Gil Friend describes Break Bread's small-group dinners designed to reconnect people across opposing views. The organization uses dinner as an equalizing setting where conversations about dreams and values can restore shared humanity and counter the disconnection that domination requires.
Yeah, this is a very interesting conversation. I hear a lot of common themes. The theme of domination. Domination requires disconnection, that we be disconnected. And you ask about work that's shifting this perspective. And that's one of the things that we're trying to do at Break Bread. And we use the phrase shift the conversation with the belief that if we shift how we show up for conversation, how we see ourselves, how we see each other, and literally change the conversations that we're having, not just in the boardroom or in the meeting room, but in our everyday lives, that's what makes change from the bottom up. The domination, the system is all top down. And we've got various processes that we've developed, one of which is basically bringing people together in small groups for conversations over. Somebody mentioned dreams and values. Conversations over. Dreams and values over dinner. Dinner is the great equalizer. And we've found that when we bring this to neighborhoods, communities, organizations, people are hungry to connect, even with disparate views and opposing views, and to be basically remembering the commonality of our humanity. That's for us, a very, very powerful means of staving off some of the wave of disconnection, of domination, of moving towards that left side of that diagram that Paul showed earlier and more towards the right side. It's really about reconnecting us.
