Attracting warmakers, polluters, etc.

The story of evolution continues, and machine intelligences are likely. Jack Semura, professor, physicist, explains how machines are growing, and how we are growing new technical capabilities. When the universe began, there were subatomic particles, then atomic particles developed, and then many molecules developed. We are, now, creating new atoms and molecules before, that have never, as far as we know ever, been produced anywhere before. Jack tells us about the motive forces behind many industry and public efforts, and what's happening in computers, data storage, artificial intelligence, genetics, robotics. Many experts think it is very likely that we will live in a radically different world within several decades. We need to be aware of the technology that is being born today. We need to contemplate our relationship with the artificial life forms that we are developing, what we want to teach them, and what they may teach us.

Note: I, Lion Kimbro, recorded these notes in real time. These notes might be wrong, I may have recorded the wrong thing, and there are (I assure you) several ommissions.

In attendence, at the beginning: 

* Jack Semura - professor, cosmology, computers
* Lion Kimbro - consciousness reincarnating into machines, or is panpsychism true? Future study, work
* Carl Anderson - Network design engineering network data analysis collection statistical - Externalization of memory, consciousness, biomimicry, theory, life in cyberspace, through networks, presence, footprints & impressions - crux: "Does life & consciousness spontaneously emerge out of complex systems?"
* Ruben Nelson - from Canada - trying to make sense out of the world - policywonk, futures researcher, community developer, not sure consciousness is just what machinery produces - skeptical of the language of machinery - does not capture the biological - here to learn, explore, get a better sense of jack
* Emmanuel Von-Lee - interested in hearing Jack's take - background: foundation field, interested in seeing where the divine & scientific meet
* Barbara (?) - Heard a conversation between Jack & another & was fascinated - concern: If I tried to read about it, would stop on page 4, but this seems important, and I want to be educated about what's goin on - appreciate Jack's perspective
* Michell Levey - "I'm just here intuitively, not by analysis, was just looking at the venue." It just called to me. "It lit up, said go there."
* Jair - Interested in analog & digital technology; Idea of A-Life caught my eye, interested in seeing where go with conversation
* Joel Levey - Brain studies, Consciousness, EG, anomylous behavior. Was with Dali Lama - "Can a sentient incarnate in a sophisticated computer system" - Dalai Lama said, "I think this could happen- why not?"
* Bill Aal- Refugee from computer world, was programmer, many years, until 1988 end - riseup.net - meditation, group work, following post-60s/70s consciousness from machinery thoughts - holds no opinions
* Michael Lindfield - Similar interests to Joel - difference between form and indwelling life - how can form and the in-dwelling life be resolved - zombies explanation talked with him - something that is a child of the conscious universe - can we make forms, as cocreaters, that have consciousness? - willing to have my software update
* Jack Semura - long background (30 years) in physics, thrown out of straight physics, ended up in experimental program, environmental sciences PhD - out of theory, into: how do you make eq's for bio things? I'm a meditator, aunt uncle buddhist priests, theoretical physics was a spiritual quest - asian kids thought: pinnacle of physics is theoretical physics - backpeddled from it

* In last 10-12 years, looking at courses that don't exist anywhere. Setting up things, researching from scratch, working on tasks like: "Complexity and the Universe" - Computation field is interestingly reinventing.
* Trying to fund a field of "cosmological complexity" - Proton/Neutron thinking vs. Digital
* Trying to make a case: There's something to - 13.7 billion years - to make a case we're in place for transition to another state - in grand scheme of things
* Drawing the universe as a U - starts from one end, goe's to another, and then an "i" at the end, the universe seeing itself - cost of observing universe is a sense of separation - mind is dualistic, objectifies, and then we forget that we're a part of it
* To me, the wild thing is: beyond participatory universe, and then after looking, the "i" starts to figure out the rules of the universe - not just seeing it, but decoding it - forming equations - and figuring out how to manipulate the symbols - start tweaking the knobs - hand emerges from the painting, and starts turning the knobs,
* it's driven by computation, pieces are driven by chip makers, software companies, ...
* It's all coming together: Biotechnology - Nanotechnology - Computation
* Ray Kurzweil - Age of Spiritual Machines, Singularity, ...
* John Von Neumann - noticed the singulary - feedback loops are for acceleration
* Before, people were worried about it - Robot machine 700's, Icarus and the Wings, the Frankenstein - Joining machines to body, and becoming symbiotic
* But maybe we're close, - if we're off by decades, it's nothing to the billions
* Humility: Each time has it's issues, we must deal with things as we find them today
* Talking about evo of the universe, talking about activism, part of a bigger overarching vision, we can enlarge the frame even more - daily life, tea, doing our activism: "The world we are going into is not going to be the same as the one we are in"
* If you project computer memory, ~2035, computer may have more memory than the entire globe of humans
* Computation is primitive and mechanistic, but our neurons are based on clicking on and off, and there's something incredibly massive about the memory of several billion people in what is a small thing - Bio, nano, electrical, computational - Biological processes are beging given to chips so that they can reconfigure themselves - why people doing it, when the computers or the DNA can do it, and the DNA clicks and links and reprograms the chip, with a gold molecule on it's back so it can be programmable, proofs and demonstrations have been done, we know how to do this- what if you can mate circuits and reproduce and they go on from there?
* Picking out parts, sharing parts of the body, electronics reproducing other circuits
* Computers can assemble their own - off the end of a line is another computer - computers can self-replicate
* They don't have to be mechanistic - muscle and tissue fibers are extremely efficient - we can make computers that have operations on muscle power - solar power transducers - circuits that reproduce, reconfigure - programs can program other programs
* I have a responsibility to all of this, have been in this 20 years - "Computers can't program themselves - people can't do it?" No, that's not true. Computers CAN and do program themselves. You can throw in random mutations.
* Robot walking training algorithms
* Vicky - Ethical domain - What of ethical DNA? What are the ethical codes - if computers are going to self-replicate, and humans increasingly side-lined - Silicon Race - what is the ethical code that we want to leave behind?
* "There's a project known as the Seed project." To get to super-intelligent computer. Lots of people involved. "This is a potentially dangerous world." We need to seed it with a seed that is friendly to humans. "What is friendly?" No universal agreement. But there's a project: "The Seed Intelligence."
* To convince people -- "Follow the money" - burnstein - all the money going into this field - billions and billions of dollars - think tanks, developments, universities, - when Stanford starts a project, starts 1.7 million dollars - UW - budget cycle just a hiccup - Berkeley, MIT lots of projects - Pharmaceuticals - Genetech - DoD - millions and millions - Bio/Nano/Computation/AI/Complexity - whole mess catalyzes places
* People WANT a better world, and they may be working with DoD - intention runs the whole gambut - it's not a matter of good or bad - I DO worry about it, but I come to some (?) - Trying to make a neutral fair of information to help dissemenate them.
* List of things:
* Misconception: Life is about reproduction - molecules can reproduce - molecules can catalyze other offspring molecules - we're building compounds, even artificial elements - new molecules that have never existed before
* At start of universe, just a handful of elements, trace of Lithium, H, He, ... Table fills up a bunch, can build next hierarchical level - atoms connect into making molecules - the molecules are all formed, there's a space of reactions in the laws of our universe to begin with - but there were things like plastic that didn't exist yet - space of existing molecules expanded, "the adjacent probable" - expanding to make new things - the space of compounds is expanding, expanding, expanding - we understand Chemistry enough that we're making artificial molecules that have *never existed before* - created by tens of thousands, automated - used to use programmed testtubes, but now have micro-channels and miniature nano hydraulics and nanoanalysis - tens of thousands of molecules - most people don't even know - peptides can self-replicate - "Even Peptides Do It" - "Peptide love"
* Roughly how many elements exist now? 100-150? Few dozen are new.
* We have meta-level laws: We can now figure out how to automatically create the things - Automated theorem proving - Automated logic - Computer memories are going to be beyond human population memory
* With meta-level laws of how programs can program themselves - can evolve better ways for programming themselves - A computer generation may not be 70 years, may be 70 days, 70 nanoseconds - Experiments of revolution can be sped up many-fold
* Quantum computation, - we're looking at our own computers as primitive! - Quantum computers can perform amazingly parallel computations - May be able to use quantum information to multiply computer powers by millions - we can do ~16 (?) bit computations right now
* This thing may open it's eyes, figure out it's eyes, and start turning it's own knobs.
* While we are doing our activism, we should be aware of this framework
* We're worried about destroyed species, we should also see the species we are creating
* The direction our vision faces should not look just backwards, but also future - using our wisdom to talk about these things
* "Jack, just flew in from Los Alamos," then from Vienna - "We're building life from chemicals of the shelf" - Building amino acids, from off the shelf, click click click until you have like a cell - building artificial life: demonstration process
* "Here's a cell," - people in field have no doubt that they can do this
* We can send our mind ahead 20 years, look backwards, say, "Those were the primitive ages."
* Remember the Bronze age tools, and the early printing process. Bronze age people polished it, looked in mirror, thought it was amazing.
* But from future point of view,
* We've ressurected a 14 million year old bacteria from an bee in Amber - South San Luis Obispo or San Diego
* Demonstration project to make prototype bacterium - can make another one, they evolve
* They do it by symbiosis - bacteria eats another and then extends it's genome
* Computer programs do this too - embed programs within programs.
* See the virus, in the computers
* We have constructed this world based on our world, our education, our intelligence, our wisdom - smart people working on this stuff
* We're not out to destroy the human race
* You get so interested in this, and you're paid, and you do it
* ALife demonstration project.
* Animal brains controlling machines - attach a brain so that the creature is turning on and off life - studying the psychology of the organism, what do these things do
* Why should people program robots, if they can just figure it out on their own?
* Programming sensors - Robots with learning processes - Processes that can change the way they themselves learn - from psych AI - metalaws about how to change self
* working out universal computers that can figure out future programs (Metauniversal computing) - convergence of billions of dollars - hoards of motivations, industry, profit defence, fight for tenure
* Artificial intelligence is to stage - humans not replicating human intelligence - Metacognitive learning processes - sexual reproductions - programs can mate with other programs - those that work well reproduce
* We're at this stage where most people educated in old century don't understand. I feel like an oddball lots of times.
* DNA is interchangable - can make new things that have never existed before - recombinant DNA technology - post WWII technology
* clones - hokey clones - hiccup in 13.7 billion years
* do you want 70 of a particular animal?
* Developing mixed bio-nano-compu agents with giga memory on tiny little chips and letting them learn and go
* we're reverse engineering everything, using DNA for computation, change A-T in the genetic code, means something, put it in a computer and let it go - binary pairing (G-C-A-T)
* the medium doesn't count so much - switching letters and placing them around - it's absolutely interchangable - one proton or another it doesn't matter - proven theorems about interchangability
* we've reinvented all of this, and at the bottom of all of this, you only need 1 and 0 and you can do all of this
* we've reinvented the way the universe at the basement has formed all these structures - rich diversity of mass and energy - with ones and zeros - simple, abstract form: process- only took us 13.7 billion years!
* look what we can do with ones and zeros? - digitized signals wiki shakespeare ...
* trans-genetic species - human ear on the back of a mouse - recombinant DNA - DNA is just interchangable replacable - industry declared a moratorium - in 1970's declared a moratorium - "until we understand better, don't do this" - the moratorium DID NOT LAST - lasted about 2 and a half years - was US dominated, 1977 1978 moratorium was called off - industrial genetic engineering biochem -  - the concern was the destruction of the integrity of life (Bill Aal knows about this and available to talk about this stuff)
* Carl: genetically modified strains of cereal grains have been a distaster, except for Monsanto - ecological failure - "the terminator seeds" - a "complete destruction of the flow of life" - can grow, but cannot reproduce - in effort to monetize biotechnology - "we have to control it, it has to be scarce, they want farmers to buy seeds over and over and over again"
* (back to Jack)
* Original founders scare thesmelves "we gotta not do this" - Genie has NEVER been kept in te bottle - That's knowledge - you lose control - another group says: "I'm going to do that" - tragedy of the commons & competition - whole show starts all over again
* This kind of thing MAY go on
* While we're doing all of this - pace is speeding up - we're not saturated, at ALL: We've figured out metalaws, we can teach these things as algorithms - better strategy, bank of 60 different strategies, try them out systematically - future modeling and estimation - reproduce mate - may be more memory than entire human population in a single mchine
* Miniaturizing
* Trans-genetic species: combine genes arbitrarily from this place and that place - green flourescent potatoes - Flourescent jelly fish - in plants and flowers that are blooming - black lit room and flowers bloom with UV florescent designs
* New form of aesthetics
* This is a world we're moving into
* Bring in discussion of community leaders and activists and traditional - to enlarge the context - not just preserving old ecology, looking at the future ecology as well
* To come into this world with our eyes open
* This hasn't filtered into the public mind
* How can we bring our collective wisdom individual wisdom wisdom traditions - think about what's possible and what we might do - there are other groups going with eyes wide open and TRYING for these futures
* Transhumanists, Extropeans; Seed Intelligence groups - will cross over and exceed
* I wouldn't be as worried if these were just deluded nightime dreams, but I actually see these people doing these things, and billions of dollars, and the well intentioned and the less well intentioned, - these are not just "dreams" - not EVERY scenario will happen, but the potential is there, but the groups are there
* Known fundamental laws are not keeping these things are happening - when something doesn't work, we can find another way - there are also not moral laws

* J: what else is there?
* Jack: Follow wikipedia, follow the links

Jon Cleland-Host: Cockroach going in remote control

* "Dreams are private?"
* Microelectrodes reading spikes

* Michael Lindfield: "Action learning" - picking up all these possibilities - we're looking for "the dream" - past/present/future quivers in the moment, synchronistically - ability of these new entities to perceive at the nontemperal, transtemporal - soul level - can they see these things that are part of who we already are - we are part of the call the calling and the caller - we are cocreators - created in the image of god his her likeness - intenntionality - purpose - dream - intended to be - how can these entities based on phenomenal way of perceiving the future - dow ork of fusing with a soul - can we infuse with consciousness - if we're going to dream a dream how can they become codreamers - computational power didn't give rise to the unvierse, helped in its production - that's my area of inquiry
* Jack: There are those who would say that these organisms, these new organisms, that are in part biological - most people in A-Life aren't concerned about Soul - "they'll learn, they'll be superior, they will have lives, they will have dreams with vastly more power than humans do - will deal with much higher levels of understanding"
* Jack: "They will have dreams and idealism"
* J: I'm not putting this out to cause a stir - so we can give this consideration - Noosphere - work at Princeton - Noosphere project - Dream analysis of the future - Noosphere project -

* Consciousness discussion - has human ego created an idea called the soul as an expression of - isthere something else, really? - Will machines become ensouled? - Soul as a metaexpression of the evolved human - somehow or another we became ensouled - did god pick us? or moving it into machines? or..?
* Carl: As consciousness has arisen out of an excess of...
* Carl: Generative by the biology
* Carl: Abstracting consciousness? Abstracting to a biochemical? No; Exponentiation of computing power - grows out of our control our through our encouragement - nothing to say consciousness and awareness will spontaneously arise - nor that it won't
* Gabriel Shirley: There's a lot of unknown out there
* Growing way beyond what we can put our arms around it.
* What kid of principles would we oput around it.
* Michael Lindfield: I hold the planet as a sentient being - I am a creative scell - I hold the universe as a living reality - it's not just US evolving shooting to the stars - we are playing a part responding to the needs of a greater being - a choice free choice - figuring a best way of getting there - once we unleash this other stuff - as long as we understand it's done in a living context aligned with purpose - strength resonant field -
* ML: There's a certain bandwidth we play in, there's a certian resonance - the planet is a living being we shouldn't forget
* Bill Aal: if everything has consciousness doesn't matter how it comes into being (if panpsych) - question is for us as ethical human beings - how do we want to play - mistake made in the genetic engineering time with moratorium - economic interests allowed to push faster - than society can deal with - instructive to look at the history - scientists got competitive - let's assume something is going to happen - something interesting is going to happen now as a species - nano bio whatever - how do we deal?
* J: Michael, are you talking about this creative lifeform being able to astrally project, have super-cognitive powers, (Minority Report,)

* Sarah von Caldar - Yes! Magazine - We're destroying the earth's biological systems, may be destroying our own capacity to live here - we must breath, ... AI would have much less connect with the biological systems of the Earth - extremely dangerous - what is the level of fundamental intelligence that says caring for the earth is important
* J: As we ask selves to break down the barrier between man and nature, ...

* Joel Levey: These things are happening: How is it that each of us, countless people in networks we're part of - how can we work with those teams - generate fields of intentions and prayers - allow highest possible outcomes for all life to the realities that are unfolding here
* Joel Levey: Trees, fish, passion for all these realms - designed experiments, ran prototypes, developed new prototypes - deeply spiritual process - did this with Monstanto - pockets of deep caring scientists out there

* "At the heart of this conversation, are assumptions about control itself. I don't know how you can back off. Whether it should be done. If control is a good thing. At the base of all these technologies, it's about manipulation and control, bottom line." World in a place of total control."How do we open up a conversation to look at the fundamental value."

* metaphor of the highways syste, and distribution of control
* German engineers - plants dying because of methane - cancelled experiment - if had been released, within a decade, all life could have been wiped out, turned into methane

* Vicki: In the short term, in this - Yang experimental investigative expansive very Yang energy - you can't ask it to grow up and have ethics yet - needs a parental force - developing an ego, expressed in monetary reward - scientific world - can we turn that competitive impulse for success such that - open access archives - financial piece - so, I'm just saying that: In a way, this question is not going to be something we can deal with, without dealing with unrestrained corporate power - unrestrained design is such that the cats going to get out of the bad again and again and again - here kids, here's your truck, here's the ground worlds - no glory for hitting

Conscious social systems: what are we learning about being one?

Convener: Henri Lipmanowicz
Participants: Joseph McCormick, Terri Anderson, Charles Terry, Carl Anderson, Jennifer Atlee, John Abbe

Henri started by clarifying that the real question behind the title really is “How to attract people from groups that are not represented here?”
The validity, quality and acceptability of whatever emerges from our group’s work require that all voices be included in the development process.
HL then shared some questions that could be explored to clarify the scope of the initial one:

• How quickly/soon does the circle of participants need to be expanded to include others that would not be naturally drawn to participate?
• How to attract wider participation?
• What would be the consequences be (positive and negative) of an “early adopter” strategy that would initially ignore all who are not spontaneously inclined to join our effort?
• What kind of networks need to be built? How?
• How do we use the power of invitation and what for do the invitations have to be in order to attract people from all sectors of society?
• What processes for inclusion are there that would be self-replicating or self-propagating?

Ideas that emerged from the conversation and the experiences of the participants:

• Invite ourselves in other people’s network and participate as a way to understand their viewpoints and build relationships
• Think of what attracted us to join in the evolutionary salon conversation (the people, the sense of community, etc) and assume those same ingredients need to be present for others
• Joseph shared the story of his personal transformation and his experience with the “Democracy in America Project”. He told about organizing the “first conference on democracy in America”. His story made a strong impression on the group and impressed on all the need for reaching out to all those with whom we don’t normally associate. From this emerged a clear attraction for the idea of inviting people from opposite ends of the spectrum for conversations on unifying principles such as equality, freedom, unity and self-empowered government.
• Unifying principles are of importance to all regardless of any other affiliation and should provide a base for finding common ground.
• Some other unifying topics were mentioned such as the future of our children and grandchildren.
• Family came up as an example of a unifying topic that has unfortunately been politically co-opted.
• Go and participate in the activities and conversations of people that one wishes to attract.
• Stop knee jerk reactions of judging those with, for instance, different political views
• Transcend either/or labels and instead explore both/and possibilities.
• Interact, interact, interact!
• Expand personal network (and enrich it)
• Talk with sincerity about what you believe and think to all around you
• Recognize the sincere fear behind the apparent lack of sincerity of others instead of judging and dismissing.
• Develop a corps of “citizen diplomats” to bridge the divides between political and other groupings.

• Give a book (e.g. on evolution) to someone who may be skeptical
• Have a conversation
• Read a creationist/intelligent design book
• Attend a creationist/intelligent design conference
• Seek to understand the 'other'
• Be forthright with our own sincerity - what really matters about something to us?
  

Since we were quite late in starting there was agreement that we had barely the time to get warmed up and that it would be worthwhile to spend more time on the topic. When?

Given how little time we had I feel that we proved to ourselves that we were able to make progress, come up with the beginning of some practical ideas and identified areas that deserved further exploration.

Conscious social systems: what are we learning about being one?

Notes by Carlos Mota Margain

Assumptions that are killing us

Unconsciousness of our assumptions
Definition of freedom – with no constraints
Absolute assumptions
Human separation /superior from nature
Separation from other human beings
Separation from spirit
We are stuck with he economic/money system we have
Self made humans
Believe in scarcity
We can function without discussing our assumptions
Humans are at the top of evolution
Power over
The love of power
More words
Human nature is unavoidable
Being stuck with our assumptions
Evolution is linear, science is neutral
Having a solution is the problem
No limits to growth
Engineer/design linear
Those with more have the answers
Either or
God is outside and is in charge of everything
Time is killing us
Right/wrong

Assumptions that foster evolution

Freedom within context
Inquiries support evolution
Evolutionary thinking – inquiriy into what I don´t know
Actions - not any kind of action
Growing edge
Belief of abundance
Systemic view of scarcity/abundance
Cooperation
Becoming/we are work in progress
Power to/Power with
The power of love
Silence
Responsibility for my own human nature
Unstuck ourselves
If we understand what is wrong we know how to do it
We are gardens and gardeners
Both and
Feeling and engaging as living beings not just as human beings
Multiple realities
Dynamic nature of life

Insights

There is not a separate list of assumptions but a set of stories
We might explore what helps us be aware of assumptions that kill us and what help us bring the new assumptions  into being
We need a coherent story – there is room for multiple stories that amplify our vision and power to act
Our assumptions are part of what structure?
How to challenge limiting assumptions or change them?
Let’s not be in a space of stillness where we are certain of things.
Let us practices of collective reflections
We talk about things but where is the creativity-as evolutionary edge-?
It is not enough to slow destruction, what do we do to increase the rate of creation?
There are new tools we need to master
Helping people to create believe systems that enable them to evolve
Identification and transformation of limiting believe systems
Increasing my/our capacity to transform through collaboration
The problem is that we don’t see the good stories
Different stories that we tell ourselves and the time we take to reflect on them and ask what our assumptions every day
There is power ins spiritual/religious practices that help us reflect
The change is possible and we are what we think we could be; instead of what is
Assumptions are not inherently bad
How can be contemplative of the world at 100%
We need a vision and a new mythology
We are here not to have a conclusion but to imagine
More than the lists is the recognition of the patterns in which we engage in the act of a reflective dynamic
We don’t make space for reflection
A sense ability how our assumptions/patterns are in line with evolutionary dynamics
We can be meta reflective how con we engage in intentions in line with evolutionary dynamics
What attractors can we create
We need new practices
New institutions

Crash Course in Nonviolent Communication

What are we learning being conscious social systems?


Peggy Holman, convened
Tracy, Anne Stadler, Tree Fitz, Gabriel Shirley, Finn, Michael Cook, Ashley Cooper . . . a few others may have come in but the notetaker was taking notes.  Please add your name(s) if you were present.

Discussion at the wall about merging Tom’s session.  His is focused with the strategy of salons over time.  This is focused on what are we learning from our experience in the here and now.

Harvesting, meta level of our own awareness. . .

I am literally seeing the carpet move (oriental!). . . it is rippling

What we are learning is doing this, using it as a practice

Things are moving faster in the group silence, bringing the silence in to the middle. . . it is about the collective . . . a presence with ourselves and a presence with the group. . .

I’m noticing the group silences have an intense sense of crucible, the chamber where the intense heat builds and allows us to refine the energy for ourselves.  We’ve now spent enough time together that we’ve had time to be in this container/crucible and burn off some of the ambient energy that we walked into the space with.  We are beginning to resonate in a collective field in the way we were not when we arrived.  I hear question floating around:  can we be intentional about getting to that place sooner?  Recognize, that is something to play with, not to require.  We play with idea we might get into the crucible but we don’t require it.

There is something about the nature of the call.  The invitation, the call that went out, that brought very disparate streams together.  There’s been a lot of uncomfortableness, fuzziness, about the exact nature of that call.  Many requests for clarity.  I’ve been noticing that every intention of making a clear call in one way or another has gone sideways.  It has remained a very soft intention.  I take that as what is called for in the moment.  Part of that is just noticing the role of evolution, we are not in charge aspect, some larger force operating  . . . I don’t think it is an operational thing.  The invocation is being sounded in a soft way, not a laser way.

What came up for me was communicative practice and how even that is vague to me.  Part of that is this invitation you have talked about.  I had some struggle through the whole process of wanting to know but knowing I probably shouldn’t because then I would shut down the possibilities, esp. with so many convergent possibilities coming together.  I’m not clear that there is a call to clarify.

Invitation.  I don’t know where I have landed on it.  There is an interesting. . . it collides into my second learning.  The power of social networks.  I believe the people here now is an illustration of the power of social networks.  The invite did nothing for me but the social connections interested me.  Those are people I would enjoy playing with so I came on the strength of that.  I believe that is true for a lot of others.  And then there were people called by the content.  I loved the metaphor of the dance this morning.  These three days have been a dance, an interest and some personal passion for a body of content, knowledge, that is cognitive and then another strong interest of social systems and what are some of the other currents. . . the practical designer in me says could we be more explicit in those kinds of invitations.  This is what it is and if I were involved or doing something similar in the future, what is the role of the invitation. . . context keeps coming up.

Was there an awareness in the planning that people would come form networks or did they think people would come form the invitation?

Out of first salon, came idea of conscious movement for increasingly conscious social systems.  So as we looked, we asked ‘what does that imply about who needs to be in the room?”  Tom made a list:  activists, evolutionary story, artists, etc.  Juanita, Tom, Peggy and Michael reached out to their networks.

I see a parallel between question of silence and invitation.  In terms of both, the extent to which my heart is open.  I can feel it and sense it, silence is the etent to which the depth of silence grows in me.  The extent to which, by, which the invitation comes from this place of inner silence and heartfulness, which is whatever the innerness of the call is is where the clarity I seek is in the invitation.  I see all of this is possible in this invitation.  Nexus of several impulses, a field that spoke to me, to me this is totally critical in the invitations that we issue now.  I think we don’t have a clue what we really want to have clarity about.  I think we do have a clue that aif we come together with open hearts and allow ourselves to be in a place where the forms that we use allow us to mingle and receive guidance, we will get the clues we will need to get to the work.

The role of the invitation is to transmit the quality of the field that we want to convene.

I felt that invite from Peggy because of my social connection.

I didn’t read the invite carefully.  I knew the invitation was what I thought.

The deeper the listener of the convenors, the more magnetic the appeal of the invitational note.  It is a magnetic invitation, soul to soul.  I saw invite and it wasn’t about that.  It was a call and I got the call.  Around what didn’t really matter, in the end it is all about the same thing.  It is about how we respond to life.

It so fits the experience I have been noticing here.  For me, the experience itself has been noticing the flow of the energy, has been personally richer than the content.  I haven’t shown up in any content sessions.  It was not where I was meant to be.  I have been aware of this quickening in very rapid form of increasintg consciousness in the way people are showing up here.  I was calling it turns the other day, in terms of conflict that might have taken weeks resolving itself in hours.  Or things that go awry quickly finding path back.  The energetics is, somehow, isn’t in the content and that is consistent with the call.  The call was far more than the content.  It was in the quality of the asking.

The group capacity emerged to take care of something right within the group.

The form of the container was being disrespected.  Since that charge moment, I’ve generalized it to say I think there is real value is being conscientious in the magic of creating a form and a container and respecting it. *****

Yes, and the learning being, evolving that container further. . .

The resilience of the container. . . .

It might have even happened more quickly if we had just gone to silence and not felt a necessity to present our own points of view about how this should happen.  If you go to silence, often, whoever speaks has whatever the collective wisdom is.  It is right there.  It is in the field but we are not listening while we are expressing our own viewpoints.

We are learning that now what could or should have been done, at that time we collectively had opportunity to use the container, to use silence and make use of it.

What is rich in regards of the container, it was whittling down what is essential in the container. . . .

We haven’t yet been consciously transparent that we are all holding space here. . . in the whole circles.  There is something tremendously powerful that invites people to step up and take responsibility in the whole.

It is both leading/holding and participating.  I have been challenged to be present in everything I am doing it.  

Re:  my role (Peggy speaking):  the idea of building a movement was certainly in the thread of conversation, it wasn’t until I was here, using the evening reflections that I realized that it is a practice of nourishing a community.  It’s criticality to the event might be secondary but nurturing the community it is vital.  It has made me aware of how much those meetings have been the meta meeting.  They are the learning aobut our learning.  I think it has been part of this exceleration, the intentionality that has come through has been of the quality of attention that has gone in to those conversations.  My own personal role has been to become clear of holding space for that quality of community building to take shape.  

The other piece is I have physically experienced being that container, knowing that as fast I could I wanted to grow that so more of us were holding the field. We are all holding this field.  It has shaped the quality of the energy and my physical response has been that last night I got a good night sleep.  It was a huge energetic learning, no matter how much I was allowing to whatever wanted to show up. . .the larger capacity was her ein the room.

And today, I (Peggy) called a session) so I have been able to move more into service.

I hear that the edge is the consciousness of the system being able to hold space for itself to emerge.

I fully get that at a meta level, things are as they should be.  I am also curious at a purely cognitive level. . . it seems like the the great cosmic story is kinda the story that was put out as the thread on which we could hang things. . . it could have bene other things but that is what showed up.  I think there is a certain amount and energy that can be set at ease by having that thread be really clear.

We could have had Michael present Thursday night and it would have been a different conference.

With the journalism work, Fetzer’s mission is love and forgiveness.  Fetzer made awesome link between love and forgiveness as first small event.  Then with thirty more people. . a different person was doing it and then the link between love and forgiveness was never made at the second event but at the end of the conference there was an embodied sense of the connection and if they had been told about it, they would not have gotten it

We’ve spun the thread out of our own being, which I think is the calling.  Michael was telling us what the threads were but we are called to spin them our of ourselves.    The ability to allow for constant upgrading and being invited to let it emerge out of ourselves. . . we are living our own story so we are the living story and we are inviting others to live in our own story. . .

Thinking of Practice of Peace:  time was set aside to share his message, it was his energetic spark that brought the event together. . . it provided the thread for those that needed the thread, grounding for those who needed it . . . but what happened after went everywhere. . . .I am curious is what would have been the different tension if we had taken care of some of this.  If some of the surface had been removed, maybe some of the juicier tensions might have had space to emerge.  Burn things off, off gas, get to the essence. . . we are getting to beautiful essence but I am curious from a design perspective:  are there other ways?

There were three and a half of us holding the container and I was really clear that it was not going to be enough.    One of the things I new would come out of this would be a larger opening so there can and will be people holding. . .

This morning:  if one is opening space and it is clear at the beginning what the foundation of opening space is, which is take responsibility for what you love, and recogtnizing that every one in the circle is going to be bringing something of great value to whatever form we use. . . then that perspective and that starts with the convening. . . it informs the forms so that the world café opening is all part of the opening of space. . . whatever the form in the marketplace is part of opening space. . . .it is not:  now we are going to do open space.  We are still captivated, at some level, at some distinctions about form, which get in the way of understanding where that is coming from.  Maybe the field as not quite grounded in the welcoming of all the different forms that can open space.  It might make it difficult, it would then create slight tension in the evolutionary process to stepping into another part of the open form.

It has felt to me like the overall container, I was less clear about the overall container than about the specific pieces.

I am questioning whether the form of the café is valuable where it was used. . . maybe that is not the form for the process at that point. . . was the world café on Sunday morning the right container.

That is a great design question that should be asked but anne is talking about something a bit different. . . if the energy for the space is set from the getgo, whatever forms that show up and whatever happens, the forms are in service. . .

If you see it all as one and it isn’t” Here’s the piece that is world café, here is the marketplace, there is a different energetic alive in the field. . . howsabout world café at suppertime?  Then it is a part of the whole, part of the palette that we are all working with

The forms are there to serve. . . we have sorta become aware of different stages:  sounding of call, gathering, relationship, building community, collective inquiry, then harvesting, then carrying it out. . . if those are the phases, whatever form is needed to preserve us through. . . if you plan it ahead of time, how malleable is that?  I am looking for forms that can resond in the moment to the sense of the wisdom in the group.

Not sure if this is happening or if it is my own dissonance:  there is not clarity about what this event is.  I don’t think there is a unity of resonance among the people who have called the gathering themselves. . .

The invitation has attracted more people than are here. . . a LOT more people. . . that says more than we are unclear. . .

Design Conversation: Creating the conditions for evolutionary/evolving systems design

Evolutionary Spirituality Wiki

Links: http://cnvc.org/ (international organization) http://nvcwiki.org/ (nascent wiki)

Notes taken by Rich Henry - pretty much "stream of group consciousness." Outline format, meaning indented line is a subpoint to outdented line above it:

Purpose of Nonviolent Communication (NVC): create quality of connection within us and between us so that everyone wants everyone's needs to be met.

Empathy and (honest) Expression
    "Be with" first, and then "This is stirring in me..."

Participants: John Abbe (convenor), Brandon Sanders, Rich Henry, Barbara Cushing, Ashley Cooper
    Other names for NVC: "Open-Hearted Communication" (in Tamil we use manam = Heart AND Mind), "Compassionate Communication", "A language of compassion"
    Language and practices, AND, it's NOT about the words or the techniques! (Techniques in the service of something deeper.)
        Goal: neither attached to or averse to the language/techniques.
    A need we all have is to help others get their needs met.
    Tap into what is fully alive in each of us.
    "We all need this!"
    Hafiz: "Why just settle for the donkey in you speaking to the donkey in me, when we both have so many other beautiful animals within us." - NVC is a way to go deeper than donkey talk
    Distinction between strategies and needs exercise
        1. What do you want to ask someone that you think they will say no to.
        2. Why do you want it? (worked in pairs)
            Just the support you got from the other, even if they said nothing, is empathy.
                Sympathy = how I feel about your situation. Empathy = being with them.
         3. Why do you want 2.? What needs would be met if they said yes? Forget about the first question, and just look for another layer, "what would that get for you?" And look for answers that you feel good about.
        (worked alone, this is self empathy)
            This exercise creates benefits, even if you decide not to go to the person and ask.
        "Ask for what you want," vs. "Ask AND share the deepest reasons."
        What would would be different?
            First way: May get a grudging yes, but at a cost.  "A grudging yes is death."
            Second way. Greater risk of no, but authentic connection. Not the answer but the connection that matters most.
            There's always a "yes" behind a "no." Their "no" is a "yes" to something else. If you then inquire into their deepest reasons for the no, you can come up together with something else that might meet both's needs.
        When I open deeply, it is an invitation for them to go deeply too.
        Need/Strategy connection. The Needs are what matter. How, the Strategy, isn't really very important.
        "Cheating toward unattachment"
            "Hold onto the need tightly, and the strategy lightly."
            "AND, you can always go deeper! As you go deeper, you also begin to hold the needs lightly."
                By holding onto your needs you open up the capacity to listen. Being able to hold them close is the result of listening deeply.
            Reading about it and doing it are very different things.
        John's design of these exercises. Intended to elicit the NVC learnings (a natural experience), rather than "lecture" on the learnings.
        "Hearing the positive impact we've had on another fuels our fire, and shows us the impact we can actually have." - John
        "Questions speak to the heart. Answers [facts, information] speak to the mind." -- Harrison Owen
        "I want to help us, the body of all life."
        4 part model, pieces:
        Observation
            distinguished from evaluation or interpretation
        Emotions (some label it Feelings)
            What's in my heart (e.g. NOT "I feel you're not understanding.")
                Anytime "that" or "like" follows "I feel," it's probably not an emotion.
                Expressing the feeling is like a thermometer. No reason to be defensive about "I'm angry," any more than being defensive because the thermometer registers 90 degrees.
                Don't go too quickly to the strategy to meet the need. Just be there. "Oh, it's hot." or "Oh, I need more respect." An affirmation in the moment! A way to be present.
         Needs
         Requests
            Big distinction between requests and demands. With a request, I welcome your 'no' as much as your 'yes.' (Paradoxically, unattachment to the outcome may be more likely to generate the outcome I'd like.)

Arc
   out in the world - clear Observation (without evaluation)
   inner Emotion/Feelings, Needs - sit with it
   out again - specific, doable Request

Want to have compassion for even those who are violent. What is the need behind it?

Future Evolutionary Salons (Wednesday morning)

• How to design social systems that can get us into a sustainable future?
• Finding ways to leverage our individual work and synergize our efforts to greater effect.
• Living it full out – bringing consciousness to your daily acts.  Not separating evolutionary change processes from the work you do.
• If you’re not ready to die to the old and live a new spiritual understanding, then the evolutionary change processes one begins eventually dies, as well.
• To stay at a higher vibration, one must engage and stay at a higher, more expanded nature.
• Center for Group Learning would hold monthly meetings that eventually became a support group for a smaller group.  It sparked a lot of our paths.  
• What I’m missing is a community of people with whom I can have an ongoing in-the-flesh relationship to continue this work.
• Interest in designing conversations that affect systems.  
• All of us who are here are people who bring our gifts toward creating a life-affirming, opportunity increasing, creatively oriented futures.
• Designing conversations: conversations that matter about futures that matter.
• The fact that there is so much awareness of the need for these type of conversations suggests that there is a confluence leading in this direction.
• Evolutionary Leadership involves the competency of language.  Often we take language for granted.  “Designing a conversation” involves taking a reflective step that asks – in what way can we consciously design the kinds of conversations that would then support the evolution of systems?
• We human beings often don’t take the time to reflect on how we shape reality through the conversations we have.  What are those key conversations that really can further action?  There are seven to ten conversations that have a greater influence along these lines.
• a conversation for relationship – this is the sort that is not “task oriented” and is less pressed for time.  What is your declaration; what do you stand for?  
• a conversation for possibilities – how can we create (in the here and now) the space and dynamics for something to emerge and sustain itself?  The mood we bring to the conversation is essential here.  We have to be knowledgeable about how we human beings relate with language.
• How can the process of these seven days be cultivated to some emergent action that we might be able to spin into existence as something that will have some sustainability in its own right?  
• We need to explicitly engage in conversations for action; where there is an explicit promise and commitment for action.
• Sharing the core purposes of the engagements (professional and otherwise) that we are currently engaged in so that we can see if there are any patterns for us to build upon.
• How about the conversation with myself, as well as with others?  
• Also the aspect of bringing nature into the conversation – as well as future generations (and not only of human beings).
• Context is very important for setting the stage for effective conversation and remembering that mother nature is the teacher on all levels.   
• Nature attracts, it does not sell.  These conferences are designed as magnetic fields for those who have similarities to find each other.  A kind of vocational dating.  
• How can we do this better?
• Designing capacity building resources, and making them attractive enough for people to want to test them and prove them empirically.  Incubating those social innovations that prove to be effective vehicles for such social change.
• Sense of urgency to create these sort of conversations in cities with every-day civil society.  That’s where the promise of a new future will come from.  How can we be promoters/enables of conversation in civil society that allows people to raise their level of consciousness and realize their potential to be a conscious part of evolutionary change dynamics.
• These type of events here are really “meta conversations” in that they are not about making change happen on the ground, but they’re about what we can do to make that happen.

If we don't know what we're doing, what is effective action?

SESSION:  EVOLUTIONARY SPIRITUALITY WIKI
Monday Jan 16, 2006

ATTENDING

John Cleland-Host (session host)
Lion
Tom Atlee (notes) + added notes from John below!
Connie Barlow

DEFINITION

 A wiki is a webpage that anyone (or any member of a specific group) can change, and that enables very simple internal links.  Wikis were developed to allow people to collaborate on the web, especially in creating computer programs or documents.  The most famous wiki is Wikipedia, a complete high quality encyclopedia (actually a family of encyclopedias in different languages) created, maintained, and expanded by tens of thousands of volunteers.  Our wiki will be about evolutionary spirituality.

 
PURPOSES  

1.  To be a resource for us and for other people to learn about evolutionary spirituality.
2.  To provide a forum within which the evolutionary spirituality movement can co-create what it believes and does, co-evolving as it does so.

CONTEXT

This is part of a larger evolutionary spirituality movement / awakening, that will include many local community groups and living-room groups in which people are supporting each other in learning about and living into the evolutionary perspective.  We envision the wiki primarily as a co-evolutionary tool for those people, generating an Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Spirituality and guide for living an evolutionary spiritual life.  We will link it to Drupal-based CivicSpace software for ongoing movement activities.

TITLE

"Evolutionary Spirituality Wiki"

Possible descriptor:  An interactive Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Spirituality to support an evolutionary metareligious infusion into diverse religious, spiritual and secular worlds.

TABLE OF CONTENTS (top category pages for the wiki home page)

EvolutionarySpiritualTheory - theological and philosophical
EvolutionaryScience
EvolutionarySpiritualPractices - ritual, rites of passage, paraphernalia
EvolutionaryAction -  Social creativity and the creation of conscious social systems
EvolutionaryGroups -  Organizational and group approaches

INTRODUCTORY PARAGRAPH

In the tradition of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Julian Huxley, Wendell Berry and Brian Swimme, the story of evolution can be taken as a meaningful sacred story of the place of human beings in the universe's fellowship of life.  Thousands of us have awakened to this form of spirituality and seek to continue learn more about it.  We are exploring how to live into it to support our lives, our growth, and the development of our work, our communities, and our shared world.  We are co-creating this Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Spirituality as a co-evolutionary resource and work-and-play space within which we can grow into a truly evolutionary culture.

TASKS:

Lion will handle the tech dimensions of this by getting Evolutionaryspirituality.wikicities.com set up.  Wikicities a site where anyone can go and create a wiki on their subject.  Geeks feel this is "us" space, so they are more likely to participate. Wikicities takes care of spam related things with link bans.  Everything posted on wikicities is under GFDL documentation license, same as the Wikipedia license, which allows you to use it but without restricting its use for others.

Jon, Tom and Michael will develop initial material.  Tom plans to spend a LOT of time writing content for the site.

Connie and Tom and Jon will explore with George Por the relationship between our evolutionaryspiritualitywiki and his evolutionarynexus.org (which has a wiki function)  We expect he doesn't want to be evangelical, which our wiki sort of is.  We believe it is important, from an evolutionary and sustainability perspective, to have multiple sources for this sort of thing on the web, which have distinct missions and are well linked to each other.

For a wiki to succeed, we need people to participate in doing it.  But it is up to us to seed it and set the tone.  We need to spread the word that this wiki exists, encouraging all our contacts to post references to it to their own blogs and their religious groups' blogs and mailing lists.  We need to push this out to people, own it, not be shy about telling people.  Link to blogs for each religious tradition's evolutionary work.  On the wiki home page, say "Please contribute: Especially here!"  As you write blog articles, link them into the wiki.  Link "christianity" to the wiki (e.g.).  Most people would be coming to it through a google search or some link.  Especially get it out to UU church networks (and maybe Quaker and Unity churches?).  UUs are especially responsive; this may be the coherent theology they're missing.  If we get things set up and ready before April, we could launch it with the planned coverage of Michael and Connie in the UU WORLD membership magazine.  (Note:  The guy who invented the web Tim Berners-Lee was a UU.  UUs and Quakers seem to have a high influence per capita.)  

On Michael and Connie's existing websites there is much material for bringing evolutionary spirituality to Christianity.  But we want a place where that can happen for all religious traditions.  With this wiki evolutionary people in various religions don't have to have their own websites -- although they CAN, and use material from the wiki to fill out their websites.

We might connect with other somewhat related wikis.  Beyond evolutionarynexus.org, Lion thought Neurowiki and protosciencewiki (which deals with consciousness) might be appropriate.

Having a wiki will allow us to take contents from our letters and emails about evolutionary spirituality and post them on the wiki, and to take contents from the wiki and post them into letters and articles about evolutionary spirituality.

Connie will Google Evolutionary Spirituality.

Added notes from Jon Cleland Host
 
        All agreed to set up a wiki so as to act as a reference  for Evolutionary Spirituality.  Two main sections of the wiki would be  Philosophy and Practice.  

Philosophy covers essays and subjects that  explain the view, and how it rationally works.  These would include  things like the role of death, thoughts about the future, the process of  evolution, and how to see various spiritual paths (such as Hindu, Muslim,  Pagan, Christian, Buddhist) in the light of Evolutionary Spirituality.   

Practice would include things like rituals, celebrations, and activities -  each of which could be specific to a certain path, or generic for all.   Lion explained many of the details of the care and feeding of a young  wiki.  His guidance will ensure that we don’t suffer guilt over a dead  wiki.  Tom provides energy and ability to help build the wiki.   Connie and Jon both will provide content and guidance.  The wiki will be  ready for use within two weeks.

Inquiring from the middle

Participants: Tom Atlee, Terri Anderson, Carl Anderson, Michael Lindfield, Tesa Silvestre, Stephen Silha, Juanita Brown, Tree Bressen, Marc Tognotti, Charles Terry, Michael Cook Dana Andersen, Fritz Hull, Jim Schenk, Halim Dunsky, [please add your name if I missed you, sorry…]

This is my record of various ideas that were expressed, not a representation of any consensus view. -- Halim

The evo focus

Keeping evolutionary focus at the center

• What makes this an evo process and how does evo perspective inform all our inquiries
• Cultivation of evo story and living into it – making it our story
• Evo and spiritual and mystery dimension of technology
• Conscious process – different ways to tell story and ask questions so as to speak to different constituencies – R&D needed!
• Articulating guiding principles such that we can serve the evolution of other gatherings, collectives, venues: by contextualizing what we do within the evo story and evo intelligence
• Coherent but not controlling languaging – what are the core memes?
• Not here to tell the story, but to allow it to emerge through us and others

Considerations

Life-changing process of Salon 2 credited to the space that was opened and allowed

• Inter-generational and more other diversity
• Holding space of intelligent love, ready to hear what arises and move accordingly
• Facing the call of other lifeforms and learning what they are asking of us
• Transmit the field effects, not just the content

Emerging forms

Evolving a process that includes more and more of the emerging evolutionary intelligence – lessons of process and of content – these events will evolve

• Diversity and synergy of this movement – diverse salons that might emerge and synergize to serve the world community
• Diversity of forms including simple conversations that could be taken and happen anywhere – intention/meaning/purpose – refining a setup for this: content/open space/momentum
• Forms of convening – some based in geographic community and some not
• Torchbearers going out – where can we light this in the world? The Capitol Mall? In public rather than in retreat?
• Huge possibility – many forms – tension with need to be practical in short time
• Next wave to emerge
• Dynamics of how we move forward
• Using the online space
• Seeing Salon 3 in May in context as part of larger emergence
• A tree of possible or planned Salon emergents from the trunk of Salons 1 and 2:
• Salon in May '06 at Whidbey Institute
• Philanthropy salon in Colorado (June '06)
• November '06 possible salon to be or be hosted at the International Systems Institute (ISI) Conversation Conference at Asilomar (south of San Francisco, near Monterrey).
• Starting something in Ohio River Basin bioregion (Jim)
• 80 retreat centers in North America with evo leanings – potential 3 year process of connecting? Salon for supporting such centers? (Fritz)
• In-person conversation forms not requiring large gatherings
• Cyberspace gatherings
• Signups for Salon 3 work: Dana Andersen, Charles Terry, Michael Cook (I know others are interested, but these people put their names on a list and gave it to me. Add yours!)

Kaliya's session on how new internet tools/structures can enable community building

Session Question:

"if we don't know what we're doing, what is effective action, and how do we get started?"

 This was a very juicy session which covered a variety of issues (for example, the need for and difficulties of non-adversarial activism) that were tangential or beyond the issue it was convened to explore (the relationship between knowing/not-knowing and action).  These notes attempt to pull together the strands of conversation that addressed the central question.

There is a great hunger in the world to act to make things better.  But too often we use our certainties AND our uncertainties in ways that get in the way of action.

For example, when we think we have The Answer, we can turn people off, invalidate other people's work, and undermine our ability to work with others.  On the other hand, we can be so unsure or dubious that we don't take any action at all, or end up just critiquing those who ARE taking action.

So what IS the right relationship between what we know, what we don't know, and our ability to act and act effectively?  Is there a sweet spot between knowing and unknowing that can serve action?

Answering these questions -- how to become skilled at operating in the dark, how to inspire even when we don't know, how to know what we know gracefully and humbly -- may be among the most fundamental things we need to get better at.  What is the new activism that enables us to act wisely beyond knowing and not knowing, and beyond us and them?

There are various ways of taking action in spite of our not-knowing.  Sometimes it just takes courage and flexibility.  But this question goes beyond coping with our ignorance into "How can we use the fact that we don't know things as an ASSET for action?"  For example, we can convene conversations around burning questions, be less arrogant, ask for help, find out what people are interested in, get training, take a learning stance regarding what we do (i.e., watch what happens and then learn from it), be more open to what each other has to say, and engage people in attempting to clarify what THEY want (setting aside what WE want) so they co-create it, buy into it and sustain it among themselves.

We imagined making a list of all the actions we could take if we don't know what actions are the right ones.  We suspected that those kinds of actions would require support structures and services in order to be most productive.

Since we are an evolutionary movement, we considered the role of evolution.  We noted that evolution is an emergent process, a vast sort of learning, that happens as a result of interactions involving a lot of diverse entities and a lot of experiments, a lot of little quick learning cycles happening in a parallel way all over the place and various ways of sharing info about what's working (consciously, as with communication, or unconsciously, as with genes).  We could model some of our own collective learning processes on that.

We also looked at the fact that in today's world things are just too complex and there will always be things we don't know, many of which we couldn't know even if we tried.  We need to release the idea that we need to know in order to act.  

We noted that many forms of spirituality allow us to connect with a place inside where we have access to a deep intuitive kind of knowledge, where we don't know "things" but we know, right at that moment, what is needed even though we often can't project it or explain it or plan it, but we can act from the place where that knowing arises.  Individuals can do that individually, but we need to develop ways to do it collectively.  How do we draw on the inner knowledge of a collective, a sense of direction that comes from looking inside rather than outside?

In one view, people who can live in the Mystery, who are connected to Source on the individual level and act from there, are more able to connect together for action out of the Mystery.  Another (potentially complementary view) suggests that certain group processes and practices can help people live into their unknownness in creative ways even if they aren't normally at high states of individual consciousness.

The idea surfaced that leaders and organizers can not-know the visions and strategies of the people they are helping, but can help those people themselves discover THEIR right visions and strategies.  Furthermore, there are ways for groups of people to "co-sense into the middle" from an empty place of not-knowing, and have insights about what is needed or ready to happen arise in their midst.

And at that point a voice cried out, amazed and wondering if ordinary people could understand what we were talking about.  Were we addressing real issues of real people?  Were we grounded?  There is incredible suffering in the world right now.  What does this conversation have to do with THAT??!!  We know enough to take action to relieve that suffering and we must do that.  We need to work together, to pull people together.  There is need and urgency to take action no matter what!  (And yet, questions remain about timing, and about HOW to work with others, about so many things -- but still this cry rings in our ears, minds, hearts....)

Pulling together, organizing and expanding the threads of our conversation produced the list of strategies found on http://www.evolutionarynexus.org/node/104

Mind Science - Contemplative Inner Science

This session monday morning was hosted by Joel Levey and Finn Voldtofte. Michelle Levey and Michael Lindfield were co-signers of the announcement, but due to change of room we never came to co-host the session – a least not in same-time-same-space.

The purpose was to experiment with and learn from experiences so far on sensing into the middle and engage what emerges in an intentional inquiry.

10-12 people participated (sorry, I wasn’t attentive to the names)

The practise was to sit in silence for a few minutes, centering attention and settling the activity of the mind – and then to hold the intention of directing ones attention from a silent place within towards the middle.

After a period of ”attending to the middle”  start sharing whatever one senses in the middle, but without making interpretations of what was sensed. ”Sense” means see, hear, feel, smell, taste, but also intuit and give it words.

The shared (and from other circles repeated) experience seems to be that something of being comes into existence, or manifests, or emerges, or reveals it self – something that is not a concrete physical form, but is there as opposed to in me and as opposed to the feeling of the group energetics. Even though nothing seems to be there to be seen, it does make sense to talk about that something is seen, felt etc. There can be shared meaning in refering to a size of the middle, a size that changes and can outgrow the size of the circle  - the middle becomes larger than the circle. Individual physical reactions can appear, changes in metabolic processes and other.

When it is established as a shared experience that ”a middle” is present, we can intentionally engage it in an inquiry. At this session a theme was suggested in the invitation: Collective Intelligence and Evolution. But one can also start the inquiry by listening into and give voice to what seems to be the question that can be listened into now.

In the inquiry the shared intention is to keep on giving attention to the middle, listen to the middle, and give voice to ”what the middle wants to say”. So one has to think of oneself as potentially at any time being the one through which the abstract middle can aquire voice. In very practical terms it can simply mean: Speak as you are moved to. A skill to be developed is distinguishing between when an impulse to speak really is from the middle or when it is a personal impulse. The skill is about making one self avaible and letting go of personal fears and desires. The skill is also about showing up in all of your capacity. Any holding back from the individual side holds back the entire field. Holding back is relative to your highest capacity – so you can not tell from the amounts of words said or the brilliance of them wether it comes from fully being on ones own edge or it is really more cleverly hidden holding back.

My interpretation of what we experience is this: Our focused attention towards the middle is a stream of consciousness that calls forth consciousness ”in the middle” – that is consciousness not carried by any of our individual beings. The calling forth is by way of resonance, entrainment or attraction. As we experience consciousness in between us, each of us is called more to the foreground in being present – consciousness expresses it self more intensely in each of us. This in turn calls forth more consciousness in the middle – and we are witnessing the proces of consciousness manifesting by bending back on it self.

One aspect of consciousness is intelligence, so the presence of more consciousness means presence of more intelligence. As it is in the middle we can think of it as collective intelligence. We experience the presense of collective intelligence by enhanced ability to think and reason together.


From the (still few, but repeated) experiments I think I can now draw some conclusions:

•    The word ”middle” has importance. ”Center” is more likely to be understood as a specific point in the center of something with a circumference. ”Middle” is a field. The middle is that which is ”not me, no you, not we, but in between”.
•    It is of importance, and many times initiating and eye-opening, to make the distinction between individual, group and middle, and claiming that whole-group-dynamics and middle is not the same.
•    Being in a group that engages the magic in the middle is an experience of at the same time full personal autonomy and full communion with the group (no sense of separation). That can be a confusing experience from the minds perspective.
•    It is likely that a period of confusion and ”not getting it at all” appears, and it is quite likely that many will sit with that sense at the same time. I think it can be explained as a period of expansion – expansion of consciousness, intelligence, presence – but the expansion is in the middle and leaves the individual in a kind of vacuum for a period. Only in later stages gets the expanded state again filled with meaning, now integrating more complexity.
•    ”The law of instant response” – if the middle is engaged, and you ask a question, you will get a reply instantly. This can be used as an indicator  of connectedness to the middle and authenticity of the question.
•    As the group session comes to an end the middle does not have to. If the group shares the intention of attending to the middle, it can live on, even if the group spreads out and engages other activities. It seems to be of importance here to not think of the session as an experience (and being caught up in thoughts about having had an experience) but as a being together that continues.

Finn 

Opening Ceremony, as Remembered by Lion Kimbro

January 16: What are we not talking about? Where are we stuck?

Convened by Ashley Cooper and Stephen Feig
Attended by Stephen Silha and Michael Cook

We first looked at the surface of broad topics that each of us notices not being talked about and areas within our selves that we are stuck. Politics, attraction, gender concerns, frustration, and much more. The entire session seemed to be a flow back and forth from deepening listening to our own personal experiences and opening space for us to be the antennas of the group, hearing that which it is that we as a whole are not talking about.

“By pulling the invisible visible, we elucidate the powers of creation.” 

A predominant theme we noticed was the amount of stuck energy generated from people confronting challenges operating in areas outside of their expertise. Many of us came to this salon with a wealth of knowledge and expertise. To push our growing edge is to act outside of that expertise. 

Another area of stuckness is DOUBT about what one is hearing. Doubting capacity to discern if a burning issue is a personal issue or a collective issue. A reoccurring question: “How do I own and recognize the personal?” “How do I own and recognize the collective?” At the core it is about being connected to Source. We noticed a theme of feeling ‘Not Enough’ that feeds doubt, lack of communication, and fear of talking about and admitting the stuckness.

The things we are not talking about are the areas in which we are stuck.

An observation was made that some felt invited to show up with all the gifts and wisdom that they had to offer, but did not feel invited in with their stuckness. They were intimidated by all that they ‘should be.’

We explored the masks we are wearing. The mask of expertise. The mask of satisfaction. The mask of understanding.

Sinking deeper into vulnerability and willingness, we asked the question, “What is present?” We explored the presence of suffering. The suffering of not naming suffering as suffering.

Being in authenticity. We noticed that when one is not being authentic there can be a tendency to fall into a role of Victim. Others are doing something to prohibit our ability to be authentic, to stand up for what we most love. The flip side to that was the role of Messenger, bringing an authentic voice to the surface, recognizing that it may or may not be received.

Isn’t it time to become authentic? Do we want to evolve? What is authentic?

The frustration of meditating amongst the noise.

Expectations: We noticed expectations of what might show up. We saw value in laying the expectations out so that when they don’t show up there is no personal attachment.

When patterns continue to arise, often it points to something not being said.

Evolution is hard. Persistence is important.

Trying to be still and act from stillness as a reflection of a greater force.

How do we be with discomfort?

When we are not speaking, maybe it’s because we need to dance or have other aspects of expression.

We ended the session dancing together in our own space, and then dancing together with our bodies making some sort of physical contact, and then a group hug. . . Moving from the words into the body.

The Future of Evolutionary Salons (Tuesday afternoon)

“One cannot unite a community w/o a newspaper or journal of some kind – Gandhi
How do we find that unity now?

Kaliya’s open space session was around how we strengthen communication & communities with the use of online tools. It was a great session – and I think it is really important for us as a community to support her and this work. Kaliya is coming from the perspective of how do we make the tools meet human needs (from the perspective of the people, rather than the perspective of pushing the tools).

What is needed for Real Social Change:

1. Strong social ties
2. Rich communication network [Universal phone book? meet space? Etc]
3. Common story {we’ve got folks working on this…universe story, etc}
4. Shared resources
5. Clarity of purpose

Where Kaliya sees the gap right now is in the communication network, & this is what she’s been working on.

There was also some discussion about how to embed more learning and feedback into the tools themselves – to help the tools evolve faster – and also how to facilitate the development of collective knowledge in the work that the tools are used for. I hope to see this discussion continue further.

Q: Rich Communication Network…What’s missing?

A: Identity

Tools are emerging around empowering individuals to show up in multiple communities, and in spaces that are contextualized in face to face meeting… Aspects of this empowerment are:

• <!--[if !supportLists]-->Personification: having an identity that allows you to move more fluidly through the internet & different networks of which you are a part.

• <!--[if !supportLists]--><!--[endif]-->Open standards & open source: Open source & Open standard are DIFFERENT. Open source means anyone can take the basic code of a program and add functions to it. Open standards means that the information (like your name or address or a date) is coded in a way that different software that uses the agreed on standard can identify & make use of that text. (so for instance, a computer could pull all the dates from various events posted on websites using the open standard and make a calendar without a person having to do that ). Something could be proprietary source but open standard so can communicate to others or vice versa (open source so people can add functionality, but not open standard so a computer couldn't automatically pick up the data content
  

• Standards dealing with this are RSS (which will basically suck content info into a group field w/o requiring human action – so you could build newsletters based on RSS content – a community could build a community filter & create their own local YES magazine online!). There are also calendar standards (HCAL & ICAL) which allow one to pull together events from different groups/websites into a common calendar.
  
• There are a bunch of examples of sites trying to work with this concept: Gaiafield Project  & EnvironmentalNonProfitNetwork ---David niccol @ RSS is working on how do we link all meditation orgs together.. & how do you support a trusted hub…(??)
• DRUPAL is an open source content management system which allows for making (online) community building easier. There are a lot of other platforms like Drupal but Drupal was built around community building.
  
• Tagging provides contextual/topical information by users. http://del.icio.us/tag/  - Tagging gives content,  ranking gives quality… If were tied with identity you could filter based on someones tags. If it isn’t tied to identity it would be more spammable - “easy to spoof the system if there is no cost to entry”

• <!--[if !supportLists]-->Trust: The problem of online identity is both technical & social (how to do it & how to insure proper behavior of those using it…). There needs to be a way to ensure “trust”, possibly through a  “reputation network” that insures integrity… Part of trust can be built through use of a link contract [people using these standards & tools agree to certain guidelines about privacy, not selling info, and other standards] If we agree to this the computers will talk to eachother (otherwise they won’t).

• Tool Values: There was some discussion on programs that can use geo location tools to map where people are from the IP address on their email headers. These tools will be developed, but the communities of which Kaliya are a part are conscious of choosing & developing tools that map to basic principles & values (of privacy, etc).  Riseup.net 

Other aspects of an effective communication system

• A reputation system: Where an individual has an identity fingerprint that is robust (so that people can’t create multiple identities & spam). Individuals can ‘tag’ content as to its relevance & possibly its quality, and you can use these tags to find content – perhaps choosing based on individuals that you trust.
• Peer-to-peer capabilities of wider network: The question is how do you find people in your locality who share interests/ etc. Building this capability into the tools could greatly enhance local in-person networks, as well as enhance the ability of widely dispersed people to network and learn from eachother.  
• One question is how to transition listserves into this kind of community (so people on the listserves who chose to could then find each other)

<!--[if !supportLists]-->

Issues:

• Overload & Selectivity: The Internet is chaotic disruptive environment with a high noise level. It is easy to get information overload, but filtering can provide a narrow perspective. How to deal?

• Big Aomeba (or, internet ego): everyone wants to build the site that everyone joins…that (ego) model doesn’t work. Important to develop community boundaries & integrity w/  interconnects between communities.
  

• Usability, Adoption, & Feedback: 

• Usability: There is often a disconnect between what tool developers put out & people’s actual needs. Needs to be more attention to how to improve the Human/non interface [calendar/events/info].
• Some people are working on this -- Aspiration Tech has something it calls“penguin days” which bring together normal people w/ goals & software people to figure out how real needs can get met. Bill Aal’s work w/ Tools for change deals with this. They are applying for a grant to establish “use cases” to explore what gets used/ what works/what doesn’t & what tools do we need?

<!--[if !supportLists]-->o       <!--[endif]-->Adoption: It can be a struggle to get people to understand the tool – even a really good set up but still not used. It is a growing edge to discover how adoption is best facilitated (things like making the tool more integral to a gathering from the start).

<!--[if !supportLists]-->o       <!--[endif]-->Feedback, learning, & evaluation: what works for people in terms of useability, adoption patterns, organizational/social systems that facilitate good use of tools available. We need more focus on & better ways for:

<!--[if !supportLists]-->o       <!--[endif]-->Facilitating people/communities making use of the tools

<!--[if !supportLists]-->o       <!--[endif]-->Tools evolving to meet the needs of people (feedback between user’s & developers)

<!--[if !supportLists]-->o       <!--[endif]-->Tools evolving to enable feedback & learning w/in the systems that they are used for.

<!--[if !supportLists]--> <!--[endif]-->

To Build a Culture

Insights to Support Catalyzing Collective Intelligence and Social Creativity
Dinner conversation, hosted by Joel & Michelle Levey
(About 15 people participated)
Contact:  levey@wisdomatwork.com

This exploration/dialogue explored a variety of topics including:

• Biofeedback technology as a mindbody-technology interphase that is the most empowering use of technology on the planet for helping people learn the exquisitely fine balance of intention and attention to create change in manifest reality (ie the mindbody as a beginning) through what is referred to as "passive volition," doing without trying, effortless effort.
• The "Dual Nervous System" ~ the interplay of neurons (functioning digitally on or off) and glial cells (functioning in an analogue mode - always "on") -- see the work of Robert O. Becker (books - Body Electric,  Cross Currents, and other writings.)
• The realization that every methods of meditation generates a different pattern of neurological, energetic, biochemical, etc. effects in the mindbody and world.  Different methods of training create radically different states and capabilities.
• And many other interesting topics...
  

WEBSITES OF INTEREST

We invite you to explore the following websites in order to deepen your insight regarding the profoundly practical applications and integration of contemplative practices and associated advances in mindsciences  into the many domains of our modern lives.

• Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
  

* Institute of Noetic Sciences. Excellent source of research and integration of contemplative principles and practices in science, medicine, business and other domains of contemporary life:  www.noetic.org

* International Society for the Study of Subtle Energy and Energy Medicine (ISSSEEM). Excellent source of research on healing arts and energy medicine:   www.issseem.org   

• Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Scientific Study of Consciousness-Related Physical Phenomena. Engineering and Consciousness.
• Science & Spirit research archives.
  

•  The Mind and Life Institute.  Good source of research and insights:
• University of Arizona Center for Consciousness Studies: Excellent source of latest current scientific research on consciousness.
  

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers or elders.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason,
and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all,
then accept it and live to it."
--The Buddha, in the Kalama Sutra

Transforming Money: Catalyzing Wealth

We acknowledged that many things are trying to happen here and be born here all at the same time. Evolutionary salons are needed in many forms everywhere.  For example we probably need a form of ongoing evolutionary salon where anyone can show up.  AND we may also need a form that relies on an ongoing community showing up all the time.  AND we need a form that allows thought leaders to delve deeply into specific subjects.  AND…  So much is needed in the field that the moment we present people with an opportunity for SOMETHING, EVERYTHING tries to come through at once.

• We want more of the outside world here -- both human diversity and non-human beings (as in Joanna Macy's Council of All Beings work in which people represent other species).
• We need strong, self-aware leadership cadre that builds new waves of leadership.
• We need to have strategic conversations in which "the right people" (thought leaders, experts, stakeholders, those who see themselves explicitly as evolutionary change agents, artists devoting their lives to the creation of sacred art, etc.) are invited instead of whoever is attracted.  And we need to organize it so that they have a chance to show up in their fullness and really see the fullness of each other.  (Open space can help every voice be heard, but it can take a whole day to really hear out one person.)
• We should make them leaner and more focused on a goal to accomplish -- not just hearing each other, but addressing some social problem in a breakthrough way that benefits the whole -- and everyone working towards that goal.  Invite only people who are committed to that goal.  Use the internet to identify some of the sessions before the salon convenes, and perhaps have people do online/phone work together before they come.  Make it possible for people to work a whole day or more on a topic.  (Note that Open Space allows that, although that point was not made in the Jan 2006 ES orientation.)  International Systems Sciences Society (ISSS) has a model for this (see summary below), although it, too, can become dispersed with too many threads.
• Let's have fewer than 80 people, more like 40.
• We need greater consistency between declared purpose and the design.  Open Space allows topics that have nothing to do with the stated agenda -- although this can be ameliorated by more clarity on purpose and reiterating the purpose throughout the Salon.  (Two interesting points related to this:  What does it mean that so many people passionately came in response to an ambiguous invitation?  And some of this missing coherence seemed to be evolving DURING the salon, so there is one view that says "Let coherence emerge naturally from the interactivity of the multiple notes, rather than from a pre-arranged score".)
• We need more turning to the collective center of being, guided by a few questions, in stillness, turning inside to access types of intelligence that don't come through in conversation. We might walk the cosmic walk together, or dance how we sense our inner self, our relationship to the other, to the in-between-ness, to the middle, etc.  Open space is a simple structure for conversations.  But what are the simple structures for emotion, for body, for spirit, etc.?  What simple modalities will open these other levels?
• Although the Jan 2006 Salon's first evening was brilliant for gathering us together, we need time to come together around the evolutionary story and tap into the juice that Michael Dowd and others have for it.  Then lighten up about it. (The May 2005 Salon was more rooted in evolutionary science, while the Jan 2006 one was more rooted in social change and lacked the shared knowledge base of evolution to pursue the primary question we were given.)  
• We need processes that are appropriate for different sizes of group, and that unfold in an appropriate order.
• Participants could be organized into home groups of 4-10 people to which they would return frequently during the salon and in which they could ground their energy. Ideally, perhaps, it would involve people from their home town (or at least network), so they will be familiar with each other and can gather before and after the salon.

Weaving a web of Evolutionary Leadership conversations

Hosted by  Jon Cleland-Host

9:30 to 11 am 2006.01.17

Attendees: Jon Cleland Host & Connie  Barlow
 
Notes:  
        Discussion ranged over many topics of the nuts and  bolts of how to next bring the Great Story to the world.  The various  approaches were categorized into three groups:

1. a distance spirituality such as the UU church of the larger fellowship,

2. a structure of chapters like the  Covenant of UU Pagans,

and 3.  a separate spiritual entity.  

Of  these, the CLF approach seemed a little too dry for now.  #3 was not an  option with only the two people who were in attendance.  It was decided  to work towards #2, with first the creation of an evolutionary spirituality  wiki (planned in earlier session), and with expansion as that wiki is added  to. This would include resources on the wiki for forming a local chapter at a  UU church, capitalizing on the energy already surrounding various forms of  religious naturalism (Panentheism, Pantheism, Naturalistic Paganism,  etc.).  Specific resources will be developed for information  dissemination and basic instructions for organization and regular activity,  perhaps using the seasons if desired by the local group.

What are we not talking about? Where are we stuck?

Money.2

Transforming Money:  Catalyzing Wealth

Convenor: Charles Terry
Participants: Henri Lipmanovicz, Chris Corrigain, Tim Murphy, Pauline Le Bel, Paul Taylor, Jean Francois, Aubrey Hornsby, Glenna Gerard, Marilyn, Tree Fitz, Dana, Joy Moulton

Chris asked Charles to tell us a story.  Charles told story of his Ivy League education, then high-powered corporate law firm, six figure salary.  Switched to poverty law for four figure salary (earning $8,000).  He turned away from the root of wanting & family expectations to make a lot of money but in fact money continued to follow him.  I found myself managing fairly substantial money my whole life.  I was intrigued at the nonlinearity of money.  I've been involved in many projects for which money showed up, almost magically, because it was needed.  Then about four years ago, a group of us started a series of gatherings of people interested in doing innovative and creative things with money for social benefit.  How can we change money systems, innovate around philanthropy, socially responsible investing, complementary currencies, consumerism, social banking. 

 We begin to research and talk with individuals and organizations working to transform the way the world works with money and catalyze the release of accumulated money in society for the public good.  A group of us then began to convene a series of gatherings called Transforming the Way the World Works with Money (Transforming Money/Catalyzing Wealth for short), which have involved more than eighty leaders and organizations to date and have covered a wide spectrum of issues and "domains" related to money.

One outcome was a series of principles, still evolving, called "The Sequoia Principles for Transforming Money"  (added below) which embodies some core values about how we could be different with money and make it something that benefits hunmanity in a wider sense, particularly dealing with gap between haves and havenots.  They are a work in progress.  We are trying to connect the many people, organizations and movements who deeply care about the "wealth gap," and are seeking to help heal the human suffering caused by lack of financial resources.


General discussion notes:

There are hierarchical forces. . . . one is money

There are forces that would control money for greed kind of purposes, but there are and can be counterveiling forces.

Aurobindo proposes a new evolutionary construct based on descent of new consciousness with a new evolutionary intent.  Unless we learn how to work with money, we are not going to get to evolutionary consciousness.

We have tried to establish a different set of ways that money actually enteres the world, money entering world with a dif set of constructions and structures based on consciousness instead of scarcity.

“The Mother” name of Aurobindo book

wherever there is force there is being, wherever there is being there is force    whenever we choose to do something, it will be expressed as a force.

Money is a collective thought form.  

We are trying to call on a gravity of sorts, gravity is a pulling to a center.  

How can we attract a new consciousness around money that holds its as a resource for the common good as opposed to greater common good than my individual wellbeing, safety and power.  That is one of the things in an evolutionary sense of what is needed because money has become such a powerful force in our world.  It feels like it has to change.  It can’t carry itself:  will either change us or destroy us.  To become conscious enough of its oneness.

Money is unlimited.  Those who have it have the energy to attract it.  

Much of my time is spent considering how I can get enough so I could do what I really wanted to do.  I made choices not based on my purpose but based on something outside of me that dictated my behavior.  So here we are, having this discussion.  There is a systemic construc of the system whereby there is a limited number of dollars in existence.  Pareto Effect: masses of anything attract more of it.

I.e.  if I own a lot of real estate, there is a tendency for me to own a lot more of it.

If I step into a game, I don’t even know what the rules are of what I am playing.  It is not that something has been done to us.  We say there is only enough but we only consider money the green stuff in our wallet, we are deferring to theprocess of where money comes from, which currently is a centralized system of pyramidal structure for command and control systems.  I catch myself all the time wanting to pay allegiance to a source of money.

We can construct new notions of what wealth is.  There are efforts underway to make use of that kind of value as a complementary money system.

The system that we operate in is one that we created; we do not have to be bound by it; we can change it.

We can look at it by separating money and wealth.  Our current money system addresses a narrow range of wealth.  In order to work, this wealth has to be scarce.  What are the new money architectures to address a wider range of wealth, currencies, not barter.  Four principles of a new money architecture:

1.    move from scarcity to sufficiency
2.    move from centralized money power to peer-to-peer/community money
this is occurring everywhere today, we are seeing it in the media, now everyone can generate info so it has become peer-to-peer.  It could also happen for money.  We will have millions of currencies.  There will be all kinds of currencies, local, global, mini, medium. These currencies would be taxable because they are real currency.
3.    move from top down to bottom up emergence
4.    moving from proprietary to commons.  85percent of money now is private money. Money should be a commons.

This shift is not going to happen overnight but it could happen in less than two years.

These currencies tend to operate in an intimate way, intimate relationships, mediated not by price but mediated by care.  We have a relationship not because we’ve iinvested money in each other but because we are invested in each other.  What it allows you to do in a philanthropic endeavor, it brings microleanders and micrograntors together.  If I have fifty dollars to give away, I can find someone in my community of interest to give to the person who needs it.  After Hurricane Katrina I gave money to the friend of a friend instead of to the Red Cross. This can connect local communities.  

What does this new money thinking do for poor people?

The current monetary system is based on core property.

Pareto Effect again:  Pareto was an Italian and went all around world studying economy.  He observed twenty percent of population tended to hold eighty percent of the wealth.  He asked why.  Monopoly game illustrates this self-aggregating effect.  These equations have now been generalized into quantum physics.  If we counted the relationships in this room, we would find a pareto effect in terms of relationships.

Built in to the monetary system we have today, the accumulation effect is built in, the incentives for accumulation are built in; but this was not always so, and in fact collecting interest on loaned money was illegal and immoral in many/most cultures in the past.  Our system demands that there be winners and losers, accumulations of money. . . but only if we play by the rules.  There will be rich and poor simply because of the architecture of money.  If we practice interest, it is a strong accelrator.  In the end, there are only losers because the winner cannot play with the losers.  Our money systems not sustainable by design.  

Most communities are now under monetized.  

How can we build new monetary architectures that provide sufficiency rather than scarcity.  The mutual credit system is one answer.  Steadily recalibration of the exchange.

How does accumulation effect not happen?  The real wealth in this kind of mutual credit system is the breathing, it is about the quality of the breathing and the trust.  

What stops someone from going negative?  The community decides how positive or how negative a person can go.  We might decide you cannot go further than minute one thousand, for example.  We might say no one can be more negative than a certain percentage of the monetary mass that is in circulation.  Trust.  It is a reputation system.

As a reminder, in the current system, elderly and vulnerable are already kicked out.  In this new system, the fact that there is a sufficiency there is a very strong incentive for taking care of one another.  Apart from that context, any community can have its own tax system.  

What happens to old people?  Well, in this new system, monetary communities would be having these conversations.  

It takes a village to care for a person, regardless of their age.

Ananda Community:  forty five year old system, the people who had the most were cqarpenters and plumber type folks.  Artists didn’t do well.   What happens with the value system tends to be separate from the monetary system.

Is there an appropriate size for such a community?  It is a matter of context and technology.

Context:  when these experiences are tried in US or Europe, it is hard for people to make the paradigm shift but if  you look at Argentina where overnight you could have a million dollars that become worthless overnight.  

Demurrage:  negative interest, your credits lose their value



Of Human Wealth. . . book about to come out by Bernard Lietaer and a co-author

Where do corporations come in to this new monetary system?
How, for example, does someone build a factory?

There will be big communities with high investing powers.  If you need cash to build a company, there will be banks that belong to community and these banks will provide a supply of money.

Flow of the 2nd Evolutionary Salon

Health of the entire spiral, or on all levels of evolution

Responses to Feedback questions

Please respond to the questions here.

This means: Click on the "add child-page" below, fill in a title and put your text in the "body"; then - underneath the page - 'submit': done!

1)  What are the things you liked or valued most?

2)  What could be improved, and how?

3)  How do you imagine your gifts contributing to the future of this
movement (of which Evolutionary Salons are but a part)?

Evolutionary Salon suggestions by Connie Barlow:

CREATE CELL GROUPS:  Instead of meeting at the end of the day in a big
circle, have everybody meet with their "cell group."  Each cell group would
contain 6 to 8 people, chosen for in-group diversity.  The purpose would be
for all conference related problems and emotional upsets to be processed
there by the small "family" group, and to give everybody a chance to really
get to know a small number of people very different from themselves.  Each
cell group would have a facilitator whose responsibility would be to take
any major problems or suggestions of the cell group as a whole to the
planning team each day.  Overall, I am suggesting that we use the
"nestedness" of the universe as a template for our own salons.  There must
be a steadfast intermediate in size between the solo individual and the
whole group.  I experienced the cell group process for a week-long science
and religion conference and it worked fabulously!

MAKE IT CLEAR THAT THE LAW OF TWO FEET APPLIES TO ANY LARGE CIRCLE gathering
too.  After feeling "trapped" on the floor chairs in the inside of the big
circle early on, I never did set foot inside a large circle again.
Basically, I feel that anyone who chooses to use the large group circle to
do an emotional download (that could far more effectively be dealt with in a
cell group) is violating a personal boundary of mine.  It becomes more of a
performance; whereas in a cell group, the small number of real people
sitting there keeps the emotional download to being real and not shouting at
the individuals. And it is an enormous waste of time.  Whatever goes on in a
large circle (if, indeed, a full circle is EVER usefully engaged) ought to
be weighed against whether it is worth the time of one person times the
number of people in the circle.  Frankly, I can't remember anything that
happened in the full circle that was even close to that.  It will
unfortunately tend to sink to a low, as it did in Ev Salon 2.

USE THE WORLD CAFÉ AS A FOLLOW-UP TO SOME SORT OF INITIAL SUBSTANTIVE
PLENARY, that would give participants a common experience to talk about and
thus to shape ideas for the days to come.  When I experienced the World Café
at the first Evolutionary Salon it was very unsatisfying for me; seemed to
be a waste of time.  None of the questions engaged me.  I'd rather begin to
meet new people on the level where we are sharing our responses to a
plenary.  Or, use it at the end of a salon instead of a full circle.

I was thrilled with the generative possibilities of 'evolutionary salons'
and I hope to be a part of co-creating future salons! I offer my deep
gratitude to Michael for making possible my experience of the salon.  JOY!
Dana


 #1     I was especially impressed with the quality of people, the high
standard of awareness in using language that was opening and empowering, and
the quality of the conversations that resulted from a more conscious use of
language.  In our discussions  I felt that we were pursuing truth rather
than staking positions, and that questions posed were brought forth in order
to refine the questions.  In this spacious context, ideas could be expressed
in order to be clarified and refined, rather than as 'final positions'.

The simple, but profound, intention to call forth the emergent wisdom from
our collective field placed us all in a position of service to the whole.
Huge territories of hitherto undreamt possibilities opened when we could
step aside from attachment to our own ideas in order to follow the thread of
'what's trying to happen', or as Finn describes 'the magic in the middle'.
The expression of ideas took place in service of greater clarity rather than
in a mode of grasping and positioning.  Moreover,


#2        When I am involved with creating future salons I hope to bring
into our work more dimensions of knowing in order to have a fuller spectrum
at our disposal.  I would bring more dreams, music, poetry, art-making,
movement, theater, improvisation, etc., in order to better access our
intuitive, mythic, kinesthetic, aesthetic and imaginative intelligence along
with our verbal, cognitive, logical and rational modalities.


#3      I hope to be involved in co-creating 'full spectrum' salons.  I
would like to bring even a smidgeon of these modalities to the June Salon
(since I'll be in my homestate of Colorado at that time) though I do
understand it's special focus may prevent that.  I wish I could be there for
the May salon , but as I cannot, I will offer myself to the emerging team of
those generating the next evolution of the salon.  I am staying active on
the evolutionary nexus site as my way of staying with this movement.

1)  What are the things you liked or valued most?

* Meeting all the amazing people.
* The variety of people and backgrounds/fields/interestsrepresented. I
thought the diversity of gifts that we all brought was a sacred thing.
* Open, unstructured schedule and no pressure to participate ineverything. I
got in some wonderful runs through the forest as a result, and really enjoyed
just being there on the island.
* Breakfast together at the Farmhouse, and wonderful conversations and
intimate, easy time together around the kitchen table to begin the day.
* The authentic intention and spirit of the group to lean into how to create
a new way for human beings to live together on the planet.
* The integration of music, movement, dialogue, art, laughter, song, good
food. Mind, body, soul.

2)  What could be improved, and how?

* A little more structure. Not too much, but there was not quite enough this
time. Or maybe there was for this time, but I think we need more for next
time. This time the Salon felt like a marketplace or a bazaar of ideas,
methods, experiences. Although the group as a whole was tighter and more
coherent for sure towards the end, I didn't get the sense that we went
anywhere collectively, INTENTIONALLY. I think more structure could help
create a space where we actually move forward, together, at a deep level, in a
way that is apparent to us by the end. Setting the intention for this will
also help, even if that intention is set and held only tacitly by a small
group.
* Creation of small group "holons" of 6-8 people who stay together for the
entire time and who meet together once per day to talk about what is
happening for them, to do deep dialogue, et cetera. There are some practices
and guidelines that could be used to guide these sessions.


3)  How do you imagine your gifts contributing to the future of this
movement (of which Evolutionary Salons are but a part)?

* I'm interested in bringing my spiritual practice of dialogue into the
space--maybe by inviting a skilled leader of that practice to the next Salon
and helping to convene a session
* I'm finishing a master's degree right now and I'm going to be starting a
PhD degree this fall, so I don't have a lot of time on my hands right now,
but I'd love to keep coming to the Salons to share my work and heartfelt
passion for evolution and find synergies with others

<!---->seeing friends and having plenty of time to connect with people one to one. meeting new people. the large number of people present who have the capacity to hold a spiritual focus while participating actively. the young geeks.

<!---->
i am not sure, as who i am in the world and how i express it is still very fluid.  my outer work tends to be more pragmatic and visceral, less big picture theoretical - i think people (not just the cultural creative types
the great story attracts) are so swept up in the turbulence of the synergizing crises that they will be moved by things that address more immediate problems... and through that will begin to see the bigger picture.
the old 'does it hoe corn?' issue. so perhaps the evolsalon thread will be for folks like the ones who gathered, not a larger circle.  this said, i am personally moved by my increasing intimacy with the miracles of existence,
and the great story strings these miracles together in a powerful way.  as you know, the jury is out for me about 'conscious evolution' - my sense of how the universe works is ever more steeped in mystery and i am less sanguine that 'a small group of concerned citizens can change the course of evolution through conscious overarching intentions.' i do believe we need a more immediate capacity to govern ourselves globally in a more rational, peaceful, cooperative way and to the degree that the great story provides inspiration and impetus to do this very hard, essential work, i'll incorporate  it.

Questions for reflection: Making the Salon Personal

Holding the space for each of us to show up in the truth of who we are.

Artificial Life with Jack Semura

Responses to Feedback questions

Reflection Circle: Day One/Sunday: The edge of emergence is the growing edge of evolution

This is a personal recollection of what the opening ceremonies were like. It is the memory of Lion Kimbro. It may be inaccurate, and miss important things.

We began the first gathering with a poem about how all things begin. It begins with the trickling accumulation of water molecules into tiny tiny droplets of water. The tiny droplets collect to form full dew. The dew accumulates, and other, trivial, insignificant bits of water from myriad sources, until you have a marsh.

Many thanks were given, appreciation for the people present. A lot was spoken about how great the people present were, and how good it was to be with them. (This seemed to have been a point of contention for some, who felt that we were giving too much self-congradulation.)

The keyword then became "story." It was used to describe who we are, what we are doing, the story that we are making real. A story, a dream, a computer program, a sequence within a simulation. The story is 14-whatever billion years old. The Great Story. We are ancient.

Michael Dowd mentions a book called, "Evolution's Arrow," that Michael Dowd draws inspiration from.

There is speak of replication, copying, how to distribute the evolutionary salon, how to grow The Great Story. There is an invitation, to other people who would like to assist in the replication.

We are all made from stardust- literally. The matter in our bodies has existed for countless ages. We are made of universe. Matter became conscious of itself, forming simulations of it's own place and circumstance. Intelligence. You get a ball of gas, and you wait, and a few yugas later, it's singing opera.

Michael points out that we weild incredibly vast power, as individuals, by virtue of the technology we possess. But we have not yet grown in the wisdom and intelligence to wield that power. Perhaps we will form groups, and with collective intelligence, form the relationships and commit the actions necessary to save ourselves, by making sure our use of power is responsible?

We are asked to think about what it is that we believe is dangerous, what is most dangerous to our lives, society, ecosystem, economy, whatever. We are invited to bring our concerns to the fore.

We listen to a story about a preacher. A preacher who, one day, after passing the hat for collections, sent the hat back out again. People were encouraged to put in their name and number, if they wanted to participate in this experiment. Then it was passed out AGAIN, and people were asked to take out a name and a number. The people were invited to, within a week, to call the person on the other end of the number, and to just talk about what concerned them. The preacher said, "This was like sitting on a gold mine, and having finally figured out how to mine it. The gold mine is the interest and feeling and concern and motive force within the people. The figuring out how to mine it, was getting the members to communicate with one another."

Longing and passion. We are invited to be present with our whole being, to not hold back, to participate in full, with heart, head, and soul.

Then we are asked to remember the most creative, vibrant, active people in our lives. We are asked to envision the lines of connection between ourselves, and between the creative network we just pictured, and the people THEY know, and so on. We ask ourselves: How many people are in our expanded network? 100? 1000? More than a 1000? How many?

What can we not do?

We speak "Welcome," spoken in all languages our members know. We have someone from every continent. I draw some laughs, near the end, saying: "printf hello world." I am not entirely in jest; I speak for the machines, that are still in the womb. But I worry about alienating people, who don't know programming, and may think I am making fun of them. Not many people know that that's C for a simple program.

We are invited to silence. This was an idea I had never heard of before, but now think is essential to a conference; It played out wonderfully, the next few days. It goes like this: In the conference, there will be periods of silence. These periods of silence are there so that we can think to ourselves, so that we can reflect without external expectation or interruption. I think this is a fantastic idea, and immediately begin to wonder how I can integrate it into the myriad institutions that I work with. Integrating silence and time to think in one's own mind, before speaking again- what a fantastic idea. A beautiful idea. And it so very clearly works. I mean, it just makes sense: When we're so busy talking, how can we possibly have the time to sort out some of what the other people said, in our heads? And I remember the feeling that was starting to articulate itself to me at MindCamp: With sessions back to back, I had very little time to "record" in my mind what happened, even to just record some notes to myself on paper, or in my computer! Wouldn't it be awesome, if at tracked events with multiple sessions, that there was a mandatory silence period between them, so that people could collect their thoughts? Well, I'm not so sure about **mandatory,** but nonetheless, I think it's a fantastic idea, and I will be thinking about it more fully over time.

After-Salon Harvest

Reflection Circle: Day Two/Monday: Giving Voice to what we are Sensing

Posted by Peggy Holman: 

Here is the collective affirmation that came to me at 3:00am on January 16:

We are an increasingly conscious social system evolving through showing up fully at our individual and collective growing edges.

We bring our authentic selves present by…

• Sensing what arises from ourselves and the middle in service to ourselves, each other and the whole.
• Supporting each other to stay with discomfort when it arises by embracing our own and each other’s incompleteness with compassion (acknowledging the “holes” in our wholeness).

We use silence, music and movement to slow us down and sense the emerging patterns that can guide us through the mystery.

Reflection Circle: Day Three/Tuesday