Love within Community … Beyond Tolerance

It seems there is an emphasis today on the importance of tolerance within Community.  Love goes beyond tolerance.  Should there be a greater emphasis on the importance of Love within Community? 

To tolerate is to allow without argument.  Perhaps the thing being tolerated is not personally  preferable or desirable, but it is tolerated, it is allowed in order to avoid confrontation or argument.  There is no judgement made, or at least no judgement expressed when something is tolerated.  Presumably, there is no great depth of emotion.

Love goes beyond tolerance.  To love is to feel emotion for, to want the best for, to cherish.  To love is to accept, to embrace, to care for.  Love often involves confrontation, both joyful in celebration, and troubled when addressing wrongs perceived.  Judgements are often made, but in true love they are expressed, and love grows stronger.

So what should we strive for in Community:  tolerance or Love?  There will always be people and things in Community that are unfamiliar, different, or inconsistent with how we choose to live our lives.  Should our goal be to tolerate them or to Love them?  Tolerance may be easier, since it does not involve investments of emotion or judgement.  But Love is stronger and more meaningful, and seeks what is good and healthy for those cared about.

The opposite of tolerance is intolerance or rejection.  The opposite of Love is hatred.  Which is more reviled in today’s Community, intolerance or hatred?  It seems that intolerance is universally decried, while hatred is accepted or expected for certain people and things but not others.  Perhaps this is appropriate due to the greater power of Love and hatred.  But here’s the puzzle … if we are to always be tolerant, how can we be allowed to be hateful?

Clearly tolerance within Community reduces conflict and makes room for many different people and ways of being.  But Love takes it further.  Love within Community leads to active engagement through the best of intentions.  Perhaps some day soon our Community can seek to do more than just tolerate one another, but to Love one another as well.

Four Years Later

The 12 Core Values were written in 2016 and here we are now in 2020. In 2016 only a smaller group of people felt like the world was about to change as a result of the U.S. election. But now in 2020 the whole world feels like greater forces are at work in this nation and the world. We’ve had almost four years of Trump … and we’ve had almost one year of chaos that was previously unimaginable: impeachment, near-war with Iran, COVID-19, demonstrations, clashes in the streets between rival political groups. Many are describing our nation as at the brink of a new civil war, while others insist the civil war is already raging.

Where do we go from here? How do we navigate through this? What can we hope to achieve at the end?

Now even more than four years ago, we need a common set of goals, methods and rewards. The 12 Core Values stand as a viable alternative, presented for your consideration.

Why do we need these 12 Core Values?

The 12 Core Values are an attempt to bring people together through a framework of living together that people can agree upon.

I have always followed the news, paid attention to current events and obsessed about needs and conflicts and dangers.  Meanwhile I am actively engaged in my local community with businesses, nonprofits, schools and faith-based groups.  I have always wanted to fix things, but I realized that all of this is not about me, and is far beyond my power to fix.  Likewise, I try to see things from as many different perspectives as possible.  One day in early 2016 I embarked on a little thought exercise to defy everything I saw that was wrong with the world, and try to come up with a combined list of things that were right with the world instead.  Several days later, I had the 12 Core Values in hand.

Why do we need these 12 Core Values? 

There are endless words that people have already selected.  In many ways, words are like real estate ... groups stake them out and claim them like territory.  I tried to find words that were not already claimed exclusively by one group of people or another, because I think that building bridges across groups of people is so essential.  It seems like people are more polarized now than ever before.  I think a huge part of building successful communities is to look for common ground instead.  The 12 Core Values are intended to be that framework of common ground and agreement.

You might think that 12 Core Values is way too many.  Maybe we should have three or five at the most.  I get it.  And I think that individual people or companies or faith-groups might really rally around three or five of the 12 Core Values.  That's fine.  But when I'm trying to look at covering all the bases of big community issues and how to solve them, I think that we need all 12 Core Values.  We play many different roles in our lives, and these 12 Core Values touch on all of the different roles.

What about the ones that are left out?  Where are basic notions like justice or liberty or fairness?  There are some concepts that are SO big and important, that I think they cascade across and underneath and above all of the 12 Core Values and they get represented that way.

Our goal is to build great communities across our nation.  I invite you to express yourself, and tell me what you think.  I want to hear stories about how you are working to build your own community.  Please let me know!