that they have moved from a place of invisibility into visibility. A lot of the systemic impact
is that we “invisibilise” the deep realities that people are experiencing. And when you afford
dignity you’re “revisiblising” or “rehumanising.” We don’t have this very well evolved in
our language. We have a dictionary that contains the word “dehumanisation” but we don’t
have a dictionary that includes the word “rehumanisation.” And much of what we’re facing
today is that human mobility is quite often driven by deep experiences of invisibility and
dehumanisation. When we come at that with a greater capacity for collective compassion
and dignity, we “revisible-ise” the interconnectedness of our human relationships. This has
to be done both individually and collectively. And it cannot be done exclusively by way of
representational models. It’s too massive. So there’s going to have to be other ways that we
stitch our conversations. The dilemma that I’m constantly asking and engaged with is how
do we rethink the ways that we restitch our conversations?Yeah, I’ve been close to it
from its beginning.Yeah absolutely. What you find there is the micro-expression of exactly
what I’m describing. So you’re using something like a radio wave or digital
podcast which knows no national frontier. On Being, initially a radio program conversation
that reached out and into homes, created an impulse for people reaching back out to ask,
“Who do I talk to?” [Laughs]. The Civil Conversations Project is in many regards asking the
co-ordination paradox question. How do we stitch different ways of being together given
that there are impulses that are seeking to break out from where we have been isolated? One
of the things they’re trying to understand is how there is a community that’s being stitched
when there has not been centralised control around that in any form or fashion. And how
is one responsive to the need of that conversation? It may shift from parts of the southeast
of the United States to where the radio waves reached all the way to Australia [laughs]. And
probably left a scent in the landscape. I remember talking with Krista just recently and she
said she was stunned when she came for a visit to Australia. It felt to her like out of nowhere
people appeared.Yeah. So how did that happen? I mean this is where
I’m not asking that purely rhetorically. It’s absolutely
fascinating how conversations that are highly
meaningful and significant emerged in ways that are
totally outside of the normal ways that you might
think about convening and representation and making
decisions together. There are other things that are happening in our global reality that I think
are the core impulses for how significant and meaningful change can happen. But they seem
to have certain kinds of characteristics. One, they are not bound by national boundaries.
They’re not coming out and asking for permission. They’re functioning very differently
than that. It’s very trans-local. It has to have a touchstone that hits the context where
people actually live. People have the sense that something came, touched them and they’re
touching it back. We’re in the world of the arts and the ephemeral. We’re in the world of those
things that help us better feel like we’re a part of a human community. But we can’t always
find exact words to describe or explain it because it’s more like music or poetry that touches
our lives and catalyses something of our humanness that is like that connective tissue of our
relationships. And it finds interesting but mostly invisible ways of stitching. How else do you
describe a radio wave? What we’re doing right now? We’re stitching right now [laughs].Another great question! I think there are a few hints out there. Have you heard
of the Civil Conversations Project that Krista Tippett from On Being is driving?That feels like one promising way.
Yeah, I saw her speak. I think there were nearly
1000 people at the Melbourne event. And she was
floored by the fact that she’d travelled across the
world and suddenly there were people, kindred
spirits, who were there to hear what she had to say.56
JOHN PAUL LEDERACH
DUMBO FEATHER