Hello John,

Thank you for this info. I had never heard of U.Lab before. Having checked it 
out I find it very exciting and free! and have joined the course. 

I agree with you it is very relevant to what we have been discussing.

Course Description

This interactive and experiential course is about leading profound innovation 
in order to pioneer a more sustainable economy and society. It focuses on the 
intertwined relationship of the following three questions:

Transformation of Capitalism: How can capitalism and society evolve from their 
current forms to emerging future forms that create well-being for all (society 
4.0)?

Multi-stakeholder innovation: What kind of leadership is required to create 
profound innovation at the scale of a whole eco-system of stakeholders and 
partners?

Presencing: How can people access their authentic self — their highest future 
possibility — and “act from” that heightened state of awareness? 

Look forward to meeting you online,

Anna


On 27 Jan 2015, at 07:08, John Baxter <[email protected]> wrote:

Hello all

I am doing the U.Lab MOOC at the moment and this immersion is providing some 
very interesting lenses on a lot of what I am seeing...

For instance, the personal-collective integrative process is central to Theory 
U, so the theory provides a good context for understanding it (especially for 
someone who has so far avoided Integral with a fair degree of emotional 
resistance).

So, I thought I might flag that (as a potentially useful tangent),
and also flag that I am interested in any comments that others might have about 
the applicability (or not) of Theory U in this sort of issue...  Would love to 
explore!

Cheers


John Baxter
Cocreation Consultant & ​Co​Create Adelaide Facilitator
jsbaxter.com.au | CoCreateADL.com
0405 447 829​ | ​@jsbaxter_

Thank you to everyone who came, helped or spread the good word about City Grill!
Summary and links: cocreateadl.com/localgov/grill-summary/


> On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 5:01 PM, P2P Foundation mailing list 
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> hi Anna,
> 
> At the p2p foundation we stress personal and interpersonal change and 
> facilitation, but at the same time, we have to be realistic in this, what is 
> already possible but very difficult in small groups of committed people may 
> not be possible for society at large ... For understanding this, and though 
> I'm critical of the authoritarian interpretations of that tradition, the 
> integral psychology of clare graves remains fundamental ..
> 
> Detailed studies by Susan Cook-Greuters have determined that at most 2% of 
> the population have integrative consciousness, with 30% more or less having 
> this as a aspirational consciousness ..
> 
> I take great comfort in the growth of participative culture and skills now 
> evident in the new mutualized working spaces  but this is far from being the 
> general culture ..
> 
> Again, referring to the scheme of John Heron, I would say that for the 
> greater masses, we are at the potential change of stage 2 to 3, with 
> significant minorities at four ..
> 
> so here is how I see it:
> 
> * develop fully participative cultures for mature peer producing communities
> 
> * develop deeper participative potentialities for the aspirational parts of 
> the population (active citizenship)
> 
> * embed participative process in the general social technology of our time, 
> to upgrade the general culture ..
> 
> A lot then further depends on the relative positioning of scarcity vs 
> abundance dynamics ...
> 
> for abundance context, the generalization of peer governance is very realistic
> 
> for scarcity contexts, the choice between hierarchical, 
> democratic-representative, and market-driven allocation mechanisms remains 
> entirely open
> 
> see for example how the wikipedia re-introduced a rather toxic bureaucracy by 
> re-introducing artificial scarcity ... (notability requirements to be decide 
> by elite editors)
> 
> just today, I am involved in a frustrating dialogue with a feminist activist 
> who did not even want to share even excerpts of her book on 'moneyless 
> living' .. in other words, she is creating a artificial scarcity of her own 
> book, that is technically freely copyable, in order to 'swap' it in exchange 
> for something else  ... reproducing the artificial scarcities in so-called 
> advanced milieus ... moneyless living for those that have the money to buy it 
> ..
> 
> I'm sure you can find similar contradictions in all of us, including me ..
> 
> in conclusion, we are not ready to shed relative domination processes for any 
> pure egalitarianism any time soon,
> 
> Michel
> 
>> On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 1:05 PM, Anna Harris <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Amid all the euphoria in celebrating the Greek landslide, and following 
>> Michel's integrative approach, the points in the article below need to be 
>> emphasised. We all carry within us the wounds of oppression however much we 
>> feel we have cast them aside, and they will surface again in the new post 
>> capitalist structures unless we put some focus individually and collectively 
>> on healing ourselves and becoming whole. 
>> 
>> 'the wounding through oppression that we all experience shows up in our 
>> organizing, and have permeated organizational culture except where the 
>> influence of feminists and others committed to transformational work has 
>> created a different way of creating structure, that prioritizes a strategy 
>> and collective struggle rooted in healing and wholeness.'
>> 
>> Pauli Friere spoke about this in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
>> 
>> What does that mean? How do we do that? Often it seems there isn't time to 
>> go into this now, let's get into power first, then we can see to these 
>> issues. That's when the multitude becomes an instrument, and arguments 
>> between hierarchy and horizontality appear to be abstract concepts with no 
>> people involved.
>> 
>> How do we become more fully human in our relationships with each other? What 
>> makes it particularly difficult is that there is no ready made formula - 
>> follow these steps and you will get there. No. This is a step into the 
>> unknown. But that also makes it an exciting exploration. 
>> 
>> Anna
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On 25 Jan 2015, at 11:38, P2P Foundation mailing list 
>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> 
>>> https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/andrew-willis-garc%C3%A9s/another-politics%E2%80%94from-anticolonial-to-occupy
>>> Another Politics-from anti-colonial to Occupy
>>> Chris Dixon's new book identifies four principles that underpin the success 
>>> of transformative social movements.
>>> 
>>> Andrew Willis Garcés 7 January 2015
>>> 
>>> [This article originally appeared in Waging Nonviolence.]
>>> 
>>> Seven years ago I worked at a tenant and worker organizing group in 
>>> Washington, D.C. We referred to ourselves as a "movement-building" 
>>> organization, but weren't always clear what we meant by that. One evening I 
>>> was out door-knocking with one of our members, James, an African American 
>>> man in his 50s. He asked me about a conference some of us had attended in 
>>> Atlanta the previous week, the U.S. Social Forum.
>>> 
>>> "What was the big theme there that stuck out to you?" he asked.
>>> 
>>> It was a good question. At that moment, the DJ Unk song "Walk It Out" was 
>>> booming from a nearby car.
>>> 
>>> "Well, I was most impressed by the groups that really try to walk out their 
>>> beliefs-connecting all the dots between racism, capitalism, even 
>>> imperialism, and the inner work we have to do as people to overcome the 
>>> things we've learned."
>>> 
>>> I explained more about what that meant to me.
>>> 
>>> He shook his head, amused.
>>> 
>>> "That's a tall order!" He thought about it a little more. "When will we get 
>>> time for all that?"
>>> That tall order is the subject of Chris Dixon's book Another Politics, 
>>> newly released by University of California Press. The product of dozens of 
>>> interviews conducted with community organizers over the last decade, the 
>>> book is an excellent distillation of what Dixon calls "another politics," a 
>>> shared political orientation that unites grassroots organizers working from 
>>> similar principles in the United States and Canada across issue, movement, 
>>> sector, strategy and identity.
>>> 
>>> Through the interviews, he identifies four core principles that unite left 
>>> "anti-authoritarian" organizers across different "strands" of struggle, 
>>> transcending traditional notions of issue-based organization:
>>> . being against domination of all kinds;
>>> . prioritizing the development of new social relations and forms of social 
>>> organization in the process of struggle;
>>> . linking struggles for improvements in people's lives to long-term 
>>> transformative visions; and
>>> . grassroots organizing from the bottom-up.
>>> 
>>> In regards to these different strands, he writes, "We braid them together 
>>> as we work collectively and build relationships across politics, campaigns 
>>> and movements: anarchist labor organizers draw on analytical frameworks 
>>> from women of color feminism; radical queer activists use community-based 
>>> models for dealing with violence, developed by anti-racist feminists and 
>>> prison abolitionists."
>>> 
>>> He explores how Occupy Wall Street, anti-colonial movements, and INCITE! 
>>> Women of Color Against Violence, among other groups, have contributed to 
>>> developing "another politics" across decades.
>>> 
>>> Dixon digs even deeper, characterizing organizations practicing "another 
>>> politics" as being explicit about their "collective refusal" of 
>>> oppression-specifically, as incorporating "the four anti's" of : 
>>> anti-authoritarianism; anti-capitalism; anti-oppression; and 
>>> anti-imperialism, into their work. This left me wondering how some 
>>> organizations might "fit" this taxonomy-what if your group has a handle on 
>>> economic exploitation, for instance, but relies on charismatic leadership?
>>> 
>>> But Dixon is nevertheless clear about organizations that he sees as 
>>> practicing "another politics," and the book is most compelling when he 
>>> recounts movement-building victories, like the story of Canada's multi-city 
>>> immigrant rights group No One is Illegal:
>>> "In a stunning December 2007 action, some 2,000 people, largely South 
>>> Asian, blockaded the Vancouver International Airport to stop Singh's 
>>> impending deportation. And starting with an 'Education Not Deportation' 
>>> campaign in 2006, NOII-Toronto launched a multi-year fight for Toronto to 
>>> become a solidarity city, where all people can access city services 
>>> regardless of immigration status. Organizing across sectors and services, 
>>> they finally won in 2013."
>>> 
>>> Dixon also uses the book to highlight "ideas rarely in writing," exploring 
>>> dynamics of movement-building organization that don't get much print. For 
>>> instance, he writes about the process of integrating not just issue lenses 
>>> but our whole selves-creating community and organization that operates at 
>>> the speed of the whole.
>>> 
>>> As Dixon writes,  "recognizing and deliberately fostering feelings and 
>>> relationships as essential ingredients for transformative struggle" is 
>>> still not a widespread practice, and he points out that this is not a new 
>>> phenomenon, as the Black Panthers and Student Nonviolent Coordinating 
>>> Committee also sought "to develop common expectations about how people 
>>> should treat one another."
>>> 
>>> Continuing this thread, he also counts as emergent practices among "another 
>>> politics" practitioners, forms of organizing that affirm families and 
>>> domestic and reproductive work simultaneously with challenging systemic 
>>> inequity, and moving beyond an individual-focused anti-oppression politics.
>>> 
>>> Dixon and the people he interviews point out that the wounding through 
>>> oppression that we all experience shows up in our organizing, and have 
>>> permeated organizational culture except where the influence of feminists 
>>> and others committed to transformational work has created a different way 
>>> of creating structure, that prioritizes a strategy and collective struggle 
>>> rooted in healing and wholeness. This increasing focus on wholeness and 
>>> wellness, seen in the recent popularity of integrating somatics and other 
>>> healing disciplines into community organizing, can only make us more adept 
>>> at building a broader and more resilient web of movements.
>>> 
>>> And Dixon helps unpack the challenges unique to movement-building 
>>> organizations, which, he says, must move towards specific victories and 
>>> goals, while also moving through a process that creates new ways of being, 
>>> doing and relating, that avoid replicating oppressive practices. All while 
>>> avoiding "ruts" common to anti-authoritarian groups, like knee-jerk 
>>> non-hierarchy, and the "burn bright, burn out" cycle of organizations that 
>>> rise and fall quickly.
>>> 
>>> Dixon illustrates this point with a fantastic metaphor offered by Project 
>>> South's Steph Guillioud, comparing different forms of organization to 
>>> different kinds of cars suited to particular functions:
>>> "The variations in vehicles don't change the map, they don't change the 
>>> road, they don't change the need for people to drive and people in the back 
>>> or the people moving it. We will always have and need the people who can 
>>> push it and the people that can work on the insides, the people who can 
>>> never get a ride, et cetera."
>>> 
>>> It's rare to find a book on social movements written explicitly for people 
>>> with less academic credentials than its author. Dixon, who wrote the book 
>>> for a PhD program, takes care to explain terms as they come up; he doesn't 
>>> assume we know about ethnography ("analyzing lived culture while 
>>> experiencing it"). And he gives his interviewees plenty of airtime to put 
>>> their own spin on, for instance, "affective organizing," which becomes "not 
>>> being a fucking asshole," in the wonderfully succinct words of Bay Area 
>>> activist Harjit Singh Gill.
>>> 
>>> Still, the number of concepts he introduces feels overwhelming at times, 
>>> and I longed for a glossary or flow chart when concepts like 
>>> "non-instrumental organizing" popped up (which, it's worth noting, refers 
>>> to the analysis and strategies people can create when they come together in 
>>> dialogue and struggle as peers, as opposed to treating people as 
>>> instruments to be manipulated, or pieces on a figurative chess board to 
>>> mobilize toward a predetermined end).
>>> 
>>> "Anti-authoritarian," then, could be shorthand for "principled 
>>> organizing"-organizing that gets down to the roots, that refuses to settle 
>>> for electing a slightly better candidate, for selling out our potential 
>>> allies to scoop up a superficial win, or that sees the path to victory as 
>>> anything less than the destination itself.
>>> 
>>> Towards the end of the book, I was reminded of my exchange that day with 
>>> James. Clearly, as Dixon demonstrates, there are mixed-class organizations 
>>> that make time for individual and collective healing practices, for 
>>> skillshares and strategy seminars, for discussion groups, for intentionally 
>>> developing and evaluating leadership, and for developing organizational 
>>> structure. But increasingly, as people are forced to work longer hours for 
>>> lower incomes, I have to wonder: How are organizations adapting to support 
>>> their people to do more with less?
>>> 
>>> I longed for more detail on what day-to-day life is like for an organizer 
>>> in the six specifically-chosen cities from which Dixon chose his interview 
>>> subjects. What does it look like to practice "another politics" in Atlanta, 
>>> for instance? It's worth asking, given that the book is structured around 
>>> questions like, "How can we most productively manifest our visions through 
>>> our organizing work?" Like a good organizing mentor, Dixon (and his 
>>> interviewees) gives us insight without "right" answers, helping to deepen 
>>> our understanding of commonalities and remind us of the deep roots of the 
>>> "another politics" leftist lineage.
>>> 
>>>  ((((((  )))))
>>> 
>>> Andrew Willis Garcés works with Training for Change and has led trainings 
>>> for immigrant activists in several US states on campaign strategy and civil 
>>> disobedience. Read more of his work at www.porvida.org/.
>>> _______________________________________________
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> NetworkedLabour mailing list
>> [email protected]
>> http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: 
> http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan 
> 
> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net 
> 
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> 
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