OS Topic 5: Super-ordinate Goals: What everyone wants, but no one entity can do themselves

for "DandDTrans," a "community of inquiry and action" regarding the role that Dialogue & Deliberation can play in addressing the mega-crises of our time

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Super-ordinate Goals: What everyone wants, but no one entity can do themselves

Initiated by: +Ben Levi on January 6

Description: What super-ordinate goal could replicate across the collective set of value systems, and act as a "guiding star" for systemic transformation?

On a group call with Otto Sharmer and David Korten in December, I heard the meme "Living Human Living Earth" as a super-ordinate goal that could attract a large portion of people frustrated by the current system and its direction. I'm not attached to the name, but am very fascinated with the "meme" as a way of collectively moving toward what we want, rather than opposing what we don't want. My background in Spiral Dynamics integral gives me a basis in theory and application for the idea of a super-ordinate goal for the range of value systems that the U.S. population expresses. This is a conversation about the power of super-ordinate goals as they can apply to systemic transformation for a large-scale system.

Open Space for Conversation — Room 13

This could even turn into a political party [organized around the frame of Living Human/Living Earth.

Clayton Christiansen's idea of Disruptive Innovation might be applicable to social change. "From scarcity to abundance" as another frame that might bring people into the fold. People are so scared of financial and environmental disasters, that they don't want to act.

We need to change it all, so we need a goal that encompasses it all. LH/LE fits that.

Also "Healthy Human/Healthy Planet" as a possibility.

Yoga narrative re "kitten path" and "monkey path" to "enlightenment" or "realization" or "awake": taken "There" by the scruff of one's neck and "dropped off"...or getting "There" by clinging to and traveling with a nourishing mother-type entity

nature metaphors: acorns "become" oak trees; birds "flock"...living human/living earth allows for seeing both/and and moving away from either/or

duality-polarity perspectives held within a ???? perspective (HT has "trouble" with "unity" language.)

mention of developmental differences of people due to differences in early childhood experiences and abilities to handle levels of complexity...and differentiation of those with wisdom to see and those without and implications for democracy...can "change" be accomplished democratically...perhaps "no" because all are "not equal" in abilities to "grok" complexities...how is it possible to move 300 million in the same direction...a model other than a few "wise people" guiding/directing that change...

create a super-ordinate goal (eg Grover Norquist no new taxes) that many will lean towards...like iron filings heading towards a magnet?

The two things we all want to do and no one can do alone that come to mind from natural systems training are flying and breathing. A strategic disadvantage in the choice of flying as a superordinate goal is that most of us have little faith that we could fly if we would all learn to fly together rather than fly apart. A problem with breathing as a candidate is that most people take the diversely inspired creation of our breathable atmosphere for granted, as if it is something they would still have were they the only living being on their own planet. So that does seem to bring us back to the idea of living most optimally or abundantly. Thich Nhat Hanh encourages us to think of rich nutrition v. toxins with regard to all of our sensory input, not just what we eat. With this democratization of the word nutrition, our superordinate goal, what we all want and no one can do independently, is to live optimized polycultural nutritional lives; where polyculture is the appositional end of a spectrum upon which "monoculture" occupies the more unsustainable and impoverished end. Polycultures are what permaculturalists and DNA/RNA intend to develop across multiple regenerations, or reiterations, if we are speaking of information strings and narrative stories.

If you step into Turquoise, as described on p. 292 of Beck and Cowan's Spiral Dynamics, while learning the basic attendance and developmental sequences of Permaculture Design and Development, then the enculturation of Turquoise begins to look like the super-ordinate goal of Permaculture Design: regenerating optimized polycultural abundance by minimizing monocultural dissonance, stress, loss, decay, decline, wilting, starvation, immense thirst for balanced water, Earth, air, and fire.

Topic: What if the ambition for a super-ordinate goal is misguided?

Steph 1/19 /15

I +confessed to my bias in a conversation with Chris Smerald over in the OS#6 pad on Processing. But what to say about why? What is the assumption I am attempting to counter? I have one label for it, which I imagine will be . . . I don't know, controversial, or vigorously argued against. Defended in the irrational way Bohm talks about, when our opinions get linked to our identities. We'll see, probably, eventually.

What supports my skeptcism about a single unifying goal is this TED Talk by Hans Rosling, The Best Stats You've Ever Seen. http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen

http://youtu.be/usdJgEwMinM

He says, "The improvement of the world must be highly contextualized, and it's not relevant to have it on regional level. We must be much more detailed. We find that students get very excited when they can use this." The point being twofold, a) our misconceptions are probably thick, and b) what will motivate people not only metaphorically but literally depends on their lived social reality. If one starts from above (the example Rosling gives is wealth), no significant or automatic improvement in the baseline (in this case, health). You must invest in the ground, in the local, and-most importantly-from within the local context in order to participate in processes leading to tangible change.

That said, I think eating is the most bottom-line common denominator. Physically we need water more urgently (and, as @Gerald Dillenbeck said, air even moreso) but people (esp in the US, if we're restricting this conversation to within national borders) are awash in so many beverages the need for water is often masked (again, unless you live in California or other western states that have long been scenes of water struggle). But everyone has to eat, and everyone like to eat whatever it is they like -- regardless of where it gets shipped from.

Gerald Dillenbeck, 1/19. This reminds me of Thich Nhat Hanh's "deep ecologizing" of our universal cellular-level need for good nutrition, as opposed to absorbing toxins, predicting an un-sustainable, vaguely neglectful, and non-informative wilting away toward our silent silos. Nutritional analogies work for all sensory receptors and as responsive to both physical and mental health. So, yes, what we eat, but, one step up on the ladder of abstraction, what we absorb: nutrition or other or too much in-between?

OS Topic 5: Super-ordinate Goals: What everyone wants, but no one entity can do themselves
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Super-ordinate Goals: What everyone wants, but no one entity can do themselves
Open Space for Conversation — Room 13
Topic: What if the ambition for a super-ordinate goal is misguided?

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​​Open Space for Conversation — Room 13

Open Space for Conversation — Room 13