How are we doing?

 My friend Rick wrote: 

When creating foreign aid programs in 1961, President Kennedy wrote to Congress about “our moral obligations as a wise leader and good neighbor, ... our economic obligations as the wealthiest people in a world of largely poor people, ... and our political obligations as the single largest counter to the adversaries of freedom.” To “fail to meet those obligations now,” he said, “would be disastrous; and, in the long run, more expensive."

How are we doing at this?

I joined the commenters to remark:

"The picture of the world's richest man killing the world's poorest children is not a pretty one." — Bill Gates remarking Elon Musk’s dismantling of USAID on behalf of the American president, May, 2025 

To which someone replied: 

Bill Gates. No respect at all for him and his activities. Using him as some sort of respectable authority is so misguided.

And I responded: 

 Please don't buy more than I'm selling. Former world's richest man assesses that current world's richest man dismantling USAID is a bad look, considering the marginal savings this rapid unscheduled disassembly produces for people who are comparatively well-off in light of the death sentence it pronounces on people most of us thought couldn't be any more marginalized than they already were. That's the story here.

Suspending judgment is *so hard.* Getting out of my own head requires a degree of disciplined energy I often do not care to expend. The lingering distaste I have for the ideas and actions of some individuals and institutions affects my vision and hearing. (My newsfeeds — so useful in so many ways — don't help much in this regard.) So I am in daily peril of missing something both true and important because I don't want to hear it from *that* person or *those* people.

Accepting the possibility that a liar may, without warning, say something true, is prudent; as is accepting the possibility that a truth-teller may and probably will sometimes get it wrong. I know this. But so what?

These days I spend most of my working hours developing and promoting something called 3Practice Circles.

The practices are:

1. I'll be usually interested in others . That's practicing genuine curiosity
2. I'll stay in the room with difference . That's practicing endurance
3. I'll stop comparing my best with your worst . That's practicing fair play

The circles — in-person and online — are safe, refereed spaces to work on operationalizing curiosity, endurance, and fair play so we can be prepared to define ourselves and stay connected in real world encounters that feel anything but safe. (Hat tip to Edwin Friedman: We don't ask each other to surrender principled values that define us; we do ask each other to do as much as we can for as long as we can to stay connected. That's the heavy lifting.)

We're creating these communities of practice because we have to; because such communities are hard to find these days where we live and work and worship.

Our goal in 3Practice Circles is not agreement. Our goal is clarity. We help each other get clear about what our neighbors on the other side really mean. Getting clear about that helps us decide how we want to treat each other going forward ... which we think in a democracy is time well spent. Because responsible citizenship — and neighborliness — requires the we keep asking "How are we doing at this?".