Dr Emily Samuels-Ballantyne argues that communities don’t fail because people disagree; they fail when disagreement has nowhere useful to go. Drawing on Con Viv (head–heart–hand alignment), Jung’s idea of the “Third,” and Anthroposophy’s threefold social order, she reframes conflict as a constant input that can be metabolised into capacity. The article outlines practical containers, listening spaces that surface facts, rights processes with visible decision rhythms, and small, time-boxed pilot projects, that turn heat into shared work. Rather than “being nicer,” it proposes love as infrastructure: clear lanes between cultural freedom, equal rights, and mutual economy, plus simple cycles of notice → propose → trial → review. The result is a pattern language for civic care where friction becomes fuel and culture grows through practice.

This essay argues that Australia’s resilience work is over-documented and under-practiced. Drawing on a database of thousands of local food policies and current state/federal funding streams, it proposes a shift from writing strategies to funding “patterns”: small, hosted experiments that turn one policy clause into a safe, repeatable practice, seed libraries and crop-swaps, cool-evening street meals with tree-watering rosters, neighbourhood preparedness walk-throughs, and similar low-overhead trials. Framed by Con Viv (“with life”) and threefold social theory, the piece outlines how councils and communities can run micro-trials with clear edges, light measures, and a one-page “how we did it” so others can copy. It closes by asking governments to reserve a modest slice of existing budgets for facilitation, prototyping, insurance templates, and pattern-writing, so resilience moves from paper to everyday life.