an envisioned leading role for the EU | 62 comments (62 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (none / 1)

Emil,

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.

by nanne (zwaerdenmaecker@gmail.com) on Tue Dec 12th, 2006 at 04:04:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (4.00 / 3)

Nanne,

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.

by emilmoller (emil@beyondthewalls.eu) on Wed Dec 13th, 2006 at 01:58:41 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (none / 0)

Emil, I found the explanation on the Integral Institute's home page to be enlightening, so much that the overall approach now makes a certain amount of sense to me (the whole five domains thing) even though I have my doubts about some of its more metaphysical underpinnings.

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...

by nanne (zwaerdenmaecker@gmail.com) on Wed Dec 13th, 2006 at 04:58:06 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (none / 1)

My experience is that in the public we need evolution and in the personal we need revolution.

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

by rg (leopold dot lepster at google mail dot com) on Thu Dec 14th, 2006 at 05:16:25 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (none / 0)

Or the other way round

or sommat ;-)

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Thu Dec 14th, 2006 at 05:53:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (4.00 / 2)

;)

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.

It is naïve to think that only one person can be right, and it is equally naïve to think that we all can be right. Every perspective is true but partial

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...

"What is soul?"

"It's the ring around your bath tub."

...or sommat!

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

by rg (leopold dot lepster at google mail dot com) on Thu Dec 14th, 2006 at 07:48:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (none / 1)

Folks: It's time to evolve ideas. You know, evolution didn't end with us growing thumbs. You do know that, right? Didn't end there. We're at the point, now, where we're going to have to evolve ideas. The reason the world is so fucked up is we're undergoing evolution. And the reason our institutions, our traditional religions, are all crumbling, is because ... they're no longer relevant. They're no longer relevant. So it's time for us to create a new philosophy and perhaps even a new religion, you see. And that's okay 'cause that's our right, 'cause we are free children of God with minds who can imagine anything, and that's kind of our role.

--Bill Hicks

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

by rg (leopold dot lepster at google mail dot com) on Thu Dec 14th, 2006 at 08:12:20 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (none / 0)

ok rg, that's quite a story.
.
.
.

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?

by emilmoller (emil@beyondthewalls.eu) on Thu Dec 14th, 2006 at 04:01:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (4.00 / 3)

It's not ideas that have to evolve. It's that messy metaphysical stuff called consciousness. Ideas are just so many perspectives. You can't design it upfront. Even the current EC didn't happen like that. You can only show up with the most evolved consciousness you can manage and participate, intentionally, in the emergence of what's next, for the good of the whole. Knowing that none of us has the whole picture, but together we can ROCK.

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!

by yeshe on Thu Dec 14th, 2006 at 04:18:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (none / 1)

you do get clear as bedtime nears

by emilmoller (emil@beyondthewalls.eu) on Thu Dec 14th, 2006 at 04:37:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (none / 0)

Ego's yesterday's news

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.

by rg (leopold dot lepster at google mail dot com) on Fri Dec 15th, 2006 at 04:38:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (none / 1)

rg, my friend, the Commission is THE legislative body of the EU. One of its main jobs, as enshrined in the Treaties, is to propose legislation. It is the only European Community institution that has the right to do so. Parliament and the Council have a say in certain types of legislation, but can't draft or propose anything themselves. The Council can ask the Commission to propose legislation, and can refuse to adopt certain types of proposal. That's it.

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.

by yeshe on Fri Dec 15th, 2006 at 01:25:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (none / 1)

He he he. I mistook the parliament for the commission...coz I ain't too...er...clued up. (Comes from a previous discussion we had here about contacting our MEPs, and I just got confoosed, yeshe!)

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.

by rg (leopold dot lepster at google mail dot com) on Fri Dec 15th, 2006 at 01:36:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (none / 1)

Sounds like someone got there first with those drinks...

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.

by yeshe on Fri Dec 15th, 2006 at 04:13:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (none / 1)

that's indeed what a jolt is to me: the rush of recognition of what it is to be a human being

plain and simple inspiration, awe, relief, blissfull butterflies that you can

the 4 projects have what it takes, no?

by emilmoller (emil@beyondthewalls.eu) on Thu Dec 14th, 2006 at 04:40:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (none / 1)

YESSSSS!!!

fantastic diary, brilliant comments....

syncronicity party anyone?

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Thu Dec 14th, 2006 at 05:12:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (none / 0)

irl?

by emilmoller (emil@beyondthewalls.eu) on Fri Dec 15th, 2006 at 01:37:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (none / 0)

I know it's a wee bit of an aside, but since spiral dynamics keeps rearing its head in this conversation, there's a cool development going on over at the spiral dynamics pod at zaadz: http://pods.zaadz.com/spiraldynamics/discussions/view/88694 (too lazy to make a link...) - this is some recent writing by Don Beck on the complexities of the Spiral. It's GREAT!

by yeshe on Sat Dec 16th, 2006 at 04:02:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (none / 1)

Cross posting with http://pods.zaadz.com/spiraldynamics/discussions/view/88694#89737

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

by emilmoller (emil@beyondthewalls.eu) on Sun Dec 17th, 2006 at 03:35:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (none / 0)

Emil, my man, what say we open space around this project of yours? Find the real, committed callers and bring them together into a team, craft a powerful question and run with it? We have friends whom I am sure can help with the hosting, if there are enough people out there who care and who have the expertise to move this on. You seem to know a lot of them already, and this kind of experiment could feed rather nicely into your doctoral project.

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.

by yeshe on Sun Dec 17th, 2006 at 04:02:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (none / 0)

That is an excellent idea. Perhaps we could team up with the Center of Human Emergence. This is in the process of delevering the 'how' of the transition experiment with Direct Drive (project #3 in main posting).

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.

by emilmoller (emil@beyondthewalls.eu) on Thu Dec 21st, 2006 at 04:31:28 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: an envisioned leading role for the EU (none / 0)

Always yes to working with the CHE, Emil. They have the expertise, vision and positioning to help make this happen.

Good luck with the transition... I'm living the same stuff where I am. Synchronicity from the inside. Blog it!

by yeshe on Thu Dec 21st, 2006 at 07:30:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]

an envisioned leading role for the EU | 62 comments (62 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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