A World Without Answers

/

"The Swarm master coaches, 'Loosen all attachments to the sure and certain.'"
Kevin Kelly, Out of Control, Hive Mind, page 25

It used to be we could rely on answers. If we did not know the answer, we could ask our parents, or a teacher, consultant, expert, the government, etc. All of our lives we have passed or failed tests because we knew or didn't know the right answer. We competed, climbed to the top of our class or corporate ladder and got tenure because we published answers that gave instruction to others.

The deeper I get into complexity science the more I come to know that looking for answers is often a hinderence to my learning. Complexity is about processes and patterns and these are recursive, iterative and adaptive! I do feel like Alice must have felt at times. How do I know what I know? Where am I on the certainty level?

"'It was much pleasanter at Home,' thought poor Alice. 'when one wasn't always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit hole..."
Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

Read More

Diversifying Diversity

/

Inevitably, at any community event focused on catalyzing change or improving the quality of life within the community, "diversity" - and the lack thereof among the existing body of participants - is pointed out as a key ingredient in success - or failure. I found this to be true whether the group gathered numbers five or 50, and whether the participants know each other or are new to one another. "Diversity," as I hear it used in these instances, refers pretty much exclusively to race, ethnicity and gender. Occasionally, age and economic status are included.

Acknowledging the essential role that these kinds of diversity play in community building and collaboration, other means of identifying and cultivating diversity may have an equally important place. Indeed, diversities are like dimensions - they exists in multitudes, yet at any given moment, we typically 'see' only a few. In addition to those mentioned above, a few lenses of diversity that come readily to my mind and seem important to a communities self awareness and ability to transform include: kinds of intelligence, family size, work/job experiences, time lived in the community and places traveled to outside the community. Granted that on a national or global scale, these measures of diversity may not cut as deep into what makes a person who they are, I believe at the level of local communities, measures such as these provide context and information that can be every bit as critical to catalyzing change.

 

Department of Peace

/

 (10) We are in a new millennium, and the time has come to review age-old challenges with new thinking wherein we can conceive of peace as not simply being the absence of violence, but the active presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of the human awareness, of respect, trust, and integrity; wherein we all may tap the infinite capabilities of humanity to transform consciousness and conditions which impel or compel violence at a personal, group, or national level toward developing a new understanding of, and a commitment to, compassion and love, in order to create a `shining city on a hill', the light of which is the light of nations.  ~H.R.2459  To establish a Department of Peace. (Introduced in House)

Yes! Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the environment.  In deed, Gore has opened the door for all people throughout the world to switch from exploiters to stewards of Planet Earth.  His title for his work, The Inconveinient Truth is brilliant. The fact that he combined words with images, art and science, the macro and the micro works to embed a new awareness of our responsibilities.  It isn't that his ideas are perfect, or 100% correct that matters to me. What matters to me is that new possibilities can now spill forth into reality ... Gore, and certainly others, have provided us with a new search image.  Now, we see and realize things within a much different frame.

Read More