Read an Excerpt
THE DEEP DEMOCRACY OF OPEN FORUMS
Practical Steps to Conflict Prevention and Resolution for the Family, Workplace, and World
By ARNOLD MINDELL Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.
Copyright © 2002 Arnold Mindell, Ph.D.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57174-230-8
CHAPTER 1
Beyond the Rules of Order
"We cannot dismantle one system without having another in its place."
—Mahatma Gandhi (Sharp 1973)
To understand yourself, you need to explore your inner experiences. Likewise, if multileveled organizations want to know themselves, they need to explore Open Forums to understand their various parts. Open Forums in my definition are structured, person-to-person or cyberspace, democratic meetings, in which everyone feels represented. Furthermore, they are facilitated in a deeply democratic manner, which means the deepest feelings and dreams can also be expressed. In other words, the Open Forum is to a corporation or city as innerwork is to an individual. The analogy between the innerwork of an individual and an organization's Open Forum goes even further. Just as your personal learning depends on how open you are to your various parts, feelings, and dream figures, an organization's self-discovery process depends on openness to the diversity of its individual members, and the diversity of their inner and outer worlds.
Diversity awareness is multileveled: It is a matter of noticing cultures, ages, genders, races, sexual orientations, religions, economic backgrounds, jobs, abilities, and worldviews and dreams. Process-oriented work with organizations is based on awareness of and bringing forth the richness of our total diversity and complexity.
It is said of Gandhi that "he didn't want to win battles; he wanted to win hearts and minds" (Atlee; Bondurant 1965). The methods of the process-oriented Open Forum aim at doing exactly that. By fostering awareness of the deepest feelings and communication signals of everyone in the community, we can create nonviolent yet direct exchanges. The new procedures presented in the following chapters are adapted to working with organizations not as mechanical entities, but as living systems, be they schools, businesses, or cities.
It often seems to me as if the very people we have made responsible for leadership and global change are not always the best for the job. Most organizational and world leaders, activists, and politicians have little training in understanding people or helping groups to change. Yet most of us who are supposed to know most about personal transformation— namely, those in the helping professions—usually avoid organizational tasks and the problems of social transformation. The lack of conscious leadership is why troubled organizations turn against their troubles, and conflict with conflict. They assume that existing conflict is "wrong."
Process ideas are different. Instead of thinking in terms of the paradigm that condemns what's going on in a given conflict situation and implementing programs, methods, and procedures that implicitly look down on the people involved, process-oriented organizational work discovers the missing power of transformation in the tension itself and in people's behavior. In the new paradigm, conflict itself is the fastest way to community. Conflict is its own healing.
Democratic methods, rules, and laws alone do not create a sense of community. Rules and laws may govern mechanical systems, but not people. The new paradigm, which I describe in the following chapters, acknowledges that organizations are partially mechanical beings needing behavior change. However, in the new paradigm, organizations are also living organisms whose lifeblood is composed of feelings, beliefs, and dreams. Ignoring the flow of this "blood", that is, moment-to-moment experiences, disregards emotions and represses what I call "the dreaming background" to the everyday life of schools, businesses, and cities. Ignoring the dreaming background eventually depresses us. When "facts" become more important than feelings and dreams, we get bored, don't vote, won't go to meetings, avoid relationship problems, and become disinterested in public life. Disinterested participants erode organizations, precipitating their collapse as if they were empty, paper buildings.
In today's world, "good" ideas don't work without communication awareness. One side cannot truly win in a battle. In addition, one method alone cannot deal with human issues for long. In fact, our organizations are no longer localized in one spot; cyberspace changed all that! There are no longer simple localities in our second-millennium world. We are rather a planet of interconnections.
Therefore, creating deep democracy deals with community members not only as separate, local entities but also as sensitive, nonlocal interconnecting spirits of the times, which are constantly changing. In other words, each of our viewpoints has something global and eternal about it, for even if we are not around, there is always someone else who seems to fill in for us. In fact, any viewpoint is more like a ghost than a fact. Even when no single person represents that viewpoint, it sort of "spooks" us. We have all witnessed at one time or another how roles such as the "rebel" or the "unconscious leader" hover like spirits around groups.
Even in serious situations, process-oriented Open Forums can bring out the spirits in the background in a playful manner to reveal the community as a global, dreaming being in the midst of self-discovery. By taking the group's process as a teacher, everyone becomes a learner and leader, including young children and longtime gang leaders. According to William Ury in his excellent 1999 book, Getting to Peace, "In 10,000 schools in this country, kids as young as six or seven are learning peer mediation." He tells us that in the cities of the United States "gang leaders often become the best mediators, they command respect for the transformation they've gone through." The awareness methods of process-oriented Open Forums work in face-to-face interactions and on the Internet.
Using awareness in groups allows us to discover ourselves, the way we are. With awareness, we have access not only to our emotions, but also to detachment. Anyone who uses her awareness to enter the heart of conflict knows from personal experience that the emotions that arise are not always predictable. For example, I know from my own experience that the feelings involved in tense situations touch me deeply. Sometimes people scare me; they make me feel sad, or even removed from situations. If I use my awareness, I notice that sometimes my body shakes, as if I were in the presence of a huge monster, although the person I am facing seems to be acting timidly. Using awareness connects me to the excitement, the wildness and love in any given moment. Using awareness is a very different paradigm from using rules and power, because with awareness, the next step is not always predictable. Even monsters can be present.
Taoism: Ancient Chinese Paradigm for Process Work
To get along with change and survive the stress of conflict, we need some paradigm that is beyond those of danger and safety, war and peace, violence and nonviolence. These viewpoints are either for or against what is actually happening. If for any reason, you are against either conflict or peace, you tend to ignore anger and/or quietness in groups. Process-oriented facilitators do not use peace paradigms, which wage war against conflict. Process work is based on an ancient Chinese belief in nature called Taoism, which includes all possible states of mind such as conflict and peace, stagnation and breakthrough. The philosophy of Taoism is expressed in eighty-one sayings of the Tao Teh Ching. The various states of consciousness Taoism encompasses can be seen in the sixty-four chapter headings of the I Ching, or The Book of Changes. I understand Taoism to mean that we should notice and observe nature, then be at peace with what is happening, be it conflict or rest. If we stop fighting war and struggling against tension, we can give problems the chance to resolve themselves.
Taoism has been very helpful to me in working with small and large groups. My personal view of Taoism is, in a way, very simple. When I look around, I see that everything changes. Try to find one single thing on this Earth that does not change with time. Notice that there are no firm "things." The stars are in the process of transforming; the Earth evolves; everything is in the midst of flux. Each of us changes each day. This is the essential view of Taoism as well as modern theoretical physics. Everything is in the midst of change. Fixed things do not exist. In a way, everything is moving and dancing together.
The afternoon before I began work on this book, I went for a hike in the mountains and climbed for several hours into the hills until I stood on a high, rocky terrace. I looked toward the heavens and saw clouds streaming by, like blue-gray balls of cotton, flowing beneath a bright blue sky. Elk running across the meadows caught my attention as I gazed into the autumn valleys, painted red and gold by the changing seasons. Above were the clouds flowing across the sky; below, the elk running through the meadows.
While enjoying this view, a thought came to me: the whole Earth is changing, shuddering, and shaking. The animals, plants, rocks, and stars of this universe are moving, not independently of one another, but together in a sort of dance. Just as the clouds, the elk, and the Earth dance together, so do all things dance together.
While I stood there perceiving this immense dance, I was moved to tears. This experience put the job of mediating organizational change into perspective as part of a larger, more awesome interaction—the world's dance. This view that things are changing and interconnected is the view of Taoism.
We could say that the way in which things move and change is a dance. Each dance is a kind of Tao. Conflict is that particular kind of Tao, that particular dance, in which you notice someone yelling: "You are stepping on my feet, get off my toe!" When no one listens, the dancers' Tao of conflict may turn to the Tao of violence. However, no Tao is inevitable. Awareness can change a painful situation into an enriching one. To prevent violence, we need to become aware of feelings and pain and of the call, "You are stepping on me!" In this moment, awareness can lead to new relationships, new dances.
This reminds me of a recent interaction my partner, Amy, and I saw in London, where we were working with a large group of people who had come from all over the world. At one moment, the peaceful atmosphere of the group was awakened by the cry of a woman bringing everyone's awareness to the pain of gays ostracized by their families and cultures. The group atmosphere, or Tao, changed; conflict was present. The very openness to tension introduced by the gays allowed those who had been repressing themselves to speak about their problems.
In one powerful interaction, Irish participants spoke about the ancient feeling of being "stepped on" by the English, and this opened the historical conflict between the Irish and English. At one moment, a sensitive Irish woman came forward and spoke of her sense of being less valuable in the eyes of the English. She cried, "Why colonize, why down us? Where are your feelings?"
An English man who had been silent until this moment explained that being a sailor in the English Navy had forced him to repress his feelings. The woman screamed in pain at him, accusing him of heartlessness. Immediately others surrounded the man to protect him from her. Amy and I suggested he be allowed to stand alone with her. The group parted and the two stood in the center as we tried to use awareness and follow their moment-to-moment experience. As always, we hoped their body signals and process itself would show us what to do.
Then, to the surprise of all, he broke down in tears, admitting with sadness that he had lost track of his feelings. To the even greater surprise of everyone, as he wept, she peered at him and suddenly exclaimed, "Why, you have lost your soul!" She explained that she realized for the first time that he was in a worse situation than she, even though she experienced him as the social oppressor. Totally changing her demeanor, she said she felt badly for him. To the amazement of everyone, they embraced, having reconciled their conflict, at least at that moment and in that city.
New Dances
In process work, awareness is the key. As in Taoism's view, the necessary next steps to relationships are found in the momentary situation. The job of conflict managers is not only to reorganize people, but also to help people recognize how their own communication signals and dreams, the hidden signals and feelings, the hidden Tao, so to speak, of a given situation reorganize organizations. These vital signals and dreams bring people back into step with one another. The point is to train our awareness to notice the necessary next steps hidden in what I will later define as "body signals" and "organizational ghosts." Awareness inevitably reveals the new steps that can transform even intractable conflict.
The Trouble with Democracy
One of the sources underlying the ubiquitous violence we are all increasingly concerned about is the governing democratic paradigm. Embedded in the foundation of democracy are wonderful ideals such as liberty and freedom. For example, in Articles 2 through 21 of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we find the right to freedom from racial and other forms of discrimination; the right to life, liberty, and the security of the person; freedom from slavery or involuntary servitude; freedom from torture and from cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. However, can democracy, as it is now formulated, really uphold these rights?
The root meaning of the word democracy is associated with power, not awareness. In Greek, demo means citizen and kratie means power. Democracy comes from the root words literally meaning citizen power. One of the original goals of democratic forms of government was to balance and distribute power; instead of only the ruling elite, everyone was supposed to have power. What could possibly be wrong with citizen power? If people could be reasonable instead of emotional, democracy—and the "good" use of power, might work. But without awareness of our capacity to interact, social power alone will never solve our interactional problems.
Inner Tyranny Instead of Democracy
There are two reasons why democracy does not work well. In the first place, democracy mainly addresses social issues, not inner, personal ones. Truly democratic human beings are that way only very briefly. I have never met even one person who is able to sustain an egalitarian, democratic form of consciousness toward self or others for more than moments. Without some form of awareness training, within the privacy of our inner autonomy, most of us behave like tyrants. When it comes to recognizing different aspects of ourselves, we become dictators who simply refuse to do so. If we are strong, we ignore our shyness. If we are harmonious, we repress and/or deny our anger.
Instead of enacting the democratic principle that the people or parts should all be represented, there is usually only one prevailing viewpoint—that of the everyday self. This "dictatorial" viewpoint makes sure that we do not listen to the various parts of ourselves, our feelings, longings, desires, fears, and powers. Democracy—which, in principle, strives to empower all the parts—cannot work as long as it is recognized only as a blueprint for external structures. To make democracy an inner experience, we need to engage in some form of innerwork or inner dialogue to create a deeper democracy.
Democracy's Power Problem
A second problem with democracy is that it is based on the concept of citizen power—more specifically, the power of the majority—instead of an awareness within each citizen. Perhaps in the best of all possible worlds, the majority is imagined to be interested in the minority's viewpoints. However, this is rarely the case. In fact, as Professor J. J. Hendricks of the Department of Politics and Public Administration at California State University, Stanislaus, points out, democracy without awareness is a form of tyranny.
Awareness is a more comprehensive guiding principle than power. By using awareness, we can track what happens to those people and parts of ourselves that are not part of the majority when the majority rules. Awareness tells us that the minority gets upset when it realizes that the majority is not interested in its needs and views and that the wishes of those with fewer votes will not be heard, even if they are supposed to be heard.
For example, if the majority of teenagers in a certain section of a city are of one particular race, sexual orientation, and economic class, and two new young adults of another race, sexual orientation, and economic class move into the area, they are likely to be ostracized. Democratic procedures, which provide guidelines for behavior but not for awareness, cannot forbid or even address the fact that the disdain of the majority humiliates the new kids.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THE DEEP DEMOCRACY OF OPEN FORUMS by ARNOLD MINDELL. Copyright © 2002 Arnold Mindell, Ph.D.. Excerpted by permission of Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
