Eight (Quaker-based) Laws that Comprise a "Proven Strategy of Beingness"

Back to "DandDTrans" Open Space-- +A Supersaturated Theory of Change: It's well beyond a theory, it's whats going on

Mark Dubois shared this piece in the conversation that seeded the pad linked to above...

The Beingness Doctrine

Stephan A. Schwartz

http://savorysites.com/Small%20groups%20article.pdf

An excerpt:

In the whole of American history, from the colonial era to the present day, there have been a total of less than one million Quakers. Today, in a population of approximately 300 million, about 250,000 of us are Quakers. It is such a small faith that most people have never met a Quaker and never will, and few know anything about what they believe.

And yet . . .

If one works back to the headwaters of every one of the major positive social currents I have listed (and many more besides), one finds a small group of Quakers. How could this be, I thought? How could this tiny group of people create movements that ultimately involved millions, and because enough people personally changed, made the change the new society norm? Studying the histories, eight laws—I hesitate to call them laws, but because they are constants in each case, I think they have earned the term— began to emerge. They were not at all what I had anticipated. Taken together, they constitute a proven Strategy of Beingness:

● law number one—the individuals, individually,

and the group, collectively,

must share a common intention

● law number 2—the individuals and the

group may have goals, but they may not

have cherished outcomes

● law number 3—the individuals in the

group must accept that their goal may

not be reached in their lifetimes, and be

OK with that

● law number 4—the individuals in the

group must accept that they may not get

either credit or acknowledgment for

what they have done, and be authentically

OK about this

● law number 5— each person in the

group, regardless of gender, religion,

race, or culture, must enjoy fundamental

equality, even as the various roles in

the hierarchy of the effort are respected

● law number 6—the individuals in the

group must foreswear violence in word,

act . . . or thought

● law number 7—the individuals in the

group must make their private selves

consistent with their public postures

● law number 8—the individuals in the

group, and the group collectively, must

always act from the beingness of life affirming

integrity

Comments

[Your Name, date]

[your comment]

[Your Name, date]

[your comment]

Eight (Quaker-based) Laws that Comprise a "Proven Strategy of Beingness"
Back to "DandDTrans" Open Space-- A Supersaturated Theory of Change: It's well beyond a theory, it's whats going on
The Beingness Doctrine
Comments
[Your Name, date]
[Your Name, date]

​​

​​Comments

Comments