NEW 2nd Interview with Alexander (Aleco) Christakis September 2011 in EUROPE'sWORLD:
Learnings
and Vistas based on revisiting 40 years "Global
Problematique"
The
Predicament of the Individual, Communities, and Humankind in the
21st Century
Dialogue as a Means of Collective Communication
Volume I from 2005, more on further volumes, like 2008 below.
COMMENT about this Volume: Such on overview on the topic ot scene seems necessary as different streams of community development, conscious evolution, planning, systems thinking, model theory, dialog and deliberations, governance, .... came together in a critical time of the Agora Movement maybe from 1996 - today. After 12 years it might make sense to revist the concepts and confront them with the needs and dimensions of a possible 21stCentury Agora. This website is created to revisit milestones and recommend positive new developments and trends.
I will forward this thread to colleagues so we can add further steps and milestones and by using [bracketing] include personal and not commonly agreed perspectives on this very interesting process ! ( I will cut and paste segements from othe documents in the web to give the broader picture and always link to the original source so it is easy to study the whole matter in greater detail.
As it is "Academic Usance" to always note to what was not mentioned and is missing in this context, I can ony point to the sections on the roots as far as I learned baout them in the (1) fields of participation and international conferencing and colaboration, 100 years UIA, 30 ICA, 20 years Syncons and the Millenium Project, and the are of Citizens Juries (Planungszelle), and the (2) fields of systems and model thinking milestones, General Systems 1954, General Model Theory 1968, Alpach 1968, Club of Rome (somewhere between 1968-70), ISSS Wholeness Seminar 1996, http://www.newciv.org/ISSS_Primer/seminar.html and Konrad-Lorenz Institute "Emergenz" Altenberg Seminar 1996/7: http://benking.de/worldview-compositions.html (as the early works are not easily accessible in the web as they are behind the INTERNET curtain, I invite you to see a collage of resources, abstracts and links here: (1) Sources-CoLab and (2) Sources System-/Holistic. (I presently move content form the "sandbox" to (1-2).
The first publication I have in mind relating to the topic of "Agora and Social Systems" is Béla H. Bánáthy's: Designing Social Systems In A Changing World, 1996. I feel we need to check with Christakis on this as he was the AGORA Planner with Doxiadis and a friend of Bela, and as he is of Greek origin, had used the term "demosophia" - maybe also "agora" earlier. See also: OIKOS, Ekistics, Ecumene, Ecumenopolis, Ecopolis, Ecudomy, and you see that this is concrete socail (&planning) thinking and terminology, as wether it is the Town Square, or the Agora, it was a place to meet, deliberate, haggle, quarrel and come to ends.
Bela mentioned and cited Christakis extensively and started the NEW AGORA group with him in 2002. (I aknowledge here the inspiration for the title "retrospective Inquiry" as Christakis wrote such an inquiry on the original prospectus of the Club of Rome and the Predicament of Mandkind duely mentioning Hasan Ozbekhan. Sources Club of Rome
A year later I remember a conversation with Béla http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9la_H._B%C3%A1n%C3%A1thy in Asilomar (1997) about the need for new community development and new commons. I had presented at an ISI Asilomar gathering with the title:
"New Voices / New Spaces" - to know - to connect - to transcend
Embodying Situations & Issues,
Sharing Contexts, and Encouraging Dialogue
was the title later in the IFSR Journal
and this was the sub-title, and the figures we used to show what we mean: How can people go beyond the "Battle of Perspectives", to see where other persons are, physically and conceptually, to find a way to reach them, co-create and encourage Voices in self-organizing Dialogue?
Please visit the IFSR Newsletter http://benking.de/IFSRnov98pp.htm, the original publication in the Club of Budapest Viewsletter or this Sources page. http://open-forum.de/giesecke-book-culture-visions-infoscociety.pdf
Béla immediately added: "to transcend" - "to create" in order to follow the circle not only from the "cradle to grave" of ideas, but to start new co-creative circles of conscious evolution. I was to stay with my "sister in co-creation" Barabara Marx-Hubbard" ( see evolve, WOVA, and Peace Rooms http://benking.de/ExtraOrder/challenge.html ) and so it was obvious we were leapfrogging after Fuschl and the rest of the world connected in the "deep" viah Willis Harman (see also: http://berlinoetics.de/) - Bela, Barabara and me had been just writing our eulogy-messages for the late Willis....
Many other friends like James Rose had been with us at this memorable ASILOMAR gathering - but also please see SYNCONS and this page and follow some of the underlying concepts and ideas) - best start here at the CEPTUALINSTITUTE: http://www.ceptualinstitute.com/uiu_plus/isss98/isss98sustain.htm or with Jerry and his Millennium Project and the ReSources in the "sandbox" like: Futures Research Methodology--V3.0
In 1997, there were difficult times for this budding new conversations and agora thinking. Béla's wife was very ill, and as you know he needed her ! - but we had two intense exchanges before he had to rush away again. He very much liked my papers on interacting along and across scales, linking not only from the individual and local, regional and global, but across issues, themes, and languages, but looking into deliberation, particiaption, mediation concretely in groups of various sizes. I introduced him to the concept of “glocal” we had developed by searching for a word for something concrete, the dimension across magnitudes. See Wikipedia.My concern at that time was a Humane Information Society and Dialogue and Democracy for the Information Age, and as we had many people we both knew and liked, I had arrived with Barbary Vogl (see Dialog and Story Space) and we spoke about Barbara Marx-Hubbard, and he promised to look into this approach to bridge mindsets in a tangible way. (I had called this new shared continuum or negotiation space borderland at that time).I knew him as the mover not only in Asilomar but also the spirit of the Fuschl Conversations - so we agreed to follow up next time close to Salzburg. Unfortunately he did not manage to come to Fuschl again but had forwarded my report on the Bohm Dialogues in Ljubljana and my Summary of the Asilomar exercise to the Fuschl team around Gerhard Chroust, which asked me for permission and a more complete version for the IFSR Newsletter 1998 which was published a year after our last exchange, and 4 years before we finally got together to start in 2002 the New Agora Working group in Fuschl. Here is a link to the Patterns report.During the next couple of years the idea of a new, second generation agora was carefully evaluated and the Greek Alexander Christakis was invited to become President of the ISSS His writings about the Agora as a DEMOSOPHIA was considered essential to establish a working group focusing on a New 21st Century Agora. The Fuschl 2002 event was scheduled, but unfortunately Bela was in bad shape after his wife has passed away and very unfortunately Patrick Jenlink could not make it neither to Fuschl 2002 nor 2004 (see below). This is very unfortunately because in the two Volumes (2005 and 2008) by Springer all this work and important strands of the broader concepts and width of the original concepts of the original idea of expanding the potentials of Agoras for the 21st Century was not covered in this “seemingly” authoritative summary.
FUSCHL 2002 Team call:
Team 1: New Agoras for the 21st Century:
Conscious Self-Guided Evolution
Coordinator: Patrick M Jenlink (he did not show up)
The Agoras of the City States of the Classical Greeks were public spheres where true democracy was lived by citizens who made collective decisions about issues affecting their daily lives. Reconsidering the idea Agora in society today, and creating an ideal of the New Agora is a metaphor for social action contexts (public spheres or arenas) in which people can make collective decisions about their future.
These contexts would be forums of democratic discourse. People in the settings of their families, neighbourhoods, community groups, organizations, and institutions have the potential to organize themselves as evolutionary design communities. These New Agoras could link up with each other and engage in evolutionary conversation in order to bring to life the Guided Evolution of the Society. The dual purposes of the New Agora project are to first create and sustain an Agora community of stewards who will then support the right of people to take part directly in the decisions that affect their lives and to guide their own destiny. The New Agora would guide the conscious evolution of civil society on local, national, and world levels. This goal will be achieved by creating knowledge bases for evolutionary inquiry; developing resources for evolutionary learning; and exploring approaches, methods, and technologies toward the establishment of New Agoras. These purposes are grounded in the belief that the right of people to take part directly in making decisions that affect their lives and to guide their own destiny is a fundamental human right.
Triggering questions:
What are the major problems confronting our species within the context of our global society?
What is the role of the New Agora project in addressing societies problems?
What would be the design of a "New Agora" that would serve as an evolutionary guidance system for world peace?
How could the "New Agoras" contribute to the conscious evolution of the human species?
In what ways can the "New Agora" serve humanity through creating and sustaining civil society?
http://wwwu.uni-klu.ac.at/gossimit/ifsr/fuschl/f2002/nl20_1_fuschl_p4ff.pdf
But unfortunately Bela and Jenlink did not show up, and so the Team consisted of Bazewicz, Espinosa, Gill, Lenser, Umpleby, Walton - and me as a "Bumble-Bee" in the open-space terminology - as I was moving between the teams and themes and issues, but had written the discussion paper with Farah Lenser: Cultivating Dialogue with Magic Round Tables. See 11. Fuschl Conversations - ISBN 3 85206 166 0
We learned later that Patrick M. Jenlink, Bela H. Banathy had published in September 2002 in
Systems Research and Behavioral Science: (more below)
As we are looking here for diverse, distributed "communities" and the challenges of exclusion and dis-embodiment (virtual realities) this Book from
2001 (original 1994) might also be of interest:
Potential Oppotunities and Risks Cyberspace Culture as adopted from University of Tübingen 1994, Artificial paradises - Virtuelle Realitäten:
Cyberspace as Toy or Orientation Support ?
SEPTEMBER 2002
Systems Research and Behavioral Science:
The Agora Project: the New Agoras of the twenty-first century
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/98515536/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
ASILOMAR 2002
The first annual board meeting of the Institute for 21st Century Agoras was held at Asilomar, California on November 2, 2002. Members present were: Aleco Christakis, David Loye, and Bela Antal Banathy. LaDonna Harris was absent. Also in attendance were Diane Conaway and Ken Bausch.
|
The Agora Project: the New Agoras of the twenty-first century |
|
Patrick M. Jenlink 1 *, Bela H. Banathy 2 |
| Systems Research and Behavioral Science in June 2003 is dedicated to the memory of our beloved Bela H. Banathy. |
|
I recommend this Conference Report in WORLD FUTURES, special edition on AGORA - but this is also hidden behind copyright walls and so expensive that only few can afford:
Using Systems Thinking to Construct Agoras of the Global Village, Institute for 21st Century Agoras, Riverdale, Georgia, AND
Toward a New Covenant: Embracing a Dialogue and Decision Culture to Address the Challenges of the Agoras of the 21st Century, Heiner Benking, Farah Lenser, Sherryl Stalinski
see also the ISSS 2003 website
Co-Laboratories of Democracy
A Co-Laboratory of Democracy is a refinement of the Interactive Management methodology created by Christakis and his associates. It is a further refinement of the CogniScope and sometimes goes under different names, as the Indigenous Leadership Interactive System, for example, in adapting it to different circumstances. In these co-laboratories, people of diverse cultures, ideologies, and agendas engage in structured dialogue; focus on common concerns, decide on practical priorities; and craft consensual actions plans. [For a more extended explanation go to www.globalagoras.org and choose Co-Laboratories on the menu.]
ISSS 2003 Crete
CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION OF HUMANITY: USING SYSTEMS THINKING TO CONSTRUCT AGORAS OF THE GLOBAL VILLAGE
The conference theme has been chosen to focus attention on: (a) the challenge facing humanity as it transforms from "evolutionary consciousness" to "conscious evolution," and (b) the role systems thinking must play in constructing 21st Century Agoras in the context of globalization.
Globalization is being described by many as an emerging new system of world order that has accelerated following the end of the Cold War order in 1989. Systems thinking must make clear what is being eliminated and what constructed by globalization. We must rise to the challenge of democratizing the processes of conscious evolution to ensure that globalization empowers all peoples and not just elites.
Dialogue is essential for understanding cultures and subcultures in the emerging global village. Boundary-spanning dialogue across disciplines and civilizations, if conducted wisely, can generate democratic agreement on the courses we must pursue to create agoras and avoid Big Brother. Thus, the ability to engage in dialogue becomes one of the most fundamental and most needed human capabilities. Dialogue becomes a central component of any model of conscious evolution.
Dialogue was practiced very effectively in the agoras of Ancient Greece, like the one in Athens. The agoras were public spaces where people congregated and deliberated on their issues. If we want to democratize the emerging global village, we must provide agora-like places where people can engage in meaningful dialogue.
ISSS (www.ISSS.org) has long advocated "transdisciplinarity." This was indeed the common feature of the four aims of the Society for General System Research (the forerunner of ISSS) as stated by its founders in 1954. Concepts, laws and models developed in particular fields were to be investigated to see if they could be properly transferred to emerging phenomena which were less well conceptualized. The challenges of the 21st Century, associated with conscious evolution and globalization, demand the identification and general transmission of such concepts, laws and models in whatever field they were originally developed in order to enhance humanity's capacity to design the 21st Century Agoras. Systems thinking remains the best hope for this to be achieved.
ISSS 2003 will engage participants in earnest discussion and structured dialogue on topics such as the following:
Defining what a democratic global discussion might look like (agora as process);
Describing what a global village achieved by an effective global discussion might look like (agora as product);
Exploring how local discussions as processes and agoras as product might come about;
Making explicit what thinking globally and acting locally means for individuals and groups within ISSS;
Fashioning ISSS into a model functioning agora;
Deciding how ISSS can become organized for influencing the course of globalization;
Discovering how to enhance the practice of boundary-spanning dialogue across disciplines and civilizations.
Conference Objectives:
- To work towards making ISSS a living model of a society where people are capable of appreciating and practicing "conscious evolution;"
- To explore and identify the role of systems thinking in the context of the emerging phenomenon of globalization;
- To identify action steps in the pathway of constructing the agoras of the global village;
- To enhance the praxis of boundary-spanning dialogue across disciplines and civilizations.
World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, Publisher: Taylor & Francis, Issue: Volume 60, Numbers 1-2 / January-March 2004 Using MetaPress Direct Linking or OpenURL
Using Systems Thinking to Construct Agoras of the Global Village,
and pp115-128: TOWARDS A NEW COVENANT - EMBRACING A DIALOGUE AND DECISION CULTURE TO ADDRESS THE CHALLENGES OF THE AGORAS OF THE 21ST CENTURY http://open-forum.de/Dialogue_and_DecisionCulture.html
FUSCHL 2004
Official Newsletter of the International Federation of Systems PDF
Twelfth Fuschl Conversation PDF
The Agora Project DOC
Team 1 Report: NEW AGORA (powerpoints) Benking / Chroust
http://benking.de/dialog/fuschl/fuschl-agora-2004.html
- Asilomar team 1, which has developed a comprehensive set of generic functions for steward agoras;
- Asilomar team 2, which has devised a system for the web-based implementation of a Q&A system about the New Agoras;
see "us" sitting at Lake Fuschl (see cover below): Conversation as the Communication Method of Choice: Designing New Agoras for the 21st Century,
2006
Dialogue for Conscious Evolution
2005, 2008
A "LATE"-comer, recent publication in 2007-2008
Conversation as the Communication Method of Choice: Designing New Agoras for the 21st Century, Springer 2008
Very interesting papers, but unfortunately this collection is incomplete and one-sided because key players and key threads are not covered, such as Dialog and the Fields of Deliberation or Mediation, or the Supreme Dialog (Anthony Blake), or the whole line of tensegrity **** , And systemic mapping (see work of Anthony Judge ***** 1967-2004 is not covered, nor are traditions like the ones of STORY *** Mantitonquat ***
Unfortunately the essential 2nd volume was published only 5 years after the late Bela Banathy passed away and so many of original thoughts and intentions are not covered.
Maybe a 3rd Volume of Springer Publishers is good idea to follow up.
AGORA at Crete, EcoTHEE 2008
Missing Context and Orientations in Modern Times:
Outlining the Problematique of the Human Predicament
and sharing Commons in a global Embodied Covenant
http://benking.de/futures/Benking-ECOTHEE-2008.pdf PDF
and the Agora exercises as "Magic Roundtables":
Ecological Theology and Environmental Ethics EcoTHEE 2008 Agora:
http://open-forum.de/events/AGORA-OUTCOMES-Chania-EcoTHEE-2008.htm
http://open-forum.de/re-invent-democracy.html
Before I forget, I recommend:
PLEASE VIST THE INSTITUTE FOR 21ST CENTURY AGORA: http://www.globalagoras.org/ this book: http://www.harnessingcollectivewisdom.com/ and the OBAMAVISION exercise at:http://obamavision.wikispaces.com/
