At 07:45 PM 8/25/2001 -0700, Mark Jones wrote:
Tich Nhat Hahn is the Buddhist teacher that made the proclamation
regarding the "Collective" as the next manifestation of the Buddha.
I believe that Open Space as a life practice creates the minimal structure
required to begin to grok "Community / Collective" -- in terms of
intention, communication, and behavior.
I believe that communities like the (Centers for) Spirited Work
that practice ongoing (3 years now) community, organization,
and business model using Open Space as the core practice -- are the
training grounds for the manifestation of the Buddha as the Collective.
I note that the active inclusion of children into the Spirited Work
community in the USA has had a positive and profound transformative
effect on the community and the practice of Open Space as a Life Practice
(in contrast to using Open Space as just a "facilitation" tool.
Welcome Mark! - I don't know the work of Tich Nhat Hahn but he doesn't seem
to be alone in the speculations. A fellow by the name of Joel de Rosnay, a
Frenchman no less, writing in a book called "The Symbiotic Man" seems to be
saying much the same thing, although he starts from a rather different
place. The argument in brief, is that as our electronic environment lays
down the necessary neurons and synapses for a global collective, in fact
the forces of evolution are at work one more time -- but this time leading
to what comes after us -- which he calls Symbiotic Man. Which sounds a lot
like the manifestation of consciousness in (as) the collective. And myself.
I have found my thinking moving for the last 20 years in a similar
direction. Those of your who have wandered through "The Power of Spirit,"
(or the predecessors, Tiger or Spirit) will recognize the argument that we
are currently in what I have called the ProActive Organizational
Consciousness -- heading towards the InterActive, which is characterized as
a conscious, living, open self-organizing system. Of course, we have always
been living, open self-organizing systems -- but the new thing is the
consciousness of the fact. Or better yet, the appreciation of this fact.
Which means (amongst other things) that control as we used to think we had
it, no longer exists. It also means that the (I think) artificial
distinction between the organization and the individual is blurred, and
perhaps abolished. This does not mean (at an experiential level that we all
turn into an un-differentiated blob -- but it does mean that the
individual finds meaning largely in terms of the collective -- and perhaps
more striking, the collective is infinitely more than the sum of the parts.
In short, rampant Individualism of the sort worshipped by the likes of Anne
Rand may be on the way out (Thank God). And of course, the experimental
data upon which I have based some of these wilder notions is our
collective, global experience in Open Space. So we will see what happens next.
Harrison
Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, MD 20854 USA
phone 301-469-9269
fax 301-983-9314
Summer Phone 207-763-3261
Summer Address
189 Beaucaire Ave.
Camden, ME 04843
Personal website www.mindspring.com/~owenhh
Open Space Institute website www.openspaceworld.org
Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com
