[Oe List ...] WHO WE WERE

Tue Jul 19 15:01:56 PDT 2022

Randy,
This is a very helpful reflection on “what we did”. I like to combine it with the bolded statements that just recently came out from Gordon Harper. These are two ways of helping ourselves and others interpret what our lives were about and continue to be drawn to.
Ruth

> On Jul 19, 2022, at 3:32 PM, Randy Williams via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
> 
> Debra,
> 
> There may not be things that are happening today that anyone could trace in a straight line back to our work. And, by the way, I think some of our most important work came after all the names came off the assignment board and we scattered to the four winds, when many, if not most of us, were still engaged in the common mission in our own particular work and locale.
> 
> I think we jumped into a multifaceted revolution that really gained momentum in the early 60s, and we added a lot of impetus to that with our emphasis on the local, on participatory democracy, and on the primary role that culture plays in the emergence of the new reality. 
> 
> I think our major contribution shows up now in what is called systems thinking. I would suggest three primary aspects of our work that contributed to that. The first is what we called Imaginal Education when we said that learning is a process of changing images, which Willis Hartman called “mind change,” which Peter Senge (one of the great systems thinkers) said leads to the creation of new stories of reality, which then leads us to do things differently and thereby get different results.
> 
> Second, I would point to the Social Process and the graphic portrayal of the interdependence of the economic, political and cultural dynamics. Those triangles were systems thinking personified. In fact, if we we’re putting them together today we might well call it the “Social System.”
> 
> Third, I believe the HDPs were where we did the practical application of the Social Process/System and demonstrated human community as the interaction of interdependent aspects where you must address all the problems of all the people at the same time, and that, after you stop the bleeding, you must address the underlying issue if the resulting change is to be lasting.
> 
> Systems thinking, by whatever name you may call it, is now the progressive approach, whether in education, health care, community/human development, governance, the mitigation of climate change—in all the more effective ways of promoting justice and equity in harmony with planet Earth. As I said, whether anyone will ever trace any of this back to our work, I don’t know. But I have a firm conviction that we contributed to it significantly.
> 
> I hope this sort of answers your question from my perspective. How would you address what you asked me?
> 
> Take care,
> Randy
> 
>> On Jul 19, 2022, at 2:54 PM, Debra Harris <quantum1135 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> 
>>  Randy,
>> What are your thoughts and hopes on what are some of the things which may emerge as a result of our work/continuum? I know it’s up to history to decide, including butterfly effects, ripples in unknown ponds, crimson line etc. Yet would welcome yours and others thoughts. 
>> 
>> In peace,
>> Debra Harris
>> Houston
>> 
>> 
>> Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone <https://overview.mail.yahoo.com/?.src=iOS>
>> 
>> On Tuesday, July 19, 2022, 10:44 AM, Randy Williams via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
>> 
>> In considering who we were and what we did as participation in some kind of continuum, I find myself thinking about what came before that gave rise to the part we played, and what has emerged, and is still emerging, as the result of our work. Saying this, I stand humbly before the reality that all change is the outcome of millions of relationships and interactions throughout time and space of which we, in the whole array, were but a momentary flicker, though I would trust, a necessary flicker.
>> Randy
>> 
>>> On Jul 19, 2022, at 11:20 AM, Terry Bergdall via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
>>> 
>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> Many of us continue to reflect upon those days, their significance, and, perhaps even more importantly, implications for our lives today. I know I do. I appreciated reading Gordon’s list, especially his comment about not trying to evaluate anything. It has more to standing before the wonder of it. I certainly have immense gratitude for being a part of the experience. Which, of course, in some form or another (even if it is just a listserv like this) continues today. Terry
>> 
>> 
>> On Jul 19, 2022, at 08:41, Frank Knutson via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Colleagues, I ran across this document from Gordon Harper. I share it with you. He articulates what so many of us experienced in those extraordinary years.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> What Were We Thinking??
>>> 
>>> It’s MLK Day, 2015, and I guess I have to write this.  My own fault for letting myself get drawn into this bloody archive project.  I’m one of those who are currently in the process of “accessioning” their own files.  Which is to say, registering in an online database the types and quantities of materials we have in our personal collections.  
>>> 
>>> I found I had to sit down in the midst of reviewing these piles of file folders and reflect on what on earth it was that we thought we were doing "back then."  As I tried restating for myself some aspects of that, I got sucked into that vortex of wonder that all of us who were around then experienced on more than one occasion.
>>> 
>>> I’m astounded once again at the audacity of what we set out to do--at the range and scope of even imagining that such an undertaking might be possible (and, knowing that it was humanly impossible, nevertheless committing ourselves to doing it).
>>> 
>>> What follows are a few of my wonderments.  I’m inviting you to share yours.  Your way of talking about this will be different from mine (of course: we didn’t agree on everything even back then).  Here goes with some of what I’ve been ruminating about:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> · We set out to deeply understand and engage the historical moment in which we found ourselves, the global forces at work in that moment and the profound changes underway.
>>> 
>>> · To do this, we studied and attempted to articulate for ourselves nothing less than the nature, the history and the dynamic relationships of the nations, regions, cultures and religions of planet Earth.
>>> 
>>> · We created a framework that sought to capture and operate out of an essential knowledge of the key concepts not only of our own Western intellectual tradition but of Eastern and Southern thought as well.
>>> 
>>> · We took on the challenge of discerning and daring to say what it meant to be fully human and the nature of the existential issues and decisions facing every human being in the twentieth century.
>>> 
>>> · We undertook a massive crowdsourcing research effort in order to map and describe the nature of human social interaction and produced a model of the economic, political and cultural processes operating at every level of society.
>>> 
>>> · We explored, reformulated and embodied ancient spiritual practices and created a variety of new ones in order to live spirit filled lives ourselves and to keep its presence at the forefront of everything we did.
>>> 
>>> · We developed a corporate culture and form of intentional community that sought to hold the impossible tension between radical personal freedom and disciplined collective action.
>>> 
>>> · We designed a strategy for building a global movement of decisional change agents and constructed a range of tools to awaken, engage, train and sustain them.
>>> 
>>> · We sought to connect and integrate the interior spirit life and external structural dimensions of the profound changes we saw required in society
>>> 
>>> · We adopted, adapted and invented methodologies designed to give all people a place at the table and real voice in the decisions being made that affected their lives.
>>> 
>>> · We formulated and implemented a strategy for catalyzing substantive change from the local level to the global that involved pilot project demonstrations, wide scale replication campaigns and a  reconstituted system of education that provided people, communities and organizations with new and empowering images of possibility.
>>> 
>>>  
>>> Clearly, only a start.  Join in with what you’d say, how you’d say it.  Not trying to evaluate anything here, just capture a bit of what it was that captured us.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> <ms-9jw0vC.gif><clip_image002.png>
>>> 
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