On December 19 we'll have another Wise Democracy Project call with Tom Atlee...
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Tom will start the call with 10-15 minutes describing
what “the whole” means in
the Wise Democracy Pattern Language’s “prime directive” -
“evoking and engaging
the wisdom and resourcefulness of the whole
on behalf of the whole.”.
During the rest of the call we can talk more about “the whole” or anything else participants want to say or ask about wise democracy, its pattern language, or the Wise Democracy Project.
The call will officially end after 2 hours, but Tom will remain on Zoom for participants who want to hang out longer.
If any participants would like to study the WD-PL in greater depth, Tom is particularly interested in discussing how that might happen.
Below are instructions for joining the December call.
(Note: For a report on November’s call, see the next article.)
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Tom Atlee invites you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: December 19 Wise Democracy Project call
Time: Dec 19, 2018 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://zoom.us/j/2422308394
Or iPhone one-tap :
US: +16468769923,,2422308394# or +16699006833,,2422308394#
Or Telephone:
Dial(for higher quality, dial a number based on your current location):
US: +1 646 876 9923 or +1 669 900 6833
Meeting ID: 242 230 8394
International numbers available: https://zoom.us/u/6rtd2wFN
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How to use the Wise Democracy Pattern Language
A report on Tom Atlee's November 14th videoconference call
The full unedited 2 hour and 20 minute video
of Tom’s call focusing on the uses of
the Wise Democracy Pattern Language (WDPL)
is available to watch here.
This article shares some highlights from that call.
Tom spent the first 11 minutes of the call talking about the main topic - how to use the WDPL - starting with a reference to the Activities and Exercises page of the WD-PL site.
Then Tom described using the WDPL to analyze democratic institutions for their capacity to generate participatory wisdom. He mentioned two examples of this, where he used the WDPL to compare the strengths and potential improvements of both Austrian Civic Councils - one of the most advanced forms of civic wisdom-generation in the world - and the more familiar public hearings common in the US and elsewhere, which are quite crude and problematic in comparison.
Tom then described how a group with a democracy-enhancing project in their community can use the WDPL cards to help prioritize action. Organizers and designers can use the pattern cards to imbue their creations with the spirit of wise democracy’s “prime directive” - “evoking and engaging the wisdom and resourcefulness of the whole on behalf of the whole” - and to subsequently evaluate what aspects of their efforts were well or poorly attended to.
This is simple to do as a group process: Facilitators distribute all the WDPL cards to the group and ask participants to check their hands for patterns that speak to the purpose of the exercise - for example, something the group should focus on, or has done well or needs improvement. When someone raises their hand, they’re asked to read their pattern’s name and description - and then the group discusses it (usually briefly) before checking in with someone else. After enough people have shared relevant patterns, the facilitator can ask a question to narrow the target - for example, “Out of all the possible pattern focuses we’ve mentioned, which three do you think we should make our priority at this stage?” Once the focus has narrowed down to a few patterns, the group can divide into teams to research them more intensively through the Examples and Resources on each pattern’s page and/or through each pattern’s “related patterns”.
Another use of the pattern language is to learn - not only to simply learn the pattern language (for which various learning games are provided on the website), but also - and most importantly - to develop an understanding of the prime directive and our ability to bring it to life in our work and our world. Students can explore deeply into an individual pattern by exploring its Examples and Resources, or they can explore the whole pattern language through the web of related patterns.
Tom noted that the skill associated with the prime directive - evoking and engaging the wisdom and resourcefulness of the whole on behalf of the whole - could be viewed as the most vital skill in the world today.
That remarkable aim and capacity is embodied in every wise democracy pattern and in the pattern language as a whole. It is thus worthy of at least as much study - and time, money, care and attention - as any of the academic subjects in which people currently invest vast amounts to study at universities. Any given pattern could be a student’s “major” or the topic of their thesis or dissertation, with its related patterns being their “minor” and the entire pattern language being their general education. (This is true of many other pattern languages, as well.) Lists of existing resources could inform and be greatly extended by such study.
In closing his discussion of the uses of the WD-PL, Tom noted that its PURPOSE - as a set of interconnected design guidances - is to connect visionary theory with specific applications in specific situations.
Later in the call, Tom and the group also covered how the cards can be used in other ways, including
* in consulting to point people’s attention in productive directions,
* for strategic planning and action around specific issues,
* by people in a group exploring the pattern language through patterns related to ones they’re holding in their hands,
* as tarot cards, helping someone shift perspectives on a situation in their life.
Finally, we discussed the idea of an online community of 6-20 people with wise democracy related projects who could meet on Zoom for a series of 1-2 hour meetings, each of which was focused on helping one of their number to think about their project using the pattern cards.
Tom noted that the patterns are not only listed alphabetically and by category but also sorted by challenges and social dysfunctions they seek to address And the site also offers a “starter list” of six of the most fundamental patterns as a starting place for viewers who feel overwhelmed by having to deal with all 70 patterns at once.
But all that discussion was only about half the call. Among the many other things discussed were:
* how to participate in revising the pattern language;
* making physical card decks available;
* fundraising issues with the Wise Democracy Project and the Co-Intelligence Institute;
* how to engage thousands of people in working with the cards;
* the difference between collective intelligence and collective wisdom;
* adding “collective wisdom” to the UN’s list of Sustainable Development Goals;
* how we can’t actually measure wisdom, but we can measure many things that can impact how wise our decisions and activities will likely be;
* using the patterns to gain insights into public issues or to guide the creation of questions people can use to engage with issues in depth;
* how the cards might help decentralized/anarchistic movements like the Fair Coop movement or “democratic confederalists” like the Kurdish enclave of Rojava in northern Syria;
* how to scale up the magic that is possible in a room with one or two dozen people to millions of people;
* the difference between consensus and co-sensing;
* the upcoming Climate Change and Consciousness conference (that used the WDPL in its strategic planning);
* the emerging governance potential of multi-sector, multi-stakeholder, multi-scale networks that collaborate to deal with a particular issue or domain;
* a new way (Bridgit, as yet unreleased) to link online ideas directly to each other;
* a new way (called Polis) to generate consensus from thousands of people agreeing or disagreeing with each other’s statements about an issue;
* Taiwan’s remarkable national governance experiment (called vTaiwan);
* students using pattern cards to explore all the people and initiatives working on an issue, so they can do some of those things themselves;
* how the WDPL and the GroupWorks group process pattern languages can apply at every level from the family to international relations;
* how WDPL - especially the next-to-last pattern - can help us relate to what we don’t know and even what we don’t know we don’t know...;
* how a pattern language provides useful, holistic jargon to build wholesome dynamics in a particular realm of human activity;
* the nature of sociocracy;
* the desire to continue to have open monthly WDPL Zoom calls with Tom.
Tom also had an interesting engagement with William K, a participant who was totally new to the wise democracy pattern language and was reluctant to speak out of fear of disrupting our conversation. Tom used the “Using Diversity and Disturbance Creatively” pattern to welcome and engage him. William saw the WDPL through an academic philosophical lens that Tom and others couldn’t fully understand - although Tom reflected back what he thought William meant - leading not to a full resolution but to a discussion of the “Feeling Heard” pattern and the role of reflection in that. William - excited and grateful for it all - said he would study it all more.
All these topics are explored in more depth on the 2 hour 20 minute video of our Zoom call.
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