HUMAN DEVELOPMENT COURSE

STATEMENTS ON HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

1. HUMAN DEVELOPMENT is empowering the individual and the community with skills to deal with life creatively. It is a corporate journey that communities embark on, dancing over the dark abyss.

2. HUMAN DEVELOPMENT is a journey of consciousness, in the life of an individual or community, which passes through being related to all of history and all of the world, to the burden of caring for all, to the affirmation of or gratitude for the oneness of all that is. It is the process of struggling with the decision to act out your care in the particular situation.

3. HUMAN DEVELOPMENT is the free and lucid decision to participate with others in altering the historical process through engagement in a local community, out of a vision of caring for every local community on the planet.

4. HUMAN DEVELOPMENT is a journey in consciousness ­ it is extraordinarily practical, and deals with every facet of life. It includes all sectors of society, and above all has a vision of the future which keeps unfolding. It is constantly on the move reaching out to more and more people, endlessly restless and filled with life.

5. HUMAN DEVELOPMENT is the art of giving meaning and significance to the exhilarating and painfilled journey of human community towards the 21st Century. It occasions changed lives, radically new decisions, courage to encounter the fear and fascination of the unknown future. It provides the tools and methods for individual and corporate effectivity, sustenance and creativity.

6. HUMAN DEVELOPMENT is the stimulation and maturation of the regenerative and creative capacities of persons either locked into positions of mechanical response or allowed to mature without the imparted skills of reflection, expression and decision­making individually or as part of the whole society.

7. HUMAN DEVELOPMENT is a process that can go on in any community that self consciously decides to risk all they know and stand for, so that each member can effectively live a fulfilled life.

8. HUMAN DEVELOPMENT is that which happens in any local community, or better yet, in groups of communities, when changing the social fabric is occasioned by catalytic action. The methodologies used to bring off the catalytic action are extremely important and serve as ways of training individuals in service to their communities. At the heart of human development is a highly disciplined, revolutionary core of people.

9. HUMAN DEVELOPMENT is the occasioning of Dr. Lao's Circuis in the midst of community that calls that community to join the long march of care and service to humanity and BE ITS MYSTERY, DEPTH and GREATNESS.

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT COURSE

SHORT COURSES.

I. WORKSHOP METHOD.

A. BRAINSTORMING.

­ out to use 90% of brain not normally used

­ intuitive process, not deep rational thought

­ individual work first to ensure broad based input to corporate product

­ everybody's data up on the board

­ no wrong answers, only questions of clarity.

GROUPING

­ seeing relationships in the data

NAMING

­ taking relationships to the data

­ creating a common mind

B. MANOEUVRES.

­ have motivation built into them

­ catalyze engagement, every assignment is named.

II. SINGING.

A. Sustains a group in its task.

B. A human activity that makes a group one.

C. Keeps a community moving forward.

D. Allows the celebrative to emerge.

E. Every great movement is nurtured by singing.

III. RITUALS

A. Rehearsal of who you are.

B. Intensify corporate consciousness.

C. Rehearsal of the decision to do a task.

D. Release corporate spirit.

E. Always on behalf of.

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT COURSE July 1981

Workshop IV Back­up ­ P 249­252

ANCIENT OF DAYS prose

It takes several winters to move all of the felled trees from the forest to our encampment. And several summers pass before each trunk is stripped of its bark and cut to size. Those trunks that will be the uprights are cut to hold the crosspiece. Holes are dug and the first uprights are planted. But we cannot get the crosspiece up to where it can be rolled into the notch.

Thorp spends several days looking at my carvings and then he says, "We will put the crosspiece in the notches while the uprights are still lying on the ground. Then when we plant them, everything will be in place."

The uprights already standing are dug out. They are set down on the ground. The crosspiece is fitted into its grooves and bound in place with strips of skin. The newly made piece is placed near the holes where the uprights will be planted. Strips of skin are tied around the crosspiece so that some will fall on one side and some on the other when the entire piece is upended.

Thorp oversees the men. They begin to pull the piece upward. The men on one side pull while the men on the other play out the strips of skin until the piece is upright. To keep the piece from falling backward or forward each man holds his line taut.

Together the two uprights with the crosspiece stand very tall and wide. It is very heavy and the men who hold it upright use all their strength to keep it from falling. Thorp and several other men slowly move the bottom of one of the uprights toward the hole where it will stand. Thorp calls for the men at the lines to give him slack or to tighten their hold.

The bottom of the upright moves out over the edge of the hole a bit at a time. Then suddenly it falls in the hole. The lines are torn away from the men holding them. The piece creaks and groans and then falls forward. The sides of the notches on the uprights splinter. The crosspiece tears itself away from the uprights, and then it rolls free.

I rush forward to see if Thorp is hurt. His arm is badly scratched. None of the other men is injured. Thorp looks at the three pieces of wood and, shaking his head, he says, "I did not think that would happen."

I do not know what to answer and so I keep silent. Over and over again Thorp tries to set the uprights and the crosspiece in place. He can think of many different ways, but he cannot do it. Some thing always goes wrong'

Most of the summer passes. Thorp makes another attempt to set the uprights and the crosspiece into place. At his command , men move the bottoms of each upright. None goes beyond the other. When most of the bottoms are over the holes, other men cut the remaining earth out from under them. They slide easily into the holes.

The men Bee what has happened. They begin to shout. The holes are quickly filled with earth. To make it more secure, rocks are set around the base of each upright. Then at Thorpe's order the men holding the lines let go of it. It stands alone' It stands'

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT COURSE July 1981

Workshop IV ­ Back­up

ANCIENT OF DAYS PROSE

Through it I can see the place where I first marked the light of the sun. Now when the sun reaches its end and its beginning, when its light touches the tip of my meeker, it will flash yellow midway between the two uprights and midway between the crosspiece that sits above them and the earth into which they are set.

"It is the beginning," I say to Thorp. "The Beginning." he shakes his head and answers, "No Ronstrom ­ the beginning was many summers and many winter ago when you stood in your great stag robe with your crown of antlers on your head and told us you would give us meat." Thorp waves his hand in front of him. Its movement takes in what he has just set into the earth. "The meat was the promise, the bait. But that," he says, 'and the others we will build was always its purpose." I nod.

"And yet," he says softly, "we cannot name what we build and do not know its purpose or even why The Giver of Life would have us build it."

Again I nod, I have often had the same thoughts though I never spoke of them to anyone. I had led a people ­ my people ­ from the forest to the plain. All that I have done has been done in order to build what no man before has built. And now that I see the first part of it standing I know no more about it than I did when I first saw it on the altar of the cave so very long ago.

Word of Thorp's work spreads through the encampment. The people flock to see it. Though none of them knows its purpose, they all marvel at it.

At night when the sky is alive with bits of flickering light, I leave my hut and walk to where the two uprights and the cross­pieces are. Though it stands because of Thorpe's work, I run my hand over the rough wood and realize I too, helped make it stand.

The moon comes up full and white. The light from the moon is very bright. The shadow of the uprights and the crosspiece is huge. My shadow, too, is high, almost as big as a giants.

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT COURSE CONVERSATIONS
I INTRODUCTIONS	1. Give your name and the community you were born in. Who can I name the people on this side of the room? 2. Give your name and the community you are living in now? Who can name the people on that side of the room? 3. Give your name and say what fascinates you about your local community. 4. What is your greatest concern about community today? 5. What is the biggest struggle in developing local community?
II SPACE	1. Present a drawing of some community. Point out the landmarks, housing, main roads, symbolic places, gathering places, shopping area, schools, recreation areas, garbage. 2. What do you notice? 3. Where would you add something? 4. Where would you move something? 5. How would you ease the traffic flow? 6. How make the place more pleasant? 7. What is the key to this living environment?
III TIME	1. Draw an outline of a week: 7 days with four side Categories­­norning, afternoon, evening and night. 2. Put in black the time you sleep; in blue, your work time; in red, meal time; in yellow, family time, and white for other time Put each one on the wall. 3. What colour covers the greatest amount of space? The least amount of space? No space? 4. In order to spend more time with the community, what would you change? 5. What have you learned about time today?
IV ENGAGEMENT	1. Once in a flood, people worked 20 to 22 hours a day for 3 days filling sand bags. In one harvest season my family worked from 3 a.m. to 10 or 11 p.m. for 2 weeks. When have you seen people work like this? 2. What kinds of situations do people engage in like this, besides crisis? 3. What is in these situations that allow people to work like this? 4. What are the elements of this kind of engagement? 5. How can a village engage the people fully in doing development? 6. What would you have to do to have your community fully engaged?
V EVALUATION	1. Context: this is a new course we are teaching around the globe, and are always trying to improve. Value participants wisdom. What do you remember from this course? ~ 2. What was most helpful? 3. What would you do differently next time? 4. When you meet someone and they ask what you were doing, what will you say about this week­end? 5. What is the first thing you intend to do when you return to your local community?