Category: Blog Wisdom

Posted on

Reference: Humanizing “The Man”

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Articles & Chapters, Blog Wisdom, Officers Call, Strategy

Humanizing “The Man:” Strengthening Psychological and Information Operations in Afghanistan
by A. Lawrence Chickering

In this paper, I will argue there are three great challenges the coalition forces need to overcome in their search for narratives that resonate with Afghans and that ultimately will promote support for the coalition and for the government. First is the traditional and tribal Afghan antagonism to outsiders. Second is the lack of a stake that ordinary Afghans have in the larger system. And the third involves a conflict in impact of major activities in the country, a conflict between programs that empower Afghans and programs that disempower them.

Download the Full Article: Humanizing the “Man”

Phi Beta Iota: The four levels of war and peace were best explained by Edward N. Luttwak, see Review: Strategy–The Logic of War and Peace, Revised and Enlarged Edition.  We raise this point, as we raised it while teaching at a Civil Affairs course at Fort Bragg, because no amount of good intentions at the operational and tactical levels of war can overcome flagrant irresponsibility and immorality at the strategic level, or the lack of anything other than killing tools at the tactical level.  War and Peace are a whole.  If you cannot start with morality and a just cause, and if you cannot implement a Whole of Government strategy that leads to an outcome of peace and prosperity for those you wish to win over, then everything in the middle is waste–wasted blood, wasted treasure, wasted spirit.  And if everything you do on the battlefield and in your supply line is rife with corruption–e.g US funding the Taliban, never mind–then you are thrice cursed and unlikely to prevail.

See Also:

Review: Surrender to Kindness (One Man’s Epic Journey for Love and Peace)

Review: Modern Strategy

Search: Strategic Analytic Model

Search: four levels intelligence analysis

Posted on

Reference: Third Party Bubble & Possibilities, RECAP

Blog Wisdom, Book Lists
Jock Gill

“I've been trickled on for thirty years.    Tastes like piss.”
— Randall Head, attorney in Louisville, KY

This is the single best explanation of the raging anger in America today I have seen.  Reagan voodoo economics sowed a bitter crop that we are reaping with a vengence today.  And neither party seems to care or be willing to take corrective action.  No wonder we have anger on the streets and in the ballot box.   Frank Rich is right, it will not end with the mid-term elections.  It will only end when we replace Reagan's magical thinking and its reality distortion field with a reality based economics with fairness as justice for all.

All this 3rd party stuff will not amount to a hill of bean if these 5 heresies are not converted into common wisdom that everyone knows and accepts:

1. We live in a closed system;
2. Corporate profits have trumped democracy for far too long;
3. Global Climate Disruption is a real game changer;
4. Caucasians will no longer run the casino and the country club
5. Knowledge will always be imperfect.

So long as we fail to modify our ‘narrative' to take these facts into account, it is unlikely we, or any third party, will be able to embrace the future with confidence.  Any party, economics, or politics that must assert that these truths are heresies is, of course, then based on fiction and lies.  That is why, amongst other things, they are intellectually bankrupt.  As you may recall, I have been saying this about both parties since about 1993.

You might want to checkout the work of  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minqi_Li

#5 is a killer as it is the force that drives the seven deadly sins.

So a third party, technology to the contrary not withstanding, will not matter until these heresies become truths.  It is essential that we develop education, politics, and economics that are based on these truths.  No third party I have heard of has even begun to tackle this very difficult challenge.

We are in the fix we are in because we deny these 5 truths and, as a consequence, live in a reality distortion field.

Phi Beta Iota: Brother Gill is correct, which is why we started funding this non-profit in 2006.  Public intelligence in the public interest is the CRITICAL ingredient in moving beyond kum-ba-ya hand-holding and long sighs of Ommmm.  Below the line we RECAP Third Party relevent-entries.

Continue reading “Reference: Third Party Bubble & Possibilities, RECAP”

Posted on

Reference: Best Piece on Democracy in a Decade

Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Sense-Making, Media Reports
Michael Ostrolenk Recommends

From Fire Dog Lake No Logo Available

Third Party Rising?

By: Nancy Bordier Friday October 15, 2010 2:25 pm

Eleven-Page 1997-2003 Paginated Word Document of Entire Piece

Thomas Friedman wrote in a recent New York Times article, “Third Party Rising“, that he is “astounded” by the level of disgust with Washington D.C. and the two party system he has found among industry leaders in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. He says he knows of “at least two serious groups” on the East and West coasts “’developing third parties’ to challenge our stagnating two-party duopoly that has been presiding over our nation’s steady incremental decline.”

He predicts that “barring a transformation of the Democratic and Republican Parties, there is going to be a serious third party candidate in 2012, with a serious political movement behind him or her one definitely big enough to impact the election’s outcome”.

Friedman cites the harsh indictment of the two major parties by Stanford political scientist Larry Diamond: “We basically have two bankrupt parties bankrupting the country”. Diamond published similar views back in 2008 in a Huffington Post article, Can American Democracy Recover? He cited “a broad and deepening sense among Americans not only that the country is moving in the wrong direction, but that there is something seriously wrong and corrupt with our democracy”. He provides the following specifics:

MUST READ EVERY WORD….

Phi Beta Iota: We learned this when we went across America for the American Committee on Foreign Relations (ACFR) in the years following 9/11 delivering our lecture, “9/11, U.S. Intelligence, and the Real World.”  Americans are not stupid–mainstream media personalities like Friedman are not stupid either, just oblivious.  They live in their own world with the Kissingers and CNN faces so bent on being polite they cannot muster a tough question or get a grip on the whole.  As we said years ago, Washington may not be interested in reality but reality is assuredly interested in Washington.  It's game time.

See Also:

Votetocracy (vote on bills)

Reference: Diversity of Voices & Values

Reference: Citizenship Versus Transpartisanship

Reference: Cyber-Intelligence–Restore the Republic Of, By, and For…

Harnessing Collective Intelligence to Save Democracy

Tom Atlee Proposes distributed-intelligence, crowd-sourcing participatory think tank for popular common-sense policies, unhindered by party affiliations and ideology

Safety copy below the line.

Continue reading “Reference: Best Piece on Democracy in a Decade”

Posted on

Reference: BarCamp–Self-Organized Learning & Sharing

Blog Wisdom, Methods & Process

BarCamp is an international network of user-generated conferences (or unconferences). They are open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants. The first BarCamps focused on early-stage web applications, and were related to open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats. The format has also been used for a variety of other topics, including public transit, health care, and political organizing.

BarCamps are organized and evangelized largely through the web; anyone can initiate a BarCamp using the BarCamp wiki.

The procedural framework consists of sessions proposed and scheduled each day by attendees, mostly on-site, typically using whiteboards or paper taped to the wall. This approach has been dubbed to play on words, The Open Grid approach.

FooCamps and BarCamps are based on simplified variations of Open Space Technology (OST), relying on the self-organizing character of OST. Unlike classical conference formats, BarCamps and OST rely on the passion and the responsibility of the participants.

Although the format is loosely structured, there are rules at BarCamp. All attendees are encouraged to present or facilitate a session. Everyone is also asked to share information and experiences of the event via public web channels, including blogs, photo sharing, social bookmarking, twitter, wikis, and IRC. This encouragement to share is a deliberate change from the “off-the-record by default” and “no recordings” rules at many invite-only participant driven conferences. It also turns a physical, face-to-face event into a ‘hybrid event‘ which enables remote online engagement with Barcamp participants.

Learn more:

Wikipedia Page for BarCamp

Wikibook: BarCamp – How to Run Your Own

History: Open Space Technology → Foo Camp → BarCamp → Unconference

Tip of the Hat to Paul Harper.

Posted on

Reference: Peggy Holman on Government and Change

03 Economy, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Methods & Process, Real Time
Peggy Holman

The Challenge of Power (Extract)

There are virtually always political barriers!

What I have found to be true is that when the issue faced is more important than their position, people in power positions will engage. In other words, they’ll step up when:

  • the situation reaches the point that they realize that they can’t solve it alone;
  • it is critical to their success; and
  • they’ve found a partner to work with that they’re willing to trust.

Essentially, these are the conditions when anyone will engage. It’s just that people with more to lose tend to wait longer. By then, the situation is really messy and they’re desperate.

Don't Hold On

Peggy Holman knows a lot about change in organizations and communities and she wrote Engaging Emergence to help people not only deal with unexpected and chaotic change, but even come out ahead by engaging it proactively.

But proactive engagement means letting go of some things just as much as discovering new things. To help you navigate, Peggy presents her list of The Five Things We Need To Let Go Of To Effectively Deal With Emergence:

1. Give Up Command and Control.

2. Give Up Habit and Routine.

3. Give Up Top-Down Decision-Making.

4. Give Up the Existing Order.

5. Give Up Thinking That You Have the Answers.

Read the full blog with paragraphs and examples for each of the above….

See Also:

Worth a Look: Engaging Emergence

Journal: Self-Organizing Emergence from Chaos

Review: The Change Handbook–The Definitive Resource on Today’s Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems

Reference: Peggy Holman Free Video on Emergence

Who’s Who in Collective Intelligence: Peggy Holman

Posted on

Reference: When NOT to Follow the Leader….

11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Cultural Intelligence

Seth Godin Home

Time to get off the brandwagon

Marketing involves spending money and it's fraught with the fear of failure (because it often doesn't work).

This mix creates the perfect opportunity to play it safe and to follow the leader.

Jumping on the brandwagon, if you must coin a phrase.

Here's the thing: while the second imitator might make it pay, the third, the fourth, the tenth–not so much. The more you try to fit in, the worse you do. The more you rush to follow the leader, the less likely you will be to catch up.

Phi Beta Iota: A major negative feature of bureaucracy, apart from its inherent propensity to magnify fraud, waste, and abuse, lies in its eradication of diversity and innovation.  It is a bureaucracy precisely because the past demanded control and repetition and reliability from small cogs in big machines.  That is NOT what we need now, in fact it is counter-productive.  Live free or die….