Defining Themes
There is a back ground story for each of the framing ideas presented in The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. A colleague has suggested that these stories may help other understand some of the deeper nuances of these ideas. This page is a start on that project. It names some of the underlying ideas and lists a number of related experiences that helped me understand this particular piece of the larger mosaic. These are mainly notes to myself. It is a work in progress.
Looking Up Stream/Expanding the Frame. Moving upstream during the course of my career. The four levels of program strategy from service deliverty to movement building. The meeting with Vandana as the imputus to look upstream from corporate rule to see the larger picture of Empire. Finding myself ever more at odds with the establishment along the way.
Cultural Awakening: The experience of deep culture shock from being emersed in an Indonesian cultureso different from my own and the outcome of falling in love with Indonesia. Then
Structure - Hierarchy vs the power of self-organizing networks: Doing research with Alex Bavelas at Stanford on group dynamics. Air Force experience at Special Air Warefare center on insurgent networks and learning why it is nearly impossible to defeat an insurgency with conventional military force. Nicaragua family planning experience and learning the power of bottom up problem solving. The John Ickis thesis that structure must follow function in development organizations. The Ford Foundation applications in Asia and how I learned through my AID experience that one bureaucracy cannot debureaucratize another. UNCED, the emergence of Global civil society, and the power of social self-organization. The contribution of Riane Eisler to helping me see it in the larger social, historical context. Discovering The New Biology and life's power for creative adaptation and self-organization. Parallels the social learning process.
Human Potential: Maslow hierarchy, Willis Harman seminar on consciousness. Robert Kegan developmental psychology framework. The Erik Fromm Thesis that people will establish their presence in one way or another.
Cosmology - Creation Story - Religious up bringing. Grandmother. Indonesia return and hearing from a Protestant minister that the problem with Islam is that it is ethical and monotheistic, which makes muslims difficult to convert to Christianity. Discover the story of the deeper nature of reality. The story of writing the Epilogue to When Corporations Rule the World. The need for meaning.
Planning - Blueprint vs. Social Learning. AID experience with blueprint programming. Friedman and the term social learning. The Ford Foundation experience.
Money centered vs. Life centered. Core values. Growth-centered vs. people-centered.
The Power of Expectations. Theory X and Theory Y. Encounter with an accountant who saw only motivation by money (Know they self). Sabaneros and peones: Learning about the power of expectations from the case of the ranch in Costa Rica discussed in Chapter 1 of The Great Turning.. The feminist experience. Made to stick example of the brown eyes and blue eyes (p. 111). The epiphany in Albuquergue that the expertise resides in the group --- our expectation that we need outside experts.
Pushing the limits, but staying within the boundary of acceptance. The story about Getting to the 21st Century and the chapter on sustainable growth.
Blueprint - command and control
Hierarchy<(
Degenerative
Social learn - self-organization
Network <(
Generative
The above themes all come together under domination vs partnership - Empire vs. Earth Community.
This page looks for inspiration on framing the themes to Chris Johnstone's home page.