Faith

If my colleague Robert Bell is not always certain about the future of the world (see his June 19 blog), who in the world can blame him?  However, fear not for I am in the office right down the hall from my friend here in New York and frequently walk into his air-conditioned office to assure him to keep the faith.  I am pleased to report to you that he mainly does.  (John Jung too!)

I assure you that the world and its communities will be fine, not only because we will soon figure out how to make wind turbines  and advance  energy technologies worthy of the serious investments required, and which Robert discusses.  Nor will we be fine simply because a whiz kid somewhere in New York University's Polytechnic Institute, Tallinn, Estonia or the University of Waterloo are well on their way toward inventing the world's next battery - or the next smart soccer ball (one which hopefully will guide the kicks of aging players on Italy's football team into the net at the NEXT World Cup!).  These innovations, as they arrive, will do what innovations and technologies do for societies fortunate enough to have them: they will make work more productive and daily physical life increasingly convenient, while underpinning robust economic activity.  (By the way, if recent studies are accurate: we will all work longer and harder as a result.)

For those in the rest of the world's communities it will also turn out fine, over time, because this has increasingly been the trend.  Long-suffering peoples rise up.  Over the past 17 years nearly one billion people have been lifted from abject poverty in Asia.  One of the goals of the Intelligent Community Association, stated in its first board meeting in New York, is to reach out to other communities to share knowledge and best practices.  To bring the rest of us along, and to keep the faith that our tribes, when enlightened with strong ideas, can restore each of us to the point of balance.

I am frequently accused of having faith.  It is not the blind faith which allows any snake oil to be consumed at any cost.  It reflects, I believe, what poet and former Czech president Vaclav Havel once suggested was a cautiously chalky brightness.  Havel noted that to hope in a sober way is not to act with the conviction that something will turn out well but with the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.  

To make sense and to act accordingly are embedded in our nature and in our spirit.  We are built to persist, no matter what.  Like a good battery, we seem built to last.  As a species we have much in our selves, in our cultures and in our communities to rely on, although a long way to go to be confident enough to rely on them totally.  William Faulkner famously got it right in his often quoted 1950 Noble Prize speech when he conferred upon humanity final victory.  He said that humankind will "not simply endure its existence, but rather prevail over it."  I have never doubted this.  It was said by wiser folks long before Faulkner got around to identifying it as his reason to get out of bed and make coffee in the morning.  

As I see more of the world, and am allowed the privilege to go inside its remarkable Intelligent Communities and discuss the hope filled plans of its leaders and champions, I can tell you that there I see astonishingly bright flares of depth and purpose, as well as awful moments and harsh setbacks.  However you do not leave a place like Windsor or Sunderland or Suwon without confirming the truth of Faulkner's core proposition.  It too is mine and that of all of us here at ICF.  We must, in our age of the "new tribalism," take a cue from our elders and our mentors and stop wringing our hands.  

Another person who has a Nobel Prize somewhere in his home, The Dalai Lama, notes quite frequently that human beings are designed for joy.  Think of it.  Here is monk who was literally chased out of his native country the same year that Faulkner offered his vision of light, while nearby Korea was being shredded by civil war, never to return.  He would have every reason to mourn the loss of his beloved community and to be despondently negative about the future of humanity.  Rather than wring his hands he grabbed his meditation beads.  He chose light.  He chooses still the universal mandate to build.  To be fine.  To say "OK."  I do not know how this will turn out.  But it will turn toward light.  Like the earth.  He is not different in his inner mandate to build than Kristina Verner, Scot Rourke, Amirzai Sangin, and Andre Santini are in their approach to build broadband communities and tribes that connect to the rest of the enlightened communities we are gathering each year through our awards program.  

If William Faulkner, Vaclav Havel, the Dalia Lama, and Robert Bell and John Jung aren't authorities with high enough standing for you, I finally cite even HIGHER authorities:  my mother and father, who as they entered their eighth decades of life reminded me with conviction as their community suffered that "We are never given more by our creator than we are able to bear."  

Indeed.  Keeping the faith is to keep the tribe intact.

As I anticipate the 2011 submissions for Intelligent Community of the Year, what do I expect?  Prevailing may not mean, entirely, complete economic prowess in one generation.  Faulkner believed that prevailing meant, first, a dedication to overcoming fear and thus to recall "old verities and truths of the human heart."  

This is step one toward becoming a healthy Intelligent Community.  

While we study and award the impact of access technologies on communities and other criteria, ICF is also, I see, repackaging old truths with a new vocabulary.  A great deal of the new vocabulary is written by people like you, who submit Smart21 nominations to ICF and share with us your stories of challenge and responses to the challenges.  Never underestimate how powerful your story is, nor how "fine" you have become on your way to sending us your submission.  You would be surprised!
In my remarks during the Intelligent Community of the Year Awards Luncheon in May I said that I believed that what was failing us at this hour of history were national governments and national leaders.  Their predilection to use heavy tones of fear as their way to focus collective attention is not only working poorly, it is undermining the essential cue we must take to nourish our communities and our spirits.  We need a cue to move forward with hope.  

Moments after I said this, Professor Cheol-Soo Park took the stage and in perfect English and with the timing of an actor thrilled the audience as he accepted Suwon's award as the Intelligent Community of the Year.  He not only proved that Suwon had overcome the fallout from a serious national debt crisis of the late 1990's, and that the small nation of Korea itself had prevailed over the ravages of nearly 50 years of occupation, civil war and the challenges of a backward, insular nation, gosh darn it all Suwon had also become "happy!"  Happy Suwon.  A place of faith, where the rising light of a future that was better for its children than it had been for its elders had emerged.  Who knew?  Happy Suwon is a place Faulkner, the Dalai Lama and Pietro and Aquila Zacharilla would claim as a community they could feel at home in these days too.

There are hundreds of others out there like Suwon (I just know it), and if you are one of them, we want to know that you are "OK."  Send in your nominations and, if you have time, drop me an email to let me know what anchors your faith in your community for 2011 and beyond!