• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Work That Reconnects Network

Work That Reconnects Network

  • Events
  • Contact
  • FAQs
  • Register
  • Login
  • Show Search
  • E-mail
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
Donate
Hide Search
  • Connect
  • Resources
  • Become a Facilitator
  • Blog
  • Community Forum
You are here: Home / Resources / Widening Circles

Widening Circles

Work That Reconnects · Dec 1, 2017 · Leave a Comment

Resource Type: Practices (Seeing with New/Ancient Eyes)

or Four Voices

(About 60 minutes)

Activists want to be able to express their views about an issue clearly, even passionately.  At the same time, for their own understanding and skillfulness, they want to see differing and opposing perspectives on this issue.  This favorite exercise of ours helps us do both.  And in the process it loosens the grip of self-righteousness and opens the mind to progressively larger contexts and to widening circles of identity.

Method

People sit in groups of three or four.  Ask them each to choose a particular issue or situation that concerns them.  After a minute of silence, invite them to take turns speaking about their issue.  Each person will speak to their issue from four perspectives, while the others in the group listen.

(1) from their own point of view, including their feelings about the issue;

(2) from the perspective of a person who holds opposing views on this issue, introducing themselves and speaking as this person, using the pronoun “I”;

(3) from the viewpoint of a nonhuman being that is affected by that particular situation;

(4) and lastly, in the voice of a future human whose life is affected by the choices made now on this issue.

After describing these four perspectives out the outset, the guide provides cues for each perspective as each speaker’s turn unfolds, reminding them to always speak in the first person.  Allow some two to three minutes for each perspective, perhaps a little longer for the first.  People find it helpful and enjoyable to stand up and turn around before moving on to the next voice.  

To speak on behalf of another, and identify even briefly with that being’s experience and perspective, is an act of moral imagination.  It is not difficult to do: as children we knew how to “play-act.”  Use an uncharged, almost casual tone in your instructions; you are not asking people to channel or be omniscient, but simply to imagine another point of view.  Allow some silence as they choose for whom they will speak, and imaginatively enter that other’s experience, so they can respect it and not perform a caricature of it.  It is a brave and generous act to make room in your mind for another’s experience and to lend them your voice; let the participants appreciate that generosity in themselves and each other.

Allow time at the end for people to share in their small groups what they felt and learned.  

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Primary Sidebar

Share:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Practices

Help us build our resource libary by adding useful WTR resources.

Submit Resource

Resource Types

  • Recent Resources
  • Audio (9)
  • Books (14)
  • Practices (76)
    • Adapted for online (1)
    • Deep Time (13)
    • Going Forth (15)
    • Gratitude (10)
    • Honoring Our Pain for the World (14)
    • Meditation (10)
    • Seeing with New/Ancient Eyes (14)
  • Videos (23)

The Work That Reconnects Network is a fiscally sponsored project of Inquiring Systems Inc., a tax-exempt 501 (c) (3) nonprofit corporation. EIN 94-2524840. All donations are tax-deductible.

Footer

Recent Posts

  • Help Bring the NEW WTR Network Website to Life! May 11, 2022
  • The Work That Reconnects Network Visions for 2022-23 Apr 16, 2022
  • Call for Submissions: Deep Times, September 2022 Apr 5, 2022

Recent Comments

  • John Roach on Living the Spiral: An interview with Molly Brown
  • Margo van Greta on Living the Spiral: An interview with Molly Brown
  • Empathy and Compassion in Uncertain Times - Network of Wellbeing on Three Stories of Our Time
  • Revisiting Riverton: the Longwood Loop food resiliency project - Naijal on Three Dimensions of the Great Turning
  • Revisiting Riverton: the Longwood Loop food resiliency project - utexta on Three Dimensions of the Great Turning

Subscribe to the WTR newsletter

Receive notification when new issues of the Deep Times Journal are available as well as updates on the Work That Reconnects Network.

You can unsubscribe at any time.

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
Return to top
© 2000–2022 Work That Reconnects Network, all rights reserved