The building of the Guild is very good news.
In the world at large, business as usual, bad news always grabs the headlines and feature stories of print and broadcast media.
History books are filled with the records of wars, disasters, assasinations and global violence. The good deeds and productive work of the day to day silent majority are left out of the pages of official history. History books report a tiny, minute fraction of 1% of the actual human experience. The good work and loving actions of the masses within families, homes, small business, schools and communities remains the silent reality of the human condition. Herstory and Humanstory are left out of traditional History Books. History Books would be more accurately described as The Bad News Annals of the Human Race and The Global Games Big White Men Play.
Is the constant good work of the Guild to remain unprinted or on the back page with an occasional mention, and the bad news be our daily ChandlerGuild.com Front Page Headlines?
Here at ChandlerGuild.com we are creating a revolution in candle making... and along the way we will create a revolution in the way we live our whole life.
How about creating a local revolution within the Guild and make sure that Good News is on the daily front page of Chandler Guild? ChandlerGuild.com can provide the real facts of the total history of the formation and growth of this Guild --including a full and very complete report of the Good News.
There has been much discussion during the last few weeks on this website about complaints, conflict, and opposing points of view. An interesting pattern has been in place for several weeks on these pages of The Daily Guild News: Complaints and criticism are consistently posted by the same 3 or 4 Chandlers. These three or four consistently post more content on the pages of the Chandler Guild website than all of the other registered 147 Chandlers combined.
I must congratulate and credit the negative news reporters. They communicate! They are definitely the best reporters we have at ChandlerGuild.com
Another interesting pattern is present on the pages of this website: negative comments and postings often get 200-300% more readership than productive and positive reports and information posts on this website. ChandlerGuild readers flock to the negative posts just like The Evening Broadcast News. We are beginning to mirror the mass media of the mass culture on this website. Mass media has a focus on bad news because as a culture we have learned to give much more market value to bad news than good news. Bad news sells! As a culture, we have learned to make bad news more sensational and dramatic. Good news would describe the great things normal people do in normal lives. Bad news gets more atttention because it is out of the norm of our daily life. The fact is, drama is created by conflict. A movie without a conflict in the plot is a box office flop.
Random complaints and angry outbursts are an adolescent and lazy approach to communciation. Such profane communcication is exactly what we see modeled in the mass media, escpecially in regard to conflict. The mass media model of conflict resolution is a contest of who can shout out derogatory four letter words louder. If the mindless verbal attack doesn't work, then our mass media image of effective conflict resolution is to get out a gun to quickly dispatch the opponent. Our mass media model of conflict resolution is totally infantile. As a culture, mass media has dumbed us down to the point where civil commnication and intelligent discourse is becoming a lost skill. Criticism without the offer of a suggested solution is a half way measure. Constructive criticism with a well thought out plan for a solution is an intelligent and mature response. Full communication takes real skill to learn. Chandler Guild members are all up to such a serious challenge. This is an intelligent and caring group of people. You demonstrated that at our Chandler Congress. This open source web page is where we can practice these crucial communication skills.
The national newspapers and broadcast media can remain dominated by bad news. We are practical idealists here. We are not out to change the world at large, but we are committed to change our own lives and to build our guild with intelligence and care. How about creating a really radical revolution here on the ChandlerGuild.com pages and report all of the good news that is always generated every day by the silent majority?
The really good news sometimes is a small story with big meaning:
Here is an example from one of the Good News Field Correspondents for the Global Guild Gazette:
"** "Today Lynette Richards made several beautiful candles and left them on the doorstep of a good friend."
If you make a thorough and objective study of the postings on this website, most of the three or four of our very best bad news reporters are ChandlerGuild.com web site posters who did not come to the Chandler Congress. Most articles posted by our best bad news reporters are posted from afar, without making the commitment to travel to the heart of the action to dig deep for a more total picture of Guild Life. Those that watch any action from the sidelines always find much more to fault. It is much easier to tear down something if we did not work to build it. It is interesting, those that made the commitment to become fully engaged in the Chandler Congress are not posting negative comments on this site. The more we get involved in something directly, the more personal power we experience. Productive and creative communication comes from a basis of personal power. Responsible and participatory parties may be avid critics, but they are usually not complainers. There is a very crucial difference in these two forms of communication. Complaining is a powerless and passive response. Criticism is a positive, power based action offered when we care enough to make things better. A Chandler that takes responsbility for this Guild knows that if we don't like something, it is up to us to change it.
We are the Guild and the Guild is Good. At the Chandler Congress good news was the dominant communication of the entire group. Good News was heard loud and clear everywhere at the Chandler Congress. Guild revolution was palpable in the air at the Chandler Congress. Keep it up. Unless we keep the postive communication started at the Congress active every day, the message of that seminal event will wither and die. Tell your real life stories here... We had one hundred Chandlers at the Congress. Only a few have put forth the effort to post stories and articles on this site so far. Lets have a revolution here and have the silent majority become the vocal majority. The Guild can become a new way of doing business and ChandlerGuild.com can become a new way of communicating effectively.
***Report your sales breakthroughs.
*** Report your heartbreaks and setbacks.
***Report an excellent candle production method that you have discovered and perfected. Share knowlege and skill.
***Tell us all how your Chandler business has brought your family together in productive work this week.
***Tell how a beautiful candle that you made became a gift
for a graduation, a wedding, a birthday or an
anniversary.
***Tell how much money your fundraising candle sales raised
for a local church, organization or school.
***Tell the whole Guild story, good and bad and humorous.
Life is too important to take too seriously. We are making candles here folks, not doing brain surgery. Lighten up!
Tell the whole beautiful and perplexing story of the joys and sorrows of life and running a small business. Guild is Good. Life is Good. Chandler Guild activity is a mix of of good and bad that gets distilled into something great.
This website is the History Book of Chandler Guild. Let's make sure we do not do as the world at large and only report bad news.
The Guild is Good News.
Make a commitment: write at least half as often on this site as you read on this site. We each have the responsibility to give as much to ChandlerGuild.com as we take from it. Just reading here is a one way act of consumption. Writing completes the cycle so that each Guild member is also productive. Participate! That will bring ChandlerGuild.com to life as a very exciting media resource. This website is an open web platform for a purpose: All Guild Members need to write here often. This website is for partcipatory process not for passive perusal.
I expect at least ten new stories to show up on this site this week about what all of the silent Chandlers have been doing out in the field since the exciting days of our First Chandler Congress. We know you take time to read this site. Take time to tell your own Chandler story. In order to write an accurate cumulative history of this Guild we need to hear from many of you often. Our history book will then be about much more than tbe conflict and disaster that fill conventional history books and the evening brodcast news. If only a small minority tell their story, we do not know the whole story of Chandler Guild.
P.S. Contsructive criticism is always welcome here. Bad news can become good news in context and with open dialogue. Censorship is not useful on this site, but verified facts are. Name calling, assumptions, accusations and second hand hearsay have no place if our communication is going to be useful and intelligent. Keep reporting any bad news that needs reporting. We want total communication here. ---that is the point. We have 150 Chandlers signed on to this site and most are silent most of the time. This website will become a very vital virtual village when you all speak up often.
There are more than 150 Chandler Guild website readers. We need 150 ChandlerGuild writers. You don't need to take hours to make a post here. You can all commit a minute or two per week to report to all of us your activity as a Village Chandler.
***Write a one sentence thought.
***Write a 17 syllable Haiku.
***Write a joke
***- or write the first chapter of a great book on Candle
Making... but write!
There is a comment section below: What do you have to report or say right now in reponse to this article? I hope it generates some intellingent thought and dialogue. If you are taking time to read this, then take time right now to respond to it or state your own new Guild story.
I'm waiting to hear from all of you. Each of your stories are very important to the success of Chandler Guild.
Michael Ricahrds, Village Chandler Founder