At 12:39 AM 6/13/2002 -0800, Dan wrote:
It occurs to me "conflict" is a loaded word, having different connotations in different cultures. For example, we have Bahai friends who see no benefits in the category "conflict." They talk about "conflict free conflict resolution," with heavy emphasis on our common humanity. This and other examples notwithstanding, we use the term "conflict resolution" frequently, and we like the common association of "conflict" with the Chinese Mandarin word "wei-ji," usually translated as "crisis" and embodying the characters for danger and opportunity.
If conflict is a loaded word, even more so peace. It seems that many people understand peace mostly in terms of the absence of it's opposites. Such things as conflict, confusion, and chaos. Yet in my experience each of these "unholy trinity" have essential contributions to make to the process of living. Admittedly, if you could rid the world of conflict, confusion and chaos you would probably achieve a state pretty close to equilibrium, but as a biologist friend of mine says, "When you reach equilibrium in Biology, you are dead." So the real issue, as I see it, it to "transcend and include" all three "C's" -- and "wei-ji" is heading in that direction.
I am very interested in questions associated with what are necessary and sufficient conditions for constructive OS process. I notice in this case that a relatively large expenditure of energy must have been required create and fill the Open Space vessel we read about in Rome, far from the pressure cooker of home.?
No doubt many people worked very hard for a short period of time assembling that incredible 50 in Rome. But it is worth while noticing what they did not work hard on. No thought or effort was devoted to the agenda or the process. When folks arrived they knew only when it would start and when it would be over. For the curious (and the Villa staff) we scheduled meals, but that was it. I think it has been a common experience that working on agenda and process is not only a waste of time and energy, such work is actually counter-productive. First of all, things never turn out as planned, and secondly, when you are fixated on the agenda and process as they "should be" (according to the plan) -- it is quite likely that you will miss all the good stuff that is happening. As we say -- Be Prepared to Be Surprised.
De Lange on the learning-org list many times has observed the following "essentialities" that give form to what he considers are conditions of emergence in self-organizing complex systems: Wholeness (associativity-unity) Liveness (becoming-being) Fruitfulness (connect-beget) Sureness (identity-categoricity) Spareness (quantity-limit) Otherness (quality-variety) Openness (open-paradigm) I think Open Space has potential to deliver on these "essentialities" quite well.
De Lange's list is interesting and useful. Personally I find the work of Stuart Kauffman of the Santa Fe Institute to be most helpful, but regardless of the details, I think there is a growing consensus in the scientific community that there are essential pre-conditions, which if present will produce order. While it is true that I knew of the work on self-organizing systems as early as the late '70s -- dumb me I never put two and two together. I "created" Open Space, and then one morning I said damn -- this is a self organizing system for real. So I guess I would go one step further than your statement above ("I think Open Space has potential to deliver on these "essentialities"). For me it is not a question of "potential to deliver" -- rather, if the conditions are not met, there is no Open Space. I have tried to put all this together in Part I of my book, "The Power of Spirit" (Berrett-Koehler/2000) if you are interested. Harrison
Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive Potomac, MD 20854 USA phone 301-365-2093 Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html