Primary Thoughts

A couple months ago I was listening to Travel With Rick Steves on WFPL, he was interviewing Jeff Greenwald about his book "Snake Lake". The book recounts episodes of Greenwald's many travels to Nepal. It was a highly interesting program.

At one point the host asked the question, "do the Nepalese operate from a philosophy of scarcity or a philosophy of abundance?"

That, I think, is one of the essential questions of governance in our time. Since I was then early in the campaign for re-election to the City Council I applied that question to my situation.

Is New Albany operating from a position of scarcity, or abundance? For any who follow local politics, the answer seems all too obvious. We are firmly in the scarcity camp. Too often decisions have about them the sense of a zero-sum-game in which if you win, I lose.

On the other hand we could approach civic relations from a philosophy of abundance in which when more people win, more people win, and I might be one of them; and if I'm not, I will still inhabit a better city.

Scarcity is not simply a lack of material things.And abundance is not a scorecard where one tallies possessions to measure relative better-offness.

Much of scarcity is self-centered penury, and some of it is fear. Fear of what? Fear that if you win I lose, and there we go again. But fear is also used as a weapon to diminish our capacity to think the future can be better. We can not strive for a better tomorrow because we must hunker down and protect what we have. With scarce thinking we behold a bleak horizon.

Abundance is a sense that much awaits us even if not much is with us now. It is a sense that we can build a better tomorrow. We can build it through a wealth of committed individuals who make up a caring community. We can build it with a vision of abundance, a long horizon, for those who follow us. Those who preceded us must have had a sense of abundance long ago or they would not have built what has lasted until today.

From time to time throughout this campaign I have used the phrase "civic compact" to label what it is I think should inform government service at any level. What I mean by that phrase is simply an intergenerational promise to make this small plot of the Earth rational, functional, pleasant, and sustainable. I believe those are key components of abundance.

I had intended to write more on this topic, but time is scarce.