Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨Dec 22, 2022

Was thinking about these words by my mentor Donella Meadows:

"And you will run up against people who wield a gun or bulldozer or government budget or some other power over that which you love. Have you ever tried to tell why you love baseball, or opera, or a sea turtle, or an old-growth forest, or your neighborhood, or your kids, to someone who is hostile to the subject? It can’t be done.

Show threadDr. Elizabeth Sawin✨Dec 22, 2022
"It is not a matter of words. You know there is something lovable there, for anyone who will pay close attention, open to the wonder. But you can’t force that attention. You can’t cause that opening."
Show threadDr. Elizabeth Sawin✨Dec 22, 2022
"You may be able to touch an experience of love in another person, as the student’s turtle story touched the whale and the eagle in me. But if the person in power has no such experience, or no willingness to access it, you will be called a sentimental fool, a tree-hugger, an environmental wacko. Then power, uninformed by love, will crush beauty and mystery in the name of efficiency, economic growth, national security, racial purity, or some other loveless abstraction. It happens every day."
Show threadDr. Elizabeth Sawin✨
"What to do about power uninformed by love? I wish I knew. One answer is to seek power yourself. Another answer is to respect other people’s loves, knowing that a love you don’t share is a wonder to which you have yet to learn to open. The most effective answer is to be sure that power is never entrusted to those who cannot love — though they are attracted to power like moths to a flame, because it is all they have."
Dec 22, 2022 at 5:36pmWeb
Show threadDr. Elizabeth Sawin✨Dec 22, 2022
read the whole essay here: https://donellameadows.org/archives/turtles-eagles-whales-love-and-power/
Turtles, Eagles, Whales, Love, and Power

The Academy for Systems Change
Show threadSimon PaynDec 22, 2022
@bethsawin Oh, wow, this is great. And it's the kind of thing I have trying to be saying and writing about. Wonder/Awe + Love = Action. I want to try to engender this in others. Now diving down a rabbit hole of learning about your mentor.
Show threadCynDec 22, 2022
@bethsawin Well said.
Show threadArthur HoyleDec 22, 2022
@bethsawin The love of power is antithetical to the power of love.