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At 01:51 PM 5/18/2002 -0600, you wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Releasing those kinds of labels
(beautiful, ugly, good, bad, etc) has been<br>
one of SD's gifts to me. It's created a real shift in my own head,
and a<br>
deeper willingness than I had before to accept without judgement
(or<br>
anywhere near as much judgement, anyway) the current state of affairs as
I<br>
look (for example) at the vast majority of first world government, ngo
and<br>
for-profit institutions, or (another example) at the way life works
inside<br>
a country that is set up as a fundamentalist theocracy.<br><br>
Instead of seeing them in such negative terms (the Emperor's new
clothes<br>
metaphor sums up my prior view), I've come to see them in terms of
where<br>
they are on the Gravesian SD model. And it's not that I don't take
account<br>
of how soul-deadening life can be in an organization that is stuck in
a<br>
command-control paradigm (I lived in a Dilbert world for 15 years!), or
how<br>
terrible it can be for women (I have two daughters!) to live in a
society<br>
that institutionally deprives them.</blockquote><br>
There is no question that structure and control, even under the Command
And Control model have a legitimate place in the human story, and as you
point out, both Wilber and Beck honor that place -- as would I. But
Wilber for sure, and Beck (I think) would also understand that each level
in all quadrants has its darkside, which can become (usually does become)
pathological. I have to say that a lot of the empowerment business comes
out of the dark side of a quite "legitimate" level of
consciousness. This gets a little complex, and if you want the details,
see my books about Spirit/Consciousness. The short take
follows.<br><br>
In a much simpler model, upon which Wilber based much of his earlier
thinking, derived from The Great Chain of Being -- and from which I
borrowed shamelessly in writing <i>The Power of Spirit</i> and its
earlier version <i>Spirit: Transformation and Development</i>, there are
five levels. Actually there are 7, but the first is nothing, and the last
is nothing -- leaving 5 that you can talk about. In my words these
levels for the Individual are <i>Body, Mind, Intellect, Soul, and
Spirit.</i> Intellect is the point where we develop ego. The good news is
that we become a conscious identity. The bad news is that we tend to get
stuck on our ego. No question ego is a good thing (to be honored), but
getting stuck on ego is pretty disastrous. One word for this disaster is
<i>arrogance<br><br>
</i>My journey led me to ask what were the organizational analogs to the
individual levels because I felt then, and feel now that organizations
have consciousness just like, and related to, individuals. This led me to
speak of 5 levels of organizational consciousness -- Reactive,
Responsive, Proactive, Interactive, and Inspired.<br><br>
The critical levels individually and organizationally in terms of this
discussion are Intellect/Proactive. The Proactive organization is
what we would usually consider (until very recently) the "well
managed organization." This is the home of the MBA, everything is
done by the numbers, and the mantra is Control, Control, Control. And if
you are out of control, you are typically out of a job. In all fairness,
organizations at the ProActive level are impressive: Productive to a
fault, and well oiled machines. They also have an Achilles Heal
which I experience as Corporate Arrogance. And when I hear corporate
policies to the effect -- We Empower our People -- I hear arrogance
talking. <br><br>
Fortunately, at least in terms of my (and I believe Wilber's ) story we
don't have to settle for this. There is something new on the horizon --
which I have called The InterActive organization. At the moment, we are
sort of stuck in the middle. We know by experience that the old Proactive
organization, a good as it was is no longer fully functional, and in fact
has become quite destructive -- productive of what I call Soul Pollution.
The InterActive organization can sound awfully good -- it is a conscious
self-organization where power and control are always situational and not
positional, which goes a long way towards the elimination of arrogance.
The real problem is that you can't just wake up some morning and say
"We are going to be an InterActive Organization" -- because you
are then right back in the old trap -- Command and Control, Executive
Dictate and all the rest. Even worse, it becomes quite clear that the
only way forward is to give up the one thing we took to be the most
important Control, Control, Control -- not because all that is bad
-- but because we never had in the first place, at least in the way we
thought we did. Terrifying. We could be out of a Job. <br><br>
If you can't get there by command -- maybe you can just let it happen.
And this I think is the core of the experience every time Space is
Opened. Which is also why, i think, that Open Space is so often
experienced as "transformational" because it is. Not in the
sense that we transform anything -- but rather that what is happening
anyhow is allowed to appear in our consciousness. One manifestation of
that is our sudden awareness that the Old Emperor doesn't have a stitch
on. And when we thought the power came from that dude, it was all in our
(and his) imagination. He had no power to give us. We only had our own
which we must claim. (or not).<br><br>
So I can certainly honor our evolutionary history in all phases, if only
because the gifts of each phase (level) are still with us and still
useful. Even old Ego can not be gotten rid of -- but may be
transcended. However, I feel zero compunction is calling a Spade a
Spade. The notion that I experience my own power only when the CEO
empowers me is fundamentally fraudulent. He/She can't give what he/she
never had -- my power. Only I can claim my power, and until that time --
so far as I am concerned -- the Emperor remains resplendent in my
mind.<br><br>
Or at least that is my story.<br><br>
Harrison<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Harrison Owen</blockquote>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<div align="center">7808 River Falls Drive<br>
Potomac, MD 20854 USA<br>
phone 301-365-2093<br>
Open Space Training
<a href="http://www.openspaceworld.com/" eudora="autourl">www.openspaceworld.com</a>
<br>
Open Space Institute <a href="http://www.openspaceworld.org/" eudora="autourl">www.openspaceworld.org</a><br>
Personal website <a href="http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm" eudora="autourl">http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm</a><br><br>
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