Reading the posts on economics and especially the part about bankers
made me look into "Tales from Open Space", a grand little collection HO
published in 1995. There is a report of bankers of the World Bank in
open space (Lessons from Open Space at the World Bank by Giles and
Robbins Hopkings). That was 18 years ago.
Since then Larry Peterson in Canada worked extensively with Canadian
banks in open space and Brian Bainbridge moved all over the planet
working with World Bank folks... I think I also heard about work with
the World Bank that John Engle was involved in and Nigel Seys-Phillips
worked with the World Bank in Singapore, Hanoi, Ulaanbaatar/Mongolia,
Vientiane/Laos and Phnom Penh/Cambodia (Nigels events are found in the
data base "Open Space worldscape" that lists 760 os events recorded by
some 60 os-workers all over the planet)
http://www.openspaceworldscape.org/index.asp?sprache=en
I myself had not the privilege to work with banks or bankers... what I
can imagine is that "alternative" or "green" banks and especially also
Credit Unions (they come in all sizes and have navigated, at least in
Germany without public bail outs through the "crisis") could, in
addition to the banks already mentioned, employ Open Space Technology
for their pressing business issues.
In the final chapter of their report on the work with the World Bank
back in 1995 headed "Is Open Space Better?", Giles and Robbins Hopkins
report on results and aspects with bankers that I have experienced with
almost the same wording with teachers, engineers, public administrators,
day care workers, parishioners, IT-folks, hospital staff, politicians,
sanitation department workers... you name it...
The very simple secret in all this for me as (still a little bit)
OST-facilitator is to keep spreading stories of our work, everywhere...
no way that bankers will escape us.
Cheers and greetings from Berlin
mmp
On 21.04.2013 01:19, Brett Barndt wrote:
So important these questions and these topics. The kinds of crises that
are precipitated and arise from these kinds of economic times merit the
attention now of anyone who wants to positively contribute to change.
Michael Rowbotham's book "Grip of Death" does an interesting job of
showing how insecurity is manufactured by the kind of money system we
have had for now a few hundred years. That would be a debt based money
system at its essence. It is most useful to establish a baseline. His
understanding of how the money system itself works today is stronger
than Eisenstein's. He establishes how the money system itself works to
create the kinds of the social conditions that Dickens documented so
long ago and that persist today throughout the global economy under this
kind of global money system. He also shows how debt grows and grows as
it must along with the money supply in modern economies that require
money for most human relationships.
Douglas Rushkoff's book "Life, Inc." also provides an interesting
introduction into the mechanisms of money that establish a condition of
constant lack (of money but not anything else) and that drive forward
what we have come to name capitalism and all its outcomes such as broken
relationships, deracination, and the identity deficits that feed
consumerism. He does a great job of relating the influences on not only
consumerism but the pathologies arisen in our enterprises and
organizations. He also introduces alternatives to the current system in
history (they do exist) and in contemporary times in places like Japan
where the money supply seriously contracted after the 1980s debt bubble.
David Graeber's book "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" presents a story of
what happens to human relationships once money is interjected into them
as a medium of exchange instead of relationship. This book was a great
inspiration to OWS and is now in paperback. It establishes how caste
systems themselves arise from debt economies and many other things we
take for granted as normal or somehow natural and preordained.
There is also a great body of literature about the psychologies that
arise from these kinds of conditions of forced scarcity on human beings.
The challenge is to get the bankers into the room for openspace, when
anyway the system itself is larger than they are as individuals, and it
is itself programmed to drive toward certain ends regardless of the
choices or behaviors of individuals working in it. The banks are also
really owned and their boards controlled by people who seek anonymity
and would be hard pressed to show up at an Openspace.
Of course, funders of politicians and political conflicts in our
countries, and especially funding arms or whatever drives conflicts in
natural resource rich or strategically placed countries also don't show
up at Openspace.
Fortunately, this generation of scholars, mostly anthropologists, have
new insights that we can employ to answer many of our old questions.
There is more insight coming out in this generation to help us frame new
kinds of new solutions. As a young person who was involved in OWS
expressed, "we need new theories."
So important this discussion now. Can't wait to see what the Openspace
community can come up with once engaged in it. The timing is crucial
since we know what these kinds of conditions can lead to.
On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 7:47 AM, facilit8 - Amanda Bucklow
<ama...@facilit8.com <mailto:ama...@facilit8.com>> wrote:
Kerry
speaking as someone who frequently feels a sense of 'pushing water
up a mountain with a fork', one answer to your passionately posed
question is actually full of irony...
... for thousands of years, humanity has been self-organising into
tribes in search of protection from the uncertainty of life, power
and influence and indeed their very survival. Those tribes are today
labelled bankers, lawyers, politicians, experts.
Despite all the distain for consumerism and the disgust at endless
bad behaviour of some in those tribes, the numbers of young people
who see being a banker, lawyer or any other influential expert, as a
career path continues unabated. Why? Of course I don't know exactly
why, but I have a sense that, many more feel that security for self
is a priority over better quality for all and they may even feel bad
about that, they may spend a good proportion of their lives doing
something they hate deep down, but they go that way anyway and may
even stay there for a long time.
Open Space is a wonderful way of inviting those in who are ready to
change in their own time wherever they are in their life. And we all
add to the momentum which will help the wake-up call to go 'viral'.
warmest good wishes
Amanda
Commercial Mediator
www.AmandaBucklow.co.uk <http://www.AmandaBucklow.co.uk/>
www.blog.AmandaBucklow.co.uk <http://www.blog.AmandaBucklow.co.uk/>
+44 207 121 8772 <tel:%2B44%20207%20121%208772>
PSave a tree ... please do not print this e-mail//unless you really
need to
On 20 Apr 2013, at 10:51, Kerry Napuk wrote:
Dear Listers
Thanks Raffi for introducing SACRED ECONOMICS.
If we can find a way to get rid of money by reinventing the way we
exist, the banksters will disappear along with all the greedy and
selfish people who have accumulated the world's riches on the
backs of others through the shibboleth of globalisation. There is
something disastrously wrong when the three richest people have
more wealth than the poorest 48 countries in the world. How did
0.5% of the population amass 38% of the world's wealth when 68% of
the population have only 4.2%?
How can capitalism, which depends on consumption economics to
create more and more growth, continue when the earth's resources
are finite and the environment is ravaged to produce yet more
wealth for the few. In our hearts we know the old system is
bankrupt and corrupt, so something must change. Eisenstein's book
is one attempt to look at what the transition might involve.
For some years I have believed there is another way we can move
away from production and consumption of quantity by focusing on
quality, making and doing things that last and allow people to
feel good without using more and more precious resources.
Do you have any thoughts?
More specifically, does Open Space have a role to play here? How
do we get from Bruce opening space from his park bench in deep
winter to transforming the world?
Peace
Kerry
Edinburgh
PS For more conversation with Charles Eisenstein, ust click on the
12 minute film which will take you to YOU TUBE. The other two
films are further conversations with Eisenstein.
Sacred Economics with Charles Eisenstein
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEZkQv25uEs&playnext=1&list=PL5D65912B81EB9D7B&feature=results_main>
by 777Bluewhale <http://www.youtube.com/user/777Bluewhale>
*
•Sacred Economics with Charles Eisenstein - A Short Film
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEZkQv25uEs&playnext=1&list=PL5D65912B81EB9D7B>
(12:09)
*
•Sacred Economics - Charles Eisenstein Part 2
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMKLXx6ZCcw&playnext=1&list=PL5D65912B81EB9D7B>
(9:22)
*
•Sacred Economics - Charles Eisenstein Part 1
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4LsktuiaOU&playnext=1&list=PL5D65912B81EB9D7B>
(10:35)
view full playlist (3 videos)
<http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5D65912B81EB9D7B>
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