DDATT makes lemonade from lemon

By Sam Brown
DDATT

DEXTER — Dexter Dover Area Towns in Transition (DDATT), for its September First Friday Free Film and Public Discussion, was going to show the new movie “How To Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change”, but just after we started streaming at the Abbott Memorial Library that night the Internet decided to collapse. The theme of the movie (according to its publicity) is that climate change is huge, we individuals are small and what are our human qualities that global warming can’t destroy?

As some of us fumed and fussed trying to get the movie to play, one of the regular monthly attendees observed that this situation, a failure of technology upon which we’ve become so dependent, is exactly the reason for DDATT’s existence — what do we do when our infrastructure doesn’t work the way we want or expect? All the 15 other people in the room paused, laughed at this recognition, shut off the machinery, moved our chairs into a circle and decided to talk to each other for the remaining hour and a half. You know, conversation.

Climate change was the initial topic, but we soon examined the roles of science and religion as powerful means for humans to examine the world and universe in which we exist. Modern electronic media commands so much of our attention that we don’t make time to sit and reflect on what our individual reason for living actually is. Felix Blinn from Milo said, “My life is run by hope and not by fear.”

Humans are cooperative beings, not able to survive alone; cooperators will adapt to changing times and events better than competitive individuals. Each of us has the ability to do something for someone else. Gerry Amelotte from Dover Foxcroft summed up the theme of the evening when he said, “the givers are much happier than the takers.”

An evening of sincere, funny, spontaneous and thoughtful conversation blossomed because of an ironic glitch in the Internet, and it has not ended with the closing up of the library room that night but continues in the community as we struggle to adapt to our changing world.

DDATT’s mission is to help ourselves rethink and reshape our community as we all move (consciously or not) away from being consumers to being contributors.

For more information on DDATT and future events, email info@ddatt.org to get on list or call 277-4221 or 924-3836.