Introductory note to the Leadership of the Great Transition Initiative

From Bruce Schuman, bruceschuman@cox.net, December 18, 2014, Filegroup 102061

To:Paul RaskinRich RosenMarjorie KellyJonathan Cohn

Dear Tellus Institute –

Thank you so much for the opportunity to participate in your very well-managed and informed email discussion. You are moving along an evolutionary track I believe is highly significant, and doing so in a way that has real “world-class” meaning. No one else out there, I would guess, is in a similar position, able to combine so many “interdisciplinary” resources and perspectives on highly critical issues in such substantial ways. For me, this makes your work vital and essential and probably unprecedented, and I am grateful to be part of it.

CONJUNCTION OF FORCES

The conversation in my world over the past two or three months has involved what seems to be a profound conjunction of interconnected elements, and when I came back to the GTI web site in the last few days and noticed several emerging themes, I thought it might be interesting to comment on a couple of points.

Just by coincidence, it so happens I am reading both the Naomi Klein book on climate and the Fritjhof Capra book on systems. Plus, I am going through a couple more books pertinent to the science/religion discussion by the Dalai Lama – “Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World” and “The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality” – both of which appear to be of the highest caliber and very much worth careful review.

Plus, as further background for my own growth and perspective, there is the continuing influence of a few forces perhaps outside the sphere of the GTI, including NCDD – the National Coalition on Dialogue and Deliberation (2,500 group process facilitators from all sectors of society, many concerned with “the crisis of democracy” – http://ncdd.org ), the “ontolog” mailing list and discussion group (a couple hundred professional “semantic ontologists” discussing the core issues of meaning and language on a networked planet), and the continuing inspiration of “conscious evolution” and Barbara Marx Hubbard, and other spirit visionaries and futurists – along with the high resonance of the KOSMOS journal group.

So, with that background and those influences – what might emerge?

INTEGRAL NETWORK DESIGN

Currently on the GTI site, the Naomi Klein interview reviews her very substantial and challenging book, and offers her suggestions for activism. The Fritjhof Capra book is a review of the history of science and emphasizes his perspective on “networks”. And the Tom Athanasiou piece begins by saying “The global governance system currently in place has not been capable of making the momentous “top-down” decisions that are necessary to limit aggregate emissions, let alone doing so in an acceptably fair manner.” He concludes his article by asking a series of very tough questions – for which, at the moment, we appear to have no real answers and no method to develop answers.

In combination, these elements brought together by GTI are a potent but challenging handful of issues and possibilities. 1

What I would like to suggest is a possible conjunction of elements, combining the concerns expressed by Naomi Klein and Tom Athanasiou, considering “systems” methods in a broad context that has a reasonable hope of linking to the kind of global ethics described by the Dalai Lama, and defining this conjunction in a context consistent with the underlying GTI vision as I understand it – and guided as appropriate by influences such as NCDD, conscious evolution, and high-level computer science and ontology.

As activist scenario and design, I am guided by Paul Raskin’s call in his “Where do we stand?” August keynote:

“Is the crisis of modernity nurturing a protagonist capable of galvanizing the progressive potential of our epoch? The signature feature of the Planetary Phase—the enmeshment of all in the overarching proto-country, Earth—suggests an answer. The natural change agent for a Great Transition would be a vast and inclusive movement of global citizens. The world now needs citizens without borders to come together for a planetary community. This "global citizens movement" is the missing actor in the drama of transition. But it’s stirring in the wings and could move toward center stage as crises intensify and consciousness shifts.”

http://greattransition.org/publication/a-great-transition-where-we-stand

In his next sentences, Paul Raskin lays out an activating network vision that resonates deeply for me, and which takes a form very similar to projects I have already designed and built, if in an experimental and perhaps too-complicated way.

“ In one narrative, it would begin to coalesce as a network of networks, attracting adherents through local, national, and global nodes. It would connect the full spectrum of issues within an integrated strategic and intellectual framework. It would seek to bridge divisions of culture, class, and place, honoring diversity and pluralism within an umbrella of common principles and goals. It would practice a "politics of trust" that tolerates proximate differences in order to sustain the ultimate basis for unity.”

In 2012, I did actually build a networking system that did most of this, though without any significant participation. But it was based on all these ideals, its features actually operate (full-scale taxonomy of interdependent issues, global/regional/local network configuration, email-based polling network), and I worked through a great many issues and design concerns. http://circle2012.net/tx/vision.cfm -- http://circle2012.net/tx/levels.cfm

It seems interesting that in 2011, Paul Raskin published an article in KOSMOS journal that reviewed the “Widening Circle” project, which was my initial attraction to GTI.http://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/imagine-all-the-people-advancing-a-global-citizens-movement/4/

I did approach Tellus a couple of years ago regarding the Widening Circle project, but came to the understanding that this particular vision or hope has not yet really caught fire – for reasons, as a developer, I think I understand. This is a tough game right now, and we really got to get this thing dialed in the right way.

CLIMATE VERSUS CAPITALISM – NETWORK VERSUS TREE

As to what might be this “right way” – I believe it is critically important to address what might be a limiting facet of the Fritjhof Capra vision of networks by considering the issue raised by Tom Athanasiou. This question goes to a huge issue at the core of systems science, which is sometimes described as “the tension between network and tree” – or, in slightly different terms – the tension between bottom-up and top-down. In the GTI conversation, I think we are familiar with the common resistance to “broad overarching principles” and what are often seen as the repressive limitations of any such broadly inclusive concepts. Capra is aware of this issue, and points out that “hierarchies are human constructions.” He is right, of course – so, perhaps the question becomes – what is the proper and “organic” role of human synthetic hypothesis in the context of global governance?

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In simple terms, “the network” is the bottom-up teeming actuality of empirical on-the-ground immediate local data, emerging in the context of “local community”. And “the tree” is the broad integral design demanded by any holistic or integral or global vision that must somehow coherently manage the interdependent relations of 1,000,000 local communities. This is a huge challenge for system science. I think it is interesting that Fritjhof Capra was very influenced by cognitive scientists Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana (author of The Tree of Knowledge) – and that the Dalai Lama considered Varela (also one of the founders of the Integral Institute) to be a friend.

This issue of top-down versus bottom-up comes up in a critical way in any context of system science, and in the Artificial Intelligence context of the “ontolog” discussion, one way it emerges is in what used to be called the tension between “the scruffies” (heuristic empiricists, making some immediate system run without concern for broader system implications) and “the neats” (mathematical system visionaries who demand logical integrity across all processes). In the context of computer science, this tension has been described as a “holy war”.

And Charles Hampden-Turner, at the time the president of the Society for Humanistic Psychology, wrote in his powerful and seminal review of psychology “Maps of the Mind: Charts and Concepts of the Mind and its Labyrinths” (1984) that his entire book is about the tension between tree and net – which he also related to right-brain/left-brain issues.

What I think is emerging right now is a new kind of integral vision, intended to address the tension of network and tree, grounded in the “ethics for a whole world” idea as offered by the Dalai Lama, and taking a form intimately commensurate with the basic GTI vision of “widening circle” and “network of networks”.

This is my own experience right now – the dawning of a new highly integral vision – that “interconnects the pieces” in a powerful new way – perhaps grounded in some new kind of holistic mathematics, that might emerge at the core of a google-class network project designed to collectively address the huge and exceedingly vexing issues raised by Naomi Klein and suggested by Tom Athanasiou at the conclusion of his article.

We need a network project with a practical outreach that can support a significant global dialogue interconnecting “the people” and the critical leading agencies, that embodies potent integral mathematics in its core design, that links the entire conversation into a single context of “the whole”, and guides all immediate choices (how to manage the extremely challenging issues raised by Naomi Klein) from the point of view of the whole, rather than from some local and “relativistic” (and hence fragmenting) local perspective.

In the context of that kind of network, we might have a real hope of emulating the “balancing feedback loops” of nature described by Fritjhof Capra, such that a very sophisticated kind of “systems homeostasis” might be able to guide complex decisions in managing global trade and climate tradeoffs. It might be possible to build an ethical alliance as a broad guiding framework, interconnecting spiritual and religious and secular-humanist forces, and radiating an illuminating and guiding influence grounded in wholeness into a million local nodes where critical system decisions must be made “with respect to the whole”.

We need tree and network, we need sophisticated network science, and we need global ethics.

It’s great to see GTI so intimately involved with all of these contingent elements.

Thank you.

Bruce Schuman FOCALPOINT: http://focalpoint.us NETWORK NATION: http://networknation.net SHARED PURPOSE: http://sharedpurpose.net INTERSPIRIT: http://interspirit.net (805) 966-9515, PO Box 23346, Santa Barbara CA 93101

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http://greattransition.org/publication/climate-the-crisis-and-the-movement

“I cite the Great Transition research in the context of a discussion of capitalism’s growth imperative and the fact that the only breaks from the mindless growth juggernaut have been economic crises. Avoiding those extremes requires that we very carefully plan the economy, something I have started calling a “deliberate economy.” People need to know that moving away from our obsession with GDP growth does not have to mean deprivation and suffering; on the contrary, the “managed degrowth” model means putting our well-being, health, and leisure time back at the center of our economic lives and aspirations. The idea of a Great Transition, along with much other inspiring work coming out of the New Economy movement, expresses that optimism beautifully.

“More broadly, there is a desperate need for the different coalitions of the left to get far more engaged with climate change, because this crisis really forces us to decide what kind of societies we want and puts us on a firm, science-based deadline. And that makes it a unique and powerful opportunity.

“The world’s social movements need to work together under a common banner to fight climate change. And we certainly need smart frameworks for thinking and talking about the diverse set of solutions that we know can tackle the crisis…”

http://greattransition.org/publication/climate-crossroads-toward-a-just-deal-in-paris

“A global commons problem can be addressed only if each actor sees the others doing their best to achieve their fair shares of emission reductions. But before such mutual recognition is possible, there must be a means for comparing one country’s effort to another’s. But how? By what norms and indicators shall we judge individual contributions? How will we discriminate between the leader and laggard nations? What can we do when we fall collectively short? And how can any of this knowledge be used to push forward into a new regime where an effective majority of the world’s states moves to act, decisively, on a global scale? If, after the last late night of the upcoming Paris negotiations, befuddled by an agreement that will certainly fall far short of any ideal, we want to know if the effort was nevertheless a success, these are the questions that we will have to ask.”

http://greattransition.org/publication/systems-thinking-and-system-change

“There is a clash between linear thinking—this notion of continued growth—and the nonlinear patterns in the biosphere. The biosphere contains feedback loops and balancing systems. Growth is going on all the time, but in different ways, shifting from place to place. The driving force of the systemic crisis is global capitalism—itself a network of financial flows, designed without an ethical framework. It promotes limitless growth and excess consumption, because these fuel profits. Underlying this system is not only economic growth but also corporate growth.”

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Christmas Letter to the Leadership of the Great Transition Initiative

From Bruce Schuman, bruceschuman@cox.net, December 24, 2014, Filegroup 102061

To:Paul RaskinRich RosenJonathan CohnMarjorie KellyCarolyn Raffensperger

Dear Tellus Institute, dear GTI –

Greetings and blessings for Christmas.

In my world, it seems there is a continuing convergence of creative forces associated with the GTI conversation, and I thank you for the opportunity to be part of it. Today, given what appears to be the urgency of our situation and a ripening opportunity to respond to it, I thought it would be appropriate for me to sketch out for you what seems to be an emerging new potential for integrated network activism.

ETHICS OF THE WHOLE

The recent GTI conversation has prompted a reawakening of concern regarding “global ethics”, and it was exciting for me yesterday to receive an email response from Dr. Steven Rockefeller, in reply to an email I sent to him regarding interfaith network development. I have begun responding to his interest on this subject, by replying in detail to his recent GTI post, and sketching out ways that it might be possible to convene a broad global ethic intended to affect global activism through an alliance of religious and humanist organizations. As Dr. Rockefeller suggests in his GTI message, we already have a strong start on this subject, and perhaps we can develop a broad consensus on a few simple principles that might help guide leading negotiators to successfully work their way through critically difficult problems.

In her guest essay “Living Enterprise as the Foundation of a Generative Economy”, inserted into Fritjhof Capra’s recent book “The Systems View of Life”, Marjorie Kelly cites a powerful and seminal principle of ethics that I believe could emerge as a significant general principle of guidance for a highly interconnected world beset by what are called “wicked problems”. From Capra, p. 404:

"If you stand inside a large corporation and ask how to make a sustainable economy, the conversation has to fit itself into the frame of profit maximization ("here's how you can make more money through sustainability practices"). Asking corporations to change their fundamental frame is like asking a bear to change its DNA and become a swan.

"A better place to start -- as the founding generation of Americans did -- is by articulating truths we hold to be self-evident. That's what ecologist Stephen Harding [introduced in Kelly's comment] did in the forest, saying simply ‘a thing is right when it enhances the stability and beauty of the total ecosystem. It is wrong when it damages it. The sustainability of the larger system comes first. Everything else must fit itself within that frame.’"

“Everything else must fit itself within that frame.”

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This is the critical point for a new global ethics: all local decisions must (or most desirably should) be made with respect to the whole – the whole system – the entire context within which we find ourselves. In Kelly’s citation, she uses the term “the total ecosystem” rather than “the whole”. But in a broader context, her concept can be expanded to include all sectors of human experience and thinking, to weave together a fully comprehensive and fully inclusive model of interdependency in human awareness and action. Indeed, we most properly should be including in our whole-systems balance equations the well-being of every person on the planet, the well-being of the environment and the well-being of the economy – all at the same time, all understood as directly and intimately interdependent. I believe we are learning how to do this, and I believe the GTI can be part of activating this critical solution.

ADDRESSING “WICKED PROBLEMS”

As I begin to suggest an activist vision for a circle-based network architecture, I am prompted to respond to the very challenging questions listed by climate change activist Tom Athanasiou in the conclusion of his article currently featured on the Great Transition website, at http://greattransition.org/publication/climate-crossroads-toward-a-just-deal-in-paris. Athanasiou begins by introducing the concepts of “equity frameworks” and “distributional justice”.

The 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit was a failure, but it did serve as a wake-up call. The global governance system currently in place has not been capable of making the momentous “top-down” decisions that are necessary to limit aggregate emissions, let alone doing so in an acceptably fair manner. As we approach the critically important 2015 Paris Summit, negotiations are taking a more realist course, with national pledges of action understood as the best foundation for international mobilization. Making this work will take a “pledge and review” agreement with an extremely robust review in which national commitments are evaluated collectively for compatibility with climate science and comparatively for compatibility with concerns of justice. Equity reference frameworks can help achieve the crucial task of justice, which now threatens to fall through the cracks. Such frameworks have already been developed to address distributional justice both within and between nations and to identify both leaders and laggards.

A global commons problem can be addressed only if each actor sees the others doing their best to achieve their fair shares of emission reductions. But before such mutual recognition is possible, there must be a means for comparing one country’s effort to another’s. But how? By what norms and indicators shall we judge individual contributions? How will we discriminate between the leader and laggard nations? What can we do when we fall collectively short? And how can any of this knowledge be used to push forward into a new regime where an effective majority of the world’s states moves to act, decisively, on a global scale?

What is “distributional justice”? What is an “equity reference framework”? How are these things defined, how comprehensive are they, who defines them, and under what authority? This article begins to propose answers to such “wicked problems” by considering the emergence of a universal or global ethics, primarily derived through a global alliance of ethics-grounded agencies and organizations, and perhaps in some ways defined in terms of pure systems mathematics. The article concludes by offering a simple transcendental model of circles, and cites the Dalai Lama regarding a “universal moral compass.”

AN INTEGRAL HYPOTHESIS

In the context of hydra-headed global crisis, the work of Tellus and GTI has already laid a profound and well-informed foundation for significant activist development, and it is my sense that new insights can empower and accelerate the designs and potential you have already clarified. A variety of influences continue to shape my own insights into what can or should be done, and it’s my belief that “we are all working together” towards common ends, as we each illuminate the insights we individually bring to the discussion through an essential process of cocreativity and “teamwork”.

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On my side of the equation, over the past couple of months I have been working on an innovative form of “the pattern that connects”, to restate Gregory Bateson’s theme, and it has been exciting for me to see the convergence among many relevant forces that I see as located within that pattern. For the past year, I have been considering the idea of an “integral hypothesis” to be offered into the context of shift and transition-related discussions, as “something to be put on the table” which could then be refined and expanded by informed participants, each contributing from the angle of their expertise and motivation. This hypothesis would embrace the full range of interconnected concerns we must consider (academic and scientific disciplines, thematic areas, issue crises, methods and approaches and principles), and, while recognizing that “no one single individual can be master of all these elements”, we must indeed find a way to bring them all into a common framework, because the interdependence of these issues – and the gridlock that may emerge in their context – is a critical and perhaps deadly problem, for which we must find a solution. If the initial hypothesis is “in the ballpark”, this kind of approach – get a solid model on the table to talk about and then fix it – might be essential to any hopes of moving past a discussion process that too often seems fated to “start all over again from the beginning”.

Integral frameworks are always a house of cards. As a synthetic construction with many moving parts, they fall apart easily. If we want to move ahead into an integral world held together in stable ways, we have get past this beginner’s dilemma, and begin refining complex models that fully embrace, one way or the other, hundreds of emerging factors that are widely as seen as relevant today in the context of shift-related discussions. We do more or less know what these pieces are, and we’ve been to hundreds of conferences that review the overlapping facets of this larger whole. We must find a way to be bold and put them together, even if only as a testable hypothesis.

NETWORK OF CIRCLES

I am persuaded that Tellus is in a strong position to provide a unique caliber of global leadership, particularly because of the breadth of your vision and your highly inclusive approach to creative conversations.

In particular, I track this conviction back to your original vision of “widening circles”, which I believe contains powerful keys to very significant forward movement. Your original article, a “GTI Perspective” entitled “Imagine All the People: Advancing a Global Citizens Movement” (I have the complete text, though it appears removed from the internet) lays out a strong clear strategy for general development that I believe should not be abandoned. But the article concludes by mentioning that “a real-world TWC alliance was formed” by several organizations – and in my inquiry as to the status of this alliance, I have been led to suppose that the results thus far have not been entirely encouraging. The Widening Circle website appears abandoned, and I have not been able to learn any more about it.

I am guessing that this initial alliance was a bit premature, that its development was based on general intuition and perhaps some raw excitement rather than a precise and well-negotiated basis for common action. What are the common links among these organizations? What is the relationship between your model of circles, and, say, the doctrines of circle visionary John Buck (as it happens, coming to Santa Barbara in early January), who you list as part of the initial alliance? How did you address high-tension issues – such as the relationship of science and religion? Your initial list of prospective participants does include both science-centered and spirit-centered groups, and without clarification, an alliance among them could explode on that basis alone. Did you move forward together with a clear underlying sense of common purpose and common ethics?

These are challenging issues, and there are many reasons that idealistic and broadly inclusive alliance concepts today can prove to be dry holes. A successful alliance has to serve the particular needs of its particular members, and its fundamentals cannot be taken for granted. As independent agencies motivated by their own convictions and serving their own constituencies, most participants in a broad alliance do not wish to be subsumed under some other group’s “umbrella”, no matter how idealistically or charitably defined. And the precise way that the “circle” energy is understood can have a critical effect on the general process. To some degree, the understanding of circle can be something like a religion, and the power and inner workings of that religion, it seems to me, have not yet really been clarified outside the world of deep intuition and indigenous spirituality.

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RESONANCE

My own work on “circles” began in the early 2000’s, as an outgrowth of extensive experience here in Santa Barbara with the “Conscious Evolution” movement. When Barbara Marx Hubbard came to Santa Barbara in 1998 to found her successful community here, I immediately became involved, and developed an internet platform for her group called the “CEN” – for Conscious Evolution Network – and that project has been running steadily ever since, as a mailing list and internet database with something like 300 members. At the core of our community project was a “network of circles” – a series of “core groups” generally organized around principles defined in the Co-Creator’s Handbook by close BMH associate and partner Carolyn Anderson, and for something like ten years, our community continued to meet in circle. One lady anthropologist in the group has estimated that together we spent something like 80,000 man-hours meeting in “resonant core groups” organized as circles.

This process had a strong influence on me. Most of my circle friends in Santa Barbara were women, and as an internet developer, I got involved in a number of “women’s circle” projects. The group “Gather the Women” ran on my network for many years, and we built several other projects for women grounded in circles, including “Lightpages” – http://lightpages.net -- and “Standing Women” – http://standingwomen.net. I built two other significant circle-based projects including The Global Resonance Network (2003) – http://globalresonance.net – and Network of Circles (2010) – http://networkofcircles.net Additionally, I built The Resonance Project – http://resonanceproject.org exploring what is generally regarded as the core energetic of a “resonant circle”. In 2012, I built “Circle2012” – http://circle2012.net.

Here in Santa Barbara we have continued to explore the meaning of resonant circles since those days, including something emerging recently we have called “Collective Avatar”, which explores the meaning of collective spirituality. This experience is similar to what has been called “discerning God’s will together” in more traditional Christian contexts. It is intimately related to the process of circle as convened by some Quaker groups.

In addition to these influences, I have been involved with mainline interfaith for many years, as well as the “interspiritual” movement (as per the recent book by Dr. Kurt Johnson, “The Coming Interspiritual Age”), both of which very often arrange their meetings in a circle format. And I have been a member of NCDD for a number of years – National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation – a network of something like 3,000 “group process facilitators” working in all sectors of society, many of whom are interested in circles. There is a lot of expertise and experience out there on these themes, and it feels to me like this capacity is yet another potential waiting to be harvested in service to an enlightened global transition process.

CONNECT THROUGH THE CENTER

I have been studying dialogue and collective intelligence and collaboration for a long time (in 1993, I helped interfaith pioneer Dr. Leonard Swidler from Temple University organize one of the first listserv conferences on interfaith), and am particularly interested in the definition of “dialogue” from MIT professor William Isaacs, who in his book “Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together” defines dialogue as “a conversation with a center, not sides”. For me, this concept of center exerts an almost irresistible fascination for its power to convene wholeness and unity in a context of high difference.

My exploration of “center point” began long ago, and in 1995, I purchased the domain name “origin.org”, which I conceived as a name for a universal center point (“a coordinate origin zero-point”) for human experience that could also operate as an internet platform and website. My project “United Communities of Spirit” has been operating at http://origin.org since 1996 – and it was a leading quote on the UCS project taken from Steven Rockefeller’s book “Spirit and Nature” that led to my email exchange with him. I am also very fond of a guiding quote from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, which I believe offers a key to the healing of the human community in the full context of our teeming and fertile diversity: "There is only one single center in the universe. It impels the whole of creation along one and the same line, first towards the fullest development of consciousness, and later towards the highest degree of holiness." For other Teilhard quotes, see http://networknation.net/teilhard.cfm

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The concept of “center”, in my opinion and if understood properly, is very powerful force for the integration of diverse perspectives in a co-creative context, and perhaps can emerge as a rather stunning integrator for a complex array of competing or contending forces which must be held in balance. I believe there is a intimate link between the concepts of balance as found in the pursuit of “justice” (the blindfolded Goddess of Justice holding a balance scale) and the concept of balance in issues of economic equity, ecology and negotiated climate/market tradeoffs (as per the upcoming Paris Summit talks). In the context of a well-defined network process, as guided by a simple common “ethic of the whole” and a few basic virtues, I believe we might be able to convene an integrated network process of unprecedented capacity.

What is needed is a network of circles model – developed much as you describe in your original vision piece, but linked together through a more profound understanding of center and perhaps a more mature concept of alliance – where all circles are interconnected in ways that bring together contending forces and tend to convene the balance of those forces. A huge network of interconnected circles linked together through an internet framework could function in ways that are fundamentally “homeostatic”, and could help resolve the extremely complex and challenging problem of finding balance among contending trade and climate issues in the context of perpetual global/local market/climate tensions.

ADVOCACY

In the context of this complexity and interdependent simultaneity, it is very reasonable to ask how we might possibly create a model embodying all this systematic interconnection. Is some small research team behind the scenes supposed to come up with the perfect framework that somehow identifies all the variables and puts them into proper relationship? The answer to this question has to be “no”. No small research team can possibly do this. They cannot be sufficiently well informed, they can’t hope to guess what the variables actually are, they cannot adequately anticipate rapidly emerging changes, and they cannot properly assign correct values for interdependence. If a top-level research team of passionate system scientists cannot hope to put together a realistic model, where is such a model to come from? The answer, I believe, is through responsible human advocacy. Let particular “issues” and “positions on issues” be represented by advocates, and brought by them into circles devoted to their resolution. Let “people on the ground” function as “the eyes and ears” of the network, bringing in their perspective and their documentation, and within an integral and balanced negotiating framework, get their specific position on the table and put their network of support behind it. This is “democracy in action”, and is the right way to propel a broadly inclusive global network. Yes, we want “harmony among the participants”, but we hardly expect them to agree on all particulars. How could they? All adjudication in the world involves due proportion, and our objective is to find that balance in a fully holistic and inclusive way. We need to convene all the contending forces under the auspices of a universal ethic, and bring these forces into balance.

HOMEOSTATIC SELF-REGULATION AND DEMOCRACY

Understood in this way, a global-scale network of circles functioning as a kind of universal people’s congress (or parliament) could begin to exert a kind of cybernetic and homeostatic influence intended to bring all critical system variables on this planet back to within “acceptable tolerances” – and indeed, as the process becomes refined, to approach ideal levels. A network of this type, convening advocates for something like “all sides of all issues”, would have “eyes and ears everywhere”, and could respond immediately to any sort of local perturbation. The essence of cybernetics is stability and balance; indeed, Norbert Weiner’s original book that coined the term was subtitled “control and communication in the animal and the machine”, and was taken from the Greek word for “steersman”.

“Norbert Wiener defined cybernetics in 1948 as "the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine." The word cybernetics comes from Greek κυβερνητική (kyvern tik ), meaning "governance", i.e.i ̱ í̱̱ all that are pertinent to κυβερνώ (kyvern ), the latter meaning "to steer, navigate or govern", hence κυβέρνησις ó̱̱(kyvérn sis), meaning "government", is the government while κυβερνήτης (kyvern ti s) is the governor or the i ̱ í̱̱ i ̱captain.

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“The word cybernetics was first used in the context of "the study of self-governance" by Plato in The Alcibiades to signify the governance of people. The word 'cybernétique' was also used in 1834 by the physicist André-Marie Ampere (1775–1836) to denote the sciences of government in his classification system of human knowledge.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics

UNIVERSAL MORAL COMPASS

In his 2011 book “Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World”, the Dalai Lama reviews the issue of developing a secular ethics grounded in a variety of sources, including secular humanism, spirituality and the great religions of the world. He persuasively introduces the thesis that ethics need not be grounded in religion – nor be inconsistent with religion. From my point of view, it appears that what we need most critically today – as a way to address among many others the demanding questions raised by Tom Athanasiou in the conclusion of his current article on GTI – is a kind of universal moral/ethical compass that is consistent with the great wisdom traditions and the best of our secular humanism, and guided in particular through a constructive watch-dog alliance that keeps the process tuned and sharp.

If we designed and constructed a cybernetically-interconnected network of circles, taking on every critical issue faced by human beings in common, we could be seeking balanced solutions to every problem in a fully-interconnected way, and radiating a benign and enlightened influence into the world from every direction. And perhaps the emerging hypothetical principle suggested here – guidance from the point of view of the whole – could be a critical or essential factor in our “cybernetic control loop”. Balance, wholeness, co-creativity, interconnection – these are some of our ideals, and as our project grows and gathers its full range of potential, beginning to encounter the full complexity of issues in the world today, we might have some reasonable hope not only of finding balanced and equitable solutions to a few big system problems like climate change and economic equity, we could be radiating a related enlightening influence into every other issue that besets the human community.

It is this type of network system that can most correctly approach the extremely complex issue of “distributional justice” cited in the Tom Athanasiou article. What is the “due proportion” at every point within the grid of collective human experience? How are we even to begin conceiving the answer to a question like this? Through a network of circles conceived more or less in the terms outlined here, we can begin to consider how this might work. Justice and balance are intimately related. With the right kind of network, this abstract philosophical generality might become the guiding principle for an actual operating system reaching every point on the grid of human experience.

CIRCLES WITHIN CIRCLES

In the hope that this drawing does not appear overly childish or simplistic, as a conclusion to this article I want to add an artistic rendering of the circle process that I personally find highly illuminating and instructive. Its particular circle configuration, in my opinion, is not only simple and intuitively appealing, but is also deeply profound. The particular way that this diagram shows what I would describe as “several levels nested within one another” illustrates a profound principle of natural organic recursion, and shows why the circle process becomes stable and its perspectives reliably cross-correlated.

Interpreted in the right way, there is a single central axis coordinating and aligning this framework, taking a form that defines a “descending” plumb line that links “the universal” (or “the global”) to the particular (or “the local”). That plumb line could itself perhaps be interpreted as a principle of ethics, as every action taken at a local point – every decision convened at a local point about something of concern at that point – could (should) be placed in the integral framework of the absolute whole. This drawing begins to show how to do this.

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The essence of spirituality, the argument can be made, is “alignment”. Align your mind with “the great central sun” or “the godhead” or “universal oneness” – or “the whole” – and in so doing, also align your mind and energies with those of every other person in your circle. This creates a process that becomes “safe” when all participants become trustworthy and approach the circle in a genuinely humble spirit, creating a relational energy similar to the Hindu concept of “Namaste”, and becomes authentic by cross-correlation through a process akin to scientific “peer review”. This entire principle can be seen as the root idea of healthy community, where in a process of centered co-creativity, the diverse members (or indeed, sectors) of the community interact in creative and constructive ways.

The outer circle is “the godhead” – or in less anthropocentric terms, “oneness” or “the whole” or “the absolute” – and becomes the integral container of the entire process and its source of guidance towards “wholeness in all things”. There is an implicit “chain of transmission” that interconnects the highest level to the circle of people, and from that center, then to each particular person in the circle. This entire process is “aligned through a common multi-level center taking a fractal form descending across levels” and directly connects the universal to the local, as an expression of the ancient spiritual adage “As above, so below”. This chain of transmission might emerge as a single universal principle of ethics that guides action at the local point in the absolute context of the whole.

With careful consideration and good project development, I believe this model can help us design and convene an activist circle-based network that can deliver an unprecedented level of properly distributed collective intelligence into a world that absolutely needs it now.

DALAI LAMA ON COLLECTIVE GUIDANCE

This quote from the Dalai Lama is excerpted from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality, 2005, p. 198. The particular context of the quote is chapter 9, “Ethics and the New Genetics”, so his remarks are particularly tuned to this issue. But most or all of what he says is broadly applicable to almost any question of shared human concern, including climate change, income inequity, energy and environment or peace and justice.

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A Higher Level of Collective Effort

In order to respond to the challenges of the present and in the future, we need a much higher level of collective effort than has been seen yet. One partial solution is to ensure that a larger segment of the general public has a working grasp of scientific thinking and an understanding of key scientific discoveries, especially those which have direct social and ethical implications.

Public Involvement

Given that the stakes in the world are so high, the decisions about the course of research, what to do with our knowledge, and what technological possibilities should be developed cannot be left in the hands of scientists, business interests, or government officials. Clearly, as a society we need to draw some lines. But those deliberations cannot come solely from small committees, no matter how august or expert they may be. We need a much higher level of public involvement, especially in the form of debate and discussion, whether through the media, public consultation, or the action of grassroots pressure groups.

Collective Moral Compass

Today’s challenges are so great – and the dangers of the misuse of technology so global, entailing a potential catastrophe for all humankind – that I feel we need a moral compass we can use collectively without getting bogged down in doctrinal differences. One key factor that we need is a holistic and integrated outlook at the level of human society that recognizes the fundamentally interconnected nature of all living beings and their environment. Such a moral compass must entail preserving our human sensitivity and will depend on constantly bearing in mind our fundamental human values. We need to be revolted when science – or for that matter any human activity – crosses the line of human decency, and we must fight to retain the sensitivity that is otherwise so easily eroded.

Human Goodness, Universal Ethics

How can we find this moral compass? We must begin by putting faith in the basic goodness of human nature, and we need to anchor this faith in some fundamental and universal ethical principles. These include a recognition of the preciousness of life, an understanding of the need for balance in nature and the employment of this need as a gauge for the direction of our thought and action, and – above all – the need to ensure that we hold compassion as the key motivation for all our endeavors and that it is combined with a clear awareness of the wider perspective, including long-term consequences.

The Single Human Family

Many will agree with me that these ethical values transcend the dichotomy of religious believers and non-believers, and are critical for the welfare of all of humankind. Because of the profoundly interconnected reality of today’s world, we need to relate to the challenges we face as a single human family rather than as members of specific nationalities, ethnicities, or religions. In other words, a necessary principle is a spirit of oneness of the entire human species. Some might object that this is unrealistic. But what other option do we have?

I firmly believe it is possible. The fact that despite our living for more than half a century in the nuclear age, we have not yet annihilated ourselves is what gives me great hope. It is no more coincidence that, if we reflect deeply, we find these ethical principles at the heart of all major spiritual traditions.

In developing an ethical strategy . . . it is vitally important to frame our reflection within the widest possible context.

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Fundamentals of a Global Ethics

In a nutshell, our ethical response must involve the following key factors. First, we have to check our motivation and ensure that its foundation is compassion. Second, we must relate to any problem before us while taking the widest possible perspective, which includes not only situating the issue within the picture of the wider human enterprise but also taking due regard of both short-term and long-term consequences. Third, when we apply our reason in addressing a problem, we have to be vigilant in ensuring that remain honest, self-aware, and unbiased; the danger otherwise is that we may fall victim to self-delusion. Fourth, in the face of any real ethical challenge, we must respond in a spirit of humility, recognizing not only the limits of our knowledge (both collective and personal) but also our vulnerability to being misguided in the context of such a rapidly changing reality. Finally, we must all – scientists and society at large – strive to ensure that whatever new course of action we take, we keep in mind the primary goal of the well-being of humanity as a whole and the planet we inhabit.

Our Home

The earth is our only home. As far as current scientific knowledge is concerned, this may be the only planet that can support life. One of the most powerful visions I have experienced was the first photograph of the earth from outer space. The image of a blue planet floating in deep space, glowing like the full moon on a clear night, brought home powerfully to me the recognition that we are indeed all members of a single family sharing one little house. I was flooded with the feeling of how ridiculous are the various disagreements and squabbles within the human family. I see how futile it is to cling so tenaciously to the differences that divide us. From this perspective one feels the fragility, the vulnerability of our planet and its limited occupation of a small orbit sandwiched between Venus and Mars in the vast infinity of space. If we do not look after this home, what else are we charged to do on this earth?

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ON WICKED PROBLEMS

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

A wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. The use of term "wicked" here has come to denote resistance to resolution, rather than evil. Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems.

The phrase was originally used in social planning. Its modern sense was introduced in 1967 by C. West Churchman in a guest editorial he wrote in the journal Management Science, responding to a previous use of the term by Horst Rittel. Churchman discussed the moral responsibility of operations research "to inform the manager in what respect our 'solutions' have failed to tame his wicked problems". Rittel and Melvin M. Webber formally described the concept of wicked problems in a 1973 treatise, contrasting "wicked" problems with relatively "tame", soluble problems in mathematics, chess, or puzzle solving.

Rittel and Webber's 1973 formulation of wicked problems in social policy planning specified ten characteristics:

There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem.Wicked problems have no stopping rule.Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but good or bad.There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem.Every solution to a wicked problem is a "one-shot operation"; because there is no opportunity to learn by trial and error, every attempt counts significantly.

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Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set of potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan.Every wicked problem is essentially unique.Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem.The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem's resolution.The social planner has no right to be wrong (i.e., planners are liable for the consequences of the actions they generate).Conklin later generalized the concept of problem wickedness to areas other than planning and policy.

The defining characteristics are:

The problem is not understood until after the formulation of a solution.Wicked problems have no stopping rule.Solutions to wicked problems are not right or wrong.Every wicked problem is essentially novel and unique.Every solution to a wicked problem is a 'one shot operation.'Wicked problems have no given alternative solutions.

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These below notes from https://www.wickedproblems.com/1_wicked_problems.php

A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that is difficult or impossible to solve for as many as four reasons: incomplete or contradictory knowledge, the number of people and opinions involved, the large economic burden, and the interconnected nature of these problems with other problems. Poverty is linked with education, nutrition with poverty, the economy with nutrition, and so on. These problems are typically offloaded to policy makers, or are written off as being too cumbersome to handle en masse. Yet these are the problems—poverty, sustainability, equality, and health and wellness—that plague our cities and our world and that touch each and every one of us. These problems can be mitigated through the process of design, which is an intellectual approach that emphasizes empathy, abductive reasoning, and rapid prototyping.

Horst Rittel, one of the first to formalize a theory of wicked problems, cites ten characteristics of these complicated social issues:

1. Wicked problems have no definitive formulation. The problem of poverty in Texas is grossly similar but discretely different from poverty in Nairobi, so no practical characteristics describe "poverty."2. It's hard, maybe impossible, to measure or claim success with wicked problems because they bleed into one another, unlike the boundaries of traditional design problems that can be articulated or defined.3. Solutions to wicked problems can be only good or bad, not true or false. There is no idealized end state to arrive at, and so approaches to wicked problems should be tractable ways to improve a situation rather than solve it.4. There is no template to follow when tackling a wicked problem, although history may provide a guide. Teams that approach wicked problems must literally make things up as they go along.5. There is always more than one explanation for a wicked problem, with the appropriateness of the explanation depending greatly on the individual perspective of the designer.6. Every wicked problem is a symptom of another problem. The interconnected quality of socio-economic political systems illustrates how, for example, a change in education will cause new behavior in nutrition.7. No mitigation strategy for a wicked problem has a definitive scientific test because humans invented wicked problems and science exists to understand natural phenomena.8. Offering a "solution" to a wicked problem frequently is a "one shot" design effort because a significant intervention changes the design space enough to minimize the ability for trial and error.9. Every wicked problem is unique.

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10. Designers attempting to address a wicked problem must be fully responsible for their actions.

Based on these characteristics, not all hard-to-solve problems are wicked, only those with an indeterminate scope and scale. So most social problems—such as inequality, political instability, death, disease, or famine—are wicked. They can't be "fixed." But because of the role of design in developing infrastructure, designers can play a central role in mitigating the negative consequences of wicked problems and positioning the broad trajectory of culture in new and more desirable directions. This mitigation is not an easy, quick, or solitary exercise. While traditional circles of entrepreneurship focus on speed and agility, designing for impact is about staying the course through methodical, rigorous iteration. Due to the system qualities of these large problems, knowledge of science, economics, statistics, technology, medicine, politics, and more are necessary for effective change. This demands interdisciplinary collaboration, and most importantly, perseverance.

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Vision of Global Ethics from the Carnegie Foundation:http://www.globalethicsnetwork.org/profiles/blogs/global-ethical-dialogues

Carnegie Foundation review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Centuryhttp://www.ethicsandinternationalaffairs.org/2014/thomas-pikettys-capital-and-the-developing-world/

Cybernetics:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics

The “AGIL Paradigm” – Talcott Parsonshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGIL_paradigm

John Buck on circles:http://www.socionet.us/

Bruce Schuman FOCALPOINT: http://focalpoint.us NETWORK NATION: http://networknation.net SHARED PURPOSE: http://sharedpurpose.net INTERSPIRIT: http://interspirit.net (805) 966-9515, PO Box 23346, Santa Barbara CA 93101

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