are we there yet?

Artur Ferreira da Silva artsilva at mail.eunet.pt
Mon Feb 17 20:18:44 PST 2003


Hello John (and all the other colleagues that are contributing to these
marvelous interconnected threads):

Due to professional reasons (that I will explain some day, as they relate
to opening the space for transformation, but not mainly through OST) I have
been out of the list for some months. Not that I have unsubscribed, but
only rarelly had the time to read one message or two. I am still with too
much work, but the subject was so compeling... And I have to reconect back
as I have no excuses for missing the next OSonOS in Europe...

I agree completelly with Jonh and Bernd, and in a good measure with
Harrison and Chris. Let me begin with this mail from John.


At 11:02 16-02-2003 -0500, john engle wrote:

>while i believe that day is years away, if ever, i believe it was an
>important question. we already observe that with port au prince-based limye
>lavi (light of life) foundation, their is no talk of principles or any
>propts during the quarterly open space meetings. the 8 or 9 people present
>just get to the office or wherever the meeting is being held and start
>posting subjects. the foundation has been using open space for 8 years. not
>all staff members have been there for 8 years but it doesn't take more than
>one meeting (three consequetive days from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm) to see how it
>works and integrate oneself.
>
>the power of cultural norms is that they are not spoken. they are assumed.


That's exactly the point. There are a lot of cultural norms (or mental
models) in (ocidental) society and in our organizations, and whenever a
meeting is called those norms tend to be used, including the unspoken
"logic" Bernd referred. The magic of OST, in my opinion, is that, at least
for the duration of the meeting, it "suspends" the traditional rules and
replaces them by some soft guidelines, that are often called
counter-intuitive, in the sense that they counter the "culturallly accepted
intuitions" (the cultural norms John referred)

Now, if "less is more", one can ask what is the absolute minimum. I can
very weel believe that if a community or organization uses OST often and
for a long time, this will also became a "cultural norm", and after some
time one can begin the sessions without repeating the principles, etc. [I
wonder if the "beginning ritual", for a methodology that is based in
"letting go", is not our last attempt to "be in control" at least for a
short while and "make our number"... But that is a different question...]

The organization/community that John refered, after 8 years of using OST,
seams to be able to not use the standard OST opening anymore, and I believe
that Open Organizations/Communities of the future will do that quite
naturally - and not having even the need to spell OST, as OST will then be
for them "business as usual". And as the OST community is also using it for
same years, I wonder if we couldn't give a try to the "minimum
introduction" in one of the next OSONOS...

And yes this is "anarchism" with the meaning John gave to the word. And it
is also "self-organization" (Harrison/Kauffman), unschooling (Chris) and
decolonization (Jonh and Chris). And in the sense clarified by Jonh, me
too, I am na anarchist ;-)

My small doubts about some of the formulations from Harrison and Chris will
need a diferent post, tomorrow, probably.

Best regards to all the familly in my caming back home

Artur

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