A right to treat each other well (long yet worth a peruse :-) )

[Alan Stewart]

Dear Friends

                                        We have a right to treat each other
well.

A right, not an obligation.

This idea and its underpinnings stems from my longstanding observing
of what happens in open space, formally constituted or not.

In space cocreated and underpinned by the principles and law we OS
facilitators know and use from the depth of our being.

The trigger to post it to you came from a comment about "trying to see the
larger
pattern and make sense and meaning out of what has occurred on 9.11."

For somewhere in the great mystery of human life there must be something
beyond everyday 'stuff' of power, control and status. Something which
manifests when people feel secure to express their authentic selves through
interacting respectfully with others.

I think it was Charles Handy who wrote of finding a purpose through having a
vision of something 'otherworldly, something beyond ourselves.' Of creating
communities
in which people can be persons - 'Without a respect for a superpersonal
moral order,
we will not be able to create the social structures in which a person can
truly be a person.'

And so I share with you that perhaps such a 'beyond ourselves' is expressed
in this truism:

                        Whenever we treat each other well, good things
happen.

It follows that we have a right to do this!

Could this idea be an anchor with which to hold fast onto what is dear to us
in these troubled times? A 'little verbal reminder to guide and orient us in
moments of doubt.'

To help each of us to contribute to the emergence of a world in which people
feel so
respected and included that they have no need to vent violence on anyone.

Pie in the sky? And yet, and yet ..

How vast are the resources and brain power not directed to creating ways of
living in
harmony? How much further we as a species could have progressed along these
lines if
such resources and human creativity were oriented to this end? How
impoverished are we
all through this not happening?

What if we _demanded_, as the community and caretakers of a tiny, precious,
fragile planet, the
right to treat each other with respect ..

A right to make contact, to listen with attention; to act thoughtfully,
generously and do someone a good turn.

I invite you to elaborate the idea to find for yourself how practically
useful it can be. (It may be that some
of the underpinnings of its posting resonate with you too).

And to share your observations and findings if you so wish.

An incisive perspective of the idea may be gained from this comment in a
letter in June of this year from my friend
Pille Bunnell, President of the American Society for Cybernetics:

".I heard again in many new contexts your statement that nice things happen
when we are good to
each other. As a charm to produce a desired result, it does not operate. As
an abstraction of what takes
place it is accurate. As a little verbal reminder of the latter, one which
guides and orients us in moments
of doubt, it is beautiful. And when nice things happen, we can always find
good human relations behind
them, and so we are once again encouraged by the quality of humanness, and
how we love to be this
species, Homo sapiens amans."

How's that for a 'beaut' (Aussie for wonderbar!) observation??

Another key prompt was an item brought recently to my attention by my friend
Marie Lamb through a
conversation we had had long before the events of 9.11.

"... In the less than a month that I was with the two boys, I had learned
again what I had already
understood in my first days with the Partisans -

_that any human being anywhere will blossom into a hundred unexpected
talents and capacities simply by
being given the opportunity to use them." _ (my emphasis)

>From Doris Lessing. "Briefing for a Descent into Hell'  p215.

This is an accurate statement, in my knowing, for I have seen evidence of it
many times. I lived for 34
years in Africa and know people who in one generation had come from remote
villages with no running
water or electricity to doing a PhD in nuclear physics at Stanford
University.

My wife Carmen and I sing in a choir of which most members are people with
severe intellectual disabilities.
To see these people blossom from being socially inept to being confident to
travel recently to Vancouver to
perform in a great international festival and to participate in the
development of an opera for the forthcoming
Adelaide Festival 2002 is a gift beyond price to experience.

I submit that Lessing's statement about 'being given the opportunity'
carries with it the seeds of how to
respond to recent tragic events and to realize  the gift these present to
everyone to do things differently.

To appreciate why this may be so I refer you to another seminal comment,
made by Vaclav Havel prior
to his being elected president of the Czech Republic.

Havel wrote this in his letters to his wife Olga during the period he was
imprisoned for his outspoken views
of the erstwhile communist regime in his country.

"We do not know the meaning of life - just as we do not know the mystery of
Being - and yet in some way
we "possess" it - as our own, immediate version of that "anchoredness" or as
our own way of longing for it.
There is no direct answer to the question of what life means, but
indirectly, each of us answers and must
answer it anew every moment of his life. It is the darkest and most
distressing mystery - yet it is our final
hope, the only firm point in life and the only reason for it: were we in
some way not to "possess" it, search
for it or at least feel its lack, we couldn't begin to live as what we are,
that is, as creators of the "order of the
spirit," as "re-creators" of the world, as dignified beings, capable of
stepping beyond ourselves, that is,
beyond the shadow of our animal foundations."

I suggest that our search for, and possession of, 'anchoredness' is through
how we connect with each other.
For doesn't our own knowledge of the world and of ourselves in it come from
ongoing awareness that we
are what the sociologist Kenneth Gergen calls 'the by-products of ways of
getting on with one another'?

I further propose that "Blossoming into a hundred unexpected talents and
capacities" occurs through being
treated well, even if only by one other person, at some stage of our lives.

Isn't this what is now happening in New York, as restauranters prepare fine
food for those
clearing the devastation and people from all walks of life come to gather at
candle vigils, as examples.

Some of you may know that I am passionate about 'conversing', coming
together to treat each other well
in a spirit of "We're in this together."

In my experiencing it is through Open Space Technology (OST)
www.openspaceworld.org  and World
Café www.theworldcafe.com processes that conditions are cocreated in which
conversing happens naturally.

And I know that whenever such conditions are in place good things emerge.
How does this happen? Who
knows, perhaps impossible to fathom by the human mind? Seemingly we can only
ever come to know 'patterns
and meaning' indirectly through experiencing, stories and metaphor.

The late British cybernetician Gordon Pask noted: "Intelligence is a
property of conversation." - when
people converse intelligence is the only thing that could happen. I believe
that the idea of 'Spirit being
unleashed' when people treat each other well is another interpretation of
the same phenomenon.

For conversing invariably leads to intelligent or spirited action - is part
of such action - in which people
behave differently in becoming more questioning, playful, curious,
courageous, risk taking; in effect open
to possibilities from listening to and sharing voices of lived experience.
Their action is manifest through
their having the freedom to do what matters to them.

Such signs of transformation, of healing, can be found whenever people feel
that they are respected,
listened to, included and 'given the opportunity' to express their innate
potential.

Here is a comment on this happening, in the words of a famous and well loved
Australian poet. I am
sure that every culture, every language, every religion has ways of saying
something similar.

".An' ever it 'as taught me, day by day,
The one same lesson in the same ole way:
"Look for yer profits in the 'earts o' friends,
Fer [h]'atin' never paid no dividends."

. Knowin' that ev'ry coin o' kindness spent
Bears interest in yer 'eart at cent per cent;
Measurin' wisdom by the peace it brings
To simple minds that values simple things.

. Livin' an' lovin'; learnin' to fergive
The deeds an' words of some un'appy bloke
Who's missed the bus - so 'ave I come to live,
An' take the 'ole mad world as 'arf a joke."

From: The Mooch O' Life. In The Sentimental Bloke
By C.J. Dennis. 1916.

Such love, such peace, such wisdom, such joy of living, such compassion,
such learning from others can
only come from ways of being and ways of doing in which people pay respect
to those around, with no
exceptions, and in doing so unleash unpredictable 'blossoming' in the lives
of others and their own.

The alternative? A life of fearing what is lurking in the subway or in the
post box, searching for a place to
hibernate?

How much of the richness of life is enhanced, individually and collectively,
every time each of us  moves towards
another as a fundamental way of being?

What would happen if we all _insisted_ that we have the right to treat each
other well?

Alan
Adelaide

"The intrinsic act of relating is not a moral duty or obligation to
anonymous others. It is a joyful necessity for one
to live as a human being." - Majid Rahnema

"We're all we, although some of us don't know it yet." - Jeff Schwartz via
Tom Atlee

"Just remember, we're all in this alone."  - Lily Tomlin

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu,
Visit:

http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html