This conversation began our inquiry in early December, and has now being folded into the World Cafe space. As of 1/10, there is an invitation to process what is posted here as a whole via +Open Space Topic 6.
You are also encouraged, if you have not yet done so, to post your individual answers to this pad. Read the"distinctions" below, then find a blank template, post your name in bold on the first line, and offer some brief answers to the two questions.
Note: this entire page is editable! Please be careful to only make new entries and not delete what is here. To edit, you must sign into hackpad, using either Facebook, Google, or an email and password you set up. +More on how to use hackpad here.
The Questions for this Possibility Conversation
Question 1:What is the crossroads where you find yourself at this stage of your work in service to systemic transformation?
Question 2: What declaration of possibility can you make that has the power to transform the community and inspire you?
Distinctions for this conversation:
"The challenge with possibility is it gets confused with goals, prediction, and optimism. Possibility is not about what we plan to happen, or what we think will happen, or whether things will get better. Goals, prediction, and optimism don’t create anything; they just might make things a little better and cheer us up in the process. Nor is possibility simply a dream. Dreaming leaves us bystanders or observers of our lives. Possibility creates something new. It is a declaration of a future that has the quality of being and aliveness that we choose to live into. It is framed as a declaration of the world that I want to inhabit. It is a statement of who I am that transcends our history, our story, our usual demographics. The power is in the act of declaring.
The distinction between possibility and problem solving is worth dwelling on for a moment. As I have said, surely too many times, we traditionally start with problem solving and talk about goals, targets, resources, and how to persuade others. Even the creation of a vision is part of the problem solving mentality. A vision is something we must wait for to realize and is most often followed by an effort to make it concrete and practical. Even a vision, which is a more imaginative form of problem solving, needs to be postponed and replaced with possibility. The future is created through a declaration of what is the possibility we stand for. Out of this declaration, each time we enter a room, the possibility enters with us.
The communal possibility comes into being through individual public declarations of possibility. Much the same as witnessing in religious gatherings. Though every possibility begins as an individual declaration, it gains power and impacts community when made public. The community possibility is not the aggregation of individual possibilities. Nor is it a negotiation or agreement on common possibility. The communal possibility is that space or porous container where a collective exists for the realization of all the possibilities of its members. This is the real meaning of a restorative community. It is that place where all possibilities can come alive, and they come alive at the moment they are announced."
What is the crossroads where you find yourself at this stage of your work in service to systemic transformation?
Perhaps the crossroad across every heart and mind between ego-self-identified intent and eco-soulfood composting natural practice.
Question 2:
What declaration of possibility can you make that has the power to transform the community and inspire you?
Tellus Institute(www.tellus.org) has been looking at possible evolutionary trends, projecting 100 years forward, since the 1970s, developing large set analog trend analysis, and actually call their most optimistic hope for the general well-being of our grandkids a"Great Transition" value option, probably born out of a sense of impending crisis.
Apparently, our grandkids' best odds for sustained quality of life for their kids hinges significantly on how quickly we develop a global culture that perceives that we are all in this mess together, and then quickly realigns now overly-competitive and self-serving cultural and economic values to balance and more gently challenge globally cooperative exchanges of values and information, like language, and dialogue, and deliberation. Within this way of seeing our situation, the NCDD"neutrality" value would recommend framing this"Great Turning or Not: Crisis for Global Economic and Environmental and Cultural and Educational and Nutritional and Health/Well-Being Systems, or not so much?" BIG opportunity for public on-line discourse and large data formats, to grow from information, recreation, entertainment, communication, pedagogical functions, to further embrace ecologically cooperative communication and economic network functions.
What if we hosted a global voluntary budgeting on-line discussion. Assume we have the combined federal budgets on Earth as revenue potential. And, it would also be interesting to include all the money currently invested by philanthropic foundations, private and corporate and community foundations, with global search for potential social investment budget dollars. Then find out what"we the people" throughout the world would think would be the best way to invest that money to optimize our potential to sustain the full diversity and quality of life for the next 7 generations. One of the models for doing this involves allocating percentages of the total resources to population sub-sets, based on topographical proximity. So, for example, neighborhoods have executive control of an allocated percentage of total city revenue. Presumably our subsets could operate all the way from neighborhood to internationally shared biosystems, It would be an interesting project to do with the Tellus Institute. Maybe Jim Rough could produce an international reality TV show around this global adventure in budgeting cooperatively-held resources.
The Questions for this Possibility Conversation
Possibility Conversation