Our July 2017 Wise Democracy Online Dialogue
July 18, 2017 • 10am Pacific Time

Don't miss our next free teleconference gathering with Tom Atlee for newsletter subscribers interested in upgrading democratic systems. This two hour Zoom.us call will start at 10am Pacific Time on Tuesday July 18th.  

We're happy to offer this opportunity for you to connect with people from around the world and deepen your understanding of the wise democracy pattern language. 

The call will begin with a brief check-in in which we’ll invite you to share 

• your name and where you live, 
• a question that is important to you and 
• one of the wise democracy patterns that is especially important in your work or life. 

(Whether or not you plan to join us, we invite you to take a few moments now to think of a question and a pattern that have heart and meaning to you?  Try it out... And if you have done this before for a previous gathering, do it newly now, or know that new people will be on the call who haven't heard from you...)

After our intro check-ins, Tom will share what led him to articulate some of the patterns in the Explicit Sustainability Factors category.  Along the way he’ll respond to our questions and comments about what he’s sharing. We can also explore other patterns that might fit in that category.

For the last 20-30 minutes of the call, we'd like to hear from you what kind of community full of interesting, engaged people you'd like to see coming together around the wise democracy pattern language (see Andy's note below). What would they (and you) be doing?  What other groups have you been part of that really engaged you? What kind of activities and opportunities have such groups offered?  What do you think would engage people together to explore, use, and evolve this pattern language?

This special call will be limited to 16 newsletter subscribers who have spent at least 1 hour exploring the WD-PL website. If you haven't taken at least an hour to explore the site, you might enjoy participating in the July 12th event described below, which will give you a fascinating hour-long experience that will qualify you for this call. 

Reserve your spot now for the July 18th event at Eventbrite. (If you are late, make a reservation anyway. We'll put you on a waiting list. If enough interested people want to participate, we'll organize a second call.) 

Instructions for attending will be emailed to you both the day before and an hour before start time. If you haven’t participated in a Zoom call previously, you may wish to download the free Zoom.us software beforehand.

The call will be facilitated by Andy Paice, a wise democracy enthusiast from London, UK. After the call is formally concluded, Tom and Andy will remain online for a while to explore people's experience of the call, any thoughts for improving it, further visions for the community of practice, and whatever else you’d like to talk about.

You can always contact us through cii@igc.org or the comment section at the bottom of every page of the Wise Democracy Project website.

A DEEP DISCOVERY ABOUT TWO
REALLY BASIC RELATED PATTERNS

You may have noticed that we identify seven patterns that are related to each of the patterns in this wise democracy pattern language.

I went through the whole set asking ourselves about each pattern: “What other patterns will influence - or be influenced by - what someone does with this pattern?” and “In order to apply this pattern well, what other patterns should a user be aware of?”

Identifying and articulating these relationships among all the patterns is one of the features that makes this collection of design principles into an actual pattern LANGUAGE.  

I picked seven related patterns for the simple reason that that’s how many related patterns will fit comfortably at the bottom of a given pattern’s card. Actually, many more connections could be identified for each pattern. But I think the seven I’ve identified are among the most important.  

Now here’s the interesting thing I discovered about all this… 

When I was working out these related patterns on a big 70x70 grid, I decided to find out which patterns were chosen most often as related to other patterns in the set. 

So I added up each of the columns and was startled to find that two patterns showed up almost twice as often as the next most referenced patterns. These two super-patterns were "Using Diversity and Disturbance Creatively” and “Well-Utilized Life Energy”.  That in itself was intriguing.

But weeks later as I reflected about this, I realized that these two patterns are actually two facets of the same dynamic.  Here’s what I saw:  

Life energy manifests in drives, values, passions, visions, needs, interests, purposes, concerns, etc. - all the motivating forces in our lives. So life energy is intrinsically powerful.  In fact it can be an extremely potent and freely available resource to the extent we work WITH it and use it well. 

But all too often life energy gets suppressed. It is not always easy to work with. Different people have different motivating drivers pushing and pulling them in different directions - and this can happen even within each one of us as our
 

different needs and dreams compete with each other! 

Bingo! 

I see at least three ways that this is important for those of us working for a wise democracy: 

1.  In general, we need as much life energy available as we can manage, acting in ways that serve the wellbeing of all involved rather than getting in each other’s way all the time. This is simply a matter of not wasting a precious natural resource.

2.  The presence of diversity and disturbance often indicate an emerging dynamic, a new possibility, or some factor that we didn’t notice before that we need to take into account in order to comprehend a bigger picture of what’s going on. Being able to engage creatively with disturbing energies and information thus enhances our ability to generate big-picture wisdom.  

3.  We want to get whatever wisdom we discover or develop to actually influence the world in ways that serve the welfare of all beings over the long term.  So we need to work skillfully with any available life energies to enable them to freely align with wise directions that benefit them all. In most cases, this means tapping into their natural dynamism and directionality repeatedly during our efforts to find that wisdom in the first place.

In conclusion, it has been both surprising and enlightening to discover this big convergent reality embedded deeply within the pattern language’s unfolding structure - a discovery that clarifies one of the most fundamental truths about generating wise outcomes together.  It is, indeed, something to keep in mind.