Sender: Rosa Zubizarreta
Subject: Re: Fukuyama's "America in Decay"
Date: Sun, Aug 24, 2014
Msg: 101143

Dear Michael,

I have just finished watching the video of your talk at UFM. Awesome!!! It has inspired me to post on this list, where I've been mostly silent... and also, to write to you directly.

Where to begin... Since 2000, I have been involved with the development of a social innovation that supports people in speaking their own truth. "Training wheels for courage", you might say... Currently this work is spreading the most in Europe; the video below shows it being used within a corporate environment in Switzerland, to surface"organizational elephants" in a creative and empowering way.

It is also being used very successfully in Austria , as a cost-effective way to generate high-quality input for participatory public policy processes. A randomly-chosen microcosm of people, reflecting the diversity of the larger whole, engages in a creative dialogic process where they arrive at some shared understandings, which they then share out at a large public gathering designed for stimulating further high-quality conversation. In addition to useful recommendations, the "side effect" (main effect?) as documented in the research, is that the council participants directly experience how each of their inputs is key to generating a fuller understanding of the bigger picture, and feel very inspired and moved by the process.

In turn, government's view of the value of citizen participation has changed to the point that the State of Vorarlberg has committed to hosting these community councils on any topic for which the citizens gather a thousand signatures, in addition to hosting two per year on a regular basis.

In this country, we have not quite reached the "tipping point" yet. However, there is a small yet enthusiastic community in North Carolina who is training in this work, and who have invited us to help them organize a Community Wisdom Council there. We are planning to videotape this, and, there will also be the opportunity for some interested people to observe this work live via streaming. I would imagine that some participants on this list may find this of interest.

For those who are interested but who are not able to join us in North Carolina, you may want to know that there is a new version of my book coming out in German in Septembe r, published by Belz, that includes four additional chapters by European practitioners doing this work in both corporate and public settings. A future English-language edition will include these four new chapters. In the meantime, all of the basic information needed for practice is included in the current English-language version (see link below), as we have chosen to open-source our methodology. Several free published articles available on my website as well, and additional unpublished ones available upon request...

Ok! There you have it! Bringing a new social innovation forward sometimes feels like that person in the paid psychology experiment, where everyone else is discounting and dismissing what I know from my own experience to be true... yet I've been hanging in there, in large part due to the work of people like you, Michael, who so brilliantly encourage creativity and innovation.

with all best wishes,

Rosa

*Rosa Zubizarreta*

*Diapraxis: Facilitating Creative Collaboration http://www.diapraxis.com *

*Celebrating my new book, "From Conflict to Creative Collaboration: A user's guide to Dynamic Facilitation" *

On Sat, Aug 23, 2014 at 12:19 AM, Michael Strong wrote:

> Thoughtful analysis concluding: > > "The depressing bottom line is that given how self-reinforcing the > country's political malaise is, and how unlikely the prospects for > constructive incremental reform are, the decay of American politics will > probably continue until some external shock comes along to catalyze a true > reform coalition and galvanize it into action." > > > http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141729/francis-fukuyama/america-in-decay > > -- > Michael Strong > > > Creating a World in which All of Humanity Flourishes > > Co-Founder and CEO, Khabele+Strong Incubator > Co-Founder and Chief Visionary Officer, The FLOW Project > , now Radical Social Entrepreneurs > > Co-Founder and CEO, StartupLearning.Me > Co-Founder, Startup Cities Institute > Lead Author,* Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious > Capitalists Can Solve All the World's Problems > * > Author, *The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic > Practice > * > Blogger at "The Purpose of Education is Happiness and Well-Being for > All," "Let a Thousand > Nations Bloom," and "Radical Social > Entrepreneurs" > Co-Founder of The Atheneum School , The Winston > Academy > > (defunct), Moreno Valley High School > > (ranked the 36th best public high school in 2006 > ), and The Bronze Doors > Academy . > Co-Founder, Conscious Capitalism, Inc. > > TEDx UChicago, "The Creation of Conscious Culture through Educational > Innovation" > TEDx GrandRapids, "Innovate: Experience" > > TEDx UFM, "Socratic Practice as Disruptive Technology" > > > ------------------------------ > > To unsubscribe from the TRANSPARTISAN list, click the following link: > http://lists.thataway.org/scripts/wa-THATAWAY.exe?SUBED1=TRANSPARTISAN&A=1 >

############################

To unsubscribe from the TRANSPARTISAN list: write to: mailto:TRANSPARTISAN-SIGNOFF-REQUEST@LISTS.THATAWAY.ORG or click the following link: http://lists.thataway.org/scripts/wa-THATAWAY.exe?SUBED1=TRANSPARTISAN&A=1