Outline of a Citizens’ Brainstorming / Design Charette

for Visioning a Wisdom Culture

© Paul H. Ray, Ph.D. 2003  paul@culturalcreatives.org

{This is my ‘giveaway,’ it’s ‘Creative Commons’: Feel free to use it, and pass it on. But attribute it to me, and check to see if I’ve added to it. It will work better if you’ve experienced my workshop doing this.}

Start With: Checking in on the wisdom and intelligence of the heart’s longing

Initial energy in locating and sensing the “heart” = cardiac nerve plexus 

Two Repeating Questions Exercises in dyads:

      If you need instructions in using repeating questions, let me know.

• “Why is it okay not to feel the pain of the world?”  =  Seeing our own resistance
• “Tell me a world your heart longs for”      =  Tapping into the wisdom of the heart
• See where the energy or “juice” is for you, in terms of the 5-sector Wisdom Culture model as shown by what came up in the exercises. Regardless of your expertise, go into a group where the real energy is coming up from your wiser side.

Brainstorming in 5 Kinds of Wisdom Sector Groups, Phase 1

A.    “What my heart longs for is…” Group members share what came up for them in exercises, as the goal-states of a wise new culture, the strong feelings of “what should be” and the values that they want to see realized in the next culture. This is both a sharing and a discovery process, where you get down on large newsprint paper, quickly as possible what has come up so far, in bullet point form.

B.    “What social inventions or new ways of life will get us there?”  Generate an initial list of items in brainstorming style. Just toss out ideas like popcorn without evaluating them

C.    “And is there a transition process to there, or a way of enabling them to occur?”  You can brainstorm a new list of social change or transition ideas.  You can also use this question to modify the earlier brainstorm list by adding/deleting/improving items.

D.   “How can we tell if it’s good stuff, and/or how can we tell if it moves us closer to our envisioned goal-states?” This is brainstorming a new list, of norms and standards that ought to be consciously developed for a wise culture, in place of the traditional norms we’ve inherited from the past, or the purely technical, or hierarchical, norms imposed by wealth and power in the worlds of the “Bigs” in business and government.

E.    “What are the 3-7 Big Themes we see here?” Mostly to be able to spot the pattern of what you’ve created, but also to be able to summarize the above for the rest of the seminar.

Brainstorming in 5 Kinds of Wisdom Sector Groups, Phase 2

Before this happens each of the groups presents what they first got to the rest of the seminar.  First post their notes up on the wall and have everyone read everybody else’s stuff. And then the group explains any unclear items, and what the big themes are that they saw.  You may then go back to your 5 kinds of groups, or do the following as a group of the whole.

Ask of the list of items as a whole:

1. “Would I want to live there?” Treat this as a gut check on the overall gestalt of the items generated. Add/delete/modify the items on the list, based on this.
2. “Is it radical enough for an ecologically sustainable world, or does it fall short?” This is the big ecological sustainability filter. Remember that falling short is a recipe for slow death in an evolutionary transformation model. Add/delete/modify the items on the list, based on this.
3. “Does it have sizzle, or pop?” Is it exciting or fun? Are people drawn to it by the enticing smell? Is there some surprise value, or big Aha!? In other words: Will it sell? Draw a crowd? Win elections? Add/delete/modify the items on the list, based on this.
4. “Is it consistent with the other parts of our collective vision that we’ve seen so far in the first round?” Look at the thematic, esthetic, and practical consistency of this with the rest, and ask: Would these work together in a real culture? Add/delete/modify the items on the list, based on this.

Brainstorming in 5 Kinds of Wisdom Sector Groups, Phase 3

You can do this by the 5 kinds of groups or as a committee of the whole.

1.  “What’s the Big Idea(s)?” State the new 3-7 emerging themes, big ideas, visions, aha’s you now see. See if you can give the list an attractive name or image. How can your concept, or vision, or insight be explained to others easily? What suggests the sizzle or pop? Don’t spend too long on this because you’ll want to return to this again.
2. “What my heart longs for NOW is…” In light of all the above, what has my heart learned, and what do I now long for, using the intelligence of the heart’s longing. Have my goals, values, criteria, or insights changed?
3. “What inventions do I NOW see?” New round of brainstorming, by sector, and by links to the other sectors.
4. “What transition strategy do we see, and recommend?” Shift from concrete ideas to strategies. More brainstorming, and add/delete/modify items using this.
5. “Can we improve on our own, or other sectors’ normative criteria of goodness?”
6. “Can we improve on our own, or other sectors’ functional criteria of effectiveness?”
7. “Can we improve the salability of items, or do we need to educate the tastes of the population to want this?”

Brainstorming, Phase 4, by the whole seminar

Post the new materials and read them as a whole, and get clear explanations from each group. You definitely want to do this as a committee of the whole.

1.  “What is our collective reaction to the whole picture of where we are?”

• Are there gaps or holes?
• What are the gems and aha’s?
• Have we covered both the goal-states and the transition-processes?
• Is it radical enough?
• Is it a big enough idea?
• Is it a compelling enough vision?
  Is it morally good enough?
• Is it esthetically good enough?
• Is it functionally effective enough?
• Is it salable enough?

1. Turn it into a document, and share it with others.
2. Draw other groups into a comparable process, and then compare and contrast what they got with yours.

Sectors for Design of a Planetary Wisdom Civilization

1. From Elite High Culture / To The Wisdom Level

Note: this is primarily cultural content and process, as well as cultural organization

- Science & Technology & Mathematics & Philosophy

- Co-intelligent Cultural Production & the Arts

- Enobling Professions & Deeper Crafts

- True Education for Wisdom Throughout the Life Cycle

- Media & Communication & Co-intelligent Wisdom Councils

- Worldviews & Religions & Spiritual Beliefs & Practices

2. From Personal Life Worlds / To The Whole Person in a Mature Society

    How we live, love and behave at the interpersonal level in:

- workgroups,

- communities,

- associations,

- neighborhoods,

- friendship groups,

- families

3. From Human Exploitation of the Natural World / To Humans in Gaia

  Our need is not only to avoid destruction but to rebuild our relationship to nature, by redesigning the following from a whole planetary ecosystems perspective:

- Extractive industries: Agriculture, forestry, fisheries, mining, oil and gas

- Artificial industries: Manufacturing, bulk processing, construction, transportation

- Tertiary industries: Tourism, commerce, entertainment, urban commercial centers

- Direct humans to nature interaction, beyond sentimentality to participation

- Preservation, Cleanup, Restoration of Ecologies

4. From 'The System' of Money and Power / To The Society of Organizations

   The 'Bigs' exist to concentrate money and power, are all too large and need to be redesigned to be smaller, and their functions both reassigned and redesigned:

- Big Military                                    to Minimal Self-defense Forces + Citizen Nonviolent Forces

- Big Finance                                    to Multi-level Currencies and Finance imbedded in communities

- Big Corporations                        to Limited-size Corporations imbedded in communities/ecologies

- Big Science/Technology            to Limited-size Science, imbedded in Wisdom philosophies

- Big Technology                        to Socially- & ecologically-responsive Technologies

- Big National Governments            to Multi-level Governments/Citizenships: Local to Planetary

- Big Urban Metropolises            to Multi-level towns & small cities, few or no metropolises

- Big Mass Media Networks            to Dispersed, multi-level media, with citizen control

- Big Markets                                    to Dispersed, multi-level markets, with ecological  controls

5. From Colonized Communities in Decay / To New Kinds of Communities

Reclaiming currently fragmented, colonized pieces of communities as:

- Quasi-kin extended-families-of-choice, out to extended networks

- Extended friendship networks, in person and online

- Local places: neighborhoods, small town centers, small city civic spaces

- Civil societies' associations (built around values, human-scale relationships)

- Communities of faith/belief