You’re proposing an interesting idea. My guess is that to get everyone (or close to everyone) all on board the same train moving in the same direction at the same time would be a huge task. And some of those people would lose some passion, because they haven’t truly committed to the single unifying vision. (Speaking as a stiff-necked and opinionated person convinced of his own rightness , I doubt that any unified consensus vision would hold much interest for me.)

Seems like you either have everyone off pursuing their passion in some degree of isolation; or everyone pulling together (which might lead to other problems; e.g., power-hungry people seizing the reins). As a firm believer in diversity in natural and human systems, I’d rather see us figure out ways that people can work on what they believe in, but do so as part of a richly-connected network exchanging information and resources. I hope that the Chamber of Commoners event on Feb. 10 will be one way to start forming those connections.

And it would be nice to get more people involved with local projects of all types. We need to do better at making urgent community-building work look like fun. (Tom Sawyer figured that one out years ago…)

I’ll try to square this circle by next week. Wish me luck.