Racism and Open Space

Harrison Owen owenhh at mindspring.com
Fri Apr 21 15:10:19 PDT 2000


At 01:03 PM 4/21/00 -0500, you wrote:

>And just because Open Space came from Africa doesn't mean that it is honoring
>that culture.  Historically, white europeans have made a practice of
>"borrowing" things from other cultures, claiming it and benefitting from it
>without giving anything back to that culture.  I'm not saying that's what's
>happening here.  I don't know... I'm just putting it out there.
**************************************
Some thoughts. I believe it important to make a distinction between Open Space
and Racism in the US (and elsewhere). I have always thought of Open Space (one
way at least) as a sort of a Rorschach (sp?) Test. You know, the funny thing
with ink blots to see if you are crazy. The blots themselves are purely random,
and therefore meaning is totally in the eye of the beholder. What you see is
what is welling up in your consciousness -- for better or worse. In an Open
Space, I think pretty much the same thing happens. There is no content --
except as supplied. Folks come as they are -- and fortunately in most cases,
they leave changed, sometimes profoundly, and for the better.

So Open Space, I think, is pretty much color neutral, race neutral -- just
about anything neutral -- except it is death on control freaks!

As this discussion proceeds, it may be well to remember the 1000's of folks in
India, Asia, Africa, and South America who have all been "in" Open Space to say
nothing of the First nation Folks in the US and Canada. As near as I can tell
(either as participant or facilitator) there is virtually no difference in
response or behavior anywhere in the world. It always seems to work.

For me, Open Space breaks barriers so that we can be fully human with each
other. It is not magic, but it gets the job done. OS creates the conditions of
Peace (with a capital "P") -- not a dreamy sort of indolence, but genuine
conversation and encounter. So it can be, and has been, enormously helpful in
overcoming the agony of division -- whether that be race, tribal, class -- or
professional.

Does racism, tribalism, sectarianism, nationalism -- appear in Open Space? For
sure, because they all come with our common human experience. But of greater
import is that when you open the windows and doors of our lives something
deeper than all of the divisions comes through. Call it what you will -- I
would call it the common Spirit of our Humanity.

So where do we go from here? My guess is that we offer Space to anybody who
cares. And move on when the doors are shut. Who knows, they may open tomorrow.

Harrison
Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, MD 20854
USA
phone 301-469-9269
fax 301-983-9314
website
www.mindspring.com/~owenhh
Open Space Institute websites
www.openspaceworld.org
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