The Risky Handjob's First Episode - Appreciative Inquiry

"Appreciative Inquiry" motivates progress in groups. Not by solving problems but by identifying the energizing forces already at work, and then amplifying them.

AI emphasizes our role as a community, not as an organization. Authentic human relationships form the movement and the movement itself helps form them. Our need to associate and share goals energize us from the bottom-up.
 
Assumptions / Values:
 

• Differences as a source of strength
• Empowerment of those presently marginalized
• Prevention of disempowering cognitions & discursive loops that can occur when people focus only on problem solving
• A group contains the same miracle present in living organisms.
• An group's energy stems from the bottom-up, from the individuals who invest their effort, passion, and dreams into the shared reality that constitutes it. The ideals and images present among individuals manifest into the reality of the group via semantic constructs and stories. These constructs shape the way participants talk and think about the group.
• By appreciating aspects of the present we can then imagine futures that shift normative expectations toward the extraordinary.

We start by articulating what goes right, what energizes, and then we describe our most narcissistic and indulgent images of the revolution. Then we try to make them happen.