Friends, Here is a 20 minute talk I'm planning to use during my tour, at bookstores and other public gatherings. It's quite a challenge trying to get the main ideas of the book into such a short form. As usual, feedback invited. cheers, richard ____________________ (CRISIS) Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Imagine a wide river, flowing swiftly toward a precipitous waterfall. Our civilization is a ship on that river, steaming full-speed ahead downstream, heading right for the falls, and the rocks below. The only way we can avoid that catastrophe is to turn the ship around and steam the other way. Slowing down the ship is no real help, that only postpones disaster for a little while. Protest movements, political reforms, and personal life-style choices are only capable of slowing down the ship a bit. And if we look at our global track record, despite all our brave activism, we aren't even succeeding in slowing the ship down. Who is at the helm of our ships of state? We all know the answer to that: it's people like Bush & Cheney & Blair -- and the folks behind them, people like Rockefeller, the DuPonts, and Kissinger --the elites of business, oil, and finance. These folks are totally committed to continuing on our current path, what they call 'economic growth'. As long as they're in control, they don't care if there are famines and economic collapses. For example, the Great Depression was very beneficial to such people -- they foreclosed on thousands of farms and launched the modern agribusiness industry when the Depression was over. They used the depression increase their ownership share of everything, at bargain prices. Ladies and gentlemen, the only way we can save humanity is by gaining control of the helms of our societies. That is the only way the ship can be turned around. Impossible as it may seem, we need to create real democracy. We need to learn how to govern our own societies -- to govern ourselves. For 4,000 years, ever since civilization began, we've been controlled by one elite or another. We have finally reached the point where we cannot afford to put up with it any longer. Either we learn how to govern ourselves or we perish. I'd like to share with you a quote that I use at the beginning of my book: (HIERARCHY) "We've lived so long under the spell of hierarchy-from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses-that only recently have we awakened to see not only that "regular" citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high." -Frances Moore Lappé, "Time for Progressives to Grow Up" What I'd like to talk about today is how we can begin this kind of 'direct engagement'... What is real democracy? What does it look like? How can we achieve it? I'll be talking about these things for a while, putting some ideas before you. Then I'd like to open it up for questions and discussion. (DEMOCRACY) The word 'democracy' is rather abstract. I think a better term is 'self-governance'. Democracy is about governing ourselves, as a society. This isn't something we have any experience at. It's something we need to learn how to do. Everywhere in our society, when we want to get something done, we seek solutions in terms of hierarchies. When we engage in political lobbying, we are asking our hierarchical governments to solve our problems. When we join a political party, or an environmental organization, we are expecting a centralized leadership to fight for our causes. If we get involved in a local citizen's group, we usually end up delegating to some committee, to actually 'get things done'. Our model is always to delegate actual decision making to some central organization, some hierarchy. That's how we 'get things done' in our society. And hierarchies do work, they do get things done, but they aren't necessarily the things we want done. In the long-run we pay a high price for this delegation of power, as we can see from the course civilization has taken, where it has brought us to. Hierarchies, particularly on a large scale, always end up being controlled by elite cliques and wealthy interests. It's always been this way all through history, right up until today, with Bush and the neocons. And these elites think of humanity as something to be exploited, just like resources are exploited, just like cattle are exploited. 'civilized man' is really 'domesticated man'. The words of our politicians are simply soothing melodies in the barnyard, played so that the cattle will remain calm. Governing ourselves is about learning how to make decisions without delegating. It really comes down to learning how to work together, and dialog together. We don't really have good models of how to work together and make decisions on a group basis. We are taught to be competitive and we are taught to always defend our own self interest. So when we try to work together, we end up arguing -- 'my' solution against 'your' solution. Sometimes we vote, and one side wins and the other side loses. Or, as I've been saying, we usually end up delegating the problem to others. (FACILITATION) Now it turns out that there are other ways to engage in dialog. Ways that are not about arguing, but about taking everyone's concerns into account. This kind of dialog isn't about choosing among alternative, but about working together to find creative solutions that everyone can be excited about. For most of my life I didn't know these kinds of dialogs were even possible. I'm basically an argumentative fellow, and I don't get along very well in groups. But I had an experience a few years back, in an activist gathering in Berkeley, that kind of blew my mind, and woke me up to new possibilities. We were arguing, tempers were flaring, and a woman spoke up and asked if she could try facilitating. I didn't even know what facilitation was, but we all decided to give it a try. The results were really amazing, and what she did turned out to be very simple. She was basically helping us to hear one another, instead of talking across one another. She started by simply asking the upset people why they had come to the meeting, and what they hoped to get out of it. Pretty soon, the 'space' in the room opened up, everyone was sharing stories and experiences, and we found ourselves on the 'same wavelength'. Not only did the discussion become more productive, but there was an emotional dimension: a relaxing of tension, almost a euphoric feeling -- along with a strong sense of bonding, and of 'being in this together'. After this experience, I spent the next year learning about facilitation, and group processes. I visited some of the leading-edge people in this field, and spent many hours -- sometimes days -- talking with them. I discovered that there is a whole rich world of facilitation, and a whole range of methods that have proven effective in various group situations. It turns out, and this has been proven in repeated real-world cases, that almost any group of people, no matter how far apart they may be in terms of their beliefs and their perceived interests, can be enabled to have the same kind of breakthrough we experienced in Berkeley. By engaging in dialog in the right ways, they can almost always 'break on through to the other side', and begin working together creatively and effectively. It's hard to believe, I know, but the hard evidence is there. It's been proven over and over again, with ordinary people, in real-world situations. I can give you some examples in the discussion period later if you like. As I continued my research, I learned that early societies, indigenous societies, all tend to use these same kind of processes when they make important decisions. In the Hawaiian culture, for example, they have something called 'h'o pono pono', where an elder simply listens, to each person in turn, with everyone else 'overhearing'. Eventually the 'right answer' emerges, and it is obvious to everyone. In Native American cultures, they had the peace pipe, and pow wows, and again they used these kinds of processes to make tribal decisions and decisions among tribes. Contrary to what we see in Hollywood Westerns, there was not a Chief who gave everyone else orders. (HARMONIZATION) This special kind of dialog -- which turns out to be part of our primordial heritage -- is the special ingredient that can enable us to learn how to work together -- to learn how to understand one another, make wise decisions together, and govern our own communities and societies -- without delegating authority to anyone. I use the term 'harmonization' to describe how these dialog processes work. People come in with competing interests, and conflicting ideas, and through dialog these differences can be 'harmonized' into creative solutions that take everyone's concerns into account. Of course there's a big jump from harmonization in a small group, to the governance of whole societies. That's really what the book is about: thinking through the implications of harmonization, and working out how these kinds of processes can be used to transform our societies. We know harmonization works with small groups, that much is proven. Now let's take this one step further, and consider harmonization within a local community. (WISDOW COUNCIL) Two years ago, in Ashland Oregon, a group of local citizens were invited to participate in a 'Wisdom Council'. A Wisdom Council is a particular kind of harmonization process, developed by Jim Rough, of Port Townsend Washington. The citizens were selected randomly, and they spent two full days in dialog, using Jim's method, called 'Dynamic Facilitation'. Following the second day's session, in the evening, a public meeting was held, where the Wisdom Council participants reported back to the community on their experience. This was all captured on video, and a documentary was produced, by Joseph McCormick and Pat Spino. I watched this video, in the company of Joseph and Pat, and I could see for myself that the results were truly amazing. At the beginning of the first day's session, the participants seemed rather shy, didn't have much to say, didn't show a lot of energy -- they were just going along for the ride to see what might happen. There was no specified agenda or topic, and Jim simply encouraged people to start talking about whatever concerned them in their community. What a difference there was at the end of the second day! They seemed like a different group of people. They were full of energy, and when they gave their reports to the public gathering, you would have thought they were seasoned public speakers. They had decided in their session to talk about funding for education, and they had come up with some creative proposals. But the big thing they talked about was their experience of empowerment, what they described as a spirit of 'We the People'. They had seen how they -- an ordinary group of people -- were capable of finding their common ground, and capable of working creatively together to solve problems. They could sense in their bones that a new kind of democracy was possible. Their phrase, 'We the People', expressed not just their own group experience, but a broader sense that We the People -- generally -- have both the capacity, and the wisdom, to govern our own affairs. As the participants gave their reports, the local citizens in the audience were captivated by what they heard. The energy of the participants was infectious, and the audience were 'getting it' about the We the People spirit. The audience broke into small groups, with one session participant at each table, and each table engaged in its own little dialog process. By the time the evening was over, the whole room was buzzing with energy, and everyone was excited about the possibility of greater participation by ordinary citizens in the decisions that affect their community. (EXTRAPOLATING) Now let us consider what might happen if a whole series of Wisdom Councils were to be held in the same community, say over a period of six months. Each time a new cross-section of citizens would participate, and each time there would be a public gathering to talk about what came out of the sessions. Let us also suppose that an article would be published in the local paper after each event, reporting on the Wisdom Council and the public meeting that followed. This is an experiment that has not been carried out yet, so I'm extrapolating here, going out on a limb. But based on what happened in Ashland, I am convinced that we could expect some very exciting outcomes from such a series of harmonization events. Each successive session would expose new people to the dialog experience, and I imagine the public meetings would become larger and larger as more people learned about the excitement and energy of the events. Before long, the whole community would be aware of what was going on, and the newspaper articles would keep everyone informed of what kind of ideas and proposals were coming out of the sessions. I believe that these ideas and proposals would begin to converge -- that a community wide sense would emerge around 'these are the main issues', and 'this is what we want to do about them'. Let me explain why I feel optimistic about this 'convergence' process. If the people that participate in a session represent a rough cross-section of the community, then we can think of them as a 'microcosm' of the community. If there are about 12 people, selected randomly, then most of the viewpoints, and interest groups, in the community are likely to 'find voice' in the dialog. When this 'microcosm' succeeds in harmonizing its concerns, then the ideas they come up with are likely to find resonance in the community generally -- because most people will see that their own concerns 'found voice' in the dialog. If some sectors of the community happens to be left out in one session, they would be likely to 'find voice' in subsequent sessions. As the sessions continue, with reporting in the local paper, you can see why the ideas and dialog would be likely to converge. (WE THE PEOPLE) I believe that such a series of harmonization events would be likely to lead to a general sense of We the People -- of democratic empowerment -- in the community. The convergence process would be likely to evolve into a 'consensus community agenda', that everyone would feel a part of. Even though some people never got to participate personally in a session, they would have friends and neighbors that did participate, and everyone would feel that their own concerns had been taken into account in the process. Imagine what a powerful thing this would be -- a whole community united behind a common agenda, and empowered by a dialog process that is effective, creative, and that brings in everyone's concerns. This is what democracy would look like, this is what self-governance would feel like. There is no delegation of authority here, no central committee, no hierarchy. Just the people working together and making decisions together. Democracy is not an institution, it's a way of working together. It's not a form of government, it's self-governance. A government makes decisions for you, self-governance is about you making your own decisions, in collaboration with your friends and neighbors. Harmonization dialog is the key to making all this possible. In such a community, the mayor and city council would not set policy, they would be carrying out the policies that the people themselves come up with. These city officials would not be politicians, but simply public-spirited citizens who are willing to take on the burden of administrative and management tasks on behalf of their friends and neighbors. Nowhere in such a community is there any delegation of policy-making authority to anyone or to any institution. This would well and truly be a self-governing community, an island of real democracy in the larger hierarchical society. (IS YOUR COMMUNITY READY?) Such an experiment has not been carried out yet. One of my goals during this tour will be to look for communities that might be interested in trying such an experiment. The investment required would be very small: a bit of funding to bring in skilled facilitators, a place to meet, and the time invested by the participants. Local people could learn how to facilitate themselves, public buildings could be used for meetings, and the whole process could be locally self-sustaining and virtually cost free. My message to this community, and to all communities, is this: Why not give it a try? You have nothing to lose -- and your own liberation to gain. I'd like to close with just a few brief comments, and then open up the floor to your comments and questions. I'm very interested in your ideas and what you have to say. What I've talked about so far is a summary of the first five chapters of the book. The rest of the book goes on to explore how a few self-governing communities would be likely to be infectious: other communities would see the results and want to try it for themselves. It could become a movement, but it would be a cultural movement more than a political movement. There would be no leaders in this movement, and it would have no 'political platform'. It would simply be more and more communities waking up and learning how to govern themselves. The rest of the book explores how this process could be expected to lead to a self-governing society, a truly democratic society, based on local autonomy and voluntary collaboration among communities. Rather than governments to deal with large-scale issues, we would have councils of delegations that would meet and engage in harmonization dialog, just as the Native Americans had pow wows among tribes. All proposals would go back to individual communities for ratification. Miraculous as it may seem, it would be possible for every one of us to participate directly in making the big important global decisions. Thank you very much for your patience and attention. Now its your turn to say something. Who wants to go first? ____________________