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This paper is an Extract of:
Dialogues and Conversations
Participation and
Moderation/Mediation: Ways and Means towards Re-inventing Democracy and
Good-Governance
Heiner Benking,
Independent Scholar, Berlin
(PLEASE NOTE: Below you find the
full list of content. But only an extract which is omitting some figures,
links, references could be made available at this time for the First Virtual
Conference on World Citizensship and Democratic Global Governance. You will
findmore by following this link some time soon: http://benking.de/dialog/dialogues-conversations2006 ).
The
Focus and Width/Depth of this paper.................................................................................... 2
Foreword........................................................................................................................................................... 4
Dialog (IESC 0911)............................................................................................................................................ 5
Democracy / Demosophia (IESC 0849).................................................................................................. 5
Governance....................................................................................................................................................... 5
Combining dialog and decision and policy making.............................................................. 6
Generative Dialogue................................................................................................................................... 7
How to
take a first step towards a generative dialog?.......................................................................... 7
The Bohm
Dialogues and the “School of Ignorance?”.......................................................................... 7
Magic
Round-Tables / Open-Forum and time-credits............................................................................ 7
Open Space
Technologies ™, Open Space Online ™, and other methodology collections
for open processes or scenario development........................................ 8
Open
Space..................................................................................................................................................... 8
Open Space Technologies TM................................................................................................................... 9
The
dangers of Groupthink and Spreadthink.......................................................................................... 9
Design Conversations - Structured and
Disciplined Dialogues............................... 10
NEW AGORAS, The Dialog Game, Boundary Spanning
Dialog, and the SDP Webscope.......................................................................................................................................................... 10
The Need
for a Structured Design Process (SDP)................................................................................. 11
Boundary
– Spanning Dialogue for the 21st Century Agoras (AXIOMS)......................................... 12
Evaluation of the six principles of the BDA for
Managing Complexity............. 12
The
Asilomar and Fuschl Conversations and other events search for new forms of
Dialogue and Co-existence................................................................................................................................................. 13
The quest
to get hold of the Problem space or the Problematique.................................................... 13
Why attend – why avoid?...................................................................................................................... 14
The „SCHOOL OF
IGNORANCE?“ and The FUSCHL “Conversations”................................ 15
Why
attend?.................................................................................................................................................. 15
Why avoid
attending?................................................................................................................................ 16
A
Dialogue Game and The Tree of Meaning........................................................................................ 16
The
Dialogue Inquiry of the “Lovers of Democracy”........................................................................... 17
New Agora
and Asilomar and Fuschl Conversations.......................................................................... 17
Some more personal experiences and realizations......................................................... 18
Design Conversations and Situation Rooms.......................................................................... 18
Poetry Making and Policy Making - Arranging the
Marriage of the Beauty and the Beast........................................................................................................................................................... 18
Panetics
(Ralph G. H. Siu) and Transcend
(Johan Galtung ).......................................... 18
Summary............................................................................................................................................................ 18
Literature........................................................................................................................................................ 19
The
Focus and Width/Depth of this paper
what we are trying to tackle here is how to follow our “whim” or “gut”
or “belly” and “grope” and “grok” and at the same time ponder about making complex societal multi scale dynamic
questions and phenomena concrete[1] Namely
What is involved when we take into view at once commons
and cultures, different identities, ways of learning and assumptions,
understanding different scales and the where,
what and how, or the "Zusammenhang"
which makes "Zusammenhalt".- After writing I just realised how
difficult it is translate these two words – but as they condense somehow the
essence I want to say here I will try with the help of my dictionary: Without “Zusammenhang”: coherence, coherency, cohesion, combination, connection, connexion,
connectivity, context, contiguity, correlation, interrelation,
interrelationship … no: “Zusammenhalt”: coherence, cohesion,
strong company, … see the ORIGINAL “way inside and out”: from 1999[2]
as these terms are as all too often circular, and worse sometimes the German
means the opposite of the English term
like with Culture and Civilizations, as the translators of Samuel Huntington’s
“CLASH OF CIIVILISATIONS” had to learn the hard way[3].
So we are dealing here with concepts and contexts and how they come to
action and reflection. MAYBE see work in the field of terminology research,
which urges us to include the context[4].
I will not try to deal here with words like Gestalt, Kindergarten, and
Weltanschauung – but as I have no words in English I have to ask you to look
for the meaning “in-betweenen”[5].
We are dealing here in this article about “participation” and
“caring/sharing” in the broadest sense of the word - not just about communication in a verbal sense, but also about
generative and intuitive "phantasy” communication phase.See FUTURE LAB
Zukunftswerkstaetten (Robert Jungk[6])
see later GENERATIVE DIALOG but also about the pragmatic realisation phase (STRUCTURED, DISCIPLINED, STRATEGIC DIALOG
(see again Robert Jungk and his FUTURE LAB participatory design, what is later
called in the USA around the ISI called design conversations[7].
Maybe consider it overview and detail, panning and zooming, analysis and
synthesis, generative and strategic. All such dichotomies do not match but
provide an idea of the In-between, leaving the box, of pragmatic
but un-orthodox thinking and acting.
This
posting from a list of activists for democratic schools might help us clarify
the issue or how wide the topic is:
[AEROlistserve] Definition of
“democratic”
Arnold Greenberg <grnbrg@downeast.net> wrote Wed, 14. Jun 2006:
Folks: For me democratic education
is much more than equal voting for students and teachers, it's having the
students be in charge of their education. At Liberty School we want students to
have real ownership of their minds and spirits and at the same time share equal
responsibility for our learning community. We take each of the words--"democratic
learning community" seriously and discuss--what does it mean to be
democratic, What do we mean being committed to being learners and what does it
mean to be a community?
IN THIS PAPER we have to keep in mind that there are not just participants of one
school or class, but people on Earth from many different cultures, scales and
strands of life, we have to keep in mind to ask the same questions and include
and not exclude and find ways to co-creatively co-exist and co-invent and
jointly tackle issues with an extra view on the “others”.
IN THIS PAPER we use terms in an embodied form, so not just labeling but using
tangible conceptual models to make issues, relations, contexts and situation
more easy to explore and negotiate. For this we also need to create Spaces,
Physical and Ideal Spaces connected in time so we can concretely follow
relations, views and arguments. Please see the texts on concept mapping above
the citations below about space and time in science and in participation where
we operate with metaphors, analogies, to models to share and negotiate not to
dematerialize and disembody, as we find it with some “postmodern” thinkers,
but to show in extra spaces and between
times and spaces what connects and can help us share broader commons and
explore and grope the broader not just material “given” by not denying the
material fundament but building on it new shared constructions and communities.[8]
|
Knowledge in
Time and Space The ultimate
aim of science is to obtain knowledge, description, and explanation of the
whole, in all the complex interrelations, in all the differences from time to
time and place to place. Hartshorne |
Scale is more than size; it is size with proportions
and consequences. When proportions are no longer in harmony, or consequences are unanticipated, we have problems
of scale. J. A. Buzacott |
|
The Circle is the fundamental geometry of open human communication.
Who ever heard of a Square of friends? Harrison Owen |
Words yes words make them solid so you can pick them up and throw them that is the problem: how to make the intangible real
T.S. Eliot |
Please note that the meaning and use of terms and concepts is very central to the topic of our paper but has to wait for a more comprehensive publication which should bridge not just terms and concepts, but also models and sign systems[9]. Christakis realized that he has to check the terminologies and value-base before concerted action can “emerge”. And these terms are not ”out in the blue” but have a referent and are situational. And it must be possible to also point at, inspect and negotiate such “non-tangible” concepts and situations as they are specific and civilizational. The author in his projects around terminology research and mediation came to the conclusion that a very basic and fatal mis-conception of the concepts space, place, void, exist specially in the modern western civilisation. We have a problem with void and emptiness of space and neglect/avoid fullness of space. This has to do with a tragic translation error from the [10]and our modern use of abstract terms as disembodied “labels”. Pörksen speaks about Plastic-Words[11] which are progressively misused in politics and media to hide instead of putting issues onto the table or into the public (space)..
Please note that for
readability reasons we can not provide all the helpful references and
literature. We have therefore created a [mirror]
of this page where you find more links and further material.
Foreword
Dialog, Democracy, and (good) Governance are very fashionable concepts,
these days. They all revolve around communication and the commons in order to
leave the individual or ego-perspective behind and search for co-existence
instead: ways and means for conviviality even when we can not agree and there
is no one-and-only single solution but a bigger "Unity" in a broad
range of Diversity[12].
This paper aims to show that "good" means to foster these
goals towards positive ends and inclusion versus exclusion, by bridging the
concepts and finding ways to look
deeper and celebrate the difference and diversity as one basic way of nature’s
resilience - not through survival of
the fittest, but the celebration of communion of subjects in contrast to the
collection of objects and knowledge (free after Thomas Berry).
In order to explore, combine and share elements needed for positive
futures and co-existence this paper will see how we can bridge and combine
workable concepts of Dialog, Democracy and Governance towards making the idea
of democracy more appealing and tangible by involving the people and making the
issues more real.
The author feels that the term “participation” is too fuzzy, as it is
not enough to “be a part”, but to “contribute and focus on the bigger picture
and the commons in order to celebrate the differences”, - and at the same time
“consider the scales, proportions and consequences of individual acts onto the
greater whole or bigger picture”.
Instead of incessantly trying to define terms like “Democracy” or
“Dialog”, the author will shortly present these terms as we can find them in
the International Encyclopedia of
Systems and Cybernetics (IESC)[13]
to set the stage. Afterwards, he
will exclusively focus on a limited set of "ingredients!" which he
feels need further study and development. This approach does not claim or try
to be complete and cover each and every domain. Elements or Concepts indicated
below are only considered "spices" worth to be explored and applied
wisely, as they seem to be not commonly known or applied nowadays!
Dialog
(IESC 0911)
Bela Banathy (as well as other authors) has explored systemic ways to use dialog, specially in co-participative design processes. He distinguishes between Generative and Strategic Dialogue.
Dialogue (Generative) is a "mode of social
discourse.... applied to generate a common frame
of thinking, shared meaning and a
collective world-view in a group".
In generative dialog people may prefer a certain
position, but they are willing to suspend it. They are willing to listen to
others to understand the meaning of their position. They are able to face
disagreement without confrontation and are willing to explore points of view
that they do not subscribe to personally...
"Generative dialog is not a tool for addressing
specific task-focussed issues".
"Generative
dialogue becomes the core process of transforming the group into a "community".
Dialog
(Strategic) "focuses on specific issues and tasks in organizational and
social systems settings". Banathy advocates "Generative dialogue and
Strategic dialogue as a combined methodology for Design conversation".
I have collected a lot of other
“unique” definitions and explanations but may this collection is good to get
going on the matter towards reaching mount awareness and becoming more
relevant: DEMOCRACY[14].
Democracy
/ Demosophia (IESC 0849)
"The Wisdom of the People" A. Christakis
writes: "The name implies a paradigm
shift from "the power of the people" which is the Greek meaning of
the word democracy, to the "wisdom of the people". The underlying
premise of the new paradigm is that discovering the wisdom of the people is
necessary if the people are expected to exercise their power. However. because
of the escalating complexity of the
contemporary societal situation, it
is much more difficult today to uncover the wisdom of the people...
Old Greek experiences and present ones (for example in
Switzerland the municipal participative debates open to all citizens) show that
the "wisdom of the people" can be uncovered ...
Moreover the present complexity of human affairs at
any level adds the need for
sufficient information and
evaluating learning for all stakeholders.
Governance
The entries on Governance (IESC
1451), World Governance (IESC 3787), Governability (IESC 1450) are worth
reading, but we have to postpone this until we have explored what is needed for
authentic participation and valuing authenticity, diversity and integrity of
the participants / stakeholders.
But let us briefly state that Governance means “influencing the
macro-setting and border conditions by
inducing micro-effects” - so people can orient and challenge alternative
courses of action. Governance has to be seen in the context of and
responsibility “for the benefit of a greater whole[15]”,
and should synoptically include research into dilemmas in decision making.
Governance should be exercised as an inclusive way to involve and let
participate, invite the above elements of dialog and democracy to help jointly
manage a country or the worlds with the people and for the people. It should be
a delegation of responsibilities for a clearly defined time and with the
obligation of transparent reporting of the alternatives and decisions taken and
involving stakeholders as much as possible during the whole process. Please
visit the “Club of Rome Report : “The Capacity to Govern” and in particular the
last of six points to remember towards pragmatic forms of governance, always
keeping in mind the actual situations in a variety of countries and how to come
to global policy colleges[16].
Towards the focus of this paper we would like to repeat the last two of
the six points summarizing the Club of Rome report THE CAPACITY TO GOVERN first
public introduction in 1995 in Berlin: Which are: “Check the frames of
references and terminologies used”, and “Explore chains of vicious problems
circles, checks and balances” (more and links in this footnote[17]).
Governance and the art of steering societies has to be seen as a
participatory effort where all have to contribute and make sure that the
values, visions and directions are known, if not shared! So the question is not
to steer, lead or guide, but to do it transparently and invite participation
and reviews.
Since Karl Deutsch and the “Nerves of Government” we know that with the
modern media we have other ways and means to manage and govern but also that
the moderns "nerves" are sensitive to external manipulation. The need
and the possibility to make issues in their context real and concrete, see
shared situation rooms[18]
and discuss and compare positions, perspectives levels, proportions and
consequences is obvious, but let us first focus on some requisites, like how do
we come together and share, how do we include minorities, and how to we tackle
complex issues without closing our eyes, numbing our feelings in our
post-modern perplexity.
Combining
dialog and decision and policy making
Experience shows that the issues are not brought forward to the table or
onto the floor where people meet in a concise and easily digestable format.
Issues are intertwined, and complex, multi-level and inter-sectoral and so they
often get only inspected from a distance or will be ignored as one of the
tactics of avoidance or to hide hidden agendas..
It is not only that people can not listen, or people try to dominate
"their" groups in order to support their interests, but also that
stakeholders do not have or get the voice to speak up and are not encouraged to
explore issues. We are trained to label and categorize issues and all-to-often
use the most convenient grid or mould. We divide and categorise the living
world into an over-simplified raster of
either -or, plus or minus, black or white, east or west,...
But how can we leave and think "out of the box", do
"paradigm mapping" and see issues from different perspectives[19]?
Generative
Dialogue
How to take a first step towards a generative dialog?
First of all, we must be willing to listen and suspend, we must be
willing to re-consider and re-evaluate. Of course, this is something that can
be best done without a fixed agenda that pressures us to achieve a certain
goal, to deliver a specific idea or solution.
We have to skip here the theory and application of Dialogue Processes,
and refer to the names and works of Bohm, Sri Aurobindo, Buber, Gutierrez,
Jungk, Christakis, Judge, Habermas, Manitonquat, Banathy, Meyersen , Owen, ...
(see mindmap of more recent and relevant dialog and conversation thinkers and
movers) and come to the central issues of openness and flow[20],
how we can help facilitate an open process which allows us to listen and
relearn, leave the personal perspective to allow something new, to allow
surprise(!) to happen, and to empower people to speak up and include all
participants and stakeholders, whether
they be the young "not daring" new generation or in contrast the
talkers and lobbyist who think they have to sell or be on missions.
The difference lies in the layout of a gathering, meeting, hearing or
symposia.
"Open" like Open-Space is the fashionable method which is used
to allow participants to speak up and contribute little without social or
cultural restrictions. It is not "free" or "open" as
participants have to agree on topics, times, spaces they want to offer or
attend. Every game’s procedure has rules, just like you may break the rules and
leave, - but only trough "sidelines" it becomes possible to bridge or
jump over "fences" and thus allow ideas or new approaches to emerge,
allow surprises to happen, and – also – allow action groups to form and address
and achieve desired objectives.
The Bohm Dialogues and the “School of Ignorance?”
Ljubljana Bohm Dialogues http://benking.de/dialog/LJUBLJANA-DIALOGUES.html
School of Ignorance?
www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs/ignorant.php
more to come... as we finally see the merits of these dialog
experiments and initiatives and how they could come together one day – maybe
for a 3-day „concert“ and later allow us to play another tune. More on
metaphors can be found here[21].
Magic Round-Tables / Open-Forum and
time-credits
But what if people have to first
learn and dare to speak up? What if still some talkers dominate and try to sell
their view or solution? How can we include all stakeholders and empower them to
see the "we" and learn to live without the urge to agree and accept?
Please read these articles[22]
on Open Space, Open-Forum, Magic Roundtable, and other methods for Generative
Dialog, as our synopsis has to include Strategic Dialog and
Democracy-Making".
Here we might only need to add that
time credit-tokens are a different form of voting and bartering as units or
voices are given as presents to empower and give voice in an open, transparent,
dynamic, embodied format of a culture of sharing, co-creation[23],
and empowerment of others.
Open Space Technologies ™, Open Space Online ™, and other methodology collections for open processes or scenario development.
Open Space
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Pleases see above a collection of Open-Space
posters and the OPEN FORUM -
OPEN SPACE as I see the reinventing Democracy series of events: http://open-forum.de/open-space-open-forum.html
as an example of what I called a method chain or a mix of methods adapting to
the “situation” and the requirements, backgrounds, and expectations. The slides
and impression give an idea of open format events. Credits for figures go to
OPEN-SPACE Technology TM and are from Harrison Owen with kind
permission.
Please see also this ICSU CODATA paper on organizing mixed format events
and some posters prepared by the author for OPEN FORMAT events and gatherings: http://open-forum.de/ISGI_open-format.htm
*
Open
Space Technologies TM
The whole issue of open transparent participatory methods is covered
elsewhere in the articles mentioned above. I recommend beside the Wikipedia
link above, this openspace world site and WIKI, and an
Interview of Harrison Owen[24] about the essence, learnings and systemic
aspects. Important for our topic here is the possibility to use Open Space
Technology also for distance or on-line group exercises Open-Space Online[25].
Such methods should be further developed made more “open” and to include
not just voting, but also weighting and empowering elements – a broad topic –
we discussed it under “Liqiuid or Fluid Democracy” at a meeting around the
World Democracy Movement some time ago – but the issue is not to have “polls”
only but to come to shared terminologies and value bases before, or as part of
the process. Such as Web-Scope. See the work of Warfield and Christakis as
covered below and in the “essential
steps”.
As Open-Space is already widely used so I want to the coverage here to
be short in order to allow more space on potentially interesting future
developments and methodologies. See also the Millennium Projects[26]
toolbox which also includes Syncons, Charette, Fishbowl, Future Wheels and
Future Conferences,… … and many more old and new valuable elements and
learnings in the field of large and distributed group exercises.
The dangers of Groupthink and Spreadthink
It is often not enough to listen and empower, to follow your feelings,
because this can make you a candidate
for manipulation, for media and demagogic ways to influence your assumptions,
positions and feelings. All too often it is very tempting to look for the easy
way out, the most appealing and simple solution, the "yes or no"
solution without space for any other views or a break. Call it overclaims and
oversimplifications[27]
or Group-think or Clan- and Spread- Think[28].
Design
Conversations - Structured and Disciplined Dialogues
NEW AGORAS, The Dialog Game, Boundary Spanning Dialog, and the SDP Webscope
Rather than summarizing the work
on Structured and Disciplined Dialogues by Ozbekhan and Christakis, later also Warfied
and the new book "HOW PEOPLE HARNESS THIER COLLECTIVE WISDOM AND POWER TO
CONSTRUCT THE FUTURE IN CO-LABORATORIES OF DEMOCRACY"[29]
we want to just point out that this is what the Robet Jungk Zukunftswerklstatt
(Future Lab) is about. Jungk just called it
Phantasy Phase and Realization
Phase. [more] and proceed by providing some orientation and lists of issues
or content.
The author will not rewrite and re-invent or try to
make another such a summary but presents instead with the permission of the
author Enrique G. Herrschers his lists from his Forword to the book “… Harness the Collective Wisdom … ” as
mentioned above. There Herrscher sets out to list the 10 major contributions or
assumptions of the science presented here, as they present the building blocks
of the proposed methodology – without ever forgetting that we are dealing here
not just with “building blocks” but and architectual design in contrast to engineering
blueprints[30]:
·
That the self-organizing model is spreading in all
kinds of organizations in the post-industrial world.
·
That in a world where influence increasingly
replaces control, dialogue and teamwork will be more and more the preferred
methods .
·
That commitment, shared responsibility and real
change can only be achieved by democratic participation .
·
That mutual purpose and a collective leadership
are necessary to link the group's work with the organization and its extenal
environment.
·
That practices based on the hierarchical model
have only limited effectiveness because they generate negative feedback.
·
That without a proper process, individuals do not
learn from each other (they often use the debate to persuade others, stick to a
zero sum mode or simply voice their beliefs) .
·
That while the generation of ideas is
comparatively easy, relating them to each other is complex.
·
That stakeholders possess the requisite knowledge
for defining and resolving systemic problems . That stakeholders are however
generally programmed to see situations in terms of the mechanistic paradigm.
·
That computers lessen the cognitive demands on
designing participants, and therefore are an essential aid for easing
consensus.
Enrique Herrscher summarizes not
just the proposed action plan but puts him into perspective in the following
„bullets“:
·
To achieve,
through a preliminary "White Paper," a common understanding of the
problem situation.
·
To generate,
by disciplined discussion, a common language.
·
To open the
door, thanks to such common ground, to true teamwork.
·
To bring
together key stakeholders who identify barriers, provide a hierarchy of issues
and develop a plan of action.
·
To give a
voice to those ,who are rarely heard, by "patient honoring of stakeholder
autonomy".
·
To empower
"those who do the job".
·
To equalize
power relations among the stakeholders.
·
To integrate,
through interaction, diverse viewpoints.
·
To elicit
ideas and points of view from all stakeholders.
·
To have
stakeholders "to think clearly and outside their preconceived mental
boxes".
·
To avoid
"premature closing", jumping too early at conclusions.
·
To severely
restrict "power-grabbing activities" by stakeholders trying to
monopolize attention by exercising the role of experts .
·
To view
problems/solutions without a winner - loser perspective.
·
To heighten
the "appreciation for the scope of responsibilities that each person
has".
·
To establish
"salient priorities for design".
·
To uncover
unexpected solutions.
·
To lessen, by
use of interactive software, the cognitive demands on designing stakeholders.
·
To reverse, by
participation and dialogue, "the dismal trends of decline and discontent
prevalent in most societies and organizations today".
·
To create
"an atmosphere of serenity, equity, authenticity and empathy".
·
To "learn
to have fun together as a community".
Herrscher continues by stating:
„The reader will find (and enjoy) the practical ways to achieve these goals
though the diverse examples furnished in the book he wrote the Foreword for. We
have to skip this „joy“ for the moment and try to stay on the synthesis and
pragmatic level. He can do so thanks to
his experience, knowing best not only the Latin American Case which was
documented also in the "Harnessing" Book and is documented in the
ISSS 2004 from Crete[31].
·
The self
organizing model is still a minority
·
Hierarchy and
priviledges are prevalent
·
There is
little disposition to learn from each other
·
Then
suspicious about management really want it typical both at the corporate and
public level
·
Valuable
proposals often trigger concerted opposition from entrenched power structures.
The Need for a Structured Design Process (SDP)
But how to structure when everybody
things he is right, „sells his skin on the market“, when the issues are deeper
than we think and the world is not flat, but deep[32]
and few scouts, pilots, or (in German Lotsen) are not trained in our societies,
when their training should be a common practice of not just being in the
crows-nest, but responsible for captain and ship. See more about Global Learn
Day and LEARNING in this Congress and elsewhere by Eric Scheider http://pnyv.org/idec2006/ or when we are confronted with more and
more loss of fidelity and truthing with the advent of the misuse of modern
media and visual data processing?
Here a short synopsis of the
systemic AXIOMS and LAW which were discovered „on the way&fly“ during the
lasty 35 years and more[33]
and in the Agoras for the 21st Century community:
Boundary – Spanning Dialogue for the 21st Century Agoras (AXIOMS)
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Axiom 1:
Complex
Situations are multidimensional. They require that observational variety should
be respected in the dialogue amoung the observers, in an effort to strive for
completeness. Completeness however, is an objective not easily attainable by
mortals through dialogue.
Axiom 2:
Observers are
subjected to cognitive limitations during dialogue. Violation of these
limitations leads to underconceptualization of the multidimensional complex
situation, which results in lower productivity and inferior design.
Axiom 3:
Relative
saliency, or importance of one observation relative to others, can only be
understood and brought into play as a useful concept when observers are dealing
with sets of observations.
Evaluation
of the six principles of the BDA for Managing Complexity
see also 100 years Bertalanffy symposium and
Wittgenstein and Cybernetics
(ACS) , both in Vienna
and the IFSR Encyclopedia
Ashbey‘s Law of Requisite Variety
Appreciation of the diversity of the perspectives
of observers is essential in managing complex situations.
Miller‘ Law of Requisite Parsimony
Structured dialogue is required to avoid the
cognitive overload of observers.
Bouldings‘s Law of Requisite Saliency
The relative importance of observations can only
be understood through comparisons within a set.
Peirce‘s Law of Requisite Meaning
Meaning and Wisdom are produced in a dialogue only
when the observers search for relationships of similarity, priority, influence,
etc. within a set of observations.
Tsivacou‘s Law of Requisite Autonomy in Distinctions
Making
During Dialogue it is necessary to protect the
autonomy and authenticity of each observer in drawing distinctions.
Dye‘s Law of Requisite Evolution of Observation
Learning occurs in a dialogue as the observers
search for relationships among the members of a set of observations.
The idea here is to show that the work started with the immensely
complex in rapidly changing worlds or environments which did cross allthought
about the references boundaries: Please see work of Jantsch, Ozbekhan,
Christakis,… (and many unmentioned others) which is very deep, authentic, and
scientific, but also open and participatory in all aspects of futures studies
and global forecasts.
The Asilomar and Fuschl Conversations and other events search for new forms of Dialogue and Co-existence
But as we need to make sure to not
loose anyone in a lot of theory and axioms, here a few slides from the NEW
AGORA synthesis presentation of the FUSCHL 2004 Conversations: (they are all
for better readability available on-line and “down-loadable”[34].
The quest to get hold of the Problem space or the Problematique.
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Add here
Cognitive Panorama [35]Slides
and see IDEC conferences with focus on learning and tangible “newterms”. |
Why
attend – why avoid?
This are two slides which are based
on the of Anthony J.N. Judge to not only find out who re the stakeholder, but
help them to find out if they should join asuch experimental gatherings which
were closely with the Bohm people developed and started about the same time as
the Fuschl and Asilomar Conversations[36].
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You can not read the text ? see here: about cultural transmission, memes, multi-media, and Signs
and SuperSigns: |
First: You are not alone ! - this is normal / some people even
communicate in images or with emotions…(and that is even harder to read - See Literacy). Secondly: Do not worry
/ it is with all views from a distance, you can first the views of the woods,
later maybe the view of the trees, the grass, or the cells..l See MACROSCOPE ! Thirdly:The FULL
version and publication will include all Powerpoints since 1992 and many
links and Literature. INSERT MEDICI
Macro-scope |
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Slides from the NEW AGORA Fuschl 2004 conversations which will be
presented below: Summaries of the presentations are covered in the IFSR
Fuschl proceedings - the slides of the authors presentation are available
here. More sources in the footnote below. |
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Slides from the NEW AGORA Fuschl
2004 conversations which will be presented below: Summaries of the
presentations are covered in the IFSR
Fuschl Conversations proceedings - the slides of the authors
presentation are available here, earlier ASILOMAR
CONVERSATION and DAVID BOHM DIALOGUES events might be of interest.
We have used the lists above for the
preparations of the “SCHOOL OF IGNORANCE ?” gatherings and have recently
introduced them to the New Agora Fuschl Conservations 2004. As they are
universally applicable to find the stakeholders and let them themselves get
involved and passionate active, instead of assembling observers who, as we
experienced with the Polish and German RUNDE TISCHE “Round Tables”, often are
hidden lobbyist who try to control block the group from reaching results and
coming to joint action.
Experience with the German Planungszelle
and Consultative
and its broader & deeper pragmatic concepts and
other methods and tools which have been collected here (1993) and might be still of some interest for
complex and multilingual Settings (see e.g. OPUS). See Footnote: Robert Jungk
80th birthday below and here.
The „SCHOOL OF IGNORANCE?“ and The FUSCHL
“Conversations”
Before we go into ways and means to
cultivate participation we need to check who are the stakeholders and how we
can clarify and motivate people to decide about their feeling part and
concerned – and personally motivated to attend – or not.
Why attend?
* If you feel an often desperate
sense of urgency in endeavouring to discover new frameworks of response to the
many tragic world issues
* If you believe that meetings
can be a useful learning laboratory in which risks need to be taken if they are
to produce anything of wider relevance to social transformation
* If you are interested in the
exploration of co-created meetings
* If you are weary of
conventional pre-structured events and presentations and the low level of
expectations that they encourage
* If you want to test your
ability to respond spontaneously to new meeting possibilities
* If you recognize the need to
hold dilemmas and paradoxes without resolving or by-passing them
* If you question the wider
social impact of the resolutions, declarations, pledges and plans that are
laboriously negotiated as the main product of conventional international
gatherings
* If you are intrigued by the
possibilities of collective self-transcendence
* If you are prepared to accept
that all participants, including yourself, are as much a part of the problem as
a key contributor to the solution
* If you believe that you are
prepared to question your most fundamental assumptions
* If you believe that you learn
and grow through being challenged by radically different views
* If you consider that much of
value remains to be discovered from larger group experiments in
self-organization
* If you are weary of
intellectual frameworks and fashionable models and are intrigued by the
possibility that new metaphors are required to navigate the strategic
challenges of the future
* If you are intrigued by
possible breakthroughs from collective concentration of attention in the moment
* If you believe that
participants should be collectively responsible for the fruitfulness of an
evolving meeting process
* If you enjoy surprises and the
unexpected
Why avoid attending?
* If you feel that the
prevailing style of meeting is adequate to the challenges of the times
* If you consider a pre-defined
agenda essential to any meeting
* If you consider a well-defined
purpose essential for any effective gathering
* If you believe that clearly
defined leaders and presenters are essential to successful meetings
* If you are sceptical of the
possibility of relying on the skills of other mature meeting participants to
take responsibility for correcting any unproductive imbalance in the meeting
process
* If you prefer well-defined and
appropriately facilitated meeting processes
* If your principal need is to
present your own project or to convince others of the overriding merits of your
perspective, paradigm or process
* If you need an audience for
your views and are impatient with time spent on integrating the views of others
* If you are convinced that the
remedy for present challenges lies in responding concretely in a specific area
such as: employment, pollution, alienation, conflict, discrimination
* If you are convinced that a
particular belief system, or set of values, holds the key to a more appropriate
response to the dilemmas of the times
* If you are especially status
conscious and have difficulty in recognizing the contributions of others with
different qualifications or cultural backgrounds
* If you are unwilling to restrain
yourself from presenting proven insights and skills that seem a vital
contribution to the evolution of the meeting process
* If you are unwilling to be
constrained by the reluctance of others to accept any imposition of your
insights or processes (that they may perceive as a subtle play for power by
you)
* If you expect the meeting to
produce a well-defined product
* If you consider that the
tension between polarities can, and should, be resolved or avoided
* If you consider
acknowledgement of individual or collective "shadows" to be
unfruitful
* If you believe that deeply
felt differences should be de- emphasized in favour of whatever participants
hold in common
* If you are not prepared to
waste time on experiments that may fail
* If you regularly indulge in
group process experiments as a pleasurable hobby
A Dialogue Game and The Tree of Meaning
For the Dialaog Game as a way to establish, negotiate and share differences, meaning, values, ... see this
handbook[37] (PDF). Below the Principles of Dialogue were
established in A Tree of Meaning with
the help of an exercise called the
Dialogue Game.
In the reader A Technique of
Democracy, six principles of dialogue are applied utilizing systems
methodologies derived from the research of various scholars and practitioners.
These principles were articulated by Dr. Alexander N. Christakis in A Tree of Meaning produced with his Dialogue Game. These principles aid in
resolving the constraints and difficulties described as Spreadthink, while also
promoting the pursuit of meaning and wisdom in dialogue. The six principles of
dialogue include the following:
·
Appreciation
of the diversity of perspectives of observers is essential to embrace the many
dimensions of a complex situation.
·
Disciplined
dialogue is required so that observers are not subjected to information
overloaded.
·
The relative
importance of an observer's ideas can be understood only when they are compared
with others in the group.
·
Meaning and
wisdom of an observer's ideas are produced in a dialogue only when they begin
to understand the relationships such as similarity, priority, influence, etc.,
of different people's ideas.
·
Every person
matters, so it is necessary to protect the autonomy and authenticity of each
observer in drawing distinctions.
- Evolutionary learning occurs in a
dialogue as the observers learn how their ideas relate to one another.
For more see the book and works of Warfield and Christakis.
BUT NOW LET US RETURN NOW TO CORE OF
THE MATTER: Sharing words and values and coming co-creatively to insights and
actions:
The Dialogue Inquiry of the “Lovers of Democracy”
So how
did this work on deep, structural, and disciplined Dialog come about? and What
can we do when the issues or problems are too complex and multi-faceted, when
very large groups are involved, with many people and when they not only use
different national languages but also communicate with a terminology specific
to their field or culture, when they use the same words but mean different
things? (this a very dangerous hidden cause of many disputes as people think
they know and are right, when they maybe are not !! - but start fighting over right or wrong instead of stepping out of
this vicious circle).
So how can we strategically tackle and clarify the issues in a
structured and repeatable form? Some researchers like Erich Jantsch, Hassan
Ozbekhan, Alexander Christakis, later John Warfield (see: IESC), have worked
already in the late 60ies to address global, highly complex issues of immense
problems, and called it for the Club of Rome the "Global Problematique[38].
For them it was very obvious and clear that not "expertocraties" but
the people have to address and settle the issues, have to be empowered to
structure and differentiate, compare, evaluate, dismiss relative assumptions
and statements by putting them into perspective and evaluate alternatives and
explore differences ! - give voice to the minority view and statement ! Their
work led to shared vocabularies and value bases because often people share the
same opinions but disagree because the meaning, perspectives, proportions, and
consequences are not shared and “people think they know and can decide when -
truly - they should or can not.
In order to successfully address cognitive burdens, complexities and
opaqueness of situations or terminologies, the authors listed above have worked
on methods to tackle issues in an elaborate clarification, comparison and
voting evaluation process; see CogniScope, Dialog Game and a recent book by
Alexander Christakis and Ken Bausch “How People Harness their collective Wisdom
and Power to Construct The Future in Co-Laboratories of Democracy”[39].
It is important that we cover ways and
means of Strategic Dialog in contrast to conventional "democratic"
voting or "modern" electronic
voting methods - which avoid addressing the complex issues and situations.
Please study the 6 systemic laws identified by above authors which help
to structure the process and inquiry by following these steps: 1. Disciplined Dialog, 2. Autonomy in
Distinction Making, 3. Evolutionary Learning of Observations, 4. Appreciation
of Diversity, 5. Understanding Relative Saliency, 6. Meaning and Wisdom. (see
Tree of Meaning)
New Agora and Asilomar and Fuschl Conversations
At this point we can only refer to
the a good introduction in the WORLD FUTURES Journal editions on NEW AGORAS
for the the 21st Century (Editor Ken Bausch); more at: http://www.globalagoras.org/,
the International Journal of Evidence
Based Coaching and Mentoring, Vol. 2, No. 1, Spring 2004 Page 68, Leadership Coaching as Design
Conversation, by Sherryl Stalinski, and Dialog Game and the recent book
"How People Harness..." all to be found at the site of LOVERS OF
DEMOCRACY
A Networked Community Development Enterprise - (Facilitated with SDP & WebScope
Interactively, see: http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/loversofdemocracy/
To get started and to get a good
overview pls. see the DEFINITIONS OF DEMOCRACY[40]
and the SELECTED WESITES ON DIALOG collected by
Anthony Judge, UIA, Brussels.
Some
more personal experiences and realizations
Only to give you here another idea that voting is not a tool to find out
who has the majority and so is winning and can "rule", but to find
out differences and where minority views are. And not to have the majority
"win" over the "others" but to “Question the Why” in
specific situations. By participating in such Dialog Exercises in Crete some
years ago I was surprised how especially traditional people (in this case Maori
and American Indian elders or chiefs used voting or "seeing
differences" to check the variety and validity of views. In one case for
example, only one person had an opinion that differed form all the others.
Focusing on this minority vote and giving it time to speak and explain
experiences and the specific situation resulted in all the others changing
their mind and voting for the earlier “minority opinion”.
We do so
also with the time-credit method in whatever settings. See re-inventing democracy
and Multi-Lingual Issues and Learnings ... for example in Barcelona in the
early 80ies. Collection of Participatory Methods for Robert Junks 80th birthday
celebrations “ENDE UND ANFANG – End and Beginning”, Graz 1993.
See also Future Labs – Zukunftswerkstaetten (Robert Jungk with Rüdiger
Lutz)[41]
Design
Conversations and Situation Rooms
see links and more a.s.a.p.
Poetry
Making and Policy Making - Arranging the Marriage of the Beauty and the Beast[42]
some more on going beyond the need
to agree and different fomat and modes to live with complexity and opposites
will be added heren a.s.a.p.
Panetics (Ralph G. H. Siu) and Transcend
(Johan Galtung )
See the Johan Galtung at the memorial lecture by Johan Galtung for Ralph.G.
H. Siu, founder of Panetics, an „art of governance – are science to study the
infliction of suffering and help decisionmakers find alternatives keeping
different time-scales and „qualities“ or „depth“ of suffering in consideration
by comparing alternatives and weighting different approaches in mind. More
about Panetics can be found here or
on Siu and the TAO of SCIENCE in a session we did on Applying
Panetics.
The word or the language, written or
spoken,
do not seem to have any impact
(role)
in the mechanism of my line of
thought.
The mental building blocks of
thinking
are certain signs/symbols and more
or less clear pictures,
which can be reproduced and combined
at will.
Albert Einstein
Summary
This summary will deal with informed decisions, sharing,
co-creation and empowerment, but also with reasoning (sinnvolle praktische Vernunft)
the work on Education, Planning, Pragmatics and Ethics[43]
And has to focus on our ways nof communicating and sharing.
Then represenations and references we use and the sign systems because we have
to understand the commons and the ways of seeing and reasoning to avoid
labeling, and categorizing, overcalims in hierarchical or flat orders, our
mental boxes and our sweet mental isolation. More to follow, maybe before enjoy
the EARTH CHARTER Open-Space and TAGORE EINSTEIN COUNCIL presentations at: http://benking.de/covenant/tagore/
or these cultures,
systems,
maps and models link collections.
This needs to be done carefully a.s.a.p. see the
dialogues-conversations living document where new content can be added mor
easily than in the forthcomming First Virtual Conference. This page will be
maintained and updated continuously at http://benking.de/dialog/dialogues-conversations2006
Literature
This needs to be done carefully a.s.a.p. see the
dialogues-conversations living document where new content can be added mor
easily than in the forthcomming First Virtual Conference. This page will be
maintained and updated continuously. at http://benking.de/dialog/dialogues-conversations2006
Please excuse
that his paper evolved from old materials and colelctions of
materials for a forthcomming publication and was done in times of high pressure
and exposure. But as a living input for a discussionit might serve its purpose
even when not perfect in stile and editing.