Spay and Neuter and the Martial Arts

I've been spending a lot of time thinking out and planning the strategy for spay/neuter programs through community building. Taking a break from it for a while, I was reading a few websites within the karate communities I follow.

Boy, talk about schisms -- karate groups are as bad as churches, rescue groups, or just about anyone else. And yet there's so much in common between all the groups, or at least so it would appear on the surface. After all, in the situation I'm thinking about, all the groups practice the same style of karate. It would seem that there's an immediate focal point to support a continuing community.

But is there, really? What is it about karate (and church administrative structures, for that matter) that lends itself to schism and infighting? Or is there really a functional community just characterized by infighting?

At least part of the problem lies in attempting to impose a foreign culture in the guise of learning an art. Many elements of martial arts that are traditional in their native lands simply don't survive the trip across the ocean. That's especially true, as Michael Massey points out in his work, when traditional martial arts are filtered through an American military mindset.

In the next few weeks, I'll be coming up with a checklist/flow chart for identifying some of these problems.

A practical exercise in community

Reducing euthanasia rates through aggressive spay/neuter policies is a practical exercise in community-building and changing. Those of us in rescue, who follow the euthanasia rates and know how many dogs and cats are homeless have a hard time understanding the mindset of people who don't spay and neuter their pets. How do we influence people whose mindset we don't really get? The local open admission shelter provides FREE spay/neuter aka S/N services to all county and city residents.

How best to influence the non-S/N people? And why? There's a mismatch of community identities at work -- the first step in influencing is to form that community bond, that focal point.

Education might change minds, but probably not.

If that doesn't work, the next technique is to identify another focal point that both the pro-S/N and the anti-S/N have in common. Often, the pocketbook is a persuasive factor, showing how much the necessity for controlling an overpopulation of animals costs each of us. There are other possibilities as well, some even more powerful, but it takes some thought and research to pull those focal points out AND establish the transition to the attitude toward S/N. It would be excellent, for instance, if pro-S/N were linked to "support our troops". While supporting the troops is a focal point that most folks will rally toward, the connection to S/N is not strong enough or even sufficiently evident (yet).

But establishing that linkage is not the first step. The first step is to list out the particular community focal points that link otherwise opposed communities.

Just in passing, one parallel might be the pro-life and pro-choice factions in human communities. The positions are essentially irreconcilable and education and cogent arguments are likely to have little effect. HOWEVER -- there are things that both sides can agree upon. That adoption is a GOOD thing, for instance. That we need to provide an alternative for desperate parents to abandoning infants, e.g. providing "no questions asked" alternatives for leaving newborns in a safe environment. Those need to be the focal points of both groups.

What are the implications for the S/N issue? More thoughts on that later. For now, it's sufficient to say that we've got to identify those community focal points before we can hope to effect true change.

Community and Culture

Community is the emergence of cohesive groups from random individuals. Communities will have at least one trait in common. It may be geographic location. It may be a language. It may be an interest in a certain breed of dog or type of music. Whatever it is, good or evil, it will exist. The common interest is like the speck of dust in the air around which a raindrop coalesces or the bit of sand in an oyster's shell.

Community happens. The primary ways of creating a community are identifying a common interest and establishing a way for those adherents to communicate.

Culture is the egregore or meme that emerges from that coalition of individuals. It is the way the individuals relate to one another, other communities and the rest of the world, none of which need to be consistent or reconcilable. Extreme xenophobes can be insanely vicious to outsiders yet kind to one another. In a more mundane example, anyone who's ever been involved in animal rescue knows that each group has certain members who should never be allowed out in public. They're the ones who're incredibly compassionate to animals (the focus of the community) but oblivious to the feelings of their co-rescuers.

Communities can be created. Cultures can be built from ground up as the community is created or influenced in an existing community. How you do both of those depends on what you want to accomplish.

Tomorrow, I'll talk briefly about forming communities.

And by the way -- if you haven't seen this, go watch this short video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY

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Building a community

Google got it right – there are really only two things you need to build a community (aside from a nifty logo with primary colors). All you need is

1. a common interest and

2. a way to communicate with others who're interested in it.

Now, remember, we're talking about building a community. Not about the resulting culture.

When I was at the Naval War College, I found the whole issue of the Kurds a fascinating one. The mountains almost always yield fierce fighters and the Kurds are no exception. If they were able to engage in more coordinated activity, they'd be an even more powerful force in the area.

But those same mountains that make them fierce fighters also block direct line of sight communications and the most basic radio communications. They have, at some level, a common culture. They have LOTS in common. The issue is communication. Best way to unify the Kurds would be to drop a bunch of satcomm gear in.

So suppose your problem is a good deal more mundane than unifying the Kurds. Suppose you're starting a new dog rescue group. If you're a breed rescue, you've already got that unifying interest. If you're a mixed breed rescue, you'll find your community is much stronger if you can define that unifying interest -- small breeds? Large mixes? Family dogs? Whatever it is, you want that unifying interest quite definable.

Your next question is how your adherents are going to be able to talk to each other. Phone? Email? Monthly meetings? Provide multiple paths, even paths that aren't entirely of your liking, to ensure that th needs of all types of members are met.

Do this intentionally up front -- define the common interest and allow for multiple ways of communication -- to create the strongest community.

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Is it ethical to intentionally shape cultures?

One of the first questions I always get is whether it's ethical to intentionally shape the culture of a community. The idea that we might be able to make choices about the culture we live in seems to smack of some sort of mind control.

But look – it's a given that folks are going to form communities. It's hardwired as a survival bias and the internet hasn't changed that..

If you're operating on an old MBA mindset, it's the high tech/high touch matrix and today we're seeing that folks will seek toward that corner of the matrix that maximizes both. Beginning with the very earliest internet message boards and progressing through microblogging, people formed communities in even the highest-tech of environments.

So – there will be communities, and they will have their own cultures, their ways of being together and dealing with issues. The question really is whether we let it develop randomly or attempt to make choices about what sort of community culture we want.

We already choose to shape cultures as we build communities. The most obvious example is boot camp – everything is taken away, radical environment and lifestyle changes, and elements of the new culture are introduced. The same processes, albeit in a far less traumatic and dramatic fashion, can be put to work in any community.

I saw a sign the other day at a grocery store: "Everyone speaks to everybody every day." That's a tool for influencing the culture within the store, for building communication structures between all levels. In theory, that means fewer unpleasant surprises for management because the habit of communicating is already in place and reinforced.

So is it ethical to choose to reinforce and develop positive community values? Who decides what are positive values and what aren't? What's the difference between developing a community culture for a business and branding? Is it less ethical or less effective if a profit motive is involve?

Before we can answer any of those questions, it's important to understand the difference between culture and community. I'll talk about that tomorrow.

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