First version 3/31/09. Updated 1/28/2010
A member of Aiki Extensions asked me what I do out in the world so, after responding briefly, I offered to post this.
Imagine living at the point in the past before the term "martial arts" came into use. You notice that practicing the arts can also build character and good citizenship (relational) skills. Then you notice other people have already noticed this and begun to develop ways of teaching it, going by various names, or just calling it versions of The Stuff I Do. You have the feeling that the various ways would benefit from interaction and cross-pollination. When you suggest this you often run into resistance of various kinds, from simple denial to turf wars, to benevolently pretending you don't exist or are charming in your naiveté.
Change facilitation methods (including methods that extend aiki metaphors beyond the mat) are in their infancy, just beginning to realize they are process arts and relate to each other as equals and collaborators.
It might help to imagine what follows as if it were a conversation between marital artists discussing their disciplines.I just completed a webinar with Harrison Owen (of Open Space) hosted by Steve Cady and the Nexus folks at Bowling Green State Univ. There are several more coming up, each on a different process art. I'm going to attend as many as I can, as I am writing the part of my dissertation that deals directly with the process arts.
If you'd like to participate in the next one or get more info and download slides check out http://tinyurl.com/nexuswebinars
After hearing Owen equate the Open Space approach with Life and declare it The Ultimate Method Which Always Works I had a few thoughts which the moderators chose not to allow until after the recording had been stopped and the webinar had officially ended.
I began to ask the following in the aftermath and then opted instead for the discussion area at http://tinyurl.com/c82dtu
What if our edge, as a field, may be sharpened into focus by honing the following two sides as though they were part of the same tool:Just wondering...The promo for this webinar wonders "Why does this "stuff" work when it shouldn't?" Even the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation frequently refers to what we do as "stuff." Aren't we ready to step into the professional world of business and academia as a discipline with a real name, and identify with and challenge each other as colleagues?
- There is no method that is Best, only one that fits here and now, but there are core principles and best practices, which suggest a co-created ethics, which apply to the entire field of approaches and practices which facilitate behavior based on an increased consciousness of how we do what we do, and develop and deploy tools for changing systems.
- These core principles will not be recognized as describing a whole field of study until that self-organizing field has a name that is non-proprietary (like sociology or psychology) and encourages the emergence of any approach that works best here and now.
Parallel in importance and depth with the liberal arts, more and more facilitators of this "stuff" are being specific about their methodologies but are also realizing that they practice one of many process arts.
While in conversation with Founders of Methods at the beginning of making a field of study it is difficult to make room for this kind of open space. It is difficult to self-organize and use your two feet when an approach claims to be Life and the Ultimate Method. Continuing to call our work "stuff", or insisting our method is the only method is choosing not to organize such that more organized agendas gain power-over that is not helpful.
What if our field really is at least as wide as The Change Handbook suggests on page 14 (below), crossing the development of organizations, psychology, complexity theory, and so much more? How to frame that so we may work together so deeply that individual strengths and weaknesses become clear and methods adopt a bit of epistemological humility - becoming better able to work and grow together? Even more importantly, imagine the impact process arts may have in the making of cultures of peace and collaboration, as soon as we go ahead and identify as colleagues and grow the field as a whole community of understanding.
Brandon WilliamsCraig bdwc.net
or
and In Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest
More:
http://grouppatternlanguage.org
http://ourpla.net/cgi/pikie?ProcessArts
P.S.
After the session was thoroughly over, Steve and I corresponded so he might have the opportunity to read a transcript of his words and correct any misconceptions I might harbor. Here is his response to my concerns about monotheistic thinking in our field:
| The thing that I have learned, as I have made it my passion of the last six or seven years to really study these founders, is that, in order for them to solve a very critical issue they care about in the world, they, in some fantastic way, created something that got a name, got a community of practice around it, and is being used. The very skill set they needed to make it concrete, so that people would be able to hold it and use it, is the same skill set that sometimes holds them back from blending it with others. What I have found is that, for me, personally (and I identify with the Third Generation), I'm very interested in learning about all of them, in understanding that process of how people develop a method, learn a method, blend methods, and come back to inventing new ways. I'm very interested in how to facilitate that - so we all can find ways to do that as well, but more fluidly, allowing things to have their own identity and yet realize the overlaps. |
Labels: processarts
| posted by Unknown @ 1/28/2010 12:44:00 PM
Process Arts are not a method
On Facebook, DeAnna Martin, of Dynamic Facilitation fame (see below for links), asked
how is promulgating a term like "process arts" different than promulgating an approach or method? it sounds like you are experiencing what a lot of method founders experience when they try and articulate their method to others who want to ignore the truth behind it, or want to wrap it into their box of knowing so they can feel comfortable with it's... Read More "place" in their world... just wondering how you'd respond to that? i love the term, by the way...
there are so many ways to organize "processes" and so many layers/lenses through which we apply them... have you been involved with Tree's pattern language work? She's still working on a name for it...
http://www.wisedemocracy.org
http://www.dynamicfacilitation.com
http://blog.tobe.net
I replied:
The best response I have at this point is to suggest levels of practice and a few tentative (personal and limited) definitions:
In my mind, someone in a difficult situation might want a specific and applicable response - a practice that seems likely to work, perhaps based in a larger method. If they learn that specific practice and others to it, they become a practitioner of a method. If they notice there are others working to facilitate the same method, they have colleagues.
Any of these individuals may notice that there are others working with other practices and other methods with different strengths and applications, which also facilitate behavior based on an increased consciousness of how we do what we do, and develop and deploy tools for changing systems.
When a practitioner discovers these core principles in the hands of other practitioners various best practices suggest themselves. This community awareness suggests the need for a co-created ethics (applicable in noticing what kind of culture is being created by a given advertising campaign, for example), which can apply to the entire field of approaches and practices and open a conversation about responsibility, innovation, and behavior. This is where the process arts apply.
The Process Arts idea is methodical, in that it suggests a way, i.e. creating a community of practice. It is a method of organizing by way of a non-proprietary name that aligns this work with the liberal arts and puts the the process arts naturally into education. It is a method of organizing a specific group of facilitators and not an approach to group facilitation, as such, and is thereby able to exist without increasing competition between practitioners. I am a method founder, but not in the case of the process arts, which have a much longer history than can be measured by my lifetime. I just conceived and prosposed the name for the field based on my practice in it with many others.
When I articulate the parts of my particular methods to others, and sometimes feel they may be missing a truth behind it, I usually find, in retrospect, that I have listened insufficiently to their needs or am feeling especially vulnerable on a given day. As far as tidily boxing my methods for consumption, I find that those situations and clients well suited to work in the way I suggest find my basic assumptions credible very quickly. That is how I learned that no method I have ever seen can meet all group and situational needs, and then committed to our field as a whole. My most arduous sales jobs have resulted in the funkiest mismatches in my history.
I'm glad you love the term. I got a bit of that during our conversation at the first Nexus conference. Want to help me/us grow the field beyond the method you know and practice with such expertise?
I have been in Tree Bressen's (http://delicious.com/tag/treebressen) pattern language loop since it began but unable to appear yet in the group as a whole. I'd love that project to consider the pattern language a part of the process arts field, but hope I have learned when to simply make a clear request and not push too hard.
Labels: processarts
| posted by Unknown @ 4/06/2009 12:08:00 PM
Here are the three parts of the question I asked of David Isaacs during the World Cafe webinar today:
- Do you see our field (by which I mean change facilitation methods, or process arts) as being at least as wide as The Change Handbook suggests, crossing the development of organizations, psychology, complexity theory, and so much more?
- If so, how may we frame the field so we may work together to deepen ourunderstanding, clarify individual strengths and weaknesses of methods, and design in a bit of humility - becoming better able to work and grow together?
- How should we help process arts practitioners identify as colleagues and grow the field as a whole in order to impact the making of cultures of peace and collaboration around the world?
I notice fairly frequently that there seems to be a tension between being a method founder/owner and being a colleague, and that this dilemma negatively impacts our field in a way that often prevents us from growing as a discipline and having a broad impact on the world as a whole.
What if we were to define collaboratively and speak publicly of the field as the "process arts" in order to to identify as a discipline and co-create a shared ethics and development community? This phrase/name for the field aligns us with the liberal arts, implies the process arts should be taught to children and adults, and could impact the impact our field was on peace-making and community building.
For further clarification about my proposal, please go to http://bdwc.net and click on "Process Arts" in the left menu.
Please leave feedback and responses/reacions here and on related blogs and websites.
Gratitude,
B
Labels: processarts
| posted by Unknown @ 4/09/2009 02:37:00 PM
I am available to facilitate groups, provide workshops and trainings, and mentor those learning process arts.
The people I admire the most spend time imagining how reality works. They realize that truth is most often paradoxical and even the most concrete or religiously held ideas are also an imaginative experiment -- potentially sublime and inescapably problematic at the same time. What follows is a brief introduction to the terms I have borrowed and invented to use as bookmarks and tools for working with my own notions. These marks are my trade (trade marks), facilitate the services I provide (service marks), and name methods which have stood the test of revision through study and activism. 
indicates a strong "copyleft" with selective rights reserved and available with permission.
Process Arts 
Scientific and Cartesian rationalism attributes all significance to human reason and imagines all else as material split from and subject to the objective mind. By the time of the Industrial Revolution humanity had adopted a mechanical mythology to the multiplication of material product. Psychology arose within this frame, drawing attention away from the what of production and to the how of creativity. Psychological questions notice how you do what you do before during and after what you actually produce. Today psychology is everywhere in the form of a multitude of practices beyond the consulting room which all concern themselves with facilitating how human beings work together. Examples include at least organizational development, mediation, group process practices, psychological and somatic therapies, conflict facilitation and resolution, and the practice of post-modern critique. I imagine these facilitative practices whose product is process as a single discipline - the Process Arts - and hope practitioners will identify as colleagues in order to grow the work into relationship with liberal education from grade school to post graduate studies, form professional associations, and develop an ethics for the field that prioritizes peace through social justice. Please look for process arts across the internet and around the world. My working definition is evolving but the term itself I reserve to the Commons for the use of all.
Association Building Community, Inc.
Practice of the process arts provides tools to shape culture as an artifact. This carries with it tremendous responsibility for what is made in an age where any change can sweep around the globe. ABC is an organization and a modular intentional community created in response to the need for ethical and relationally sustainable facilitation devoted to building living communities of support and understanding - on purpose. We seek to learn within a network pursuing similar intentions with purpose, as though co-creating community culture were an art form, where all voices are heard thoroughly and the connections and disconnections between people are attended with depth and consistency, such that needs are met, wants are respected, and it becomes a pleasure to live together, especially through conflict and difference. ABC umbrellas community projects and its members work together and individually with aligned organizations in need of facilitation.
Culturesmith 
I originated and use the proprietary name "Culturesmith" to refer to the role I play and then share when I facilitate groups. I am open to being asked for permission to share the term by others who do similar work with a commitment to a related ethics. Frederick Buechner wrote, "Your vocation is the place where your heart's deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." It is my desire and vocation to participate in the making of environments the purpose of which is learning the practice of building community. My background in this work is based on hundreds of hours applying various process arts of group facilitation, academic graduate degrees in Mythology and Psychology, and a whole-systems change method I call Associative Inquiry. 
Healing Friction 
is my overall method. This work plays in the paradox that "conflict done well" characterizes living communities where ideas like Peace apply. Our ideas about friction and difference need healing so that the process of conflict is expected to result in cooperation and understanding in the service of Life. This requires practice at a level of dedication similar to physical martial and performing arts and is best engaged with fellow learners. Within Healing Friction, Martial Nonviolence is the theory and practice behind the bodymind Flexibility in Adversity Training (FIAT) I offer based on my experience as an executive, mediator, academic, 4th degree black belt instructor of aikido, and as a survivor of violence and grief.
Guardians of Peace 
Professional community builders training together regularly, practicing peace as conflict done well, are Guardians of Peace. Not purveyors of Security per se, Guardians are process artists practicing Martial Nonviolence in partnership to love the idea that peace is less an absence of conflict than the ongoing work of expecting even the most intractable and violent of experiences to yield deeper connection and move the people involved closer to what they need and want for living together sustainably.
Bluevolution
I lost my beloved fifteen month old little boy to a still unknown ailment on December 12th, 2006. What is most important can die in an instant without warning or explanation. In all that I do, support and authentic guidance of children plays a primary part in memorial tribute to my son.
On the other side of the devotion to community building there is a place where it becomes clear that the endurance to insist on peace in this way leads to an ongoing exposure to loss and grief while engaging both legitimate suffering and the needless violence in daily life. Especially at the cultural level, remaining in the presence of this suffering and of death, without pretending everything is/will be fine, is essential to our survival as a species as we confront the realities of having exhausted resources on which our children will depend.
Extending the metaphor of Blue Fire developed by Thomas Moore to discuss the work of James Hillman, I created the term "bluevolution" to refer to the process of shared legitimate suffering as an activism leading to sustainable community. In order to improve our chances of soul survival, I believe humanity will be required to loose and lose the hope of eternal rescue to which, through mechanistic perfectionism, we have grown accustomed. At the other end of that loss we may expect a new mythology of community that will measure value in terms of balanced relationship and lead to stewardship of wilderness, food, air, and water such that we may both refresh ourselves and wash our dead tribal myths for true burial.
At that ritual burial is where hope may come alive again.
Peace,
Brandon WilliamsCraig
Related Work
Aiki Extensions, Inc.
Aikido is a modern Japanese martial art with a unique voice. From philosophy to application it was and is designed to be an "art of peace," changing the way conflict works rather than accepting the premise of violent confrontation and simplistically becoming as proficient as possible in emerging victorious. Both the principles and practice of aikido posit an insistence on peace, redefined as conflict done well, redefined as dismantling the cycle of violence so that it is very difficult to continue as victim or as oppressor, making way for many other roles and options that do not involve victimization. Aiki Extensions (AE) is the worldwide network and community devoted to extending these principles, these arts of peace, beyond the walls of the schools in which they are taught and into the mainstream of public consciousness and the practice of citizenship. Through 2008, AE contracted with Association Building Community (above) in order for me to create the position of Executive Director in AE and occupy it in order to build AE from ad hoc network into a responsive international community. Though my official position is ended I continue to actively support AE's mission and initiatives around the world.
Association Cultural Movement Education 
ACME, "a new high point in depth", is also known, tongue even further in cheek, as "edgeucation". It proposes an educational reform revitalizing the liberal arts through process arts of systemic learning through dialogue and deliberation. This is a cultural movement already in progress.
While "fast-track" job training and mechanisms of standardized assessment continue to replace the disciplined thinking explicitly developed through liberal education, how shall we keep up with ourselves as a society in need of engaged citizens? How to clarify, track, and shape the associated systems that form our societies? How to find the leading edge of education for ourselves and our children in the process of making cultures that are both beautiful and life-giving?
Labels: bdwc
| posted by Unknown @ 1/06/2000 02:47:00 PM
The Nexus For Change conference has just reached a finish at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. This went out as an email to the Association Building Community list of over 6,000 people.
Iris McGinnis
John Abbe
Brandon WilliamsCraig
A certain "Alice down the rabbit Nexus" feeling pervaded our time in Ohio. We lost three hours across time zones, went to bed late and rose early to be a part of the teams dealing with Logistics, Photography, and IT. By turns, Nexus was frightening, exciting, exhausting, invigorating, disappointing, and wonderfully exceeded both our expectations.
Nexusians provided several suppliants with financial help in order to work toward diversity, as well as giving gifts of friendship and collaborative inspiration. We received round trip airfare and a place to stay so that we might participate, and paid for reduced registration costs and related expenses from matching money raised within the ABC community. We feel profoundly grateful, in particular, for Leon Regelson and Marilyn Madsen within ABC, Bill Adams of Maxcomm, Peggy Holman and Steve Cady, Joe Matthews, Cheryl Honey (Nexus Share and Care) of Community Weaving and the Family Support Network, and the M.O.D. students from BGSU who created the morning-after Ancient Wisdom Circle.
The event itself was a fundamental gathering, for the first time on this scale, of whole systems changers, researchers and authors, organizational development professionals, community builders/weavers, academics, human systems innovators, playback theater and graphic artists, and a multitude of other corporate managers, consultants, and facilitators - all apparently desiring open circles to struggle fruitfully with change-work and make a positive difference in the world. Hopefully this kind of gathering will continue and deepen, find its way around the nation to a different area each year, and reach beyond its currently limited scope to consciously support the face-to-face building of communities of understanding in specific locales - beyond the intense days of cross-pollination.
The opening invocation for the Nexus was a "Samoan Circle" in which each of five chairs was labeled with a role: Jean Bartunek ( professor of Organization Studies at Boston College and former president of the Academy of Management) began in the Scholar chair, Henri Lipmanowicz ( retired CEO of Merck subcontinental, and co-founder of the Plexus Institute) began in the Leader chair, and Carolyn Lukensmeyer (creator" of AmericaSpeak's 21st Century Town Meeting) began in the Practitioner chair. Peggy Holman offered the following words to introduce my presence in the Activist's chair: " Brandon WilliamsCraig is of the new breed of activists, who, rather than advocating for or against something, are process activists – bringing people with diverse perspectives together so that wise answers emerge." Most gratifying of all was the briefly empty " Wild Card" chair for the rarely heard voices the future/the artist/the natural world/the unknown/the child, etc. The opening was both hopeful and problematic and, in so being, a fine place to start as a metaphor for the whole endeavor.
Iris met many wonderful people at the various formal and informal conversation 'cafes', attended numerous workshops, and hopes to write about them later on her blog. Brandon convened two Open Space sessions entitled, respectively:
- Process Arts: culture-making, Healing Friction, and guardianship of peace
- Grief Before Beginnings: essential depths without which changes are unsustainable
and was happy to be interviewed about the Process Arts by Michael Gaciri.
We wish we had understood, ahead of time, the full scope of the collaborative and emergent Nexus design process, so we might have sent a clear invitation, so you might have watched the invocation process, since the invocation circle was streamed internationally and now is part of growing archive on the web. Everyone involved would have benefited from your feedback and encouragement and we would like to invite you to review the Nexus material on the web, to consider attending next year, contact us with council, suggestions, issues to raise, etc. Please send any thoughts, desires, inspirations and let's continue our conversations into making the next event sparkle even more brightly than the first.
With Nexus behind and before us, the nationwide walkabout to grieve what is past and build the Guardians of Peace begins soon. Iris may also wander, grieve Aidan, and (if financially manageable) go to conferences to continue connecting with other process artists. The better part of a decade has passed in building our small ABCommunity slowly and our core desire now is to grow in size and depth, share the fruits of our modest learning, and be changed by new people. We'd like to send more regular reports and invitations.
Your creative and financial contributions (see below) will help take this work further into the world and empower more folks participating in this culture shift toward peace (conflict done well). If this interests you and you have the ability please contribute what you can to make it possible to take our work out in the world. While attending conferences can be very rewarding it is also financially and physically exhausting. Although this one was largely covered by gifts of various sizes, the overall cost to others to get us there was about $1,500. In the near future we'd like to offer community building circles, classes for adults and children, and raise funds for even more folks to participate in training and intense gatherings like Nexus For Change. Let us know if you are in the San Francisco Bay Area and are interested in getting together on a regular basis to learn and practice Process Arts. We would love to expand our face-to-face community. Also let us know where you are outside the Bay Area so we can connect when we are in your area, with you and with others with a will to practice and learn from each other. We are profoundly grateful for our time out in larger circles this year and look forward with particular energy toward being together during the Next Us For Change. Particular thanks to Peggy Holman and Steve Cady - to Peggy for revealing herself in the Ancient Wisdom Circle created with students on the morning after as being a "nexustentialist," and to both for their warm welcome and desire to collaborate - making local ripples swell into waves of global change.
We hope to work more with you on the questions this work inspires and the responses and learning we all carry. For us, the core framing question emerged in Peggy's words from the Day-After Circle and we deeply desire to share its unfolding with you and the wisdom you represent. The core question underlying this entire field seems to be: " In Service to Whom?"
Warmly,
Brandon and Iris
from Association Building Community a.k.a. Beamish Process Arts
A list of links mentioned above:
- The largest cache of beautiful photos including people, graphics, charts, etc. http://www.flickr.com/groups
/nexusforchange/pool/ - for Session notes mentioned above go to http://www.nexusforchange.org and select "Conference Central" and then "Session Notes Library"
- for Video go to http://www.nexusforchange.org and select "Conference Central" and then "Media Streams"
- Iris' blog is http://mythinginaction.blogspot
.com/ - John Abbe's blog http://ourpla.net/cgi/pikie
?ObBlog
- Brandon's blog is behind http://bdwc.net. Search the word "Nexus" or click on "Recent Blog"
- Process Arts interview http://www.nexusforchange.org
/index.php3?object_id=GME _Vault&function=download&item =8c1b83db43b595d09ce2082f333a59 cf - Walkabout (the Little Fire Burns) http://abcglobal.net/LFF.html
- Guardians of Peace project http://abcglobal.net/GPx.html
- Please donate via http://www.justgive.org/giving
/donate.jsp?charityId=6530 - If you are having trouble seeing this, it is reproduced with links intact at http://docs.google.com/Doc?id
=dhrh8swg_6fkjmgq or http://abcglobal.blogspot.com/2004/06/potential-ways-of -renamingvisioning.html
As always, all feedback is very welcome – the chewier the better.
The organization name will read "Beamish Process Arts" - which was the founding name of Association Building Community.
Please make your desire clear on the Just Give form
Membership (whatever appropriate offering you would provide to support any vital organism growing these changes)
Program: Guardians Of Peace (Process Arts Community for Training)
Program: Little Fire Burning (walkabout and national outreach and teaching)
Program: Training Scholarships (to help develop process artists)
Administration (to further the survival of our community infrastructure)
If you would prefer to write a check, please write your purpose in the memo line and post it to ABCGlobal, 181 Farrelly Dr., San Leandro CA, 94577.
Toll Free (866) 236-0346
administration at abcglobal dot net
Labels: ABC, Nexus2007, processarts
| posted by Unknown @ 3/28/2007 11:23:00 AM
I am a professional facilitator and teacher, and co-founder of Association Building Community. In the 90's I coined and we developed the term " Process Arts" now used widely by Peggy Holman, Tom Devane, Steven Cady, (see this entry for the text from their The Change Handbook), John Abbe, and several others in Organizational Development, psychology, and social justice fields, to refer to the participatory practices which build cultures of change able to work with and through conflict.
Process Arts relate to the kind of education that is essential for democracy and are so named to invoke and parallel the Liberal Arts, as the curriculum of schools around the world already includes practices like conflict resolution and mediation. As an approach to full participation, Process Arts have also proven quite useful in bridging the distance between citizens and representatives, as well as "progressive" and "conservative" groups eager to discuss and have a hand in social changes already in progress.
I have focused on building and articulating my contribution to this work for the past several years, working within our community and Council, obtaining an (almost finished) Ph.D., and contributing to or initiating online and face-to-face projects which are in the process of maturing.
My wife, Lisa, and I lost our 15 month old son, Aidan, for no reason that anyone can tell us, just before Christmas 2006. We left our apartment and employment to pull up stakes and wander the nation for several months so that our fundamental sense of homelessness might find a place to become more authentic and less something to be repressed. As often happens in transitions of this scope our financial situation became rather tight and the need to connect and continue working is stronger than ever.
I hope you will invite me to visit you and hear about your work. I'd also be happy to:
- facilitate conflicts so that all needs are met and several wants are satisfied,
- demonstrate how Aikido applies to everyday conflicts,
- introduce improvisational techniques for expanding creative responses to difficult situations
- re-energize meetings and work-sessions
- initiate mythological culture-study specifically for your group's growth,
- provide in-service training,
- present any of these ideas publicly or consult privately, and
- carefully consider your needs and those of the people in your sphere of influence.
I have thousands of hours in group process, hundreds of those as a mediator or facilitator, and would be more than happy to offer process options, help plan, or be available for back-up of whatever kind is needed. Humor is a prominent feature in my offerings and deep echoes of grief and re-creation often surface and find a place to rest or move while the process continues.
I also work with large groups to create conferences and seminars. ABC has a Saving Sounds project in partnership with Conference Recording Service, collecting audio and visual records of the Process Arts as they develop, so I record conferences for part of my living. I manage teams of conference recording professionals and would be happy to connect you with CRS or lend a hand in any capacity to make an event run more smoothly. I have been planning, directing, and providing security for events and presenting in public for over thirty years, and would also be happy to provide event coordination assistance as part of your existing team.
Left entirely to my own devices I like to hang a sign somewhere everyone can see that says something like "dilemmas, disagreements, and differences welcome here" and just see who joins in. I'm ready to plant the seeds, or offer water or warmth to grow your ongoing, auto-critical practice so that daily work becomes a pleasure and post-event or crisis debriefs become more rich in the authentic details necessary to improve for next time. Ask me how!
public at bdwc dot net
Toll Free (866) 236-0346 voice mail and fax
Direct to my PC (510) 96-bdwc1 (510) 962-3921
| posted by Unknown @ 2/07/2002 08:02:00 PM
Training in any martial art can be character building, teach one to deal more calmly with fear, and increase the chances that conflicts will be averted or end up less violently than in the hands of somebody who panics and either runs or escalates without thinking. Extending this beyond physical conflict, the principles shared by martial training and authentic relationship or good citizenship have been explored around the world through time, from ancient empires to contemporary nation-states. Believe it or not, this relationship is not obvious to everyone and needs to be made explicit in order to increase the number of people ready and able to work through conflict toward a best outcome for everyone involved, in short, to make peace.
Though martial arts can increase the capacity for peace-making they can also increase the tendency to respond with casual aggression to any and all conflict. They can also build in the habit of treating all conflict as a simple win-lose equation where rapid victory at any cost is the most highly valued approach. This depends on how a martial art is taught and practiced.
Making the peace-building qualities of martial training "explicit," in this case, means a series of clear (martial) choices -- hours, dollars, and attention must be devoted to the teachers, students, and practitioners who explicitly teach, learn, and practice even the most dynamic and physical of arts as though the highest value of the training involves changing the rules of conflict as a whole so that even the most difficult differences are an opportunity to learn while insisting that nobody loses their soul, heart, or life in the process. This defeats the cycle of violence in a way that uncomplicated Victory and Defeat cannot. The martial arts do this with physical conflict, with subtle undertones reaching into all areas of life as arts do, while the process arts facilitate this rule-changing processing of conflict while differences in groups are not actively being expressed as physical violence.
If you value the peace-building qualities of the arts of conflict, then make this explicit. Become an active member of Aiki Extensions, get involved with Nonviolent Communications, Processwork, or Association Building Community. If you are looking for a dojo, ask out loud if the teaching is explicitly oriented toward peace-making and choose to support the teachers who not only know what this means but can clearly demonstrate their process arts skills off the mat. Celebrate them with posts to your blog, Twitter, and Facebook accounts and review them on Google Maps, Yelp, and other sites.
Make the connection explicit between your thirst for peace and honest conflict work. Ask for it. Talk it up. Use whatever means are at your disposal. Today. Please.
Labels: aiki, aikiextensions, conflict, processarts
| posted by Unknown @ 11/11/2009 01:00:00 PM
The phrase "process arts" refers to the facilitative disciplines like diplomacy, mediation, activism and cultural criticism, community building, consultation, management (organizational development), psychotherapy, etc. that attend the how of friction, creativity, and power at least as much as the what of production and making ideas concrete.
As long as there have been teachers, facilitators, and conversations about virtue there have been clear and compelling appeals to use power for the common good. The field of new vocations we now call "process arts" carries an unshakable obligation, especially in this era of a rising new myth of a worldwide communitarian movement, to access group power to practice peace so that everyone involved has support in meeting their basic needs and at least a chance to blossom fully.
The extension of the process arts into arts of peace, or peace practices, used to be a bit more buried in literal ideas of peace defined as "not in conflict" rather than "working well through conflict", but they have always suggested an education in behaviors that result in being peaceful. They have to be practiced, learned and passed on for peace to be real.
Imagine if our soldiers had an accepted and universally applied "program [that] includes every phase of education, from vocational training to graduate courses in universities" in how to practice peace with as much intensity and dedication as we train our children to destroy each other.
The Arts of Peace
On the rue d Ayen in bedraggled St. Germain, France, stands a bright, pink, three-story schoolhouse. In its library are $25,000 worth of books. Its music room has an electric phonograph and a big collection of classical records. Its basement hums with lathes and its upper floors are alive with the clatter of typewriters and sewing machines. Last week the school awarded its first graduation, certificates—to WACs, for their proficiency in beauty culture.
The St. Germain school is one of the first G.I. schools to be set up under the Army's mammoth post-V-E education program for servicemen & women temporarily stranded in Europe (TIME, Oct. 16). To keep everybody busy, the program includes every phase of education, from vocational training to graduate courses in universities like Cambridge and the Sorbonne. But unit command schools (established by battalions) like St. Germain's form by far the biggest part of the program. By August 1 there will be one such school for every 1,000 soldiers. Every soldier who is not assigned to urgent duty will be required to attend for two hours a day (unless he prefers drill and supervised athletics) until there is enough shipping space to bring him home.
Other phases of the Army education program are now getting under way. British universities are enrolling their first small batches of G.I.s, will soon take many more.
Find this article at: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,797608,00.html
Labels: peace, processarts
| posted by Unknown @ 7/25/2001 12:11:00 PM
Our van was stolen, emptied of it's most valuable contents and then recovered in time for me to pass too close to an AC Transit Bus parked in the only lane of traffic for repairs, and touch its mirror with mine such that my passenger side window exploded. Which cost $250 to replace. And the bus was apparently damaged. And a fellow claimed he got glass in his eye even though he was on the other side of the van and considerably lower down and the reporting officer was "skeptical". My passport request in April resulted in a counter-request while we were on the road for extensive additional information which was packed in storage at home so, when we got home, my packet of info crossed their "never mind - you'll have to pay $150 and start again" letter in the post. I have airline tickets for next Monday October 29th to work in Canada. The bureaucracy and paperwork cascade following all this has made other activities than working and lurching around catching up almost impossible. How are you?"
As yet another hearer became more and more horrified with this brief version of the last several months, mumbled sympathetic noises and went away shoulders slumped, I reflected that this process didn't seem to be serving anyone. I've been operating under the mistaken assumption that speaking of suffering was in almost all cases a good idea. As the litany gets longer and longer it would seem like a comic set-up if it were happening within the confines of a shaggy dog story, sit-com, or stand-up act. A concrete person saying these things is mostly an assault on the soft places in thehuman heart. Talking has probably reached the limit of its usefulness. I'm tired of most folks I know wincing in anticipation of another addition to the list whenever they see me coming. So no more.
I asked my father for specific advice, a practice more or less unheard of and, in all his spiritual, therapeutic, and academic wanderings, I wondered, what had he learned of sparking life-shifts when some pattern had passed beyond being profoundly burdensome. He suggested (paraphrased) that I do everything in my power to minimize the things I can control as soon as possible and simplify parts of my life wherever possible in order to have more bandwidth to deal with sudden attacks from without. Seems a good idea. A significant part of me is beginning to disavow my responsibility in this cascade, which is against my religion. The question is not do I have influence here, but which parts of this can be brought under beneficent influence.
So I got my hair cut. Time for a costume change, hacking off what remains of my history (you are what you eat > hair is extruded protein > long hair is a metaphorical and literal record of whatever has gone before). I didn't lop off my hair during Aidan's Funeral and send it to be burned with his body just because he spent so much time riding me and sleeping with his hands in it. Every meal and nap and body transition we shared was in that hair and I want to hang on to any part of him I can for as long as I can. However, if this is in any way connected to my current dilemmas, and I'm not sure about it either way, I'm willing to experiment with altering parts of my experiential system. It will also probably help me get hired. In San Francisco I got flirted with by members of both genders, nobody got out of my way as I walked down the street, and I seem to have suddenly become more approachable. Fascinating.
I highly recommend Joyce Hair Design (http://www.yelp.com/biz/S63wjabcaTsp_Fzo8xwOnQ) There is a clear conflict of interest in writing a recommendation for a "secret among friends." Granted the desire to promote a sterling businesswoman trumps this conflict, but the dilemma persists, so please tell all your friends to go but with the caveat that it mustn't be during the same shift I am trying to find parking and get my extruded protein managed.Joyce has that rare combination of top scores in each of the qualities I consider that can generate a highest rating. Capacity (relational, technical, and artistic), Accessibility (excellent location that presents no barriers to a good experience), and price ($18 + tip). Above all else, it is immediately evident that her primary desire and capacity is to make your head, the focus of the way humans initially perceive and remember each other, attractive. She really cares how you look, not just because it makes her look good and brings in recommendations but because it makes her happy. I asked Eric Winters where he got his excellent cut and he happened to have one of her cards on him. Now I do as well. THE REAL DEAL.
In other news...
Association Building Community's Special Purpose
do i do this?
was actually crying to think i spent so much time traveling to it....in
NYC. really nice people, nice speaker, but woe woe woe. does every one
have to try and reinvent the wheel, or at least think that they are
onto a New Idea?
ok ok ok.
When I tell people stories about ABC I often mention that we are oldish. I am the only member of our group under fifty-five and the others have been a part of either the upper management corporate world or peace and community activism since before The 60s in Berkeley were the 60s. There is a strong refrain in our history and dialogue that emerges from a history of disappointment with perfectly sound efforts to make peace or some related meaningful difference undermined by poor process despite existing expertise and stated commitments otherwise, by friction that could have led to self discovery and innovation but led instead to dissolution and even betrayal of partners and purpose.
There is something essential in a council of elders who have Been There and won't easily tolerate repetitions of those dilemmas, if we can gather young energy as well dedicated to building community on purpose and if we can still move forward through our fears that we won't have enough time and listening and clear enough communication to be faithful to our callings This Time.
When I go to progressive conferences to record them I study the form, content, and participants for traces of the developing Process Arts underlying our emerging world myth. A part of me despairs of getting paid for my real gift but wants to offer it anyway - an independent (third party), ongoing, facilitated, autocritical process that is a sophisticated debrief, inviting all voices to be heard before, during, and after. There are so many important developments missed or misunderstood which could be captured and understood if there were Process Arts in play throughout these "progressive" events. Otherwise "alternative" luminaries are satisfied with their own process savvy but don't identify the practice of the Process Arts as a whole as a value, therefore it sneaks in "by the way" in the same way that community is simply expected to happen when people get together, even when those involved know from experience it must be built on purpose at the cultural level. Still there is "no time for process" they've got to "focus on targets and goals"...and other corporatisms that keep all voices from coming forth and keep us repeating the same old shit woe woe woe.
It is the same dilemma John Abbe articulated so well while addressing the issue of the use of technology during the Nexus for Change events, thus far held once in Bowling Green, OH.
| I agree with what Gabriel said, "Technology must serve the purpose of the event," *and* want to call our attention to the fact that some of what is being offered here is not simply technology, but processes (eg wiki) with their own history and philosophy, every bit as deep and powerful as, say, Open Space. So one could just as well say, "Open Space must serve the purpose of the event." This points to how we might modify pure Open Space - or wiki - to serve the event, and to the idea that we choose some processes because of the values they embody, and we may want to stick with them even if (maybe even because of how) they stimulate discomfort, and may involve some learning for conference participants. |
One may as well say "the event must serve" or "processes must serve the event" at which point you run the risk of making a statement so general that it becomes a platitude. Time for process (deep listening/dialogue/deliberation/etc), as an art, for its own sake is a cultural value cultivated in the presence of the inescapable. There will be a way that we are doing things. Process Arts simply make structure, method, and critique as conscious as can be arranged. Process time is not an option. It is not a question of if there will be structural choices but of how they will be made - habit, design, etc. Nexus is already using technology, so it is not an if proposition. The question is how to do that so that it serves best and sparkles most beautifully.
The question is ever: how to prepare and then authentically process difference and parallels such that "progress" doesn't simply rehearse the same tired and ever present power dynamics? I think it has to do with Elder voices, but in the literal older folk and inside the younger ones of us who have suffered set-backs and loss and have learned a bit of how to grieve. It is from that place that conflict may be practiced and processed with integrity and centered dynamism.
Up(&)coming
Labels: ABC, Aidan, daily, grief
| posted by Unknown @ 10/22/2007 10:31:00 PM
