rn> Harmonization progress…

2001-01-24

Richard Moore

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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

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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]

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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


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Richard K Moore
Wexford, Ireland
Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance 
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