The price of gold has had a wild ride in these contemporary economies.  That is largely because with gold we can fake it but we can’t make it (yet).  Like gold, common ground exists and in terms of value to us and our futures, its value exceeds gold compounded by common grounds growing scarcity.  We can’t make common ground unless we have mined for it in our relationships in our families, regions, nations and internationally. The hard work of mining commonality with our fellow human beings seems to be something we are currently programmed to avoid.  And we wonder why we are teetering ever more dangerously on the edge of a world war.

The xenophobia against immigrants is one symptom of our world’s current problems. That politically generated xenophobic field of fear is working both on Europe and the United States these days.  Only God knows what our current leaders think in fact, but in practice it seems in America, they think if a majority of Americans aren’t motivated to live out of a common humanity, than the road to power is uncommon inhumanity. Our president seems obsessed with being known as a peacemaker yet concurrently with his peacemaking aspiration, uses power, anger and division in attempts to achieve that end.  The oldest mistake in the world is to think one can achieve peace through power and coercion. Common ground is the gray space between the human heart and the machinery of the world. Common ground is where true peace will be designed for the time in which we live.

A Modest Proposal for Good

Demonstrating how you are different from the social problem you are trying to solve is deeply flawed as a practice. In therapy it is often asked of people stuck in their own dysfunctional behavior:  “how is that working for you?”  I can safely say if that is a helpful question in therapy, this entire country should be seeing a counselor every week. But that won’t and can’t happen so we will have to mine for common ground ourselves in families and communities like the hard working adults we should have already become.  The pick and shovel for mining common ground are the question and listening ear.  Find a stranger, ask skillful questions motivated by heartfelt curiosity and listen without defenses to the answer.  You will find common ground.  The brutality of today’s world cannot thrive on the human common.  That would be good.