============================================================================ Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 21:10:15 -0800 To: •••@••.••• From: Rosa Zubizarreta <•••@••.•••> Subject: Re: A MANIFESTO FOR GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION Hi Richard, I've been away visiting family (am still in Ohio at present.) Here is my feedback on this piece. I've taken the liberty to add some stuff in here, in suggestion mode. Overall comments -- GREAT first draft. I think the major thrust of my recommendations would be to 1) add some comments and framing designed to explicitly appeal to conservatives as well as progressives. Have included a few suggestions along those lines. 2) work on streamlining. the shorter the better, that takes time and multiple revision. Have not offered specific comments re: that yet. 3) consider circulating this a la Natural Step process --- repeated iterations getting input from a variety of perspectives. I know a number of folks from various ideological positions i'd be interested in showing it to. ---<snip>--- ================ Dear Rosa, Your feedback is excellent! I've snipped out the detailed comments above, but they will be studied carefully when I do the next revision. Please _do circulate to your 'number of folks' when you feel that is appropriate. yours, rkm ============================================================================ Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 13:31:51 -0800 To: "John Bunzl" <•••@••.•••>, "Richard K. Moore" <•••@••.•••> From: Tom Atlee <•••@••.•••> Subject: Re: Fw: * Simultaneous Policy * Website: http://www.co-intelligence.org Dear John (and Richard), I find this dialogue very generative. Here's a way of thinking about this that may be helpful: Those who involve themselves in this Simultaneous Policy movement would, quite naturally, a) talk about it with friends and associates and b) talk about which measures should be included, among themselves and with others. Those who involve themselves more centrally would c) explore, develop and establish ways to spread the SP idea more broadly and d) explore, develop and establish sophisticated forums in which the conversation about measures could take place more broadly and constructively. These latter two activities -- (c) dissemination and (d) dialogue -- might even be pursued in ways not directly associated with the project, like creating a generic dialogue website devoted to "exploring all possible local, national and international policies and programs that could limit the dominance of global capital over people's individual and community lives." On such a site, the SP would be only one proposal (thereby serving to attract people who are interested in limiting corporate power but who aren't familiar with SP, thus helping to satisfy function [c]). Even though many of the site's discussants and visitors would not be affiliated with SP, their resulting dialogue and conclusions would be immediately applicable to SP's ends (thereby satisfying function [d] and, after those insights were featured in SP's materials, would help attract even more people to SP, thus further enhancing function [c]). The two sites below [with notes by me, from an earlier communication to my list] give two different (and potentially very complementary) ways of approaching the dialogue in (d). In fact, the first site could be used to discuss such proposals even now, one dialogue for each proposal, in a very self-organized manner (although the dialogue text should be downloaded from the site frequently to prevent loss of valuable data, should the dialogue be closed down by the site owners or e-sabateurs). I suspect that, as the Simultaneous Policy movement builds steam, its Achilles Heel will be the very dialogue it needs, if it is to develop the requisite coherence for simultanaeity. It is highly likely that global corporate forces will work to undermine the movement at that exact weak spot, so that it can never develop the coherence it needs to go into effect. In this light, it is significant that certain forms of dialogue are much easier to manipulate, disrupt or confuse than others. Choice of process(es) may ultimately be a critical consideration (although it is less critical now at this early stage). I can join you in thinking about this, if you'd like. Coheartedly, Tom Is there a formal pledge soliciting commitment to your 1-4 in Stage One, that people can sign and groups can endorse? (I do not find these new nuances on the on-line form on your site. Also that form has complexities I would put on other pages, keeping 1-4 on their own page, linked to the further pages.) _ _ _ _ _ _ http://www.debateamerica.org - Provides a new way to seek solutions for community and national issues by steering viewers beyond candidates to all the voices that want to speak out. It allows people to compare how their issues are being dealt with in other communities and it improves on the chat room experience through a new mechanism for online discussion in which all citizens can create and manage their own debates. [You get to pick your issue and create your own debate, inviting your own list of participants. You can view the debates of others, but not necessarily participate. I wasn't happy with the categories into which all debates are put, but categories are always problematical, especially for leading-edge folks. I found this site particularly intriguing in that it provides six different debate styles, and describes the pros and cons of each one. The "deliberative discussion" style comes closest to what I think of as dialogue, but falls far short of the creative power of practices like dynamic facilitation. It would be interesting to see how dynamic facilitation could be facilitated online in such an environment.... -- Tom] http://www.destinationdemocracy.org - Destination Democracy: the ins and outs and unintended consequences of campaign finance reform. [This is an excellent exploration of a complex topic. As much as I love the topic, however, what really interests me about this site is the way it goes about reviewing its topic -- looking at "all options" from "all sides" with a sophisticated sense of the tradeoffs, nuances and complexities. You can't help but get a real education about campaign finance reform -- and about campaigns and money and power and democracy and.... (It makes me wonder if this isn't a big piece of what education could and should be like...) I'm sure there are other options than those that are explored on this site, and I'd love to see more encouragement from the site's designers to have people create "third way" options that no one has come up with (perhaps even have contests about it!) that resolve some of the problems inherent in the existing options, which could then be explored and critiqued by other site-users.... The possibilities not only for citizen education, but for citizen co-creativity, are mind-boggling. -- Tom] ============================================================================ From: "John Bunzl" <•••@••.•••> To: "Tom Atlee" <•••@••.•••> Cc: <•••@••.•••>, <•••@••.•••> Subject: Re: Fw: * Simultaneous Policy * Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 04:08:54 -0000 Website: http://www.simpol.org Dear Tom, Richard, That was a very helpful contribution Tom - thank you. In spite of the message I sent to Richard suggesting that no in-depth discussion on policies need take place for some time, I am coming round to the view that we perhaps need a parallel approach along the lines you (and some others on the simpol list) proposed. In my brief experience of trying to get SP up and running, it seems that those who adopt (when I say 'adopt', I mean provisionally adopt along the lines of points 1-4 of my earlier message) seem to fall in to two categories: ones who feel policies should be actively discussed and others, like me, who feel it could be left for another day. So maybe the SP movement (if I can call it that, having only about 150 'adopters' so far) needs to have two 'arms': a 'campaigning' arm which focuses more on gaining adoptions through propagation of the concept of SP and a 'policy' arm which focuses on policy formulation/harmonisation but which, by involving others in the way you suggest, also serves to encourage adoption as a secondary effect of its work. The two arms would, of course, be linked and have dialogue, etc. in a mutually supportive way. Adopters could choose which arm they wanted to be most involved with. The only other point I would make in response to your suggestion is that I think it could get very difficult to discuss different policy ideas which have differing bases of implementation. In other words, without it being understood by the participants in the discussion that the basis of implementation is, for example, global and simultaneous (SP), it could make for a bit of a mish-mash. But on the other hand, maybe that's positive as it will serve to demonstrate which policies belong in SP and which don't and help to capture people's imagination/support as a result. Can I also say that our website is a starting point. Georges Drouet (who kindly got it set up) and I both recognise that improvements could and should be made but have not done so yet due to considerations of time, money, priorities, etc. I can sign you on Tom as having adopted - please confirm. The simpol discussion list is exclusive to those who have adopted so I can subscribe you to that if you wish. I will, however, first post this exchange and the others I have had with Richard on the simpol list so everyone knows what we've discussed. Look forward to hearing from you. all the best John ============================================================================ Richard K Moore Wexford, Ireland Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance email: •••@••.••• CDR website & list archives: http://cyberjournal.org content-searchable archive: http://members.xoom.com/centrexnews/ Please take a look at "A Guidebook: How the world works and how we can change it" http://cyberjournal.org/cj/guide/ A community will evolve only when the people control their means of communication. -- Frantz Fanon Capitalism is the relentless accumulation of capital for the acquisition of profit. Capitalism is a carnivore. It cannot be made over into a herbivore without gutting it, i.e., abolishing it. - Warren Wagar, Professor of History, State University of New York at Binghamton Permission for non-commercial republishing hereby granted - BUT include and observe all restrictions, copyrights, credits, and notices - including this one. ============================================================================ .