speaking with Lena Marchuk and more

[Raffi Aftandelian]

Dear Harrison, Lena, and anyone else who has survived (like me!) scrolling through lots of html (aargh!) in their OSlist message,

Thank you for your replies. For me, there are several ways to reach the unspeakable, as Tova Averbuch put it. What we as a group/community/organization want to achieve. It is hard for me to fathom that OS is THE way.

On a gut level, I know that offering OS to organizations is part of my path, not the whole path. And my questions, doubts about OS help bring me to a more nuanced and careful yet passionate and interested place (in my attitude towards the technology).

I think it is hard to say at this point if OS "works" or doesn't work here in Russia. While a lot of different people use OS, there isn't yet a virtual community of Russian-speaking OS'ers. We had a listserv; and Elena liked my nickname for us: "the silent community". That was because no one posted. I attribute the non-posting and non-existence of a Russian-speaking OS community -- real or virtual-- mostly to a lack of trust overall in the former Soviet Union. It is hard for me not to have judgement about this, because I have essentially chosen to make Russia my home. Maybe at some point I'll want to go back to what I call Bushastan (hence its citizens are Bushastanis, pardon the phrase). So, I think the verdict is out. One of the values of OS and FS here, I think, is that these approaches build up that key ingredient between people: trust. 

In terms of OS working (while all the pre-work conditions you describe happen), that's an important point. Risking making a generalization, I think that level of thoroughness does not happen. In other words, I work really hard with clients so that these conditions (doing the preparation work fully) are observed and it is rare that I feel it has been done adequately.

But I do think there may be something to OS being "oversold" as a mentor and colleague put it. I am not sure I can develop the thought. As an analogy, I think of NLP. Now, I have never been trained in NLP, but I have read a number of books by its "founders" and have a friend and colleague who consciously uses NLP as an English teacher and interpreter. Initially, the NLP crowd poo-poo'd other therapeutic approaches, specifically humanistic ones. That therapists kept clients for years dealing with problems that could be solved in a single session. Now that may have true, but NLP in psychotherapy is not the answer to everything. 

And I am not sure OS is the answer to everything even when the basic conditions- presence of passion, space "open", etc.- are met. But I am loving the exploration for now and I do it with heart!

On a side note, is there any way of setting up receiving the OSlist digest so that I just get text and no html code? 

Best,
Raffi

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