--- chris macrae <[email protected]> wrote: > The process starts erring to absolute democracy of > everyone must have > equal time contributions to speak at each phase (...) In other > word's the circle's communal harmony ... can co-create such > deep love of nice > behaviours to each other that it misses the biggest > spiral out above our > communal thinking's common denominator
That's interesting, Chris. I have been, at times, in situations like that one - circles (or squares) where everyone must "be in place", must "speak in his turn" and must have a "nice behavior". They call this democratic, but in fact it is a dictatorship. In a democracy I can stay silent if I want. When everyone is obliged to speak that is not democratic. This can be a "rules' dictatorship" (created by the rules previously defined,) a "leader's dictatorship" (the leader(s) imposes that everyone must speak), or even a more interesting type - a "majority's dictatorship" (where the rule is created at the moment by the majority). Apart from claiming to be democratic, this type of groups/sessions also claim that they are following "good principles". The two I have heard more often are "appreciation" (like in "appreciative inquiry") and "dialog". Democracy (and Open Space) are made of dialogs AND of discussions. If one suppresses discussion and impose dialog (as in "everyone must be nice to each other and hear the other with appreciation") then there is no democracy and no open space, I think. Apart from the fact that there are some people that I don't want to hear with appreciation (say, Bush, to give only one example) the point is even more strange. "Playing the appreciative game" (an expression I have created just know) is only one form of "playing games" - and that is the essence of Argyris and Schon's Model 1. If, in a meeting or organization, one imposes dialog and appreciation, then a close session or organization will come to place. Artur PS: I never heard to call this "circle" and even less Open Space. But I would not be too surprised if some would call that. I have already referred to a respectable group of practitioners of "Communities of Practice", USA based, that not long ago claimed that they had used "Open Space" (OST) in a meeting because: - they assembled in a circle - they gave participants the opportunity to ADD issues to a large group of issues pre-prepared by the organizers - they divided the large group in small groups to discuss those issues (by choice of the organizers, if I recall well - but I recall well that there was no reference to "the law" - people were not expected to leave their group! That would not be considered "appreciative" to the other group members, I suspect...) But don't worry about what some people do "in your name", Harrison. You can always remember what some have done (and are doing) in His name. And at least about you I know that you exists - something I am not prepared to say about the Other... __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
