FOR A LONG TIME IT WAS THE RAGE.
and when i found it,
i understood immediately why so many craved it.
finally, i felt like fish in water,
no longer living in a world of people
who didn’t understand me,
it felt amazing to find people
who thought like me and felt like me,
like minded people,
and in their company, i no longer felt alone.
i was no longer a lone wolf crying in the wilderness,
i had found my pack, my tribe, my home.
it felt great to be with people
whose craziness was my craziness
and rather than weak and alone, i felt connected and strong.
until, ever so slightly, imperceivable at first
things started to change.
the words we spoke were different,
the people we surrounded ourselves with were all the same
and over time, my thinking became more narrow minded.
i started to notice it everywhere
in religion, politics, social circles, self help groups, businesses, friendships, foods i ate, practices i followed,
and even more insidiously, beliefs i started to believe.
what had once been my refuge had now become my prison.
locked behind the walls of silo’ed thinking,
i started to very subtly believe
that the way i believed was right,
the way i saw the world was bigger, better, more spiritual,
and as i spoke of everyone’s right to believe as they see fit,
i noticed a dogma slipping into my way of being
one that i saw too in everyone else in my silo,
the very feeling of being not understood
which led me to this like minded group of people,
i was now doing to others.
it was an “animal farm” like takeover
and in a subtle way, i was alienating others
in the same way i had felt alienated before.
i could not support this,
i knew how alone it had made me feel
and certainly did not want to be a part
of making others feel the same
not in my like minded community or any other
i saw our silos getting bigger and stronger
and the space between the silos getting wider and deeper.
we were losing something
a gift that the beauty of diversity was trying to give us,
an ability to collectively find solutions to unsolvable problems
the ability to see different sides of an issue
and then come to center.
we started to stay within our silos, play safe, take less risks
and we were losing innovation.
innovation comes
when we are able to see what we do not see
the more we stay safe in like minded communities of thought
we lose the ability to discover new ways of seeing things.
i believe in a world where everything is possible.
the only reason it is not possible yet
is because i can’t see a way for it to be possible.
but when i mixed openly and lovingly with people
who see the world differently,
perhaps i might just see the piece i never saw before
and the impossible will suddenly become possible.
it is time for a change.
it is time for us to disband like minded communities
and open the door to communities of like and unlike minds
to come together with all people
rich and poor; old and young; people of every color of skin, and every language,
people who know no division of border, or religion, or sex, or education
it is time for the greatest minds to sit together with the simplest minds
to solve the problems that all of us experience.
it is time to start groups in every city, in every state, in every country
groups that unify, not divide,
groups where people work together rather than tear each other apart.
like buckminster fuller said years ago
“you cannot solve the problems of the old paradigm with the thinking of the old paradigm,
we must create a new paradigm that makes the old one obsolete.”
it is time for vertical thinking to end.
thinking that there are those who know and they must teach, fix, help those who do not know.
that model has gotten us here. it no longer works.
it is time for the Mosaic Paradigm
where every piece comes together and creates something that no piece on it own can do.
call it swarm intelligence, or connected intelligence or whatever other name you prefer,
it is time for the intelligence of like and unlike minds to come together to lead us to new answers.
contact me if you are interested in helping to create Mosaic Groups in your area.
places where people can come to speak without anger and listen without judgement.
email me: danny@TheMosaicOnline.com