The Origin and Emergence of Movement Models - Frameworks for Evolutionary Transformation

The vision of a movement for the conscious evolution of social systems emerged from the first Evolutionary Salon and found its expression in the blog entry on Growing Together at the Emerging Edge of Evolution, by Tom Atlee, who wrote:

We decided that we were part of an emerging movement for the conscious evolution of (increasingly conscious) social systems. The success of that movement would not involve taking over society or even creating a new society, but rather having the society's conscious capacities expand until it became able to consciously and wisely participate in its own evolution. 

That's a novel, refreshing and potentially irresistible concept for social transformation. A lot needs to be learned on the way, so much that we can learn it only as an emergent social movement with a collective intelligence and consciousness.  Tom also suggested:

The movement for conscious evolution of social systems is already well underway. ... another contribution we could make would be to map these various elements of the world we want and the ways we want to get there, to show their interconnections, and to clarify successful practices -- and to do all this in an ongoing and participatory way. (A model that inspired us in this is the "pattern language for sustainability".)

Another breakthrough result from the first Evolutionary Salon is a chart of  embedded circles, which integrates many threads of inquiry, including:

Those who see us transforming the society from one form to another can imagine the smaller movement circle expanding outward until it is congruent with the big society circle: The worldview and activities of the erstwhile movement BECOME the new society.

On the other hand, those who see our Work as an increasingly conscious phase of a process that has been going on for some time and will likely continue for some time (with increasing consciousness, if we do our Work well), can visualize the thin blue rings as spreading out from the "movement" circle forever, as ripples spread from a rock dropped in the water. In this latter view, the expansion of the rings represents an ever-emerging evolution of society which always has a "movement" (an evolving network of innovators and early adopters) at its generative center. 

The two paragraphs above are quoted  from the blog entry on "A Movement for the Conscious Evolution of (increasingly conscious) Social Systems."

Tom Atlee has introduced a more fine-grained  description of the movement's model in an essay on Five Areas of Activity Needed for a Movement to Advance the Conscious Evolution of Increasingly Conscious Social Systems that he shared with particiinats of the 2nd Evolutionary salon on Catalyzing Collective Intelligence and Social Creativity. We will follow the conversation triggered by it and post its key documents on these pages.

Then Tom has developed with Peggy Holman a visual model called "An Architecture for a Movement of Conscious Evolutionary Agentry for the Conscious Evolution of Increasingly Conscious Social Systems." Quite a mouthful for a name, but it's worth to look at the rich picture. Out from the above and other seminal writing produced by a group of kindreds, as the movement is ripening, the need for a "source document" will, very likely, emerge.

Talking about the 5 Areas of Activity Needed essay and the Evolutionary Agentry picture in a conference call, somebody said, "I was sitting here looking at these two documents trying to discern the differences between 'the five pieces' in Tom's write-up and the picture of the movement architecture." Tom replied,  "They overlap, but they don't fit perfectly together, and hopefully that will be generative."

Let's take Tom's words as invitation to co-inquiry into the emerging models of movement architecture and what is missing that could make them more robust. That's the intent of The "Magic in the Middle" of Movement Models.