Notes from the Trail by Swami Beyondananda (Steve Bhaerman)
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The Missing Ingredient
November 8, 2007 web: http://www.wakeuplaughing.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
by Steve Bhaerman
At a party years ago, I casually picked up a container of avocado dip.
I read the long, long list of ingredients and noticed there was one
thing significantly missing. There was no avocado. No avocado in the
avocado dip.
Folks, I think I've discovered the missing ingredient in government
of, by and for the people -- the people. More specifically, what has
been missing is the voice of the people. Now that may seem way too
obvious, but please read on. There may be a way to regain that voice,
and consequently recapture the moral authority that has been
appropriated by the inappropriate immoral authority currently in
power.
Two weeks ago, I attended an event at San Francisco State University.
I agreed to be on a panel and have the Swami make an appearance
without being sure exactly why. By the end of the day, I knew why. I
had been there to meet in person Jim Rough. I had seen his name and
work referred to in Tom Atlee's book The Tao of Democracy. When I
heard what Jim had to say, I eagerly got a copy of his book Society's
Breakthrough! Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People.
That's how I discovered the missing ingredient in America's political
formula.
Rough Stuff Is No Flough
Jim is a corporate consultant and seminar leader who's developed a
technique called Dynamic Facilitation, a way to access the collective
wisdom of any group of people by making sure everyone is listened to
and making sure every word said becomes part of the collective
awareness. You can find out more about how this is done by clicking on
any one of the links above.
For our purposes here, I would like to focus on the "universal
conclusion" that every one of Jim Rough's groups have reached,
regardless of the issue they've been considering. Then, we'll consider
Jim's creative clarification of our current political dilemma and how
-- in the Swami's parlance -- we can turn the dilemma into dilemma-
nade.
First, a little background. For the past fifteen years or so, Jim has
been bringing together diverse groups of people -- sometimes randomly-
selected -- in an attempt to bring "collective wisdom" to areas of
collective stuckness. As an example of the kind of work Jim does, he
once had a half-hour to work with a group who had picked the very
contentious "abortion issue" to work on. At first, the usual pro-life
and pro-choice positions were expressed. These kinds of "binary"
positions -- either "this" or "that" -- are the ones we are all
familiar with. Usually the conversation starts and stops there.
Once all the either / or positions had been expressed and were up on
the board, Jim asked for some other possibilities. There was silence
for a period of time, as the group began looking at the unfamiliar
territory "outside the box." The group had to look beyond "abortion"
-- the symptom -- to get to something deeper. At the end of 30
minutes, despite coming in with different positions regarding
abortion, the group came to an agreement on how to define the problem:
"How can we achieve a society where all children are conceived and
born into families that want and love them?"
"This kind of consensus," Rough writes, "a pulling together of what
everyone thinks, can always be reached."
However, in order to really understand the power of this process and
how it can transform politics in America and everywhere else, let's
look at a few other distinctions. Let's begin with the universal
conclusion that every one of Jim's groups comes to. Ready? Every group
realizes that the system is the problem. This is not a sloughing off
of responsibility but rather acknowledging that in the absence of a
coherent "voice of we the people," a heartless, soulless, self-
perpetuating system persists.
As Donella Meadows wrote in an article entitled The Industrial System
Isn't Intended to Bring Out the Best in People, "Every day decent
people clear cut forests, fish the oceans bare, spray toxins, bribe
politicians, overcharge the government, take risks with the health of
their workers or neighbors or customers, cheapen their products, pay
people less than a living wage for a day's work and fire their
friends. 'If I don't do it, my competitor will,' they say regretfully,
and they're right."
From Republic to 'Mockracy
In order to understand how America has ended up here, we have to go
back to the intentions of America's founding fathers. In this area
too, Jim Rough offers us clarifying and edifying distinctions. America
was founded on the radical notion that a government serves the people,
not the other way around. In a revolutionary departure from even the
most enlightened regimes in Europe, the Declaration of Independence
declared us sovereign citizens, not the subjects of a king.
However, the new government that had to encompass the wishes of
conservatives like Alexander Hamilton and radical freethinkers like
Thomas Jefferson, stopped short of giving power to the people. Instead
of a "democracy," they gave us a "republic." The distinction can be
found in taking these words back to their Greek and Latin roots
respectively. Democracy comes from the Greek "demos" ("the people")
and "kratia" ("power"). Republic comes from the Latin "res" ("thing")
"publica" ("of the people"). The distinction is subtle yet profound.
In a democracy, the power of the people rules. In a republic, the
people empower a "thing" to rule them.
In designing a republic, America's founders took a huge step away from
arbitrary topdown rule. However, as we find ourselves at the effect of
a system everyone agrees is unworkable, it may be time to evolve the
conversation one step further. Again, Jim Rough offers some simple and
clarifying distinctions: the triangle, the box and the circle.
The Shape of Politics to Come
Rough claims that throughout evolving history, post-indigenous humans
have had three forms of governance. First there is the topdown rule of
kings and individual rulers, represented by the triangle (or pyramid,
if you look at it multi-dimensionally). This is the type of rule that
was overthrown by the American Revolution. In its place, our founders
gave us a "box." This box is the rule of laws and agreements put in
place to replace the arbitrary rule of a topdown hierarchy. This "box"
of rules, the Constitution and the rule of law, is the "thing of the
people" that we designed as our government.
But it is still a "thing." And while it offered vast improvement over
monarchy and allowed what Charles Walters calls "people's capitalism"
to thrive, it has no inherent moral authority. It is a machine, a
thing. Like any machine, it can be used in any way by anyone in the
driver's seat. Over two centuries of time, "we the people" have gotten
further and further away from the actual driver's seat. This "thing"
of the people is now ruled by "self-interested self-interests" but in
a more important way, the machine is being ruled by itself. That's why
things so feel out of control, why the intrinsic moral values of 95%
of Americans have been overridden by the values of the 5% who are
sociopaths. 220 years ago when our system was designed, the fear was
"mob rule." Today we must confront the reality of "mobster rule."
And that brings us to the third shape that might help America "shape
up" and once again stand as an inspiring role model to the world. That
shape is the circle. Interestingly, indigenous people understood the
circle. In the aforementioned book, The Tao of Democracy, Tom Atlee
quotes Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga
Iroquois. Describing their tribal council, where everyone sat in a
circle, Lyons says, "We meet and just keep talking until there's
nothing left but the obvious truth."
The next evolutionary form Jim Rough proposes is the circle of a
Citizen's Wisdom Council. It is a reprise of indigenous wisdom applied
in the most modern of ways, and it represents a step into political
"adulthood," and not a moment too soon. The triangle, says Rough,
represents a "dependent" form. In this form, we depend on a leader the
way that children depend on parents to provide for their needs and
impose order and discipline. The box represents "independence." In a
way similar to adolescents breaking loose to explore their own power
and resources, our Founding Fathers gave us the wherewithal to be
independent individuals achieving manifest destiny.
Now, in order for our species to survive (not to mention reestablish
decency and civil rule) we must emerge to a new emergent form that
will create "humanifest destiny" -- the circle of interdependence.
Please do not mistake interdependence for co-dependence.
Interdependence means coequal independent individuals recognizing that
self-interest and mutual interest must now be one and the same. From
political children, to political adolescents, to political adults,
that is the only way -- the only way -- things will change for the
better.
To implement this next level of functionality, Jim Rough has proposed
an Amendment to the Constitution, the Citizens Amendment that would
establish a Wisdom Council composed of two dozen randomly-chosen
citizens from the pool of registered voters. The group would be
random, not representative. Here is the distinction: Instead of trying
to represent a particular demographic, the random selection would be
-- random. The wisdom in that is that each individual represents only
their own opinion, not some class or group. Each year, he suggests,
some ten thousand individuals would be chosen at random as potential
participants. Those who reply and express a willingness to participate
will provide the pool the final twenty-four are chosen from.
This group would be convened just once -- for a weekend or a couple of
weeks -- and have no authority except as one-time representatives of
the voice of "we the people." At the end of the period of time, they
return to "civilian life." The next year, a new group would be
convened in the same way. The final selections would be made known
just a very short time before the council is to convene, to prevent
the media from turning participants into "special people." Each
council would decide which issue or issues it would address.
The council would have no coercive authority, only the resonant
authority of a "voice" of we the people. They can make
recommendations, but not legislation. Rough suggests a formal
presentation to Congress, to the President, and to the people of
America. He even suggests televising their ongoing conversations and
deliberations. The council would be run on the principles of Dynamic
Facilitation, which Rough calls Choice-Creation: "nonjudgmental, heart
felt, energy-driven creative thinking process in which people seek to
invent new options that work for everyone. Instead of negotiating
agreement on particular points or discussing ideas back and forth,
people seek breakthroughs everyone can support."
There are many more nuances and details to the Citizens Amendment.
This is just a rough idea of Rough's ideas. For now, let's stop for a
moment to consider the implications:
1. The reason why we have a runaway system that has run away with our
liberties and commonwealth in spite of our best intentions, is that
the voice of the people has been missing.
2. The Declaration of Independence -- the literal founding document of
the entire American experiment -- makes the people the ultimate
authority, and the government a servant of the people. In
acknowledging the missing voice, and instituting a public, official
means of cultivating and broadcasting this voice, we have the missing
moral authority to fill what is now a moral vacuum.
3. The current political system, which "lives" on partisan conflict
has disempowered the American people. Think of it this way. While well-
meaning people on either side of the red-blue divide have been arguing
whether it's "wronger" to kill the unborn or the born, the powers who
know how to manipulate the power have helped themselves to a heaping
helping of our commonwealth.
4. We would still have our "inside the box" government where laws are
made and enforced, and elections take place. However, the box -- the
thing of the people -- would exist inside the circle of "we the
people." Because this voice would necessarily rise above the
positional, it would give a new directive towards breakthrough not
blame. The voice would be the voice of collective intention, invested
in the solution and not the problem.
The Next Step
Like everything else, before anything can be built there must be the
contextual container. The container is this: We the people are now
initiating the evolutionary step that will grow our system of
government to the next level and stand as an example for the rest of
the world to "steal." It is a step to empower a coherent field of
dreams to overgrow the field of nightmares we seem to be playing in
now. It is a step to awaken the heart and soul of America, and to add
to that awakened heart and soul a resonant voice -- the voice of we
the people.
It's a voice that has been drowned out by the power of too much power,
and stifled by the very forces we have entrusted to care for our
"thing of the people." Our representatives -- thanks to a system where
the rule of gold has stepped into the vacuum where the Golden Rule
used to be -- have been bought off, and have sold us out. The "news
media" we pay our good money to watch, listen to and read tells us we
are stupid and sells us lies.
We must face the situation we face squarely in the face. Denial is a
luxury we can no longer afford. We have exactly the government we have
"earned" by everything we have done or not done. Our doings and our
non-doings have nearly been our undoing. But that is what this
awakening is all about. We must release blame, and accept
responsibility. The issue isn't so much about impeaching George Bush
and Dick Cheney as it is about impeaching the entire impeachable
system. Bush and Cheney are merely the symptoms of what has been
inevitably cooking since we the people elected to go along with the
ruling class's "don't ask, don't tell" policy -- we promise not to ask
what they are doing in our name, and they promise not to tell us.
Here is something that bears repeating again and again because it
holds the power to awaken us from our trance of disempowerment. The
Declaration of Independence tells us that the voice of we the people
is the final voice, and it speaks louder and is stronger than any
delegated authority whether President, Congress or Judge. This is not
the voice of "my interests vs. yours," but the higher voice that can
be accessed through a process like Dynamic Facilitation. We have lost
that voice, but we are beginning to find it. And if we lose it again,
all we have to do is go back to the Declaration to remind us:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted
among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive
of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish
it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such
principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
There it is. The government is established to insure our collective
safety and happiness, as an instrument of common will -- not to be
used against one another, but for the benefit of all. We the people
are given the final power over any government, just as you might fire
an incompetent servant -- not to mention one who's been stealing you
blind. And the most valuable and precious thing stolen from us? That
would be our voice.
How do we go about giving form to this collective voice? Well, we can
find out more about the Citizens Amendment and offer support and
feedback. I will also be contacting Jim about the prospects of
creating such a Wisdom Council before any amendment is passed. It
won't have the official authority of a council that is legally-
mandated, but we might not have the time to wait. Such an experimental
council, if instituted and successful, could speed the Amendment
along. In any case, this is the beginning of a new conversation that
can lead us out of the bewilderness.

Contact Information
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email: i...@wakeuplaughing.com
web: http://www.wakeuplaughing.com
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