I don't disagree with anything said on the subject of fear up to now but for me it the discussion is lacking some components and I am not sure myself what they are. Hopefully in my response I will unpack them. > "The culture of fear is like a genie that has been let out of its > bottle. It acquires a life of its own -- and can become demoralizing.
Another way of talking about all of this is that when the Genie of fear is let out of the bottle, space closes. People burrow in and seek the lowest common denominator of our humanity. This is not to suggest that no dangers exist, but the words of Franklin Roosevelt ring very clear here, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." And fear does a fantastic job of shutting down our life space. The reactions that follow are fairly predictable. Simple tasks become monumental chores, and small irritations send people off the deep end. And our life space becomes smaller and smaller - until there
i>s scarcely room to breath.
I think this is absolutely true and in addition to demoralizing it becomes self fulfilling. As we have experiences that are defined as threats we become more hardwired to define experiences as potential threats. Each new tragedy no matter how small tunes the brain physiology to expect more threats and to define experiences as threats. I do think the current political establishment exploits and manipulates brain physiology and intentional fosters a climate of fear but there is something bigger and older culturally going on here. I think they exploit but they did not create the climate of fear. I don't agree with the article that we were a confident people in World War II and now we are fear ridden. We were a manipulated people then and a propaganda machine was used then to help people turn their fear into action by joining up or working for the war machine, planting victory gardens etc. If that suited the intention of the war machine now they would be using the same propaganda. No, I think arrogance and xenophobia and entitlement drove people then as now. Politicians and entrepreneurs stand to gain a lot of power and wealth from large violent conflicts and they invest in them. That was true in World War II as it is now. The Rockefeller's made a fortune selling jet fuel to the Nazis. There is plenty of booty being made now. My feeling is that we are not just afraid of terror. As a people we are afraid of everything. As a young person growing up in a Christian community I was taught at the very least to be suspicious and I don't think it is a stretch to say that I was taught to fear non-Christians as they could be representatives of Satan. I was taught to fear my own sexuality and my gender as a source for potential evil in the world. These are fundamental to my identity as a human being and the infrastructure on which fear can be cultivated. I am not in the minority in my experience and I don't think it is a particularly American problem. I see it manifest all over the world and in all kinds of communities. When we identify with people based on certain attributes that we have defined as superior for whatever the reason we have a substrate that can foster fear and create a climate of "othering" which puts other communities at risk for being terrorized. All that said, what it the issue then. What is the antidote to globalized fear. Fear is a good thing in that it is a survival mechanism that is effective. I think it is important not to demonize fear. We need it. What we don't want is to have that mechanism triggered and manipulated by other people. So my question again is what should the response to fear be? I think the best response is reasoned action. How do we reach a reasoned action? I think most of us do it through inquiry. So for me that is the answer to globalized fear is questions and lots of them. Questions leading us to more questions leading us to descriptions of sensory information, leading to more questions and descriptions and to some actions after many many questions and descriptions. This ability to be present with questions leading to more questions is for me how open space is connected and is a process that is the antidote to fear. The experience in open space fosters a comfort ability and confidence with questions that often don't have answers and that never have a single answer. We become comfortable describing experience or issue without judgement uncovering the questions our descriptions reveal. We become comfortable to the many descriptions that are related to a single question and we become practiced at viewing questions from multiple perspectives. We become practiced at asking questions in response to fear not just reacting. We become experienced responding to questions by developing plans for action that respond to questions not to adrenaline floods. Our identities become defined by our ability to develop questions and descriptions and understanding of multiple perspectives instead of by defining ourselves by how we are different and our immutable descriptions of our different worlds. At least, this is what I see the potential of open space is.
Doubtless lots of things can and must be done - but in this community I think we have a special role, opportunity, and I would guess, responsibility to do what we know how to do - Open Space. It is tempting to think of massive open spaces for the "powers" of this world.
I think this is true. We are all at different places in our fluidity with inquiry. To step out of sensory experience and reflect is the opening of space. To the brain there is no abstract memory of experience. What the brain stores is the experience itself. Our physiological response to experience is the same as if the experience is happening at the moment. There can be no epiphany moment here stepping outside the experience, stepping into open space requires practice.
Everytime we open space, and especially when we do that around some common, mundane, everyday issue for even a few people - those people have an opportunity to take a deep breath, to push back the crowding walls of fear, to open up their life space. I am reminded of a very small Open Space I did in The Middle East. At the end a young Palestinian woman came up to me with tears in her eyes, and said, "You have reborned my hope." The English may have been a little fractured, but the moment was profound.
And so I would have to agree totally that open space has the greatest potential for power in our living practice. Every time I take that breath in my own life space is opened and my relationship with myself, with the experience, with fear itself is transformed. It is these moments in our living that the world is transformed. Open space events of course work their change as well but for me open space events are more like a ritual for living, the real substantive change happens in the personal experience. Every time I take that breath I change every other relationship that I have or could have. Not only is hope reborned but the world itself because it can never organize in quite the same way again. In this climate of "othering" and evangelism and this discussion of fear, I am reminded that diabolic and symbolic come from the same root word. "dia" to pull apart the body and "sym" to put together the body. I love the image of Open space as the symbol that pulls the bodies together into one. I thank you for asking the question Harrison and inviting breath. Pat Black -- CHRIS CORRIGAN Facilitation - Training Open Space Technology Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com Principal, Harvest Moon Consultants, Ltd. http://www.harvestmoonconsultants.com * * ========================================================== [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 Reply Forward Invite Chris to Gmail Send Save Now Discard To: Add Cc | Add Bcc | Edit Subject | Attach a file Check spelling Send Save Now Discard New window Print all Collapse all Forward all Would you like to... Map this 7808 River Falls Drive Potomac, Maryland 20854 « Back to Inbox ArchiveReport SpamDelete 1 of 100 Older › Now you can use Gmail in more languages! Learn more You are currently using 161 MB (5%) of your 2834 MB. Gmail view: standard | basic HTML Learn more (c)2007 Google - Terms of Use - Privacy Policy - Program Policies - Google Home * * ========================================================== [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
