Posted on

In the Dark of the Night: Public Administration in the 21st Century II

Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Officers Call
0Shares

Responding to  Harrison Owen: Public Administration in the 21st Century II.

I think of consciousness from two perspectives.  Both may seem plodding.  I don’t think of it in terms of evolution, understood as involving some novel emergence, like growing a new organ. An improvement of consciousness occurs within the kind of physical and social makeup and potential that humans have had for a very long time and will be stuck with for a very long time.

One perspective is individual development.  I’m reading Bernard Lonergan right now, so I will use his terms.  He uses lists and says there are five degrees of “self-transcendence.”  (Don’t go looking for any long explanation.  I’m working off his Reader, and an excerpt from a 1980 article called “A Post-Hegelian Philosophy of Religion.”)   “The fourth is the discovery of a truth.. the grasp in a manifold of data of the sufficiency of the evidence for our affirmation or negation.  The fifth is the successive negotiation of the stages of morality and/or identity till we reach the point where we discover that it is up to ourselves to decide for ourselves what we are to make of ourselves, where we decisively meet the challenge of that discovery, where we set ourselves apart from the drifters. …becomes a successful way of life ..when we fall in love, whether the love be the domestic love.. or the love of our fellows whose well-being we promote and defend, or the love of God above all in whom we love our neighbor as ourselves.”

This seems to fit with what struck me in Robert Kegan’s book, Immunity to Change: How to Overcome it and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization.  He has a nice little progression on “mental capability”, going from socialized mind, self-authoring mind, and self-transforming mind.   The self-authoring mind is a very clever fellow who figures out how to get things done and apply concepts.  They are the leaders today but a few percent get beyond it. Kegan even seems to have some tests that can detect this. And I saw his deceptively simple unlocking workshop really make a difference for several people.

The other perspective is culture.  Lonergan points to a first enlightenment, with Newton, that swept away feudalism.  We are well into a second enlightenment that relativizes it all.  “Just as the first enlightenment had its carrier in the transition from feudal to bourgeois society, so the second may find a role and task in offering hope and providing leadership to the masses alienated by large establishments under bureaucratic management.” (From a 1975 paper in the Third Collection, p56-65.)

While all this sounds plodding, it can also get very sophisticated (in explaining our degraded culture and recapturing lost insight) without at the same time being taken in by some new age or guru, an impulse that has confused and derailed us. (My other guide on this is Eric Voegelin, who understood the errors of gnosticism.)

Posted on

Harrison Owen: Public Administration in the 21st Century II

Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Officers Call, Policies
0Shares

Good show to In the Dark of the Night with the “Three Story lines” I find myself in substantial agreement with all that is said about the downsides. However I might put an additional twist on #1 – Changing Consciousness. It certainly can have the air of fantasy, especially when played in the mode of “The Age of Aquarius.” But the positive side might be that it has happened before on multiple occasions – so why not again? I think there is broad agreement that such shifts have happened, and not just in the esoteric community. Less agreement as to the exact phases and mechanisms of development (evolution) – and mild to wild arguments about the details. Developmental Psychologists, Anthropologists, Sociologists all have their schema – along with the esoteric community. It is even possible to do some useful comparative study, for example, Ken Wilbur’s The Spectrum of Consciousness (Quest Books, 1993)

The schema I offered (my take on the Great Chain) certainly falls at the low end of sophistication when compared to the other efforts, but  it has been  around a lot longer than all the rest which suggests a certain historical viability. And it was not my purpose to rewrite the history of consciousness, a task for which I have zero competence – but rather to get something on the table for discussion. Five Easy Pieces, as it were – you might say it was “good enough for government work.”

Anyhow, if shifts do take place, and the schema I offered is a rough approximation of the situation – why would that matter? One might argue that you simply had to fold your hands and wait for the inevitable to take place – and many people would do that – so why bother to even think about it? I think there are at least two reasons. First – when life gets confusing it is helpful if you can see the dreck as part of a process as opposed to mad randomness. I’m told that women experience this in the birthing process, each moment of which can seem like insane hell – and it is also an ordered sequence that gets you to a desired outcome (a baby). The second reason is that with some knowledge of the process, it may be possible to facilitate its progress, which of course is what a Midwife does, and Breathing helps.

You don’t design the process, can’t change it – No skipping of steps! But you can facilitate its flow. That is what happens in birthing. Could it also happen in the birthing of consciousness? Not just with each individual, one individual at a time, but all together, or at least in large groups? I think we have more than a few clues as to how that might happen – none of which include storming the walls of the ancient regime or convening the global design team. I think.

Ho.

Posted on

In the Dark of Night: Public Administration in the 21st Century

Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Officers Call, Policies
0Shares

I see three story lines in this particular piece and often in much of your work in the past decade since you encountered Tom Atlee and those he introduced you to (one could say he did change your own consciousness):

Line 1.  We are going to change consciousness

Line 2.  The prior regime needs to be destroyed

Line 3.  The times allow for, and cause us to, organize differently

I am sympathetic with all three, but each has its downside.

Continue reading “In the Dark of Night: Public Administration in the 21st Century”

Posted on

Search: lee kuan yew intelligence

Searches
0Shares
Lee Kuan Yew

Phi Beta Iota <lee kuan yew intelligence>

DuckDuckGo <Lee Kuan Yew>

Google <Lee Kuan Yew>

Editor's Pick: Days of Reflection for MM Lee Kuan Yew

MM = Ministor Mentor

Phi Beta Iota:  It is typical of the West to believe that its Weberian and faux democratic processes are the “best way,” and to destroy (African, South American) or disparage (Asian) alternative forms of leadership.  One has to live within the environment Lee Kuan Yew created to appreciate the extraordinary nature of his leadership.  It is safe to say that his appreciation for intelligence is two-fold: demanding that all of his Ministers and legislators be educated (Singapore requires an earned MBA or equivalent as a pre-qualification for legislative candidacy) and that Singapore excell at computer processing, knowledge management, and toward organizational intelligence; and (we speculate) demanding that counter-intelligence against subversion from the West and others be the very best.  The best book on intelligence in English out of Singapore, one that captures what Singpore is capable of, is Thomas Quiggin's  Seeing the Invisible: National Security Intelligence in an Uncertain Age (World Scientific Publishing Company, 2007).

Singapore took a very wrong turn falling prey to Admiral Poindexter's Total Information Awareness that appears to have found a home there, and to the snake oil from Cognitive Edge and others that mean well (e.g. the Arlington Institute) but actually have no clue about how to achieve M4IS2–intelligence with integrity in the public interest.  We now look to Malaysia and Indonesia and perhaps Brunei for more interesting melded advances.

Amazon <Singapore Intelligence>

Posted on

Harrison Owen: Public Administration in the 21st Century

Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Methods & Process, Officers Call
0Shares
Harrison Owen

Asked to comment on the preliminary abstract for a new article, below the line at Search: public administration in 21 century, Harrison responded as follows.

I like your story line, if only because you reach a conclusion that closely parallels one of my own. Coming off a very different base, I found myself convinced that we are at the cusp of a transformative moment, caught between a control oriented, rationalistic awareness (consciousness) of ourselves and our world, verging into an interactive, self organizing consciousness. And “cusps” are always painful and disorienting, which would seem to be an accurate, albeit mild, characterization of our times.

—  extract from the end advanced here—

The real issue was that The Millennium Organization was not a “new program” – it was a profound paradigm shift. And if Thomas Kuhn has taught us anything it is that paradigm shifts are counterintuitive, painful and always the last thing that anybody in their right mind would care to do. Even worse shifting paradigms is not something you can think or reason yourself into. You can’t plan it, design it, program it, manage it, nor control it. The journey forward follows a very different route. I believe there are any number of useful approaches – but none of them come from the Old Proactive Toolbox. I think.

—read the full story—

Continue reading “Harrison Owen: Public Administration in the 21st Century”

Posted on

Review: The Arsonist – The Most Dangerous Man in America (James Otis 1760′s Catalyst for Liberty)

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Biography & Memoirs, Country/Regional, Culture, Research, Democracy, History, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
0Shares
Amazon Page

Nathan A. Allen
5.0 out of 5 stars Six Star Pre-History Ignored Until Now, July 17, 2011

This is a BARN-BURNER of a book! This book is a PhD dissertation that is being published quickly to aid the cause of liberty in 2012. The academic detail would normally make it a four-star read, but the relevance, the originality, and the appendices-both within the book as it will be published, and online-carry it to six stars. Depending on one's interest, this can be a quick read to confirm that we need a second American revolution-or a slow read to savor the loneliness, the persistence, the integrity of one man called a lunatic and a traitor for one reason only: he was twenty years ahead of his time. It is on the shoulders of James Otis that the Founding Father stood, and this author, Nathan Allen, has performed brilliantly in identifying a slice of American history here-to-fore overlooked, and in deeply investigating and then publicizing what can only be appreciated as both one man's cross to bear, and one nation's long lead-time in the gestation of liberty.

Continue reading “Review: The Arsonist – The Most Dangerous Man in America (James Otis 1760′s Catalyst for Liberty)”