Reflections on ethics and the process of making things happen

I'm really happy that you guys homed in on this aspect - I hadn't at all been thinking along those lines when I posted, but i was in too much of a hurry to stop and ponder my motivations!

For me, I loved these principles because they resonate strongly with me. Why do they resonate with me? If I were to sit down and enunciate the essence of these principles myself, I would frame them as Mushin suggested - in the positive. So they must have resonated in me for a different reason. I am thinking about the collectives that I live and work in. When I see our world and I listen to our dominant social discourse (which is where we have to set out from in whichever direction we wish to go), these are the things I hear.
- We act small because it's easier,
- We hold back rather than go against the group,
- We are content with trying what we think is possible, even when we know it won't help,
…

And so on. THIS is what we are dealing with. Collective impotence brought about by the individual's incapacity to think beyond the group - or to elect representatives who can. This trend that we are seeing in the world - of no longer trusting traditional authority, but only trusting 'people like me' is a little bit terrifying in this respect. I won't trust the shepherd, only the other sheep. Taking a step (or 1000) back to see the bigger picture, perhaps this is an evolutionary step in the right direction, but I really wonder whether we have the time for anything as glacial as the move from 'socially programmed' to 'fully individuated' and then beyond to the place were collectives can become wise.

So that's another way of framing the inquiry I'm in these days. What are the conditions in which the collective can be consciousness of the above principles and systematically choose to take ethical action?

Ah, brother Albert, I love your BIG THINKING!

I see those basic principles I posted as being what we need to get over in order to fulfil all the requirements you list. Because right now, what you list ain't happening on my radar, and I have no intention of holding off on action while waiting for them to materialise. And I really don't think pain will gain us much. If it hurts, it's because we're not ready - there is something else that needs to happen first in order for the work to be sustainable.

Ho to the core group - I'm in quite a few and I love-em!

Next week we step into the fire delivering an experience of the Art of Participatory Leadership to 50 leaders in the EU Commission. I expect some transformations, but the core team on that one is strong enough to hold whatever happens.

Ho, Albert. I agree with everything you say here.

I was just having this conversation with Susan Belchamber. She said “As Elisabet Sahtouris suggests, perhaps we simply are being asked to move towards a higher level of complexity so as to have more collective membrane available for sensing?  (Like the single cell organisms moving to become multi-celled in order to survive.) ”

To which I replied: “Yes to this - I feel that that's exactly what we're doing - developing more collective membrane for sensing. But what we're sensing is still such a mystery. Because we are sensing into future possibility. I know from experience that this is what is needed for manifestation. To sense into future possibility and to hold out for the highest possible manifestation of our collective potential, moment by moment. Nothing big to begin with, just what leaves the most options open for growth, transformation and joy, now, now and now.”

As for my work inside the Commission, here's what I wrote (and you might already have read it …) on the SDi list not long ago:

“I work inside a large international (transnational) organisation (despite its often self-defeating mix of memes) precisely because of its huge sphere of influence and potential leverage for massive transformational change. Being a European, I can see this continent's potential for hacking out a path into a sustainable and equitable future for humanity.

One thing is sure. We won't succeed in getting out of the collective mess we have evolved ourselves into unless we do it together. And we have to do it together from a space beyond ego and self-interest - unless that self-interest is the enlightened self-interest that sees the good of the whole as the only safe game in town. And when I say 'together', I mean precisely as a continually reconfiguring collective Buddha that knows how to drive a jeep.

I have been observing, experimenting, and now prototyping inside this organisation, and also locally in my own community and globally with the community of other cohorts of worthy souls who like to inquire into the patterns that fascinate them (like this list). My inquiry has been ”what are the conditions that need to be in place in order for us to get from where we are to where we need to go?” It is an integral inquiry, to the extent that it attends  the four quadrants and is quite explicit about the role of 'natural hierarchy' in both the status quo and desirable future steps.

My aim is not to live in a polyanna-ish haze of love-fests and delusion. But unless I can constantly live open and empty of my own egoic concerns, unless I can serve as a 'strange attractor' that irresistibly calls evolving individuals into a transformative field of sacred space in which we turn our blended, shared attention to the problems we face, then this work cannot be done!  We must never forget that we are embedded in a living system.

One of the dangers of these e-lists that I see is that we all to often sink into intellectualisation, behaving like heads on sticks. There is so much labelling going on. But it's never that simple - as we all know. But still, the temptation is always there to intellectualise. There's a conversation going over on the London Integral List about the fact that intellectualising is a 'masculine' habit. My way of seeing the work that I am doing is that it is bringing in some 'feminine' embodiment. In my professional environment there is a whole competition that you have to go through to get a permanent contract. It tends to eliminate all but the heads-on-sticks. So the challenge is huge to get people to reconnect with their bodily sensing in a way that allows them to tap into the kosmic field that contains our collective knowing about what wise action we must take together to move from here to a more sustainable and generative way of living. As an efficiency junkie, I have found that the most effective way of doing so is - again - through creating (with others who have collectively learned how to do this) a powerful 'strange attraction field' that opens people up to their innermost humanity and longing for authenticity. Once that door is opened into their hearts, the seed is planted and the hunger grows, and more and more people come flocking into the field, eager to participate so that they can continue to drink at the source.

This approach seems to have a very high success rate. But it cannot be faked. The price to be paid (;-)) is a willingness to face one's ogres, be vulnerable in front of others, and to let the light shine into the inner fortress of our cynicism and egoic shell. So together - like the early christians - we explicitly practice authenticity, through the fourfold practice of stillness, inspiration, service and devotion. We call it leadership development, because otherwise we would be fed to the lions as a direct route into la-la land. Now we have enough momentum to be able to call it 'participatory leadership', and to start teaching the social technologies that can pull massively larger numbers of people into the field. In two weeks we will be holding a 'training seminar' with 55 people all coming to learn how to host authentic conversation with their wider circles of stakeholders. This is where this work starts virally spreading out from the heart in Brussels through the arteries and capillaries throughout the 27 EU countries - all sectors of activity, all walks of life, all levels from global to local.

The 55 attendees of the seminar are coming not as individuals but as small teams from diverse fields inside the organisation. While learning the forms of the social technologies, the content that they will be working on is their own projects. So they will take what they learn out into the world, and again, the core community of practitioners of strange attraction will be operating to support, coach and strengthen the viral infection. All the time, we also work to educate ourselves on all the different approaches and mental models that can help people see clearly enough to create the collective clarity that is needed for wise action on a massive scale.

If any of you good and wise people reading this have ideas on how else this work can be done, I am ALL EARS!”