My take is that the simplest and most-effective way forward for The Commission would be having dialogues with one of their translators, Helen Titchen Beeth (http://yeshe.zaadz.com/), Peter Merry (http://petermerry.zaadz.com, http://www.engage.nu/interact/) and Jan Heetebrij (http://www.gezen.nl/archief/HeetebrijCSPGasplan2006.pdf).
Their perspective is a linking pin between an old/current/ineffective style of governance and a level up; a new system/effective style of governance. For only shifting a level up gives the needed system change (http://www.wie.org/j22/beck.asp)
After they have opened themselves to this next step, the domain of sustainability, security of supply and social justice can be reperceived as described in ‘an envisioned leading role for the EU’.
I can't really do a lot with the 'what is enlightenment' buddhist perspective personally because I do not grok the language. I have decided to remain largely in the secular domain for the next 30 years and work for change there.
'Spiral Dynamics' seems in secular terms a bit reductionist in its discussion of memes - we live in a maddingly rich, fluid world with a plethora of ideas and motivations coming to us from all directions and interacting with and also shaping our biological drives. To sum these up in 8 categories is too simple and I don't know about translating it into managerial practices.
What I would like to see for the Commission is simply a flatter organisation with more cross-cutting working groups and fewer 'directorates general'. I am rather enthousiastic about the ability for groups to accomplish transformative thinking (a 'level up', if you will) if they are organised ad hoc, but around certain principles. The tremendous human potential in the Commission could be put to much better work in that way.
Constantly expecting magic may be a bit much, though, and I will settle for more comprehensive policies, which may already be accomplished by ceasing to isolate policy areas from one another.
Agreed that Spiral Dynamics addresses -only- one developmental line out of many. To many people in the business environment, this is a practical inroad to a more integral perspective. This is the main reason I mentioned it.
What could convey a next level in a way you'd grok is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_theory.
Anyway, as I see it, what we need for the Commission is a jolt, rather than a gradual development. From which a flatter organization follows, or whatever seems appropriate. In any way, more comprehensive policies would be a logical consequence. Since this is what Integral theory is about.
Some days ago 80 business leaders have sent and open letter to the new government in Holland, stating their concern re the environment and the lack of attention it gets in the elections and its aftermath. This is superb stock for the Commission to dare to jolt.
On a personal note: yesterday I visited a conference on hydrogen. The 70 or so attendants showed luke warm responses to the presentations by the fossil fuel related industries. In the break there was a buzz of a hope for some incident provoking a jolt in society, politics.
For this is what was seen as the only way forward; with business as usual / incremental change, uninspiring, mediocre perspectives would continue to prevail.
Any abrupt system change will destroy some of the existing capabilities in the system, so for that reason I'm more a fan of incremental change. Although in terms of sustainability I'd want to see quite radical changes soon, like those you and Jan Hetebrij propose.
Instead of jolts and radical change you might want to talk about bold common projects? As a framing thing...
or sommat ;-) You can't be me, I'm taken
Though in this case I think the opposite is precisely the problem.
Because....
If one has a personal revolution and it all goes wrong...one suffers the consequences....and maybe others around one might get involved, but it's local and small scale.
But if one forments a social (political) revolution and it all goes wrong...someone else suffers the consequences...and maybe one is involved, but now it's large scale and not localised...and one can hide from the consequences...
This is how the neocons saw Iraq (from what I've read about their ideological underpinnings)...forment revolution! And now it's all going wrong, those same people will be s l o w l y evolving their personal lives (change of job, maybe; change of locale), far far from the results of their fervor.
And now I can add "or sommat".
The thing is, people would rather someone else gets it in the neck...before they get it in the neck themselves...so they are careful in their personal lives...caution caution...evolve s l o w l y (there's time; maybe that's the thought--"I have time! I have time!" Until suddenly, you don't have any more time. Here comes the heart attack...)
But when it comes to others, it's always "There's no time! We don't have time! You must change NOW!"
As diederickjanse writes.
So we (=humans) need the humility to evolve our ideas as they relate to public matters, learning from our mistakes, because the public spaces (the world etc.) will continue after we (=the individual) are long gone--and no one will thank us for throwing our ego's needs into the public sphere and cocking everything up (I mean the secular sphere of social rules, regulations, and directives...or sommat...yes, and where does the personal world intersect with tthe public...how many ways.... ;)
But in the personal...we should accept that for the individual life is a continuous revolution, from sperm meets egg to expulsion from the womb, to hormones, etc...etc...
"It's the ring around your bath tub."
...or sommat! Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
--Bill Hicks
Let's KIS and get work done: focus on the projects and do reverse engineering.
For now: how to get powers in the current regime (EC, CEO's, fill in) see our perspective as worth going out on a limb for?
Ego's yesterday's news. Old hat. Uncool. Authentic self rules. We're already dead, we have nothing to lose (except everything, if we risk nothing). So let's go for it.
Can you tell it's past my bedtime?
Lovely talking to all you dear ones!
Not for me; not yet. I see it as a generational change. If you can avoid passing on your neuroses (etc.) to your children (a reverse-Larkin), they will have time space (and connected consciousness...or sommat ;) to...evolve ideas...because an idea that works has effects beyond the person having the idea? Because an idea is a holistic map?
I think our best ideas (as far as I have read) came out of the sixties--linked strongly to intelligent and positive people taking LSD and boom! Out came...a new idea of consciousness (?) in the...consciousness of those whose consciousness had been expanded (the ego as a small grey cloud trail filling 10% up high in the sky where self-consciousness lives?)...
Yack yack!
But anyways, networked computers; enviromentalism; humans as one species connected out to other species on continua (continuums?), consciousness as larger than "self" consciousness (and what self can see that? T'is strange...beyond the "ego", "trapped in one's own head" consciousness?)
So...yes. Energise Europe. I wonder if we're all waiting for Jerome to take a next step here. Or Colman? I'm happy to facilitate the process in any way people prefer--but here, in diaries and comments...I live in England and zipping around to meet people would be...a lot of unnecessary travel...coz there are lots of you better placed...
I'm not sure what put the brake on; people taking time to chew on...ideas...as their consciousness expands to deal with possibilities (and positive shocks where possible)...
So, if anyone wants me to post diaries which try to sum up what's been said so far (I can read--thankfully for me--and if I sum up wrong a comment can put the debate right..etc...etc...)
As Migeru mentioned elsewhere, the Commission is not a legislative body; as I understand it it has a role something like the UK House of Lords, so how can an organisation which only acts as a check on decision making effect those decisions effectively?
I still think at this stage language is key. The phrasing...well, the ideas...coz good language is good ideas...good expressions...new expressions?
Good to read you, yeshe! Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
The potential leverage of the Commission is so huge it makes me weep to contemplate it. It can put its finger in every pie in every country, at every level from local to national (up to global), in every walk of life. It can certainly influence AND it can lead by example.
And being in the language industry myself, I can tell you that the Commission is constantly having to make up new terms (then it's accused of jargon-mongering) for new things. Like Subsidiarity. Many of my translator colleagues roll their eyes and spit, even when asked to translate terms like "Governance". Because they just don't have the concept in their language (I'm thinking of the Finns and the Portuguese in this instance). Boggle, mind! But the point is, there are phenomena emerging out of our transnational work that cannot be described using existing terminology that belongs to national phenomena.
Are you really offering to sum up all our zootle-woordles here? That could be a stupendous service to the whole.
I thought (and your corrections, yeshe, are just what I need, so correct away!), yes I thought that the Commission was stuck with its national blocks, but you are suggesting (if I've understood correctly...big IF) that there is some heavy cross-fertilisation going on.
I was offering my services to the ET project to write an Energise Europe document or documents, but if you can point me in the direction of your zootle-woordles I can tell you just how far (or even close) I may be from (or even to) summing them up in some way.
At any rate, you have me intrigued and interested in the...possibilities, so by all means...er...my going rate at present is one big bundle of lossalaffs on a regular basis, plus drinks at any human meet up moment thing, so, hey! Tell me more, or just point me in various directions.
(Well now, you know I was just pretonding to not know the power of the commission...
verb: pretond to be unaware that you knew something and when you find out to realise you didn't quite know what you were unaware you knew, which is why you probably forgot you knew it in the first place.)
And a good weekend to yez! Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Can't blame you for getting mished up in the intricate weights and balances of who blocks what in the European Union.
Good weekend to you too.
plain and simple inspiration, awe, relief, blissfull butterflies that you can
the 4 projects have what it takes, no?
fantastic diary, brilliant comments....
syncronicity party anyone? ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
Interesting stuff indeed. Especially the last part of Albert's quote from DB strikes me > liberally translated: lets focus on the suffering in this world / the limping Spiral and transcend and include the usual suspects, (inside as well as outside; same difference) running around spoiling much
It might also be interesting to note that chaos theory also finds that reality ( the whirling, spiralling, tetra-enacting, aqal Spiral) can't be reduced to our hobby horse perspectives. And that as we do, we are shooting ourselves in the foot.
As far as I know 'Transition thinking' is the only official academic endeavour recognizing this explicitly. It's also dedicated towards a more sustainable world, in which it sees a system change as the only way to effectively address unstainable issues like gross inequality / poverty, global warming, environmental degradation, social exclusion, economic decline, human rights infringements.
This academic endeavour to me is ideally positioned to receive integrally informed perspectives and mesh them into its own perspective. This could show the academic domain the viability / expediency of integral informed perspectives This is the main reason for me to plan to write my PhD at http://www.icis.unimaas.nl/ The subject will be 'Decision making processes in a transition towards a sustainable energy regime', since I think this is as concrete and timely a suffering reducing tool can be here and now (as a part of ITP ofcourse). Am curious who else in this community is positioned in a sort like fashion.
On http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/12/9/16451/1405#here you can find some interesting postings on how the Spiral endeavours to heal itself
As Peter Merry has it 'On we spiral', Emil
If you doubt we can do it, check this out: http://www.iyeshe.com/archives/2006/12.html#post24249
In the mean time, may the Kosmos bless you for your vision and commitment. We need you more than ever.
The last couple of days I was immersed in the 'what' of #3 > there is a window of opportunity for #3 to materialize. All ingredients are there, it's now up to us to listen carefully for what is about to unfold and act accordingly
It's a odd sensation to be an actor in the story we all want to see come true.
At this time Olivia (my girl friend) & me a doing a liver cleanse, after I had a reading session in which it became clear that all was set for a major break through. The best I could do was take a wu wei like hike. That seems to turn out well.
Perhaps this is what synchronicity looks like from the inside.
Good luck with the transition... I'm living the same stuff where I am. Synchronicity from the inside. Blog it!
A lot of my responses are in fact to the ideas brought in by Nanne, who seems to have a sixth sense about the Commission... or have you worked there? (;-))
"Unfortunately the roots of this go down to the bureaucratic structure of the Commission, which is in dire need of reform. We need more integrative, comprehensive policy drives and the idea of sustainability should be promoted to that end"
I must say, as someone who has to live and breathe every day in this bureaucratic hive, I'm always rather astonished at how much we have managed to achieve. So let's have some compassion for the flesh and blood men and women who actually keep this bloody structure in place through their collective inability to think something different. We are like one of those party games where everyone lies on everybody else and then they take away the chairs... At the current level of complexity, traditional command and control structures cease to perform well. I talk to a lot of people in the Commission every day and we just cannot see any other way of doing business. ... yet. I just sent an article on holacracy to my Director General as holiday reading.
Emil, you say "Key issue is vision. After that leadership and boldness in implementation." Right on. But the vision ain't gonna be generated by individuals, not this time. Too complex. More likely it will be held by the collective/community. And in order to get there, we're going to need a different kind of leader, and we haven't found them yet. We need a "natural" hierarchy where each higher level is truly more developed in terms of cognitive capacity and socio-emotional flexibility/resilience and wisdom. Not to mention humility. At the moment, there is understandably still a certain amount of old-world self-concern and vanity in the works, to be soothed and reassured, and conquered with competence and diplomacy.
Nanne, you say "Spiral Dynamics' seems in secular terms a bit reductionist in its discussion of memes". There's an awful lot more to spiral dynamics than just its 8 memes, but that's not a conversation to start here. And I, too, would rather live in Nanne's "maddingly rich, fluid world with a plethora of ideas and motivations coming to us from all directions and interacting with and also shaping our biological drives". All these models are absolutely useful, but they are indeed reductionist if not used to inform an ever broader and higher perspective. No ungrokkable Buddhist language is needed. The new organisational discourse will have to be languaged "emergently" by the collective as it dreams itself into the new paradigm.
Nanne, I'm really glad you said this: "What I would like to see for the Commission is simply a flatter organisation with more cross-cutting working groups and fewer 'directorates general'. I am rather enthusiastic about the ability for groups to accomplish transformative thinking (a 'level up', if you will) if they are organised ad hoc, but around certain principles. The tremendous human potential in the Commission could be put to much better work in that way."
I once asked myself the question "is it possible to grow a chaordic operation inside a command-and-control bureaucracy in such a way that it can still do its day-to-day work?" A small group of individual "Imaginal cells" inside and outside the Commission is starting to explore what's possible. I sense an openness, but we can't redesign this puppy beforehand. It's an emergent story and we have to make it up as we go along.
Somewhere in this long conversation, someone mentioned "questions that matter" and linked to World Café. We are looking at introducing the Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter into the Commission next year. Also, work is already afoot to support the formation of knowledge networks and cross-cutting communities of practice. Always building on what is already there and taking it to the next level. Softly and gently, sustainably and FOR REAL. With conversation "callers", hosts and facilitators conversant with the various components of the integral model and supported in their own development by a personal (and hopefully even group) practice - whatever it takes... to create a field that is strong enough to act as an attractor to all that "tremendous human potential" in the Commission, to dare to dream another way of doing business that will support the projects of visionaries like Emil.
And then taking we can start taking those hosting skills out into the field. Emil you seem to know some people we should be talking to. I don't have many contacts inside the transport and energy DG, but I'm sure we could find some in short measure to start up a conversation along the lines you are suggesting.
RG said "come on let's get this done"... So what's first? Or what's next?
I haven't worked in the Commission, but I studied EU law and the EU's environmental policies.
On the conversation Rg is talking about: We are working on an 'Energise Europe' project. The thing is a bit slow to take off so far (I take my share of the blame). Here's the discussion until now:
Drafting an European energy policy - getting started Jerome a Paris, July 16th
Energize Europe Brainstorm Jerome a Paris, September 3rd
Energise Europe Project Colman, November 20th
Energise Europe: Proposed Outline Colman, November 21st
Energize Europe: Zero-th draft plan rdf, November 21st
Energise Europe: Goals Colman, December 6th
I confess that it is beyond my absorbtion capacity to do it justice. I find myself looking for shortcuts, thirsty for KIS.
Is 'Energize Europe' going anywhere; is it worth pursuing? By comparison the plan I presented seems so, ehh, feasable. Do I miss something?
Somewhat confusedly yours, Emil
Pretty soon, I think we will need to make a choice what kind of strategy we want to draft. One that provides the EU and its Member States with a set of policy options and concrete projects that can be achieved within the current institutional setting, or a strategy that asks for the change of pretty much everything.
There are in-betweens, of course...
P.S. I get RES, but KIS? Knowledge Information Systems?
(also in the variant KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid) In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
When I mention holacracy, I mean Brian Robertson and Ternary Software.
It's a pity Peter Merry's book evolutionary leadership isn't out in English yet (Sigh) Have you read it in Dutch yet? It addresses two scenarios for change - in the one, you have people in positions of power who can sponsor it, in the other, you have people who care and who feel the itch. They have to follow the imaginal cells scenario and go for it under the radar until they pick up a critical mass. We'd better not wait for leaders. We'd better not get caught behind enemy lines. Don't want martyrs and inquisitions this time round.
Yes to the power of intension, attractors, free will and synchronicity. I can bear witness that they are alive and well and working in the Commission.
You and your jolts. I'm not convinced a jolt will do anything other than frighten people. Climate change is a jolt enough for now. We need to work slowly but surely on our courage and our competence. The Art of Hosting will start small and build. But I'll sit in circle with you any day, Emil. If you want to design something with those business leaders, we can get all our mates together to support it, one way or another. I'm sure the Dutch human emergence guys would come on board.
Is your diederick the same as my diederick (Janse?) If so, good luck finding a date. Those boys are BUSY! But then. So are we, no doubt.
But rest assured that I'm working on all the things in your list of what's next. Let's stay talking. :-)
In the late 1980s, three engineers at SEMCO proposed setting up a Nucleus of Technological Innovation to develop new businesses and product lines which Semler endorsed. At the end of the first six months, NTI had identified 18 such opportunities. Following the success of this initiative, satellite units were encouraged throughout SEMCO. By the late 1980s, these satellite units accounted for two-thirds of its new products and two-thirds of its employees.
