Global Research Centrum: Chicago,RL, Social Methods
School 12/13/74
In the last 2 days we have been building the 21point
vision, or the Operating Vision. We have emphasized the last component
of tactical thinking, systematic implementation, in this school.
We have used the terminology of miracles, framing and structural
catalyst. We have focused upon the methodology of contradiction
analysis or the designing of pressure proposals (I call them pressure
proposals simply because they attack pressure points and contradictions
at the same time.) The indicative tactics, or tactical system,
are the common format for the organizing of indirect actions,
which are the miracles.
Miracles are the most indirect actions you can think
of. Miracles are the signs, the catalytic events, which are not
out to care for the world, but to enable people to care for the
world. Miracles illustrate the effectivity of indirectionover
and over again. Tactical thinking is built upon the philosophy
of indirection. Corporate action and motivity are also built on
indirection. All of these have to do with the effectiveness of
indirection.
In creating the practical vision and moving through
the analyses, proposals and tactical steps, you arrive at a plan
for miracle implementation. This miracle implementation becomes
your common model. Going through the process of practicalizing
that miracle system gives a group a common model. Modelbuilding
is a separate process as well. Although transformation of the
miracle timeline, or the tactical system into an operational format
is a modelbuilding process, it is a different type of process;
a separate endeavor. It is done to practically implement the model
in your situation. But the key to that modelbuilding process
is corporate action.
If a corporate group does not stand behind your timeline,
it becomes just another set of good ideas. If the practical who,
where, when is not a part of your plan, you will have another
abstract plan for community development at best. Therefore, the
models of working together, the methods of acting together, and
the methods of thinking together all become important. In other
words, we do not make all the plans look alike, but we do want
the plans to have a common impact.
The RS1 teaching system is an example of corporateness
and impact. RS1 has a common curriculum around the world. It has
a common format, common methodology and common faculty training.
It has a common setup design. That is its power. We are here today
because of the impact of that global teaching net, and the teaching
of corporateness.
We decided to put another torpedo into this fantastic
teaching network about three years ago. We called it LENS. Within
2 years, we had another course with a common curriculum, taught
by the same faculty in the same cities around the world, in every
continent except China and Russia. The impact of corporateness
is a revolutionary tool. We must not forget this fact.
This corporateness is not achieved through a hierarchical
organization of regimentation from the top down. It is not accomplished
through an authoritarian corporate image. It has been achieved
by a rational horizontal polity. Our corporateness is built on
standing shoulder to shoulder and on balanced participation. In
other words, we teach RS1 on every continent or we do not teach
it anywhere at all. This policy allows corporateness to create
a horizontal impact. Your corporateness is your glue.
A simple word like that may seem pedantic to old revolutionaries like yourselves. However, the rational ordering of the corporate structure is the glue that holds us together. We are the RS-I format, commonly. We are the LENS methods, internally. Our glue is not different from our corporate structures, and this gives us unbelievable flexibility. It gives us unbelievable adaptability. We can assign teachers from different parts of the globe to teach the same course together as if they had been doing it for years. It gives us mobility. It gives us hit and run ability as well as stability in the midst of that. And the basis of that is our corporateness.
There is corporateness in tactical thinking; it builds
corporateness, obviously. We also isolate it and call it corporate
action. We also have corporate motivity which has to do with motivation
of the group. These are criteria for our corporateness.
We can talk about this corporateness in many ways.
It has to do with the social process and the methods we use. It
has to do with knowledge access and enabling each of us to put
our wisdom into the total corporate effort at any time. It is
how we structure ourselves and how we enable individuals to have
access to the body of corporate wisdom.
Our bureaucratic system is a gift of the 20th Century.
The problems and the pitfalls attached to bureaucracy exist for
us too. As we expand, these pitfalls will become more treacherous.
You destroy the evils of bureaucracy by making it global . In
relating any bureaucratic system to the globe, you destroy the
blocks to and the impediments within that bureaucracy.
What would happen to the bureaucratic system of a
library, for instance, if you distributed check in and check out
systems for it all over the world? You would have to revolutionize
the entire check out system from the ground up. We cannot do without
bureaucratic systems. But we must keep them global in intent.
Corporateness allows us to make decisions together. Corporateness
is directly related to polity. Therefore, knowledge access and
the bureaucratic structures must be open to every man, so that
decisions are informed
Our way of organizing ourselves also relate to corporateness.
Corporate action and tactical thinking are related as two sides
of the same coin. The integrity of corporate action turns on and
is intimately tied to tactical actualization. Do you see what
I am saying? I put my life and blood into deciding what is wrong,
write down exactly what needs to be done, and then file it. This
is not integrity. Integrity means doing the plan. Integrity of
corporate action is based upon doing. Corporate action must synchronize
with tactical thinking and planning. Therefore, corporate decisionmaking
is a continual process.
After you do tactical thinking, your deep decisions
are made. It is then a matter of implementing those destinal decisions.
Corporate style what you have to be, to do and to
know depends upon what is necessary to pull off your
tactics. Finally, corporateness is the only thing that allows
completion of your tactical system. Even if you tried to pull
off the tactics yourself, you would end up being corporate. The
only doing that is possible is corporate doing. We are not discussing
something removed from life. We are talking about the way society
operates, the way people interact, and methods of systematizing
that reality.
We come at life sociologically, not psychologically.
You are your relationships to other people. You are your relationships
to the structures of society. What you do with those relationships
and in those structures, determines who you are. That is your
integrity. You are what you do. What you do is corporate Your
integrity, therefore, depends upon intentional doing.
Corporateness, however, carries with it much broader
implications. You never criticize your colleagues in corporate
action, although it is sometimes necessary to call them into question.
In corporate action, you never criticize the administration although
it is sometimes necessary to call that administration into question.
Furthermore, in corporate action you do not criticize history,
although it is necessary to ask why certain things have happened.
The actions of your colleagues and the administration
and the action of history is your action. This is what corporateness
means. That was my administration that flubbed last time, even
though I voted Democratic. This is the only action I know about,
and I am responsible for it. Corporateness is like the air we
breathe. Our only question is how to deal with it, how to order
it and how we organize it in a powerful way, We are dealing with
deep resolutions which people have made, but are only now beginning
to be articulated. Corporate action will empower these resolves.
We must be ready to organize in the deepest sense
of that word. There have been too many highly motivated groups
of people in history who have not participated in resurgence.
World War II is a powerful example of this. The genius of Hitler
was in depth motivity. The man was a genius with symbols. He used
them to motivate a whole nation. He motivated and corporately
organized the entire nation. I would submit that while he was
a good tactician, he had not done his tactical thinking within
this process. If you let tactical thinking loose, it is like Pandora's
box. You have to be ready with the instruments of corporate action.
You have to be masters of the tools of corporate manipulation,
with the techniques and the instruments of corporate style.
Many corporate groups in history are not known by
their action but by their style. Coming at style, the instruments
of corporateness have to do, of course, with corporate brain picking,
corporate writing, corporate conversations, and corporate decor.
You have heard all this before.
Corporateness, finally, is motivated by care. Structures
and instruments of corporateness are utilized only in order to
care. Accountability is in the context of corporate care. Enablement,
when you work in the kitchen, is in the context of corporate care.
Corporate celebrations occur when they are missionally necessary
and corporately wise, not because it is the 4th of July. The first
criteria for celebration is always mission. That means we can
have more fun than anybody, because we have so much mission. The
spontaneity that we have could not operate effectively without
the missional corporateness that we have as well.
Corporateness has nothing to do with meetings. Meetings
exist for the sake of checking with task forces and problemsolving
units. Every meeting is either a collegium or a plenary. Now,
for some people, corporateness has to do with meetings. You have
to keep meeting all the time so that you can sustain corporateness.
Meetings are only for the sake of enabling the corporate task.
The agenda is designed to use corporate methods and allow corporate
decisions and corporate style to bring off the implementaries.
We are probably more gifted in the arena of corporate
intellectual methods because that was the first arena of our work.
But knowing is only for the sake of doing. In corporate action,
your methods are only for the sake of bringing off that tactical
system. Your methods of corporate action, though, are indirect.
What do I mean by indirect, corporate methods? Just as tactical
thinking is interspersed with intuitive gaps, the corporate methods
all have techniques to release intuitive thinking as well as analytical
thinking. Intuitive thinking has been dormant for at least 300
years in Western civilization. We are trying to discover new alternatives.
But we are not going to logically reach those. Logic would bring
us into doing the same solutions to the same problems again.
Contradiction analysis is designed to come up with
new problems. Why come up with new ones? Don't we have enough
old ones? We intend to find the underlying contradictions to the
old problems. This is a new articulation, and therefore a challenge.
Also, it is motivational, and therefore corporate. Each of those
is designed in some way to release the imagination. We are talking
about releasing intuitional thinking, imaginal thinking and contemplative
thinking. The genius of our planning is that contemplation is
at its base.
The same is true of corporate action. The dormant
ideas, the latent ideas, and the unconscious ideas are the base
upon which consensus has to be built. When you create a group
to study a problem, they come back with a hundred recommendations.
Then you bring in various groups and see what they can agree upon.
You find that all agree on 10% of the recommendations. Therefore,
90% of that study is tabled as old business. These intuitive processes
are designed to get that hidden business on the table as soon
as possible. And what you are consensing on is "beyond our
ancient prejudices".
The corporate decision has already been made. The
corporate decision process is build ways for us to trust our intuitions.
There is a process built into logical thinking which calls itself
into question. A corporate decision is made by objectifying these
intuitions and trusting them. You cannot do that by yourself.
It has to be done corporately.
You know that the total power of the corporate group
is far beyond the sum total of its parts. This is right in the
sense that it is the power you rely upon to trust the intuitions
of the group. By yourself, you would not trust anyone in the room.
You wouldn't even trust a segment of the group. Thinking of new
people, who have just been recruited. Unless they participate
in this corporate action, they have no way to give themselves.
There is no way for them to allow their intuitions to be their
guides. Therefore, there is no way for them to decide to participate.
The next step is to symbolize that. We have many
ways to do that: celebration, singing, pictures, decor. That consensus
then is what moves you on. Symbolizing that consensus to act corporately
forms not an ideal, but the real story of the group. The revolution
marches on its story; nothing else. The story is the primary symbol
of intensified global engagement You do not say "Let's all
get involved in the globe." You come at this through consensus
held in your story, and put into action in your parish. Global
engagement is what we are after. We intend to create involvement.
We are after the directed engagement which throws
us back against the practical vision. The practical vision is
clarified through the posture of intensified engagement. There
is no idealism, Pollyanna-ism, or useful "hopeism".
The practical vision comes out of tactical actualization. The
practical vision can only be seen when you are in over your head
in tactical actualization. Everything else is good ideas.
Tactical thinking cannot go on without corporateness.
Without corporateness you cannot do the tactics. They work with
one another. A human being's journey happens in the midst of corporate
decisions and in the midst of the corporate style which cares
for individuals, as well as a group. This process is built on
the corporate methods that are the stated procedures and common
approaches which you introduce to a group before they can become
corporate.
As you use these methods together, you can see that
a human being starts a journey in corporate action, and only in
the midst of corporate action. Nurture for the soul happens only
in a corporate body. Genuine, authentic selfhood explodes only
in the midst of the corporate. There are some geniuses who have
made great, individual contributions. But we are after the corporate
genius, made up of the individuals, which is far greater than
any individual genius. Authentic acceptance only happens why you
mix your own creativity with others in corporate action. We have
discovered the happening of acceptance occurs only in corporateness.
I think Tillich would understand that, based upon paragraphs 13,
14 and 15. Acceptance occurs when you are working with someone
else.
Acceptance is not experienced when you are like a
log in the midst of a great forest. If you grasp yourself as a
stump in the road, you only create a log jam. It happens when
you are mixing your creativity with other creativity, which you
cannot sort out on the other side of mixing, then saying "Look
what we did!"
Authentic reconciliation takes place only in corporate
action. Have you ever been part of a group with conservatives
on one side, liberals on the other, which actually consensed on
a proposal. Everyone wonders how it happened. The answer is through
corporate action.
The genuine human journey takes place within a corporate
body and within corporate action. All our methods create a tensionfilled
process in which depth creativity can come forth. In this school,
we are systematizing those creative, tensional situations so that
we can use the methods, use the decisionmaking and so that
we can be the ones who use style in some intentional way.
There is a relationship between corporate action
and this modelbuilding process. Without a common model,
you won't have corporate action. You have to have corporate action,
or finally, you do not come up with a model. This is the strange
nature of a consensus. A consensus is always invisible. A consensus
is like a surprise; it is never what you thought it was going
to be. A consensus, especially as consensustaking, is sheer
symbolism. This is what I mean by symbolize consensus.
Clearly, it took more than one person, or even several
of us, to build the social process model. We had to have a corporate
body to do this. In other words, you and I are training ourselves
in such a way that we do not do anything until a thousand minds
have looked at it. This is not procrastination. This is the nature
of the movement. Unless task forces have experimented, and unless
there is a consensus from every continent, we do not move. And
that is our gift. That is our power. When we do throw the switch,
the fulcrum of the planet turns just a little bit.
Before we get too heady, I am reminded that we are
beginning to recover a Hebrew posture in life. I use theological
categories only in passing here, because I believe they are helpful.
The posture of the Hebrew was to obey the power of God, not his
own power. The posture of the Hebrew was to obey the waves of
history, as opposed to, but not negating the Greek posture of
realizing a vision. We are not interested in realizing any vision.
We are interested in obeying the deep currents in history. We
are not interested in realizing some great virtue for ourselves
or for the corporate body. We are interested in obeying the spirit
of God. We are interested in responding and moving. We are interested
in the linear concept of doing. We are interested in the doing
which is obedient to the eventfulness of history. We are interested
in doing to the degree that it is obedient to God and his action
in the world. We are interested in the action of the People of
God.
Rick LoudermiIk