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September 10, 2003 By Uncategorized

I’m reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson and it’s totally engroosing. In the middle of the dozen or so stories that swirl around between the covers of the book are gems of writing like these:

Randy spent plenty of time chasing and carrying out impromptu experiements on dust devils while walking to and from school, to the point of getting bounced of the grille of a shreiking Buick once when he chased a roughly shopping-cart-sized one into the street in an attempt to climb into the centre of it. He knew they were both fragile and tenacious. You could just stomp down on one of them and sometimes it would just dodge your foot, or swirl around iot, and keep going. Other times, like if you tried to catch one in your hands, it would vansih — but then you’d look up and see another one just like it twenty feet away, running away from you. The whole concept of matter spontaneously organizing itself into grotesquely improbable and yet indisputably self-perpetuating and failry robust systems sort of gave Randy the willies later on, when he began to learn about physics.

There was no room for dust devils in the laws of physics, at least in the rigid form in which they were usually taught. There is a kind of unspoken collusion going on in mainstream science education: you get your competent but bored, insecure and hence stodgy teacher talking to an audience divided between engineering students, who going to be responsible for making bridges that won’t fall down or airplanes that won’t suddenly plunge vertically into the ground at six hundred miles an hour, and who by definition get sweaty palms and vindictive attitudes when their teacher suddenly veers off track and begins raving about wild and completely nonintuitive phenomena; and physics students, who derive much of their self-esteem from knowing that they are smarter and morally purer than the engineering students, and who by definition don’t want to hear about anything that makes no fucking sense. This collusion results in the professor saying: (something along the lines of) dust is heavier than air, therefore it falls until it hits ground. That’s all there is to know about dust. The engineers love it because they like their issues dead and crucified like butterflies under glass. The physicists love it because they want to think they understand everything. No one asks difficult questions. And outside the windows, the dust devils continue to gambol across the campus.

— Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

I’m not the only one taken with this piece of writing either. Others have quoted it too.

More on the physics of dust devils.

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September 9, 2003 By Uncategorized

How not to run a democracy. This article, sarcastically titled Grassroots Democracy in Iraq, American Style tells the story of a local leader in a Baghdad neighbourhood who, despite his gut instincts, decided to stand for local office in a new local council. The military convened the council, supervised the elections and gave the orders – representatives would not be paid, but would receive US military assistance in making local improvements.

The first job was to do a detailed assessment of the neighbourhood’s needs. The five member council undertook the assignment diligently and in nine days produced a thick report based on door to door interviews, grassroots consultation.

When the report was presented to the military, the council was dismissed and disbanded and no follow-up ensued.

Our hero, Majid, concluded that the process was a sham:

“Perhaps we made too many suggestions. Perhaps they didn’t like our suggestions,” said Majid, struggling to find an explanation. “Or perhaps this is democracy, American-style. In any case, what can we do? They are the occupiers and we are the occupied.”

Now this could be read as a story of the sideways effort to rebuild Iraqi civil society, but the fact is that this is a parable for our times. In an age where people feel cut off from the systems of power, authority and control that seem to dominate lives, great cynicism takes root. When people like Majid, display passion for improving their lives, it is common to see governments, management or other structural homes for power and authority quashing that passion.

I’m sure everyone can think of examples where this kind of thing has happened here too. People are given some power to go out an make a difference and then their orders change and it all falls through. This is why I am hard on clients about sincere support for work done around community consultations, workplace evaluations and in Open Space.

The passion that people bring to tasks is a gift. To squander it or treat it contemptuously drives cynicism that undermines trust and healthy working relationships. That is true in communities, organizations and families.

Martin Brokenleg and the Circle of Courage

September 6, 2003 By First Nations 2 Comments


Circle of Courage, from the Reclaiming Youth Network

Port Hardy, BC

Port Hardy is near the northern most tip of Vancouver Island. The fastest way to get here is by a Pacific Coastal Airlines Short 360 which is the only plane I know of with a square fuselage. We flew up through the first rains of the late summer, a storm system that has tracked low into Southern BC as the jet stream has begun to sink southwards. in the mist and fog, two ravens were playing next to the runway as we touched down.

I�m here to open space for the Vancouver Island Aboriginal Transition Team which is a group responsible for setting out a service delivery model for Aboriginal child welfare. This is the first of three community consultations that are being held around the Island.

Tomorrow I will do my thing, which is to say I will facilitate a meeting for 60 people with thoughts and passions for the kinds of systems and services children at risk need. I’m following hot on the heels of what was apparently a tremendous day of learning facilitated by Dr. Martin Brokenleg, a Lakota professor who is well known for his teachings on reclaiming Aboriginal youth at risk. His teaching model is called the Circle of Courage, and it is a medicine wheel.

The Circle of Courage, being a medicine wheel, is made up of four quadrants: Belonging, Generosity, Mastery and Independence. Brokenleg teaches that these capacities are inherent in each of us and need to be relatively balanced for us to live balanced social lives. It’s fairly obvious that any services directed towards children need to foster all four of these areas.

As I am thinking about my opening for tomorrow, I am thinking about the posting I made earlier today about places to intervene in a system and how one creates new paradigms by, as Donella Meadows says, coming “yourself, loudly, with assurance, from the new one, you insert people with the new paradigm in places of public visibility and power.” So i will use Dr. Brokenleg’s framework to suggest that as we contribute ideas to this process, we do so out of the paradigm that he advocates. In short, we have an opportunity to practice that paradigm right now, in Open Space.

Open Space acknowledges the four quadrants of Dr. Brokenleg�s teachings by inviting each person to see themselves as belonging to a whole, using generosity to contribute their wisdom to the group, drawing on their inherent mastery of life to share ideas and thoughts about what works and taking the step forward as independent folks with two feet, able to make choices about how they will spend their time and energy.

It is so important to embody new paradigms. We cannot expect the new ones to arise spontaneously without fully entering them and living within them. Tomorrow we’ll try a little new living.

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September 6, 2003 By Uncategorized

Thanks to both Dave Pollard and Jim McGee, I spent some considerable time musing over Donella Meadows’ paper on “Places to Intervene in a System.”

The paper takes a systems theory approach to identifying leverage points for creating change. In her language, the ten places, in increasing order of scale are as follows:

9. Numbers (subsidies, taxes, standards).
8. Material stocks and flows.
7. Regulating negative feedback loops.
6. Driving positive feedback loops.
5. Information flows.
4. The rules of the system (incentives, punishment, constraints).
3. The power of self-organization.
2. The goals of the system.
1. The mindset or paradigm out of which the goals, rules, feedback structure arise.
0. The power to transcend paradigms.

These may seem somewhat cryptic, by Meadows explains them in very clear language and with numerous examples. Dave Pollard has done a top notch job on summarizing the paper in “layman’s terms” and provides some of his own examples.

For me, as someone who works in complex systems like communities, I’m especially interested in the last four, from the power of self-organization to the power to transcend paradigms. Check out her thoughts on changing the paradigm or the mindset:

So how do you change paradigms? Thomas Kuhn, who wrote the seminal book about the great paradigm shifts of science, has a lot to say about that. In a nutshell, you keep pointing at the anomalies and failures in the old paradigm, you come yourself, loudly, with assurance, from the new one, you insert people with the new paradigm in places of public visibility and power. You don’t waste time with reactionaries; rather you work with active change agents and with the vast middle ground of people who are open-minded.

Systems folks would say one way to change a paradigm is to model a system, which takes you outside the system and forces you to see it whole. We say that because our own paradigms have been changed that way.

As powerful as that thought is, Meadows saves the best for last. Her thoughts on transcending paradigms:

It is to “get” at a gut level the paradigm that there are paradigms, and to see that that itself is a paradigm, and to regard that whole realization as devastatingly funny. It is to let go into Not Knowing.

People who cling to paradigms (just about all of us) take one look at the spacious possibility that everything we think is guaranteed to be nonsense and pedal rapidly in the opposite direction. Surely there is no power, no control, not even a reason for being, much less acting, in the experience that there is no certainty in any worldview. But everyone who has managed to entertain that idea, for a moment or for a lifetime, has found it a basis for radical empowerment. If no paradigm is right, you can choose one that will help achieve your purpose. If you have no idea where to get a purpose, you can listen to the universe (or put in the name of your favorite deity here) and do his, her, its will, which is a lot better informed than your will.

It is in the space of mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring down empires, get locked up or burned at the stake or crucified or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia.

I think Open Space Technology may just be the fastest way to work these leverage points in a system, but I have to do more thinking about that. So I am adding this paper to the Deeper Open Space Wiki for further discussion and consideration. Feel free to join me there.

Herb Joe on poor weak human beings

September 4, 2003 By First Nations 2 Comments

Harrison Hot Springs, BC.

Spent the day in a meeting at Seabird Island First Nation, a large community which is part of the Sto:lo Nation located in the upper Fraser Valley about 150 kms east of Vancouver. I was working with a group who was in some internal conflict, and I was very privileged to be working with Herb and Helen Joe, two respected Sto:lo Elders and traditional teachers.

Herb told a very interesting story today. It was part of the Sto:lo creation story and it had to do with the destiny of human beings.

In the story, the Creator makes the earth and then creates all the creatures of the earth, including the winged animals that fly, the four-leggeds that run on the land, the animals that crawl across the earth and the animals that swim. Each of these animals were created perfectly.

When all these animals were created, the Creator looked around and noticed that something was missing. So humans were created. To do this, the Creator took a little bit from each animal and rolled it up into what Herb called “poor, weak, human beings.” The reason we are poor and weak is that we can do lots of things, but none of it well. We can fly a little, but we fall heavily to earth. We can run, but not as fast as a deer or a cougar. We crawl, but beetles and spiders can stick to the ceiling. And we swim, but nothing like a salmon. In short we struggle.

Herb finished the story by saying that it is our destiny to struggle because by struggling we learn and that is what we are put on earth to do.