Kitsap Resiliency Project: Workshop Synopsis
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
~ Albert Einstein
Goals and Objectives
Teaching people to fish. These are hands on workshops that will give people the perspective and tools to create community. We are looking for people who are seeking change, in themselves, in their community, and in their environment. These workshops will challenge you to see outside of the box, beyond labels, and help you build a toolbox for effective change. They might even provide a support structure moving forward, but that is up to you.
Connecting, Building Community, and Networking
There are so many promises of community, why? Because we, as human beings are driven to connect, we are hard wired for it, and we are shamelessly manipulated by that need to join everything from religion to multilevel marketing schemes, to political parties, and homeowners’ alliances never able to scratch that instinctual itch. The commonality is that we do this for connection and get empty promises. The Workshop series is designed to give people the perspective, the tools, and the starting point to create community and thriving communities at that.
These are designed to be interactive and will change with the pieces you bring to them. There are four sections of three workshops broken out in this way:
Section One - A Perspective on Culture and Social Contracts
- Workshop One: Addressing perspective part one, discussions on assumptions on “human nature” and our understanding of culture. (Lecture and exercise)
- Workshop Two: Understanding the tools culture uses to manipulate and co-opt efforts of change. (Interactive)
- Workshop Three: Words, language, and communication. (Interactive)
Section Two - How we got here
- Workshop Four: Ishmael by Daniel Quinn (prerequisite reading); Exploring the development of Taker Culture, and how the human path was co-opted by the Taker path. (Discussion)
- Workshop Five: Historical Context; Those who do not remember the past are destined to repeat it… ~George Santayana. Looking at human history through a contextual lens of the Taker vs the lens of humanity. What would a human future look like? (Lecture, discussion, and exploration)
- Workshop Six: The Siblings, Revolution and Evolution; Insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different outcome… AA. Taking a hard look at how the revolutionary cycles have fallen short of the necessary change, how the cycles start again, and how intentional evolution might change the outcomes. (Introduction and exploration)
Section Three - Communication, Connections, and Social Contracts
- Workshop Seven: The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz (prerequisite reading); Peeling the onion by exploring the layers of the agreements and exploring how understanding them can help us have deeper connections and overcome the cultural labels that bind us. (Discussion)
- Workshop Eight: The Resilient Community Playbook by Mark Boatwright-Frost (prerequisite reading); Meeting people where they are, the art of listening; What we are doing is not new, but it is far outside the norm. Even in normal conversations we tend to think everyone shares our lens of the world and are shocked when there is misunderstanding. We will explore how we do not all see the same thing and how we need to spend time learning where we and others are, so we can communicate effectively. (Introduction and exercise)
- Workshop Nine: The Commonalities of our shared humanity; At the core, people want the same things, unfortunately we do not communicate at our core but at the religious, gender, political, x-label level. It is an exploration of shared commonalities, priorities, and core connection. (Exploration)
Section Four - Laying Foundations and Planting Grass
- Workshop Ten: Breaking Bread, the core human connection; Creating core connections in this group. (potluck and interaction)
- Workshop Eleven: Tipping Points, the math of human/cultural programming; Understanding the math of tipping points and change. (Lecture, discussion)
- Workshop Twelve: The Constitution of the United States, James Madison (prerequisite reading); We the People, why Grassroots is the only way to make permanent change. You are the center of this workshop, acknowledge the connections with this group, know that you support each other and are the pieces of each other’s puzzle. You are the foundation! (Introduction, exploration, interaction)
Pre-workshop reading
- Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
- The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz
- The Resilient Community Playbook by Mark Boatwright-Frost
- The U.S. Constitution, James Madison
