Open Future NZ "When others accept you as a member they change how you see yourself."

Expanding our Social Memberships

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We all tend to swim on ponds that are too small.  We need to explore new rivers and lakes.

In 1986 I came across this quote which was written in the Journal of Waldo Salt, American film-maker, in large letters across one page.  "To search for the truth, you must first have lost it."  I realized that for a long time (15 years) I had been revising and recovering the truth that I had lost. 

Self Knowledge you can Trust
There's a long journey from becoming responsible for your knowing and for your not knowing, to having self knowledge you can trust.  We all know many things that are in fact not true.  That dis-information prevents us from seeing what is true.  The truth is usually obvious and while sitting plainly in view, it remains "invisible" to us.  Our culture, directs our way of seeing the world and makes us understand it in one way.  We are often blind to an alternative understanding even when it should be obvious.  Loyalty to the common knowledge of "our own" can obscure the truth.

Membership is Critical
There may be no question more important than to rethink the whole idea of who is (and who can be) a member?  A world divided between "us" and "them" is a dangerous place.  You are who you are because of other people have accepted or rejected you as a member.  Family, ethnic, educational, professional, and community groups all set rules, often unwritten social rules, that distinguish who is and who is not "one of us". 

Your Learning
These social rules determine who is important and what is important, what you can learn and even the questions it is possible to ask.  People in the social groups you belong to have "common knowledge" but they also share "common blindness".  There is no escape, if we remain connected only to tight-knit, local social groups.  It's in creating and nurturing new forms of diverse group membership that new conversations can begin and new ideas can develop.  Online groups have great potential to break down barriers and ignite a wave of progressive learning and innovation across the world.

Open Future Limited is encouraging these new conversations that are changing the world.


When you say "we" or "us", just what do you mean?

Are you referring to the groups where you feel that your membership is strong?

Propaganda

    Finding truth you can trust?

When you say "them" what do you mean?

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