Earth Repair Wisdom Council with Jim Rough

Jim Rough facilitates ‘How do we turn humanity from destructive to regenerative practices?’ through a special track called “The Global Wisdom Council Experiment.” At the Global Earth Repair Conference we will be exploring many different ways to repair the Earth. In addition we will be exploring: “How do we turn humanity as a whole from destructive to regenerative practices?” through a special track:

“The Global Wisdom Council Experiment.”

This will be…

1. an opportunity for you to participate in this fundamental conversation in a creative way with others. In this track you will experience and learn about “Dynamic Facilitation” a way to help people address intractable issues, stay creative and come together in unity.
2. a demonstration of a particular solution approach for “turning humanity as a whole” to a new level of consciousness and a new system of governance. So you will also learn about the Wisdom Council Process as an exciting new strategy for large system change.

These two social innovations … Dynamic Facilitation and the Wisdom Council Process … have been around for a while. And have even been adopted into the constitution of two states of Austria. They were recently brought to my attention by Jim Rough as explained in his 2002 book “Society’s Breakthrough: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People”. I met Jim recently at his home in Port Townsend where he explained how Wisdom Councils operate and described some large-scale examples. Jim has seen many intractable problems solved through this approach. For more information on both these innovations see www.WiseDemocracy.org.

In the conference, Jim Rough will dynamically facilitate a small-group of people, from 8 to 16 volunteers. They will meet together at three of the concurrent session periods to address the fundamental issue: turning around our destructive civilization so we can repair the earth. Dynamic Facilitation elicits a special quality of thinking, what we call “choice-creating” as opposed to decision-making, problem-solving, deliberation, dialogue, discussion, debate, brainstorming, etc. That’s why it is essential to Wisdom Councils and works to bring diverse peoples together as “We the People.”

One might say from participating in this track, “I love this conference because I got to be in creative conversation with different people about real issues and we got somewhere.” Normally, there is a ceremony at the end of a Wisdom Council where the final conclusions are presented back to the whole-system in a plenary moment. But in this experiment the “Wisdom Council” will present to video cameras and to a post-conference audience asking: “How DO we get humanity to change from biosphere destruction to regeneration on a massive scale, quickly?”

So this is a pointed effort to address and solve this issue. And in addition I encourage all conference participants to think of themselves as part of an impromptu Earth Wisdom Council genuinely interested in real solutions to the seemingly insoluble, intractable problem of global earth repair. Goals for our special conference track on the Global Wisdom Council Experiment are to:

• Creatively address this civilization-threatening issue and come up with the beginnings of real answers.
• Experience Dynamic Facilitation and the choice-creating conversation, as a way to facilitate “We the People” in large systems of people.
• Demonstrate how we might use this process to facilitate this new “We the People” public conversation into being at the global scale

Society’s Breakthrough: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People. Jim Rough. Available for $11.50 from www.societysbreakthrough.com

by Jim Rough

Today I (Michael Pilarski) just started reading Louis G. Herman’s book Future Primal. Louis Herman is a professor of political science at the University of Hawai`i – West O`ahu and will be participating in our Conference.

I came across the example of an ancient Greek governing body, the boule, consisting of citizens chose by lot every year. Reminiscient of the random assembly of Jim Rough’s wisdom council. “ When the people in a group debate a proposition each person refines the idea from his or her own perspective; ideally, this leads to a final result that includes the partial truth in each position in a larger synthesis”.

Here is a excerpt from page 315 about parrhesia: which has some bearing on the topic.

“ . . . a type of morally driven, philosophically inspired oratory essential to democracy, which the Greeks called parrheisa. The type of face-to-face speech was characterized by utter frankness: one said everything on one’s mind, speaking from the heart, without holding back, without fear of consequences on all matters relevant to the issue. It includes a readiness to express unpopular thoughts, criticize the holders of power, demand change, and risk immediate self-interest, all in the service of a higher public good. Polished oratory was suspect, since it obscured intention and made possible the flattery and manipulation of an audience to serve the speaker’s self-interest. Ridiculing one’s opposition and winning a debate were not to be confused with wisdom. The display of sincere passion for the public good was the highest value in political discussion, as opposed to eloquence or flawless logic for its own sake. Talking with parrhesia meant revealing something of who one was, what one cared about, and how one chose to live; the assumption was that the wisdom of one’s talk is connected to the life one lived”.

Unfortunately women, slaves and foreigners were not allowed to participate in Greek political life. In contrast, the Global Earth Repair Conference encourages the voices of women, foreigners and those not generally heard in politics.