I’m sitting in The Bridge Restaurant in South Queensferry, looking across a foggy Forth and can just see the Kingdom of Fife.  Over there, the Fife artist Jack Vettriano remembers being told as a child, “Everyone is equal and no-one is special.”

I don’t use together in this way, the kind which cannot handle everyone having something to bring to the party – many different things from many different people, the hope I have for any society.

Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright share some mindsets from the world of work in their useful Tribal Leadership.  They identify five different tribes, each summed up in a different mantra: Life sucks!, My life sucks!, I’m great!, We’re great!, and, Life is great!.  What they’re tracking is a development in people’s understanding of who they are, towards seeing how each has something to contribute to the good of all.  I’m great! is a significant step forward but carries the corollary, But you’re not great.  Even the tribe declaring, We’re great! adds, But your tribe isn’t.  It’s those in the fifth tribe who get how we’re all together against some of the greatest threats and evils facing our world: disease, poverty, injustice, violence, illiteracy.

Allowing for these categories being sharp-edged, they do line up with what Otto Scharmer describes as the society which is emerging from the future, one shaped through opening our minds, our hearts, and our wills, in which, ‘others of us who thought ourselves nothing special will be surprised in a positive way,’ as Brian McLaren has it.

To take hold of this hopeful future, we will need to let other things go.  Logan, King, and Fischer-Wright believe people can only proceed by passing through each tribe; we cannot skip the hard work of opening our understanding, our hearts, and our wills – for some, slowly, for others, faster, but never easily.*

When it comes to a world together in this way, McNair Wilson‘s assertion, ‘More is more’ fits critically – as many as possible to participate in the shaping of the future, which is a future for as many as possible.

I love this from Seth Godin and had wanted to include it yesterday; he’s offering his A-Z new words (often new ways for using words – beginning with artist):

‘A is for Artist: an artist is someone who
brings humanity to a problem, who changes
someone else for the better, who does work
that can’t be written down in a manual. …
it’s about bringing creativity an insight to
work, instead of deciding to be  a compliant cog.’

We are artists together.

(*Humility is not about having a low opinion of ourselves, rather, it is about having an accurate opinion; a low opinion is just as harmful as too great an opinion.  In this accuracy of who we are lived out, we find our equality together.)