  Youngprofessionaldetroiter Member Username: Youngprofessionaldetroiter Post Number: 175 Registered: 07-2008 |
Digitalvision started a great thread on perceptions of doing business in Detroit. It led me to another thought about perceptions over the weekend, and I wanted to think about how to present it to the forum. So much about perceptions is rooted in the quality of relationships. For example, if you have a good relationship with your neighbor, you're more likely to perceive poor behavior as less poor or even neutral. Neutral behavior might be seen as positive, etc. If you have a bad relationship with your neighbor, you perceive all actions as negative. Even a gift might be seen as a trojan horse. Well, I'd like to throw out there, that everyone in our region that is angry, frustrated, hurt, and disappointed has every right to feel the way they do. I'd like to offer as a hypothesis that the problem is not our anger, hurt, and negative feelings. Here's an excerpt that I found online... ---- http://www.nonviolentcommunica tion.com/aboutnvc/aboutnvc.htm Most of us have been educated from birth to compete, judge, demand and diagnose—to think and communicate in terms of what is “right“ and “wrong“ with people. We express our feelings in terms of what another person has “done to us,” instead of a feeling independent of another person. We mix up our basic human needs with the strategies we’re using to meet those needs (we say “I want you to spend more time with me,” instead of “I’m really needing companionship”). And, we ask for what we’d like using demands, the threat of punishment, guilt, or even the promise of rewards. At best, the habitual ways we think and speak hinder communication and create both misunderstanding and frustration. And still worse, they can lead to anger, depression and even violence. Marshall Rosenberg’s vision is to teach a much more peaceful and effective alternative ------------------------- I belive that we as a region...our community...our culture lacks the skills to communicate about our authentic, valid feelings in ways that are productive, effective, and solution-oriented. I feel that much of our dialogue in the community (and even on this forum at times) becomes personalized, attacking, polarizing, and wasteful. Instead of using our valuable emotional energy to help each other heal, grow, develop, and solve problems...we use it to blame, divide, condescend, and injure. Do you agree with me? Do you think I'm out in left field? Note that I'm not talking about who's to blame for our problems. I'm talking about HOW WE CHOOSE TO TALK about our problems...and that maybe we it's our ways of thinking and talking that's getting us in this perpetual state of "stuck"? YPD | ||
Ljbad89 Member Username: Ljbad89 Post Number: 41 Registered: 10-2007 |
http://www.forumsforjustice.or g/forums/images/smilies/other_ beatingA_DeadHorse.gif | ||
Youngprofessionaldetroiter Member Username: Youngprofessionaldetroiter Post Number: 177 Registered: 07-2008 |
LJbad, it seems like you might be as frustrated about our cultural dysfunction as I am. Or that you disagree with my statement all together. I'm not sure, and I would like to understand. Would you mind telling me what you mean? YPD | ||
Ljbad89 Member Username: Ljbad89 Post Number: 42 Registered: 10-2007 |
Aww, come on YPD. You're a good contributor to the board and you seem like a nice guy. I did it for lulz. | ||
Youngprofessionaldetroiter Member Username: Youngprofessionaldetroiter Post Number: 178 Registered: 07-2008 |
hahaha. I just learned what lulz was yesterday. Ljb...it's comin back at you sometime when you least expect it  YPD | ||
Ljbad89 Member Username: Ljbad89 Post Number: 43 Registered: 10-2007 |
In all seriousness, YPD I agree with your post. I think many others would agree as well that Detroiters have negative attitudes and think that the current conditions of Detroit will stay as they are and won't get much better. It is understandable to be negative since there is a bunch of blight, the administration is corrupt, schools aren't the best, crime rate is somewhat high, etc. However, if many people have bad attitudes, things won't change. I personally see the great potential that Detroit has. It may take some time, but it's definitely possible. Someday Detroit will once again be a thriving 1 million plus city with good homes, schools, etc. Others disagree and that's where your statement of perception comes in. Can't hit a baseball without picking up a bat. | ||
Diane12163 Member Username: Diane12163 Post Number: 188 Registered: 07-2008 |
YPD-I totally agree with your statements. We do spend too much time in negative roles with eachother choosing to act in ways which do no one any good when we could be learning and growing with eachother. Not trying to sound cheesy here but, a great example of a working society is the one on Star Trek and its subsequent offspring especially The Next Generation. P{rejudice was pretty nil or very slight at the most, no money issues, class issues just learning, growing and fostering an empathetic ear and a sympathetic heart in everyone. Sure, they had their enemies but, few and far between. They as a group worked like a well oiled machine and also enjoyed life. If more people put God first and His example of loving eachother as He has loved us and stopped being so overly complicated, then we could as a community and a world really get someplace. | ||
Sean_of_detroit Member Username: Sean_of_detroit Post Number: 1535 Registered: 03-2008 |
You are on a roll this evening/morning... ...and you are also right! Such as that thread you mentioned. It's always more clear when you get a good view too, that's just always so great to late though. Like overlooking a Civil War battle from a hill... or how we can see stupid moves from the stands at a Pistons or Wings game. Regardless of why Ragged posted that, why the heck did I respond like that? Shouting out Rah Rahs ... and doing the same dang thing he did. Meanwhile, I'm sure everyone up on the hill was just reading, watching and laughing. Or why should we care about comments in general...? Don't respond with Rah Rahs, is that what it's all about? Hmmmm, your right! It's so easy to totally forget the only thing you really have in life is your attitude towards, and in, life... | ||
Gannon Member Username: Gannon Post Number: 13822 Registered: 12-2003 |
Last year, when I jogged and biked the streets downtown, I acknowledged everyone I passed on the street. I got some of the most amazing responses imaginable, mostly some version of surprise, amazement, yet leaning towards the negative. THIS YEAR, I continue to do the same (I cannot change myself) and people have begun to recognize me...many of them say hello first, and the smiles are genuine and wide. We all have a choice on how much energy we expend upon the world about us, but I don't think any of us really can see the impact we can make upon the world if only we tried a little harder. I saw today the nicest woman ask a hardened one one more time if she had been invited to sign the petition to knock our knucklehead out of the highest office in the city, and to everyone's amazement...after Gnome offered to help her with her work and each of us in our own way gave her consideration while we shared space...she DID. I think even SHE was surprised... I spent the evening after the small rally staged on the clock by the AFSCME folks with two other people who love this city and are not giving up on it...who WON'T give up on the city of their birth. Met a few more who share the same drive, including a photographer for one of the local newspapers and an urban planning student at Wayne (who's got enough passion for this city for ten of us). Tonight was a banner night, even down to the very last conversation I had with the security guard outside the Spirit statue...who shared my enthusiasm that the monument honored a REAL and tangible, if ethereal, thing. If you care about this city, and put your energies towards good, you are also infected by the Spirit of Detroit...and that is what will keep us going. Our next victory will not appear like anything anyone is expecting, but we've never used other's metrics to gauge our success. The unity of our people, well beyond the common divisive boundaries the world wishes us to remain bound by, will be our success...and will take us further than any of our critics wish. There is an underlying current of freedom running through this town, no matter what the universe throws at us we remain. Strong. Surviving. And our creative folk put it into whatever genre they have available...whether painting, sculpture, poetry, music, prose, dance, theater...into blends within and between genres that have never been done before. Some create venues to showcase this creativity, others use their work to create art...whether working the ground, or forming something from raw and even discarded materials. Some wonderfully take the refuse of the passing age and redefine them, taking ruins back from the trend...indeed that might be the zeitgeist of Detroit, rescuing ruins into recovery. We've got something unique here in this city, all you have to do is get out and perceive it...through the clutter of debris from the end of the industrial age. You can choose to simply look at the death, destruction, and dastardly ways some desperate individuals deal with the passing of an age...or you can choose to look UP and breathe and smile at yet another day, and say no matter how hard it is...we're still here...still alive...and there remains hope that if we put just an ounce more positive than negative OUT, tomorrow in Detroit will be better than today. I choose the latter...and encourage those who are still stuck in the former. I want tomorrow's hope to make today better, all I have to do is work for it. Cheers | ||
Strathcona Member Username: Strathcona Post Number: 50 Registered: 03-2008 |
I am always amazed how some folks are up so early in the morning... I thought I got up early. | ||
Gannon Member Username: Gannon Post Number: 13829 Registered: 12-2003 |
I don't keep regular hours. Went to sleep at eleven or so, woke from my new cat's ruckus around four...happened then to be awake when the Waste Management driver couldn't open our gate and started actually tooting his truck horn around five thirty...then went back to sleep. I'm up now...but out of caffeine, so the Hirt's folk get to see me even uglier...and desperate! | ||
Mwilbert Member Username: Mwilbert Post Number: 340 Registered: 11-2007 |
I find people are generally pretty friendly and helpful. Of course, that isn't true of everybody, but I don't run into that many sourpusses. It doesn't cost anything to be pleasant. |
