[Dialogue] [Oe List ...] The Spirit of the 10s

Fri Jan 7 13:04:42 CST 2011

Another option to print only what you want is to highlight the text, copy and paste into a another document.
I actually prefer the full communication thread. I delete the early ones from my inbox
My 2 cents...
Elsa

--- On Fri, 1/7/11, Del Morril <delhmor at wamail.net> wrote:

From: Del Morril <delhmor at wamail.net>
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] The Spirit of the 10s
To: "'Colleague Dialogue'" <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
Date: Friday, January 7, 2011, 11:17 AM

Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] The Spirit of the 10s

Thanks
for the greetings, friends. 

Could
I suggest to our dialogue, that when replying, please “erase”
anything except the most immediate thing you are responding to, or the whole thing,
if not responding to any particular note.  I wanted to run off this letter and ended
up printing off around 7 pages to get 1 ½ letter.  

From: dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net
[mailto:dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On
Behalf Of Evelyn Phil brook

Sent: Thursday,
 January 06, 2011 
 7:49 PM

To: dialogue at wedgeblade.net

Subject: Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List
...] The Spirit of the 10s 

Dear all, 

Larry and I need to do a family letter on all the things that happened last
year and this coming... very fast year and lots of traveling...and new roles
for both of us.

This is a very abbreviated report on what Janet Sanders and Evelyn
 Phil brook did with the PJD in Nepal, but since I
sent this to Nelson Stover in response to his thinking and John Cock's course
on the Great Work, I am including it to all of you at this time. It is by no
means the complete report and I will also send you what Tatwa Timsina thought
of how the program was received later. However, be aware that Janet has had
done extensive Social Artistry work via the grant from the Jean Houston
foundation to be in Nepal, and of course ICA Taiwan sending me too, and we had
also done the Imaginal Education with a twist with Social Artistry prep and
added the the song, story and symbol workshop...so these folks in Nepal had
lots of time with Janet and me before getting PJD lab for three hours as a
research introduction...

On the PJD

Janet and I did a three hour presentation as part of the research lab on the
PJD. I did the TWLI and witnessed my own Illusion and event with the Accepted,
Received, Approved, Possible X legacy new word in history, and asked for
examples of transformation in their life. First it was very quiet, and people
just wrote in their own books, then when invited to share, one facilitator in
training talked about how she had imaged herself as a black crow by her
grandmother who did not know how she would get her married off because she was
so short. So she always though of herself as too dark and unattractive to be
married until one day, a lighter colored handsome man talked to her directly
about getting married. This was such a shock to her, she said, we don't match,
but she realized her self story about being an ugly black crow and unattractive
was not true. So she dressed differently and thought differently about herself
and decided that she wanted to be an independent woman who did not need to
depend on caste marriage to survive in the world and went to college and is
studying facilitation with ICA. There were other great stories too. 

Then with synchronicity on our side, Janet Sanders did her master's thesis on
Thomas Berry and did a great job of simplifying the Great Work to thinking
about how the new Nepal will be responsible for the biosphere and the rights of
the melting Himalayas, the air, the water, the  soil, the plants, and the animals
as well as humans...So Janet's talk was on Observe Judge Weight up Decide and
Act and render the results to God....and who is our neighbor...which was the
discussion of the Great Work...She also followed up on the wedge blade, the no
longer, the not yet and how do we be self sustaining in this new edge of
history as pioneers.

I am thinking now about...as Those Who Care, as
 ICA as a community and as an organization...

What is our new pioneering mission for the not yet and how do we sustain
ourselves on this journey and be the sensitive and responsible ones...

What do we now turn our back on?, What must we abolish within, and lead in the
new, repenting on behalf of all now? Is it still imperialism, racism, and
nationalism? 

Off hand, I am thinking it may be it is still racism, but now more materialism,
and individualism, and only caring for people and me, myself, my family and my
cat... who actually died three months ago. I went to animal shelter last week
and will get others soon...

Nepal, like India is a calling...I understand why people are haunted by them
both...the poverty and the sheer creativity of the mass and promise of depth
spirituality...but with Nepal, is the delightful openness of the people, (it
felt like a unique quality of acceptance) ...Historically this is their time of
creating history and ( with the constitution writing they know it is currently
at a stand still).  But then there is the awesome mountains and the
beautiful hills as well as the plains...

How do we talk about our new mission which still includes people, but goes
beyond human development...

I am beginning to think more and more about organic farming, and fruit trees as
an answer to reforestation because people do not cut down olive or pomegranate
trees because they produce a product that people want... I mention these
two  because they do not require as much water as other trees.

Water and air, water and air, and space...

Currently we are talking about Theory U...Peter Senge and Otto Sharmer - Open
Mind, Open Heart, Open Will and Leading from the Future...www presencing

there is something about Blind Spots, 

How do we let go of the past to allow ourselves to be inspired and informed and
planning on behalf of the future...there is griefwork that needs to take place

Yes, meditation, or prayer, or some practice to listen to God or the Source is
the key...

Be your Greatness,

Evelyn Kurihara Phil brook

On 12/22/2010 5:49 AM, Wayne Nelson wrote:  

I have a paper on
this in the works too.

External situation - I think there are several points of “no turning
back” that we have encountered. “Hell-ooo, welcome to the 21st
century.”  

9/11/2001 –
Can’t go back to the way things were. Can’t see the world the same
way

Climate Change - Al Gore’s
powerpoint presentation. Lights on. We see. We can no longer view the natural
world the way we have since to rise of agriculture and more dramatically since
the industrial revolution. Down-scaling our lifestyle is an indicative.

2008 Financial Crash - Our
assumptions about what a healthy economy looks like and how to establish the
conditions for healthy, sustainable development are all up for grabs. 

Web 2.0 – We’re wired.
We’re connected. Small pieces – loosley joined. We can participate.
We can engage. We can enliven our dialogue.

WikiLeaks - The cultures of
secrecy have been dealt a severe blow. We are really tired of the opacity of
those in leadership roles. The story will be told. We will know what we have
only suspected. We will be sharing more and more. 

There are probably a very few more and I have the feeling that the thread
running though then is that they indicate the shattering of a
“paradigm.” Maybe it’s not quite up to paradigm – maybe
it is – not sure.  These things represent a death knell to the ways
we have have been thinking about things, doing things and how we approach our
relationships. The house is burning down. And we can describe the fire on each
piece of burning ember in detail. 

I think the internal crisis is related to seeing the end of things and not
being able to see what will emerge or even what would really help a new
modality to emerge.  We’re standing in the dark, looking out at a
blank. We know there is unbelievable potential, but it is really hard to see
the way to a different track. This is beyond being overwhelmed by possibility.
It is being overwhelmed by not knowing how to make an evolutionary leap and the
complexity involved. We’re kind of stunned at the moment. 

I kind of think I might state the existential question and, How the hell to I
see a way forward in the midst of all this collapse, complexity and haze?

I think the escape is scrambling to put together something that we recognize.
We yearn for the familiar. I think the escape is also our inner state of anger
– an escape, because it is a great way to make sure we will do nothing to
make things different. We want someone to blame. We’re using our anger to
fuel inadequate, off target solutions that sound good to us. We are stuck in
ideologies.

This is all ruminating and I haven’t got the article written.  This
is, I believe, a critical conversation.  I remember Slicker saying
something like, take a few things from the past that you’re sure of,
forget all the rest and start learning about the emerging world. It’s a
different critter, for sure.

\\/

"George Holcombe"  wrote: 

This is great
stuff.  I can't find anything I would disagree with.  Too bad we
can't go down to Room A, but maybe this is our Room A.

I would add a tag, or sub-title, to name our present age as the Age of
Bewilderment.  We have come so far, so fast that we have had little time
to digest our present situation in order to make a clear choice or decide the
next step that would take us in a direction of our choosing. And that time
doesn't appear to exist.   It's like the time you got caught in a
wave, the water is all around you; up down and sideways, and you think you have
a general idea where the beach is, but the undertow is pulling one way and the
wave is pushing you another, and you're not clear which is which, so you just swim
for all you're worth.  One of our colleagues told me the other day he
wanted to pay off his house loan, but because his loan was part of a derivative
or credit-default swap, the bank couldn't find it.  Or the
folks who found radiation behind the Big Bang, which could mean it was just one
of the Bangs.  Or the doctor in Boston a couple of weeks ago who had
inserted genetic material into a man paralyzed from his shoulders down and
declared we had entered into a new era of medicine, which would eclipse the chemical
treatments up 'til now.  Then last week they cured a man of AIDs by using
material from another person's immune system.  Even the spiritual and
religious types are shaking like they're standing in front of a Tsunami of some
sort.  Hardly a day goes by without some earth shattering announcement,
and it's not confined to any one field.  In a visit with Slicker a couple
of weeks ago, after he had returned from
 India , he said “presently we are headed in a
hell of a direction, not an Armageddon, but an explosion to newness."
 We know or can know that wealth is getting more concentrated than ever
and the elements used to produce wealth are limited and the processes that the
developed world is addicted to are problematic, and we're hemorrhaging poverty
and the climate is warming just like the climatologist said it would.  We
just had an announcement today that a company is splitting off one of it's land
development units to be it's own company in town, which for whatever reasons
has changed the landscape for realtors, banks and government taxes.  I
have no idea how to make much sense of all this, but would like to hear more.

George
Holcombe

14900 Yellowleaf Tr.

 Austin , TX 
 78728

Mobile 512/252-2756

geowanda at earthlink.net

“...we have the choice: we can gratefully cultivate the relationships
that make us part of a vast network, or we can take them for granted and allow
them to wither and die.”  Brother David Steindl-Rast, Deeper than
Words

On Dec 20, 2010, at 6:19 PM, Jack Gilles wrote: 

John,

I love the work you've done.  I think your examination of the last several
decades is on target.  I see the external situation for the 10s a bit
differently.  Although technology certainly has come on strong and is
affecting everything we are engaged in, I think this decade is going to be
addressing people's lives in a different way.  I would call it Hitting the Wall of Sustainability.  This
will be the decade when we are forced to face our limitations in so many areas.
 I love Jeremy Rifkin's articles on the role of energy and the impact of
having hit peak oil and the Empathic Society.  I think this will come
crashing home in this decade.  We have, of course, climate change and I
think that although there is debate right now and lots of "inaction",
this decade will force us to face that reality and its consequences unlike
we've ever seen before.  Add to this the questions of sustaining a growing
gap between the wealthy 1-2% and the rest of society.  It cannot continue
and I think that this decade we will be forced to deal with it.  Add
collective and individual debt (credit card), trade imbalance, spending on
armaments, and several other areas and in all of them I see us hitting the
wall, where consequences will have to be faced and hard choices having to be
made.

Now I'm not sure of the escapes, but I did live through the period of
"this is my bomb shelter" and I think we could see the same response.
  My survival is at
stake and I'll do what it takes for me and my family to make it.
 Collectively we could experience paralysis
of complexity and the unknown.    There will be choices
that require major sacrifices and moves into the unknown, and the question, as
David Whyte talks about in his DVD, we are not sure we have the interior capacity
to deal with the world that is coming. 

There are signs of creative response every where and I think replicating and
sharing approaches that work will really come into its own this decade.
 Here technology will be a critical tool and we are on the cusp of
fantastic creative sharing methods and technologies.  I just upgraded my
Skype so that several can share video capacity and there are now numerous ways
for inexpensive on-line conferencing and collegium type events.  And data
storage, retrieval and "mining" are also coming of age.  But for
me, the underlying critical response will be providing the spirit capacity, the
collective and individual dimensions of that.  That is why I feel so
strongly that now is the time for us to get our wisdom in these domains into
forms and forums for the sensitive and responsive part of society that will
have to lead the way.  

That's my 3 cents worth (inflation you know).

Thanks again for getting this on to our "table"

Grace & Peace,

Jack

On Dec 20, 2010, at 5:23 PM, jlepps at pc.jaring.my wrote: 

Colleagues:

One contemporary task of this group of people is to keep track of the
"signs of the times." I've tried it for the past 5 decades, and below
are my current thoughts about the teens. Please comment with your perceptions.
This task takes us all. Anyway, have a very Merry Christmas, and here are some
thoughts: 

The Spirit of the 10s

John
Epps, December 2010
             (draft)  

     We have made a practice of looking at the various
decades and seeking their underlying spirit quest. We have used the categories
of External Situation which
creates an Internal Crisis that
leads to an Existential Question
from which we tend to Escape.
Those categories have provided a way to look beneath the surface and discern
some underlying issues and struggles that provide a way of making sense of
what’s happening and addressing it creatively. With a new decade well
under way, it seems time to have another go at that task. But first a quick
review.

     In the 70s we experienced expanded horizons.  The oil crisis and
the Vietnam War brought globality home to us personally. Our internal
experience was unity: we sensed a
common humanity with people everywhere. Our existential question was “How can I participate?” and we
often escaped the demand of that question through withdrawal, either into ourselves with a self-sufficient style
or into the cheap euphoria of drugs. One authentic response to this existential
question was the development and promulgation of the Technology of
Participation (ToP).

    The 80s
were a time when we experienced the collapse
of separating boundaries and encountered the inescapable diversity of planet Earth. The
existential question it raised was one of integrity:
“Where do I stand?”
With all the options so visible (and none of them universal) what standpoint
can be the basis of my integrity? We tended to escape through mindless relativism (“When in
 Rome , do as the Romans
do”). The authentic response in this decade came in the formation of
collaborative efforts and alliances among dramatically different groups.

     In the 90s
we encountered a time of the intangibles:
in science, nano-physics disclosed that nothing is substantial in the
materialistic sense. Everything is energy in motion. Technology focused on
information management, business on vision and values, medicine on preventive
practices, cultures on foundational traditions. Our internal crisis was meaning. The question raised was: “What’s worthwhile?” Where
is it possible to find the significance that will add fizz and mischief into
life? Spiritualism was our escape
in which we pursued mysticism and various Eastern religions as a New Age search
for human authenticity. Authentic responses came in the disclosure of depth in
the midst of ordinary experiences, a transparency sometimes disclosed in
photography and art. 

     In the 00s,
the turn of the century was a decade in which we experienced the collapse of sustaining structures. It was
not simply 9-11 that occasioned our perception of collapse. Economic, political
and cultural institutions which had provided a sense of stability and
predictability seemed no longer to work effectively. Even the environment
showed its fragility. In this situation we encountered a terrifying crisis of security. Our underlying question was
“What can I trust?” We
attempted to escape the turmoil of that question through a belligerence that seemed prepared to do
battle with anyone and anything that called into question dependence on our
favorite institutions. Another attempt to escape the question was through
establishing security systems, notably at airports in an attempt to thwart the
aims of “terrorists.” We also developed regulatory systems for
economic institutions. Authentic responses to this situation came in the
formulation of new myths. This was the time of Harry Potter and Lord of the
Rings in which authors were developing stories that showed heroism in the face
of unavoidable insecurity and terrifying danger. 

     We've just turned into a new decade, and
hopefully one that can diminish some of the hostility of the past ten years.
Certainly Obama’s election seemed to herald a new time, though subsequent
events have shown belligerence to have a residual persistence that remains
disruptive. Still, there is a new scent in the air that may herald a
distinctive decade ahead. I’d like to explore that a bit now.

    The 10s seem
to be a time of intensifying technology.
Our dependence on gizmos and gimmicks has never been stronger.  While
watching young children lined up with their parents to see Santa Clause at a
shopping mall, I noticed a couple with two children in the queue both intently
fiddling with their smart phones,  probably surfing the Web or social
networks. Even their two children were playing with toy cell phones. Later
driving home I met numerous cars whose drivers were talking into their cell
phones. A colleague spoke recently about college students who were unable to
take a 4-hour examination because they couldn’t be away from their smart
phones that long – they were addicted. Of course it’s not only the
cell phones and their remarkable inclusion of apps for unimaginable activities
that capture addicts. Computers, automobiles, TV’s, and other
technologies that have defined modern life have developed their own dependents.
A recent NY Times article describes a local coffee shop as
“laptopistan,” complete with its own economics, polity, culture,
and ethics. Looking at research into energy generation, biotechnology,
robotics, and artificial intelligence, technology seems only to be in its
infancy (but in a phase of rapid growth).  It’s little surprise that
Time magazine selected the founder of Facebook as their “Person of the
Year” for 2010.

     The function of technology is to expand human
potential.  Current research and inventions seem to offer undreamed of
possibilities. Virtual meetings, satellite radio, microwave meals, robotic
surgery, online shopping with digital assistants, self-driving automobiles,
self-diagnosing body parts, space travel – even avatar immortality
– are all either currently available or in pilot stages. The interior
crisis occasioned by all this possibility is pure
potential. Clearly the old structures are past their usefulness as
we saw in the past decade. Now we have pure potential for creating a new
functioning civilization. Technology is no longer a constraint: we can do even
more than we can imagine. Our imaginations, however, seem constrained by
established images of systems and structures that are no longer effective. We
don’t know how to think in new categories, or even what those categories
might be. People often speak of this as a digital generation gap, and to be
sure there is one. But I suspect even the brightest young geeks haven’t
set themselves to thinking of new ways to operate as a global society. Pure
potential is an abyss – a gap with no place to stand, no security, and no
certainty. That’s the situation in which we find ourselves.

     Our existential question is “How shall we operate?” and
even the “we” is not clear. At one time it could refer to the
family or our network of friends or colleagues or the community or the state or
party or nation or race or even in our more generous moments, humanity as an
inclusive whole. Now even that seems inadequate. The environmentalists have
expanded our horizons. All animate beings now seem to have a claim on us, and
that includes flora and fauna. Even the mineral resources which we’ve
extracted and manipulated with abandon seem to be crying for attention. Neither
our economic, political nor cultural systems are equipped to address those
cries. 

     We seem to have developed two means of escape from this question. One is the more political in which we latch
onto any person or group that pretends, not so much to have a solution as to
point the blame at someone else. In the
 USA , the Tea Party is rich in its
objections to “the system” but sparse in its alternatives. More
radical groups and movements seek to destroy existing systems in favor of a
greatly reduced grouping that is pure in its ideals but exclusive of diversity.

     The other
approach is more cultural and can be found in the media. Programs like “The Biggest
Loser,” “Lost,” “The Survivor,” “Amazing
Race,” “Apprentice,” “Undercover Boss,”
“Slapdown,” and other so-called “reality shows” have
captured a huge market in the US and abroad. Their common feature is the
depiction of people in terribly difficult circumstances, and their appeal is in
presenting the mental, physical, and emotional struggles of protagonists in
agonizing detail. We seem to take some comfort in seeing others going through
internal uproars similar to our own. The reason these are escapes is that on
television there is always a way out, a winner, or a rescue. At that point
their analogy to our experience of reality breaks down. 

Authentically facing up to the existential question requires us to build new models, models that are
inclusive in their scope and in their development. We need models for a global
economy, for a polity that is inclusive, for a culture that respects diversity.
There are pilots in all these arenas, but none has the recognition that might
lead to widespread adoption. And the old systems will not go quietly away. There
is opposition to be faced. Much is at stake. The trap here (perhaps another
escape) is to become enthralled with the newest technological gimmicks. It is
important to be aware of developments, but continually to raise the question of
applying them to development of new systems for civilization.

     In the 60s and 70s, the EI/ICA set out to develop
a “New Social Vehicle” based on a “New Religious Mode.”
We succeeded admirably in formulating the rational and spiritual frameworks for
those realities. And we put into place numerous pilot projects demonstrating
what the future called for. We even experimented with replication in which
those pilots could set in motion a rapid expansion. Those are valuable
resources for the task at hand. 

     After four or five decades, the environment has
altered dramatically. Globality is no longer an edge concept; it’s an
operating reality, thanks in part to technology. Instead of expanding
people’s horizons, we now need to enhance the recognition and appreciation
of diversity. Learning from the past, we will need collaboration with
dissimilar groups, appreciation of depth in the ordinary, stories and myths
that support creativity, and, of course, the technology that is newly at hand

     The alterations that have come to
“us” as a group have been numerous and substantial going far beyond
the inevitable process of aging. But, in the words of Tennyson (thanks to
Gordon Harper),

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 

     There are far more of “us” ready and
willing to work on the project than were available in the 60s and 70s. There is
much more potential for communications. “We” now represent a wide
diversity of viewpoint and experience. Maybe these are the times and we are the
people. 

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Wayne Nelson - ICA Associates Inc

 ICA -
416-691-2316 - - - Cell – 647-229-6910

http://ica-associates.ca

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