I think influence is one way to exercise power and that the challenge is whether it is power over or power with. That's the essential shift that I hope can happen in the world.

Peter Buffett

Categorized in : Thinking Exercise Challenges

America comes from a flawed but wonderful idea. Many great things have sprung forth over the past few hundred years but there were deep issues in the beginning that now are starting to show up.

past years ideas

Things like science and technology still leave some gaps, so it's not as if everybody was sitting around doing nothing, but the bureaucracy and the whole structure of our culture is basically built out of men trying to be legitimate and making things up so they look important.

technology trying men

It's no surprise that if you look at the development of the economy, of consumerism, of all these things that have gotten out of hand over the last hundred years, it happened when men were purposeless, when they didn't actually have a legitimate reason to be moving the species forward because the machines were doing all the hard work.

hard-work men moving

Suddenly, in the early 20th century, there were thousands of men with essentially nothing to do. The farm work, as well as other work, was being handled by machines.

machines century men

True collaborative, nurturing, and safe power is a combining of forces that can only happen on a pretty small scale.

scales force safe

The more history I read, the more everything seems to point to th... by Peter Buffett

The more history I read, the more everything seems to point to the same thing.

seems

It seems inevitable that you'd end up getting someone like Trump telling us all how important and amazing he is.

trump important ends

Start from the bottom up. by Peter Buffett

Start from the bottom up.

bottom

Don't walk in with a colonial mindset and say, "We know your prob... by Peter Buffett

Don't walk in with a colonial mindset and say, "We know your problem and we're going to fix it."

mindset walks problem

Shift the dynamic as much as you can, so you hear the truth from people that have lived experience. Listen intently and honor their experience.

honor people

What may be on the surface looks like one thing but it's often a... by Peter Buffett

What may be on the surface looks like one thing but it's often a much larger problem.

problem may looks

Two hundred years ago, we were all busy farming and we all had a role to play. The home was a unit of production. We made food and all the things we needed, we took care of our kids and were connected to purpose in our evolution. When the Industrial Revolution came along, it took away a lot of the work the men had done.

home men kids

It's very powerful if you can home in on, and really trust, intuition and its strength. Most men have shunned that in so many ways that they end up squaring off the circle of life.

powerful home men

I think the antidote to any symptom borne of fear and scarcity is love. Compassion, understanding, respect, honor: all the things we need to help the world heal begin there.

understanding compassion thinking

Patriarchy is connected to greed, a symptom of a larger force that can only be dispelled through kindness and love. It's basic Buddhism.

buddhism greed kindness

Our individual wholeness includes a masculine and a feminine side, which are slowly (or not so slowly) wrung out of us, depending on which gender you are.

feminine individual sides

Men at an earlier age, get the feminine aspects of them wrung out... by Peter Buffett

Men at an earlier age, get the feminine aspects of them wrung out in a variety of ways.

age men way

Women have a connection to life force and nurturing. They have a connection that men don't have. It doesn't mean one's better or more important, it's just a difference.

differences men mean

I've seen women essentially martyr themselves for the good of the future and the good of their children and, again, the good of love. That shouldn't be happening but it shows you the strength and power of it, and the fact that it will take over a woman's sense of her own survival. Men have taken advantage of that for hundreds and probably thousands of years.

taken men children

Men can learn a lot about the importance of nurturing and being in relation to the life force versus having power over.

force relation men