The vision for sharing LA is to create a unity for Southern California that both respects and energizes our diversity and coordinates our action. Global Perspectives promises the same on a world scale: both humanity united - the very ground of the beloved community - and  the nations exalted.

The both/and philosophy of our web discussion areas is embodied in both its networks, which encourage diversity and its ability to list messages by value, which creates a common consciousness.

After clicking in to either sharing LA or Global Perspectives you will find only messages from Center participants.  This is because you are linking in as a member of the Season network. But if you click "broaden network focus", messages from other networks come into view.  When you have broadened the focus as much as possible, the message list contains all the messages in the database - far more messages than you will want to read. This is where the listing by value comes in.

How to list by value after you have clicked in to sharing LA or Global Perspectives: first click on the "Message List" and then click on the "By Value" button.  You can confirm that you have the correct listing by value because the value ratings on the right side of the list will be in descending order.  Now read down the list until they are not worth your time.

We are just at the beginning of building participation in sharing LA and Global Perspectives.  The power of the list-by-value function depends on the number of people participating.  Somewhere between 50 and 100 active participants, we should go through a phase transition where the highly rated messages really begin to represent the participants as a group and therefore have the power of unified assent behind them.

High value messages must be rated highly for both interest and approval.  High value messages are therefore guaranteed to be of interest, never sinking to the lowest common denominator.  We will find that the high value messages are consistently novel and full of love and wit.  We will want to read them, and we will be doubly impressed because we know that everyone else reads them, too.  They become a "shared reference".  Shared reference along with shared endeavor is what creates community.  Shared reference means that everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows.  Shared reference means you can refer to something and not only does everyone get it, but also everyone appreciates that everyone else gets it.

Please join in!  If you are a writer, then do post your articles on one or the other of our databases.  At this point our readership is too small to warrant writing especially for sharing LA or Global Perspectives, but if you already have something in digital format, you can easily cut and paste it into the appropriate forum.