Jim French: Opening Show Commentary

Jim French

(With comments and editing by Anastasia)


Jim: New Horizons Small “Zones of Peace” went on the air waves for the first time on the evening of December 20. We used the capability of Blog Talk Radio to achieve this amazing counterpart to the all-too familiar broadcast talk radio that permeates the audio atmosphere. Sometimes it seems that there is more of that than anything really stimulating.

Our first show ran for just 30 minutes; actually that's the maximum period for a free subscription. That will be our limit until we have funding for a more ambitious program. This first program included our host, Anastasia, plus Jim French, a long-time participant in other activities of the New Horizons Small “Zones of Peace” Project, and his friend, Dana French, a former Naval office and organization consultant.

The three of us discussed a variety of aspects of how, we as citizens of the United States, can move beyond our present, highly negative polarization circumstances. Respecting the instructions that Anastasia requested as entrée to the dialogue, Dana and myself, came prepared to use Anastasia’s Overcoming Polarization address as a jumping off point for discussion.

I viewed the three of us, throughout the broadcast radio show portion of our evening, as moving in the direction of the show’s first theme, “Beyond Polarization,” by examining the question "What causes polarization in the first place?"

Anastasia: I found this notion of Jim’s as to what our broadcast show portion was centered on to be  surprising  when first I read it. I experienced us as, right from the start, exploring solutions to our current day problems of polarization. Not immersed and rehashing the problems. Most significant to me was my experience of seeing how much of an environment for moving “beyond polarization” was being created by Jim and Dana joining with me during our show in this pursuit.

Once again, I was enlightened by the ways in which Jim approaches “what’s happening here” so differently from my own spontaneous viewpoints. Yet both of us are seeing, whatever is our shared focus of the moment, viable angles of the completed picture; a realization for me, again, of how much we all have to learn from taking the time to really listen to what one another has to say.

Jim: Although we didn't reach any firm conclusions, Anastasia picked up on two main points from the broadcast portion as worthy of further exploration. The first offered by myself as the lead-off panelist: (1) the idea that everyone has two poles inside of him or her that may be fighting with each other a lot of the time; the dominant one influences the general approach to contemporary issues. The second presented by Dana: (2) the idea that the process of learning in life follows a spiral pattern and some
people happen to stop at various points along the path, but not continue on to the highest level.

After the actual internet broadcast, which is archived and available for anyone interested in hearing it, we continued our discussion by means of a regular conference call. I had hoped that many folks would join us for this portion and was, thus, disappointed that were only a handful because I believe that more people joining in makes for less complication in a discussion of this nature. Nonetheless those of us who did participate had a lively, engaging, ongoing dialogue for 90 minutes.

Unfortunately that is not in any archive. However, I know that we will be able to pick up the thread of that
dialogue at our next opportunity on December 27."

Anastasia: The conference call -in portion of our show was so rich. I do wish we did have recorded it. I would like to hear it again and again; pregnant, as it was, with possible solutions beyond polarization. I look forward to our continued, newly developing, radio show as having the genuine potential for being of service to our various communities in an expanding effort to move “Beyond Polarization” as possible humans building a possible society.

Along the lines of, collectively, building a bountiful future, I hope our listeners will think to support the efforts of this show, our Possible Human, Possible Society Study and the various programs of the New Horizons Small “Zones of Peace” Project by writing out one of your last checks of 2012 as a tax-deductible donation to our non-profit organization, New Horizons Support Network, Inc,.

A donation form and details as to where to send your contributions are posted on this link.