Author: Michael

Electing Space

Not usually inclined to post politics here, but found this blog entry by Matt Stoller helpful in understanding the deeper shifts and choices that this coming year’s election represents. While doing my best to refrain from taking sides in this space, here is a bit of his post…

…both parties are facing internal wars between those who represent more space and those who represent reaction. ‘Liberal’ and ‘conservative’ are simply labels right now to keep score between two teams on symbol issues like ANWAR, late term abortion, gun rights, the lie du jour, but the real battle going on has little to do with any of the symbols. The real battle has to do with ‘the insiders’ battling to exclude and gradually losing, whether through having Howard Dean call Democrats in Congress cockroaches or Salam Pax, Iraqi citizen, blogging about how stupid the administration is in Iraq. McCain/Bush was the first battle of this war in the GOP; Dean/Clark/Everyone else is this war among the Democrats.

My guess is that this next bit of analysis (interesting for the dynamics it points out, more than for it’s not-exactly-balanced set of specific examples) could be mapped to the dynamics of leadership, compensation, training and other aspects of working in business and community organizations. Interesting to consider how we use in our organizations the equivalent of what he calls “public wealth” in this next piece…

The new politics isn’t going to do away with top-down structures of organization, but it will provide a powerful alternative. Top-down structures, and there is no better example than Bush himself, succeed at retaining power by engaging in four basic tactics:

1) Buying off those who have leverage with which to threaten or hurt them. Some Bush examples include the Saudis, Pakistan, China (spy plane apology), energy companies, etc. Some liberal examples include tariffs for unions and the protection of trial lawyers.

2) Buying off themselves and their friends and family (Halliburton, Harken, Enron, Delay PACs – The Kennedy family is the liberal example)

3) Threatening and hurting those who have no effective concentrated leverage with which to protect themselves (veterans, minorities, the poor).

4) Concentrating selective resources into creating factoids for later display in PR campaigns (steel tariffs, tax credits for some children, most likely a semi-bailout of California).

The critical element to remember is that all of these tactics cost, and none of them produce, which essentially means that the store of public wealth – whether that be fiscal surplus, creditworthiness, international sympathy for the US after 9/11, environmental treasurers – is consistently used by reactionaries and never replenished by them. Bush pushes out the costs and pulls in the benefits – tax cuts are not just the reactionary MO, they are the great reactionary metaphor.

This insider-itis produces a vicious and victorious right-wing agenda, and a pathetic pandering from the reactionary Democrats, who scurry to offer their own version of ‘tax cuts’, though this time for the ‘middle class’. Of course, tax cuts are fundamentally a bribe for a populace that doesn’t trust its leadership, and the Democrats win when the people trust government, not when they don’t. A Democrat that offers a ‘middle class tax cut’ while also promising help for the poor is both engaging in cynical pandering to the electorate through selective bribery AND asking for trust from that same populace. But you can’t have it both ways. Bush is a better crony than the Democrats, which is why the Democrats consistently lose influence through fights over symbolic issues, regardless of how much they compromise with Republicans or each other. Democrats think small; the DLC fights over gun control and marginal shifts in tax policy and trade, with the idea that removing the Republicans bludgeoning use of symbols will remove the source of their power. But it won’t, because the source of their power is the very insider mentality that fights over symbols on GOP turf.

The fight, symbolized by the potentially realigning 2004 election, is not over ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’; those are just petty policy labels. The fight is over space, and whether to create more of it…

Joy

‘Tis the season for joy. Today I had conversations about work in corporate, government, higher education, and three different community-based situations, bits of it located on four different continents. The new year is looking as busy and happy as I can ever recall, in spite of everything else.

So this old favorite from George Bernard Shaw was a nice find today…

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

Handel Rocks!

Tonight was the first of two performances of the “Do-It-Yourself” Messiah at Chicago’s Lyric Opera. There is something unbelievably democratic about 100+ volunteer musicians, a handful of world-class soloists, and 3000+ regular guys (and gals) like me slipping and sliding through more sixteenth notes than you could hope to count. They say Handel wrote the thing in 22 days. I’m not sure I could recopy it in that many days without mechanical support.

This was my first time experiencing this 28-year tradition, but hopefully not my last. I’d like to get the tutorial CD next year and be a little more ready to do my part. But ready or not, it’s hard to overstate the joy of making music or anything else in concert with several thousand others. I just giggled after every chorus.

You still have time to get to Friday’s performance. I’m told there are usually free tickets at the door, turned in by those who’ve found themselves with extras. Best to arrive by 6:00pm or so.

Frank Burns – Into The Light

“Let’s go watch planes!” he would say … and we would head out of the office and over to the parking lot off the GW parkway that is right under the flight path to National airport.

When the planes come over you can feel the roar in your body … Frank loved loud noises that take over your whole body … noises you can feel in your heart and your pulse and your being – fireworks .. and drums … and rock and roll …and thunder …

Sitting in the car feeling the planes coming over we’d get into the right ‘state’ and talk about politics and leadership and woo woo things and crazy people we knew and relationships and books we were reading and things we should write and business we might be able to do and what needed to be fixed in the world and how we could start fixing it and what would be really cool if we could pull it off and how great it was to let your body be taken over by loud noises. We’d make outrageous and audacious plans – and we carried out a fair number of them…

The car in the parking lot was maybe the best classroom i was ever in.

What’s for Dinner?

Six years ago we were fishing around and making grand plans in the living room of Gary and Erica Cuneen. Last night 200 folks gathered for the first benefit dinner for SevenGenerationsAhead, the organization that has emerged from that living room and is becoming a center for local healthy food and sustainable living.

For me, the highlight of the evening was a long, rousing standing ovation for 20 organic farmers from all over northern Illinois. It’s hard to describe the impact of noticing where food really comes from… and noticing that the rest of us non-farmers in the room are almost totally incapable of staying alive for more than a few more days or weeks, without the produce of people like the farmers at the front of the room. These particular farmers also represent the leading edge of a difficult but critical movement to create food systems that do not poison people or the land. Many of them work at the edge of financial viability, as well. It was a humble and humbling moment, inspired and inspiring gratitude.

Weaving Our World

At Bliss Browne’s Christmas party the other night, she introduces me to Davis Fisher as an OpenSpaceTech practitioner. His first words to me are… “You know John Engle?” Which sure enough I do. John’s a good friend and colleague — but he lives and works in Haiti! At the same party someone asks me about Nepal and I offer a contact for her there. Then this morning, Penny Scott mails from Vancouver, introducing me to Charlie Murphy, Power of Hope, Whidbey Island WA, whom I met some years ago in Racine, Wisconsin. And then there is Debra Meyerson from yesterday’s post who grew up within a few miles of where I did, outside Detroit. A few fine threads of the One Fabric that we are all and always weaving. Wow.

Are You a Tempered Radical?

Thanks to Penny Scott on Bowen Island, BC who tipped me off to this today, posted at FastCompanyMagazine. (How does she find these things?) Tempered Radicals: How Everyday Leaders Inspire Change at Work (now in paperback), by Debra Meyerson, of Simmons and Stanford business schools…

…Meyerson defines tempered radicals as employees who operate on a fault line. They are committed to the organization that they work for. To some measure, moreover, they want to advance on their employer’s terms; their company’s success is theirs too. At the same time, though, they are at odds with their company. Marginalized by gender, race, or ideology, they identify with causes that defy the dominant culture. While they feel bound to their organization’s goals, they also aim to stay true to their own personal ideals.

And so they pursue change, constantly challenging the status quo. It is often a personally torturous path. Because tempered radicals pursue goals that are rooted in their own identities, their efforts tend to be passionate. But because they also happen to sympathize with their organization, the changes that they introduce are mostly incremental. They are ambivalent, cautious catalysts, and they are content with small victories that, over time, lay the groundwork for something grander. “This is not a revolutionary style,” Meyerson says of the tempered radical’s approach. “But it is the stuff of change. It is the true content of leadership.”

Long Live the Cat in the Hat

In the spirit of public service, I find myself compelled to offer a few words in support of Dr. Seuss, the Cat, the Fish, and all the other inhabitants of Seussland, who should be let to play right there where they are, in their books and animated movies (like “The Lorax”), rather than twisted into drippy impersonatations as in the just-released Cat in the Hat. And so I give you this, from today’s NYTimes review…

…Hollywood has turned Dr. Seuss’ whimsical story into a vulgar, uninspired lump of poisoned eye candy.

I think I’ll stay home and read a book.

More on Concentrations of Power

Many thanks to Dr. David R. Criswell who has responded to my posting about his recent testimony on Capitol Hill. It seems that what I initially thought could be wild science fiction is already science fact. Indeed, many of the technical parts seem already functional.

Following Dr. Criswell’s invitation, I went and did some more more more reading. Still, I just don’t understand how lunar construction can possibly be cheaper than terrestrial construction, except perhaps that there are fewer security guards needed to protect systems built on the moon. That said, I am content to take Dr. Criswell’s word on the technical feasibility and even on the production costs. The long-run economic benefits seem impossibly complex and the details too sketchy for me to believe… but I’ll accept that this sort of power could be much cheaper and that that would have significant economic benefits.

From everything I see about this, it’s technically gorgeous. The trouble I have is with the social and political implications. Can these signals be hijacked? Amplified? If this sort of tech is already floating around, how hard would it be to toss up a satellite, grab a bit of power, amplify and aim it? Would the current White House be willing and able to use such power beams as short-term killers or long-term silent scourges? There have been reports of radioactive casings left behind in Iraq. Some months ago, Halliburton “lost” 200 lbs. of equipment that also happened to be essential ingredient for a dirty bomb. How often have we developed tools and weapons that quickly thereafter became things we needed to scramble to defend against? That list now includes such things as fertilizer and airplanes. Do such dangers (i.e. costs) exist with lunar power beams? Do we have the necessary social and political “technologies” to manage such things? And would these dangers be greater if everybody had one of these in their backyard or is it safer to do this all at lunar distance?

All of this leaves me wondering further what the projections would be (and how they could ever be made) for declining violence and hatred and proactive defense in a world where scarcity is seems so likely to be technically diminished. Marvelling a bit that even in the midst of such abundance, the gap between rich and poor is projected to widen. Reminds me too that Bucky Fuller showed years ago that we already have enough resources here on earth to eliminate all hunger, but still we continue to choose and spend on other means of security.

Is it possible that such a system could be designed, developed and operated as a global asset? What are the socio-political models to build this on? The UN? The internet and telephone? WTO? ICC? World currency markets? Still reading… and thinking that an interdependent sort of world more and more will require us to find integrated and complete techno-social-political-spiritual solutions to our needs. Whole-life, whole-world solutions.

Forget the dollar and the Fed. Forget gold, and even oil. Imagine the kilowatt as the global reserve currency. What does that look like if the only financially feasible power comes through American equipment on the moon? What if that equipment is owned by all nations? OR… what if it is collected from every backyard and rooftop, with each homeowner getting financial credit for the power they capture and feed into the grid? And what if those scenarios mix? Now that’s a new kind of power.

Eating Life

One of the joys of being home again for the forseeable future… as in no more one- and two-month trips planned… is that I get to restock the refrigerator and return to my regular diet. Have found myself in three different grocery stores in my first three days home.

The first of those trips was with friend, colleague, consultant and peace activist Avner Haramati, on his way back home to Jerusalem after the Practice of Peace conference on Whidbey Island, WA. We cooked a fine dinner of salad, veggies, beans and magadra (lentils and rice) Bliss Browne, of ImagineChicago fame. Along the way, Avner noted that it’s not so often that we, especially men, give themselves the kindness of cooking really good food when nobody else is around.

Not sure if it’s just my return home or if I’ve taken his comment as a challenge, but I’m very much enjoying my kitchen this week. Returning to fresh, whole, organics and experimenting with seaweeds and nutritional yeast — foods with real life in them.

Here and Gone, but Coming Back

OpenSpaceTech returned to the Illinois Food Security Summit this past weekend. The movements (FoodSecurity and OpenSpace) continue to grow. See the Land Connection and Seven Generations links in the sidebar for some examples of the good work being done.

I’m gone again this week, to Guadalajara Mexico, to open a small slice of space within a week-long corporate development program. Then finally back home to stay for awhile, looking forward to working with Latino, Sustainability, Food Security and other communities here in Chicago. Another OpenSpaceTech practice workshop coming in January, as well.

In the meantime, you can participate online in the Practice of Peace conference which is opening this morning near Seattle. Should be a powerful event, with peacemakers from all over the world gathered on-site and others watching and joining online.

Really Scary Concentrations of Power?

SpaceRef.com reports yesterday’s testimony by Dr. David R. Criswell at the Lunar Exploration hearings before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space.

Dr. Criswell says that the USA could build lunar solar power collectors that would beam energy back to earth to be received into and distributed by existing local power grids. He says the first beams could be coming to earth in just a few years, assures that they would not need to me more powerful than 20% of our sun’s usual radiation, AND that these amazingly powerful (but harmless) systems will be produced primarily from moon dust and rock, so that we won’t have to fly so many missions there! Then he turns into an economist and suggests that this project will create thousands of “new, high-value American jobs” and lower energy costs so that American incomes will quadruple and incomes in developing nations will increase eightfold. It’ll even power electric cars! He stops short of saying that it’ll keep accidently-dropped toast from landing buttered-side down, but clearly the potential is there!

Is it just me, or are others of you wondering why we can’t build same systems here on earth, since the sun hits us pretty much everyday at about the same distance as the moon? Anybody wondering what happens to those power beams on cloudy days? …how much the Space Station and Shuttle (models of cost efficiency!) would receive for this work? …about the potential for (or even the perception that) America has built and/or controls a solar-powered, robot-controlled system that can hit the earth with targeted beams powerful enough to replace nuclear and other power systems here on earth? …how this spaceman gets away with forecasting phenomenal economic growth?

Should we be worried about these apparent concentrations of power or did I miss the science fiction disclaimer at the bottom of that webpage making this nothing more than another bad movie waiting to happen?

Untitled

Another gem from Radmila Krieger. Wow.

The Monks and Me

The Little Monks At Bairoling

Some beautiful photos in this mosaic and an invitation to help these little monks in Kathmandu…

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?

coming home

well, yesterday i took a van to a boat to the airport, for two flights to a train and a bus. bowen island to chicago, via phoenix. many thanks to everyone on bowen island and in vancouver who made this last two months so full. special thanks to chris corrigan for yesterday’s posting in his bowen island journal…

Michael Herman has gone home. We had a fun two months, opening space, creating community dialogues, swimming in bioluminesence, working and playing together. He left his mark on Bowen Island, having inspired the mayor to write a column in The Undercurrent and hold weekly coffee chats. He helped us to understand the connections between power, vision and heart as they relate to municipal governance and communities and he taught a bunch of kids to do Horse Lips. Sad to see him go, but he knows he’s welcome to return.

major themes percolating in me now are this new story of somatic organization, peter frost’s toxin handling and managerial compassion, and frithjof bergmann’s new work. i’m currently reading lynn mctaggart’s stories of what physicists have figured out about zero point field (the background energy that drives all matter everywhere), am currently thinking about how that new knowledge can inform how we make organizations and communities, and currently writing an invitation for an ongoing GlobalChicago PracticeCommunity.

on the calendar, another OpenSpaceTech PracticeWorkshop and a number of other relationships and projects will be getting going in november, december and january, as well.

sweet home globalchicago

chris corrigan posted recently a bit about bucky fuller and marshall mcluhan, specifically their urging us to look at the world as one place rather than a sea of sovereign parts. i recognize this as what i’ve been working on since 9/11, or perhaps even earlier — learning to pay attention to worldwide movements, get business done through emails and occasional international travel, and still stay connected to who and what is most important at home in chicago.

today i am working on major updating of my database for the first time in a year (way overdue, of course), adding people who i’ve met or who have contacted me through my website from countries all over the world. here are the ones i can remember off the top of my head…

australia, brazil, china, czech republic, columbia, canada, england, germany, india, israel, ireland, korea, malaysia, nepal, portugal, peru, philippines, palestine, singapore, switzerland, scotland, sweden, south africa, taiwan, the united states …and chicagoland.

stretching, moving, rolling it around, pulsing back and forth. where is your world? where is your home? …and what happens to “you” when they touch?