In a context where a common purpose organisation has one of their own facing challenges, there is an expectation for a solidarity beyond all other considerations in the interest of the deeper purpose shared. 

The challenge should spur the common purpose community to gain knowledge about pathways to broader social and cultural system transformation, and cultivate a willingness to put one’s own interests aside for the greater good. It is during moments like the one Floyd faces, and potentially many in the common purpose community, that put the deeper meaning of what brings us together to the ultimate test. 

Purposeful solidarity and identity social capital formation efforts need to be fully informed by agreed values and long-term visions, and co-developed by the people who will be affected by the broader benefits. With the benefit of assuming that to just affiliate, including by being present and identifying with a purpose, you are a thread or fibre that makes the entire whole stronger. 

It should therefore be logical for the community to take it for granted that, 

  1. It has a clear purpose for defining ourselves as a community or group.
  2. It recognises the importance of its connectedness, especially when the reputational costs of those inside or outside the common purpose group far outweigh the logic of inaction. 
  3. As a community, it will always create entry points for those who identify with “the purpose” to be new inputs or render them.
  4. Contexts we all find ourselves in will only make us understand the emergence and novelty of being who we are as a deliberately defined system.
  5. Each of us is seen as a link that maintain a whole-system perspective about the entirety of who we really are

When it comes to solidarity, there is no one size fits all. However, perception and reputation stick to all sizes of humans and lasts longer, if not forever. Floyd might be one domino whose ‘innocent’ or ‘rationalisable’ dismissal is easy to live with. But when many around start falling in their contexts, the collective fall might present an overall disaster. Remember floods are made up of small droplets of rain.

As Shakespeare wrote, beware the ides of March. The ides are, for now, with Floyd. 

Avuxeni Makwerhu.