Below are excerpts from a letter Ken Wing sent to me.  My response follows. We need such interaction, plus a few more participants.      Kent

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Dear Kent,

…. in reading the posts on the yahoogroup, I experienced a dawning sense of possibility, that this project could be seminal in some influential way that I couldn't fully see.

 

Reading the document [Version 4] has not fed that sense of possibility, rather, I seem to have lost it altogether. 

 

Rethinking the posts, I sense desire to make a contribution, and courage to make the attempt, but I can't find that type of energy in the project document. 

 

One thing I am wanting from the project document is the "theory of change," our thinking about how this project, when complete, is going to influence culture, consciousness, or behavior.  What happens after publication?

 

I am also disappointed at the summaries of your chapter and David Hawk's.  Both appear to come from a place that accepts the high status position of experts in our society, but takes issue with the fact that they are ignored (=disobeyed?).  The concept of expert status is not easily wedded to open, and most of our ideas about expert are firmly based in scientific, if-then thinking, rather than complex phenomena.  If the project is a report of a group of experts, introduced into a society that likes to listen to experts and then ignore them, how will we make a difference?

…. 

Ken

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As the title indicates, this is an "open politics" project.  If it lacks something you want, you are invited to add it.  While I have written everything so far, I've made huge changes in response to the interests people have make known to me. 

 

Personally, I have a greater sense of possibility and greater energy now than when I first started. 

 

You find the theory of change embedded in the project deficient on two counts: 

• The project and product don't influence culture
• The focus is on experts, who are ineffectual

More work is needed on the first point, surely, but I believe that a written product can reach people who are open to it, as long as it has depth, legitimacy, and authenticity.  We are trained to bring depth.  It is a dereliction of our responsibility not to offer it to others.  Legitimacy comes from doing this as a group and allowing ourselves to be shaped by the group.  Authenticity is the hard one.  All I can say is that I am not kidding about global survival.  This is not an exercise.  I want to bring to bear what I know, and can best contribute, to dealing with the crisis of our time.   As far as written products are concerned, I would point to both Beyond the Stable State and Future Shock as having had significant impact, and we are following up on the implications.  I believe that there is a greater audience of seekers now, people who are justifiably worried.   We will place our book and the follow-on process with these seekers.

 

We are in a position to give these seekers information and encouragement to influence others who are, in turn, influential.   I think that formula leverages our capabilities to a high degree.

 

This is an opportunity to try something different, based on processes that are actually working in the contemporary environment (i.e., open source development), plus a sober admission of what hasn't worked particularly well from our own tradition. (Most of our arguments for processes are based on what must or should work. Everybody has to question what they have been doing, given the results we see.)    

 

You suggest many things about experts.  They:

• are the opposite of `open'
• represent illegitimate science
• do not deserve high status
• command obedience and fail to receive it

 All that is true.  I can draw up a similar indictment for any other group you can name, including `the people'.   But I forgive them all and ask them to repent! 

 

Our focus is a bit wider than experts.  We are looking at and addressing influential people in institutions, which include leaders of all kinds as well as their experts.  I see no reason to ignore the fact the influential people exist and are a resource for change, especially since we happen to be members of that group, often interact with members of that group, and most importantly have a hand in their education regarding complexity management. 

 

David Hawk needs to speak up.  He would be amused at having been criticized as an elitist.  Those notes are simply my suggestion for his chapter, based on discussions I have had with him.  David is one of our elite thinkers, and I don't think many of us have listened to him carefully enough to realize this.  I may be plodding, but I figure that if I can get David and others like him to participate, I will have leveraged my meager gifts.

 

How will others participate?