A wide-ranging interview with me, for your enjoyment

A couple of months ago I was in San Francisco and did a podcast conversation with Duncan Autrey, a fascinating conflict transformation educator and catalyst. We had quite a time over more than an hour exploring dozens of topics, including…

• intrinsic participation (we can’t help it!!) and conscious inclusivity
• wise decision-making
• the role of conversation in self-governance
• diversity as a resource
• wisdom and its relation to wholeness
• waking up all the “puzzle pieces” into an emerging whole picture
• the role of caring and concerns as life energy
• how much wisdom we lose through polarization and majority rule
• “conservative” and “liberal” labels as wild oversimplifications
• changing what’s possible by going deeper or transcending limited perspectives
• transforming conflict into positive possibilities
• creatively managing the dance of polarities
• collaborative multi-stakeholder networks as a form of governance
• various whole system approaches
• the power of helping people feel heard
• powerful questions that generate change just by asking them
• examples, methods and tools for doing all this
• the wise democracy worldview and its pattern language (and card deck) and
• “The ultimate secret truth in the universe – true in every situation and the most important thing to understand in every situation”
• …among other things! 🙂

Duncan posted the podcast as “The Emergence of Wise Democracy” with tons of links to topics covered in our conversation – both theoretical and practical. He also asked me what song I’d like to close the podcast with, and I chose one of my favorites from the 1986 cross-country Great Peace March (which changed my life). So he also posted a video of the Great Peace March band “Collective Vision” performing a number of songs they wrote on the March as well as some articles about the March by myself and others.

There’s lots of me in all this, so I’m happy to share it with you.

Coheartedly,
Tom

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