Brandon's Blog

Process Arts are not a method but propose a community of understanding

On Facebook, DeAnna Martin, of Dynamic Facilitation fame (see below for links), asked

how is promulgating a term like "process arts" different than promulgating an approach or method? it sounds like you are experiencing what a lot of method founders experience when they try and articulate their method to others who want to ignore the truth behind it, or want to wrap it into their box of knowing so they can feel comfortable with it's...  Read More "place" in their world... just wondering how you'd respond to that? i love the term, by the way...

there are so many ways to organize "processes" and so many layers/lenses through which we apply them... have you been involved with Tree's pattern language work? She's still working on a name for it...

    http://www.wisedemocracy.org
    http://www.dynamicfacilitation.com
    http://blog.tobe.net

I replied:

The best response I have at this point is to suggest levels of practice and a few tentative (personal and limited) definitions:

In my mind, someone in a difficult situation might want a specific and applicable response - a practice that seems likely to work, perhaps based in a larger method. If they learn that specific practice and others to it, they become a practitioner of a method. If they notice there are others working to facilitate the same method, they have colleagues.

Any of these individuals may notice that there are others working with other practices and other methods with different strengths and applications, which also facilitate behavior based on an increased consciousness of how we do what we do, and develop and deploy tools for changing systems.

When a practitioner discovers these core principles in the hands of other practitioners various best practices suggest themselves. This community awareness suggests the need for a co-created ethics (applicable in noticing what kind of culture is being created by a given advertising campaign, for example), which can apply to the entire field of approaches and practices and open a conversation about responsibility, innovation, and behavior. This is where the process arts apply.

The Process Arts idea is methodical, in that it suggests a way, i.e. creating a community of practice. It is a method of organizing by way of a non-proprietary name that aligns this work with the liberal arts and puts the the process arts naturally into education. It is a method of organizing a specific group of facilitators and not an approach to group facilitation, as such, and is thereby able to exist without increasing competition between practitioners. I am a method founder, but not in the case of the process arts, which have a much longer history than can be measured by my lifetime. I just conceived and prosposed the name for the field based on my practice in it with many others.

When I articulate the parts of my particular methods to others, and sometimes feel they may be missing a truth behind it, I usually find, in retrospect, that I have listened insufficiently to their needs or am feeling especially vulnerable on a given day. As far as tidily boxing my methods for consumption, I find that those situations and clients well suited to work in the way I suggest find my basic assumptions credible very quickly. That is how I learned that no method I have ever seen can meet all group and situational needs, and then committed to our field as a whole. My most arduous sales jobs have resulted in the funkiest mismatches in my history.

I'm glad you love the term. I got a bit of that during our conversation at the first Nexus conference. Want to help me/us grow the field beyond the method you know and practice with such expertise?

I have been in Tree Bressen's (http://delicious.com/tag/treebressen) pattern language loop since it began but unable to appear yet in the group as a whole. I'd love that project to consider the pattern language a part of the process arts field, but hope I have learned when to simply make a clear request and not push too hard.

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 2:29 PM, I wrote:

Brandon here, requesting an assist.

My Dad has been working from Dallas as my dissertation editor, using online tech, and we have been having marvelous success working toward my Fall 2009 drop-deadline. He has volunteered to fly to Berkeley for much of April in order that we might create a writing retreat to complete as much as is possible in a month. Even though he is an amazing jazz musician with psychological savvy and good social skills, this will be even more spiffy if he doesn't have to sleep on the couch in our tiny apartment all month.

He will be arriving April 7th and leaving the 29th. Being able to put him up somewhere in the East Bay for any portion of that time would be a huge help, even if only for one or two nights. Please don't hesitate to let me know, even if the possibility of a spot is uncertain.
Come hell or high water, this dissertation will be done this year.
Many people receiving this email have been wonderfully helpful and for that I am profoundly grateful.

Warmly,

B

----------------------------------------------

Today I wrote:

Brandon here with an amazing report I thought you might want to hear.

At the end of March I sent out a request for help finding David Williams a place to stay through April (no small amount of time) while he is in Berkeley with us.

In case you ever wonder what kind of resources are available to people who intentionally participate in building community, like yourself, my request activated positive responses by at least (and with as few overlaps as possible) two intentional communities, including Crescent Sangha House community and Berkeley Cohousing; 14 families and 10 individuals in 7 cites from Association Building Community, Aikido of Berkeley, Epworth United Methodist Church, and a fantasy gaming group; the local Green Party; individual undergraduate and graduate students at UC; local clergy unrelated to any of the groups mentioned above; denizens of the worlds first dog park; and a veterinary office, not to mention people too far away to really count but who sent supportive suggestions (via Facebook, Twitter, Skype, freenode, text messages, blog comments, etc.) nonetheless.

My Dad now has a lovely bedroom in a friendly house less than three miles away, for his entire stay. And huge thanks to you all, including the 27 people who have continued to follow-up, requesting updates even after their original positive response.

And, to those critics who say building community on purpose will never become an adequate response to the alienation of an industrialized human imagination, I throw my arms wide and grin!

B

 

 

A letter to Aiki Extensions

While walking Francisco the Dog today, I waited at a light as a suit explained to his power-lunch companion that "nobody is buying anything right now unless it saves them money." "Too true," thought I. And then it hit me. That's the whole pitch right there for paying NOW for an Aiki Extensions administration. All it needs is a clear and compelling explanation for people who don't look at our history and financial records on a daily basis, in other words, everybody but me.      Here we go.

Creating and sustaining projects from which vulnerable people benefit costs an ad hoc network more money (not to mention the strain on good will and donor exhaustion) than the same projects would with a professional administration. Straight up. Let the current attempts to establish a dedicated office fail and you pay way more going forward.

Sorry to expose "industry secrets" but the/our cycle goes something like this:

• define/realize a need (Ação Harmonia Brasil, Awassa Peace Dojo, soon Warriors for Peace Philippines and Lua Branca in Colombia, Peace Dojos International, etc.)
  
• ramp up #1: grab and begin training volunteers, start scrounging for cash, make promises to the potential recipient's and your network, begin learning how to work together with a different team in this particular context, etc.
• create an event or other discrete target towards which the amassed energy may be unleashed in an attempt at establishing a prototype for change
• ramp up #2: drive toward the target, building momentum as the time gets shorter, energy gets more focused, and the exposure of the need gets more widely visible and sexier
• reach the no-turning-back point and commit the reserves, if there were any
  
• realize it will cost more than anyone had projected and redouble fundraising with an emergency edge
• produce the event that is the intervention at the target area
  
• change the lives of those closest to the area such that they benefit and their expectations are lifted to hope for a new level of support
• document it as well as you can given the limited resources
• realize the financial and relational shortfalls as the energy ebbs and the clear target falls into history, spending more energy than anyone knew was even available
• "Wow. Imagine what would have been possible if we'd started planning earlier or had more money."
  
• discover that different decisions-makers in every camp supporting the process have different needs toward which they will continue to push despite the new complexities the change has created
• struggle with each other using less wisdom than is available
  
• attempt to retain a tiny reserve of personal energy by getting distance from as many conflicts as possible and smoothing over differences to be able to call the project alive and have a hope of fundraising Next Time.
• collapse and attempt to recover
  

I assume you want effective peace work in the world to flourish. Thereafter I assume you will support this with your gifts and service up to a point. Instead of endless "pay now or we won't survive", fight-or-flight pleas, how would you like all the programs mentioned in the first point above, plus:

• grant funds going directly to your dojo to pay for scholarships to bring in new students who otherwise couldn't train but without you charging them nothing and calling it a scholarship
  
• the chance for you and your students to practice and teach aikido for peace all over the world
  
• umbrella grants directly through your group to projects you know your area needs to help the kids there have a stronger chance of making it to adulthood sane
  
• a lasting core of qualified organizers and well managed, educated volunteers
  
• reliable cash sources from which we ask small, regular contributions to begin new projects
  
• kept promises to potential recipient's of support - for the long term
• institutional memory of how to work together in particular contexts
• dedicated online infrastructure that is ready 24x7 to help you communicate and collaborate
• discrete targets and replicable curricula and prototypes for peaceful change
• long-view momentum and continual public exposure for your favorite local and international projects
  
• reserves to commit, without selling panic in response to emergencies
• changed lives that benefit from lifted expectations, new levels of support, that continue for generations
  
• visible documentation of your work in a community of support that speaks your language and can and will tell others and back you up
  
• practicing what we preach internally and with decisions-makers in every camp supporting our process, so that responding well to naturally different needs is trained into our staff, membership, and work at every level
  
• responsible preparation to meet new complexities, especially arising from the change we create, almost as though we are martial artists
• establishing maai with any conflict that arises, honoring differences, and calling a project alive only when it continues giving good gifts to everyone involved
• celebration, rest, and natural recovery, training across organizational affiliations and political borders, and a global Community the like of which few have ever seen before.
  

Sustainable funding comes to those who prepare. Without a professional administration we lack the core elements that large funders seek before donating:

• regular, well maintained books showing a consistent cash flow to back-up the assumption that the service providing organization will survive
• involved (fund raising and contributing) Board with the necessary relationships and expertise
• engaged constituency (in our case an involved membership)
• projects that impact people in need all the while documenting a beneficial difference in a way that almost anybody can understand
  

I'm telling you, up front, that your choices are

1. Blow off the work and put your resources elsewhere - deadline Whenever
   
2. Perpetuate the ad hoc feel and the fight-or-flight cycle of exhaustion - default setting right now
   
3. Help pay the rest of the bill for a real administration with your membership dollars before the money keeping the offer on the table is gone (December 15, 2008)

This is an election year. You know how to make a change stick. Vote with your currency right now. Invite people to become a member, or a regular supporter of the extension of aiki and the arts of peace. Please let several friends know that you hope they will join.

 

My letter to Association Building Community

 

 

Obama

The themes that will continue until the election is done

An acquaintance say my Facebook profile and asked "to know 3 real qualifications Obama has that qualifies him (above the local lawnman) to become President of the US - the highest position in the world. Just 3 things he has done...specifically done."

I responded:

The most difficult part of responding to your question is picking just three things. I'll choose the three which are indisputable and more than qualify him, especially in comparison to his opposition, to be the Chief Executive Facilitator of the most powerful nation in the world.

#1 he has built, funded, and remained engaged with community-based coalitions in which participants report they got a significant portion of what they needed. This is what I'm paying for when I religiously send in my taxes.

#2 he has had no choice but to become expert at operating diplomatically from a position of sympathy in the presence of opposition. As it is with other minority leaders of my acquaintance, this may be related to weathering comparisons to "the local lawnman" when you might more accurately have written "above the local graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School" but I am not qualified to speak to the origins of his skill in this area or to your background in diversity work.

#3 He says he will do what I want a president to do. What his opponents say they will do is the opposite of what I want a president to do. Even though this makes the choice between the two an obvious one it is not enough to get my vote because politicians, by design of our system, must tell you what they think you want to hear. Therefore I ignore them, in large part, beyond paying attention when a speech writer constructs a particularly satisfying bit of metaphor or compelling prose. Rather than listen to what they say I research their record and the people they owe. Overlooking a relatively small percentage of pork and wheeling and dealing I want more of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the Lugar–Obama work expanding the Nunn–Lugar "cooperative threat reduction" approach regarding conventional weapons, and particularly the Coburn–Obama Transparency Act, as I'm very much looking forward to the long life of www.USAspending.gov. He regularly works with Democrats, Republicans, and independents and toward things like the Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008 and the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (signed into law in September 2007). He also introduced S. 453, a bill to criminalize deceptive practices in federal elections, and introduced the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007. I want more of the same where he is concerned and not eight more years of deception and blatant "you couldn't stop me if you tried" criminality.

OK. I wasn't able to pick just three.

He responded:

"I asked for 3 REAL qualifications in Obama's life that qualify him for the most important job in the world. You gave me two things that Red Cross volunteers do for free here in Louisiana...but Obama did not do those things for free...he made a whopping $13,000 a year. The other thing you said was "He (Obama) says he will do what I want a president to do" and this is again the problem...he SAYS a lot but is an empty suit that changes his mind depending on the audience...not to mention he does not have a clus about Iran (a small country with no threat) or Russia (just let all sides hug and sit down and talk with the UN) or Packistan who he suggested we invade."

I closed:
With apologies, I am up to my ears in a new Executive Director position and need to withdraw from this exchange because it does not feel potentially fruitful. Red Cross volunteers at the organizational level Obama occupied often get paid ridiculously high salaries (remember the investigations?) and still don't get the specific, grounded results Obama did. But you'd know that if this exchange were actually dealing with the historical record. Every candidate ever to hop off the campaign truck gears her message to her audience, and every leader reserves the right to shift position when a change in circumstances dictates a change in strategy, with one recent and notable exception that is costing us lives and resources at an unprecedented rate. McCain does it. Obama does it. Regan did it. Likewise (fill in the blank). It is familiar, disingenuous demagoguery for a competitor to call his rival "an empty suit" because he changes his mind, which leads me to recognize some of the main anti-Obama points generated by the RNC campaign machine and not by the historical record. He never said Iran is a small country posing no threat, that Russia will hug and sit down with the UN, or that Pakistan requires an invasion. Good grief. Someday let's at least try to have a discussion based on what the candidates actually do/say and not what the campaign headquarters tells us to think.

 

Being In Movement

I'm in Columbus, OH working with Paul Linden Sensei while writing (dissertation) and working (Aiki Extensions). My schedule may be found through Airset.com (if we share a group there) or through my website, by clicking on "Calendar".

As I write this I am sitting in Cup O' Joe - Clintonville [2990 N High St Columbus, OH 43202 (614) 447-7563], listening to a Thomas Moore interview (free at New Dimensions for this week), as well as some excellent music at http://www.folkalley.com/music/podcasts/. I am more than happy to recommend all three.

Some things I am working on with Paul:
What is the difference between a timing lag and the timing delay of a whipping motion native to so many martial techniques? To understand this better and more consistently create the effect I want I'm paying attention to how my focus (specifically my conscious purpose and eyes) aren't always "identical"/tracking with my movement but dissociate in some way. Occasionally, behaviors which can be fine, conscious, tactical choices arise from habits based at some level in fear. The dilemma presents in the both unconscious and unhelpful part of the process rather than in simply refining by repetition the conscious applications. This is not Wrong except when movement patterns reflect something I do without being aware of it or in a way that imbalances me accidentally. Like most dilemmas of this sort the question is not simply am I doing an unhelpful thing but, always, how much does it apply in a given moment of consideration.

more on this to come...

Hopefully Unrelated: Please check out http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/08/15/disney.protesters.ap/index.html

Cinderella, others arrested in Disneyland labor protest

ANAHEIM, California (AP)

 

 

We Live Our Stories 

200807

A reply to an associate...

I'm getting your emails. I'm just deeply buried in New Job Changeover Syndrome. Alas, I haven't communicated much with my beloved family, other than Lisa, in weeks.

Regarding our non-profit group in Berkeley, Association Building Community, the other participants right now (our Council /Board of Directors) are three older activists and one retired Director of Administration from Bayer. Each grew too weary of essential social change initiatives breaking down before their promise was realized due to lack of attention to the group's process and failure to practice conflict as an art. Our process is: to be together regularly and tend  to the way we relate. Sometimes we have felt more faithful to that than others. We seek ways to build the process arts as a field that recognizes itself as such so that it may take up its obligation to work overtly and collectively toward peace. We have engaged in projects when willing and able, and would like to support other people (with our 501c3 and existing finance tracking infrastructure) to do the same. We often struggle with identity issues because our available energy, pace, and needs vary widely, but I am most often proud of us for continuing in community (when it feels warm and close and even more when it doesn't) for as long as we have. Now it is ABC which provides my community building services to Aiki Extensions as their Executive Director.

I've also delayed my response because, especially over email, it may become difficult to really get to a place of deep exchange. I've been trying to figure out a way to explore that without either writing all day or exposing you to the vast and foggy terrain of my private online work area and dissertation writing (my "work in progress" wiki) which is afflicted with my baroque prose style and definitely not a quick read.

I suppose the dilemma (and fascination of learning from each other, should we decide to) is in what seems like it might be our primary point of departure - the kind of hope we practice. Getting at what I mean might take a minute and I hope you'll forgive me if my way of approach is a bit inaccessible. I'm working to refine that.

The legacy of the historical surge of monotheism (singular divinity and truth) is a kind of literalism that costumes itself as perfection. Perfectionism is not friendly to humanity and makes humanity unfriendly to itself and the soul of the world. This takes shape in the fantasy that absolute precision is possible and therefore absolute power in sufficient applied rationality. Absolutes of this kind have always belonged to divinity in the human experience. As a result, Science is imagined and followed religiously as revealing The Truth rather than supporting one method of inquiry, and the mechanistic metaphors of industrialism (efficiency, progress, development, etc.) comprise a new and overpowering fantasy of divinity, rather than an essential subcategory in a larger idea of meaning.

Psychology emerged alongside the global transition to industrial domination and is firmly shaped by the scientistic imagination of perfection (health) believed in by medical doctors who were its first practitioners. As psychology became ubiquitous in the 20th century its hypothetical and imaginative jargon ("obsessive-compulsive", "The Unconscious", "well-adjusted") was transformed into literalistic diagnoses as though they were proven facts and became everyday words. With these reductionistic explanations for the utterly mysterious firmly fixed as lenses in the frames of perception, contemporary people are almost entirely estranged from the making of meaning through sympathy for and understanding of story, soul, and sorrow. The mechanistic/medical fantasy of health continues to reform what began as "depth" psychology (and healing itself) such that learning how to live, suffer and celebrate the making of meaning, and then die well have fallen beneath the hooves of a stampeding ego-psychology. "Progress" is now equivalent with Good and "Self Help" has become the ultimate aim.

I hope we will learn to prefer to cultivate sympathy and understanding for the vast realm of experience that the self cannot help, is painful, Other, and therefore rejected as illegitimate. It is what we refuse to consider deeply and end up denying that causes "failure of imagination" that precludes honest preparation for real suffering. This also leads to ineffective action that virtually abets painfully obvious stock villains bombing other people's children to gain control "essential to our national interests and security". The remedy for this I call "martial nonviolence" - that use of shared power that insists on practicing arts of peace, defined as conflict done well such that all participants in a given system get support to secure what every human needs and have repeated chances to get some of what they want as well.

In the industrial mind it is obligatory to expect to never be sick, never suffer from pain, fulfill all your dreams, and live to an endlessly postponed (more cryo-frozen and botoxic than ripe) old age, but that is not balanced and appropriate for being human. I hope to be sick and suffer legitimately but as briefly as possible, relate to my dreams as though they are invitations to an autonomous realm wherein my capacity for wonder and understanding may become more sophisticated, and live to an age at which I may be at least a bit excited at the prospect of dying well and meeting whatever might or might not come next.

I lost my child with no reason given in December of 2006. Holding my suddenly and inexplicably dead first-born in my arms removed all doubt about the fantasy that it is possible never to suffer. The experience did not damage me so that I cannot love life and adopt a darker view to match my inner loss. Rather, it stripped away a natural privilege of childhood - the illusion which insists on enthroning simplistic Hope for an endlessly sunny future in the legitimate place of  powerlessness and sorrow. Hope, like all the other gods, is only a usurper when it insists it reigns alone.

Re-reading this it becomes clear that I have gone on too long and abstrusely, as I feared. I hope this finds you in a patient frame of mind and that you will forgive me my excesses.

Brandon

P.S. I haven't read the book you mention but would like hear what you think of it. If you'd like to read someone who says what I mean much more accessibly you might read Thomas Moore, or more precisely - James Hillman.

 

Process Arts> Martial Nonviolence(aiki principles) > NVC

 

Politics of Fear

the New Yorker Obama cover and the McCain Vanity Fair cover

  I'm fascinated. The battle has to do, again, with "the hearts and minds" of the electorate and controlling what we think is good and bad so approbation, money, and eventual votes may be directed "appropriately".

Starting point: Fear those Other People who are extremists and will do whatever it takes to control our political and then daily life.  Trust your fear.

Media-ted response: Politics of Fear = bad. Don't let those Other People cause you to vote based on your fear.

But what are the appropriate uses of your legitimate fear/concern that arises from our actual political history? The Obamas are certainly not islamist terrorists while McCain certainly is a continuation of Bush and the empire agenda. Is it as obvious as the New Yorker satire serves The Truth and Vanity Fair is in someone's pocket not interested in same? Good guys vs Those Other People simplicity? Appreciation or condemnation of political campaign maneuvering facilitated by Those Other People in partisan media outlets?

Am I (is everyone) simply attempting to increase their own power by making their tribe more influential? Am I (or They) to be dismissed because, of the two viable choices, I support Obama and you should fear my making you fear Those Other People with this critical inquiry? What does t/Truth look like?

In the end are we tired of thinking and back to calling these gambits "just satire", entertaining outlets for inner bitterness? Doesn't that burying their belief/vote changing effect on hearts and minds?

200806

I hope I have an idea of how to aim us that will match the desires of our membership. Something like...

The center is not AE as such but the aiki principles we value regardless of style or other persuasion.
It seems to me that our co-intelligence will grow and community flourish driven by the real desire, wherever it is found, to see the arts of peace in practice at home and out in the world. AE's responsibility is to help the community understand its constellations as a whole system depending on individual orbits and profoundly affected by each others gravity.