My experience is that our responsibility (and membership) within our larger society can only be based on a healthy responsibility to ourselves. This means knowing who we are (or at least be willing to engage in that learning journey). So, the larger community around us is only as healthy, vibrant and thriving as it’s self aware or self educated members. i am interested to share some of my own personal learning journey (of opening and learning how to learn) and the work of how to balance the equation between self and society. This balancing between personal and public are where the real battle lines are being drawn. What kind of spaces can we create to sustain the lifelong learning process of who we are (and who we are becoming) as individuals and how we present ourselves as members of society. Let’s try out some experiments during the conference!
The concept of the ‘soul of open government’ makes many cringe
I noticed that you included ‘soul’ in you list of tags. Clearly, this is the language of the soul, applied to the community or even greater system. The problem is, many decision makers do not realize that they have a soul!. And even less that their soul is connected to everything else, to everyone else.
I tend to use other words than soul, that make people less jump to the ceiling, like consciousness, or collective intelligence. Naturally, people are not fooled, and they eventually realize that they are synonyms. Often, they reject the idea because they associate it with a negative connotation of religion, or God.
This is very new stuff and concepts: collaboration, co-creation between institutions and citizens, co-governance. Aligned on principles of the soul.
Renowned authors have written about the soul of leadership.
But the idea of the soul of open government makes many cringe.
How do you imagine governments announcing initiatives, or experimental projects, with a goal of bringing more balance between the self and society? Could it be positively received? Which of the two, policymakers or citizens, would have the greatest aversion to this type of project? How can we sell it?
creating space for the personal within the public
lyne, thanks for sharing, yes the language of the soul is different from the language of the mind, or the language of business and politics…what we can do though is experiment with the creation of intersecting points where both may meet? create space for both to be seen and respected…all i am proposing at this moment is simply that we play with this during the conference, lets meet up and try some ideas out? thanks!
a link to a cool short post which I found today (by Brainpicker)
Found a post on
learning by Maria Popova.
I’m not a big fan of quotes, but these are quite relevant.
And some of them are from a long time ago, funny enough:
Education, of course, is always based on what was. Education shows you what has been and leaves you to make the deduction as to what may be. Education as we pursue it cannot prophesy, and does not. (1955,
William Gibson on cultivating a personal micro-culture.)