Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share "Grace" - Decoteau Irby
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
"Grace" - Decoteau Irby
"Grace is giving people permission to be human...and it provides people the opportunity to have dignity, regardless of their circumstances." Insights like these make all the time I spend doing this podcast worthwhile. The opportunity to take a concept like "grace", that we all hear all the time, and to force ourselves to reflect on what it actually means. To challenge ourselves to understand why it is so important but also why it is so hard to practice. That is what it is all about for me.
Decoteau, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and founding member of Derute Consulting Cooperative (where he focuses on how to create and sustain organizations that ensure Black people’s self-determined well-being), had such an interesting and thoughtful perspective on the topic. Through the discussion we started to uncover that grace is a bit of a "numbers game." Often the challenge people have exhibiting grace is that it is too scary. They are worried that they might get burned or end up worse off. And the truth is, they very well might. But what Decoteau explained is from a long-term, portfolio view, we are net better off as a society if we exhibit more grace. So the challenge becomes how do we change the conditions and systems that exist today to allow people to realize the long-term advantages of grace?
As we discussed across multiple topics, housing insecurity, racism, reconstruction, the prison system; human nature seems to lean away from grace. We are engrained with a coding that pushes us towards safety and security. So in many ways it might be unrealistic to expect individuals at scale to evolve to embrace a mindset of grace. Philosophically that becomes a really interesting dynamic, because it suggests we might need to push people towards grace, even if they don't want it. "We", who believe grace is the answer, need to find ways to influence society to buy into it. But anytime we "push" people towards something we believe is "right", it creates an opportunity for exploitation and abuse of power. I loved the opportunity to get to explore these types of topic with Decoteau and hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did.
View all episodes
By Terry McMullen
5
2323 ratings
"Grace is giving people permission to be human...and it provides people the opportunity to have dignity, regardless of their circumstances." Insights like these make all the time I spend doing this podcast worthwhile. The opportunity to take a concept like "grace", that we all hear all the time, and to force ourselves to reflect on what it actually means. To challenge ourselves to understand why it is so important but also why it is so hard to practice. That is what it is all about for me.
Decoteau, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and founding member of Derute Consulting Cooperative (where he focuses on how to create and sustain organizations that ensure Black people’s self-determined well-being), had such an interesting and thoughtful perspective on the topic. Through the discussion we started to uncover that grace is a bit of a "numbers game." Often the challenge people have exhibiting grace is that it is too scary. They are worried that they might get burned or end up worse off. And the truth is, they very well might. But what Decoteau explained is from a long-term, portfolio view, we are net better off as a society if we exhibit more grace. So the challenge becomes how do we change the conditions and systems that exist today to allow people to realize the long-term advantages of grace?
As we discussed across multiple topics, housing insecurity, racism, reconstruction, the prison system; human nature seems to lean away from grace. We are engrained with a coding that pushes us towards safety and security. So in many ways it might be unrealistic to expect individuals at scale to evolve to embrace a mindset of grace. Philosophically that becomes a really interesting dynamic, because it suggests we might need to push people towards grace, even if they don't want it. "We", who believe grace is the answer, need to find ways to influence society to buy into it. But anytime we "push" people towards something we believe is "right", it creates an opportunity for exploitation and abuse of power. I loved the opportunity to get to explore these types of topic with Decoteau and hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did.