake can all create a
community without much structure, but
when the crises is over so is the
community
• The best known community in the world
is probably AA
• People come to it at a time of breakingthey come because they realize they
don't have it together, they are in need
and can no longer go it alone. Crisis is a
built in condition of the AA community
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Community by Design
• Communities are often created by
design-I have experienced it in personal
growth workshops at Haven, The Pursuit
of Excellence, Mastery workshops, and
a Men's group in Victoria(Mentaurs) I
have been a part of for almost 20 years
• In the past religion was the main creator
of community experience, but in our
culture that is now rare
• We try and create a “genuine
community” here at these Harrison
volunteer weekends-this made easier by
the fact most people here have either
been in a 12 step group or have done
formal personal growth in a group
process or in individual therapy
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Stages of Community
Making
• For that reason most people here
have had some form of genuine
community experience, but
outside this type of group most
people have not experienced real
community , it is a unique and
sometimes a terrifying experience
• For groups of people still clinging
to an idealized image of who they
are, community creation will
likely be agonizing
• In general community creation
comes in 4 stages
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Pseudocommunity
• The first response of a group in
seeking to form a community is
most often to try and fake it
• The members attempt “instant
community” by being very pleasant
and avoiding all disagreement
• This pretence of community never
works-people want to be seen as
caring or loving by telling little
white lies
• The essential dynamic here is
avoidance of conflict
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Pseudocommunity
• What is diagnostic of pseudo
community is the minimization, the
lack of acknowledgement, or
ignoring of individual differences
• The unconscious rules are: if
someone does or says something
that offends, annoys, or irritates you,
act as though nothing has happened
and pretend you are not bothered in
the least
• This does produce a functioning
group but crushes, individuality,
intimacy, and honesty, and the
longer it lasts the duller it gets
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Pseudocommunity to
Chaos
• The core pretense is the denial of
individual differences-when these
are allowed to surface it sets the
stage for the next stage-chaos
• Chaos always centers around
well-intentioned but misguided
attempts to heal and convert
• At first, the group may try to
obliterate individual differences or
try and push individual points of
view
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Chaos
• In this stage members of the group
swat each other to little or no effectthere is no grace or rhythm
• The predominant feeling is one of
frustration and despair
• At this point the leader is usually
criticized or someone may attempt
to replace the leader
• The problem with that idea, is
usually that their solution is “an
escape into organization”
community is not a committee and
no chair is needed
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From Chaos to Emptiness
• “there are only two ways out of chaos,
one is into organization-but organization
is never community. The other is into
and through emptiness”
• “Emptiness” is not a particularly
inspiring word of course-but it is the
most crucial stage of community
development –it the bridge between
chaos and community
• At this point what needs to occur is to
remove barriers to communication.
“Until such time as we can empty
ourselves of expectations and stop trying
to fit others and our relationships with
them into a preconceived mold, we
cannot really listen, hear or experience”
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Chaos
• Another issue is prejudice, these
are usually unconscious
conclusions we draw with little or
no information or experience of
the other
• These can only be dissolved with
more contact and intimacy with
that person which takes time
• Another barrier to communication
is the need to heal, convert, fix or
solve
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Chaos
• Most attempts to heal or convert may
seem loving ,but in fact, often they are
self centered and self serving
• These efforts are more about to relieving
their own pain, not the others
• The most loving thing we can do when a
friend is in pain is to be present and
share that pain-even if that act is painful
to us
• The same is true with an attempt to
convert-it is much easier to convert
another than deal with the discomfort of
questioning the certainty of my own
beliefs
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Chaos
• It is much easier to attempt to
convert you than it is to extend
myself to understand you as you are
• At this stage group members “come
to realize sometimes suddenly,
sometimes gradually-that their
desire to heal, convert or otherwise
solve their interpersonal differences
is a self centered desire for comfort
through the obliteration of these
differences”
• It may then dawn on them that there
is another way-the appreciation and
celebration of those differences
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Chaos
• At this stage leaders may have to
overcome their need to controlcommunity is a creation of the group
as a whole-an authoritarian leader
cannot achieve this
• “As a group moves into emptiness, a
few of its members begin to share
their own brokenness-their defeats,
failures, doubts, fears, inadequacies,
and sins. They begin to stop acting
as if they ‘had it all together’”
• The other members may react by
trying to heal, convert or by
ignoring them
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From Chaos to
Community
• In one way chaos is a process of death,
or emotional surrender
• “When its death has been completed,
open and empty, the group enters
community. In this final stage a soft
quietness descends. It is a kind of peace.
The room is bathed in peace”
• At this point people speak freely with
depth and intimacy and sadness or joy
will be freely expressed
• When community is created -an
extraordinary amount of healing begins
to occur-without anyone trying to
convert or heal-and community has been
born
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Community
• At this point a community can go
about its chosen task-the mantra is
“community building first,
problem solving second”
• Communities will often go back
to chaos or pseudo community-it
will then have to do the agonizing
work rebuilding itself
• Creation of community does not
mean life in it is easier or more
comfortable-it is however much
more alive
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