Collaboration Zones – Page 1241 – Public Intelligence Blog

Dear friends:

What is the relationship between transforming ourselves and transforming the world?

In my previous essay, I described seven forms of leverage for deep transformation. When I wrote it, I was thinking of social transformation. The seven forms of leverage, in increasing potency, were:

1. Ameliorate the pain
2. Slow the damage.
3. Create alternatives.
4. Catalyze connections.
5. Understand the big picture.
6. Change the story.
7. Transform the systems.

Hearing this list, a close colleague was surprised that I did not include personal transformation. His view comes close to two related views held by many transformational agents: (1) Social change cannot be adequate without serious efforts by change agents to transform themselves and (2) transformation of individual consciousness is a (if not the) primary driver of systemic transformation.

I agree that both these dynamics are important and helpful, but I consider neither essential for social transformation. Nor do I see them as distinct forms of transformational leverage.

Continue reading “Changing the World Takes All Kinds…”

2011/06/23

Jon Lebkowsky: The Tree of Life

11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics

The Tree of Life may be the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (or not); in his film called “The Tree of Life,” Terence Malick plays with the universals – grace and nature parallel good and evil. Nature is will, ego; grace is nurturing. The film’s narrative plays out in Waco, Texas and in the vast cosmos, infinite space and time, surrounding it; it places one very human story in a vast transhuman context. In one primeval scene, one dinosaur, a predator, chooses not to kill and consume another… this establishes grace as something that precedes the human; I think the point is that nature and grace always coexisted, and always will, and grace seeps into nature. “Good” and “evil” are complex and intertwingled.

I thought the film was magnificent; in it I saw scenes familiar from my own life growing up in a Texas town in the 50s and 60s, though I wasn’t in that family, and I was far more innocent. And Malick’s family has no television set in the living room… imagine what a difference that would make.

The vision of the “tree of life” represents a sense that all life on earth is related… and there’s a tree of life web project that shows that connectedness. The planet is teeming with life, but all species are endangered by the actions and operations of one – is this nature acting without grace? Last night Oliver Markley spoke to the Central Texas World Future Society on the subject of risk and resilience – is civilization at a tipping point toward collapse?

Continue reading “Jon Lebkowsky: The Tree of Life”

2011/06/232011/06/23

Event: 27 June NYC Anti-War Anti-Government March

Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, IO Deeds of War, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Threats

No to the US/NATO War on Libya!

Stop Funding War – Start Funding Jobs & People’s Needs!

June 27 is the end date for NATO’s 90 day no-fly zone in Libya.

But NATO has extended it and expanded it: 10,000 bombing sorties attacking and killing civilians and destroying a country.

The destruction hits here at home when the bombs drop overseas.

No to $trillions for war, & destruction of jobs & services!

Join the United National Antiwar Committee at an:

Emergency Protest
Monday, June 27 4:30 to 6pm
From City Hall (Broadway & Park Place) to Wall Street & Back.

Continue reading “Event: 27 June NYC Anti-War Anti-Government March”

2011/06/232011/06/23

NIGHTWATCH: The Facts on Afghanistan Fighting

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Afghanistan: Special Comment. Longtime Readers know that NightWatch has had a continuing project to monitor the security situation in Afghanistan since mid-2006, using a consistent sample of unclassified reporting. In 2006, when the Taliban resurgence was just beginning, NightWatch began publishing monthly summaries of the security situation.

In the past three years, the number of incidents per month has increased so that compiling and analyzing monthly reports threatened to become a full time job.

NightWatch has continued to track data in detail for all 400 districts of Afghanistan every other month and spot checked fighting reports in between. Preliminary analysis of the data for May 2011 was completed today. The table below shows the data from three tracking measures since last November.

DATA AT SOURCE (24 HOUR Lag)

What do these data signify?

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: The Facts on Afghanistan Fighting”

2011/06/22

Chuck Spinney: Myth of Precision-Guided Coercion

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, IO Impotency

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Sounds Off....

June 22, 2011

From Serbia to Libya

The Myth of Precision-Guided Coercion

By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY, Counterpunch

Vieux Port, St Raphael, France

At the end of May the British press was filled with stories headlined “Gaddafi to be told to stand down or face Apache attack.” As of this writing, the Apaches have attacked, but Gaddafi has not stood down.

The Apache threat is a case study in the sterile but financially lucrative marriage of coercive diplomacy to surgical strikes by precision guided weapons. What passes for a war strategy in Libya is now a comic opera starring NATO as an understrength, self-referencing techno bully, who acts as if he is now so fearsome that he does not even need a carrot to go with his stick.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Myth of Precision-Guided Coercion”

2011/06/222011/06/22

Venessa Miemis: People-Powered Markets– 60 Resources

03 Economy, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Gift Intelligence

People-Powered Markets — 60 Resources

There is a growing movement towards peer-to-peer value exchange and production, prompted by a variety of things, like economic conditions, shifting cultural values, exploration into collective intelligence, and further enabled by social technologies.

I've been tracking the online marketplaces that have been cropping up for sharing, swapping, gifting and renting, as well as sites that give people different kinds of opportunity to share skills and knowledge, innovate, and work collaboratively both on and offline. Below are a few sites I've come across, please add any I've missed.

Below the line: Sharing Cars, Rides, Bikes, Space, Land; Gifting, P2P Rentals; Swap Trading, Goods and Money Sharing/Borrowing/Lending; Co-Working, Co-Production, Distributed Work, Skill Sharing, Barter Networks, Idea/Innovation Marketplace.

Continue reading “Venessa Miemis: People-Powered Markets– 60 Resources”

2011/06/22

Tom Atlee: Seeking Leverage for Deep Transformation

Blog Wisdom, Cultural Intelligence

June 21, 2011

Seeking leverage for deep transformation

I have long been fascinated by efforts to clarify which approaches to change work are most needed and effective. Among my favorite models are:

* Donella Meadows' Twelve Leverage Points to Intervene in a System

* Joanna Macy's Three Dimensions of the Great Turning

* Sherry Arnstein's Ladder of Citizen Participation

Each of these has informed and shaped my thinking. I'm looking for guidance for activists, philanthropists, and others who wish to make a positive difference. I seek not only to identify what actions offer the highest leverage — the “more bang for the buck” factor which is so important right now. I seek also to understand the value each different approach offers and how all the approaches might usefully fit together. Finally, I tend to think of all this in evolutionary terms: What will help us make the collective evolutionary leap we need within the next few decades?

In recent years a new approach to this has been slowly coming together for me. I offer here an outline of its current form, in which I appreciate each approach for its real value while listing them in order of what I consider their increasing transformational leverage, where #7 offers the highest leverage.

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Seeking Leverage for Deep Transformation”