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<DIV>Thanks Harrison, compassionate tour guide on community building. My
pushback in this is the notion of building. Building in an engineering process
where success is measured by compliance to even the most enlightened and
well-intentioned models and blueprints. If community is something that emerges
from freedom to share responsibility for what matters, its authentic form is not
engineered. In fact any attempt at engineering prevents natural emergence that
in the more unfortunate cases call for even more engineering .... and so on and
on.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>When I was a wee lad, I read everything the Berrigan brothers wrote. They
were the wild political and social activist Jesuits. They used to talk about
community as re-membering. It's a beautiful image on many levels; that we
literally re-member as a community into our intrinsic wholeness. And this comes
about in Open Space simply by how the principles and law, the circle and
invitations remind us. In that re-membering, we discover new ways of being
community.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Jack</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>~~~~~~~~~~</DIV>
<DIV>jack ricchiuto</DIV>
<DIV>two.one.six/three.seven.three/seven.four.seven.five</DIV>
<DIV><A href="http://www.designinglife.com/">www.designinglife.com</A> / <A
href="http://www.appreciativeleadership.org">www.appreciativeleadership.org</A>
</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV>------------Original Message------------</DIV>
<DIV>From: Harrison Owen <hhowen@comcast.net></DIV>
<DIV>To: OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU</DIV>
<DIV>Date: Sat, May-14-2005 9:59 AM</DIV>
<DIV>Subject: Community Building (Transformative and Otherwise)</DIV>
<DIV>When I first read Scott Peck's work ("A Road Less Traveled", "A
Different</DIV>
<DIV>Drum", etc) I experienced a deep resonance and profound learning.
This</DIV>
<DIV>fellow knew what he was talking about and had spent no small amount of
time</DIV>
<DIV>considering what he had to say. With the possible exception of Martin
Buber,</DIV>
<DIV>Peck understood and expressed the deep elements of community and</DIV>
<DIV>connectedness better than just about anybody that I knew. And yet, over
the</DIV>
<DIV>years (he started writing in the early '80s) as I witnessed his and
his</DIV>
<DIV>associates' attempts to apply these understandings I felt a growing sense
of</DIV>
<DIV>disconnect. It was not that Peck was in any profound sense "wrong,"
but</DIV>
<DIV>rather that the passage from insight to application never quite seemed
to</DIV>
<DIV>happen.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The concrete manifestation of Peck's approach was the Community
Building</DIV>
<DIV>programs that I, Glory, and thousands of others participated in.
These</DIV>
<DIV>programs were, as Glory correctly states, deeply moving, terribly</DIV>
<DIV>disturbing, and very profound. Initially the participants were what I
might</DIV>
<DIV>call the cognoscenti - the searchers and thinkers who grooved on
such</DIV>
<DIV>things. Eventually their application spread to the broader
community, and</DIV>
<DIV>there was considerable effort made to bring the enterprise into the</DIV>
<DIV>corporate world - with some success. The impact was undeniable, but</DIV>
<DIV>increasingly the niggling question arose - After the program, what do
you</DIV>
<DIV>do? Where do you go from here?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It always seemed to remind me of the "T Group" experience emanating
from</DIV>
<DIV>such institutions as NTL (National Training Labs). Profound
learning</DIV>
<DIV>occurred at both a personal and general level concerning the function
of</DIV>
<DIV>groups. And major effort was dedicated to the transfer of this
experience</DIV>
<DIV>and learning into the life of organizations of all sorts, an effort
that</DIV>
<DIV>continues (NTL is, so far as I know, alive and well). But there was
no</DIV>
<DIV>denying that the processes utilized were detailed and controlling, almost
to</DIV>
<DIV>the point of tediousness. If we could only build effective interaction
and</DIV>
<DIV>productive community by going through all of this, it always seemed to
me</DIV>
<DIV>that it would be a cold day in hell before any useful result would
be</DIV>
<DIV>broadly present. The learning was powerful, the experience profound,
the</DIV>
<DIV>research of high caliber - but the broad application and impact was
wanting.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>At approximately the same time the Scott Peck began writing, and
somewhat</DIV>
<DIV>after the T-Group phenomenon, Open Space Technology came into being. As
you</DIV>
<DIV>all know, OST did not arrive courtesy of careful research and endless
field</DIV>
<DIV>tests. It arose out of frustration, laziness and two martinis. But it
worked</DIV>
<DIV>in some remarkable ways, not all of which were immediately apparent. In
fact</DIV>
<DIV>it took some 5 years from inception (1985) to discover that not only was
it</DIV>
<DIV>productive and fun, but also that some serious positive human
behaviors</DIV>
<DIV>showed up - apparently all by themselves. I have characterized these as
High</DIV>
<DIV>Learning, High Play, Appropriate structure and control - and last, but by
no</DIV>
<DIV>means least - Genuine Community. I am not sure that Scott Peck actually
uses</DIV>
<DIV>the words Genuine Community, but it is a natural correlate to his</DIV>
<DIV>"pseudo-community." And as near as I can remember, I used the phrase
thanks</DIV>
<DIV>to him. He taught me what to look for.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The interesting thing is that in Open Space, Genuine Community
seemingly</DIV>
<DIV>happens all by itself. There are no community building exercises,
extensive</DIV>
<DIV>and (I would say) intrusive facilitator interventions, or carefully</DIV>
<DIV>prescribed procedures and processes that the group involved must perform
-</DIV>
<DIV>unless you count sitting in a circle, creating a bulletin board, and
opening</DIV>
<DIV>a market place to be such a process. Perhaps even more remarkable,
Genuine</DIV>
<DIV>Community appears even under the most stressful and conflicted situations
-</DIV>
<DIV>to the point that it almost seems that the greater the initial conflict
and</DIV>
<DIV>stress the deeper and more profound the Genuine Community. And nobody
does a</DIV>
<DIV>thing - it just happens.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>After wallowing in this mystery for 10 years, it eventually dawned on
this</DIV>
<DIV>benighted soul that the obvious, clear, and probably only explanation
is</DIV>
<DIV>that Genuine Community is a naturally occurring function of a well
dispose</DIV>
<DIV>Self-Organizing system. Duh! Or put slightly differently - Community is
a</DIV>
<DIV>natural phenomenon which suffers greatly when space closes. So if you
want</DIV>
<DIV>Community, just open space. It would also seem clear that working hard
at</DIV>
<DIV>"creating community" is to a large extent a waste of time and
energy.</DIV>
<DIV>Community is what we naturally are - we need only to remove the barriers
and</DIV>
<DIV>constraint to its (community's) manifestation. And we do that by
opening</DIV>
<DIV>space.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>A long way around the barn to arrive at a simple point - which is -
creating</DIV>
<DIV>highly elaborate community building processes is, from where I sit,
not</DIV>
<DIV>likely to be very productive - especially since community seems to
happen</DIV>
<DIV>pretty well all by itself - given the space. However, the critical</DIV>
<DIV>exploration and development of ways to leverage and amplify this
natural</DIV>
<DIV>occurrence would seem to be right on the money. Could in fact be the
real</DIV>
<DIV>Pot of Gold.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Harrison</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Harrison Owen</DIV>
<DIV>7808 River Falls Drive</DIV>
<DIV>Potomac, Maryland 20845</DIV>
<DIV>Phone 301-365-2093</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com <<A
href="http://www.openspaceworld.com/">http://www.openspaceworld.com/</A>></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org</DIV>
<DIV>Personal website <A
href="http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm">http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm</A></DIV>
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