Cultural Intelligence – Page 793 – Public Intelligence Blog

A big breakthrough for all group process folks…

For almost 5 years I've been involved with envisioning and creating a “pattern language” for group process. (A pattern language is a set of design factors to guide people in creating things that are wholesome and life-giving – vibrant communities, effective curricula, engaging software… and great conversations.) That process has now come to fruition.

In 2008 Peggy Holman and I did an all day workshop on “A Pattern Language for Conversations that Matter” to introduce the idea of pattern languages to professionals in the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD). That winter, Tree Bressen invited me to a multi-day gathering at her home to actually construct a pattern language on group process. That session began what proved to be a profoundly complex and challenging task facilitated by Tree and her tiny core team of volunteers – all pieced together on a gigantic wiki and Google docs and dozens of meetings. I participated in a few more of their multi-day work sessions over the years, but about a dozen other volunteers did far more work than I did. Last year I wrote a blog post on the project for NCDD – http://ncdd.org/4535 – and a couple of weeks ago wrote a personal blog post – http://post.ly/534Wr – on the transformational potential of pattern languages of all kinds – and why I consider them profoundly important. But the big news now is that the pattern language so many of us labored for so many hours to produce has now been released as a gorgeous card deck.

I can't recommend this resource highly enough for anyone seeking to create high quality conversations of any kind for any purpose. This card deck is THE premier navigational tool for powerful conversations. It goes deeper than methodology and is more practical than theory. It is designed to help us understand what is going on and how to make it better. It offers greater flexibility and power to our practices of dialogue, deliberation, mediation, choice creating, and conversation of all types. It is available electronically FREE for the taking – and only costs $25 if you want a physical printed boxed deck.

And to top it all off – it is beautiful.

So I hereby invite you into a new world of conversational adventure and insight, available to you right now.

Coheartedly,
Tom

GROUP WORKS PATTERN LANGUAGE CARD DECK RELEASED!

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Big Breakthrough in Group Process”

2012/02/10

John Robb: Four Sources of Trust, Crypto Not Scaling….

Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Computer/online security, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Policies, Threats

Why The Global System is Killing Trust

Posted: 09 Feb 2012 03:35 PM PST

Trust is an essential building block of any economic and social system. Systems that attempt to operate without it inevitably fail. A loss of trust typically preceeds a collapse in legitimacy.

That's our future. Here's why:

Let's start with a philosopher “king” of crypt0-security, Bruce Schneier. He has a new book out called Liars and Outliers: Eneabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive (Wiley, 2012).

The book is all about the mechanisms for building trust. There are four mechanisms:

moral controls,
reputational pressure (shame),
institutional pressure (legal system), and
security controls (encryption, locks, etc.).

He contends (rightly) that in the modern world, we don't typically make/have the personal relationships required to build moral and reputational trust. We typically make impersonal relationships when we interact with a global economic system (you buy stuff made by people you don't know). As a result, we rely up on institutional (legal compliance) and security (to guard against bad behavior) to provide the level of trust necessary to make the global economy work.

There are two massive problems with that.

Legal compliance is increasingly a farce. Take the mortgage settlement the US government and the financial industry reached over rampant fraud in mortgage lending. I wrote a bit more about it on the Resilient Community blog if you want more detail. What does this mean? That even at the national level in a “developed country” it is impossible to use legal means to enforce trustworthiness (let's not even talk about compliance at the global level). It's doesn't work anymore. It's just too easy for anybody with financial means, to buy off country's legal system for pennies on the dollar (to the damage caused). The compliance system is broken.

So, that leaves us with security as the only way to prevent bad actors from running away with the global system. This leads me to a great presentation I heard yesterday by Dan Geer. He's another philosopher “king” of crypto-security (but for the CIA). Very smart guy. He made a convincing case that security is scaling slower than data, bandwidth, node, and user growth. It is falling behind and will continue to fall behind as the global system grows.

Upshot: it's already nearly impossible to secure big organizations. Every Fortune 500 company has and will continue to compromised. The government's systems are already a sieve. There's almost nothing that can be done about it and it will get increasingly worse. Forget about securing a single person trying to connect to the global system. They are just sheep ready for slaughter.

So, what happens now?

The global system will continue to grow. Trust will continue to leak as attempts at compliance and security fail to work effectively. The economic depression we have already started gets worse and worse and worse. Disorder erupts. It grows….

Is there a solution? An alternative form of social order that can provide a scalable global solution?

Yes. Resilient communities. Resilient communities rescale your life down to a rational level. They make personal relationships with the people that economically interact with you possible (again).

Hey, let the rest of the world sink into the squalor of a trust free world. It will make that system easier to trounce in head to head competition for people.

See Also:

Robert David Steele, THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth, & Trust (Evolver Editions, 5 June 2012)

and

Robert Garigue at Phi Beta Iota

2012/02/09

Gordon Duff: Independent Report Contradicts Western Portrait of Syria

Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Media, Military, Peace Intelligence

Independent Report Contradicts Western Portrait of Syria

Arab League Report Shows that Syria Has Been Mischaracterized

While the Western media act like the Syrian government is wantonly and indiscriminately killing its own people without provocation, an independent investigation has found a different reality on the ground.

Specifically, over 160 monitors from the Arab League – comprised of both allies and mortal enemies of Syria – toured Syria and published a report on January 27th showing that the situation has been mischaracterized.

Initially, the report noted general cooperation by the Syrian government:

The Mission [i.e. the Arab League investigative team] noted that the Government strived to help it succeed in its task and remove any barriers that might stand in its way. The Government also facilitated meetings with all parties. No restrictions were placed on the movement of the Mission and its ability to interview Syrian citizens, both those who opposed the Government and those loyal to it.

The report noted that the media has greatly exaggerated the amount of violence in Syria:

The Mission noted that many parties falsely reported that explosions or violence had occurred in several locations. When the observers went to those locations, they found that those reports were unfounded.

The Mission also noted that, according to its teams in the field, the media exaggerated the nature of the incidents and the number of persons killed in incidents and protests in certain towns.

***

Since it began its work, the Mission has been the target of a vicious media campaign. Some media outlets have published unfounded statements, which they attributed to the Head of the Mission. They have also grossly exaggerated events, thereby distorting the truth.

Continue reading “Gordon Duff: Independent Report Contradicts Western Portrait of Syria”

2012/02/092012/02/09

Ralph Peters: Testimony to Congress on Pakistan As a Failing Empire, Focus on Baluchistan

Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Hill Letters & Testimony, History, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Impotency, Key Players, Methods & Process, Military, Officers Call, Policies, Strategy, Threats, True Cost

Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Baluchistan Hearing, February 8, 2012
Testimony of Ralph Peters, military analyst and author

“PAKISTAN AS A FAILING EMPIRE”

2012-02-09 Ralph Peters House Testimony, Baluchistan and Pakistan (8 pages, doc)

Introductory remarks: This testimony arises from three premises.

First, we cannot analyze global events through reassuring ideological lenses, be they left or right, or we will continue to be mistaken, surprised and bewildered by foreign developments. The rest of the world will neither conform to our prejudices nor behave for our convenience.

Second, focusing obsessively on short-term problems blinds us to the root causes and frequent intractability of today’s conflicts. Because we do not know history, we wave history away. Yet, the only way to understand the new world disorder is to place current developments in the context of generations and even centuries. Otherwise, we will continue to blunder through situations in which we deploy to Afghanistan to end Taliban rule, only to find ourselves, a decade later, impatient to negotiate the Taliban’s return to power.

Third, we must not be afraid to “color outside of the lines.” When it comes to foreign affairs, Washington’s political spectrum is monochromatic: timid, conformist and wrong with breathtaking consistency. We have a Department of State that refuses to think beyond borders codified at Versailles nine decades ago; a Department of Defense that, faced with messianic and ethnic insurgencies, concocted its doctrine from irrelevant case studies of yesteryear’s Marxist guerrillas; and a think-tank community almost Stalinist in its rigid allegiance to twentieth-century models of how the world should work.

If we do not think innovatively, we will continue to fail ignobly.

Continue reading “Ralph Peters: Testimony to Congress on Pakistan As a Failing Empire, Focus on Baluchistan”

2012/02/08

Michael Peterson: Jew on Jew – The Importance of Dissent

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics

Phi Beta Iota: The following is a comment posted to the reviewby Robert Steele of Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy: The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul (Carroll & Graf, 2002). It is a combination of Constitutional and religious counterintelligence commentary that we found to be encouraging–most American Jews are not Zionist sayanim [traitors to the USA, clandestine assets for the Mossad].

FULL EXTRACT:

Oh c'mon as Jew I'm offended. You doing that only proves him right, jeez dude way to be reactionary. It's more about the state of Israel. There are plenty of American Jews that see Israelis as arrogant to say the least…

I'm an American first. Well….it's not like the people that run the place have any sense of loyalty beyond money and family so to my own ears they sound hallow, but it's the only thing we have left right? Anyway Sanayim was removed from wikipedia so waybackmachine led me to a former Mossad intelligence officer Victor_Ostrovsky who actually admitted to it's existence and wrote at length.

Also on censorship, those who fear something usually react. So I take the side of whoever says something, provides evidence and then doesn't have a history of trying to crush the dissenting opinion of others who disagree with them. Even if I categorically disagree with their conclusions, the reactionary, who hides behind “such and such is inflammatory and therefore he must be REPORTED to protect the minds and hearts of others is even less of a human being and even more reproachable. I'm a black biracial Jew so I know what being persecuted is.

In 7th grade re-enacting a supreme court case about media censorship we were given hypotheticals as to what decisions we would make as justices. The important part about protecting the constitution is defending the rights of those you disagree with as long as they are non-violent and don't impose on the civil liberties of others. Imagine the audacity of me being the only student in class writing that the klan should be able to march in Midtown Manhattan exercising their first amendment right…why you ask? So they could embarrass themselves, heck maybe even get punched in the face? You lose liberty when you aren't willing to defend people you ideologically disagree with. Defend your convictions with fact by fact analysis and come to a conclusion that best supports the data.

Also that same year in 7th grade I learned what Nuclear Deterrence theory meant, what the Bush doctrine was, who George F Kennan Was, and most importantly what Project For New American Century is…all because of something called the 9/11 Commission Report I needed to make my case for the mock supreme court trial about whether a newspaper in Denver Colorado was breaching the espionage act by reporting on the environmental effects of government chemical testing. I was a middle schooler in the top class of a considerably bad school from South Jamaica Queens, in a lower middle class household. I did exceedingly well on standardized tests, but had a lax GPA.

I'm building this backstory to say what? That anything is possible from any ruling class(foreign or domestic)when Sarah Palin can be viewed as a credible running mate by over 40% of the voting block. Neoliberalism with the doublethink of Neoconservatism definitely proves the current regime of Israel and the policies of the United States government as the greatest threats to democracy the world has ever seen since the rise of the Third Reich.

This isn't just a message to the above commenter, but anyone who's on amazon scanning to be better informed. Be self-sufficient and remember to research, research, research, regardless of whatever your religion, class, or creed may do to disarm you emotionally.

2012/02/072014/01/18

Robert Steele: The Craft of Intelligence – OLD vs. NEW

Advanced Cyber/IO, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Earth Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Key Players, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Policies, Reform, Serious Games, Threats

UPDATED 18 January 2014

Intelligence Chief Describes Complex Challenges. America and the world are facing the most complex set of challenges in at least 50 years, the director of national intelligence told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence here today.

James R. Clapper Jr. said capabilities, technologies, know-how, communications and environmental forces “aren't confined by borders and can trigger transnational disruptions with astonishing speed.”

“Never before has the intelligence community been called upon to master such complexity on so many issues in such a resource- constrained environment,” he added.

CIA Director David H. Petraeus, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Army Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Burgess Jr. and others accompanied Clapper during his testimony on Capitol Hill. Clapper spoke for all agencies in his opening statement.

All U.S. agencies are combating the complex environment and making sense of the threats by continuing to integrate the community and “by taking advantage of new technologies, implementing new efficiencies and, as always, simply working hard,” Clapper said.

Still, he said, all agencies are confronting the difficult fiscal environment.

“Maintaining the world's premier intelligence enterprise in the face of shrinking budgets will be difficult,” the director said. “We'll be accepting and managing risk more so than we've had to do in the last decade.”

Terrorism and proliferation remain the first threats the intelligence agencies must face, he said, and the next three years will be crucial. [Read more: Garamone/AFPS/31January2012]

Tip of the Hat to AFCEA.

Below the Line: Craft of Intelligence for the 21st Century

Continue reading “Robert Steele: The Craft of Intelligence – OLD vs. NEW”

2012/02/07

Venessa Miemis: 7 Values of Next-Generation Agency

Cultural Intelligence

venessa black & white new — Venessa Miemis

As some of you know, I’m in the midst of helping build a chaordic living systems enterprise. Our core group is currently having fascinating conversations about mission, values and the kind of culture we want to cultivate amongst ourselves, which in turn will inform what we model and inspire in the world.

As the days go by, we’re becoming more comfortable opening up to each other and really unpacking our core beliefs. This is helping us find alignment and coherence, which must happen before we construct our shared vision and lay our foundation.

I’ve been thinking a lot about open-source philosophy, creative work, and a passion-driven lifestyle. While on my flight out to San Francisco yesterday, I reread a book from my graduate work called The Hacker Ethic: A Radical Approach to the Philosophy of Business. (a hacker, btw, is defined as “an expert or enthusiast of any kind”). They laid out some core values of the hacker ethic, which felt very much in alignment with the way I operate and how I’d want to interact with my colleagues in this creative economy.

How do these 7 values strike you?