[Oe List ...] M.Fox & Ken Wilbur on Leadership
LAURELCG at aol.com
LAURELCG at aol.com
Thu Mar 3 17:34:36 EST 2005
Matthew Fox has moved to the position of president emeritous of Univ. of
Creation Spirituality. Jim Garrison is the new president, is auditing every nook
and cranny of practice, and is renaming UCS as Wisdom University. This has
caused quite a brouhaha in the graduate ranks, since we weren't consulted about
the change, and some hate it. This is part of Matt's response. (The
reluctance to take input has been an issue from the beginning.) Thought Wilbur fans
would find this interesting.
Some Thoughts on Leadership within a Creation Spirituality Context
by Matthew Fox
At this time of transition at UCS and in light of discussions about
leadership and participation, I feel it might be useful to suggest
some thoughts on these subjects for reflection and from a creation
spirituality perspective. I think an intellectual discussion of
these matters can benefit not only us but progressive movements in
general.
I have always understood true "authority" to come from the word
itself--authorship or creativity. Much of the sadness I have felt
around institutions in my lifetime has been the lack of creativity
(or true authority) therein and among leaders--or people who ought to
be leading.
Probably the place where I have most offered my view of leadership is
in the chapter on "Dancing Sara's Circle" in my book on "A
Spirituality Named Compassion." I make the point there that staying
close to the earth is preferable to climbing ladders and that circles
are better than ladders because in circles people relate eye-to-eye.
But I also point out that even circles need leaders and that leaders
ought to rotate--no one is 'leader for life'--and leaders and all of
us ought to be accessible for eye-to-eye contact, for debate,
disagreement and mutual sharing of opinions.
A few months ago, Dr. Ana Perez Chisti was leading a circle dance for
the MLA students at UCS/Naropa and I was part of the dance as I have
been of so many for the past 28 years. It was a bit of a struggle
getting started--learning the new steps and the new words (some of
which were in a foreign language)--but once we got it, it was a
wonderful and spirit-filled experience. I was grateful to Ana for
what she knew and for her perseverance in teaching us and for her
bringing a newly inspired dance to our circle and our school.
What if she had set up a committee to "process" the dance? All 33
people with 33 opinions on which steps should or shouldn't go here or
there? What a time-consuming mess that would have been!
I do not gainsay Ana her right and responsibility as our leader to
instruct us and lead us. Indeed, I thank her for it. After the fact
we can sit around and decide if we like the dance and if we wanted to
learn another and just how effective it was.
I think this is an ample metaphor for leadership in a creation
spirituality context. The 32 dancers in the circle need to presume
our leader knows what she/he is doing and give her/him our fullest
cooperation. Everyone has a role to play but not as leader. You
don't have 33 leaders; life is too short for that. Of course there
are different kinds of leaders: individuals have leadership roles to
play and so do groups or teams. And work together they must.
I want to offer two insights from the work of Ken Wilbur that I think
shed considerable insight on the process we are now going through. I
feel that our struggle is not just "ours;" it is something all
organizations are going through in this unusual time in history and I
believe Wilbur's reflections can help us to understand what is going
on and evolve in a more healthy fashion.
One insight concerns the word "hierarchy." The word "hierarchy" does
not come from "higher" but from "hieros" meaning "sacred". There are
nests of sacred beings and smaller and larger circles encompassing
all beings or "holons." Individual holons exist in "nested
hierarchies" or holarchies of other individual holons (eg., quarks to
atoms to molecules to cells to organisms). Social holons transcend
and include previous holans. As Whitehead put it, natural hiearchy is
holarchy.
(Abraham Maslow talks about the "hierarchy of needs" that individuals
undergo from basics of food and water through "self actualization"
itself. All levels affect the other levels but each level is also
distinct in itself and the seventh (self-actualization) is more
advanced than the other six--though all are interdependent--and it
incorporates the other six levels.)
This, I think, is important information for creating postmodern
institutions and leadership in them. UCS is not a place of anarchy.
Nor is it a Vatican style vertical hierarchy. But it does have
people working at different levels of influence and responsibilities
to contribute to the success of the whole. Circles within circles
one might say.
A ship may have 500 workers on it, each doing their necessary job in
contributing to the whole. But it does not have 500 captains. Or
even ten or five or two. It has one captain who, for better or for
worse, has the ultimate decision-making powers to be taken abut the
ship's direction with in-put and counsel from other experienced co-
workers and even outside experts. A University has a president (or
CEO); a COO or CFO who oversees administration and finance; and a CAO
(academic officer) as a minimum. And the board oversees the
president who ultimately is responsible legally and ethically for the
direction of the institution.
A second lesson worth discussing from Ken Wilbur's work seems most
appropriate for UCS students, faculty and employees. This concerns
the passage from "green meme" to the next level of development
(called "second tier"). Many people drawn to UCS come from the green
meme generation or mind-set. Ken believes that in the 60's and 70's
a "genuine revolution" happened because for the first time in history
a significant portion of the population moved from orange to green.
Ken describes the green meme in the following manner: The green memes
are those "cultural creatives" in all their diversity. Positively,
they brought on much of the civil rights movement, feminism,
environmental protection and health care freedom.
But the shadow side is that they tend to deconstruct rather than
reconstruct (killing something is much swifter than building it and
this is why ugly speech and gossip is so destructive); they set up
politically correct thought police; they dumb down education by
eliminating all grades and ranking; they are so overly sensitive to
not hurting someone's feelings that they squelch free speech; and
finally "Green has to have victims" and thus everybody is either an
innocent victim or a wicked oppressive force. A kind of "victim
chic" erodes self responsibility, demonizes much of life's messiness
and trivializes the real victims of real oppression, says Wilbur.
They hate 'hierarchy' so thoroughly that they also ignore holarchy or
any effort whatsoever in creating rankings or what I would
call "priorities."
Wilbur describes a meeting run on green principles runs like this:
everyone is allowed to express their feelings, which often takes
hours; there is an interminable processing of opinions, often
reaching no decision or course of action because to choose might
exclude somebody. Even though in reality not all views are of equal
merit yet the meeting is considered a success not if a conclusion is
reached but if everybody has a chance to share their feelings.
The healthy green is the 'sensitive self' that develops
multiculturalism, diversity movements, pluralism and more. As
advanced as the green meme movements have been, Wilbur sees them as
contributing to preventing an integral culture or the next level of
consciousness that needs to be born.
Unhealthy green takes things to extremes with a kind of "green
Inquisition that is now quite active in academia, both conventional
and even more so in alternative education." The next step or "second
tier" needs to be a both/and consciousness but greens are not good at
that. The reason why is that "green is not yet really integral or
really inclusive because it does not yet grasp holarchy and so it
cannot really create greater wholeness--all it can do is collect the
parts, to connect the parts into greater wholes which requires
ranking--worldcentric is better than ethnocentic is better than ego-
centric--but green just can't bring itself to consciously rank
anything, including worldviews, so it gathers everybody together and
then watches helplessly as those fragments proceed to tear each other
apart."
Are we at UCS in danger of "tearing each other apart?" I suppose
wherever humans gather that is a distinct possibility. I recall my
last conversation with our beloved faculty member M.C. Richards
before she died and she told me how she saw UCS as the reincarnation
of the Black Mountain educational experiment--but how she prayed that
we would "last longer" and not "tear ourselves apart."
Regarding hierarchies, Wilbur feels that "green denies holarchies
altogether--denies nested hierarchies and ranking of any sort. But
the one way atoms can be brought together into molecules is via
hierarchy. That is, there has to be some principle that is higher or
deeper than the isolated part in order to bring them together.
That 'deeper' or 'higher' glue is nested hierarchy (holarchy), and
without holarchy, you have heaps, not wholes."
I believe that important principles of creation spirituality such as
the Four Paths; deep ecumenism; the sacredness of creation or
cosmology; art as the prime language for mystical experience and
prophetic action have indeed kept us together at UCS for 28 years.
Perhaps another word for Holarchy is: Priorities. These are our
priorities and by returning to them we ground ourselves in our common
commitment.
Wilbur asks: Why is orange more advanced than blue, etc? "Because
each higher wave of development is more inclusive and more holistic---
moving from egocentric (purple, red) to ethnoentric (blue) to
worldcentric (orange, green and second tier) and second tier opens
directly onto pneumocentric or Kosmocentric. Each higher wave has
more consciousness, more care, and more compassion." (Clearly,
creation spirituality and wisdom are about pneumocentric and
kosmocentric awareness and action.) Yes, Meister Eckhart IS a more
solid mentor than, say, Augustine. He is more kosmocentric among
other things.
Wilbur believes that the greens are poised to enter the new stage
of "second tier" provided they can "move on." The next stage will
produce "integral medicine, integral education, politics, business,
spirituality, ecology, art." He believes many young people are
already there.
To me, this is where Wisdom University (and, yes, creation
spirituality) is well situated to provide a context and even a vessel
to promote this integration.
But for UCS and Wisdom University to fulfill its mission and promise
we cannot be stuck in green notions of disempowering leadership or of
ignorance of holarchy or of eternal processing of every proposal or
of wounded ego's or victimization trumping shared visions.
>From the start, UCS (and ICCS for 20 years previous) has declared its
mission to be to train mystics and prophets. Prophets are not self-
serving and do not wilt or attack others because their ego's are
bruised. They look at the bigger picture and pitch in. As did our
recent graduate and martyr, Dorothy Stang, in the Amazon. They grow
a thicker skin. Which is what spiritual practice including arts of
meditation should be helping us with. Our pedagogy needs to
accomplish this, for the world needs strong souls today.
Especially with a new president coming on board and with our moving
out of start-up to a new level of influence, I urge all members of
the extended UCS/Wisdom University community to support the future
and our new president by joining the new teams that are being
established to draw on group wisdom and to join the visioning
exercises being developed to move us into a more sustainable
existence. Hopefully this way we will become an ever more effective
vessel for helping our culture accomplish the same.
Thank you for reflecting on these matters with me.
(You can read more of Wilbur's thoughts by going to his 3 part
interview with Shambala magazine on his Web page.)
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