----- Original Message ----- From: Bill Parker To: Gordon Harper ; Jack Gilles Cc: Larry Ward ; Wendell Refior ; Sally Fenton ; Timothy Wegner ; Steve Harrington ; Paul Noah ; Beret Griffith ; Frank Knutson ; Marge Philbrook ; Rosemary Albright ; Jean Long Sent: Saturday, February 15, 2014 11:26 AM Subject: Re: Once More, Into the Breach! Jack and all, Thanks for your comments. It seems we have three tasks in front of us: 1) understanding the practical shape of systemic transformation that leads to sustainable life processes; 2) addressing the underlying contradiction that would unlock the massive global/local movement already indicatively present but incoherently related; 3) bringing to the forefront the different faces of the human community that while seemingly independent speak and act out of a mutual commitment and discipline for systemic transformation for the benefit of the entire human community. The underlying contradiction we have been working on since before the first Symposium at Oklahoma City University is "the disengagement of the population due to a closely held conviction that nothing could be done to affect the systemic reality" resulting in delimited action or none at all. Gene Marshall talked about this in his book "The Road from Empire to Eco-Democracy" as a disbelief in the plausibility of systemic change. People know...they see, and some act...but they do not see their actions altering the systemic reality, but most live with themselves managing the futility without going insane. Some are able to do even that. And Jack, the different faces of the human community are a reflection of your work on the guilds. We need NEW authorities, NEW types of expertise, people who can deal with the technicalities of different dimensions of the life processes AND who are absolutely clear about how systemic transformation can happen through them and others like them. Think of those "faces" as engaged global/local networks in areas of expertise and/or interests but who know the circuitry of their work in terms of what is needed from all the other faces and what it can give to all of the other faces as well. As you said, or someone said, "once more, into the breach". Bill ----- Original Message ----- From: Jack Gilles To: Gordon Harper Cc: Jean Long ; Rosemary Albright ; Marge Philbrook ; Frank Knutson ; Beret Griffith ; Paul Noah ; Steve Harrington ; Timothy Wegner ; Sally Fenton ; Wendell Refior Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 2:20 PM Subject: Re: Once More, Into the Breach! Dear Team, I presume most of you got Bill Parker's email on the up coming conference at OKC University. I like his term: "Human Community Network", his new title for what we used to call Those Who Care. Maybe we should think of using this name for the GRA event and it would also link with his work and OKC University work. Nice synergy. Jack On Feb 14, 2014, at 1:51 AM, Gordon Harper <gharper1@gmail.com> wrote: Oh, I also set up a subfolder called VGRA in our shared ICA Archives folder. That's where I then created the document I just sent you. We might start putting our thoughts and ideas into this folder as well as exchanging emails (that may be hard to find later). On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 11:34 PM, Gordon Harper <gharper1@gmail.com> wrote: Here's my starting scratch at what our year might look like if we decide to go for what Paul and Beret propose. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qJ1Z8xaROnaxTXjKU7dszgx5IBEplnsc3iOG1015... Someone with better layout skills than I could put this in a format that is more editable than this is (text boxes? PowerPoint slides? Spreadsheet? Graphic design?). I've done this in "terse" form to keep it simple--can explain what's behind some of the items when we meet. Look forward to your questions, critiques and suggestions next Wednesday (or before) -- Gordon