This Friday, September 19th, many of you will gather for the Second Annual Stinner Summit Meeting outside Wooster, Ohio.  Committed people will be engaged in creating start-up energy around important ideas and so we might consider the mental frameworks we use to process information and plan actions.  Let me briefly tell you about three of them. 

First is the either/or argument approach.  The basic framework is that if A is True, B through Z must be false.  Some things are best known in this way (such as the percent of family farms under 25 acres in Ohio).  For less certain things, which most things are, it leads to individuals competing with each other trying to win instead of collaborating and learning to discover.  The adage is "truth will out," but the much more likely outcome is gereral unease or alienation.  Power dynamics are a problem as well; as the most powerful exercise force to win simply because they can.  Linguist Robin Lakoff has noted the dominant presence of war-like metaphors and backchannel, not open, communication patterns as people try to create allies to eliminate competing ideas.

Second is an unquestioning or resigned acceptance of all ideas, without any critical perspective.  The hallmark of good brainstorming, this apprioach used for other pruposes produces the equivalent of poorly executed cafeteria food, least offensive to most, but bland, ill-defined and not very satisfying.  Worse, it confounds a value of open-ness to a range of ideas with a practice of permissiveness -- having no critical judgement. 

Third is a kind of organic hybridity characterized by the deliberate inclusion of multiple perspectives and a level of trust that good-willed people working together to understand and create are capable of greater insight and insipiration than argument winners or cafeteria cooks.  In this mode, questions like "how can both or all three of these seemingly contradictory things be true?"  "What are you seeing that I am not?"  It also invovles a smart positioning of both talents and interests of participants.  Organic hybridity is a process of shared discovery and takes work and patience.  A number of cultural studies and feminist theorists have been all over this stuff for almost three decades.  (Sandra Harding, Gloria Anzaldua, bell hooks (yes, no caps), to name a few).

Given that we are still early in start up mode and that we are already positioned better than we realize in the Ohio local foods landscape, I urge you to consider these thought processes -- after all, considered or not, thought processes will be happening, better to make them explicit and put them consicously to work for us. 

Have patience and trust the many skills and insights among us in our collaborative pursuit.  Ideas and directions will emerge and they will be far better for a thoughtful investment now. 

Thanks for indulging me and looking forward to seeing many of you tomorrow.

Warmly,

Ross