Group Goals
• Begin with a model of community unity—a society in which all members are working toward collective and unified good. Once you truly understand that you are all one, the decisions you have to make must always be for the good of all, and not simply for the people in charge, or those you like, or even those who think the way that you do.
• Try to frame every decision in terms of its impact on your community and environment as a whole. If someone wishes to clean up something in the community, will it beautify the community as a whole? Does your work enhance or detract from your community? Are you educating your children to ‘give back’ or just ‘take’?
• Invite different groups—doctors, members of your local police force, educators—to visit your group. Explore with them ideas of reinforcing the Bond.
• Apportion a certain number of hours per week with your group toward working on improving your community. Volunteer to work in your local school, or visit other companies based in your community, exploring these ideas and how organizations can adopt them.
• Study yourself and your needs and invite your group members to do the same. How much do you really need? How many new gadgets, how many new cars? What else can you do with your money?
• Vow as a group to avoid individual ostentation. Take a leaf from the success of Roseto, which had one of the lowest heart attack rates in America. Such was the sense of solidarity that ostentation was strictly discouraged and jealousy consequently minimized. Although rich and poor lived together, side by side, the rich did not flaunt it. Roseto was flushed with a clear sense of common purpose.
• Also vow to avoid competition with people in your community (unless on the sports field or bowling alley). Does it really matter if someone makes more money than you do? Chances are, they still face similar challenges to you. Also refuse to engage in schadenfreude—taking delight in someone else’s misfortune—and replace it with the Buddhist idea of mudita, or happiness in someone’s good fortune.
• Adopt the principles of The Fairness Campaign and The 10 Fairness Principles, which aim to bring greater fairness into your community and into structures within America. The fairer you are with everyone else, the more likely they are to be fair with you. |
