Tomorrow Makers

"The new life needs to be inspired with the realization that it has all kinds of new advantages that have been gained through great dedications of unknown, unsung heroes of intellectual exploration and great intuitively faithful integrities of people groping in the dark. Unless the new life is highly appreciative of those who have gone before, it won't be able to take effective advantage of its heritage. It will not be as regenerated and inspired as it might be if it appreciated the comprehensive love invested in that heritage."  R. Buckminister Fuller, 1963

In an age where information seems to be doubling every few days - where one innovation stands on the shoulders of another that is just a few days old - it is difficult to see the future, to find what matters.  Every system seems to be falling apart; Our political, financial and  corporate leadership are failing the ordinary citizen, too busy taking care of each other's business. 

Then an article like this shows up in the news and there is hope again. Two paragraphs in the article define a radical shift in how humans define themselves. It is interesting that we need science to know and give legitimacy to our feelings, our sense of self.

If human nature is as the Enlightenment philosophers claimed, then we are likely doomed. It is impossible to imagine how we might create a sustainable global economy and restore the biosphere to health if each and every one of us is, at the core of our biology, an autonomous agent and a self-centered and materialistic being.

Recent discoveries in brain science and child development, however, are forcing us to rethink these long-held shibboleths about human nature. Biologists and cognitive neuroscientists are discovering mirror-neurons--the so-called empathy neurons--that allow human beings and other species to feel and experience another's situation as if it were one's own. We are, it appears, the most social of animals and seek intimate participation and companionship with our fellows.

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I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.   Oliver Wendell Holmes, Former US Supreme Court Justice

It used to be that most people hated the SCAN process. They just felt we should get down to business and get results.  Today, far more participants enjoy this process of reaching out; reaching beyond the known for new possibilities. They see the value in looking at a problem from many different vantage points.  Many realize the art of Play as well.  Still for some people SCAN is difficult and probably will always be, even though they come to recognize its usefulness and integrity to good results.  Each of us have different thinking patterns and a truly great group process accounts for all kinds of thinkers, knowing that aspects of going from SCAN to FOCUS to ACT will be frustrating at some time or another to a majority of participants. 

But I truly love it when someone who really did not like the process comes up after we are done and says, "We got really good results. But surely we could have cut out the first day and a half and done the work in half a day."  Well, you see, they don't understand what Oliver Wendal Holmes was trying to convey.  True simplicity comes after you have climbed that hill of complexity.  We are not after simple answers that have been gotten by cutting out most of the things that cannot be seen up front.  Simple answers and answers with simplicity are two very different things. 

David Bohm's ideas about play are so important. When will schools, conferences, and all too many workshops stop pounding play out of process? It is vital to our ability to survive and thrive. 

If science always insists that a new order must be immediately fruitful, or that it has some new predictive power, then creativity will be blocked. New thoughts generally arise with a play of the mind, and the failure to appreciate this is actually one of the major blocks to creativity. Thought is generally considered to be a sober and weighty business. But here it is being suggested that creative play is an essential element in forming new hypotheses and ideas. Indeed, thought which tries to avoid play is in fact playing false with itself. Play, it appears, is the very essence of thought.

Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not as in fiction, to imagine things that are not really there, but just to comprehend those things that are there.
Richard Feynman  The Character of Physical Law

The last five projects I have been asked to participate in are all long-term visions! A breath of fresh air.  It seems to me that people are reconnecting with their natural hunger for projects that matter, not only to them, but to the larger world.  I can feel the excitement in the voices of project leaders. Most are willing to reach out 25 to 50 years in the future and imagine the difference their projects are making.  A new form of strategic plan is taking place.  No one is trying to do linear goal-setting plans; rather they are leaping out into the future, envisioning the networks to help in their undertaking, and asking themselves "What is it we need to do today to make our journey into an unknown future succeed?" The MG Taylor axiom: "You can't get There from Here" is being used and lived.  During the years where only the next quarter earnings mattered, no one paid the slightest attention to the future.  It was so disheartening, boring, and of course, detrimental to life itself. 

I do feel that a new paradigm is unfolding. Perhaps the fast and slow are getting back in sync.