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July 2009 
Grass roots collaboration - invisible integral
Posted on May 12th, 2008
by 
yeshe
yeshe
I just found out about Transitions - a grass-roots model adopted to respond to the twin challenges of Peak Oil and Climate Change. I am particularly impressed that their website is a wiki. What first caught my attention was the fact that they used Open Space Technology to host their annual conference. Not coincidentally, from the same source, I learned of a gathering of cultural creatives to be held in France, also to be hosted in Open Space format.
Across the Atlantic, the Food and Society movement, sponsored by the Kellogg Foundation, also held its 2008 conference using Open Space - among other techniques gathered under the banner of the art of hosting meaningful conversations. This was a very big gathering (600+ participants), bringing together people from the whole spectrum of food and society - as the name suggests. Since some of my friends were involved in the design and facilitation of the event, I followed with some interest and was impressed by the depth and breadth of the insights that emerged from the collective alchemy as these participative processes metabolised and presenced the system present in the room.
These are just three examples of mushrooming grass-roots practices that I read as symptomatic of the integral, peer-to-peer age that is emerging on our planet today. It is rare in 'conventional' integral circles (meaning communities gathering around the work of Ken Wilber and the Integral Institute) for this kind of thing to be recognised as 'integral', because there is no explicit reference to 'AQAL' (all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, all stages), and I yet I believe that it is an integral phenomenon, whether it is 'officially' recognised as such or not.
In my experience, these events tend to cover all the bases simply by dint of being participative and inclusive, so that what comes out of them is multi-quadrant, multi-level, multi-perspectival and yet integrated. But it's hard to appreciate just how much this is the case if you're looking in from the outside. It isn't until you experience them from the inside that you really grok how integral they are - without any particular individual or group deliberately holding any integral consciousness or design. That's how integral can truly be said to be an emergent phenomenon in the world (in my book): because nobody's orchestrating it.
Something that doesn't get enough attention (if any) in integral circles is the whole field of collective intelligence and collective consciousness (it tends to get dismissed as 'GREEN'). A few individuals with strongly developed consciousness coming together to 'hold a field' (it's the same phenomenon as darshan, I guess) can catalyze a 'normal' group to work at a heightened level of awareness quite systematically, in my experience. That's part of the prototyping we're playing with (unofficially, I need not add ;-)) inside the EU Commission - where there is a growing demand for these participative approaches, because they are so much more effective than the usual bureaucratic shenanigans.
Across the Atlantic, the Food and Society movement, sponsored by the Kellogg Foundation, also held its 2008 conference using Open Space - among other techniques gathered under the banner of the art of hosting meaningful conversations. This was a very big gathering (600+ participants), bringing together people from the whole spectrum of food and society - as the name suggests. Since some of my friends were involved in the design and facilitation of the event, I followed with some interest and was impressed by the depth and breadth of the insights that emerged from the collective alchemy as these participative processes metabolised and presenced the system present in the room.
Collective intelligence at work
These are just three examples of mushrooming grass-roots practices that I read as symptomatic of the integral, peer-to-peer age that is emerging on our planet today. It is rare in 'conventional' integral circles (meaning communities gathering around the work of Ken Wilber and the Integral Institute) for this kind of thing to be recognised as 'integral', because there is no explicit reference to 'AQAL' (all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, all stages), and I yet I believe that it is an integral phenomenon, whether it is 'officially' recognised as such or not.
In my experience, these events tend to cover all the bases simply by dint of being participative and inclusive, so that what comes out of them is multi-quadrant, multi-level, multi-perspectival and yet integrated. But it's hard to appreciate just how much this is the case if you're looking in from the outside. It isn't until you experience them from the inside that you really grok how integral they are - without any particular individual or group deliberately holding any integral consciousness or design. That's how integral can truly be said to be an emergent phenomenon in the world (in my book): because nobody's orchestrating it.
Something that doesn't get enough attention (if any) in integral circles is the whole field of collective intelligence and collective consciousness (it tends to get dismissed as 'GREEN'). A few individuals with strongly developed consciousness coming together to 'hold a field' (it's the same phenomenon as darshan, I guess) can catalyze a 'normal' group to work at a heightened level of awareness quite systematically, in my experience. That's part of the prototyping we're playing with (unofficially, I need not add ;-)) inside the EU Commission - where there is a growing demand for these participative approaches, because they are so much more effective than the usual bureaucratic shenanigans.
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No doubt that CI is under-estimated in integral worlds. (The ones which label themselves in such a way).
However I suggest then to extend CI to Blue, Orange and even red and purple too….(keeping at moment on hold what EnlightenNext is describing as third tier We Space)
A good example for coporate insights in these processes is the 2006 Innovation Jam in Beijing of IBM. To make sure not only grassroots are practicing it..):)
A.
Helen,
just a quick note: There wil be Community Conference in Berlin in JUne. Though I will be in Munich this time next tuesday a salon will be offered at self-germany.de where Kosha Anja Joubert and Francois Wiesmann -as organizers of the conference -present basic ideas about power o collective intellligence.
And I saw that Auke van Nimwegen from Dutch CHE is one of the speakers at the Conference. Thats good serendipity. I met Wiebke Koch and Frauke Godat from German Self already several times -lots to communicate:):) -and I am thinking about some synergy with emerging German CHE and the Hub.
Will update you, have a joyful weekend, invisible integral is such a HOT thing. Maybe one of the most decisive dimensions for the next years.
Best,
Albert
Hello Helen,
The question you are raising here about 'intentional' versus 'unintentional' integral practices is something I have been thinking a lot about lately and it was great to have your input! It does seem as though the natural movement of our culture is toward the integral - and at the same time there seems to be a real importance to claiming and intentionally striving for that as well. One thing I bumped up against in myself in Wilber's and also Andrew Cohen's work is the hesitation to stick my neck out, to be very visible, to back up what I know. I have to admit that part of my fascination with the ‚invisible integral' might come from that. And on the other hand, it seems that the very need to be seen, to control and ‚be the one' is part of a paradigm that might be coming to an end as we move into a new ‚WE'.
I just came from a weekend of holacracy, which I saw you know about as well - it was very good. Holacracy seems to be a brilliant system for anyone, even people without any great spiritual intention or ambition to be held in a structure (in this case mostly applied in business) that reorients them toward a trans/ or impersonal space and a higher goal (that of the organization practising holacracy) In this practise, all possibilities of claiming an insight, ownership or solution are just wiped out and it left me with a strange and very compelling sense of empti- and aloneness in the midst of full participation and decision making. It made me think of ‚invisible integral' again.
I am curious about how open space meetings can be used towards decision making - or is there purpose simply to communicate/ exchange/ expand and ‚brainstorm'?
Great to 'meet' you here,
Uli
Uli, thanks for your comment. I agree that “the need to be seen, to control and 'be the one' is part of a paradigm that might be coming to an end”. But don't believe that everybody on the planet is just going to wake up one day 'in a new we'. The integral view is correct - in my experience - that individuals mature through 'ripples of widening perspectives' (to the extent that they mature, that is). So at this stage in human evolution, it's still a small percentage of the population that is sloughing off their egos at the door and bounding into the We-space to frolic with their peers!
I have been following the development of holacracy for a number of years - and have managed to resist the temptation to go to any of their weekends, simply because I work in a rather rigid command and control hierarchical bureaucracy, and steeping myself in the tenets of holacracy would probably break my heart!! However, as those ripples of widening perspective wash through me, I am finding it easier to be spacious even in such potentially stifling environments, so perhaps next time they're over on a weekend when I'm available, I'll turn up for the hell of it!
Open-space meetings can be used for decision-making in any situation where the sponsor is prepared to back the decisions arrived at by the collective. It's as simple as that! What you get is “knowledge that is produced through interaction between the members of the collective” rather than “the (mere) aggregation of the members' perspectives“ (to paraphrase Stephen Downes).