Designing Life and Living

From Kosmos Journal:

Ecovillages: Design at the Edge

By May East

Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness the energies of love. -- Teilhard de Chardin

Ecovillages are laboratories of human relations, in which we test the power of new systemic thinking to bring about necessary changes in the local and global economic, social and ecological environments. Ecovillages provide conditions for cutting-edge sustainability experiments. In these living and learning laboratories, we quickly learn from mistakes and advances. Both are held in a complex framework of dream and vision, earth and cosmos, technology and spirit, intention and love, dance and chant, cycle and balance, death and renewal.

What is sustained in an ecovillage is not economic growth or development, but the entire web of life on which our long term survival depends. A sustainable community is designed in such a way that its ways of life, businesses, economy, social activities, physical structures and technologies do not interfere with Nature's inherent ability to sustain life.

Read More: Here

Stratified Democracy

From the WorldBank website (2001) - thanks to ~C4Chaos:

The Cultural Dynamics of Nation Building in Afghanistan

Based on several years working with Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk in South Africa, Dr. Don Edward Beck has developed a new model for nation building which has tremendous relevance to Afghanistan in the months to come.

Dr. Beck s model -- entitled Spiral Dynamics -- is based on the work of the late Professor Clare W. Graves of Union College, New York. Professor Graves described what he called "Levels of Psychological Existence" as an emerging pattern and priority of worldviews, value systems, and complex adaptive intelligences that arise in response to life conditions -- that is, human nature is not fixed, and cultures are not static. Dr. Beck further enhanced the Gravesian framework by fusing it with the new science of "memetics" and joining forces with philosopher-author Ken Wilber's "All Quadrants, All Levels" approach in looking at the development of people and cultures. This enhanced model takes an integral and holistic approach that can be applied to all societies, because it focuses on open, dynamic systems.

In his talk, Dr. Beck proposes a "natural design" process, one that is crafted to fit the natural habitats, the patterns of memetic migration, the historical dynamics that have all shaped this point in time, the influence of forces in neighbor states, the current levels of psychological development of the people, the crises created by patterns of violence and warfare, the natural divisions into clans, tribes, empires and ideologies, as well as the potential skill levels of available leadership.

Beck argues for introducing a new, more powerful, comprehensive and dynamic way of thinking into decision-making systems and an understanding of both the people in Afghanistan as well as the international agencies who wish to support them. In this presentation Beck demonstrates ways in which:

* intertribal warfare in Afghanistan may be countered,
* the internal conflicts within Pakistan may be addressed, and
* the religious and cultural aspects of the Jihad and other historic conflicts may be understood.

Dr. Beck shows how to actually create a system that deals with a society s economic, social and cultural dynamics while building local capacity at the same time. Such a model ensures that support systems will respond to the survival and sustenance needs of millions of people and address the issue of sustainability and self-sufficiency, he argues.

Dr. Beck has also developed a 'Peace & Conflict Monitor' approach to profiling troublespots before they explode. He will discuss his analysis of the deeper "value system" issues regarding Israel and Palestine, by showing why neither the Oslo Peace Accord or the recent Camp David meetings had a chance of bridging over the great divides. He will suggest a fresh, Integral initiative in reframing the historic conflict out of the ethnic stereotypes and into a recognition of these deep value system codes.

By drawing upon these new insights and by exploring these value memes – the cultural "DNA"-like codes -- to leverage the situation in Afghanistan, Dr. Beck offers a unique solution that can be used to bring peace and prosperity there and elsewhere around the world.

Watch Dr. Beck's Entire Presentation: Here

*IMPORTANT NOTE*
Don Beck describes George W. Bush as "my dear friend"
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Economics at the Edge

"Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.” -- Abbie Hoffman

What is the nature of economic growth? Economist Joseph Schumpeter argued that economic growth happens through a process of 'creative destruction' - a process where old existing social and productive systems transform and give way to new ways of being, doing and relating. These novel ways of living arise to meet the needs and directives (life conditions) no longer met by the former economic activities.

Schumpeter argued that creative destruction has two sides: the costs and results of destruction as well as the benefits of creation. And as creative destruction intensifies, the results of this great tradeoff sharpen. It then becomes important to attempt to understand and track how this tradeoff plays out through the practical, multi-dimensional specifics of any situation. Only through an appreciation of the wider contexts and influencing factors (social, psychological, ecological, cultural, etc.) can we begin to determine whether or not such novel developments can be facilitated to be promote overall individual, group and environmental health

Read about Schumpeter's innovative work here:

'Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy'

So, given the delicate and complex nature of this dual transformative process, how do we begin reorganizing the industrial economy in a way that truly honors and includes the dynamics of 'creative destruction' in an increasingly complex global system? A long and complicated question, we know, but a question which needs to be at the centre of all social policy and reorganizational efforts.

For starters, such reorganization might include a sensitivity to the particular life ways and conditions (capacities and challenges) of the various peoples involved - thereby ultimately affirming the human rights and responsibilities of the most vunerable populations. One way promising way forward is suggested by leading economic consultant and strategist Umair Haque:

"By using markets, networks, and communities to alter the way resources are managed: to weave a fabric of incentives for sustainable growth and authentic value creation into the economy -- a new economic fabric that's meaningful to people."

"Meaningful economics", then, must include the linking of cultural values and worldviews to macro and micro economic processes and policy. This linking must be grounded in efforts to include individual meaning-making (consciousness) - and related processes. In fact, an economics poised to respect all aspects of the human condition would "weave a fabric" of social economics in such a way as to support the integrity of individual human development, ecological systems and social justice.

In this Harvard Business Press Blog Haque puts forth a new manifesto for the next industrial revolution:

'A Manifesto for the Next Industrial Revolution'

Haque's article is a move towards thinking more holistically about the issues, arguing for the importance of providing real tangible and valuable incentives - yet Haque’s central premise of “organize something” still maintains an allegiance to the older Western managerial paradigms - and therefore does not fully respect the more ‘wild’, or unmanagible aspects of human-social evolution.

Perhaps as perspectives shift from the modernist "management" thinking to more holistical and multiperspectival ways of thinking and acting we will begin to see a shift in practice where natural design principles and creative destruction meet to generate a truly adaptive and 'meaningful' economics.

The Integral Puzzle

Determining the Integrality of Integral Theory

by Steven E. Wallis

Clearly, we need a new way to understand this process of assembling the puzzle we call “integral theory.” Forget, for a moment, the classic story of three blind men trying to describe an elephant; we are a community of the blind, attempting to collaboratively assemble a jigsaw puzzle. We can find, feel, and describe the corner pieces fairly easily. We can also count the number of pieces by touch. This gives us some vague idea of the shape and size of our puzzle. Trying to fit the pieces together is much more difficult. Someone picks up a piece and tries to describe it to the others. Is it rounded? Pointed? How many sides does it have? Who has another piece that might fit here?

Simply put, our community of integral theory thinkers does not have the vocabulary to describe the pieces we hold. That lack of vocabulary can lead to misunderstandings – a classic cause of conflict. Clearly, we need a new way to understand this process of assembling the puzzle we call “integral theory.”

Read More: Here

Gleaning Context and Complexity

From Integral Options Café:

Geneticists Confront Integral Reality

David Brooks can be pretty interesting sometimes. In his column from Tuesday, he stumbles upon a deeper truth about reality that informs all of integral thinking -- we cannot separate the It from the I and the We and the Its…

Brooks uses the word "multivariate" in mentioning poverty -- and this word applies to any understanding of human experience. We must look at all the information -- the I, We, Its, and It. This applies to poverty, the energy crisis, racism, "the war on
terror," and everything else.

There is much to be learned in studying genetics, but we will never find the answers to who we really are in the genome, or in neurotransmitters, or in our minds and experiences, or in our cultures and religions, or in the societies we create -- but we will find the answers, someday, in how all of these interact.

Read More: Here

Consciousness, Qualia, Power and Self

It is our mission to create blog posts that are both research oriented and provide accessible information on the way to more integral kinds of thinking and doing. And central to any comprehensive (integrative) inquiry are questions about consciousness and selfhood. The following three videos address some of the most fundamental issues in the science, philosophy and exploration of human consciousness:

First up is Dr. V.S. Ramachandran, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at UCSD, discusses consciousness, qualia, and self:

Then, an interview with David Chalmers discussing his theory of consciousness, the hard problem, and the explanatory gap:

Finally, this is part two of a BBC documentary called The Century of Self. This part is called 'Engineering Consent', and it tells the tale of how power elites used psychoanalytic theories to try and control human populations in an age of mass democracy and global capitalism:

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The Academic Emergence of Integral Theory

Reflections on and Clarifications of the 1st Biennial Integral Theory Conference

By Mark D. Forman, Ph.D. and Sean Esbjörn-Hargens, Ph.D.

As founders and organizers of the 1st Integral Theory Conference we feel moved to respond to Frank Visser's latest posting (“Assessing Integral Theory”). We do this in the spirit of dialogue and out of a sense that his characterization of our event was misleading and inaccurate in important ways.

To be fair, Visser's article is less about the conference and more about what constitutes theory building and the checking of its validity. His main focus is on how Wilber has failed to build theory and have it validated in a scientific or academic fashion. We would like to raise several points relevant to this.

Read More: Here

Friends Without Borders

In this public service announcement, Friends Without Borders explains how they offer solutions to the global tensions existing in our world today: they seek to connect children with one another, heart-to-heart, on a global scale. This new generation might then, quite possibly, help grow the world into a warmer, friendlier home for us all.

From the website:

All across India, tens of thousands of children have begun writing heartfelt letters to the students in Pakistan. All across Pakistan, tens of thousands of children are replying with heartfelt letters back. New connections are being made. New friendships are being formed.

Imagine if all the schools from both nations were to participate? What will happen when this generation grows up?

At Friends Without Borders, we are making this possible, and invite you and your school to take part in this historic heart-to-heart experiment.

Children have a natural instinct toward friendship and will jump to reach out and create new friends, when given the opportunity. The simple act of writing a letter leaves deep and lasting impressions that help to humanize 'the other.' These are the seeds that promise to mature into a safer, friendlier world.

Welcome to our campaign... so simple, it just might work!

Maybe, just maybe…

Three Broad Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition

A Precis of Origins of the Modern Mind

By Merlin Donald

Origins of the Modern Mind (1991) was an attempt to synthesize various sources of information--neurobiological, psychological, archeological and anthropological, among others--about our cognitive origins, in the belief that the human mind co-evolved in close interaction with both brain and culture… This precis focuses on my core theory and disregards most of the background material reviewed at length in the book itself.

My central hypothesis is that there were three major cognitive transformations by which the modern human mind emerged over several million years, starting with a complex of skills presumably resembling those of the chimpanzee. These transformations left, on the one hand, three new, uniquely human systems of memory representation, and on the other, three interwoven layers of human culture, each supported by its corresponding set of representations.

I agree with multilevel evolutionary theorists like Plotkin who believe that selection pressures at this stage of human evolution were ultimately expressed and tested on the sociocultural level; hence I have described the evolutionary scenario as a series of cultural adaptations, even though individual cognition was really where the main event was taking place, since it provides the linkage between physical and cultural evolution.

Read More (PDF): Here

On Free Will and Human Nature

From SEED Magazine:

Tom Wolfe & Michael Gazzaniga in Conversation

Tom Wolfe, who calls himself “the social secretary of neuroscience,” often turns to current research to inform his stories and cultural commentary. His 1996 essay, “Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died,” raised questions about personal responsibility in the age of genetic predeterminism. Similar concerns led Michael Gazzaniga to found the Law and Neuroscience Project. When Gazzaniga, who just published Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique, was last in New York, Seed incited a discussion: on status, free will, and the human condition.

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

Watch this Conversation: Here

Educating Generation Next

“Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why?' Others dream of things that never were and say, 'Why not?'” -- George Bernard Shaw

Once the center of a renaissance, Harlem, New York, has slowly declined, now symbolizing urban poverty and decay. But today, there's a new renaissance under way in Harlem, with the construction of new buildings, businesses and schools. One leader is Geoffrey Canada, whose vision, quite simply, is to save children, and he has amassed a staggering amount of private money -- more than $100,000,000 -- to realize his goal. His testing ground is a 60-block area in central Harlem that he calls "The Harlem Children's Zone," in which Harvard School of Education alumnus Canada has promised parents:

"If your child comes to this school, we will guarantee that we will get your child into college. We will be with you with your child from the moment they enter our school till the moment they graduate from college."

Watch Geoffery Canada on Oprah:

Learn More: Here

The Complexities of Social Change

In recent years, in has become increasingly clear that in order to accomplish effective social change we must stop looking at the discrete elements of our various social projects and start trying to understand the complex relationships between them.

The dynamic complexity of human social life requires a new kind of thinking and acting – ways of understanding and interacting in the world that both embrace diversity and innovation, as well as seek out deeper connections and integrities. Our greatest wisdoms are embedded in myriad of different structures and relationships – and illuminating and animating that knowledge can become a massively creative process.

This is exactly what Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman and Michael Quinn Patton purpose in their new book Getting To Maybe: How The World Has Changed. The authors show how bringing together different knowledge sets to solve complex problems can radically alter projected outcomes.

In sum, Getting to Maybe recognizes the experiences of a wide range of people and organizations and applies the insights of complexity theory in an effort to lay out a brand new way of thinking about making change in communities, in business, and in the world. Getting to Maybe offers a practical guide to social innovation for others in the field, as well as for anyone who wants to make a difference but are unsure where to start.

Listen to this interview with Getting to Maybe author Frances Westley:
On Social Innovation, Complexity Thinking and Movements of Change