For the past weeks, I’ve been writing with a growing sense of urgency on the rising levels of fear and divisiveness evidenced in our political process here in the United States and around the world. It occurred to me that I was witnessing a beauty pageant for demagogues. What is a demagogue? This piece is a result of that reflection and concludes with the suggestion that we do not have to be passive participants. The demagogue’s cry for polarization must be our call to honor what we value. Read, like, comment, and share as you please. Read my new Huffington Post piece:
I'm excited to tell you about a four-day workshop I'm co-presenting with Lauren Artress and special guest Angeles Arrien called Wisdom Emerging: Finding the Intersection of Leadership, Spirituality and Courageous Action. Jan 26-29, 2012, at Earthrise in Petaluma. REGISTER NOW for early bird rates.
For the past two years Lauren and I have been outlining ideas for a workshop that would reflect our belief that this is a critical time in human history for groups to develop new visions of the future, and bring together our work on collective wisdom. We are delighted that our friend Angeles Arrien, who is also a key contributor to the collective wisdom field, has agreed to join us as a guest presenter.
We envision a community of people with diverse interests and big hearts coming together because they are involved with some form of transformation; personal, yes, but also those who are engaged with the active transformation of organizations, communities, health and education, spirit and the arts.
We will be convening at the Institute of Noetic Sciences Retreat facility, Earthrise, in Petaluma, CA. Total costs for tuition, lodging, and food at this beautiful site have been kept at a very reasonable rate and early bird discounts are available through the end of November. Mark the dates on your calendar and Register for Early-Bird Rates Now. Retreat begins at 4 PM on January 26th and ends at noon on January 29th.
Come Join Us and bring your friends and colleagues with you. For those of you who know Lauren Artress and Angeles Arrien or have worked with them before, this is truly an extraordinary chance to meet them in an intimate gathering. For those of you who have been involved with collective wisdom or heard of my work involving social fields, this workshop will offer a unique opportunity for learning, reflection, and refreshing your own vision for a new year.
The following exercise was developed by Marty Kaplan:
Collective Wisdom: Activities for Attunement, Discernment and Calibration
Name: Hula Hoop Activity Number of People: 6-10 Materials Required: Hula Hoop Space Requirements: Sufficient space for 6-10 people to stand in a circle Time Requirements: 25 – 35 minutes
5 minutes set-up
10-15 minutes active problem solving
10-15 minutes discussion
Purpose of Activity:
To heighten awareness about how people in a group need to collaborate in order to accomplish a deceptively simple task
Outcomes:
Insight into communication practices that help and hinder
Insight into the dynamics of concentration and focus in groups
Insight into how a “collective” operates under pressure
Insight into how groups become aware of their interdependence
Detailed Steps:
Ask people to stand and to form into a circle facing each other
Introduce the hula hoop, and tell them that their task will be to lower it to the ground without anyone losing contact with it.
Have them point their index fingers and extend their arms at roughly waist level.
Place the hula hoop on their fingers and get the group to adjust their finger heights until the hoop is horizontal and everyone’s index finger is touching the stick. Pinching or grabbing the stick is not allowed – it must rest on top of fingers.
Remind them that their task is to lower the hoop to the group, and should anyone’s finger lose contact with the hoop, they are to reset the hoop to the starting height and begin anew.
Begin and continue until the group either succeeds at the task or is ready to stop. Note the tendency for the hoop to rise as members strive to maintain contact with it.
Discussion Questions for Inquiry Note: It’s important for your group to maintain an attitude of curiosity while discussing its answers to these questions, and to avoid the natural tendency toward evaluation and judgment; err in the direction of being descriptive.
Level 1 Inquiry – General Review
How’d we do on this task?
What seemed to help us along?
What seemed to get in our way?
What skills did it take to be successful as a group?
What was the nature of our interdependence?
What creative solutions were suggested and how were they received?
Level 2 Inquiry – Personal and Interpersonal Characteristics
What roles did people play?
What did we each learn about ourselves?
What would an outside observer have seen as the strengths and weaknesses of our group?
What skills and competencies would we need to develop as a group if we wanted to become truly masterful at this task?
How might we develop those skills and competencies?
Level 3 Inquiry – Keeping the Whole System in Mind
How was appreciation for what worked in evidence?
When was it possible to give and receive feedback without it becoming charged with feelings of criticism or blame?
What behaviors might have indicated higher levels of “sensing together” – i.e. silence, deeper listening, intentional experimenting and reflecting on results, etc.
How was acting together different than acting alone?
Part One of the Tea Party series is already catalyzing response – witness this exchange begun on FaceBook by Michael Harkins with a reflection about the imagery that accompanies my post:
Michael said: "Alan, you put into words many of my same thoughts. I must say I too enjoy the satire of Colbert, but also worry about the fragmentation of America. I can't help but wonder about the image you displayed with your thoughts. It appears to be …a threshold guardian. These images often barred the way to all but the bravest. To go past this point would take all the Hero's strength, wisdom, and luck. Is there a place we can go to iron out these differences? I hope we can get past the gnashing of teeth, and find a common ground, and start healing America."
I responded: "Michael, I love your observations and I think the threshold guardian archetype is crucial. We become frightened by what we cannot yet see – which is a territory in which our differences can be mediated by a love that is larger than our mere opinions. It is very difficult for an individual to do this alone, to get pass the guardian without harm, but it becomes more possible with others."
Michael again: "I also think with the exaggerated polarization in our society, the threshold guardian leaves no common ground. If we looked on the other side of the statue we’d see that this demon is a Janus with two faces, pointing in opposite directions, keeping us apart. No single individual can push the two halves apart to make a space, a temenos, a sanctuary, where we can share our thoughts and be unafraid. As you say, it will take many of us, and much love."
Your thoughts are welcome – on this theme of threshold and what might lie beyond it, or whatever else calls to you. Watch for Part 2 of the series, coming out October 25th…
If you have to ask what a picture is worth, then you probably can't afford this column.
In The Power of Collective Wisdom we wrote "seeking collective wisdom is a conscious attempt to elevate group life from its history of fighting tooth and claw to reach the top of the hierarchy or achieve dominance over others." And we referred to the human capacity for empathy, compassion, and the role of mirror neurons in allowing for the permeability of emotional life.
So check out these words below from economist and best selling author, Jeremy Rifkin, the author of The Empathic Civilization. If you want to see his ideas come to life in pictures, however, check out this graphic illustration of his ideas (sent by my colleague, Gabriela Melano, this is a 10 minute synthesis of a much longer presentation – brilliant).
"Economic activity is no longer an adversarial contest between embattled sellers and buyers but, rather, a collaborative enterprise between like-minded players. The classical economic idea that another's gain is at the expense of one's own loss is replaced by the idea that enhancing the well-being of others amplifies one's own well-being. The win/lose game gives way to the win/win scenario.
In the distributed economy, where collaboration trumps competition, inclusivity replaces exclusivity and transparency and openness to others becomes essential to the new way of conducting business, empathic sensibility has room to breathe and thrive. It is no longer so constrained by hierarchies, boundaries of exclusion, and a concept of human nature that places acquisitiveness, self-interest, and utility at the center of the human experience."
A serial journal of cogent reflections and irreverent insights on the social effects of capitalism and the roots of partisan politics. Pairing prose with HDR photography and “flash points” drawn from current and historical perspectives, the author seeks to recover lost wisdom and courageous action beyond the shouting and noise of today’s headlines.
Chapter Sixteen
The Dark Prophet
Part II: Capitalism’s Shadow
Time Range: 1867-1883, 2012
It is easy to dismiss Marx as a revolutionist or even as a theorist of socialism, but much harder to ignore his warnings about capitalism. He had discovered the Achilles’ heel of economic arrangements that celebrated their ability to create prosperity, generate innovation, and provide a bounty of goods and services as well as jobs. Capitalism proclaimed itself the final act in the history of economic evolution. Marx refuted the claim. His diatribes, as painful and polarizing as they were, force us to become conscious of capitalism’s other consequences.
We are confronted with capitalism’s shadow, the dependence on jobs defined solely by the marketplace, the depletion of natural resources, and the addiction to material gratification and personal glory out of sync with spiritual, community, and personal growth.
Yet, for all these dark prophecies, they are still within the imagination to address. There is ample evidence of the power of human collaboration combined with science and social purpose to tackle even the most difficult social issues. The darkest prophecy that Marx left us was not about economic concentration, ecological destruction, or the effects of inequality. It was about ourselves. It was about human polarization, the nature of privilege, and feelings of revenge – things Marx understood deeply in his bones.
HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography by Alan Briskin: multiple shots at different exposures are combined into one image in order to show “more of what’s there”.
His prophecy of successive business crises, continual warfare between nations, depletion of the earth’s resources, and mounting cynicism among the middle and lower classes was all predicated on the belief that government would do nothing about it. He believed that government would be a protector of the dominant classes — even as the dominant classes battled each other — or at best impotent, paralyzed to do anything significant about the crises that would unfold in waves.
Government officials railed Marx, in tones similar to a tormented Dr. Seuss, could not, would not stand up to the monied interests that supported their rise to political power and punished these same politicians if they deviated too sharply from the social narrative of economic growth. And that narrative was synonymous, questionable as it was, with progress, social good, and most critically the belief that money should never lie fallow but grow through investment, resulting in individual wealth accumulation. The hero’s journey, in capitalist mythology, overcame hardship in order to gain material wealth. And in gaining wealth gained wisdom and character. If only it was true.
Marx, often unkind, jealous, suspicious, even wrathful, staked his entire claim on the inability of individuals and social groups to see the predicament they were in. There could be no genuine conversation about altering the rules of capitalism in any significant way. Was he correct?
There is a final irony in all this. Capitalists and workers alike would follow the psychological script Marx laid out while believing they opposed his ideas. As groups on the right and left organized to battle the perceived dangerous actions of the other, they were fulfilling Marx’s prophecy. As unions became more organized, aggressive, and even violent in the early 20th century, they were following exactly Marx’s claim that capitalism would spawn its own detractors as workers learned to leverage their power. As certain capitalists fought against living wages for workers, initiated offshore production to increase their surplus value, and battled regulations for protecting the safety of workers as well as the environment, they were fulfilling Marx’s interpretation of how a ruling class would operate. As governments swung from welfare programs to austerity policies, their basic incompetence or incapacity to act was revealed.
Marx’s assumption was that individuals were not free to think beyond the shackles of their immediate self-interest. Given the structure of profit making, Marx asserted that individuals would choose to maximize their gain at the expense of others, regardless of the consequences. This makes nearly everyone operating within the capitalist system Marxist — at least in behavior. If there was an exception to his declaration about the lack of human agency, it was himself. Confounding his followers, he declared a few years before his death, “I am not a Marxist.”
. If you want to see his ideas come to life in pictures, however, check out this graphic illustration of his ideas (sent by my colleague, Gabriela Melano, this is a 10 minute synthesis of a much longer presentation – brilliant). 
