Some emails snatched from the ICA collegial dialogue during the last few years around or about the social process research and application.
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Whistle Points, Bill Salmon
On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:17:15 -0600 “William Salmon” <wsalmon@cox.net> writes:
Colleague,
Recently, we’ve said so much about the New Religious Mode charts, but nothing is reported on the Whistle Points associated with the Social Process triangles and the Triangle chart illustrating the collapse of the Social Process.
By-the-way, I used the SP triangles in Pre-marital counseling classes where the couple and I did a workshop of their Hope and Dreams and then located these on the 1st level chart and then named the clusters.
Very effective, and impressive I might add.
More recently, I’ve used the SP triangles and the image of the collapses with several groups and noted the Whistle Points as the way in which to restore our systems.
I’ve got some of the old Ecclesiola workshops on the 144’s, as well as some of the workshop pieces using the 144’s as Ecclesiola meditations. Still useful as they are universal.
Anybody doing anything with the 9 Whistle Points?
Pastor Bill
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Hi Bill,
After the symposium in Washington last November I started looking for a common framework that somehow pulled together many of the projects our OE/EI/ICA community shared in Washington. I came upon Jim Wiegel’s three paragraph explanation of the pressure points in the 1970s. I found myself thinking: yes those points have been our community-gathered and scattered- marching orders for close to 40 years now. And inclusive myth may be ready to burst forth on our planet.
Here’s the passage I found: The guides are the Pressure Points. Everything is not demonstration, just because someone may want to paint a chemical factory orange does not mean that would be helpful to the New Social Vehicle. When you have to decide between painting a chemical factory orange and a supermarket blue, how do you decide? How do we avoid a new activism? Through adhering to the nine Pressure Points, we will have our guides. The Pressure Points are the way in which we impact the social processes. After Summer ’71, we took the 385 proposals we wrote and related them again to the Social Process Triangles. We discovered that most of the problems in the Economic Process were healed either by the process called Anticipated Needs or by the Process in the Political called Bureaucratic Systems. That is, what the economic needed to get itself on the track was very simple: Long-range planning and some way of controlling its immense power.
Five of the Pressure Points appear in the Cultural Triangle, three in the Political and one in the Economic. This relates to our insights about the imbalances in the social processes. The Pressure Points are our map, our wave chart. These nine points are the focal points upon which the New Social Vehicle will be built. The NSV will be built in Inclusive Mythology, creating a story, a new mythology, a way of talking about what it is to be a human being in society. It is being hammered out through Formal Methods, discovering a new form of social responsibility, in people hammering out modes of effective action. It is being built in Community Groupings, where people are coming together to re-do local community, where people are giving new significance to engagement in the local. It is being built in Basic Roles, where people are crying that every human being participate and be engaged in society. The NSV is being built where people are looking for Knowledge Access, giving people the instruments they need to make decisions; it is being built when the Washington Post is exposing or not exposing what is going on in the world. It is being hammered out in Deliberative Systems, where people are inventing new ways of making decisions, of forming consensus, of creating grassroots polity. The New Social Vehicle is being hammered out in Bureaucratic Systems, where people are looking for ways to act effectively in society, where they are breaking through the morass of bureaucracy. It is being built wherever people are doing, planning and daring to anticipate the future.
The Pressure Points are our guide to audience. They tell us whom to impact, to deal with, to formulate, to break loose for the sake of breaking loose the whole of society. James Wiegel
Take care,
Jeanette
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The Social Process and the Other World were our greatest contributions to life in my mind.
Priscilla Wilson
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Hey Ken,
Shame on me. Yes, I did forget all that. What a massive effort. I imagine 50-100 houses and cadres were contributing something to the pre-summer program research. Actually, it was the relational “cloud” triangles that may have enduring value as ‘post-modern’ views of sociality are now taking hold in academia. Have to get that book by the Jenkins from Wayne.
And, indeed that was the most amazing summer I attended. There were so many of us, we had to bus over to Malcolm X College to find a room big enough to hold a plenary. The resurgence songs and the musical of the Purple Pumpernickel still dance in my head.
Don Hinklelman
Ken Fisher wrote:
Now Don, as a member of the Madison House at that time, I’m very surprised that you forgot our winter work that year. (Perhaps you haven’t.) It was to research Economic / Middle East / 1000 BCE to 4000 BCE (I’m not exactly sure of the dates.) In preparation for S’71 each House had a Social Process research project to cover the three primary aspects, the nine continents and 4 time frames. That would be 108 parts to put together the following summer.
The exciting part of our research was Sargon the Great, the inventor of currency.Truthfully, it was a marvellously amazing corporate research project. And the summer was equally marvellous.
Ken
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Don Hinkelman wrote:
Economic, political, and cultural are classic categories used in the social sciences (and especially in anthropology). Jon and Maureen Jenkins were cultural anthropology majors at the time, and contributed the most to the design and categories of the social process triangles during the preparation towards Summer ’71. I am sure the roots came from the Life Triangles, as well.
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Jim asked:
This is likely an old timer question. I was involved in working on
the social process triangles from January of 1971. Who knows
anything of their prior history?
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Tim wrote
I am quite sure I am not answering Jim’s question the way Jim wanted
it answered, but who says I’m limited by what Jim wants in answering
Jim’s question! <grin!>
The “Social Process Triangle” takes the form of a fractal called a
Sierpinski Triangle. The Sierpinski triangle (also with the original
orthography Sierpi´nski), also called the Sierpinski gasket or the
Sierpinski Sieve, is a fractal and attractive fixed set named after
the Polish mathematician Waclaw Sierpi´nski who described it in 1915.
See WIkipedia:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Sierpinski_triangle
I’d be curious to know if any of the folks who originated the Social
Process Triangle were aware of the geometric origins. I’m guessing
not. They certainly weren’t aware of the fractal nature of the
Sierpinski triangle, since Benoit Mandelbrot didn’t coin the word
“fractal” until 1975, even if SIerpinski described his triangle in
1915.
Tim
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Jim,
On early Triangle research:
There was a group as early as 1967-9 who worked on a Dynamic Sociology course. It was made up of mainly permeaters who were working in social work (Weren’t you in that group?). I think the motivation was to invent a course to bring in their colleagues in social work like the Imaginal Ed course was originally intended for teachers and schools. That taskforce had the eco, pol, cult. dynamics and may have even had the first level triangles. How much of that they invented or how much came out of the CS1 or Sociology and history I don’t know. I attended a few of their sessions as a commuter but it is now a blur. Then came the summer assembly that took the triangles down to the 7 or 9 level draft and then back to the consensus at four. Then my memory recalls Jim Wiegel managing the ecclesiola work on the dynamics of “supports, limits, and sustains”, and the documents on the relational arrows.
George
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Given what Steve and Wayne have shared, I wonder if a more apt description today might be “social system” rather than “social process.” “Process” seems to be a somewhat linear, one-dimensional word. “System” on the other hand, as it is used today, seems to indicate the web-like, dynamic inter-relatedness of all the parts into the whole, and allows for the nesting of other systems within the system, as with the various levels of the triangle. This might also fit nicely into “field” theory.
I was not aware that Boulding had worked in this area. The leading thinkers today are, I would submit, Peter Senge and Otto Scharmer.
Randy
— On Tue, 1/18/11, steve har <stevehar11201@gmail.com> wrote:
From: steve har <stevehar11201@gmail.com>
Subject: [Dialogue] Social Process Triangle Roots?
Date: Tuesday, January 18, 2011, 12:46 PM
I suspect the intelectual origin of the Social Process Triangles was with Kenneth Boulding.
I guess it is widely known that Boulding contributed 2 items to our “lore”
-the image theory regarding behavior change
-the invisible college
not widely known was that he was an originator of general systems thinking.
But, I guess he influenced the development of the triangles, something like this quote:
Partly, as Kenneth Boulding warned, we must be careful not to expect too much from a single theory. “General System Theory does not seek to establish a single, self-contained general theory of practically everything.” Such an attempt would be absurd. “All wúe can say about practically everything is almost nothing,” Instead, he suggests, that general systems theorists search for an “optimum degree of generality” for each level of abstraction. This optimum degree is not normally reached in classical scientific approaches. His contribution to hierarchy theory is a set of what he calls “levels of theoretical discourse,” quoted in “A Paradigm for Complex Systems http://n4bz.org/gst/gst9.htm
Raul Caruso, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Institute of Economic Policy has written about rediscovering his his “triangular theory” of social interactions http://works.bepress.com/raul_caruso/25/ [translate in google]
Lately, I’ve been studying on and off how the field has evolved. Lately there is a lot of new work constructing simple system models in software like iThink and Stella that are not static but dynamic -you can change a value in one place and it has an impact in other places something like a “pressure point”.
There is a lot of curriculum going on in elementary and high schools that replaces linear and static models with feedback loop logic, that have enough clarity that you can quantify variables and make charts of change in things like population. Here are some articles: http://www.iseesystems.com/Resources/Whitepapers.aspx
It will be interesting to see what John Eps has been working on in his Social Process Triangles workshop in San Antonio for the ToPs network.
—
Steve Harrington
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John Baggett said to me in an email message,
“When Joe started working on the social process triangles he went back and read Durkheim and Max Weber, who, I am confident, were old sources from his university teaching days. From Durkheim comes the notion of religious traditions and symbols mediating balance and homeostasis in society. Think of balance in the social process triangles. From Weber comes the idea of religious symbols generating social change. For example, capitalism was born from the Protestant ethic. Catholicism and the non-Christian world religions generated and supported other economic models. In other words there is a relationship between religious thinking, ethical living, and socio/economic processes. I think Joe, at some point, saw the new religious mode as providing the catalyst for a new social reality.
The social processes were part of the “Life Triangles.” I’m sure they are easy to lay one’s hands on. As John says, Joe saw a relationship – a web of them really, eh?
\\/
(Wayne Nelson’s Signature)
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“jfwiegel@yahoo.com” wrote:
social process triangles – prior history?
< > < > < > < > < >
Wayne Nelson – ICA Associates Inc
ICA – 416-691-2316 – – – Cell – 647-229-6910
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Colleagues:
Just to add another dimension to this discussion about SPT IP rights, Clancy Mann has used the Social Process triangles as the basis for a chapter in his book Borderless Business, and it’s the basis for a graduate business course he and I are teaching at University of Maryland University College. The chapter reference is: Clarence Mann, “Managing Country Risk” in Mann and Goetz, eds, Borderless Business: Managing the Far-Flung Enterprise (Westport CT: Praeger Publishing, 2006) pp. 166-192. In the chapter, Clancy provides reference to the ICA as originator of the triangles. He has also done a fine job of identifying country profile indicators, using the triangles at the 9-level. His work is an excellent job of using and building on our common wisdom. We’re in the process of trying to make the triangles the standard method for analyzing a country’s opportunity for business — it’s much more comprehensive than the existing models that come from Michael Porter. Our students are generally quite receptive to it. (One even commented, “This has made an edible mark on my soul.” English is not always up to par, even in graduate students!)
I hope we will keep our methods and insights open and accessible.
John Epps
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From: Richard & Maria Maguire <unfolding@smartchat.net.au>
To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe@wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Tue, November 24, 2009 6:27:48 AM
Subject: [Oe List …] Nature and the Social Process Triangles
At 06:26 AM 22/11/2009, you wrote:
Yes we have, and many other colleagues we know as well. But its not easy to do.
We notice that social process triangles speak directly about the natural world only is as a resource in the economic triangle.
Since the triangles are about the *social* process I find it difficult to put nature in directly. If I were to include the natural world it would be in a symbol that surrounds and interacts with the social process all over the place, or a large triangle of some sort with the social process as a sub triangle. The natural world is finally more powerful and durable than our human social world. We arise from it and utterly depend on it. Our Western technologists have only recently begun to realize what Indigenous peoples have known for a long time–our fate will very much depend on how we treat it. It almost seems that our attaining a healthy relationship with nature very much depends on our creating the balance in the social process that has been so important to us as the ICA. It is clearer than ever that economic overemphasis of the current society, even more blatant than in the 60s, is not only the source of great social injustice, but also damage to our natural world for which many people, and other species are paying dearly.
Another thought I have had is that nature plays an unspoken role within of the social process, particularly as a locus of meaning and significance, so especially in common religion, but also in wisdom etc. An awful lot of our political activity now has to do with the natural world as well. Maybe we should include this in our contexts.
Richard
> 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.
>
> –
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—–Original Message—–
> From: oe-bounces@wedgeblade.net [ mailto:oe-bounces@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.
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