Celebrate and Gather With CII This Fall!

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The Co-Intelligence Institute

September 2023 Newsletter

Join Us For Our Celebratory & Exploratory

3-Session Gathering:

The Tao of Democracy and Beyond!

In our July newsletter we asked you for feedback on how to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Tom Atlee’s book, “The Tao of Democracy”. The most popular ideas included a book group, mini courses on Wise Democracy’s prime directive, conversations exploring what has changed since the book’s publication, and conversations on Tom’s current work (read more on this below!)

Overall, we saw a clear desire to get together to talk, network and build connections.

Now, Andy Paice and Rosa Zubizarreta have combined several of the above possibilities into a celebratory offering for this fall: The Tao of Democracy and Beyond: a Gathering of Hearts and Minds.

This will be a series of 3 two-hour sessions to connect and envision emergent futures where new forms of democracy are generating collective wisdom.

We’ll offer mini presentations followed by open-space style breakout sessions, where you can dive deeper into that session’s theme, or host a break-out group on your own projects.

We are also marking 16 years since the original Storyfield Conference in 2007, which preceded the current slew of great initiatives sprouting up all over, focused on narratives for social change and transformation – another cause for celebration!

The following year, in 2008, CII launched the “ Phoenix Conversations A Call to Prepare for Profoundly Uncertain Future Crises” – conversations which are even more timely now as public awareness of the climate crisis is finally reaching a tipping point.

And it’s now been seven years since the initial launch of the Wise Democracy Pattern Language in 2016, where we sought to advance what we had initiated with the Tao of Democracy.

We want to celebrate the work we have done over the last 20 years and celebrate YOU – as part of the extended community who has been connected with us, in one form or another, along the way.

We envision this celebration as a “large community gathering” rather than a “public event”: Everyone is welcome and please invite any friends who might resonate with this work, even if we've not met yet! Just please don’t post it on social media.

To hold your spot, please register your interest here and save the following dates:

Wednesdays, October 25th, November 8th & November 29th, from 1-3pm Eastern Time, 7-9pm Central European Time

Online hosted via Open Space

More details to follow soon.

Responding to Daniel Schmactenberger

At CII, we have been very inspired by Tom Atlee’s current work on the systemic drivers of collapse and the collective wisdom we need to participate meaningfully in this context.

Part One of this blog series offered an introduction to this project, exploring how the encounter with Daniel's work has been leading Tom into yet another “deep dive” of radical revisioning. Part Two offers an overview of some of the drivers, concluding that, “The systemic drivers of collapse and alienation challenge and invite us to deeply re-think our assumptions about the world, in ways that move us towards greater, fuller belonging in the family of Life.”

Tom will offer a brief update on this work as part of the 3-session celebration of The Tao of Democracy, described above. More specifics on the schedule to follow.

In the meantime save the dates (Oct 25, Nov 8, & Nov 29, 1-3p ET, 19-21 CET) and register interest here.

Appreciating the Work of Marjorie Kelly

Several of us here at CII have been very inspired to hear about Marjorie Kelly’s upcoming book, Wealth Supremacy, How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today’s Crises. As for me (Rosa here) maybe I’ve just been out of the loop, but I was NOT aware that economists have been attempting to warn us about the excess of financial capital! Here’s one quote I found particularly compelling:

“It’s rarely explained to us how expanding pools of great wealth create and rely upon the precarity and indebtedness of the rest of us. Instead, our culture tends to view “wealth creation” as benign and wonderful. This bias toward wealth makes it difficult for us to digest the warnings of economists that the world is awash in far too much financial capital, just as the atmosphere is awash in too much carbon.”

Too much capital is as dangerous as too much carbon! What a powerful metaphor… Marjorie Kelly is part of “The Democracy Collaborative”, and I’m delighted to learn that her book also proposes solutions. Kate Raworth, author of Donut Economics, offers this endorsement:

“Marjorie Kelly has the rare ability to combine her decades of business-insider insight with the imagination and conviction to reinvent the future. Setting out entrenched systemic problems, she lucidly and compellingly counters them with inspiring systemic solutions. If you want to understand the economy we’ve inherited and create an economy worth bequeathing to our children, read this book.” Yes!

Our New Season of RWCI Community Calls

After a summer break CII’s “Real world co-intelligence (RWCI) community learning calls” are starting again this September.

Calls include a featured guest showcasing examples of practices or events where co-intelligence is showing up in the real world and includes group dialogue, and insights from Tom Atlee relating to patterns of co-intelligence. They take place every fourth Friday of the month on Zoom. Everyone is welcome to join!

Russel Razzaque, Open Dialogue

On September 22nd our featured guest Professor Russell Razzaque will join us for an exploration of Open Dialogue, a co-intelligent therapeutic approach to Mental Health. Russell is helping to lead a national, randomized controlled trial in the UK on the implementation of Open Dialogue, a social network model of mental healthcare that involves all relevant stakeholders in the therapeutic process. We will also talk to Russell about how some of its principles and understandings can inform a more participatory and deliberative democracy.

Details: Friday September 22nd from 1-2.30pm Eastern time, 7-8.30pm Central European time. Register here

Yen-Lin ‘mashbean’ Huang, Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs

On October 27th our featured guest Yen-Lin ‘mashbean’ Huang from Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs will join us to share the story of Taiwan’s remarkable digital democracy with its origins in Taiwanese cultural practices, self-organized grassroots movements, the emergence of vTaiwan and now the work of the Ministry of Digital Affairs.

Details: Friday, October 27th from 11am-12.30pm Eastern time, 5-6.30pm Central European time. (Please note: this call will take place at an earlier time due to time zone differences). Register here

Sita Magnusson, Citizen-driven development in Easthampton, Massuchessets

On Friday December 22nd 1pm-2.30pm Eastern time, CII’s very own Sita Magnusson will share her innovative model for citizen-driven development in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Registration for November and December will come later this fall.

September's Wise Democracy Pattern

This pattern reflects Tom Atlee’s blog theme of living into uncertainty about the fate of humanity and the Earth while addressing the systemic drivers of collapse…

Wise Use of Uncertainty

In any complex situation — i.e., in most situations — uncertainty is a given and certainty is a danger. Probabilities and surprises rule, and possibilities and learning can flourish. So hold plans lightly, engage actively, value diversity, pay attention as things unfold, and nurture resilience and delight in the doorways opened by the unexpected.

Featured Question

What does humility look like in this situation?

Featured Resource

Befriending the Unknown wiki

September's Co-Intelligence Poem

Becoming Whole

My fevered night ended with Life as a Whole,
with Life as the ebb and flow of wholeness becoming.
I saw an ocean of wholeness unfolding forever
in waves of accepting and healing and growing...

I watched waves of healing, sustaining, restoring
-- and they were Life becoming whole into something old.
I watched waves of growing, evolving, and learning
-- and they were Life becoming whole into something new.
I watched waves of accepting, seeing, and being
-- and they were Life becoming whole into now and here.

Past, present, future turned before my eyes
and in their timeless turning showed
that the flow of wholeness here
is the ebb of wholeness there,
And all I saw around me was a giant, deeply breathing sea of Wholeness
full of Life.

And as I healed, I saw my healing
challenge the Life that grew within my "sickness,"
the Life that fed upon this "me" I would make whole.
I watched the tide go in, the tide go out,
And with the tide my life was tossed
backward,
forward,
here....

And suddenly I was the sea.
There's more to wholeness here than me:
This "me" is part of a larger living --
which is healing toward what was
(and it was whole),
which is growing towards what will be
(and it will be whole),
which is coming home into This
(and This is now so sweetly whole that I could cry) --
and so I see this "me" will finally die
towards greater wholeness
as others grow into the place I leave,
using piece by piece of me
to grow a wholeness of their own...

... while I turn one with a wind
that blows beyond wholeness
that flows through wholeness
that shows its face everywhere
healing and growing go on.

The crack becomes part of the vase,
the dream becomes always awake
as echoes of Wholeness ebb
and echoes of Wholeness flow
in oceans of Wholeness forever and ever
and on...

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Subject: Celebrate and Gather With CII This Fall!