Dear friends,
What follows is my report on a five-day Evolutionary Salon of scientists,
social thinkers, activists and artists seeking to better understand how to
creatively engage with the evolutionary challenges of our times. I
describe the event itself -- with a focus on the evolutionary group
processes used -- and some of my remarkable experiences and learnings
during it. I also describe the action-vision that emerged, and my own
sense of the direction of evolution.
The online version, available at the URL below, has richer formatting and
links. But the full text is below. If you'd like to comment and make
your thoughts visible to others, post a comment at the bottom of the page
linked to the long URL below.
Coheartedly,
Tom
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
<http://www.communicationagents.com/tom_atlee/2005/05/22/growing_together_at_the_emerging_edge_of_evolution.htm>
GROWING TOGETHER AT THE EMERGING EDGE OF EVOLUTION
by Tom Atlee
I've just returned from a five-day Evolutionary Salon
<http://www.thegreatstory.org/ev-salon.html> that I helped organize. It
was a remarkable gathering of scientists, social thinkers, activists and
artists seeking to better understand how to creatively engage with the
evolutionary challenges of our times.
Evolution tends to accelerate in times of great change and challenge. We
wanted to know how to consciously participate -- and help society
consciously participate -- in that accelerating emergence of new forms of
life and culture.
Here are some of the things we did, experienced and learned during these
days of intense engagement and connection.
EVOLUTIONARY GROUP PROCESS
We chose for our group process three approaches that embody the
evolutionary dynamics we were exploring -- World Café, Open Space and
Graphic Recording.
* In World Café, participants gather around a question that matters,
talking together in small groups -- and then, after a time, moving to
different tables, cross-pollinating ideas across conversations and seeking
deeper patterns. At the end of a World Café, the group harvests its
individual insights and collective intelligence.
* In Open Space, participants gather around a topic about which they
are all passionate, and then create breakout sessions about whatever
aspects of that topic they personally most love, or about which they feel
most urgent. The group creates its own conference agenda and then lives
it out, coming together in the morning and evening (in a multi-day Open
Space) to share thoughts and announce new sessions they want to convene.
People are encouraged to move wherever they can best learn or contribute
("the law of two feet"), and those who flit among sessions ("bumblebees")
and who skip sessions ("butterflies") are validated for helping invoke the
unexpected through cross-fertilization and novel side-conversations. *
Graphic Recording captures the emerging meaning of the dialogue in words
and pictures --
arrows and people and suns and trees and clouds and word balloons -- in
real time -- so that by the end, the group can see the shape of what it
was exploring, woven into a coherent whole.
After an introductory circle Thursday night, we spent Friday morning in
World Café. We were asked, "What question is most alive for you that this
gathering might illuminate?" and "What in your own story leads you to care
about this question?" You can imagine how rich that was, both in terms of
idea exploration and also learning about each other, deeply and quickly.
After lunch we moved into Open Space and were soon attending each other's
sessions.
When it became obvious by Saturday afternoon that significant insights
were beginning to emerge --
albeit still vaguely -- we convened an evening session that creatively
combined the all three methods to speed that emergence. Our innovation
worked, thus demonstrating not only that we could use evolutionary group
processes, but that we could -- if we opened ourselves up enough to the
call of evolution among us -- help the processes themselves evolve.
Although I studied a number of books in preparation for this event, they
became mere backdrops. We seldom talked explicitly about evolutionary
dynamics I'd read about. But every session reflected a deeply shared
assumption that we were active agents in our accelerating cultural
evolution (which is only the latest chapter in the Universe's evolutionary
story) and that what we said and did here had evolutionary significance.
When it was all over, I was struck by the fact that THE CONTENT of our
discussions -- as juicy as it was -- did not impact me as strongly as my
experience of THE PROCESS, particularly the almost spooky power of a
multi-day Open Space to impact the participants, individually and
collectively, and to call forth nascent insights and innovations into
clarity and power -- without ever telling anyone what to do.
Among the phenomena I noticed:
* Normally domineering people became curious, engaged partners,
listening well.
* Normally quiet people spoke out more strongly.
* Normally heady people spoke more from their hearts, their stories,
and their present-time noticing.
* Basic differences (e.g., the difference between the materialists
and the spirit-based participants) informed the dialogue but never
precluded us hearing each other and continuing our explorations together.
Judgments and conflicts dissolved into productive, spicy interactions.
* Hundreds of insightful comments --
including comments on what was happening right now -- burst forth with a
rare spontaneity and naturalness.
* Experiences on one day created tensions or possibilities that
generated sessions on subsequent days, creating a sense of evolutionary
unfolding not possible in one-day events. A one-day Open Space is nothing
like a 3-5 day Open Space. I've come to see that non-linear processes
like Open Space, while they can be productive in the short term, only
produce transformational magic when they have enough time for the feedback
dynamics of thought, feeling and conversation to bring the gestating
breakthroughs out into realization.
* The physical and social conditions necessary for certain things to
emerge seemed to miraculously self-organize, until by the end I felt like
I was not living in Open Space, but Open Space was living through me.
MY STORY
These last two items played out so remarkably during the Evolutionary
Salon that I feel drawn to share the most vivid example from my own
experience of those days.
On the third day, as I mentioned, a number of us felt certain coherent
possibilities were emerging. We did our Saturday evening session with
about half the group, which resulted in incredible excitement about what
we found together. The next day, none of the sessions seemed to relate to
that, and I got concerned. Peggy Holman, our lead facilitator, suggested
that perhaps this was fallow time and I shouldn't worry. But she had told
us to "take responsibility for what you love" and so I decided not to go
to any of the afternoon sessions, but instead to become a "butterfly" and
sit by myself working over the ideas from the previous night, to push
their evolution ahead.
On my way through the kitchen to do this (our meeting facility was a
fabulous adobe structure with maze-like passageways and full kitchens and
dining rooms we used together) I bumped into another participant who asked
me what I was up to. Soon we were deep in an (unscheduled, unconvened)
conversation that drew out more and more elements of the vision I'd been
sensing. We moved to the living room. Other participants drifted by,
joining the conversation. Some left, for food or other conversations.
But by the time the whole Salon came together at 5pm for our afternoon
circle, a core of a half dozen of us had been gnawing on the topic for
several hours. I announced our efforts to the group and invited people to
join us shortly in the living room for an evening session exploring what
was emerging among us and further developing these ideas.
The Sunday evening session went well, focusing on things I was
particularly interested in for an hour or two. Then a participant who had
just come to the Evolutionary Salon a few hours before, and had not grown
into our participatory culture over the preceding days, interrupted the
flow of conversation to talk about his personal agenda. After a while I
became frustrated and left ("the law of two feet") to participate in a
light-hearted "talent show" session upstairs, where I read my poem about
living together in uncertainty at the leading edge
<http://co-intelligence.org/leadingedgepoem.html>. When I returned from
that to the "what is emerging among us?" conversation in the living room,
people had abandoned the things I was most passionate about and moved on
to another vision entirely. I guessed I must be ahead of my time (Open
Space facilitators often say that to give heart to those whose sessions
are very poorly attended) and with mild, tired sadness accepted that this
new thing was where the group energy was. And with that I went to bed.
Monday morning I decided to do something completely out of character: I
would go to a "chanting" session that had been called for 8 am in a round
tower room that rose high above the rest of the building. I had a quick
breakfast and climbed the stairs to the tower. No one was there. I
looked out the windows, fiddled with some aroma therapy bottles, and then
sat and half daydreamed/meditated for five or ten minutes, waiting. As I
sat there, I realized how the two visions that had emerged the previous
night fit together. What I'd wanted and what these other people wanted
actually formed a coherent whole that was more powerful than either vision
alone. I tried to draw a picture of it, but it was not coming easily. So
I want down to our main meeting room (where all of us were to meet at 9
am) and started sketching out possible diagrams on a big sheet of chart
pad paper.
At 8:30 some people came through the meeting room gathering pillows for
the belated chanting session, but by then I was deep in my chart. When 9
am came and we did our final whole-group check-in circle, I presented the
new model, the new vision of the whole, that had come to me in the tower.
The group was thrilled to see it all layed out, a new coherence for what
they'd been thinking, feeling and dreaming.
Then, as they began to compliment me on "my" map, I was struck by the
realization that this integrated vision was not "mine." If Open Space had
not encouraged me to "take responsibility for what I love" and made space
for me to develop my emerging ideas (with other "butterflies") during
Sunday afternoon and then convene a session Sunday night, the potentials
of Saturday's session would have been lost. If Open Space had not allowed
a newcomer to "interrupt" that Sunday night conversation and had not
encouraged me to use my two feet to leave that conversation, then my
initial ideas might have dominated and the other ideas trying to emerge
might not have shown up. If Open Space had not allowed (mysteriously
engineered?) a change in schedule for the chanting, then I would not have
been sitting alone in the tower, in an open mind-space, where the
integration of the two major emerging visions came together. If Open
Space had not invited new insights in the final circle of the Evolutionary
Salon, I would not have had an opportunity to share what came to me. The
more I looked at it, the more it seemed like I was a vehicle for the
emergent wisdom of Open Space, rather than an independently intelligent
actor within it.
THE VISION THAT AROSE AMONG US
We decided that we were part of an emerging movement for the conscious
evolution of (increasingly conscious) social systems. The success of that
movement would not involve taking over society or even creating a new
society, but rather having the society's conscious capacities expand until
it became able to consciously and wisely participate in its own evolution.
To engage people in this activity would involve introducing them to the
evolutionary story and their role in it. This was well described by John
Stewart, author of EVOLUTION'S ARROW, in a paper he submitted after the
Salon. He suggested we need to be able to "transmit evolutionary
epiphanies" that help us shift "from societies of disconnected, atomistic,
self-concerned individuals to a society in which individuals see
themselves primarily as part of a larger whole, and act accordingly."
----------------------------------------------------
(the following is a quote from John Stewart)
----------------------------------------------------
Key ingredients for experiences that are capable of assisting this
transition include:
* The experience needs to produce a shift in consciousness in which
individuals suddenly step outside of themselves and see themselves and
their actions as a necessary part of a larger whole; and
* The context provided by the larger whole needs to be capable of
making at least some individual actions meaningful, and therefore capable
of answering the central existential question facing all individuals:
what should I do with my life?
The great evolutionary story has as a unique capacity to provide
evolutionary epiphanies founded on these ingredients. It has an intrinsic
ability to spark a shift in consciousness in which individuals come to see
themselves self-reflexively as part of a larger meaningful process.
This is because it is not just a story about events external to the
individual. Instead it is about the processes and history that have
produced everything on the planet and that will continue to produce
whatever exists in the future. The shift in consciousness can be sparked
when the individual suddenly comes to the realisation that:
* she is a product of this larger evolutionary whole:
* she exists only because of the larger whole:
* her life and actions are an essential part of the larger
evolutionary process;
And, critically,
* her actions can have meaning and purpose insofar as they are
relevant to the wider evolutionary process. To the extent that her
actions can contribute positively to the evolutionary process, they are
meaningful to a larger process outside herself that has been unfolding
long before she was born and that will continue long after she dies
This works because it produces a shift in consciousness that changes the
object of self-reflection. The object of self-reflection is no longer
just the isolated self and its particular concerns, it is the
self-as-part-of-the-planetary-evolutionary-process... The individual now
identifies with the wider whole rather than the narrow self.
----------------------------------------------------
(end of quote from John Stewart)
----------------------------------------------------
This shift can be facilitated through a wide variety of methods and media.
Certain participants of the Evolutionary Salon agreed to explore how to
further this. Right now one of the most powerful forms through which the
"Great Story of Evolution" is spreading is the presentations given by
Evolutionary Salon convenor Michael Dowd and his wife Connie Barlow
<http://www.thegreatstory.org>. For three years they have been living on
the road, preaching evolutionary sermons in hundreds of diverse churches,
temples and other spiritual communities and doing presentations in schools
and other forums. I've seen Michael preach the story of evolution from
the Big Bang to Conscious Humanity, where we are (factually,
scientifically) stardust -- we are the universe looking at itself through
telescopes -- and I assure you it is awesome.
Once people awaken to their evolutionary role, they need to find their
calling or contribution in the context of that evolutionary project. There
are a number of methods -- from psychospiritual practices to publicizing
options, visions and stories of successful projects -- to help people find
their best place in all this. Certain participants of the Evolutionary
Salon agreed to explore how to further this.
The movement for conscious evolution of social systems is already well
underway. Much of it is made up of parts of other movements -- movements
for sustainability, for dialogue and deliberation, for human potential,
for a democratic internet, for human rights and justice, etc. -- that
consider the welfare of the whole, or provide tools for human connectivity
and collective wisdom. So another contribution we could make would be to
map these various elements of the world we want and the ways we want to
get there, to show their interconnections, and to clarify successful
practices -- and to do all this in an ongoing and participatory way. (A
model that inspired us in this is the "pattern language for
sustainability" at <http://www.conservationeconomy.net>.) In effect, we
could provide a nexus for the collective intelligence of the movement,
itself. We have visions for how this might be done, but no commitments for
action on it yet.
However, related to that is the idea of convening strategic
onversations -- or perhaps we should call them, in this context, further
evolutionary salons. The idea behind these is to provide means for
noticing where there are stuck points in the evolutionary process, or
where there are potential synergies or evolutionary opportunities. When
these are seen, breakthroughs can be evoked by convening conversations
between key people. These can range from a phone call to a full-fledged
conference. The inquiries that shape such conversation and the processes
used can make all the difference in the world. Thankfully, considerable
wisdom exists about how to craft powerful questions and how to host and
facilitate powerful processes. The potential is there to use conversation
as an elegant, mindful tool for evolutionary interventions, freeing up
energy and innovation at precise points where shift is ready to happen.
Certain participants of the Evolutionary Salon agreed to explore how to
further this.
The combination of all these can serve to further the kind of conscious
social creativity that can transform the society in all sectors and at all
levels at once -- not according to plan, but according to an emergent
evolutionary wisdom rooted deep in our past and in the ways life has found
to move into a better future. This wisdom is imprinted in our cells and
in our capacity to interact with each other and our world. To release its
potential, we just need safe space to experiment and opportunities to see
our lives in a big-picture perspective, as part of a story of remarkable
transformation, over and over and over, from the big bang and supernovas
to poetry, trees and the internet. What will we do next?
THE DIRECTION OF EVOLUTION
Some evolutionary theorists claim that there is no directionality in
evolution. We may have human brains and civilizations, but we also have
simple bacteria. Others claim that the appearance of more complex life
forms over time is evidence of an evolution towards complexity. Still
others, while acknowledging the growing complexity, claim that the
evolution is most importantly moving towards more complex and inclusive
forms of cooperation.
It seems to me obvious that many old life forms continue, while newer
forms evolve. It isn't that new forms are always crowding old forms out
of life-niches (although that often happens) but that new forms discover
or create new niches to occupy, adding to the range of ways life can
survive and flourish. So what I see evolving is the RANGE and VARIETY of
complexity. More complex life forms emerge, and the simple life forms
remain, and new varieties of elegant simplicity get created, as well.
Some versions of old life forms -- both simple and complex -- die off.
But what doesn't stop is the ever widening range and variety of
complexity.
And much of that complexity is only there because three other things are
present and co-evolving:
* cooperation - from simple synergies and exchanges to massively
self-organized global economies;
* competition - from simple fights over a piece of food to modern war
games and chess strategies; and
* intelligence, by which I mean the ability to take in, process, and
act on information from the environment -- from a one-celled organism
turning towards or away from light or salt, to an international team of
scientists and supercomputers working together on a problem over the
internet.
It also seems to me clear that complexity, cooperation, competition and
intelligence are deeply intertwined. Each evolutionary step in one is
evoked by, and evokes, evolutionary steps in one or more of the others.
And they often contain each other in fascinating ways that remind me of
the Taoist yin-yang symbol, a circle bisected by an S-curve, creating two
fish-like figures -- one black and one white -- chasing each other's
tails. In a further touch of insight, the black fish contains a white
eye, and the white fish contains a black eye, suggesting that at the heart
of each side of a dichotomy is some form of its opposite.
One of the most fascinating aspects of all these is that they have
internal and external dimensions, and real and virtual versions. For
example: * Competition BETWEEN life-forms stimulates cooperation WITHIN
them. Think of sports teams, or the evolution of multi-cellular
organisms. As one form proves more competitive through division of labor
or elegant internal communication and response systems, its competitors
often develop their own more sophisticated internal cooperative systems to
survive (or beat the competition). * A cooperative life system can allow
competition to safely flourish within the system. Think of the Olympics,
sportsmanship, and "the rules of the game" (of sports, business, politics,
war). Or think of the vast synergies and interdependencies in an
ecosystem (including the exchange of materials like oxygen and carbon
dioxide) and how they create a life-space in which the infamous
evolutionary competitions of "tooth and claw" can unfold without the whole
system self-destructing. * Competitive games and posturings both prepare
for and replace life-and-death battles --
not only among humans, but among many other species. (This is a vital
understanding in a world where war can destroy so much.)
* Nature learns and evolves through trial and error (or
innovate-and-test) in the real world, leaving dead organisms and extinct
species in the wake of her powerful creative intelligence. The human mind
can test ideas and scenarios "in its head" or "in the laboratory" or "in a
work of art", replacing real death and suffering with discarded ideas,
failed experiments, morality tales and virtual versions of life and death.
* The intelligence of an ant colony is largely contained in the
chemical patterns the ants deposit -- and then perceive and respond to --
in their environment. We might learn from this how much of our vaunted
human intelligence lies not in our heads but in our libraries,
universities, internets, pathways and signage. Much of intelligence is
external, environmental, cultural.
All this is discussed in the books I read for the Evolutionary Salon. But
another factor has not been discussed: the evolution of simplicity. I
suspect that simplicity has also evolved, perhaps in the form of elegance,
economy, efficiency, capacity for self-organization, and so on. If some
function will help organisms survive, a simple form that can do it (using
less parts and energy) will tend to out-compete a complicated form (which
uses more parts and more energy), assuming both forms are equally good at
performing that function. Furthermore, as a function evolves, it often
goes through waves of increasing complication followed by simplification.
Computing power developed by building giant machines filled with thousands
of vacuum tubes -- which were quickly replaced by transistors which were
then replaced by integrated circuits (computer chips). The increasingly
complex mathematics required to describe the observed motions of the
planets using Ptolemy's earth-centered astronomy was overthrown in one
strike by Copernicus, who simplified everything by putting the sun in the
center of the solar system. (If you know any biological and
paleontological examples of this, please let me know.)
The point here is that simplicity, too, evolves, often hand-in-hand with
complexity. In modern complexity theory, the vast complexity of certain
systems is built on very simple foundations. Studies show that many
entities following a few simple rules can generate complex self-organized
behaviors like the flocking of birds, the branching of trees and the flow
of goods in a market. And the theory of holons (wholes that are parts of
larger wholes) points out that incredible complexity (like my
physiological systems) can be subsumed into a simple coherent entity (my
body), which then becomes a building block for larger systems (my
community, my networks). So simplicity and complexity contain each other,
dance together, and co-evolve.
To many of us, humanity's current patterns of complexity, simplicity,
cooperation, competition and intelligence seem to be leading us inexorably
towards global destruction. We feel an urge to do something about that,
but feel so small in the face of it. We might take heart in the fact that
our urge to do something is evolution, itself, at work within us at this
moment: Life rising up in life -- within us and among us -- in the face
of new dangers and opportunities -- to transform itself, to learn, to
innovate new patterns of complexity, simplicity, cooperation, competition
and intelligence that will serve our survival --
and thrival -- once again.
As we hit the limits of this one earth, the elegance of our solutions will
necessarily expand us and deepen us into realms we barely imagined. We ARE
evolution, unfolding consciously for the first time. There is no adventure
remotely like this one, and we are all on it.
My own piece of this adventure is to help explore the relationship between
various forms of individual, collective and universal intelligence, and
how we can expand and deepen those -- and into those -- to bring forth
wiser forms of cooperation -- and competition -- to co-create cultures
that serve equally well the life within us and the life around us, and the
healthy evolution of it all.
We are All. In This. Together.
Blessings on the Journey.
--
________________________________
Tom Atlee * The Co-Intelligence Institute * PO Box 493 * Eugene, OR 97440
http://www.co-intelligence.org * http://www.democracyinnovations.org
Read THE TAO OF DEMOCRACY * http://www.taoofdemocracy.com
Tom Atlee's blog http://www.evolvingcollectiveintelligence.org
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