FEATURE Review by Matt Lehrman
A Community Of Possibilities
Generosity is a choice. Whether inviting someone with just a few items to cut ahead of you in the grocery store checkout line or mailing off a check to a worthy charitable organization, every generous decision is a spark of grace in a hardhearted world. As a civic leader – whether elected, appointed or hired – generosity is your personal choice too, but I respectfully suggest that you also recognize it as an essential professional responsibility directly related to the quality of civic engagement in your community. Let us distinguish generosity from the common vocabulary of civic behavior: • Generosity means more than civility, the polite deference people owe each other in a nation that recognizes “… all men are created equal.” Civility alone is no guarantee of meaningful discourse. • Generosity demands more than tolerance. Meaningful dialogue and collaboration require that people do more than simply endure or outlast those with whom they disagree. • Generosity asks for more than respect of others’ opinions, especially when respect is converted to villainization aimed at stoking fear against or delegitimizing a source of disagreement. Civility, tolerance and respect are not supposed to be choices. In American society, they are the minimum standard 6
theReview July/August 2022
by which people are expected to govern themselves via vigorous, informed and rational discourse. Civility is supposed to be the guardrail that keeps reasonable disagreement from veering into the oncoming lane of being outright disagreeable. Yet here is our uncomfortable truth: Civility, tolerance and respect are inadequate. They are failing at the job of sparking the grace of inclusion, dialogue, creativity and compromise necessary for healthy, vibrant communities. We need to aim higher. Civility, tolerance and respect are useful rules where local government is positioned solely as the arena in which opposing interests compete, but the more meaningful work of cities and towns should be about gathering consensus that “grows the pie” rather than “divvying up its slices.”
Civility Is Only The floor. Generosity Is The Roof. Civility is necessary for conversations about the present. Generosity is essential for conversations about the future. And being oriented to the future – that is, being a community of possibilities – is what invites people to best connect with each other, collaborate for mutual benefit, and feel secure in their share of social prosperity. Our best future is built upon generosity.
