Nourishing Ideas -

Nourishing Ideas

To change the way people act, you have to give them time to change the way they think. Otherwise we should not be surprised if people continue to act in the same ways despite the best of intentions.
- Philia dialogue participant

As we explained elsewhere on this site, Philia's work encompasses three interrelated and interconnected strands: formulating, sharing, and applying. Each of these strands informs and augments the others, each requires attention, resources and time, and all are necessary to embed new ways of thinking into societies, structures and systems.

In this section we focus on the first of the three and provide a forum for formulating and nourishing ideas. You can read "nourishing" here both as an adjective and as a verb. We think good ideas are nourishing in the way good food is nourishing: they provide the elements we need to sustain us and foster our growth and development. At the same time, our website creates a space in which to nourish ideas and foster their growth and development.

It isn't always easy to devote the time we need to nourish ideas in our bottom-line, results-oriented world. The speed of our culture runs counter to reflection (see our section on Taking Time). We expect fast ideas from a limited investment of time and feel pressured to come up with instant responses and quick solutions. But as the wise dialogue participant we quoted above rightly pointed out, we can't change how we act if we don't give ourselves time to change how we think.

So we've devoted this large section of the website to thinking: developing the ideas, principles and values that underlie caring citizenship in order to formulate a strong theoretical base for action. We've divided the section into three main parts:

Core Ideas: These are the lens or "glasses" through which we look at caring citizenship - the fundamental assumptions or biases that inform our views.
Foundational Values: These are ideas that we've identified as universal values (or virtues, as the Greeks called them) that lie at the heart of civic life and guide how we interact with each other in society.
Philia in Community: These are the various dimensions of Philia as it manifests itself in our communities.

Illustrating these ideas are a wealth of stories that have inspired our thinking, and a selection of books that reflect Philia values, concepts and/or themes. Please join us in exploring these "nourishing ideas" and help us nourish them further by contributing your own thoughts, ideas and stories!

Date / Author

Subject

Add Your Comment

Jun 17, 2021
09:20 AM

Humanitarian/Capitalist Community Centered Ideology

D. L. Whitnack

I have come to the conclusion that Capitalism is our best hope of developing the economy of a society, but where Capitalism goes wrong, is when the struggle to improve your lot turns into greed. At this turning point of Capitalism I have interjected Humanitarian values that will deflect greed and allow the option of the individual to say, "I have enough now, and I would like to give back to the community that helped me to get where I am". This Community Centered focus plus the Humanitarian values of Humanitarian/Capitalism, will let those who succeed help those who struggle in our society, and this is only one small part of what this ideology could accomplish if put into action. Imagine a political party that was driven by this ideology. What kind of country would we have?