Month: October 2003

Practicing in Nepal – TravelBlog

Tomorrow I fly out of Chicago for a quick, friendly visit to Paris on the way to Kathmandu, Nepal, where I’ll spend the rest of October.

The agenda includes working with the ImagineNepal program in OpenSpaceTech, some days of practice retreat with JulieHenderson at BairolingMonastery, and a bit of time afterward for trekking about and visiting friends. The OpenSpace will be a revisiting and continuation of work we did at CapitalCollege when I was there last year. The retreat is a further exploration of the basis of SomaticOrganization and more. The trekking, my first up-close-and-personal with the Himalayas.

The whole trip will be a practice in pulsation, between self and all, cushion and kathmandu city, monastic retreat and client emails, open space and open heart, personal and professional, practice and play, up and down. Pulsation, that is, as the basis of all life. Connecting everything to everything.

And where there’s email, however slow, there is wiki and blog. Because the wiki pages will load faster and easier there, the weblog moves into the wiki for this trip. Not sure at all where this story will take me. Will post there what i can.

New Work

I’ve mentioned Frithjof Bergmann several times in September. Here is a bit of where he’s leading with what he calls New Work:

…increasing levels of non-standard employment signal the end of an age of big corporations and governments acting as employers who provide health and pension benefits for millions of people…

Bergmann, a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan and Director of the Centre of New Work, says our current crisis is a result of job shortages and polarization. He is convinced that the growing elimination of secure, long-term employment (for practically everybody) is not a temporary phenomenon and will even extend into service jobs. He says we are witnessing the collapse of the entire employer-based job system and that it must be changed if we are to avoid the inevitable violence that results from a growing disparity between rich and poor.

Among Bergmann’s strategies (1994) to augment the current employer-based job system is the notion of high-tech self-providing (HTSP). Because unemployment and underemployment are becoming a way of life for more and more people, HTSP can be taught as a strategy for reducing dependence on the job system and for achieving a fulfilling and meaningful life despite the decline in traditional jobs and job security.

Green Home Chicago

Lynne Marie Parson reports that Building Green Bridges has launched a new website called Greening Chicago which provides comprehensive information on all local upcoming environmental and sustainability-related events. Their announcement says GreeningChicago will inform the general public and all the organizations catalyzing local sustainable development.

Sounds like a great idea. Wish we could get all these organizations together in one big sustainable open space conference! What do you say Lynne Marie?