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What Is A Shared Value Community?
I’ve started using that term a lot lately: “shared value community,” or SVC for short (although the acronym lacks a certain aspect of the full term’s vibrancy, doesn’t it?).
It’s one of those terms where I deeply and intuitively *feel* what it means. I know it because I have experienced it in my life on many levels. But I think it would serve all of us to focus on just what this term really means in your own life, as well as potentially working towards a definition of it which we can share…
Because see, that is the whole point (to me) of a shared value community: we share certain values. And by sharing these values with one another, we enrich one another’s lives.
For me, my “shared value community” simply denotes those people whose lives have intersected with mine and because of it I am a better person and my experience of life is richer in simply inexpressible ways.
But not all of those ways are so very inexpressible. Some are very concrete. Some people have helped me financially. Some people have helped me help myself financially. Some spiritually, some intellectually, some through simple acts of kindness - some through simply sharing part of their life with me. Some only through being together in the same place at the same time. The ways in which people have touched my life have been countless and amazing. A major thrust of my interest in developing this notion of shared value communities is simply to give back: to show people who are important to me just how important they are, and to one day hopefully be of some positive use to them as well.
So what is a shared value community to you? What values do you share with those people who are closest to you? Who would you consider as being a part of your shared value community? If you’re reading this, chances are you are a part of mine: simply because this is important to me, and you’re spending the time to gain a common ground from which we can both understand each other. All I can say is thank you!
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September 17th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
[…] So what I would end up doing most of the time was feigning ignorance on things which were not directly correlated to (what I considered to be) my job description. Somebody walks into your office with a PowerPoint question (I hate PowerPoint): “Sorry, I don’t know the first thing about that program.” This isn’t an effective way to operate within a shared value community though, which is what a company is. At least ideally: you are working towards one another’s mutual benefit, right? And not towards a paycheck? […]
September 17th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
I think I see what you’re getting at. Sort of how a lot of us with fairly different reality interfaces all react to/with one another, and have for a long time. We’re all the time anticipating some kind of big ‘event,’ some kind of apolcalyptic ‘thing’ we have to do, when all that we’ve really had to do is be nice to each other and talk about stuff we find interesting. The community-creation *is* the big ‘thing,’ and it’s been going on for a couple of years now.
Right?
September 17th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
I’m somewhat conflicted, talking about “shared values communities.” I see a lot of times communities that do NOT share values. (Consider, for example, this post on Hackers & Activists.) I’m also remembering Skye Burns, citing UNESCO research that she was active in, that showed that (paraphrasing) “sharing values was NOT an effective way of promoting inter-religious dialog.” Here’s another page: “Differences in Values.” My intuition is: If you share a value that someone else does NOT share, … well, it’s like someone showing you their pet rock collection, and saying, “my precious, my precious.”
Truly shared values, though, I think are powerful things. Human life, anyone?
Contra: David Korten likes to talk about these various polls showing 70% support for notions that we should do more to protect the environment, and so on. “We are the cutting edge of a national supermajority.” But I heard someone say, “…but those are polls and sentiments, and distinct from values.” So, … I teeter on the edge, on this one.
Nonetheless, I can recognize shared values communities, based on the threads I share with the people I communicate with. It is the object-centric social network. Every social network is centered on some object: a way of life, a vision, living in proximity, thinking about related stuff, etc.,.
To me, “shared values communities” means the communities (10-200 people) that I strongly care about. My family (and extended family) in California. The Saturday House. The Evolutionary Salon & Storyfield crowds. The CommunityWiki.
Work? No, not work. We ARE a community, but we do not share values; We’re a “shared labor community,” instead.
Other things to consider: Nodal Politics. Maneki Neko.
September 17th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
[…] Wanted to promote this lovely comment of the Esteemed Mr. Puma up to prime-time: We’re all the time anticipating some kind of big ‘event,’ some kind of apolcalyptic ‘thing’ we have to do, when all that we’ve really had to do is be nice to each other and talk about stuff we find interesting. The community-creation *is* the big ‘thing,’ and it’s been going on for a couple of years now. […]
September 17th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
I have drawings of this in my notebook from a few days ago that I haven’t yet turned into a post. Kind of prepped some of the material, but not really. But I used the term “perceptual nodes” to refer to what you’re referring to.
The thing - I think - that makes up a community is it is a group of people who understand something about each other. The values we share are not necessarily going to have the same expressions in terms of belief, action plans, etc. But that’s okay first of all. There is room for everybody on the playground. And second of all: the true values we have are ONE ANOTHER.
Semi-related: I think it’s really important for us to begin building universal translators between all of our reality interfaces. We need to find “common values” and then look at how to build language bridges between communities centered around different expressions of that value. “Oh you call it this, here’s what I call the same thing (sort of)!” Finding those moments of commonality and learning the “keyword clusters” to speak to someone in their own language about something you care deeply about is an absolutely astonishing and heart-warming experience.
September 19th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Tim, Nice to meet you. I followed this link back from Jason’s Anthropik post and it’s quite a coincidence. It ties into the post I just published today. Mine is a very long post, so I can understand if you don’t have time to read it, but if you are interested hopefully you’ll see that it relates. Obviously community is what it’s all about, but my post is about a type of community that I think is sorely lacking and much-needed. Feel free to get in touch if you have thoughts:
It’s at My Scheme Team Dream: Partners Wanted for Shaping and Changing The World
September 20th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Oh, that’s radical! For some reason, now that I have shifted my focus on all of this stuff, all these people with almost exactly parallel ideas are crawling out of the woodwork - I love it!
September 20th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Haha, funny how that synchronicity works isn’t it? Funny too, since I posted that entry just two days ago, a couple potential schemers have emerged, but not through the post at all. Ah good old synchronicity. Right on the edge of the fate/determinism border about which I’m so agnostic, but love to let myself be drawn to one side or the other now and then, if only for a kick.
September 20th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
We make our own choices, so make sure they are the best ones. That’s all. When you’re making the right choices, everything lines up for you.
September 20th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
I’m not as fatalistic as even that. But I just think it’s an issue of probabilities. If you’re taking actions to meet the most important needs in the situation, then you are just more likely to be in a position to attract the necessary resources. It won’t happen all the time. But it’s just more likely.
September 26th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
[…] Parallel to this, I’m getting big into some new concepts, like ‘shared value community‘ and ‘mutually inspired abundance‘ (and a bunch of other, related ideas) that my esteemed friend and collegue Tim has been developing and fostering over at his site. So with that in mind, I would like to open up my current website Feng Shui process to the shared value community that is you, my valued readers/listeners/friends. Here’s the deal: you’ll inspire my abundance, and I’ll inspire yours (if you want, of course). […]
September 29th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
[…] Last night, all I seemed to dream about was websites! It wasn’t even involving my own website, directly (despite all my obsessing over that the past few days). It was a shared value community-related thing and it felt oddly exciting (for a dream about websites). It was about self-image and becoming bigger-than-life — first in image, then in reality. I was seeing all these different people’s character profiles, skills inventories and each included an amazing self-portrait that beautifully captured that person at his/her best. All the profiles were somehow connected, too. I was flipping through them like a book (but with no hands, and they were websites). […]
October 3rd, 2007 at 3:13 pm
[…] Continuing to brainstorm about how all this talk of shared value communities fits together into new creative possibilities. This is just me running off at the speculative mouth about the potential shapes these things could take… Other people, I am sure, will be able to develop and apply these ideas far more successfully than I. In fact, that is what I am banking on, and why I am sharing these things publicly. […]
April 26th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
[…] In addition to that, I’d like to find ways to creatively explore the songs I’ve written with creative people (musicians, artists, videographers, etc) living in other locations. The internet, obviously, is the perfect means to work collaboratively, and to cross-pollinate and cross-promote cultural projects of all kinds. […]