The power of conversation is real but not total. People sometimes take an oversimplified perspective of the power of dialogue, deliberation, and choice-creating to deal with tensions between people. EIther they think “just talk” can’t do much to r…
Things are still wildly bubbling in and around the Occupy movement, which is still radically expanding and evolving. Despite many growing pains, the co-creative, committed engagement of the participants is inspiring. So many among them are using t…
The viral story field set free by Occupy Wall Street is morphing and spreading to hundreds of cities. The multifarious conversation of transformation is popping up everywhere like mushrooms in a forest. Both alternative and mainstream media are fi…
The personal is political. This is true in so many ways. I am part of my culture and social systems, and they are part of me, embedded in me. They shape how I think and act, how I respond, what I think is right and possible — and I, in turn, play…
Bill Keller’s New York Times op-ed “What if Sanity Prevails in Washington?” offers a tantalizing vision of what might be possible if we moved beyond partisan politics-as-usual. Sadly, he stops just short of the kind of evolutionary breakthrough we…
Why would you want to become one? Here are four very enticing reasons: 1. You can get federal money and other favors for the people, companies, and interest groups who supported your campaign. Although you can do this with major legislation and ba…
Transformational change depends primarily on changing social systems. A social system — an economic or political system, for example — is how a society is organized. It is a pervasive and powerful pattern of social arrangements that shapes peopl…
Some people say Gandhi was about nonviolence. And he was. But he is significant for something else that I believe is far more important: He changed the game. With no one’s permission, he reconfigured the playing field of colonialism to a higher Ga…
I believe that any person or group wishing to catalyze the emergence of a sustainable civilization must take strategic action to enhance the collective intelligence of entire societies. (NOTE: The term “whole society” or “entire society” does not …
The most comprehensive essay I have so far written on the underlying theory of co-intelligent, holistic politics has just been published (two years since I wrote it) in a special edition of Integral Review about integral politics. It starts on pag…