[OSList] sacred economics 101 and the future

Michael M Pannwitz mmpannwitz at gmail.com
Sun Apr 21 03:05:41 PDT 2013


Reading the posts on economics and especially the part about bankers 
made me look into "Tales from Open Space", a grand little collection HO 
published in 1995. There is a report of bankers of the World Bank in 
open space (Lessons from Open Space at the World Bank by Giles and 
Robbins Hopkings). That was 18 years ago.
Since then Larry Peterson in Canada worked extensively with Canadian 
banks in open space and Brian Bainbridge moved all over the planet 
working with World Bank folks... I think I also heard about work with 
the World Bank that John Engle was involved in and Nigel Seys-Phillips 
worked with the World Bank in Singapore, Hanoi, Ulaanbaatar/Mongolia, 
Vientiane/Laos and Phnom Penh/Cambodia (Nigels events are found in the 
data base "Open Space worldscape" that lists 760 os events recorded by 
some 60 os-workers all over the planet)
> http://www.openspaceworldscape.org/index.asp?sprache=en

I myself had not the privilege to work with banks or bankers... what I 
can imagine is that "alternative" or "green" banks and especially also 
Credit Unions (they come in all sizes and have navigated, at least in 
Germany without public bail outs through the "crisis") could, in 
addition to the banks already mentioned, employ Open Space Technology 
for their pressing business issues.

In the final chapter of their report on the work with the World Bank 
back in 1995 headed "Is Open Space Better?", Giles and Robbins Hopkins 
report on results and aspects with bankers that I have experienced with 
almost the same wording with teachers, engineers, public administrators, 
day care workers, parishioners, IT-folks, hospital staff, politicians, 
sanitation department workers... you name it...

The very simple secret in all this for me as (still a little bit) 
OST-facilitator is to keep spreading stories of our work, everywhere... 
no way that bankers will escape us.

Cheers and greetings from Berlin
mmp

On 21.04.2013 01:19, Brett Barndt wrote:
> So important these questions and these topics. The kinds of crises that
> are precipitated and arise from these kinds of economic times merit the
> attention now of anyone who wants to positively contribute to change.
>
> Michael Rowbotham's book "Grip of Death" does an interesting job of
> showing how insecurity is manufactured by the kind of money system we
> have had for now a few hundred years. That would be a debt based money
> system at its essence.  It is most useful to establish a baseline. His
> understanding of how the money system itself works today is stronger
> than Eisenstein's. He establishes how the money system itself works to
> create the kinds of the social conditions that Dickens documented so
> long ago and that persist today throughout the global economy under this
> kind of global money system. He also shows how debt grows and grows as
> it must along with the money supply in modern economies that require
> money for most human relationships.
>
> Douglas Rushkoff's book "Life, Inc." also provides an interesting
> introduction into the mechanisms of money that establish a condition of
> constant lack (of money but not anything else) and that drive forward
> what we have come to name capitalism and all its outcomes such as broken
> relationships, deracination, and the identity deficits that feed
> consumerism. He does a great job of relating the influences on not only
> consumerism but the pathologies arisen in our enterprises and
> organizations. He also introduces alternatives to the current system in
> history (they do exist) and in contemporary times in places like Japan
> where the money supply seriously contracted after the 1980s debt bubble.
>
> David Graeber's book "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" presents a story of
> what happens to human relationships once money is interjected into them
> as a medium of exchange instead of relationship. This book was a great
> inspiration to OWS and is now in paperback. It establishes how caste
> systems themselves arise from debt economies and many other things we
> take for granted as normal or somehow natural and preordained.
>
> There is also a great body of literature about the psychologies that
> arise from these kinds of conditions of forced scarcity on human beings.
>
> The challenge is to get the bankers into the room for openspace, when
> anyway the system itself is larger than they are as individuals, and it
> is itself programmed to drive toward certain ends regardless of the
> choices or behaviors of individuals working in it. The banks are also
> really owned and their boards controlled by people who seek anonymity
> and would be hard pressed to show up at an Openspace.
>
> Of course, funders of politicians and political conflicts in our
> countries, and especially funding arms or whatever drives conflicts in
> natural resource rich or strategically placed countries also don't show
> up at Openspace.
>
> Fortunately, this generation of scholars, mostly anthropologists, have
> new insights that we can employ to answer many of our old questions.
> There is more insight coming out in this generation to help us frame new
> kinds of new solutions. As a young person who was involved in OWS
> expressed, "we need new theories."
>
> So important this discussion now. Can't wait to see what the Openspace
> community can come up with once engaged in it. The timing is crucial
> since we know what these kinds of conditions can lead to.
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 7:47 AM, facilit8 - Amanda Bucklow
> <amanda at facilit8.com <mailto:amanda at facilit8.com>> wrote:
>
>     Kerry
>
>     speaking as someone who frequently feels a sense of 'pushing water
>     up a mountain with a fork', one answer to your passionately posed
>     question is actually full of irony...
>
>     ... for thousands of years, humanity has been self-organising into
>     tribes in search of protection from the uncertainty of life, power
>     and influence and indeed their very survival. Those tribes are today
>     labelled bankers, lawyers, politicians, experts.
>
>     Despite all the distain for consumerism and the disgust at endless
>     bad behaviour of some in those tribes, the numbers of young people
>     who see being a banker, lawyer or any other influential expert, as a
>     career path continues unabated. Why? Of course I don't know exactly
>     why, but I have a sense that, many more feel that security for self
>     is a priority over better quality for all and they may even feel bad
>     about that, they may spend a good proportion of their lives doing
>     something they hate deep down, but they go that way anyway and may
>     even stay there for a long time.
>
>     Open Space is a wonderful way of inviting those in who are ready to
>     change in their own time wherever they are in their life. And we all
>     add to the momentum which will help the wake-up call to go 'viral'.
>
>     warmest good wishes
>     Amanda
>
>
>
>     Commercial Mediator
>     www.AmandaBucklow.co.uk <http://www.AmandaBucklow.co.uk/>
>     www.blog.AmandaBucklow.co.uk <http://www.blog.AmandaBucklow.co.uk/>
>
>     +44 207 121 8772 <tel:%2B44%20207%20121%208772>
>
>     PSave a tree ... please do not print this e-mail//unless you really
>     need to
>
>
>
>
>
>     On 20 Apr 2013, at 10:51, Kerry Napuk wrote:
>
>>     Dear Listers
>>
>>     Thanks Raffi for introducing SACRED ECONOMICS.
>>
>>     If we can find a way to get rid of money by reinventing the way we
>>     exist, the banksters will disappear along with all the greedy and
>>     selfish people who have accumulated the world's riches on the
>>     backs of others through the shibboleth of globalisation.  There is
>>     something disastrously wrong when the three richest people have
>>     more wealth than the poorest 48 countries in the world.  How did
>>     0.5% of the population amass 38% of the world's wealth when 68% of
>>     the population have only 4.2%?
>>
>>     How can capitalism, which depends on consumption economics to
>>     create more and more growth, continue when the earth's resources
>>     are finite and the environment is ravaged to produce yet more
>>     wealth for the few. In our hearts we know the old system is
>>     bankrupt and corrupt, so something must change.  Eisenstein's book
>>     is one attempt to look at what the transition might involve.
>>
>>     For some years I have believed there is another way we can move
>>     away from production and consumption of quantity by focusing on
>>     quality, making and doing things that last and allow people to
>>     feel good without using more and more precious resources.
>>
>>     Do you have any thoughts?
>>
>>     More specifically, does Open Space have a role to play here?  How
>>     do we get from Bruce opening space from his park bench in deep
>>     winter to transforming the world?
>>
>>     Peace
>>
>>     Kerry
>>     Edinburgh
>>
>>     PS For more conversation with Charles Eisenstein, ust click on the
>>     12 minute film which will take you to YOU TUBE.  The other two
>>     films are further conversations with Eisenstein.
>>     Sacred Economics with Charles Eisenstein
>>     <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEZkQv25uEs&playnext=1&list=PL5D65912B81EB9D7B&feature=results_main>
>>
>>
>>     by 777Bluewhale <http://www.youtube.com/user/777Bluewhale>
>>
>>      *
>>         •Sacred Economics with Charles Eisenstein - A Short Film
>>         <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEZkQv25uEs&playnext=1&list=PL5D65912B81EB9D7B>
>>         (12:09)
>>      *
>>         •Sacred Economics - Charles Eisenstein Part 2
>>         <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMKLXx6ZCcw&playnext=1&list=PL5D65912B81EB9D7B>
>>         (9:22)
>>      *
>>         •Sacred Economics - Charles Eisenstein Part 1
>>         <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4LsktuiaOU&playnext=1&list=PL5D65912B81EB9D7B>
>>         (10:35)
>>
>>     view full playlist (3 videos)
>>     <http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5D65912B81EB9D7B>
>>
>>
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-- 
Michael M Pannwitz
Draisweg 1, 12209 Berlin, Germany
++49 - 30-772 8000



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