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