Booked on Planning
Booked on Planning
How to Remake the World Neighborhood by Neighborhood
Consider a new way to transform communities with insights from Mack McCarter, author of "How to Remake the World, Neighborhood by Neighborhood." Discover how positive relationships can serve as the foundation for thriving communities and address the age-old issue of societal collapse. By learning from historical studies and successful community initiatives, you'll gain a fresh perspective on fostering resilience and growth through genuine connections.
We discuss how love, commitment, and caring relationships can transform individual lives and entire neighborhoods. The conversation highlights the profound impact of prioritizing relational foundations. Inspired by examples from Shreveport and beyond, we delve into the challenges and successes of nurturing a caring community ethos that spans various institutions.
Show Notes:
- Further Reading: A Study of History by Arnold Toynbee, The Philosophy of Civilization by Albert Schweitzer, and Lewis Mumford’s books: the City in History, the Culture of Cities, and the Transformations of Man.
- Resources on the We Care Team discussed in the show: https://communityrenewal.us/renewal-team/
- To help support the show, pick up a copy of the book through our Amazon Affiliates page at https://amzn.to/3TVsooN or even better, get a copy through your local bookstore!
- To view the show transcripts, click on the episode at https://bookedonplanning.buzzsprout.com/
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Stephanie Rouse:You're listening to the Booked on Planning podcast, a project of the Nebraska chapter of the American Planning Association. In each episode we dive into how cities function, by talking with authors on housing, transportation and everything in between. Join us as we get Booked on Planning. Welcome back, bookworms, to another episode of Booked on Planning. In this episode we talk with author Mac McArthur on his book how to Remake the World, neighborhood by Neighborhood. This episode we have a guest co-host who, if you're a longtime listener of the show, you may recognize from our GIS episode in Season 1. Kurt Elder personally knows Mac and spent a month living down in Shreveport, louisiana, learning from Mac, which is where the ideas for this book took root.
Jennifer Hiatt:This was such a lovely and uplifting conversation, reminding everyone that caring for yourself and your neighbors and your community can make such a big difference. I love the conversation with so much optimism and I hope that you do too.
Stephanie Rouse:One thing listeners will pick up on pretty quickly is Mac's passion and commitment to creating a world of caring individuals, one individual at a time. He even mentions at one point that this was the reason he was put on this earth to see this work through.
Jennifer Hiatt:It's a bit of a longer episode. So let's get into our conversation with author Mac McCarter on his book how to Remake the World, neighborhood by Neighborhood.
Stephanie Rouse:Mac, thank you for joining us on Booked Up Planning to talk about your book how to Remake the World, Neighborhood by Neighborhood. The book is founded on the story of how connecting people who care for one another has transformed entire neighborhoods. Can you talk about where the foundation for this idea that positive relationships will improve decaying neighborhoods came from?
Mack McCarter:I am glad to do it, and, stephanie, it's wonderful to be with you and Jennifer and Kurt, and I'm honored to be a part of this. I pastored churches for about 18 years, and my major in seminary was actually under a fellow from Lincoln, nebraska, and he was one of the three founders of the discipline of pastoral psychology. The whole idea is pastors do counseling, but they haven't been trained. This was in the early 1940s, and so he went back to University of Nebraska and got a PhD in psychology and then applied that to the pastorship and it became a discipline that's now in every seminary, and so he was my major professor.
Mack McCarter:If a pastor is not a physician of relationships, I don't know what pastors are supposed to be doing, how we relate to one another and how we relate to God, and so therefore, with about 16,000 hours of counseling premarital counseling, marital counseling, friends that begin to hit a rocky road, folks that had problems with their faith all had a relational base, and so the one thing that I understood very clearly is that relationships, human relationships have rules, and those rules are just as ineluctable as the laws of gravity, and there are certain things you have to do to be friends, and there are certain things you must not do, Certain things you have to say, certain things you shouldn't say, but we'll screw up. That's another rule. And therefore another rule is we have to confess that and then we have to forgive that and we repair the relationships that have been broken. And so I literally was trained in that. And when I picked up the third volume of Arnold Toynbee, who had decided in the early 30s that we have to study civilization and make a science out of studying civilization, and that had really never taken place, it had been chronicled but never studied as a science. So Toynbee undertook a journey called A Study of History, which was 12 volumes from the early 30s up until the 60s. The 12th volume was written and literally analyzed. He picked out the leading civilizations in American history I mean in world history and compared and contrasted those. As a matter of fact, he became very famous in the 40s. They had his picture on Time magazine and his statement about civilization is the epitaph of all civilizations is suicide.
Mack McCarter:We have never grown a civilization that actually gets better and better and better and better. Every civilization we have grown has begun, started, flourished, then began to decline, decay and then collapse, every single one. And Lewis Mumford, incredible author and thinker, said that the chief enigma of all of history is why do we keep collapsing the societies that we construct? We've done it over and over and one of the reasons is is we're kind of like fish born in an ocean, and that is, they don't think about the ocean, they just start swimming. And when we have society around us, we don't think about it how it got there, what we have to do to sustain it, et cetera. We just go to work, we get our degrees, we just keep working. So this is a long way around of saying which I always give, the long way around of saying that when I read that third volume in Toynbee and Toynbee actually defined civilization that moment was October the 27th 1981.
Mack McCarter:And I was in my study and I read the words society is a system of relationships, I literally stood straight up when I read that. I went my gosh. If that's what society is as a matter of fact, I've got chills right now thinking about it. If that's what society and civilization is, that if we could obey the rules of a relationship. I watched married couples that were so distraught and I watched friends who were so broken in their friendship. I literally watched them be healed if they obeyed the rules you know and were willing to invest themselves into the big rule what do we share together in common?
Mack McCarter:All relationships are based upon that, and so, consequently, in our friendships, we know how to make friendships, we know how to repair friendships, but sometimes we need a physician to help us in those things. And so, consequently, I said, if we can take those rules and then find a way to systematically restore the relational connectedness and relational foundation, then we can be used in the healing of the brokenness of our world. We only have one world. There's no lifeboat off this world, and we had better learn to live together in this one big house that we've got, or we literally are looking at the destruction of our entire species and that, I know, is much larger than the neighborhoods. But we have to think of the world as one big neighborhood. And then we have to get down to the micro and say, okay, we need to grow a model that can actually take the rules of relationships and walk those out in the streets of a city and begin to have that model and then replicate that model on reconnecting folks together in relationships, but do it systematically, and then we've got something that will be very, very powerful. I might add one other thing very quickly Remember that relationships are only formed by what we share together in common. That's how we build relationships.
Mack McCarter:We cannot start with our individual uniqueness and guard that and expect to have a relationship that will grow. What do we share together in common? I said human beings share together in common, and this is before all the physiological evidence came in. We share in common the capacity to care for each other. We've got over 8 billion people on this planet. We are hardwired to care. All of the science is now there. When I started we didn't have that science, but we have the capacity to care. So let's devote ourselves to what we share in common. Let's celebrate our uniqueness ourselves to what we share in common. Let's celebrate our uniqueness, but let's devote ourselves to that, and so that's the genesis of this model.
Jennifer Hiatt:I found it very interesting that you very intentionally use the word caring in the book instead of love. You know we're taught to love our neighbor, but instead you talk about the caring aspect. So can you explain why you felt it was really important to make that linguistic choice?
Mack McCarter:Thanks, jennifer, because that's a great question. I did use caring because when you say love, it takes people A to a place of intimacy that is frightening to them to say you know, I don't really know you, how can I love you? But I can care about you, and so it makes the threshold of entry lower for us and it can ease our way into this idea that I'm here to care for each and every and all human beings. That's the first thing. The second thing is you listen to a song that says I danced with you and knew that I would love you forever. That's great.
Mack McCarter:That happens, you know, once, probably in an eon, the word love and even the concept of love has been cheapened to an attraction level, and of course we know that it's much deeper than that. And the word agape is not a feeling, it is a commitment to seek the good of the other just as you seek your own good. And, trust me, no matter what we think or say or what our inner voices say, we're going to seek our own good, period. I just have to know that my good rests in seeking your good, and when I can make that transfer, then it really redirects my life in a wonderful and fulfilling way. I'm not seeking my own good Actually, that's always there but it's been judoed into knowing that my good rests in you and your well-being. And when we can then go from our own little family and our own race and our own church and our own nation and understand that that's true for all homo sapiens, that then we have the worldview that can be healing for our world.
Kurt Elder:This foundational relationship model of community development has expanded into other institutionalized settings throughout your we Care Schools effort. How is the work that you do in the community different than what you do in the schools?
Mack McCarter:Port Kurt. I went back to Shreveport and I said, okay, I've counseled individuals and couples. Now how in the world do we make that practically applicable to the 300,000 people in the metro around Shreveport and Bossier City and in Louisiana, I might add? So how in the world do we do that? And again, what came to me was the vision of a swimming pool. How do you make an unhealthy pool healthy enough to swim in? You watch these lifeguards. They'll dip down their test tube and they'll look at it and they'll go okay, it's healthy, y'all can swim. Or we need to add this or add that. And so what hit me was we have to know one thing how do we clean one molecule of H2O? If we don't know how to clean one molecule of H2O, then we'll never be able to clean that pool, no matter how elaborate we get. But if that's all we know, we can't clean the pool. Now, unfortunately, we've all jumped in the water and we're madly cleaning molecules. You know, you get everybody in there and we're cleaning molecules and we can prove statistically that, hey, we're making all kinds of improvements.
Mack McCarter:I came from a church background. I could say last year we had 50 baptisms, this year 100 baptisms. But the pool isn't getting clean, and so, as a matter of fact, there are arguments that it is going the other way. So somebody a lot smarter than me invented a system that we call a swimming pool filter. That literally takes the reactive process of cleaning molecules, puts it into a system and brings in billions of molecules at once and runs them out. And if you get the ratio of volume and velocity fast enough, we have the technology, and that's the reason I call community renewal a social technology. We have the technology to clean pools. We can now clean practically anything. The astronauts well, I won't mention what they can clean and drink, but we now have an incredible technology to do that. And so, kurt, stop and think of all of these identifiable things in society, their institutions, their organizations, their groups, their businesses, government, but all of those are inhabited by what? By people. And so, therefore, there is the molecular that is common throughout everything, if we're going to take those fundamental truths on building relationships and put those to work and make those primary. When we make our relational foundation primary, it's never secondary, it is never a means to something, it is the end in itself.
Mack McCarter:How we treat and care for one another. The we Care Schools is a great example. Has her doctorate because she wrote her dissertation on what happened at University Elementary in Shreveport, louisiana, and how it was transformed. The University Elementary was built for 400 kids. They've got 1,200 in it and it's the most cosmopolitan school in Shreveport. Many different languages are spoken there.
Mack McCarter:So anyway, over 700 referrals to the principal's office. Once they put a system there that made caring for each other that involved the principal, the teachers, the janitors and the kids, they had 27 referrals last year. All of their test scores have gone up. It was all as a result of the primacy of caring relationships. They literally found a way to move that relational dedication throughout the classroom, the recess, everything. They made it the number one priority.
Mack McCarter:So I'm going to answer the question by saying if a bank makes that the number one priority, if your corporation makes that the number one priority, if that's the number one priority, if your corporation makes that the number one priority, if that's the number one priority not just to care for each other but to care for one another that becomes that all-inclusive and universal touch that touches the fundamental part of being human. That now is the entire pool of humanity, is the entire pool of humanity. The key is to do it in an intentional way. Think of strategies, then, that now go into universities, that now go into businesses, et cetera, and then figure these ways out to systematically do it. I can't figure out for businesses how they may carry for one another in their company and outside of their company what they need to do to make that priority. But business people can, and if they're dedicated to that, then we have now ignited them and that joins us together.
Stephanie Rouse:Speaking of finding caring people you point out in the book, it's pretty easy to find caring people after a catastrophic event like a hurricane or in the case in Lincoln a month or so ago we had a really bad windstorm and had massive amounts of tree branches down. And you go outside and just neighbors were coming together helping clear roads and so it's easy in those situations. But we have so many systemic issues like homelessness that is just happening over a longer period of time. How do you find the caring people for those kinds of situations?
Mack McCarter:First thing to recognize is that every single human being is hardwired to care, every single one. I used to exclude psychopathic personalities, I mean due to my background. I thought, well, psychopaths cannot fit in that. But psychopaths will even do caring acts within their particular realm, and I've never met a psychopathic baby. And so, consequently, we're all hardwired to join together in caring, and physiologically, and, as I said, all the proof is there. So the first thing to realize is because we're hardwired to do that, everyone is a caring person. It isn't like we're not caring. Here's the conundrum how in the world can an entire species, given our DNA, which was formed by recognizing, if we don't help each other I'm talking about in the early days of entering onto the savanna, coming out of the forest if we don't hang together, we're gone. In fact, if you got separated from the group of these fragile hominids, you die period. And so we're hardwired to be together and all of our physiology is enhanced when we come together. In fact, they've proven serotonin, which enhances our immune system.
Mack McCarter:Serotonin goes up when you receive a caring act. Somebody does an act of kindness to you. Your serotonin goes up when you do a caring act. Your serotonin goes up when you do a caring act, your serotonin goes up. When you see a caring act, your serotonin goes up. When you even hear about a caring act, your serotonin level goes up. That's all hard science. So, consequently, stop and think we are caring. But here we are, as a species on the verge of the possibility of self-annihilation. Now, how do you have a species where over 8 billion people are hardwired to care for each other and we're hanging by a nuclear thread of complete self-annihilation as a species? You know that doesn't even make sense. What has happened is it isn't that we aren't caring, it's because we care randomly. Random acts of caring will not cure our world. Or we just care for those close around us, or we're just caring for our race, or we're just caring for our nation All of these ways of caring and we're invisible and we're not caring together. So we haven't created a powerful public army of folks who are intentionally dedicated to caring.
Mack McCarter:I tell about the guy that gets on the airplane at Los Angeles and he's flying to New York City and he starts acting like the fool and they have to duct tape the guy to his chair in the airplane and they divert the flight and they land in Denver and it's on the evening news. Well, he just flew over millions and millions of human beings like you and me, who are out there cleaning the streets Stephanie, after a storm who are out there doing this. We're invisible because we're normal. We don't make news, and so the anomalies of human behavior are amplified on the evening news because these guys are not normal, therefore they're news. And so then we start thinking well, that's the way the normality is, and we get afraid. But actually the normal thing is all of these caring people that are not making the news. And that's the reality.
Mack McCarter:And what happens with catastrophe is that surfaces us and we become news because we see our goodness revealed. 9-11 didn't change the people in New York City. It revealed them. It revealed these caring things. So how do we deal with endemic problems? Because a catastrophe is an acute situation, but there are chronic situations within human society and that is where, when we make our caring intentional and systematic and we make it corporate, then we come with the solutions to our poor brothers and sisters who are there on the street corners, etc. When I'm walking down the street. I don't know how to solve that. All I know how to do is you've asked me, let me respond in kindness, but I don't know how to solve your situation. But when we prioritize and when we care together and when we come forward with corporate solutions systematically, we can have folks who will figure out a way to systematically do this.
Mack McCarter:And I've got to give a commercial because we have what we call a we Care team, and I'm going to just read this card that I'm lifting up. It says humanity's highest purpose is to care together to make our world a caring family where every single human being is safe, loved and joyfully fulfilled. You begin to achieve our purpose today by making the we Care promise. And the we Care promise is this knowing that I'm already a caring person, I promise to care for all human beings. Check. I recognize that caring by myself will not change the world. So I will take my place on the we Care team and join with all others who have made this promise Check. I will now do my part in achieving our purpose by inviting my family and friends to join with me in the we Care promise. Check. And this isn't joining community renewal. I'm not here to get a great nonprofit. That's crazy.
Mack McCarter:We have to heal this world and that's the fundamental challenge that is before us. We only have two challenges. We have a lot of problems. There are only two challenges. One is we've got to have a very healthy planet Earth. If we don't have a healthy planet Earth, we all go down. A very healthy planet Earth. If we don't have a healthy planet Earth, we all go down. The second is we've never constructed a global society that literally grows and gets better and better and better through caring for one another. And unless we do that, the amazing thing is, the primary challenge of a healthy planet can only be answered by investing ourselves in the secondary challenge and that is all coming together in the healing of our planet.
Jennifer Hiatt:Because we can get everybody in, but if China doesn't join we're going to still get a sick planet and to the end of Finding Caring People and the systems that you mentioned in trying to create that system, the book discusses the idea of six basic manifestations of growing as a human being, which we all need to do.
Mack McCarter:So what are these? And how can we all grow as human beings? Since we need to, we have what we call the five questions, and the five questions are what kind of world do we need to be the best human being that we can be? And then we ask what kind of society makes possible that kind of world? Or you could say what kind of church, or you could say what kind of business, et cetera. The third question is what kind of person makes possible that kind of society that makes possible that kind of world? The fourth is what kind of environment makes possible that kind of person? And the is what kind of environment makes possible that kind of person? And the fifth is what do we have to do to make that environment, to make that person, to make that society, make that world?
Mack McCarter:And so we start with the third question, because we have to look at what kind of person are we seeking? Because everything hinges on that. And we say a whole person. And a whole person is a person who is competent and compassionate. In our lingo, it means growing as a human being. Competency equals growing and compassion equals giving.
Mack McCarter:How do we need to grow and there are only six ways that human beings can grow. We grow physically, and we've got to grow on our own nourishment. And the second thing is we grow intellectually. The third is we grow emotionally. I'm different than I was when I was two my wife doesn't believe that all the time, but I am and then we grow skillfully. I drive around up here in Washington DC. I couldn't do that when I was three.
Mack McCarter:And we grow in life skills. We grow socially. You know you always say about kids now you got to learn to get along. And then we also grow spiritually. Now what that means is not jumping over pews in a church and throwing hymn books because you get all excited. What that means is is the recognition that there is more here than me, myself and I. When we recognize that, it puts us on the way to spiritual growth. And consequently, that begins, jennifer, to begin to help us, to intentionally begin to walk into wholeness.
Mack McCarter:And the astonishing thing is we cannot grow in any of those areas alone. I mean, you might think we could. The only thing that we do by ourselves is we pass away Everything else. Is critical to understand that only by entering into what we call positive relationships Y'all. There are negative relationships and those can kill you, but a positive relationship is that which grows us under. The idea is that we're committed to one another and to seeking one another's good. There's a lot of improvement and it's a lifetime in that journey, but it is a journey that literally makes us people, and that's what it means to do that. Well, I started preaching again, but I'm excited.
Kurt Elder:Community Renewal International has developed a methodology to break down the organization into its component elements and derive how the activities affect an individual's competency and compassion, which then leads to shifts in the community, Things that we've been talking about. How have your results? You know, lower crime rates, better connected, among others. How have those results influenced or impacted budgetary support at the local level, that's?
Mack McCarter:a great question. You know people say what's your development strategy? And I say we're hoping to win Powerball and, you know, mega Millions. That's kind of our strategy. No, I'm teasing Kurt.
Mack McCarter:I had a wonderful dear friend named Millard Fuller. Millard and Linda founded Habitat for Humanity. Millard would always say, to get them into a home and have home ownership for the first time, and the money is in your pocket. I can't throw enough money at you. That's fabulous and I follow you on the stage.
Mack McCarter:Well, mac, what are you doing? Well, we're rebuilding the relational foundation in order to restore, you know, the whole system of civilization, in order to restore, you know, the whole system of civilization, and that's about as exciting as watching the guacamole dip turn black at a party. So this has been a real, real struggle. To tell you the truth, because when we started CURD, the whole vision came in 1981. And then, when I moved to Shreveport in 91, to really really put this on the ground, we had what we call the Tupperware strategy. I had a lot of friends and they would throw parties and I'd share a vision because we didn't have a model that actually would show. You know, that if we did rebuild intentionally the relational foundation and reconnect folks together, that that would then flow like leaven into every phase of our community. And so I literally started also with the business community, saying if Shreveport disintegrates it's not good for your business. And so trying to help people to see that if we could go forth in this grand experiment it wasn't that grand at the time, you know just this grand experiment. Then it lifted all of the ships, because it's the fundamental nature of the ocean in which we swim. If we can restore the health of this ocean we call society, everyone benefits.
Mack McCarter:So in those years we didn't have a model and we didn't have a lot of the evidence that is now catching on. And it was very, very difficult to get funding except through folks, mostly on the individual level. And then Robert Wood Johnson came in because they said after 10 years they came to us and they said we have all the evidence to show that, a if you're in a good relationship. C it means that you will have good health. But we don't have the B how to do that on a societal basis? And we believe y'all do. And they did something they'd never done before and that is they hired a five team group, different disciplines. It was headed by the guy that was the head at the time of the School of Public Health at Tulane. They spent a year with us and their report back to Robert Wood Johnson said not only can this be evaluated and measured yes, it can, but it needs to be a national program. And that was their conclusion. And then they changed CEOs and that report was put on the shelf.
Mack McCarter:And so, anyway, the shift that we've experienced since 2016 is a real understanding of the critical nature of the relational foundation and I call it relational foundation and infrastructure. Everyone now is talking about that. We're talking about loneliness being an epidemic. That's all coming. So, while we have had a tough time showing what we're seeking to show because they call it indeed this is the way of the future and you've got to take this into account Simply in the act itself becomes the result. Our process is our product. The product is is a world of friendship. Well, the process is making friends, and that's why I tell people up here. I said I want the whole world and, kurt, I'll tell you, buddy, I want the whole world to be friends like you and our friends. It's all a way of saying it's really hard to raise money on this.
Stephanie Rouse:Well, speaking of making the whole world friends. The book really focuses a lot on examples from Shreveport, but you referenced that this concept has appeared in other communities and other countries. How do you take these kind of concepts and scale them to national level, international level and get buy-in in other communities?
Mack McCarter:I have a friend who is the chairman of our National Advisory Board. Who is the chairman of our National Advisory Board? He's from Shreveport and his name is John Dalton, and John was the Secretary of the Navy under President Clinton for five years outstanding. And John told me, mac, we need to move the model to Washington DC. He said in Washington, every single nation is represented here in Washington and they're not going to come to Shreveport to see the model, so we've got to stand it up here. At the ripe age of 68, I moved to Washington in 2013 to start all over, and so what we're doing in Washington is put the model in place and then begin to have people see that and then take that to their nations. Just this year, we've got an incredible thing happening in Slovakia, for instance, and all kinds of things happening in Ethiopia, and the person who was the first woman chief justice in Ethiopia and the only chief justice just joined the WeCare team last week. She's got 6,000 lawyers under her.
Mack McCarter:And we've got incredible work going on in Cameroon since 2005, the nation of Cameroon. We've got WeCare schools in Cameroon, we've got an International House of Friendships there, we've got country initiatives happening all over there and we've started Africa Community Renewal people. And this is so important, stephanie, because people say, well, how does this happen? You have to expose people to a vision of what the world should be and what the world needs to be, and you've got to be able to show one day there will be no more weeping and tears, one day we will be kind to every single one of us, there will be no more war, and so that's the vision of a loving family, and that vision, slash, has to be your purpose. We have to have that. And then we have to show a clear pathway how to get there. And then we have to have a fellowship to walk together and grow this seed of dedicated people into the entire environment. And so, consequently, when we start with sharing the vision and showing a pathway, because people are not going to have their hope ignited, it just becomes a wish to say, oh, let there be peace on earth. That's just a wish, unless you can show an actual way to get there.
Mack McCarter:And, by the way, if you get three people to join the we Care team and then retire, and then each of them get three people to join the we Care team, one a day for three days, you go say, okay, join the we Care team, one a day for three days. You go say, ok, join the week air team, one a day for three days. You got three people. And then they go get three people. In 61 days You'll have eight billion seven hundred and twenty six million nine hundred and sixty thousand nine hundred and sixty two human beings who have joined the we Care Team in 61 days. And so you have to show a pathway that leads to the kind of world where, literally, caring now comes together. Now we began to see this happen. It's quiet, but we're building this, stephanie, and we're leavening like salt and leaven. That's how we're going Show the vision, attract people to that vision. They say, yeah, that's the kind of world I want.
Jennifer Hiatt:You mentioned in the book the journey from the village to the city. We're city planners, so we're kind of city oriented. Back to the village. And why is it important that we re-villageize our society? Dr Anneke Vandenbroek.
Mack McCarter:The village was the vehicle that literally transformed human beings. There was a place that somebody, somewhere, that said we ain't going to follow you to hunt and gather anymore. You go ahead and hunt and gather, but we're going to stay here and plant ourselves and we're going to use this place that we're now staying and we're going to form a womb-like structure of caring for one another. That literally can change everything, and it did. The village probably goes back we have evidence, archaeological evidence about 14,000 years, but I think goes back farther than that, and the village was this supporting collective of human beings and they learned to live together in a common sense and it literally transformed the human race. So what I did is I went back and studied ontology what are the basic elements of the village, with the idea that what has happened to us one of the great examples is when I grew up on planet Earth, I lived in the same neighborhood my whole life and I still jog down that neighborhood. I can tell you where every single person lived, every one of them. I could name them. The neighborhood was like my village. We had that kind of corporate structure that made it possible for me to grow up with some guardrails and with some sense of how we have to act together. And now what's happened? What's happened is we can email people all over the world and we don't know who's living and dying four houses down from us or four apartments away. We might wave at them, but we don't know them and we've gotten disconnected. And we have to intentionally get reconnected because disconnection brings dysfunction period and all the accompanying disabilities that come with that loneliness, meaninglessness, depression, we can name all that. And so consequently, there has to be the intentional coming together with those elements.
Mack McCarter:The eight elements are safety and security. You found that in the village, safety is environmental, security is psychological, meaningful work, a way to transmit knowledge and wisdom. That's education. Then you had a healthcare delivery system with the medicine man, you had dwellings that folks lived in, you had leadership and you had mutually enhancing relationships. And that's the part that we bring. And so, consequently, with safety, security, then health care, and then dwellings and education and work and leadership, and then all tied together with mutually enhancing relationships. So if we can do that, then we can now go to literally go bite by bite and reconnect our cities geographically where you live. We've got to get grounded. In that way we can reach out to the world and touch the world, but we've got to touch one another.
Kurt Elder:If you could go back in time and give advice to a younger you on the journey that you were about to start, what advice would you tell yourself? And is that the same advice you would give or offer other champions who are ready to pick up this work in their own communities?
Mack McCarter:Well, it's been such a pilgrimage, kurt, that if I have gained any insights and any wisdom, it has been through, you know, making the journey. The only thing that I can say, I mean there are so many things, Look, as the folks that really really know me well know as a matter of fact. I'll tell you this story. One of my dear friends is a guy named Larry Faulkner, and Larry and I grew up together and Larry became the president of the University of Texas, and so I'm with Larry in his office and Larry looks at me and he says Mackie, you have really, really helped my belief in God. And I said well, larry, that's really great.
Mack McCarter:He was filling out his we Care team card and he said, yeah, he said this is so important and so powerful, this whole idea of coming together, it could not possibly have come from you. I know you. Therefore, there has to be a God, there has to be a God, and so the folks that know me well know what a numb Skolinski I am, and so, therefore, the whole thing has to do with seeing that the one purpose for which we must all live is the purpose of caring together to make our whole world a caring family where every single person can be safe and loved and joyfully fulfilled. Now, in that process, I would say to a young me and to a young everyone you still have to make the journey. We're learning how to do this. There are things that we could be more efficient at.
Mack McCarter:I mean, if you came and really did an analysis of Community Renewal International, you could take the blue pen and I'll fill out a whole tablet for you, because, given the goal of coming together and loving one another on this planet and treasuring one another, given that goal and given the imperfections now that we hope to continue to perfect, I would say keep this vision in front of you and never quit. Keep going, no matter what, and doors will open that you never dreamed would open and victories will happen that you never dreamed would happen. I tell our staff a big shot is nothing but a little shot. Who kept on shooting? And so endurance is really. I would say get the vision deep in your soul, dedicate yourself and all that you are and all that you have to that vision and don't quit, because there's no other reason on this planet that I'm here than for this purpose.
Kurt Elder:Just tying this in when we think about the work that it takes to do this, sometimes we rely upon those waypoints in our life. Who has been your greatest hero in this work?
Mack McCarter:Well, without question a great Quaker, philosopher, theologian. I wouldn't be here without him and his name was D Elton Trueblood, and D Elton Trueblood to my generation of preachers he was like you know is there really a Colonel Sanders? I mean, he was a titan. He wrote 33 books and he was the dean of the chapel at Stanford and he was Dean of the Chapel at Harvard and then ended up going back to Earlham College, little Quaker College in Richmond, virginia, and in the writing of 33 books that had to do everything from textbooks to biographies et cetera, it was Elton Trueblood that ignited my hope in the reading of his books the Incendiary Fellowship, the Company of the Committed, and Elton was saying back in 1944, his first big book was called the Predicament of Modern man and in it he called America a cut flower civilization. That became very famous and what he meant by that was you cut a flower away from its roots, you put it in water in a vase and it looks good for a little while, but then it will fade. This was in 1944, y'all. And so Elton came to Shreveport.
Mack McCarter:I was a pastor and I'd read his books and he came to Shreveport in 1977. He was 77 years old at the time I was 32 and I thought he was older than dirt. And here I am. Here, I am two years older, I'm repenting like crazy. And so he came and spent a week with my parents and I flew down to be with my hero of heroes. You stop and think whoever your hero is, and you get to spend a week with them in your home. It was an astonishing thing. I flew down on Sunday. I got there late, I didn't meet him. He had already gone to bed.
Mack McCarter:The next morning I could hear him downstairs talking to a small group of people and I hurried down to be in his presence and I had been thinking the whole time my gosh, what do I say to impress my hero? You know I'm 32, going to make my bones, etc. There he is with this deep, deep, resonant voice. And one of the things that he said when I sat down was the American church is doing many good things, but it is not stopping the disintegration of our society and we have to find a way effectively to do this. And that was my one big moment on stage which I seized and I wish I hadn't.
Mack McCarter:I seized and I said to him yes, dr Trueblood, we live in a sick society and y'all, I should have warned you, if you're looking for anything smarter from me, that's about as smart as I could get and to be impressive. And he leaned forward and he said young man, what do you mean by? And I thought he was going to say sick? So I was ready to give this litany of dysfunction, but he did. He said what do you mean by society?
Mack McCarter:I went as blank as a whiteboard and I went well, you know, dr Trubel, that's just too deep for words. And he leaned even farther in and he said young man, don't ever tell me, anything is too deep for words. If you can't say it, you don't know it. And I went down in flames in front of my hero in two minutes. I'd forgotten that he had gotten his Ph, gotten his PhD in linguistic analysis at Johns Hopkins, and he put his arm around me that week and he said I want to come to Hereford. And we walked together for 17 years. And it was actually Elton that sent me the 12 volumes of Toynbee, a study of history, where I read in the third volume, as he was hoping I would, the definition of society. What do you mean by society? Well, dr Trueblood. It's a system of relationships, and so it was Elton that fathered me and birthed me into this work.
Stephanie Rouse:So you brought up Elton and Toynbee as two authors that have been influential. Are there any other books that you would recommend our audience?
Mack McCarter:Lewis Mumford was also on the cover of Time Magazine in 1938. One of his great books was called the Culture of Cities and if you want to understand the city and you don't read Mumford, then you're leaving yourself out short. Mumford's great work was in 1961, called the City in History, Its Nature. He wrote a book in the early 50s called the Transformations of man, which I read every year. It's that important and that good. In fact I don't read any book on sociology. I look at the index. They're not quoting Mumford. I don't read it. He never got a college degree but taught at MIT, A seminal thinker, unbelievable.
Mack McCarter:So I would recommend Mumford. I would recommend Toynbee, of course, A Study of History. A great two-volume work is by Albert Schweitzer, the physician who was Nobel Peace Prize winner. He wrote a two-volume work called the Philosophy of Civilization, which is vitally important to understand that civilization is not based on gadgetry, it's based on morality. You can have a Stone Age gadgetry, but a caring group, and they're more civilized than those that use technology to make gas chambers. I would just throw those folks out. You know, as a beginning there are many, many more.
Stephanie Rouse:Yeah, those are all really great recommendations and, as planners, I don't think you can get out of a planning school without learning about Lewis Mumford and some of his early works.
Mack McCarter:Oh, good, I'm delighted to hear about that. That's wonderful.
Stephanie Rouse:Well, Mac, thank you again for joining us on the show to talk about your book how to Remake the World, Neighborhood by Neighborhood.
Mack McCarter:Well, I'm delighted just to be here with y'all, so let's go forth to make a new world.
Jennifer Hiatt:We hope you enjoyed this conversation with author Mac McCarter on his book how to Remake the World, neighborhood by Neighborhood. You can get your own copy through the publisher at Orbis Books or click the link in the show notes to take you directly to our affiliate page. Remember to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts and please rate, review and share the show. Thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time on Booked on Planning. Thank you for joining.
