The Holistic Paradigm as Democracy’s Evolutionary Frontier – Random Communications from an Evolutionary Edge

I want to bring your attention to a very important essay on “The Holistic Paradigm as Democracy’s Evolutionary Frontier”. Starting here, it explores dozens of democratic innovations in the context of the emerging paradigm shift from narrow separation to interdependent, evolving wholeness. I find tremendous value added by framing these diverse innovations as part of – and contributing to – something much larger than any of them. The more they and we can become conscious of the shape and importance of this trend, the more we’ll be able to manifest and empower it to help societies transform in healthy directions in the midst of our century’s immense challenges and crises.

My friend, colleague, and president of the Co-Intelligence Institute Andy Paice, has written an excellent essay – “The Holistic Paradigm as Democracy’s Evolutionary Frontier” – to explore healthy innovative trends in and around the broader field of deliberative democracy. I’m writing to introduce you to this insightful reflection and to urge you to read it.

Andy covers the shift from a worldview of separateness to one of relationship, interconnectedness and wholeness. He notes that all of today’s multiple mega-crises arise from assuming we are separate from each other and nature. Any life-serving resolution of these crises will require that we move ourselves and our societies away from such alienation into beliefs, narratives, experiences and systems grounded in our deep relatedness and the co-creative potential liberated by that grounding.

This won’t be easy, of course. Taking this shift seriously involves coming to terms with the evolving complexity of the realities we’re embedded in. But democratic innovations already underway can be recognized and used as precious resources to meet that challenge. Andy briefly summarizes this important trend:

“Deliberative democracy brings multiple perspectives together (those of diverse citizens, experts, stakeholders, politicians, etc.). They work towards a whole system approach with participants acting as multiple sensors of reality coming together to deliberate, each of them seeing different aspects of the issue at hand which help move towards a fuller picture. Their final recommendations thus represent a greater degree of collective wisdom.”

Andy then goes on to describe innovations through which “differences of opinion… are seen less as problems to overcome… and more as diverse resources that inform choices”, helping us “evolve democracy beyond the realm of partisan politics towards governance based on collective sense-making.”

Such collective sense-making and wisdom are not based on collective conformity, but rather on “social systems.. that appreciate, evoke and engage every kind of diversity and uniqueness” in ways that enable them to co-create the wisdom and resourcefulness we need. Andy provides links to leading-edge democracy theorists, visionaries and practitioners who are paving the way for that evolution.

In Part 2 of his essay, in a section entitled “Towards whole system governance”, Andy points to innovations that are freeing democratic participation from the limits of traditional government through alliances between citizen deliberative activities and cross-sector, multi-stakeholder collaborations. Then he describes the emerging effort to liberate citizen deliberations from their often unconscious progressive biases to visibly embrace the whole spectrum of views so the resulting insights and approaches embody the whole-picture wisdom – and engage the contributions – of all sides of an issue. This remarkable outcome is made possible by innovative methods that generate broader, deeper shared understandings than we get from approaches based on competition, manipulation, debate and compromise.

Interestingly, this advance involves a move beyond the impartiality challenge into a new stance of omni-partiality or – as the wise democracy pattern language puts it – “multiple perspective view”. This approach honors ALL perspectives specifically for the gifts that they bring to the shared sense-making enterprise. One of my personal favorite examples of this is the way a dynamic facilitator deals with disruptive disagreements and outbursts by assuming they are grounded in concerns which she and the group need to understand and attend to. She says to the disrupter “Give it to me: What’s your concern?”, listens to them, records their concern, makes sure they feel heard, and then asks “What would you do about this, if you had the power to deal with it?” (nudging them beyond critique to co-creativity). This is just one example of the kinds of radical shift in perspective and methodology that can generate democratic breakthroughs, a wide variety of which Andy shares in his article.

In a section entitled “Ego to Eco”, Andy explores the move from individual people and prescribed leadership hierarchies to intelligent living communities that integrate human intelligence with more-than-human intelligences – including natural and artificial intelligences (and sometimes even transcendent sources of wisdom). We find this development embodied, for example, in deliberative activities that now include – as many Indigenous councils do – the voices, interests and wisdom of “all my relations”, including the natural world and future generations.

Andy and others are beginning to cluster all these innovations into a single evolutionary movement, a meta-movement currently called “transformational social systems”, embracing dozens of holistic methodologies, practices, frameworks and initiatives.

Finally, Andy highlights the Co-Intelligence Institute’s view of ‘wisdom’ as “the ability to consider and act on what’s needed to generate long-term broad benefit” – and our need to build participatory systems that can generate and apply such wisdom to our collective affairs. As Andy says: “CII is specifically focused on an ongoing investigation into ‘wise democracy,’ which we define as ‘democracy of, by and for the whole’ – i.e. arising from and benefiting the whole” that includes humanity, more-than-human life, future generations, and the whole planet. In the evolved democracy we envision, “the whole system [becomes] able to manage the affairs of the whole system for long term broad benefit.”

Andy invites us to notice and support all these innovative trends interacting in ways that unfold as democracy’s evolutionary adventure. They are all facets of our maturing from the modernist story of separation and fragmentation to an ecological story of interconnectedness, wholeness and co-creativity. Yet there is and will be resistance and stumbling by all of us through our habits and blind spots. Through telling new stories in new ways, building conversations and collaborations among those of us seeking to realize these new approaches, and continuing to attempt innovative experimentation, we can move together in this already emerging healthy direction.

What I’ve written here only hints at the richness and depth of Andy’s essay. I encourage you to check it out for a rewarding deep dive. Its two parts are available here and here on the Co-Intelligence Institute’s blog, Parts and Wholes.

Blessings on this exciting new facet of the Immense Journey we’re all on together!

Tom Atlee, The Co-Intelligence Institute, POB 493, Eugene, OR 97440

Appreciating, evoking and engaging the wisdom and resourcefulness of the whole on behalf of the whole

…. main site …. main blog …. big archive ….

*** Visit the Wise Democracy Pattern Language Project ***

*** Buy a Wise Democracy Pattern Card Deck ***

Read

Please support our work. Your donations are fully tax deductible in the US

Related posts:

Leave a Reply Cancel reply