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Talking Stick, Listening Stick

S. sent an email that he wanted to discuss with me some of my opinions. Thought S. was a girls name and arranged to meet in the sauna expecting a girls night out. There I found out that it was a man. Guess from now on I will ‚verify’ the gender because meeting in the sauna with men I don’t know is maybe not exactly my stye. I was almost a bit embarassed. But we ended up having a nice evening. He told me a lot about alternative culture and the expanding culture of Ting meetings.

There is a huge Ting community that has a central meeting in summer, every year in a different location and in the nature for a few weeks. People bring tents and once you are there you organise all together, cooking etc. There are no drugs and alcohol involved and in the past few years more and more very young people joined. It must be an amazing and new experience of community and I think I would like to experience that once in my life. S. talked about the discussion culture of the ‚talking stick’ at Ting meetings: Only the one who has the stick can talk and nobody is allowed to interrupt. So it might take quite a while until you can talk and very often somebody who has the stick before you said what you intended to say. So it is also very much about listening. S. said that maybe the talking stick method would not harm some of the disussions that go on in Christiania.

18.01.2008, 09:57