Projection is the act of attributing qualities to others that we deny within ourselves. It is expressed in the way we label others and then build diagnostic categories and whole professions around the labeling.The shift away from projection and labeling provides the basis for defining what we mean by authentic citizenship - which is to hold ourselves accountable for the well-being of the larger community and to choose to own and exercise the power rather than defer or delegate it to others.
One payoff for believing that problems and suffering in our cities are the inevitable products of modern life and culture is that it lets us off the hook. The payoff happens the moment we believe that problems reside in others and that they are the ones who need to change.
[...]if we do not take back our projection, a new context and conversation are simply not possible. The essence of our projection is that it places accountability for an alternative future on others. This is the payoff of stereotyping, prejudice, and a bunch of "isms" that we are all familiar with.
This is what produces the "other". The reward is that it takes the pressure off of us. It is a welcome escape from our freedom. We project onto leaders the qualities or disappointments that we find too much to carry ourselves. We project onto the stranger, the wounded, the enemy those aspects of ourselves that are too much to own.
Projection denies the fact that my view of the "other" is my creation, and this is especially true with how we view our communities and the people in them. Most simply, how I view the other is an extension or template of how I view myself. This insight is the essence of being accountable. To be accountable is to act as an owner and creator of what exists in the world, including the light and dark corners of my existence.
It is the willingness to focus on what we can do in the face of whatever the world presents to us. Accountability does not project or deny; accountability is the willingness to see the whole picture that resides within, even what is not so pretty.
It is not that the people we project onto do not have some of the qualities we see; it is that the meaning we give to what we see - in this case, the label and categorization - is just projection.
If we saw others as another aspect of ourselves, we would welcome them into our midst.
It becomes the justification for the fear and fault conversation that in turn justifies the context of retribution. Which in turn drives all the programs, expertise, and policy that we thought were going to make a difference. When the projection is reclaimed and the labels abandoned, the justification disappears and space is created for a welcoming, gift oriented restoration.
Projection sustains itself in the absence of relatedness, in places where we have no sense of belonging. Communal transformation, taking back our collective projections, occurs when people get connected to those who were previously strangers, and when we invite people into conversations that ask them to act as creators or owners of community.
This allows us to focus on our connectedness rather than on our differences. We no longer need to take our identity from being right about "them" or from continuing to see "them" as individuals with needs or as people somehow less than us. It puts an end to our need to declare victory. The differences, instead of being problems to solve, become a source of vitality, a gift.
In the language of communal transformation, this is what it means to be accountable. At these moments, we become owners, with the free will capable of creating the world we want to inhabit. We become citizens.
[Peter Block]
Community, p.55, 57-61
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