Research in social action, discrimination, psycho-social action

Amy’s Social Action: “World Work And The Politics Of Dreaming”

In this 25 page article, Amy Mindell comes out of the closet :-) with her politics of dreaming. Written for the intellectual and also for the artistic mind, focused as well on the general public, Amy clearly makes her point.

The world is run without awareness or consciousness of the deepest, most creative parts of our souls. That is, Dreaming is an organic and necessary element of all world process. Dreaming changes group atmosphere, deepens interactions and creates sustainable change.

Download "World Work and the Politics of Dreaming" (2.6MB)

"Bridge-Building Between People Of Differing Religious Ideologies."

An Unedited Interview With Amy and Arny Mindell, www.aamindell.net,
by MS Linda Ceriello braveboldnow@yahoo.com
12/26/2007

We appreciate Ms Linda Ceriello for her interest in bridging gaps between people of different belief systems.  Her interview refers to a large open city forum, that occurred in Portland, Oregon several years ago. That forum was created by the Process Work Institute of Portland. Amy and Arny were co facilitators. The theme was about the relationship between the Oregon Citizens alliance, (a conservative Christian political activist organization) and Lesbian and Gay Rights. Her interview with A+A was excerpted from a longer interview. See the attached file, worldwork and religion.

Download "World Work and Religion " (78kb)

Conflicts Around Issues of Race reported by the San Francisco Chronicle

Thanks to the late Ms. Wilma Jean Tucker for having created the Oakland California open forum setting. Because of her, we were able to process some of the public’s feelings, both the hurt and heartfulness connected to racial issues in the United States. This forum occurred just before the “Rodney King Trial”, 1992. Mr King had been unfairly beaten by police, in a widely publicized video, sent by TV around the world at that time. A few days before the trial,  the public atmosphere in Oakland California, was highly charge just as other largely African American cities were around the US. For some amazing reason, Oakland was one of the few places which did not break out into riots after that trial.

Download the article (297kb)

Why "white" instead of "White" people?

A reader of Arny’s Sitting in the Fire, recently asked about Chapter 3 which discusses rank. She wanted to know why Arny capitalized the names of many peoples, such as Aboriginal Australians, Latinos, Africans, Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, but did not capitalize whites?

The answer is that in the mid 1990’s, Arny was (and still is) trying to compensate for the overwhelming rank given to white people over others in many parts of the world. But the more complete answer is that compensating for rank, by lowering one’s status (e.g. from White to white)  is only the beginning of social action.  It is not sustainable, because in the grandest sense of deep democracy which includes all worlds, everyone has equal value.  Moreover, every experiential level has equal value, (even if we still occasionally emphasize Dreaming over consensus reality :-) ).

Voodoo.

While studying the magical culture of “hoodoo” from New Orleans and its origins in Voodoo from West Africa, we came across a few minute video  about “Togo voodoo”. Click this National Geographic production to see aspects of this  essential African religion:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNh3_JxP3HM. This reminds us of experiences we had in Africa in the 1980’s, experiences which were behind Arny’s  SHAMAN’S BODY.

Our Planetary Future and "Universe Work"

We are thinking about individual, relationship, team and world work, as well as about “universe work.” What is and will happen to our little planet in the next several hundred years and in the eventual future. We are pondering the danger of global warming, the influence of human action, and volcanoes on global warming. We are pondering genetic manipulation getting into the hands of warring cultures. It is going to be easier in the future not only to produce medicine but genetically organized diseases.

On the consensus reality level, reducing conflict, controlling overpopulation, reducing environmental destruction can help if we learn how to get along with one another.  Once again; we need more research and practice in how to deal with conflict.

New Orleans: Reconstruction and Dialogue about Class and Race

In preparing for our worldwork facilitator training in New Orleans in the fall of 2007, we are studying the complex process of city rebuilding. This process includes the connections between intercultural dialogue and the power of the environment as it manifests for example in hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes. We are revising our thinking about what it means to care for our fragile human well being and social equality, while remembering nature.  What are the roles and the marginalized “ghost”roles, in the city, state, country…and planet?  

Worldwork Perspectives

We are enjoying the worldwork insights of various colleagues.

See Dr. Max Schupbach’s innovative applications of the worldwork paradigm.

Read also Dr. Gary Reiss’ book, “Beyond War and Peace in the Arab Israeli Conflict”.

We love reading Dawn Menken’s innovative “Speak Out.”  

Dr. Arlene Audergon’s, good book, “THE WAR HOTEL.” It weaves processwork together with social consciousness to show how to deal with war and its results.

Discourse And Process Theories: Seyla Benhabib and Arnold Mindell

By Professor J.J. Hendricks,
California State University,
Stanislaus Department of Politics and Public Administration

Introduction

This paper examines the points of agreement and difference between two theorists who address similar themes in very different milieus, coming from different perspectives and disciplines. One of the theorists, Arnold Mindell would call this a bootstrap paper discussing two bootstrap theories. Seyla Benhabib's stated philosophical project is "to situate reason and the moral self in contexts of gender and community , while insisting of the discursive power of individuals to challenge such situatedness in the name of future identities and communities, and universalistic principles."

1 A critical theorist, Benhabib extends Habermas' discourse theory by reconstituting it phenomenologically though insights gleaned from Hannah Arendt and Carol Gilligan. She intends to capture a pragmatic, yet utopian vision of reflexivity and radical egalitarianism through the moral conversation, and further, she extends the options for the marginalized in challenging their situatedness as mentioned above. She situates discourse theory, "between liberalism and communitarianism, Kantian universalism and Hegelian Sittlihkeit."

2 Arnold Mindell's is a theory of emergence.

3 His stated psychological goal is "to develop skills and methods for working with the emerging world situation: a planet with five thousand different languages and religions whose inhabitants know more about launching spaceships than about getting
along with each other. This form of process psychology is world work - an interdisciplinary method that helps small and large groups of people to live, work and grow together within their environment. The challenge is to develop organizational and conflict resolution so that they reflect democratic principles and are widely applicable.

4 Mindell draws on modern psychology - "the Jungian method of following the unconscious, the Gestalt focus on process, Carl Rogers unconditional support for the individual, the transpersonal focus on the divine, and the systems principles from economics, politics and physics."

5 His primary influences are Jung, physics and the Tao. He too, is interested in extending options for expression of voices left out of the discussion.

Download the rest of the paper .... (81kb)

Central world challenges

1. Mind and Body

Experience shows neglecting a part of yourself makes it appear as an inner problem, outer anxiety or body symptom.

What you can do:

I. Use awareness, accept your diversity of images and dreams

II. Encourage medicine and psychology to cross their boundaries and come together to match your inner experience.

2. World Problems

If you or your group marginalizes a person or feeling, that person or feeling becomes a problem later on, or a group which attacks yours.

What you can do:

I. Consider how you are the other.
II. Encourage democratic theory and practice to deepen by using awareness methods.

3. World Problem 2003: Transform Groups into Democracies.

Very few of us are democratic enough to give equal representation to all our inner and outer parts.

What you can do.

I. Use awareness, notice your feelings, and become more deeply democratic.
II. Practice awareness of the "other" in groups
III. Realize, you can't make a group democratic, but you can discover that with awareness, all people are deeply democratic. It's our basic nature. (see Arny's "Deep Democracy of Open Forums" for methods.)

4. World Ghosts 2003: Weapons of Mass Destruction

When terrorists and others "harboring" weapons of mass destruction become invisible, they become ghost roles; that is nonlocal stuff in the air.

What this means and what you can do:

I. Ask yourself why you sometimes want to wipe out the human race.
II. Notice "weapons of mass destruction" in groups when people are ready to "kill" one another.
III. Consider SARS disease as a ghost role, a nonlocal weapon of mass destruction. Become a shaman and play that role (and make it meaningful) to ameliorate its consequences.

Oneness and diversity questions

When you wake up in the middle of the night, and see something hanging over a chair, it can be a monster or goddess at the same time. But then "awakening", you realize it is just your old shirt you threw over the chair before you went to bed. In the quantum realm of physics, a consensual physics object such as a shirt, can be in two states at the same time. Likewise in psychology, in a sleepy state, we can see two different states of a "shirt" at the same time.