Dr. Paul Raskin is the president of the Tellus Institute and founder of The Great Transition Initiative.

http://www.greattransition.org/

I am part of a conversation sponsored by his group, and this morning, they opened another discussion, inviting response to his keynote address at a recent conference on "Ecological Economics".

http://www.greattransition.org/publication/a-great-transition-where-we-stand

I wrote a comment back to his network, and I thought I would include it here.

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LEADERSHIP AFFINITY NETWORK

In the "Change Agents" section of his keynote address, Paul Raskin offers a powerful and succinct review of the possibilities for dynamic action in an era of critical global change.

In this paragraph, he summarizes the vision closest to my own heart, outlining primary values and a large-scale architecture of collaboration:

In one narrative, it would begin to coalesce as a network of networks, attracting adherents through local, national, and global nodes. It would connect the full spectrum of issues within an integrated strategic and intellectual framework. It would seek to bridge divisions of culture, class, and place, honoring diversity and pluralism within an umbrella of common principles and goals. It would practice a "politics of trust" that tolerates proximate differences in order to sustain the ultimate basis for unity. Such a movement would be a fitting answer to the poignant question heard from concerned citizens everywhere: "What can I do?"

This statement summarizes a grand vision that seems grounded in something primal and universal, some “knowing” and instinctual design that many people see as archetypal. Globalism, universalism, holism, “oneness”, community – these themes seem to contain the seeds for this emerging global vision. Millions of people around the world can feel this, and organizations and agencies everywhere are guided by these ideals. But how to realize this collaboration, this teamwork? What can be our effective collective action path to bring such a grand thing into the world? Who is to define these “common principles and goals”?

This is a tough question, that has thus far tended to elude simple idealistic solutions, and in this context, increasing global pressures are continuing to drive the creative thinking of pioneers all over the world.

Paul Raskin continues:

Bringing it to life at the requisite speed and scale will not be easy. The challenge is extraordinary, but so are the times. In transformative moments, small actions can have large consequences. The efforts of an active minority can ripple through the cultural field and release latent potential for social change.

But we need a coherent planetary praxis that, at once, advances relevant knowledge, presses for strong policy, and articulates rigorous and inspiring visions of another world. All this is necessary, but not sufficient. The additional task of building the global movement now beckons all of us who care about the quality of the future.

In this comment on Raskin’s compelling vision, I want to offer a very brief summary of one possible “collective praxis” that might help defuse the great conundrum of “what to do.”

In very simple terms, something like this idea seems to be appearing on the scene, arising here and there in various inspired locales, as a practical activist design for collective forward movement. This approach takes a form that engages the specialized expertise of committed activists anywhere, without attempting to form some single “constitutional” approach based on a few grand and glowing principles that all are expected to accept. What we need, instead, suggests this emerging new approach – is a kind of “coalescence” process, that meets individuals and organizations where they live, speaks to them in their own language, and builds 1,000 bridges from independent locations and agencies to one soft and almost undefined common center.

This approach creates a center that can emerge by statistical correlation alone as the common ground of an absolutely inclusive global movement. This method demands no allegiance to one overarching grand design stated in the words of some particular language by some inspired architect, but instead is capable of building a grand unity based on something like “resonant statistical correlation” drawn together from literally thousands of independent but overlapping factors that represent the passions and expertise and commitment of motivated but “highly diverse” activists.

RESONANT ENGAGEMENT

What we need is some way to engage the vast diversity of motivated experts, each in their own terms, on their own basis, building a pathway of inclusion that honors their particular perspective, their passion, their motivation. We have all seen hundreds of graphic metaphors across the internet for something like this process – the world coming together like a giant jig-saw puzzle, with each individual member of a conscientious global community bringing their piece of the puzzle.

We need a bridge-building process that recognizes this convergence and engages motivated activists, that recognizes their specialized expertise, and sees in what they are doing some “critical piece of the puzzle”. We need to support the interconnections of this process in a soft “resonant” way, that does not stumble into the bottomless pit of debating alternative word meanings. We need a sophisticated new global semantics that recognizes “diversity in word meanings” as well as in cultural assumptions and values. We need to empower the concept of “homophily” – “love of the same” -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophily

Through our “Network Nation” project, we are beginning to explore the development of this kind of integrating network. Everyone brings their piece – or their many pieces – and their motivation forms a huge “tag cloud” written in the language and terms of the participants – and is then correlated by their engagement.

This is diversity in action. This is collective listening in action. This is engagement from the local point converging from everywhere to the global.

And all of this is amenable to clear-cut computer-based solutions. This link begins to illustrate how:

http://networknation.net/pattern.cfm?searchterm=transition&whl=11&lv1=101154&lv2=101963&lv3=101964&lv4=103137&lv5=0&lv6=0&lv7=0#go

We need a global listening process – that can assimilate the individualized and localized input of individuals all over the world, meeting them on their own terms, honoring their passions, and correlating them not through hard agreement on specific statements, but on soft correlations of thousands (or millions) of tags defined in local terms.

The architecture could look like this: