Whatever happens ....

[Alan Stewart]

Here is a perspective on this issue that you may find adds to the other lively contributions on this core topic.


Several years ago I was given a gift which has had a profound influence on my thinking, professional practice and life.

This is that 'Intelligence is a property of conversation.' 

For diverse reasons I prefer to use the notion of conversing. In other words, when people converse, intelligence emerges
automatically.  

This 'truism' IMO came via Kathleen Forsythe, Canadian poet and current vice president of the American Society for Cybernetics. 
Kathleen is a former student and friend of the late British cybernetician, Gordon Pask. It was Gordon who made this seminal observation, 
which is integral to his 'Conversation Theory.'

Intelligence, I suggest to you, refers to _process_ ie participants behave differently from how they do in everyday life (some
offspring excepted :-) ). Their demeanor can be observed to be more questioning, playful, curious, courageous, risk taking; in effect
open to possibilities in the moment from listening to and sharing voices of lived experiencing.

By intelligence, then, I do not refer to outcomes, even though the likelihood of something novel and creative emerging is very
high. My take is that, for example, questioning is the wellspring of new knowledge which in turn can give rise to unanticipated
solutions. I have a brief letter about this in the forthcoming Feb 2001 issue of FAST COMPANY www.fastcompany.com/

Conditions in which people converse? In my experiencing, those cocreated through invoking the principles of OST and L2F together with it
being explicit among participants that we are here to treat each other well, we're in this together and this gathering will only happen once.

For amplification of this you may wish to see my piece: 'Conversation as the Energiser of New Ways of Being and New Ways of Doing.' 
In: Reworking Tomorrow. The Slim Book. 1998. www.reworkingtomorrow.org/conversations/slim_book.html#energiser

Does it make sense to you that it is the demeanor of participants which opens the possibility of creative outcomes when people gather to converse 
on complex matters?  And does it resonate with you that the intelligence manifest in Open Space Technology gatherings is the only thing that could have?  

Alan Stewart
Adelaide

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