NCDD Discount on Future Search Leadership Workshop

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Roshan Bliss

We are excited to share the following letter to the NCDD community from Sally Theilacker of the Future Search Network about a great discount being offered to NCDD members for their upcoming Future Search leadership workshop this December. We encourage you to read below and take advantage of the discount! Find out more by clicking here.

Dear NCDD Community,

Sandra Janoff and I are inspired by your work in your recent conference and in your community. We want to support you in the following way. Sandra is offering a Managing A Future Search Training Workshop on December 8 - 10, 2014 in Philadelphia. We would like to give considerable discounts to NCDD members. Call or e-mail us and make plans to join us in December!

Managing a Future Search – A Leadership Workshop with Sandra Janoff

December 8-10, 2014 in Philadelphia

Visit our website to register or find out more: www.futuresearch.net/network/workshops/descriptions-50748.cfm

Managing a Future Search – A Leadership Workshop is for facilitators and leaders who want to learn how applying Future Search principles enables a community or organization to transform its capability for action. Participants will acquire the tools needed to organize and manage Future Search conferences with integrity in any sector or culture. This workshop runs Monday morning through Wednesday lunch, December 8-10, 2015.

Workshop participants will learn:

How to manage a meeting in which the target of change is a whole system’s capability for action now and in the future.
Key issues in matching conference task and stakeholders.
A theory and practice of facilitating large, diverse groups.
How to keep critical choices in the hands of participants.
How freeing yourself from diagnosing and fixing enables diverse groups to come together faster.
Basic principles and techniques that can be used to design many other meetings.

The workshop is built around a simulated Future Search. The simulation is planned by the participants as part of the learning design. The whole group then has a basis for a shared experience with the techniques for building community, developing a mutual world view, creating desired futures, finding common ground, expanding the range of choices, and moving into action. Included are interactive sessions on theory, history, planning, facilitation and follow-up.

John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods in Forbes Magazine says “… Whole Foods Market tries to embody all of the principles of conscious capitalism all the time … and if you look at our history, that is what we have done—become more conscious as we have grown. One very powerful way in which we accomplish this is through our “Future Search” process, through which we bring representatives of all of our stakeholders together every five years to think about how we can continue to grow and evolve as an organization and as an ecosystem of interconnected players.”

The tuition for this 3 day workshop is $1,690 – including materials, lunch, and a copy of the Future Search Book, 3rd Edition, by Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff. We would like to give special discounts to people who are NCDD members. Call or e-mail us and we’ll try to work within what you can afford.

We want you to join us in December! Future Search is a GREAT and little known intervention proven to transform whole systems dealing with tough issues any where the world. Call Sally or Sandra at 215.951.0328 or 800.951.6333 or email us at fsn@futuresearch.net.

Sincerely,

Sally Theilacker

Program Manager, Future Search Network

talking about the youth vote

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Peter

(Orlando, FL) Here is the audio of an interview I enjoyed doing recently on BYU Radio. The conversation ranged pretty widely, but here are a few excerpts (from their writeup):

Lack of engagement among young people is not entirely their fault, says Levine. “Young people are often just not asked to vote,” says Levine. “If someone knocks on your door, you’re more likely to vote. Young people are often left off those campaign lists because they haven’t voted before or they’re considered unlikely to vote. So that becomes a vicious cycle.” …

There is no shortage of engagement among young people in efforts to improve their world –socially conscious hashtag campaigns, boycotts and protests are evidence of that. But engagement in the formal political process is where today’s youth are lacking, says Levine. “Politics needs to make room for youth. The process isn’t committed to them, it’s not reaching out to them and it’s serving up a complex voting system.”

The post talking about the youth vote appeared first on Peter Levine.

The False Utility of Civic Engagement

Posted on October 23, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

Civic engagement is often seen as a utility.

There are problems in society, so we need to galvanize “The People” to do something about it. “The People” have power, after all. If only they can be motivated to claim it.

But who are these shadowy Masses who could control our country’s destiny?

Well, they are us.

Walter Lippman was always skeptical of “The Public,” describing them as a “bewildered herd” liable to “arrive in the middle of the third act and will leave before the last curtain, having stayed just long enough perhaps to decide who is the hero and who the villain of the piece.”

In my opinion, Lippman didn’t say this because he was an elitist technocrat, but because he recognized the danger in formulating a “phantom public” which disempowered a key population -

That would be you and me.

There is no real “public,” just lots of individual people with individual lives, beliefs, opinions, concerns, and priorities.

So I get a little skeptical when people refer to “the public” as a tool. Want to change a law? Get a certain number of signatures or a certain number of votes. Want to challenge the status quo? Get a large turnout for a protest or rally. Perhaps a certain number of views on a video where you’ll never believe what happened next.

And perhaps this makes sense. After all, it seems reasonable to have some threshold of demonstrating public support.

But there is no “Public” and civic engagement is not merely a utility.

It is great to engage people in a cause or an issue, to mobilize “people power” in changing the way things are done.

But I believe there is real value, fundamental value, in simply having people live and work and function together.

Communities are better when people – all people – have a voice within that community. People are better when every person around them has a voice.

So go ahead and push for a change. Fight for what you believe in and try to get others to fight along side you. But always remember that true engagement is deeper than that. True engagement is more than a cause or a battle or an issue.

It is listening genuinely to everyone around you. Empowering them to have their voices heard. It is recognizing that we are all better – individually and collectively – when every person is engaged.

Matthew G. Specter, Habermas: An Intellectual Biography

Posted on October 23, 2014 by Peter

(Orlando, FL) Matthew G. Specter’s Habermas: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge, 2010) is not really a biography of the contemporary German philosopher. It doesn’t say where Habermas was born, whether he has a family, what he did in his various jobs, which countries he has visited, or what he experienced in the Hitler Youth in 1944-5. It isn’t even really an intellectual biography, if that implies a comprehensive account of his influences and ideas. We don’t learn much about how or when Habermas encountered American pragmatism, French poststructuralism, or German hermeneutics, let alone what he studied in high school or what works of art he prizes (if any).

But Specter’s book is a sustained and valuable argument for a thesis. Specter shows that Habermas has always been deeply engaged in the most pressing constitutional questions facing the Federal Republic of Germany at each stage of its history.

In the 1950s, a key question was whether the Constitutional Court could safeguard democracy or whether the legislature and people had to be active proponents of democratic values. In the 1960s, the questions included how to come to terms with the suppressed Nazi past and how to deal with student protest—a complex issue for Habermas, who placed himself to the left of the Social Democratic Party but also upheld the constitution. In the 1970s and 1980s, the era of anti-nuclear protest, a pressing issue was civil disobedience: extra-legal activism in a constitutional democracy. After 1989, Habermas’ attention turned to German unification; he argued that the East offered nothing of value in the form of political institutions but that the daily experiences of the GDR’s citizens had to be valued, and the unified state needed a new constitution. Since the Millennium, Habermas has been concerned about the European Union and particularly how it should treat religious minorities.

Specter mixes quotes from Habermas’ editorials and interviews with his more abstract philosophical work. The result is pretty persuasive: Habermas is always a critical friend of the Federal Republic, whether he is analyzing Max Weber or addressing students in a 1960s university cafeteria. He is more politically engaged than his philosophical works suggest if they are read out of context. He is also more specifically German. Of course, he demonstrates an impressive range of reading and deserves credit for bringing Anglophone authors, such as Charles Sanders Pierce, J.L. Austin, and John Rawls, into Continental debates. But Habermas is always interested in improving his own republic. He emerges as a German Ronald Dworkin, addressing jurists and civic leaders as much as philosophical colleagues.

The post Matthew G. Specter, Habermas: An Intellectual Biography appeared first on Peter Levine.

Morality for the Broken

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

I often call myself broken.

I don’t mean that as a bad thing. It’s just a part of who I am. To be honest, I suspect we are all broken. All not quite right. All wounded and scarred from our past, present, or future.

So forgive me if I use that word cavalierly. I use it to refer to any person – or, perhaps, a given moment – where we aren’t quite the person we want to be. Where the traumas of our past impact the realities of the present.

Perhaps you aren’t good at opening up to people. Perhaps you over share. Perhaps you are terrified by loud noises, inexplicably moved to tears, overcome by violent anger, controlled by addictions, paralyzed by fear.

I don’t know how you are broken, but I suspect you probably are.

I know I am.

Mental health issues are serious, and we should take them seriously.

But to remove the stigma of mental health, we also need to normalize mental health issues. We need to give morality back to the broken. Or perhaps we broken need to take morality back.

And make no mistake, there is a moral component to mental health. Michel Foucault traces this well in his work. Sanitoriums were places where the mentally ill were incarcerated with criminals – eventually separated for the protection of criminals, who were seen as morally superior to the mad.

The mentally ill were left exposed in the cold and put out on display for entertainment. The mentally ill were less than human, and the perceived causes of their madness were inextricably linked to the morality of the day.

Perhaps our modern sensibilities have refined since then, but this implication of immorality has not yet faded from view.

There is nothing wrong with you if you are broken. There is nothing wrong about you.

Friedrich Nietzsche argues that aristocrats invented morality. That they created “the good” to be synonymous with their tastes. Eventually, this paradigm shifted, with those who came to power from lower social rungs declaring blessed are the meek.

But if the moral path is consistently reinvented by those in power, who will speak for the broken? Who will define morality for us?

Guilt as a personal check can be good. Guilt as a crippling response seems unhelpful. Grief can be a healthy process, but depression can be devastatingly paralyzing. Anger, too, has value, but undirected rage can be dangerous.

Who is to tell us what feelings are Right?

I am not prepared to be judged immoral for any of my many faults, nor would I presume to judge others for theirs. And yet, giving everyone a pass to determine what is best for them seems dangerous – perhaps there are some deeds we really ought not to condone.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I do know this – there is a morality for the broken, one that embraces us for who we are and accepts our many flaws. A morality that doesn’t judge how our brokenness manifests, but which understands that it does. A morality that questions what is Right without damning us for our flaws.

A morality for the broken. And we are all of us broken.

A Paradox to Savor: A High-Quality, Free Economics Textbook

Posted on October 22, 2014 by David Bollier

The economist Paul Samuelson once wrote, “I don't care who writes a nation's laws—or crafts its advanced treaties—if I can write its economics textbooks.”

What a pleasure to learn that an insurgent team of economists, The Core Project, is about to rewrite the nation’s laws. The new introductory economics textbook is called The Economy. It is surely the most daring, cosmopolitan and empirically driven textbook since Samuelson’s tome was unleashed on undergraduates in 1948. It is also packed with innovations worthy of our digital age. The Core Project’s sardonic tagline says it well: “Teaching economics as if the last three decades had happened.”

This is not your grandfather’s econ textbook. Nor is it an exercise in ideological spin or neoliberal bashing. In both style and substance, Core-Econ (the name for the Core Project's website) shakes off the dreary norms of conventional economics and embraces the critical intelligence of the real world.

Savor the delicious paradox that The Economy is published as an interactive ebook available for free downloads (pdfs) and printing. It is published under a Creative Commons Attribution, NonCommercial, NoDerivatives license, demonstrating that a free lunch is entirely feasible (at least for non-rival goods like books).

So far, ten of the twenty-one planned teaching modules have been published online; the remaining ten modules are expected to be completed by the end of 2014. At the moment, the online version is available as a “beta” release, which means that anyone can submit feedback and suggestions to improve the text before its release.

A message to the NCDD community from the Board

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Susan Stuart Clark

Wow. Talk about being inspired by what is possible! The NCDD conference in the DC area last weekend was a potent mix of innovation, connection and motivation for action. 415+ people turned out to share their best thinking, broaden their networks and add their unique contribution to advancing the work of strengthening our democracy.

FieldMapWithGRs Even as partisan rhetoric heats up in an effort to amplify division and discord in advance of the November elections, the people and organizations involved in NCDD offer a countervailing narrative — one that shows how people can talk across divides and co-create fresh solutions to stale problems.

As Board members and passionate champions of the difference NCDD is making in the world, we hope you’ll join us in spreading the word about NCDD. More people need to know that it’s possible to move beyond politics as usual and bring more thoughtful dialogue and action to our communities and our country. We hope you’ll take five minutes today and share the brief blurb below with people who you think would be inspired by this work and benefit from the resources and the amazing network NCDD offers.

Tired of partisan bickering? “Vote” for NCDD, the antidote to politics as usual. Join a network of over 30,000 people committed to creating the conditions for constructive conversation about what matters. Now through Election Day, join the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation at the 2006 rates. You will receive a new member orientation to:

projects that are finding common ground for action on important issues as the national, state and local levels

tools that you can use to create your own community conversations

hundreds and hundreds of resources for dialogue and deliberation

Go to www.ncdd.org/join to get involved today!

We also ask that you support NCDD by becoming a dues-paying member, or if already a member, consider upgrading your membership. As a lean organization, we need the active support of members to continue our efforts and raise awareness of the innovations in engagement, dialogue and community-building taking place across the country. A strong and growing membership also enables us to add even more to what we can offer members to support their work.

Until November 4th, membership amounts will stay at their current levels ($25 student/$50 individual/$125 sustaining/$150 organization) but will be increasing after that date – new amounts will be $30 student/$75 individual/$150 sustaining/$200 organization. But you can lock in at current membership levels by prepaying now for two years!

You can check what membership level you are currently by looking yourself up in the directory at www.ncdd.org/directory or on this chart (which shows all members’ renewal dates and member types). To join, renew, or upgrade your membership, go to www.ncdd.org/join.

In these weeks leading up to the election, we have an opportunity to share what we know is not only possible, but is working, to reclaim our democracy. We hope you’ll take a few moments now to spread the word and express your support.

Thanks for all you are doing every day to build more resilient and thriving communities!

Barbara, Marla, Susan, Diane, Courtney, John and Martin
NCDD Board of Directors

the left has become Burkean

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Peter

David Brooks makes a point today that is one of my hobby-horses:

[Edmund] Burke is known as the founder of conservatism, but his thought sits oddly these days with the Republican Party and those who call themselves conservative. The party has become much more populist, supporting term limits and political outsiders over those who have been educated by experience. Most call for pretty radical change to the welfare state. It’s the Democrats who fight to preserve the current structures of Social Security, Medicare and food stamps. It’s the Democrats who have been running ads through this election campaign accusing their opponents of being a bunch of wild-eyed radicals. Are Democrats now the conservators of tradition?

I would say: yes. And I would say the same of the European left and even of grassroots movements that view themselves as to the left of the Democratic Party in the US. I’ve argued that America’s most authentic conservative movement is composed of grassroots groups that emphasize community voice, localism, and sustainability. A characteristic leftist stance today is that a given institution (such as the public schools, higher ed, welfare programs, or public employees’ unions) fails to meet criteria of justice, yet we should defend the institution because it’s better than an untested alternative and because we should respect the experience and commitment of the participants (i.e., the teachers, professors, public employees, and their clients). The most ambitious leftist proposals are mostly patches to keep these existing institutions going, not whole new strategies. Therefore, I’ve posited that Edmund Burke would vote Democratic.

To the extent that other people make this argument, it’s often to score a debating point–either to denounce the left for abandoning its radicalism or to tweak conservatives for failing to recognize that their opponents are now more genuinely conservative than they are. For instance, Andrew Sullivan uses the premise that Democrats are conservative to endorse Obama and denounce both neoconservativism and what he calls “progressivism.”* But I intend this point as an analysis, not a polemic. If the left is the true home of conservatism today, that raises some important questions, but it is not necessarily good or bad.

*Sullivan: “As for our time, an attachment to a fixed ideology called conservatism (which is currently suffused with the zeal and passion Montaigne so deeply suspected) or to an ideology called progressivism (which increasingly regards most of its opponents as mere bigots) does not exhaust the possibilities. A disposition for moderation and pragmatism, for the long view over the short-term victory, for maintaining the balance in American life in a polarized time: this remains a live option. You can see how, influenced by this mindset, I have had little difficulty supporting a Democratic president as the most conservative figure, properly speaking, now on the national stage. You can see why I have become so hostile to neoconservatism whose unofficial motto is ‘Toujours l’audace!’”

The post the left has become Burkean appeared first on Peter Levine.

Fashion, Freedom and Gender Norms

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

Having never been much of one for fashion, I was quite intrigued today to hear some of the praise and mourning for legendary designer Oscar de la Renta.

He made powerful women beautiful and beautiful women powerful, they said on the news this morning.

“We will always remember him as the man who made women look and feel beautiful,” former first lady Laura Bush said in a statement.

Commentators talked about what a profound respect de la Renta had for women. A respect which he expressed in part through his art of fashion.

In some ways, these comments struck me as odd. To be fair, I know nothing about fashion or about de la Renta, but this connection between women and their looks strikes me as unsettling. Where is the line between supporting women and objectifying them?

It’s commonly argued that one’s fashion is a key way of expressing oneself. About 19 percent of U.S. public schools require a uniform – arguably infringing on those students freedom of expression.

But if indeed clothes make the man (or woman), is there anything wrong with a woman wanting an outfit that will make her feel beautiful? Or, perhaps more cynically, an outfit that will make her feel like she fits society’s expectations of beauty.

And this gap seems the real challenge.

I have heard my friends struggle with how to respond to their daughters’ princess-loving ways – How can we teach our daughters that they can define their own standards of beauty and success, but also support them if they pursue a gender-normative approach?

There’s nothing wrong with being a princess. There’s something wrong with being expected to be a princess.

High fashion for me has always seemed to cross this line – leading the charge in developing standards no healthy person ought to pursue and warping people’s own inner sense of fashion.

But I’m also reminded of that scene in the Devil Wears Prada where Meryl Streep derides Anne Hathaway for thinking she exists outside of fashion – it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff.

So perhaps we are none of us immune from the machine.

But, it seems, there must be room in this world for clothing which can help a person express themselves, which can empower and, perhaps, even make someone feel beautiful. Clothing which doesn’t have to fit gender norms, but which can help a given person in a given context express who they are to the world.

the Communist Party battles against equality

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Peter

The profound irony of this kind of story seems under-appreciated:

The Beijing-appointed leader of Hong Kong, Leung Chun-ying, said Monday evening that it was unacceptable to allow his successors to be chosen in open elections, in part because doing so would risk giving poorer residents a dominant voice in politics. ….

Mr. Leung, who has received repeated backing from the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership, argued that the way to remedy social grievances was to expand the supply of housing and spur economic growth. He stressed the importance of maintaining the confidence of Hong Kong’s corporate elite. …

Recall that the Chinese Communist Party, which backs Mr. Leung, was once totally committed to Mao Zedong Thought, which officially remains one plank in its ramshackle platform. Mao Zedong Thought demands an implacable and total People’s War against all vestiges of capitalism, the Mass Line (perfect identification of the Party with the poor masses), and Cultural Revolution (a struggle against bourgeois tendencies that must continue even after the masses have seized all power in a violent revolution). Now the same organization seeks to “insulate candidates [for Hong Kong's government] from popular pressure to create a welfare state” and wants instead “the city government to follow more business-friendly policies to address economic inequality. …”

I’m not saying that Maoism was preferable to the present ideology. Maoism was worse, killing tens of millions and ruining countless additional lives. But the Party’s volte-face perfectly exemplifies the limited impact of ideas. During the Cultural Revolution, the government of the world’s biggest nation used every tool imaginable to stomp out capitalist enterprises, norms, and instincts. A generation later, the same government, dominated by the same families, won’t even allow a popular vote in Hong Kong because poor residents might request some modest restrains on global capitalism. So much for ideology. The Chinese Communist Party remains officially Maoist, but it is also a unitary hierarchy that monopolizes the legitimate use of force within the borders of China. Hence, in the long run, it will simply act in the self-interest of its leaders and rationalize its decisions using convenient arguments. The lesson is: pay careful attention to constitutional and institutional design.

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Civic Studies

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Monthly Archives: October 2014