[Oe List ...] Salmon:Reflections on the Next Buddha

[William Salmon]

   AN INTRODUCTION TO AN EMERGING NEW SOCIAL COLLECTIVE PROCESS:
Towards a new spirituality
Reviewed by Dr. William E. Salmon
MUTUAL MINISTRY METHODS
A scholarly presentation by Michel Bauwens
“The Next Buddha Will Be A Collective”
Retrieved on April 1, 2008 at www.realitysandwich.com

Summary Statement: 
	This paper provides an introduction to an emerging new social collective process described as Peer to Peer global inter-personal and inter-spiritual influences discovered in the political, social, economic, and spiritual dimensions as a new human awareness. This subject is supported by practical demonstrations and illustrations through case studies. 

Reviewer’s Perspective: 
	My personal interest in this paper is for what it reveals about the worldview of Generation Y – those who came into young adulthood in 2005, or those born circa 1984. This interests me as a Christian theologian, and as a representative of my denomination that is struggling on how to address this cohort with the Christian gospel; how to apply a “Word” they can understand, or perhaps it is better said, how can today’s church address the Word that can be received by this unique generation. 
	This paper came to me through colleagues of the former Ecumenical Institute/Institute of Cultural Affairs and its servant-force the Order Ecumenical. This is my effort to respond to their need for an analysis and summary of this paper. 
	Admittedly, this paper is not an easy read. Evidently, it was written for a scholarly audience who are professionally aware of the author’s use of semantics and inside terminology. For example: “. . . triarchial division of organizational forms, and a quaternary structure of human relations;” “. . . alterglobalization movement is one expression. . . using a wide variety of micro media resources;” “. . . he confirms the equipotentiality principle;” or, “It is, after all, frightfully easy to be emancipated from ‘the world’ or to become one with a deity or ontological absolute and leave all the world’s grossly unjust social structure and practices. . . comfortably in place.” 
	Although, I must admit that after treating this paper seriously, the use of such special terms began to take on meaning. However, it was necessary to chart all 96 paragraphs (96 to 101 paragraphs, depending on how the reader treats some quoted materials), and then to write my own review of the paper; the results of which are shared here. Although this paper is seven page long, the reader can be thankful that this is not as long, nor as complicated, as the original 15 pages. The purpose of this summary is to clarify the message of this paper. 

Reviewer’s Conclusions:
	This paper is a powerful summary of the new thinking to be read by the established church, and other organizations seeking to communicate with a cohort group named Generation Y. Their world view is entirely different from all previous generations. It is not an easy task for those of us who are grounded in more familiar social formats. However, it is a necessary task when we wish to grasp the great gifts of this new human generation. Also, those who live as its representatives can benefit by reading this paper as a way to articulate what it is they so easy assume. Perhaps, such a reading will instill patience in them for those of us who wish to learn at their feet. 
A collective social process—
	This process is summarized in this paper as “Peer to Peer,” or P2P. This is a collective method that seriously addresses the social process itself in all of its aspects of the: Economic, Political, Cultural, and Spiritual. (From time-to-time I will use illustrations from the previous work of the Order Ecumenical [O.E.] as the “servant leadership” of both the Ecumenical Institute [EI] and the Institute of Cultural Affairs [ICA].) Those in the EI/ICA always included the Spiritual under the umbrella of the Cultural Dynamic. 

A profound shift is decision making---
	The point the author makes is that the most common understanding of decision making is that of marketing a spiritual commodity; the church is out to sell its view of religion. The perspective of this author marks a shift in the focus of decision making to that of a global and decentralized organization forging peer to peer relationships. The mode of decision making is non-authoritarian, transparent and utilizes self-selection of tasks to accomplish an event or goal. 
Spirituality is participatory—
	Because of the participatory nature of spiritual examination, the result is a new value system, and a new understanding of reality and truth. Reality becomes apparent through the collective, or synergistic insights and wisdom of the group. Those in the OE/ICA will recognize this as consensus methodologies, or the “power that lies in the center of the table,” and all of our other corporate participatory methodologies. 
Organization of this paper---
	The first 40 paragraphs define the new social collective process that Bauwens describes as “Peer to Peer Relationships.” The next 40 paragraphs are two praxis (what is the plural of praxis?) that introduces the work of John Heron and Jose Ferrer as illustrations of those utilizing these principles. 
	From paragraph 61 to 78, the author introduces new material. This is the discovery of the “We.” In this section I summarize his work as, “The Spirit-Individual viewed in relationship;” “The Self Identified;” “How the individual is created in global relationships.” 
	The rest of the paper is five case studies that illustrate or illuminate the philosophy and the theology (theosophy?) put forward by Bauwens. 
	
	Read on!

A summary of the paper’s chart:
I.	An introduction to a collective social process
A.	A profound shift in decision making
	Michel Bauwens notes that the new thinking has shifted from a context that regards decision making as the method of marketing some kind of consumable commodity and has shifted to decision making that is global, decentralized and peer to peer. He assumes that our religious formats are embedded in our social structures. For example: tribal forms are based on an egalitarian experience of kinship relations. This is different from our traditional forms that are based on hierarchal structures. The author illustrates the old form of consumable commodities as the Protestant Reformation, democratic urbanization, capitalism, and New Age religion. 
	The new organizational forms in contemporary society are evolving in P2P relationships that follow the image of The Star Pattern that can be characterized as decentralized and utilize volunteer networks. In this pattern he observes four relational typologies: Equality Matching—such as those among the American Indians in finding their significance in a pattern of giving, or in the pattern of the Jews as an obligation to return both good for good and bad for bad; Authority Ranking – such as experienced in the feudal systems; Market Pricing – in which there is a neutral exchange of value; Communal Sharing – where the value is placed on the Common Good. 
B.	The emergence of the Peer To Peer Format (P2P)
	The author explores in this section of his paper how a shift in our world view determines a new form of the Social Process he identifies as the economic, the political, cultural and spiritual. 
	Those in the EI/ICA will recognize the work we did in the1960’s and ‘70’s on the New Social Vehicle and the New Religious Mode. I mention this here because it is the contention of this reviewer that the social and religious research accomplished by our organization was on the cusp of what is now being recognized as the elements of a whole new way of thinking. What the EI/ICA lived, and taught, was a practical illustration of what this author is now illuminating. 
	Bauwens identifies three forms of Political movements: These are (1) Peer governance; (2) Collective choice; (3) Open and Free Raw Materials that the author identifies as (a) open participation; (b) open production; (c) open governance. 
	Within these three movements he identifies three powerful dynamics: These are (i) To be open and free is illustrated in the Free Software dynamic, Open Yoga, and Open Reike; (ii) to be participatory is illustrated in the spiritually oriented “Peer Circles;” (iii) A concept the author calls Commons Oriented that is illustrated in the dynamics of community vs. individualism. 
	This New Mode is characterized by two interesting concepts. 

Equipotentiality – In paragraph 17 he writes: 
At the root of the different functioning of peer projects is the concept of equipotentiality. . . It means that human beings are not ranked according to one criteria, or as a totality, but that they are considered to consist of a multitude of skills and capabilities, none of which is itself being better than another. 
	The author summarizes by making two points. First that people are too complex to be able to predict who can do the job. Second, from this position, people choose the tasks for which they feel qualified. 

Holoptism – Total Transparency – In paragraph18 he writes 
The answer is to couple distributed [ed:communal] control to this distributed [ed:communal] production. This concept can be called communal validation, and differs from the still credentialist peer review process in scientific publishing for example. In addition, peer projects are characterized by holoptism [my underline], this is the total transparency of the project, and stands in contrast with the panoptism [my underline] of hierarchal projects. . . 
	The author characterizes these terms as: equipotentiality, anti-credentialism, self selection, and communal validation.

II.	A New Participatory Spirituality: Peer To Peer production of spiritual 	knowledge
A.	The challenge to the Market/Capital Society and the Democratic/Liberal Order
Ontology – 
	Human nature is connected. The author shares his belief than there is a deep change in human consciousness. The evidence of this is not based on altruism but on the personal intent in collective networks. The demonstration of this is found in “YouTude,” “Face Book,” and in Texting that is so ubiquitous today. 
Epistemology –
	The material universe is without an absolute framework in which everyone owns everything. Those in EI/ICA will recognize this in the axiom, “All the World, All the Good, and all The People belong to All of Us.” 
	It is in this context that truth is integrated. Perhaps, the parable of the blind and the elephant is appropriate. The more blind who are gathered around the elephant, the better and more comprehensive is their understanding of the elephant. 
Axiology –
	The value system of those living out of this new world view is based on the cooperation of all individuals. Peer production and Peer governance gives rise to new types of social movements. These the author characterizes as Open and Free, Participatory, and Commons Oriented. Those in the EI/ICA will recognize this in the work of 5th City located in the Chicago ghetto, and in the New Community Movements established around the globe. 
	At the end of this section, the author summarizes the new Participatory Spirituality as (1) having no absolute reference points; (2) supporting no objective reality because all is relational; (3) no fixed methodologies; (4) no proprietary approaches to spiritual knowledge because all the knowledge belongs to all the people; and (5) all knowledge is co-created.
 
	The author applies these principles in four ways:
a.	Equipotentiality: Enlightened people are those with maturing skills;
b.	Self-Selection:  All people are free to explore while building a collective spiritual freedom; 
c.	Common Validation: individuality is explored in a global context while choosing a variety of psycho-technology as appropriate to meet their needs, and noting there is no one single path to spiritual maturity.
d.	Holoptism: The world view operates with a new openness to different systems; the esoteric is no longer secret. 

B. 	Praxis I – the work of John Heron: the Relationship Principle
	Heron’s work is authored by J. Kripal.
	John Heron reviews eight characteristics of the Relationship Principle. These are:
1.	Interpersonal liberty that is not oppressive
2.	Liberating relationship restructure spiritual routes
3.	Individualistic modes do not engage with people, but require contemplative competence and physical fitness
4.	People cooperate to explore meaning
5.	Human ecosystems are rooted in an extended doctrine of rights
6.	Decision making is peer to peer
7	Honors the emergence of peer to peer associations
8.	Rotating hierarchy
	Heron adds the point that the spirituality of individuals is secondary to the development of a spirituality based on the global commons.

C.	Praxis II – the work of Jose Ferrer: Participating Spirituality through a revised 	transparent psychology
	Ferrer makes two points. 
a.	Participating Spirituality is a critique against Spiritual Authoritarianism.
b.	Ferrer’s works to reconstruct the vision of a participating spirituality. This is characterized as Intrapersonal cooperation (team oriented ending in solidarity and mutual respect), and Interpersonal cooperation (collaborative human interaction with the Mystery). 
c.	The third point Farrer makes by using an attractive metaphor of, “an ‘Ocean of Emancipation’ that all traditions approach from their different ontological shores.” (Par: 57B)

III.	The Discovery of the “We:” the primacy of rationality and the Collective Field
	Now we move back to Michel Bauwens where he identifies three tasks: 1st to articulate the relationship of the spirit to practice; 2nd to explore the shift in philosophical and sociological concepts of being human; and 3rd to explore the development in Intersubjective Space. 
	Those in the EI/ICA will be more familiar with the development of The Other World categories of the Mystery, Consciousness, Care and Profound Awareness. Others may recall the word done in the JHDP Collegium on, “The Dynamics of Justification (Humility as the reminder of our creatureliness), (Lucidity as our contingency), and (Freedom in being itself), and the dynamics of Sanctification (Universal Benevolence as not being left off the hook of our intended creation), (Radical Integrity as the endless care for the world), and (Endless Felicity as living as the peace-filled in the midst of the storms of life).
	Along the way, the author identifies The Inclusional Self. He characterizes this Self as (1) an autonomy that only is discovered in relationship; (2) the individual that is revealed only in the collective; (3) the self that is left standing after the overthrow of the Cartesian “subject/object” split. Of this the author writes: 
This whole change in ontology (being) and epistemology (knowledge), in ways of feeling and being, in ways of knowing and apprehending the word, has been prefigured amonst social scientists and philosophers, including the hard sciences such as physics and biology. An important change has been the overthrow of the Cartesian subject-object split. No longer is the “individual self” looking at the word as an object. Since postmodernity has established that the individual is composed and traversed by numerous social fields (or power, of the unconscious, class relations, gender, etc. . ), and since he/she has become aware of this, the subject is not seen (after his death as an “essence” and a historical construct had been announced by Foucault), as a perpetual process of becoming (“subjectivation”). His knowing is now subjective-objective and truth-building has been transformed from objective and mono-perspectival to multiperspectival. (Par. 72.)
	It is from this perspective that that author develops her appreciation of the New Self. In this way the individual is existentially created from the following experiences: (1) they see the world not as an object; (2) they operated in co-created “flows” of peer to peer relationships; (3) social exchange is experienced in the desire to create and to share; (4) and all experience the emergence of a “commons” in which there are no minorities; people sacrifice for differences; there is a concrete universality; and we need each other in order to lift up our differences (EI/ICA: in order to get all of the gifts of humanness into this Inclusional Self. (Italicized for emphasis.)

IV.	Five Variations on the theme of Peer To Peer Operational Systems
	At this point in the paper, and until he writes his final summary, Michel Bauwens provides us with five case studies. These are summarized as: 
A.	Common-oriented Approaches provided in the thinking of John Heron.
	These approaches involve integral relationships that are interconnected in mutuality and in the sharing of autonomous creativity. 
B.	“We” field through Peer Circles in the work of Mushin
	From these perspectives there are no leaders. This role is replaced by “Spiritual Facilitators whose purpose is to lead others to achieve autonomy. This writer utilizes this concept in his understanding himself as a Guide.
The “We” makes itself felt all over the world: The world and its problems have become so complex that we can only hope to find adequate answers in ‘circles’ of very different people where we can meet eye to eye and heart to heart –in a sort of collective leadership maybe. (Note: I find this statement awkward. It is my understanding that Mushin either means this as a conditionaI leadership, or, perhaps this is a typo in the paper. You decide. Par. 82.)
	My colleagues in the EI/ICA will recognize supporting this view in the development of the TOP methodologies, the global work to summarize “The Approaches the Work,” and the old LENS approach to working with global business and industry.
C.	Intersubjective Facilitation in the work of Bohm
	Bohm’s work is reviewed by Bauwens as using Open Listening to identify the areas of consensus and to identify the barriers to be unblocked by the group. Again, those in EI/ICA will recognize this principle in the depth of our Consensus Methodologies, Contradictional Analysis, utilizing the Collective Intelligence in collegiums and group think synergy, and in our Problem Solving Units. 
D.	Chaos religions on the Internet in the work of Remi Sussan
	Sussan presents us with the idea of the Post-Human Utopias that are found on the internet. This has roots in an Open Occultism that blurs both religion and the imagination using pop culture. One piece of evidence of this is now being explored as The Emerging Church format. 
	Those in EI/ICA will remember our writing of hundreds of theological/sociological songs utilizing popular tunes of our day (5th City Love Song, The Corporates), Human Development Project Songs (Kamweleni Song), and theological Love Songs (Free Am I, to the tune of “Summertime.”) In fact, the EI/ICA called their Children’s Program the “Emerging Generation.” 
	Sussan characterizes these religions as egalitarian, non-authoritarian, and support Non-order. Also, he supports the definition of an Ultra-Culture that applies magic to all the world, promotes the concept of an “Open City of mailing lists,” and the only connectional system that is both local and global. 
	(Personal Note: There are some global denominations that might dispute this claim. However, I can think of none that are non-authoritarian and/or intentionally promotes chaos—although that might be the result of some of our work.)
E.	Open Source Religions
	Bauwens summarizes the development of such religions as (1) those that utilize collective spiritual knowledge; and (2) supports self-determining decentralization. 
An example of failure--:
	The author notes an example that failed. This was Open Source Judahism. 
	However, the EI/ICA had their own experience of failure in The Local Church Experience. This took place in the mid-1970’s when we developed a project that invited several denominations to work cooperatively on how to serve their parish. (Personal Note: Primarily, the work collapsed by the heaviness of our own superstructure and the extreme demands onf time and energy. But blame also can be laid at the feet of the institutional churches who really are not willing to sacrifice autonomy for inter-sectarian cooperation. Maybe this is one reason why the church today fails to reach those within the world view explored in this paper. 

Summary of the Case Studies:
A.	The Case Studies make a contribution toward a contributing spirituality. In each case the tradition honors the truth yet critically examines the traditions for its truth. 
Discovering spiritual truth then, requires at least a partial exposure to these differential methods of truth discovery, within a comparative framework, but it also requires intersubjective feedback, so it is a quest that cannot be undertaken alone, but alone with others on the same path. (Par. 95.)
	Thus, the author of this paper summarizes the notion of discovering spiritual truth as requiring an exposure to (a) differing methods, (b) comparative frameworks, (c) Intersubjective feedback, (d) and inter-cooperation with others. All of this work involves a collective body of inquiry within spiritual communities. 
	This writer happily notes that such inquiry is now being conducted. It is his wish that more formal and traditional groups become aware of a process that we’ll need to learn. 
	
	God help us. 

Names of those mentioned in this paper (Perhaps these will one day be familiar –they are now not familiar to me.)
Allen Fiske – Quaternary relational typology
John Heron – Relationship Principle
Jose Ferrer – Common Ground and the increase of human spirituality
	Ferrer’s material is presented by J. Kripal
Simondon – Globality of Everything
Mushin – Spiritual Facilitation
Bohm – Consensus Methodology
Barb Livingston – Corporate Inquiry
Steven Wirthing – Contemplative Dialogue
Alman – Dynamic Triadic Inquiry
Remi Sussan – Post-human Utopias and the Internet providing New Forms of Religion
Jason Louv – Mass Interest for improving the world and Ultra-Culture
Douglas Rushkoff – the failure of Open Source Judahism 
Also, the Wikipedia is quoted authoritatively


Biography of Michel Bauwenss:
Michel Bauwenss (born 21 March 1958) is a Belgian integral philosopher and Peer-to-Peer theorist. He has worked as an internet consultant, information analyst for the United States Information Agency, information manager for British Petroleum (where he created one of the first virtual information centers), and is former editor-in-chief of the first European digital convergence magazine, the Dutch language Wave.
With Frank Theys, Bauwenss is the co-creator of a 3 hour documentary TechnoCalyps, an examination of the ‘metaphysics of technology’. He taught and edited two French language anthologies on the Anthropology of Digital Society.
Although a student of Ken Wilber’s integral theory for many years, he has recently become critical of aspects of the Wilber-Beck movement, and is a powerful voice for a non-authoritarian peer-to-peer based integral society.
Bauwens is the author of a number of on-line essays, including a seminal thesis Peer to Peer and Human Evolution and The Political Economy of Peer Production. He is editor of Pluralities-Integration|Pluralities/Integration newsletter.
He now lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where he created the Foundation for P2P Alternatives. He has taught courses on the anthropology of digital society to postgraduate students at ICHEC/St. Louis in Brussels, Belgium and related courses at Payap University and Chiang Mai University in Thailand.
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
PS:  	The Summary Chart can be downloaded from the attached pdf file as a 8.5 X 14 	document.
	Bauwens’ paper, itself, can be downloaded from the attached pdf file.







	
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