coevolution

Conversation

2008-12-01T21:42:00-08:00

I want to expand the concept of conversation.

The Latin and Indo-European roots of "con" and "vers" connote "turning together".

This deeper understanding opens up new meanings.

When we speak our truths and hear each other deeply, letting each other's voices and ideas and stories and passions shift us, we turn together.

When we dance or listen to music, and our bodies and attention resonate with its shifting vibrations and emotional resonances, we turn together.

When we all share the same perspectives, hopes or horrors within the vibrational embrace of mass media and the webs of telecommunications -- 9/11, elections, earth from space -- we turn together.

When we respond adaptively to the situations we face -- individually or collectively -- we are turning together with the energies and realities that reside within those situations.

When we as a community come together in times of crisis, rather than splitting apart into adversarial or self-aggrandizing camps, we are turning together.

As all plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breath out oxygen, and all animals breath in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, we turn together in and as one great cycling flow of oxygen and carbon,
releasing the energies of Life.

As our one small and beautiful planet spins out its days and nights, and circles the sun into seasons, and glides with our whole solar family on one vast arcing arm of our spiral Milky Way galaxy, we turn together.

We are in conversation -- all of us, all the time, at more levels than we know -- turning together.

Waking up is our emerging realization that we can converse more consciously, learn to do it more knowledgeably and heartfully, inspired and inspiring, and thereby evolve together with -- and into
-- greater wisdom, wholesomeness, and grace... turning, together.

Maturana & Humanness

2008-08-15T19:20:43-07:00

I've recently returned from a week of truly inspirational and profound learning with Humberto Maturana, Ximena Davila and their colleagues at the Matriztica Institute learning about the cultural-biological foundations of human existence and our co-evolution as loving beings through the relational spaces and networks of conversation in which we participate.

Let me share a few seed ideas that relate to our work with the World Café to give you a flavor of this workshop on cultural biological matrix of human existence, and then provide a brief description of how I see the World Cafe embodying some these powerful scientific insights about the origins and conservation of our very humanness.

Apologies to Humberto and his colleagues in advance for any misinterpretations that I might have had, as they are quite precise and I may not have interpreted it fully as they intended.

"As humans we are born in the trust of loving and in being loved–within an ecology of the natural world and within the larger living cosmos." Love is the legitimate co-arising of the other in the relational space between us. What we understand as humanness are relations conserved on and in love over many generations of our co-existence.

Humanness is not a genetic mutation. It is a manner of living where there is pleasure in each others company, sharing food, nearness, caressing and tenderness - nor is the capacity for language a genetic mutation - it is an evolutionary drift emerging from the intimacy of human community and the coordination of actions in language together. It is in the intimate community where humanness arises as a network of conversations that is conserved over generations as a lineage through the raising of children over hundreds of generations in manners of living that are conserved in that lineage. Humanness did not arise in competition, struggle etc. It arose in intimate family/community co-existence.

We live in the braiding of emotions and languaging in our manner of living together. In this coordination through language, certain consensus or agreements appear as"reality" and the objects we understand as "real" appear.

"Words are not trivial - words are the nodes or elements of networks of conversation. Language is the coordination of doings, not a symbolic act as we commonly understand it. With one word I can follow one path and with another a different path. Our languaging distinguishes a way of inhabiting a human community and culture.

As human beings we find ourselves living in communities in recursive coordination of doings, generating different worlds and realities as different manners of living together in networks of conversation.

A person who reflects creates new worlds. All distinctions are made by an observer. Our capacity for reflection in language is one essence of our humanness. We are human beings that emerged with the capacity to reflect in language and conversations and in that we generate worlds.

"A key question is - how, in a human system, living what it is living, does pain and suffering arise from that manner of living? Culture is a network of conversations that both generates and conserves states and manners of living and co-existence, even painful ones.

We have a choice and can be intentional about what we want to conserve in our manner of living and what we don't.

Everything changes and evolves around what we want to conserve. Do we want to conserve our essential nature as loving beings?

Homo sapiens amans amans?

The Matriztic Institute invites reflection on our fundamental nature as biological-cultural loving beings who arise in language and who live in conversation as our manner of living (our doings) in conversation. Organizations, for example, are not the organizational chart, but arise in the living network of conversations that conserves certain manners of living together.

What is intelligence? It is the behavioral adaptability/plasticity that we show as the world around us changes - in our manner of living in co-existence with a changing environment.

As a co-inspirator, I can be intentional about the nature of the conversations I introduce into the conversational network that is the organization or the culture I am part of. This is serious, responsible, daring and playful work! How I open spaces of conversation is of the utmost importance to our capacity to co-inspire worlds we choose to live in. All cultural change, for example, is a change in the network of conversations and the manner of living that arises in it. Language and conversations are "doings" that lie at the heart of our capacity to intentionally bring forth worlds that are life-affirming and ethical.

Everything changes around what we want to conserve.

And, here is a brief reflection on how I might now interpret the network of conversations that is a World Cafe!

In a World Cafe dialogue, intimate (4-5 people) circles engage in deep listening and reflective conversation, where each member is seen, heard and honored for their unique contribution. This creates a relational space and dynamic in which what is conserved from round to round is what has life from each conversation that is taken into the next round. As the conversation unfolds through these multiple cross-pollinating rounds of respectful dialogue in an intimate relational space (the small circles), a living network of conversation emerges in which what is conserved and spread through consecutive rounds becomes part of the embodied experience of that living network.

Collective intelligence (the "magic in the middle") begins to arise as more and more people, in the intimacy and caring of the small table groups, are truly seen and heard in the evolving "doings" of that Cafe's network of conversations. A World Cafe dialogue is, in a sense, a small lived experiment in the cultural biology of love and our fundamental humanness with each other (love is defined as a relational space where the other arises as a legitimate other simply for who they are in their "being" and their contribution) at increasing levels of scale.

The whole group reflection and harvesting at the end makes visible to the whole what is being conserved (patterns, insights, deeper questions, possible coordinated actions) that holds the life (and the living) that has emerged through the network of conversations embodied in that particular Cafe.
_________

I think Maturana and Davila's work provides wonderful insights and I look forward to learning more over these next years.

What kinds of insights come to you in response to these words?

Unique Opportunity: Discover the Roots of the World Cafe!

2008-06-24T19:33:47-07:00

On August 3-8 in Boston I am planning to attend a powerful teaching seminar with Dr. Humberto Maturana and his colleague Prof. Ximena Davila, two pioneering Chilean cultural biologists focused on the deeper process of co-evolution and renewal in human systems. They will help us see how we, as human beings with the unique capacity for language, reflective consciousness, and meaning making through the networks of conversation in which we participate have evolved today's world.....and what our possibilities might be for consciously co-evolving our futures together in more life-affirming ways.

Maturana's work has had a profound influence on the deeper intention of the World Cafe as an approach through which people can experience these living networks of conversation and their potential for co-evolving the futures we want rather than being forced to live with the futures we get. I encourage any of you who want to learn the scientific underpinnings of the World Cafe to join me in this powerful joint inquiry.

For more information and how to register.

What's it All About?

2008-06-24T18:24:25-07:00

Nancy Margulies sent in a link to this Art of Hosting video, which gives a great overview of the self-organizing design shared by the World Café and all living systems work:

New Frontiers in Participatory Knowledge Development

2008-03-05T22:10:18-08:00

Fielding Graduate University’s Institute for Social Innovation Announces Groundbreaking Research Partnership with the World Café

By Thomas J. Hurley for the World Café Community Foundation

An exciting new partnership brings together Fielding Graduate University’s Institute for Social Innovation and the World Café Community Foundation to develop and disseminate the World Café as a methodology for participatory research and collective knowledge evolution, and to explore applications of the World Café in key areas such as change leadership, organizational development, and societal learning.

Cooperatively discovered in 1995, the World Café is an innovative approach to hosting and harvesting collaborative conversations about questions that matter. The process is designed to evoke and make visible the collective intelligence of a group, increasing participants’ capacity to create shared meaning, discover new knowledge, and foster innovation across organizational, social, or cultural boundaries that ordinarily get in the way of collaboration. Today, this research-based and field-tested approach to strategic dialogue, multi-stakeholder engagement, intergenerational collaboration, and cooperative action has been enthusiastically embraced by people around the world, in virtually every field and all sectors, who are working to catalyze positive change. Through their efforts, innovative approaches to critical issues in socially responsible business, health care, education, environmental protection, social welfare, conflict resolution, sustainable development, and many other fields are being discovered and implemented.

The newly-announced partnership is especially appropriate given the singular role that the Fielding Graduate University has played in the development and dissemination of the World Café. Juanita Brown’s 2001 dissertation at Fielding was the basis for her award-winning book The World Café: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter (Berrett-Koehler, 2005), now available in seven languages. Fielding Trustee Bo Gyllenpalm, a member of Juanita’s doctoral committee (chaired by Libby Douvan), has used the World Café with Fielding students and faculty and pioneered the development of virtual dialogues based on the World Café process and design principles in the M.A. Program in Organization Management and Development. Current and former faculty members Fred Steier, Don Bushnell, Will McWhinney, Sara Cobb, and others have played key roles in the conceptual development of the World Café and its use as a research methodology.

“I’m excited that the work I began in my dissertation now has the opportunity to be developed in creative ways that will support both high-quality, grounded research and more powerful action in the service of life-affirming futures,” said Juanita Brown. “Around the world, there’s a growing recognition that conversation, community formation, and innovation are the living roots of transformative change in every field and system, and that the power to re-make our world lies in everyone’s hands.”

The partnership between the Institute for Social Innovation and the World Café Community Foundation will strengthen the development of the World Café as a valid methodology for co-evolving social knowledge with a strong epistemological foundation. Faculty, students, and leading practitioners from the global World Café network will collaborate on a wide range of initiatives, including dissertations that use the World Café as a primary research methodology; monographs and peer-reviewed publications; case studies; development of the next generation of World Café process tools; meetings of theorists, researchers, and practitioners, and seminars for students, faculty, and Fielding program associates. We also anticipate exploring how the World Café can contribute to special projects sponsored by the Institute for Social Innovation, such as the Democracy Action Project, the Transformative Learning and Social Justice program, and the Information Society and Knowledge Organization concentration.

“Like action research and appreciative inquiry, the World Café is a process with deep conceptual foundations that can support new and powerful approaches to research on human and organization development,” said Bo Gyllenpalm. “This partnership will strengthen both Fielding as an institution and the World Café as a social innovation in the global academic and social change communities.”

The partnership also recognizes that the World Café is both a process that fosters social innovation (catalyzing insights and generating new knowledge through interlinking conversations about questions that matter) and a social innovation itself, in terms of how the World Café process and principles, based on living systems thinking, have spread throughout the world and given rise to a rapidly growing, global community of practice. As such, a deeper understanding of the World Café’s organizing principles and patterns can contribute to the quests for new forms of leadership, new tools for innovation, and creative approaches to positive whole systems change.

For more information, please contact Bo Gyllenpalm or Samantha Tan.

Be the Change

2008-02-08T12:20:45-08:00

I get occasional mail from KarmaTube sharing inspirational videos, and this one was so good I wanted to share it with you here. The people are speaking a language I don't understand, but I love the 'conversation' that happens beyond words...

Conversation as a Radical Act

2007-11-12T10:40:12-08:00

Juanita, along with a little help from GiGis (Girl Geeks) Nancy Margulies, Nancy White and Amy Lenzo, unrolled some of her recent thinking in a presentation called Conversation as a Radical Act last week at the 2007 Pegasus Systems Thinking Conference in Seattle.

The ideas focus on the nexus between issue-based content and the 'process arts' that can help us take the conversation about them to a new level, leading to action grounded in collective wisdom.

nano cafes

2007-09-27T16:27:27-07:00

David Isaacs here..

just noticed this fantastic story about nano cafes that are being convened in Madison Wisconsin.

does anyone reading this blog like the idea of connecting with these nano cafe innovators?

what would be wonderful is if someone uncovered a way to introduce the principles and processes of the
World Cafe to them!!!

are you interested in making this networking connection... and suggesting to the nano cafe people that they are part of a global network at the World Café?