Tag: Miscellany

Dinner last night with Brian Reilly, Ron Thomas, Don Samuelson, Danielle Wood, urban and community planners, organizers, leaders. Good Korean food (Jin Ju) in Andersonville and plenty of food for thought…

• Western hemisphere population, US/Europe has less than 1 billion humans. Asian side has more than 5 billion. The two biggest untapped resources caches on the planet are Siberia and SE Asia. Do the math on who’s in charge here.
• An older couple in Korea say they worked like crazy to send their kids to the best schools in the world… in the US. The kids came here, got their degrees and went home to live and work and make babies. Now they’re doing like their parents… working like crazy to send kids to the best schools in the world… in China. That is where their kids’ (and most all kids) future will be focused and grounded. This China story seems simultaneously cliche and boggle.
• US trade used to run east-west, especially on trains that hub through Chicago. Today, trade runs north-south. Detroit is new hub at base of the St. Lawrence, offloading onto trucks that run north and south. Also, goods manufactured in north central Mexico are just 3 hours from both oceans.
• Chicago as center of regional economy that includes Green Bay, Milwaukee, Madison, Peoria, Rockford, Urbana, Indianapolis, Southbend, Gary. Growth is in collar, defined by academic/population centers around, but close to, the World Class city. Functional “Chicago” now includes territory in four states.
• Falling behind… Chicago never had a rust-belt-style collapse and hasn’t had to ‘pull itself together’ with all kinds of people and orgs really collaborating, coalescing… perhaps hasn’t happened since after the Great Fire in 1870s. We have a history of social political opposition-based organizing, resistance, neighborhood divisions, segregation, strong business and political bosses, and the like. All of which leaves us behind in developing virtual and community networks needed to thrive in a post-command/control world.
• Us v. them, democratic v. republican, city v. suburbs, market v. community, for-profit v. not-for-profit, east v. west… all oppositional constructs that are quickly becoming as obsolete as USA v. USSR. As Dalai Lama says, war is obsolete… and so are all of these other turf battlings. Might “Illinois” and “USA” also be made obsolete faster than we think, a la Arthur Andersen? The decision won’t be made by us, but likely made for us, as it was for Andersen employees. That’s the way illusion of control works, I guess.
• Good news is that we have Peace Corps alums connecting in “Friends of (insert country)” groups with experience and contacts in 130 or so countries. The Pentagon is actually full of folks who know quite a bit about health, healing, nation- and community-building. We just haven’t been advertising that lately.
• It seems that most people around the world consider Bush un-elected, and therefore haven’t assigned to the American people full responsibility for what his adminstration has been doing. November is seen as major moment of accountability, when We The People will finally and unavoidably confess to being with him or against him.
• Finally, Ron turned me on to Fran Peavey and her global grassroots work on Strategic Questions. Some resources links posted here. I think I’ll be posting more on Strategic Questions as I learn my way into that practice.
• Seems there are some promising info tech access programs, teaching HUD residents how to access the web, here in Chicago, too.

With a dinner like this, there’s not much need or time for breakfast this morning. World Thought Food Chicago.

Birrell Walsh, author of Praying for Others, sent this today…

…the ultimate philosophical discussion group!

ONLY by completely defining what an Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnipotent God is ‘exactly,’ can one understand the secrets of Life in this World/Universe.

This is an open discussion/debate group with some exceptions. This group is moderated to prevent unrelated subject matter. If you have something to contribute to the topic (defining God), your voice will be heard. This not a discussion group concerning ‘ if ‘ IT/God exists, but rather, completely ‘defining’ IT. All members are required to post their particular definition of God before posting messages. Post your definition of God, making it clear and concise for any layman to comprehend.

Now was that God as noun, verb, or proposition?

This bit on Holding Space from OpenSpaceTech originator Harrison Owen…

Among the Kpelle, the West African Tribe which largely inspired Open Space for me, the role of Space Holder is typically played by the Senior Elder. In a tribal council setting, when all the people are gathered in a circle, he will normally say nothing until the very end. At that point, he will utter a short saying or parable which encapsulates the discussion and essentially articulates the common finding (whatever that might be). More often than not, the saying or parable is very well known, but the art is to find just the right one that does the job. I think the key point for this elder, as also the OS facilitator, is to be basically invisible (at least in terms of overt participation), and yet profoundly present. I also saw more than a few situations when the Elder said nothing, for it was obvious that nothing more needed to be said. He just nodded his head, and it was over. My own reaction was that this was by far the most powerful sort of

One special moment from my weekend merits reporting here. I was down on the campus of the University of Illinois, where a local jazz dynasty was giving a concert. The legendary Clark Terry, 83-year-old trumpet player who I’m told played with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, the Tonight Show band and many others, was their special guest. After the concert, which I did not attend, there were some little receptions inside the concert hall, but outside in the grand foyer there was a little “after glow” concert with what I’m guessing is an up-and-coming local jazz band.

Well, the local upstarts were doing a fine job for perhaps 150 of us when the Clark Terry quietly rolled up in his wheelchair. He listened for a bit and then asked the young guy pushing his chair to get his horn. A few minutes later the Master started to play into what was already happening. The young guys on stage started to fade in amazement. Clark Terry motioned for them to play louder. They regained a bit of their composure and carried on, grinning hugely, for a couple of numbers in a flow that seemed totally unscripted, and unscriptable.

The best part of the whole thing was watching Clark Terry connect with the band leader, a young black trumpet player. Clearly this master was not playing for us in the audience. He was totally focused on the band and especially its leader: a sort of trumpet-mind transmission. The master’s mind was clean, and clear and bright. He touched his student deeply and directly. It changed the texture of the air in the room and I’m sure it changed the mind of that young trumpet. A great honor and a direct challenge, the one inseparable from the other. A lineage extending itself right before our eyes, and ears.

When Clark Terry put his horn away, the dazed and grinning band leader announced that they too were finished for the evening, as Mr. Terry had already expressed everything that could be expressed musically for that evening. Musically and more.

…I want to interrupt this birthday unplugging long enough to say THANK YOU! to all those who posted happy good wishes to the last item. I came back from my long quiet weekend away and really enjoyed your little birthday welcomings. I’ve mostly decided to spend this whole month doing as much of what makes my heart happy as I can. Work will continue here, but blogging might be rather slow as I’m hoping to give fresh whole foods, yoga, sleep and other self-kindnesses a bit wider berth.

Birthday Hiatus

Going off to be quiet for a few days. When I come back I’ll be older. Four decades, and counting. In the meantime, there are some great comments posted to the last item. Or feel free to throw a party in the comments for this one!

ChrisCorrigan was blogging a bit ago on Jonathan Schell and Vaclav Havel, about “Living in Truth.”

Havel, who wrote passionately about a politics he called “living in truth” (which is perhaps the best way to translate Gandhi’s satyagraha, by the way) crafted a politics along with other thinkers in Eastern Europe that made democracy emerge, but not before it issued a challenge to every single person.

Now this comes today from PureLandMountain, about firewalking, seems related…

…Echo began to speak meditatively on the nature of pain: how, although this pain she was feeling in her feet right now was just like conventional pain– it had all the earmarks, so to speak, and was irritating in the extreme, like all the everyday pains– she could not relate to it as she did to the usual pain, couldn’t be negative toward it, because it was kami related.

The objective in standard self/pain relations is to make the pain go away; this pain, in contrast, was self-chosen, indeed inflicted for sacred purposes, and was therefore itself sacred; so she had to respect it, sort of even savor it as being positive in nature, and accruing benefit with its extension, so in a way she had to enjoy the suffering, nurture the pain. This went against every instinctive principle, affording an illuminating gestalt on the reality and illusion of pain. I had to agree with her; it was indeed an interesting perspective on pain…

Whatever pain comes from standing up, standing out, speaking out, and living in our own truth is not a normal sort of pain. It’s this other sort, sacred sort, self-chosen sort. It brings us closer and closer to something important, and still un-name-able. As I think through this just now, it seems that some suffering — indeed, any suffering we choose — has the capacity to take us through and beyond all suffering. I think Living in Truth must be like that. Any moment.

It seems that this may be where our popular, mainstream media culture really gets in our way: when it keeps — we keep — pushing our pain away, keeping ourselves from these moments to find it, feel it and pass through it. Transcend and include it. Nurture and enjoy. Resting in Life. Living as Truth.

My grandma used to have an old wooden milk crate full of wooden blocks. Big blocks and small blocks, pictures and letters and stuff carved and painted on every side. When we got to her house, we pretty much went straight for the basement and lugged them up to the living room. We stacked them up and knocked them down all day while the grownups talked about boring stuff.

We know blogging has something to do with writing. But today, as I’m juggling rss feeds, templates, icons and new comments links, it feels a lot like stacking them up and knocking them down.

This from Economics, Politics and the Coming Collapse of the Elderly Welfare State, by James Rolph Edwards. For reference sake, the last of us Boomers turn 40 this year. Some of us turn in the next week or so, which might explain my recent interest in such things. (grin)

In 1950, there were 17 workers per retiree. It is now three to one, and the boomers begin retiring around 2008. When they realize they have paid all their working lives into the system and are able to obtain only little or nothing from it, all delusions will fall away, and they will be unable to deny that they have been massively stolen from. This may precipitate the worst political crisis since the Civil War. Fortunately, we are not the first nation to face this crisis, and we can take instruction from those who have gone before. more excerpts

Another handy reference point: I graduated in a high school class of 625, my sister graduated from the same public school 4 years later as one of 425.

I’ve been addicted for a while now to the simplicity of the Drudge Report, despite the nasty hype/spin. Now I finally remembered to check out Google News. What a relief… there is life after Drudge! Google Rocks!

ChrisCorrigan posted this from way up in Prince Rupert, British Columbia last week…

Funny though, how we never really notice just how tall some of our Chicago buildings are until we step back a bit. Quite a view from the top of them, too!

Penny Scott quotes a good reminder from Bologna’s Stephani Zamagni at BALLEBC today…

Economics and Ecology were seen as alternatives, as opposite poles, despite the fact that the common root of the two words links respectively government (the economy) and knowledge (ecology) of what happens in a oikos, ie in a house, in a territory.

…and Mises.org links recently to articles about inflation/deflation, the reliance on fiat (paper) money, and the effects of leaving the gold standard.

Ecology is house structure. Economy is house rules. All this taken together, the point is that when governments broke the connection between gold and money, they dared to make their own rules, fiat, and paper more important than gold, earth and structural limits.

The main difference between gold-backed money and fiat (rule-backed) money is that central banks can inflate it without reference to anything physical, not gold, not goods production. And they have. Money has been separated from Earth, Life. Trouble is… Life is bigger than any government bank or rule ever could be. In the end, Earthly limits will always win out over rules made up by governments and corporations. Huh.

To the comment quoted in yesterday’s posting, Paul Everett added… “Jack Hawley, in his book Reawakening The Spirit In Work, has a great discussion of ‘already-thereness.’ It is in Chapter 11 on Bending Space and Time, Already-Thereness and Instantaneousness.

The Spirit Of Already-Thereness: The familiar idea of searching-to-grow, exciting though it may be, is a gap maker. The long-cherished notion of becoming can soothe, but it can also serve to distance us from ourselves rather than bring us nearer. The spirit of already-thereness, on the other hand, is a gap closer. Being has more power in it than becoming. Imagine just proclaiming already-thereness. No questions asked. No permission sought. Simply take residence. It’s audacious, but declaring it is what creates it. That’s the leap!

Paul goes on to say “I have had several experiences along this line of already-thereness in some very practical senses. One in particular, a former six month plan to start up a really huge paper machine compressed into 17 calendar days, for instance. Clearly impossible, but done.

The whole exchange is posted here.

OpenSpaceTech originator, Harrison Owen, posted this recently on the OSLIST in reference to a question about the ongoing practice of OpenSpaceTech in organization — what I’ve called the InvitingOrganization and others call the ConsciousOpenSpace or InterActive organization:

…In my practice, I find it useful to start from the position (at least in my own mind) that the client is already there, but just doesn’t recognize their true situation. This start point makes a major difference in terms of how hard I have to work, and what needs to be done.

If the client is “already there” there is no need for me (or us) to design an InterActive? Organization, or even implement somebody else’s design. Simultaneously, I can say to the client — Look, this is not about doing something new and radical. It is really about being fully and intentionally what you already are.

Enabling the client to achieve this awareness is all about engaging in a process of appreciative inquiry (small “a”, small “I”) or maybe formally “doing” AI??? So — “Let’s look at what works, and how it really works.” The ensuing dialogue can go all over the place, but it usually covers the following sorts of stuff — Starting with the organizational chart.

Everybody knows of course that the organization is a steeply ranked hierarchy — with all control clearly centered at the top, and in the hands of the Senior person (CEO, MD, Director) And we know that, because that is the picture we have in our minds or framed on the wall. And yet, if you push a little bit, it turns out that little if anything actually works the way the picture says it should.

Good ideas come from all over the place, projects are initiated from the “Skunk works” that don’t even show up on the Org Chart. Most of all, it turns out that if all command and control is actually held by that single, almighty MD/CEO, the organization is but a short step away from death by organizational hardening of the arteries. Come the next shift in the environment (large or small) — the rigid face of things just cracks.

The nasty secret is that real work, really gets done interactively — despite our best efforts to the contrary. So it might seem that we are working much too hard to fix something that ain’t broke. We simply have to get out of its way so that it can easily do what it does naturally.

This is a good rendition of the very first words I ever heard Harrison speak, which happened to be in OpenSpace and in answer to my own question about organizing organizations. So have a look around this website… and suffice it to say that his saying so did touch me rather deeply. (grin)

He really knew something about paying attention. A niece recalls one of his more famous lines: “Lemme tell ya’ little ’bout a lot.”

“Lemme tell ya’ little ’bout a lot…” she says, “…meant your head was going to be spinning for a few days trying to figure out what he was talking about. Nobody ever knew what Lester was talking about. And when you finally figured it out, he was always right.”

And he was. A boyhood friend called Lester a “Mult-I-Genius.” An athlete, soldier, youth counselor, father, uncle, son, wandering facilitator, community connector, and quiet observer. He was my friend, my colleague. And he was buried today. Free at last.

I do not place my faith in institutions but in individuals, world wide, who think clearly, feel nobly, and act appropriately.

From an early 20th century, Indian poet, possibly paraphrased. This quote appears on a bust outside the Asian Centre at UBC. via LauraTrippi

On F. A. Hayek (1899-1992) and knowledge, prices, and competition as a discovery procedure…

In “Economics and Knowledge” (1937) and “The Use of Knowledge in Society” (1945) Nobel Laureate Hayek argued that the central economic problem facing society is not, as is commonly expressed in textbooks, the allocation of given resources among competing ends. “It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only those individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge not given to anyone in its totality.”

Much of the knowledge necessary for running the economic system, Hayek contended, is in the form not of “scientific” or technical knowledge–the conscious awareness of the rules governing natural and social phenomena–but of “” (missing word? unconscious? circumstantial? tacit? latent? …or not?) knowledge, the idiosyncratic, dispersed bits of understanding of “circumstances of time and place.” This tacit knowledge is often not consciously known even to those who possess it and can never be communicated to a central authority. The market tends to use this tacit knowledge through a type of “discovery procedure,” by which this information is unknowingly transmitted throughout the economy as an unintended consequence of individuals’ pursuing their own ends.

For Hayek, market competition generates a particular kind of order–an order that is the product “of human action but not human design” (a phrase Hayek borrowed from Adam Smith’s mentor Adam Ferguson). This “spontaneous order” is a system that comes about through the independent actions of many individuals, and produces overall benefits unintended and mostly unforeseen by those whose actions bring it about.

To distinguish between this kind of order and that of a deliberate, planned system, Hayek used the Greek terms cosmos for a spontaneous order and taxis for a consciously planned one. Examples of a cosmos include the market system as a whole, money, the common law, and even language. A taxis, by contrast, is a designed or constructed organization, like a firm or bureau; these are the “islands of conscious power in [the] ocean of unconscious cooperation like lumps of butter coagulating in a pail of buttermilk.”

Most commentators view Hayek’s work on knowledge, discovery, and competition as an outgrowth of his participation in the socialist calculation debate of the 1920s and 1930s. The socialists erred, in Hayek’s view, in failing to see that the economy as a whole is necessarily a spontaneous order and can never be deliberately made over in the way that the operators of a planned order can exercise control over their organization. This is because planned orders can handle only problems of strictly limited complexity. Spontaneous orders, by contrast, tend to evolve through a process of natural selection, and therefore do not need to be designed or even understood by a single mind.

Italic in this last paragraph are mine. This is the case for OpenSpaceTech. The planned orders of our organizations simply can not handle the levels of complexity and adaptation that most organizations are facing. The only compassionate thing to do is look carefully at the knowns and unknowns… and then to use planned orders for what we know and use OpenSpaceTech to discover and invite spontaneous orders to address all of the real and uncertain complexities, diversities, urgencies and conflicts we face.

The compassion (and the vision, wisdom and real power) comes in seeing the distinctions between the knowns and unknowns, plan-able and un-plan-able, without separating, discounting or attempting to dominate either one with the tools and temperment that work with the other. Give to Ceasar what is Ceasar’s…

Last year about this time, as the US was gearing up for war in Iraq, I began telling friends that (independent of my own views on GWBush and Iraq) it was my only slightly twisted opinion that if Bush is elected to a second term, he could end up being the second-to-last American president. The short logic on this is that we as a nation were becoming so divided that if such an administration were to continue for another four years, the divisions would be irreparable. At the time I thought it would take a second Bush term and then another four years for the Union to actually start coming apart.

The longer logic posited that a combination of increased military spending (cost), increased taxes, increasing global protest against us, decreased willingness to buy our products, currency and securities, the rise of the euro and the loss of our status as the printers of the world’s reserve currency… all collude to make the USA brand name really expensive here and not very well liked (or supported) around the world. Notice, too, that the most important “security” forces are fast becoming local police, fire and healthcare workers.

My guess was that education and healthcare, both essentially locally delivered by people we used to call “neighbors,” would be shortchanged by federal funding — then reclaimed by the locals, at the expense of the feds and the federal system. My musing was that California, the world’s 5th largest national economy if it were to stand on its own, could lead the charge and maybe take a few neighbors with it. I wondered if the gubernatorial recall couldn’t be a practice run for doing things previously politically unthinkable. I wondered how much California pays in taxes and how much it gets back, but I never actually looked it up.

Well, it’s made for an interesting year of conversations, especially while I was in Canada last summer. But now I see that the Utne Reader reported in Jan/Feb issue that there is a thriving and remarkable viable secession movement underway in Vermont. I see some big names like John Kenneth Galbraith (noted economist and former ambassador to India) have endorsed the Vermonters plan. I read about some of the horrendous things being supported by essentially invisible government support of some corporations. It makes me wonder if peacefully dissolving the union wouldn’t be the single most beneficial thing I could support with my limited time and energy.

Think of how many more people would be involved in “national” political and economic deliberations if every state needed to make security, currency, trade and human rights policies for themselves. What if smaller-than-national groups got together to deliberate on the benefits of hosting the businesses of some of our more destructive corporate citizens. What if decisions about Alaska’s federally owned oilfields were made by Alaskans rather than federal bureaucrats in Washington? Might get to be a much more livable place, long-term.

So often, activists attack moves like Monsanto’s patenting of strains of special Indian rice and Bechtel’s purchasing rights to South American water supplies. The activists see this as market action and attack the economists who defend open trade and markets. But the market didn’t certify Monsanto’s right to the Indian seeds — the US government Patent Office did. And the local governments down south are the ones who initially and violently enforced Bechtel’s ownership claims. Markets don’t take sides. Markets facilitate movements. It’s the interventions that cause trouble… and the bigger the government, the bigger the intervention and more removed the decision is from We The People.

For me, it’s not even about taking sides on this one. It’s just about getting ready. Given the mounting social, economic and political costs of our federal government, I simply don’t see how it can be sustained. As the Utne article points out, the people of the USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia didn’t think they’d come apart as fast as they did. And then there is Arthur Andersen… when the costs go up and the brand name goes to pot, the castles can come down in a hurry.

I see today somebody is selling t-shirts that say “Voting is for Old People.” Yikes! …but local-national elections would be a whole new ballgame. Forget about voting by internet. It’ll be voting by cellphone. Oh yes, and let’s not forget that the mass political media machine would be undone right along with the feds. Or the administrative vacuum that could and would be filled over time by more global groups and structures.

Try this one out: We The People, in order to form a more livable, sustainable, humane and happy State/Region… Or how about one with a decidely Chicago ring: Hail to da Mayor? (Long live da Mayor.) In the end, you see, it doesn’t really matter who is president.

My future starts when I wake up every morning… Every day I find something creative to do with my life. — Miles Davis

via George Nemeth at BrewedFreshDaily.

This from Dan Bassill, founder and director of the Tutor/Mentor Connection:

…T/MC has launched a new Program Locator that we feel will make it much easier for a parent, social service worker, volunteer or donor to find a specific tutor/mentor program in the Chicago area. It enables visitors to search for tutoring and/or mentoring programs based on where they are located (zip code), what type of tutoring/mentoring they offer, what age group they serve, and what time of day the service is offered.

The Program Locator and other services offered by the Tutor/Mentor Connection, are developed primarily with the help of volunteers. If your company or foundation would like to sponsor this service, or help the T/MC expand it, mailto:tutormentor2@earthlink.net.

An important new open marketplace! The T/MC also points out that “no child left behind” should really be “all children in jobs/careers by age 25.” An important clarification of purpose.