[Oe List ...] archives

Sat Nov 21 16:55:53 CST 2009

Another sort of triangulation...a quote from an old IAF colleague, 
Sandy (Sandor) Schuman, Director of the Program on Strategic Decision 
making at the Center for Policy Research at the University at Albany, SUNY,

"Meaning is all we want.
Choices are all we make.
Relationships are all we have."

The three play well with the Social Process Triangles. Sandy has a 
been a colleague in spirit since early days of the IAF. I don't 
recall that he ever had a connection to the ICA. Troxel may remember. 
He was in on the creation of and edited the IAF professional journal, 
Group Facilitation: A Research and Applications Journal and edited 
Creating a Culture of Collaboration and The IAF Handbook of Group 
Facilitation, plus a whole lot of other things. He has been involved 
in environmental dispute, conflict resolution and environmental 
management and policy issues for a long time.

I think this piece from his website is interesting...
"Sandy Schuman has been helping organizations work more effectively 
to solve complex problems and make critical decisions for more than 
thirty years. He is a group facilitator, collaborative process 
advocate, and storyteller. He helps groups create shared meaning, 
make critical choices, and build collaborative relationships. He 
facilitates problem-solving and decision-making processes for a wide 
variety of public management and policy issues and provides training 
in group facilitation, decision making, systems thinking, conflict 
management systems, information management, and organizational storytelling."

If Living Legacy work at some point involves a triangle psu/think 
tank/big chat, it would be good to have folks like Sandy involved, 
who are outside our "system".

Beret

At 03:26 PM 11/21/2009, you wrote:
>Jack, Herman, and everyone,
>
>One of the most important phrases in the statement by Joe that Marge 
>found is, "Society is relationships..."  I think we could go one 
>step further and say, life is relationships.  When we did the social 
>process triangles we worked hard on the internal dynamics and, as an 
>afterthought (or so it seemed to me), we drew those arcs outside the 
>triangle showing how each of the three major poles related to each 
>other.  I'd have to dig to remember what they were.
>
>If we did some kind of universe triangle today, we might put the 
>human community on one pole, the other-than-human or natural 
>community on another and the earth community on the third (Herman, I 
>think these might be Thomas' categories), or whatever they may 
>be.  But here's my point.  It seems to me the arcs outside the 
>triangle showing the relationships of the various parts to each 
>other may be more important, than the sub-levels inside each triangle.
>
>Just a thought,
>Randy
>
>--- On Sat, 11/21/09, Jack Gilles <icabombay at igc.org> wrote:
>
>From: Jack Gilles <icabombay at igc.org>
>Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] archives
>To: "Order Ecumenical Community" <oe at wedgeblade.net>
>Date: Saturday, November 21, 2009, 1:59 PM
>
>Herman,
>
>I have done some work on this question.  I said to myself that the 
>'foundational process' is what I called The Natural Process but I 
>think Earth Process would work as well.      On the right side I had 
>the Social Process, the 'organizing process' and at the top I had 
>the Human Process, the 'meaning process'.  I call the whole new 
>triangle the Creative Process, but there might be another name that 
>would be better.  I have worked through a couple of levels of the 
>the two new triangles but am not ready to share just yet.  A good 
>"research project" for the Diaspora!
>
>Jack
>On Nov 21, 2009, at 12:26 PM, Herman Greene wrote:
>
> > That's a good statement and worth archiving!
> >
> > Occasionally I muse on how to place the social process into the Earth
> > process. I haven't had a brilliant idea about this yet. One approach is to
> > have an Earth process set of triangles (like the carbon cycle, the
> > hydrological cycle, etc.) parallel to the social process. Another approach
> > is to have the Earth process in the middle triangle of the social process
> > triangles. Another is to redo the social process triangles to include
> > interactions with nature.
> >
> > I haven't really done much except muse about this. (One approach I saw that
> > I question is to apply the social process to nature--it's not entirely
> > unfruitful but it seems like an artificial imposition on the natural
> > processes rather than beginning with the natural process itself.)
> >
> > I wonder if anyone else has thought about this.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: 
> <http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oe-bounces@wedgeblade.net>oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net 
> [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf
> > Of Marge Philbrook
> > Sent: Friday, November 20, 2009 10:09 AM
> > To: Colleague Dialogue; OE list
> > Subject: [Oe List ...] archives
> >
> > I'm having fun trying to figure out my plan for the archives.  I just
> > found this note in Joe's handwriting.
> > "1.  The social process is a complex dynamic that involves the
> > inter-relation of the Economic processes (which maintain basic
> > existence); the Political processes (which provides social existence);
> > and the Cultural processes (which enables rational or intentional
> > existence.  Because the social process is dynamical in nature, none of
> > these separate processes exists in itself.  Each is dependent on the
> > others.  Society is relationships, when one part is malfunctioning or
> > tyranizing over the others society as a whole is ill.
> > 2."  There was no 2.
> >
> > So where should I file this? in B401 Joe's papers, or G1904 the Social
> > Process category which I just added to the list as I have gone over
> > material about researching the social process triangles.
> >
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