{"id":17195,"date":"2016-09-29T02:59:32","date_gmt":"2016-09-29T02:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/?p=17195"},"modified":"2016-09-29T02:59:32","modified_gmt":"2016-09-29T02:59:32","slug":"inclusive-developmentthe-potential-for-detroits-empathetic-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/inclusive-developmentthe-potential-for-detroits-empathetic-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"This is Water: Inclusivity and Awareness in Detroit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”<\/em>\u00a0– This is Water<\/a>, David Foster Wallace<\/p>\n

Newly minted readers: I\u2019ve got a confession. I have started, restarted, and rewritten 4-5 blogs in my lifetime that have never seen daylight. Till now, I\u2019ve never quite had enough of a focused topic to write about, nor the gall\/audacity\/courage to actually speak and share these thoughts with the world. In fact, to date, I\u2019ve written a blog on hiking, Pistons basketball, teaching, and various conglomerations of all of the above. We\u2019re talking maybe 20 or so articles of various lengths, legibility, and coherence just stored away on my computer\u2019s hard drive, all never to see anyone\u2019s eyes other than my own. But, alas, in the illustrious words of one of our presenters in the past month, Detroiters are \u201cabout that action, boss\u201d. Time to act the part.<\/p>\n

For the most part, this blog will be a tool to chart my input as I ideate on the city of Detroit\u2019s future. That\u2019s code for \u201cthis will feature ramblings on Detroit\u2019s rebirth (or revitalization or whatever technical term you\u2019d like to refer to the phenomenal things happening with the city as).<\/p>\n

But enough with intros. Coming to you as an English Major, I can\u2019t help but turn to a favorite text when I consider Detroit, particularly how I want to interact with the city as a Challenge Detroit Fellow for the upcoming year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is Water\u201d, David Foster Wallace\u2019s now infamous Graduation Speech given to the 2005 class of Kenyon college, articulates the need for an empathetic approach to living. Foster Wallace asserts that \u201cThe only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide\u201d – that is, decide \u201cHow to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default-setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out\u201d.<\/p>\n

Now, this may seem rather morbid – and for those of you familiar with DFW\u2019s writing, his trademark witticisms often are. After all, he\u2019s essentially calling the majority of adults slaves to their systematic abuse by the work to live cycle. Yet, note that he gives readers an option – in fact, if you read through the entirety of the speech, everything is about this option. According to Wallace, we (Detroit) have a decision.<\/p>\n

\"Alter

Tension: Alter Road marks the line between Detroit and Grosse Pointe.<\/p><\/div>\n

Rewind. Challenge Detroit asks fellows to approach Detroit from a \u201cseat of empathy\u201d, as I like to think of it. That is, our goal should always be to never act without first sitting down in some sort of proverbial chair and listening first. As DFW notes, empathetic living marks a turning point in which a person decides to promote outward compassion and companionship with those around you rather than being \u201cpissed and miserable\u201d just about all the time.<\/p>\n

Feel free to make your own comparisons, but I\u00a0see much of Detroiters\u2019 narratives being shaped in similar fashion. Detroit will be driven by its builders\u2019 willingness to engage with those around them, listening for the underlying, sometimes unspoken feelings motivating the actions of the city\u2019s residents and prospective relocaters alike. Gentrification vs. Inclusive Development. Detroiter vs. Outsider. Environmental Racism, symptoms of poverty, or some combo of the above? These are just a few of the tensions that I\u2019ve seen, felt, and reflected upon with other CD Fellows.<\/p>\n

As I begin my year in the city, I\u2019ll strive to come from a place of self-awareness. a place that is\"this-is-water\" \u201cso hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: \u2018”This is water, this is water.\u2019”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":289,"featured_media":17241,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15,17,370,19,30],"tags":[478,479,159,63,480,481,482],"class_list":["post-17195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-givedetroit","category-leaddetroit","category-livedetroit","category-be-better","category-detroit","category-work-detroit","tag-beginnings","tag-david-foster-wallace","tag-design-thinking","tag-detroit","tag-empathy","tag-inclusive-design","tag-rewind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/289"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}