​​Bruce Schuman's Possibility Conversation
​​Dialogue, Deliberation and Systemic Transformation 
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​​Image courtesy of www.NewStories.org
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​​Because of it's length, I have moved Bruce's full possibility conversation over here to its own pad.  Click the link immediately above to get back to the main ​+What's Possible?​ pad at the location of Bruce's entry there. Thank you, Bruce, for diving in with such passion and intelligence! [Ben Roberts, 12/15]
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​Question 1: 

  • ​​What is the crossroads where you find yourself at this stage of your work in service to systemic transformation?
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​​"Crossroads" -- hmm.  For me -- the big tension is the issue of activating a transformative vision.  I have spent a long time more or less as an architect, a designer, working at the level of internet system design and development.  But taking a very ambitious design and turning it into activism, where people get on board with a common vision, in ways that lead to real social change -- this is much more challenging, and the internet alone is not enough.  Writing theories and visions -- while important and probably essential -- alone, just doesn't get us there.  Theory by itself is an unrealized potential.  Somehow, we need to jump into the fire of real social change.  Real-world D&D projects can be a very big part of this activation.
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​​For me, at this point -- it seems the next steps are profoundly "spiritual".  Any hope I have for broad social change, as I see it now, will have to flow from spiritual levels -- probably coordinated as a movement from the point of view of ethics, probably in ways analogous to the leadership of Martin Luther King or Gandhi.
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​​And one major reason I think this is true is -- the "movement" that we each are feeling -- is something different in each of us.  We are not all seeing the same things or worrying about the same issues, and our "common ground" or basis of agreement is very fuzzy.  But the D&D principles -- as per "Conversation Cafe", or you-name-it -- are a kind of "universal ethics of co-creative relationship".  
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​​Is D&D "a religion"?  Some people probably see it that way.  Principles of D&D are at the core of community healing and health.  If the human race is going to find a way forward together, D&D will be at the core of that way.  And those principles are very consistent with the ethics of religion and spirituality at their best.  So for me, at least as I am feeling it now, leadership for a transformative social-change movement will probably require some new kind of alliance between secular/political ethics and spiritual/religious ethics -- in ways that enable tight and authentic collaboration between secular and spiritual/religious groups.  The Dalai Lama talks about such things in his 2011 book "Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World".  Perhaps the basic thesis of this book could be directly transplanted into the core of our emerging movement for systemic change.
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​​I would say the most promising route for a transformative movement empowered by D & D practitioners would involve the synthesis of a broad multi-sector alliance (environment, energy, economy, education, governance, etc.) with a strong core of universal ethics.  Somebody needs to hammer out an initial definition and get co-creative buy-in from independent activist agencies in every sector that relates.  "Get something on the table, and then we can work together to polish it."
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​​Personally, I think the entire project/vision looks like a mandala -- like the "Wheel of Ashoka" -- a wheel with spokes and a hub -- where the spokes are bridges to the different sectors (ecology, environment, economics, etc.) and the hub is the common ground and point-of-fusion.  This integral hub is where "the religion of D & D" reaches white heat...
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​​And I would follow the Dalai Lama's general statement in "Beyond Religion" -- and build from an "ethics for a whole world" ("whole world" having dual meaning -- "entire world" and "healed world").  As I see it, "the ethics of wholeness" is inherent in wholeness -- and the entire social change movement we are imagining could/should (?) be guided by an "ethic of the whole".  Seen from this point of view, every particular perspective or skill-set can/should fit into a single grand scheme with a single "pure" guiding ethic that might (?) transpose to every level of community and into every issue -- all guided by one common ethical principle of "wholeness in all things"
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​Question 2: 

  • ​​What declaration of possibility can you make that has the power to transform the community and inspire you?
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​​Having sketched out a few ideas above, I wanted to comment on Linda's statement, which is going in a very similar direction, and which introduces some specifics.
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  • ​​Linda: I can imagine that we (starting with those of us called into this conversation from NCDD) first self-organize ourselves into a financially viable cooperative of service and process providers. 
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​​Bruce: Financial viability -- great idea, maybe essential, love to see it work.  Ok, now what would that look like, and what would we be doing....
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  • ​​Linda: Our mission is to utilize our unique process and organizational skills in service to other organizations working on ushering in what many are calling the “Great Transition or Shift.” We assess those projects/efforts already in motion and look at what is still needed in moving this agenda forward. 
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​​Bruce: Hmm, we are in service to other organizations.  Fascinating concept, do you think we can sell that -- to "somebody" (?)   Who might that somebody be?  Funders, foundations -- the organizations we are serving?  So, our role is not only to provide "mediation and facilitation", but also to play the role of look-out and trail-scout, making suggestions as to who or what should be included, and helping facilitate connections and collaboration, and playing a real leadership role.  If we had a sound skeletal framework and a strong participant list, that might (?) be something we could sell.  Love to see it happen....
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  • ​​Linda: We might even serve as a kind of “backbone” organization or as a network of networks in this way, providing such services as consulting, communication, strategic and tactical over-site as crises unfold that offer openings for social changes to occur. We model a form of shared leadership through how we organize ourselves. 
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​​Bruce: Good.  We probably do have the core ingredients to put those pieces together -- and maybe the hackpad format is good for sketching out and gathering up what those pieces might be (though of course, obviously, we have to follow through and get these jobs actually accomplished).  So, there's a lot to do to move from fuzzy ideas to concrete and funded project....
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​​Speaking for myself, I have been visualizing this kind of "backbone network" most of my life, and as a web programmer, have built many projects supporting this kind of potential.  So, technology and working internet databases to support something like this is kinda second-nature to me....
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​​Bruce: My own core vision for all of this tends to be very circle-centric -- so thank you for putting it this way.  Yes, there are many forms of D&D and a lot of different ways and contexts that people can get together and talk.  But for me -- particularly with a spiritual/interspiritual background, and a sense that this entire movement must emerge from a common core of global ethics -- the principle of "interconnected circles" seems essential and very potent -- and in fact, just a couple of years ago, the Great Transition Initiative was promoting a very similar vision .  As I see it, the vision of "interconnected circles" opens up the full power of the "integral" movement -- and there is a realistic hope of "interconnecting everything" though it.  
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​​As William Isaacs (PhD, MIT) said, "dialogue is a conversation with a center, not sides" -- and as a thousand other people have said, "circles have centers".  For me, the great vision is -- a million circles (as per Jean Shinoda Bolen) interconnected through their centers (as per Teilhard deChardin) -- all of which can come together, I believe, in a way that is something like "the next step beyond sociocracy and holacracy".  For me, this geometry is the "crystal architecture" of the shift/transition movement.  Not only does this design work perfectly (I believe) in intimate small-group face-to-face settings, it works at large scale because this architecture transposes perfectly to internet system design.  It is not only "the perfect form" for approaching any single issue or concern that people care about, at any level of scale, it is also the perfect form for interconnecting many (or potentially all) such issues.  This congruence seems so perfect, the entire framework can seem astonishing or deeply mystical.  Look out across the internet for images of "interconnected circles", and you will find thousands of them...
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  • ​​Linda: We apply our process and organizational skills in ways that help to connect everyone from the grass roots and up through every level of society so that, no matter which political persuasion, religious perspective, geographic location, or economic strata, etc., anyone all over the world is welcome, invited, and included to participate in this grand human experiment of interconnection. 
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​​Bruce This is a great vision that I have held for many years, and this kind of "transpartisanship" has guided most everything I have done or worked on.  But lately -- influenced by a sense of crisis -- I might want to make this sense of full inclusion compete with the need for effective activism.  Naomi Klein's book reviews many reasons (I'm just going through chapter 2) why the global-scale green movement has tended to crash.  I'd say this "systemic transformation" group needs to look at the issues Naomi raises and come up with some solutions (sample problem: "free trade -- Chinese suppliers want to compete with Canadian suppliers -- versus the pressure in Ontario that all suppliers for their local green industry come from the Ontario region).
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  • ​​Linda: In fact, we figure out a way to make these interconnected circles of people so enticing that everyone in our world, no matter where and regardless of their circumstances, will not want to be left out.
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​​Bruce: Yes, this is "the great vision".  Something has to become extremely attractive and magnetic at the center of this process, so that everybody will want to be there, or see a place for themselves.  My guess is -- that something will/must be "charismatic" -- and maybe "very spiritual".   (maybe the Las Vegas blinking-lights model will also have some role in there???  :) )
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​Comments from other participants:   

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​Tom Atlee
​​Bruce writes:  Principles of D&D are at the core of community healing and health.  If the human race is going to find a way forward together, D&D will be at the core of that way.  And those principles are very consistent with the ethics of religion and spirituality at their best.  So for me, at least as I am feeling it now, leadership for a transformative social-change movement will probably require some new kind of alliance between secular/political ethics and spiritual/religious ethics.
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​​Possible candidates for a starting place regarding these principles are the http://groupworksdeck.org pattern language and some articles where I explore the spiritual dynamics of quality dialogue Empowered Dialogue Can Bring Wisdom to Democracy and the interactive, co-creative, co-incarnational nature of the universe/reality, itself, especially Intrinsic Participation and the Great Co-Creative Dance and Resonant Intelligence and the Core Commons
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  • ​​Bruce: Thanks for these thoughts, Tom.  I was looking at the groupworks deck recently, and was wondering in a basic way whether all those points and themes represented in that deck could simply be listed as "tags" -- more or less as "items to be included".  The groupworks deck is a potent review of the D&D field.
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  • ​​And it's very good to see your citation of the beautiful quote from MLK's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" -- "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."
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  • ​​As regards the "system" elements of this "garment of mutuality", this is a very big philosophical discussion.  One question I have been looking at is the "top down versus bottom up" issue -- which sometimes gets stated in very sophisticated and interesting ways -- such as the tension between "network" and "tree" (or "hierarchy").  This can be seen as the tension between immediate empirical observation and the great integrating hypothesis that supposedly holds it all together (the "tree" model of community).  I have seen a powerful psychological model of this same idea emerging from cognitive psychology, as per this review of psychologist Francisco Varela's work in Charles Hampden-Turner's "Maps of the Mind":   http://bridgeacrossconsciousness.net/mindmaps.cfm
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  • ​​"The net is intuitively perceived as a whole by the brain's right hemisphere; the tree is logically perceived as a sequence of actions by the brain's left hemisphere.  While the tree gives direction to the net, it constantly endangers its balance." 
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  • ​​Fritjof Capra in his new Systems View of Life says that all life is essentially a network -- and that hierarchy or tree is a human construction conceived by intentional human purpose.  As Varela suggests, he is at least partially right -- in that hierarchy (or tree) are human concepts -- that carry some risk of distortion or inaccuracy.   The tree model can be seen as indicative of "human will" and intention -- which can be abusive of nature (as we know).  So, there is a fine balance to be found, between the teeming life of "the network" at the immediate local level -- and the grand integrating tree that purports to interconnect all the local networks -- like the backbone of a computer system.  This concept is exactly analogous to the structure of governance in the USA -- where there is a constant tension between transformative energies "on the ground" in a local community, and the federal government, which is charged with the task of holding 1,000,000 separate communities together in one framework.  In a successful model, the teeming life at the local level must stream into the capillaries and veins of the society in a bottom-up way, exerting a constant transformative effect on the tree -- which otherwise becomes rigid, static, and non-responsive to immediate local needs, and very likely oppressive.  This is a primary cause of political revolution.
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  • ​​My own view is that Capra oversimplifies this discussion, by leaning in one-sided ways towards networks -- but in any case, it's an important question, and one which system designers must take into careful and informed account.
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  • ​​And PS, Tom -- I was just going through your statement on "intrinsic participation" -- that's a great statement, it feels like the fruit and capstone of a lifetime of careful and inspired work.  Whether a group like this one could accept all those axioms might be questionable -- but from my point of view, everybody who cares about this stuff and really wants a solution as finely nuanced and complexly inclusive as we seem to need right now would benefit from making sure they really understand what you are talking about: http://co-intelligence.org/IntrinsicParticipation.html
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  • ​​You are going over very primal and essential material, highly insightful.  How can we build a movement that embraces and "incarnates" this insight?  I do absolutely believe these articles are pointing in the direction we need to go, and whatever we build should fully encounter and consider these points.  Without this kind of broad and deep insight, our designs will be superficial or badly informed.
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  • ​​As you cite
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  • ​​Democracy is an infinitely including spirit. We have an instinct for democracy because we have an instinct for wholeness...   Democracy is the self-creating process of life... projecting itself  into the visible world... so that its essential oneness will declare itself.  -- beautiful quote from MLK's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" -- "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."
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​​It seems that you and I, Tom, are agreed that "the essential wisdom we seek" is grounded in wholeness and oneness.  In these three articles you have suggested, and which I have briefly cited and reviewed, you outline a powerful and profound visionary perspective on the future of democracy, that I believe can and probably should be the basis of a highly inclusive "all-sector" alliance for social transformation.
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​​It's now Monday Dec. 15, 2014, 6:45am in Santa Barbara.  In the next couple of hours, I expect to do what I can to put your three articles into one document, offering some dialogue on each point, and doing what I can to suggest a way to convene "agreement" or collective resonance on these themes.
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