Election Twists

I find the US elections to be a dizzying maze of spins, jests and projection to follow with any amount of dedication or analysis.  I found this site to offer me a simple reference point for my perspective.

It takes about 5 minutes and the output ranks the presidential candidates in order based on how you respond to the campaign issues their relative importance.

It’s fun!

http://www.wqad.com/Global/link.asp?L=259460

Communities in Crisis

I watched “We are Marshall” last weekend. I enjoy movies based on true stories. For me, somehow they offer a deeper view into human nature. This was a compelling movie, emphasizing how a devastating event can shift an entire town, not just those whom experience profound loss. Often our best is called forth during these times, generated by the exceptional leadership capacities of a few. In this case it was Jack Lengyel, a coach, who showed up to lead not a just a team, but community through the next very difficult football season. It wasn’t his football skills that made the difference, but his ability to connected with people with an open heart, not ignoring the pain, but moving through it to find the other side.

I was in Omaha on December 7, 2007. I arrived in town for a couple of projects; one of which was to assist in a day of presentations geared toward shaping Omaha’s future. Our message is simple, it described the kind of thinking capacity, the mind open to new understandings, insights and potential our leaders will possess to meet the complexity of our current collective problems. Our first presentation occurred at the same time 9 people where shot at local shopping mall. The building we working in was locked down while the facts were being sorted out, and the hotel we were staying in was the police/family/media home base that day. The picture included in the post is the sign that hangs in front of the our hotel, which sit directly opposite the mall department store. This crisis became a part of our project in the most direct of indirect ways.

We collectively are moving into a Fourth Turning. The “winter” years of a 20 year change cycle uncovered in the work of William Strauss and Neil Howe. They call this stage the crisis years. Perhaps it has already begun.

I was reminded, again, both in Omaha and through this movie, the determining factor for our future is not that crisis happens, but it how we respond to these events that define the shape of the next ones. In Omaha, we talked about fact that this extremely troubled boy was taken in by a friends family, their home and hearts open. We talked about the courtesies extended to grieving family members by offering up private meeting space in use by local business people at our hotel. And we pointed to the restaurateurs who opened their establishments as place to receive free food and drink to the people involved with the mall events.

As 2008 quickly approaches, and the coming series of crisis. I worry less about what might happen and look to my own leadership capacity as I prepare to respond to with my head up, an open heart and an open mind.

Life conditions to the power of six

Here’s a very well done multimedia presentation of the life conditions that help light up the F-S (green) adaptive intelligence code. Unfortunately, we live in life conditions to the power of seven (and eight is quickly upon us) so just solving these problems is not nearly good enough.

A Thought Experiment

Let’s play a game.

Watch this video and let us tell us about your interpretation.

Here’s mine: Things are not always what they seem.

Get Connected: The Human Network

I was out on Cisco’s website a couple of months ago. It’s pretty happenin’ for a company website. They have made a huge investment in the idea of the Human Network and a big part of the site is dedicated to Cisco’s roll in delivering the technology. It’s really marketing oriented, but it’s got some interesting stories on it. Slickly produced, with ample resources. Not like what you from your average Internet story teller.

What caught my attention a couple months ago was a bit on the site that seemed like a tag line message, but it’s gone now, so I don’t know. The Human Network: Where People Subscribe to People (not to magazines). Anyway, here is the Cisco promo vid. You can find it…where else, but You Tube.

I’ve been thinking about that message for several months now, I am really digging it. It’s a very different way of being informed, a way that requires accessing, sorting, discerning and distilling skills that are fast being acquired, at least by the under 40 folks in the western world.

In my mind, the Internet is becoming the neural net, the brain of the emerging organism currently known as the human species and I do think that those who know how to send and receive information through it will be the ones most likely to thrive in their lives. So…I consider carefully how I engage the Internet.

Maybe start by watching EPIC. Although this is about 2015, don’t kid yourself, it’s happening now. It’s eight minutes worthy of your time.

Camp Prisoners

Jake, Jessie and I were YouTubing together the other night. I had seen the uber popular Dirty Dancing vid couple on Oprah (Dirty Dancing, the movie, is one of my faves, topping the viewed literally 100’s of times -i love a man that can dance) so I brought it up for all of us to watch. The sidebar always has related videos next to the one you watch. That’s when we came across this group. (It’s seems that Thriller is another popular 1st wedding dance…who knew!)

This is the story. In Cebu, Philippines at a detention camp, the inmates, as part of their exercise activities, march. One day a security consultant saw the 100’s inmates out in the yard together and in a moment of creativity saw them line dancing together. So he made it happen.
It’s fascinating to me.

This video sparked a moment of creativity in me too. As a SWIT (Spiral Wizard in Training) I often ponder and explore natural habitat design. Usually, I am thinking about the businesses I work with and the local community I live in. After this video, though, it was obvious that one of the environments in desperate need of habitat design is prisons.

See, we haven’t figured out that punishment doesn’t work in most cases (sometimes it does) but mostly it doesn’t. Why? One of the major factors is that the dominate adaptive intelligence code in prisoners is C-P Red, and Red doesn’t respond to punishment. They do not have the capacity to feel guilty. Guilt comes in at D-Q Blue, and you don’t find very many dominate Blue thinkers in prisons. Why? Because they are interested in what’s right and following the code of truth.

So if we designed prisons, understanding how Red societies function, providing ample opportunity for these folks to solve the existential problems faced at Red in prison and watching and guiding the natural change flows that they happen from within, setting up indicators of that change, we create a developmental pathway instead of a very expensive punitive institution that perpetuates more Red. It’s be a marked difference in our prison system.

Lost? Here’s more where you can read about complex adaptive intelligences- Spiral Dynamics.

This video is one element of introducing integral Blue practices inside of Red dominated brains that could function as new intelligence structures inside the brain/mind/body form, while not making the Red wrong.

Hallelujah!

This song has made a strong entry into my life in the last months months, from pure unawareness to inspirational. My music diva friend Deb Cooperman blogged about it, and I’ve since spent time exploring the various expressions on YouTube, until today, when I found Allison Crowe’s vid was hanging out on my computer screen (thanks to friend Jessie Newburn who often uses my computer.) Even though Deb included Allison in her accounting, today I heard it, like not before.

Thank you Ms. Allison Crowe for moving me from the inside out, through the emotional highs and low’s of life, the openings and the closings, happy to just be here surrounded by the perfection of the imperfection.

Writer’s Block

I’ve been told people enjoy reading what I write. Some days I enjoy writing. Most days it doesn’t happen. Why? Because, for me, writing is only worthwhile when I have something to say, and to have something to say demands that I find the place in me that makes it worth expressing from. And who I am to judge what is worthwhile. I am, only, to find “that place.” Sadly, and often, it’s lost between the happenings in my life.

In a show of support for the writer’s strike and to celebrate great writing, from others in places that I judge as worthwhile, at a time when finding words expressed from “that place” will be more and more important; I post three of my favorites, from one of the grandest television shows to air.

The WEST WING

20 Hours in America (1:50 minutes)

Biblical Quotes (3:51 minutes)

Santos Convention Speech (6:21 minutes)

In an other’s words…

Two great quotes, printed on magnets, found in one of those trendy shops in Boulder during the SDi Personal Emergence training, by Don Beck:

“Whatever you are, be a good one.” Abraham Lincoln

“One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.” Nietzsche

Anybody want to learn how to be a good dancing star? Asta la Vista, Baby…. Errr, I mean, personal emergence, Baby.

For those who dare.

This came from the Montgomery College plantarium; a presentation on how stars are born:

A Hard Road to Hollywood

1. Find (more than) a whole lot of gas & dust, break it into many pieces & stir it up all the time
2. Add gravity, magnetic fields & plenty of harsh light
3. Wait about 1 million years for (slow?) gravitational collapse …While this happens, a disk & outflow will form, thanks to the spin the stirring gave your creation…Oh, and watch out for other stars & blobs whizzing by, trying to mess up your plans
4. Turn on fusion (of deuterium, and worry about hydrogen later)
5. Voila, you’re a new star, with a spinning disk of hanger-on groupies that can form planets
6. Start Fusing hydrogen & join the “main sequence” (Actors’ Equity)

Well…now. That sounds like a good time! I’ll suggest some order to add to all that chaos:

Here is what works for me:

• Learn the biggest map of reality you can get your mind around,
• Develop new skills and capacities,
• Get yourself a good “thinking buddy”, and
• Determine and then take action on only What’s Next for you.

When that’s too much, then whatever you are…just be that.

(Art by Don Dixon- click on picture for website)

A Convoluted, Paradoxical Mess…So you want to marry your Soul Mate?

This frame was taught to me by my friend and mentor, Don Beck and was presented in Boulder, at this years Personal Emergence Spiral Dynamics training. I think it’s very revealing, simple and down right brilliant.

It goes like this:

The “Real” (or total) Me loves The “Real” (or total) You

Ah, our souls meet, connect and recognize each other. Does it get any better, really now?

Then…

The Me – Me (how I see myself) and The You – You (how you see yourself)

tries to live with

The YOU- Me (how You see me) and The ME- You (how I see you)

Hmmm… a match made in heaven, except:

The bigger the gaps and stronger the polarities between these perspectives, the more fireworks…both exploding in ecstasy and blowing up in conflict. Perhaps this is all too familiar, it was for me.

Oh…and then when the Me-YOU engages as many people as possible, to support their view of the Me-Me, and as an added bonus has no clue as to the YOU-me (let alone the You-You)…well, you have, under normal circumstances, the makings for a “War of the Roses.”

Good Lord, have mercy! Or as my friend, Janet Cunningham understands: Caution! Soul Mate Ahead.

More and more of us are responding the impulses of the Real Me and the Real You. Our minds on the other hand, have not quite caught up, and thus, the moment to moment mingling of all six of the perspectives is…well…chaotic.  Anyone care to reach for that dancing star?

If we are ever going to experience living from the Real Me and the Real You, let’s figure out how to close those gaps. Oh yeah! That’s personal emergence in the context of the the other. Because people don’t mature, grow or change outside of relationship.

I guess I’ll keep ‘growing a new mind.” See ya in Boulder, next year!

(Artwork by Stephanie Schriver- click on picture for website)