There's a diversion between economic reality - integration, global village, everybody depending on everybody else - and cultural reality, which is people feeling invaded, undermined, threatened, wanting to have "stand-your-ground" legislation all over the place. It's alarming because at the moment, the fear is outweighing the benefits, and that's partially because the benefits have been so unequally distributed that lots of people don't feel better off. They feel threatened, angry and despairing.
Activists can get very preachy about things. It's more about understanding people's own experiences and tapping into them.
The question, "When did you last listen to a poor person properly and try to understand what's going on inside their own experience?" enables you to connect.
Often we're having an argument with something imaginary - a fixed idea of the "enemy" and the good. We need to get beyond that and actually develop a deep curiosity about people and systems and understand them better.
We should look at how "the enemy" - people that you wouldn't necessarily agree with - have done change and see whether there's bits in there that we could learn from.
Until you have looked in depth at the system and found out where women in Egypt are not being cut through female genital mutilation, or where kids in Vietnam are not malnourished, or where hospitals in America are getting rid of the superbugs anyway - unless you have that level of curiosity about what's going on without you, you will always come in with your great new recipe and just ignore what's going on, and that will make you much less effective at what you're trying to achieve.
