the urban village as a living system

THE URBAN VILLAGE AS A LIVING SYSTEM: BUILDING A GENERATIVE AND CARING LOCAL ECONOMY AND SOCIETY THROUGH STRATEGIC

COLLABORATION

A dissertation presented to

the Faculty of Saybrook University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosphy (Ph.D.) in Organizational Systems

by

Brett R. Joseph

Oakland, California May 2016

Approval of the Dissertation


COLLABORATION

This dissertation by Brett R. Joseph has been approved by the committee members below, who recommend it be accepted by the faculty of Saybrook University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy in Organizational Systems

Dissertation Committee:

____________[signature] ______________ ______________________ Nancy Southern, Ed.D. Date ____________[signature] ______________ ______________________ Gary Metcalf, Ph.D. Date ____________[signature] ______________ ______________________ Kathia Laszlo, Ph.D. Date

ii

Abstract


COLLABORATION

Brett R. Joseph

Saybrook University

This research investigated cross-sector collaboration as ideal-seeking social action

within the context of a stakeholder-led initiative to foster place-based community

revitalization in the City of Cleveland, Ohio, USA. It engaged organizational leaders and

citizen activists to develop and refine the praxis of design conversation inspired by an

appreciative awareness of values and qualities found in communities as thriving, living

systems. Within a framework of community action research methodology, as informed by

an emerging interdisciplinary body of work centered on dialogue as a collective means of

accessing human evolutionary potentials at the community level, the study engaged a small

group of community leaders to create a learning space and relational field enabling them

to acquire knowledge and understanding in the manner of an evolutionary learning

community. Through facilitated design inquiry, participants sought to understand their

communities as living socio-ecological systems; evolving purposefully within a context of

embedded cultural and institutional influences.

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The group discourse combined generative and strategic dialogue with other co-

creative inquiry practices to embody dynamic and purposeful characteristics of an

evolutionary guidance system. Through design conversation in both small group and

community practice settings, participants worked to transform habitual patterns of thinking

and shift awareness towards appreciative qualities of communities as purposeful social

systems; thereby building collective evolutionary competencies that enable self-

organization and unfolding of human evolutionary potentials at the levels of self,

organization, community, and society.

The study results were summarized from participant journaling and transcribed

conversations, and interpreted through critical hermeneutic analysis and systemic

modeling. The results demonstrate, at least tentatively, how designing conversation as a

strategic approach to community revitalization praxis enabled participants to coalesce as a

dynamic learning community, expressing evolutionary consciousness and competency and

developing a more integral, shared understanding of Cleveland’s communities as

continuously evolving and appreciatively self-guided, living systems. These results show

how strategically facilitated conversation within a framework of evolutionary systems

design enabled community stakeholders in Cleveland to utilize conversation as purposeful

social action to build appreciative awareness of their differences and understanding of their

collective human potentials as the conscious embodiment values and qualities found in

healthy, resilient communities.

iv

Acknowledgments

This work is for me the culmination of a quest for self-transcendence, as well as a

promontory point from which to set my compass on the journey ahead. My greatest joy,

however, is in knowing that this work was inspired and nurtured by all those whose

treasured relationships have been a source of encouragement, mentoring, and steadfast

support.

Words cannot adequately express the extent of my gratitude for Dr. Nancy

Southern, my dissertation committee chair, whose attentive mentoring, deep wisdom, and

generous spirit enabled me to stretch beyond my own limited vision of the possible.

Likewise, it is with profound appreciation that I acknowledge the other members of my

dissertation committee, Dr. Kathia Laszlo, whose highly evolved intelligence, creativity,

and appreciative presence showed me how to search beyond academic theory to embrace

complexity in the real world of people and places, and Dr. Gary Metcalf, whose

encyclopedic knowledge of the systems sciences, capacity for deep listening, and

unwavering commitment to scientific rigor showed me the true meaning of scholarship.

Beyond the dissertation itself, this work is at best a mere reflection of the deep

learning and creative engagement that I had the privilege to share with my research

participants and co-inquirers, who afforded me the gift of their professional expertise,

humility, vision, presence, sense of community, and sense of place. Truly, this learning

journey would not have been possible without the individual and collective contributions

of these valued co-inquirers, whose legacy is written into every page of this document.

To my cherished wife, Martha, and my brilliant and talented daughters Caitlin and

Sionainn, this work is in large measure the product of your subtle and overt

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encouragement, including our many hours of thoughtful “bantering” and the patience

with which you allowed me to disrupt life on the homefront; just enough to succeed as a

doctoral student. To my dear parents, Ralph and Normi, thank you for helping me

believe this was possible.

Finally, to my other local mentors, colleagues, and friends, including those within

the Cleveland vital neighborhoods, social justice, educational, and local food networks,

as well as to my Saybrook colleagues and peer learners within the Organizational

Systems degree program, thank you for the gift of community and for the opportunity to

collaborate towards a better world for all!

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Table of Contents

List of Tables ................................................................................................................... viii List of Figures .................................................................................................................... ix CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................1

Overview and Background ......................................................................................4

Research Aims, Purposes, and Rationale .................................................................7

Organizational Setting and Systemic Context .......................................................12

The Vital Neighborhoods Working Group ................................................17

Researcher Background .........................................................................................20

Research Questions ................................................................................................25

Philosophical Orientation.......................................................................................26

Overview of the Methodology ...............................................................................26

Entry and Preparation ................................................................................28

Evolutionary Design ..................................................................................29

Embodying the Evolutionary Learning Community as an Embedded Community System..................................................................30

Significance of the Study .......................................................................................32

Definition of Terms................................................................................................33

Organization of the Dissertation ............................................................................36

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ...........................................................................39

Purpose and Scope of the Literature Review in Community Action Research .................................................................................................................39

Conceptual Framework and Major Premises of the Inquiry ......................40

Philosophical Foundations .........................................................................56

Unity of Knowledge: Science, Humanities, and the Prospect of a “New Enlightenment” for the 21st Century ...............................................63

From GST to Evolutionary Systems Design ..............................................67

Evolutionary Systems Theory ................................................................................68

Theoretical Foundations: Enfolded Potential, Natural Selection and Self-Organizing Systems .....................................................................68

Societal Evolution ......................................................................................81

Consciously Guided Evolution ..................................................................85

Theoretical Approaches to Syste25mic Analysis and Problem Solving .......................................................................................................91

Total Systems Intervention ........................................................... 93

Critical Systems Thinking and Social Systems Design ................ 96

Interpretive Systems Approach (Soft Systems Thinking) ............ 97

Emancipatory Systems Approach ................................................. 99

Viable Systems Model ................................................................ 101

Open Systems and Self-Transcendence ...................................... 103

Theoretical Exploration: Evolutionary Guidance as an Integral Systemic Process .................................................................................................................105

Summary and Conclusions ..................................................................................107

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CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ...................................................................................113

Overview of Research Methodology ...................................................................116

Research Questions ..............................................................................................119

Research Design...................................................................................................121

Community Action Research ...................................................................121

Evolutionary Learning and Applied Systems Science .........................................125

Cleveland Neighborhoods as Evolving Socio-Ecological Systems .....................126

Global Context and the Emerging Posthuman Condition ........................126

The Local Context: Ecology, History and Culture ..................................127

Evolutionary Consciousness and Systems Design ...............................................128

A Generic Model of an Evolutionary Guidance System .........................132

“Field Theories” and the Evolutionary Guidance System .......................135

Participant Recruitment .......................................................................................141

Selection Criteria: Characteristics of Anticipated Participants ................145

Exclusion Criteria ....................................................................................145

Research Setting.......................................................................................145

The Role of the Researcher ..................................................................................146

Community Action Research Methods and Procedures ......................................147

Inquiry Cycle 1: Entry and Preparation. ..................................................148

Intended Outcomes ..................................................................... 148

Preparation .................................................................................. 149

Normative and Interactive Planning ........................................... 150

Practical and Attainable Social Action ....................................... 150

Data Gathering and Evaluation ................................................... 152

Integration, Feedback, and Reflection ........................................ 153

Inquiry Cycle 2: Evolutionary Design .....................................................155






Inquiry Cycle 3: Embodying the Evolutionary Learning Community as an Embedded Community System ..................................163






Data Generation, Capture, and Analysis of Learning Outcomes .........................167

Validity and Reliability ............................................................................169

Generation of New Knowledge .................................................. 169

Achievement of Action-Oriented Outcomes .............................. 170

Education of Both Researcher and Participants .......................... 170

Results Relevant to the Local Setting ......................................... 170

Sound and Appropriate Research Methodology ......................... 171

Ethical Considerations .........................................................................................171

viii

Confidentiality and Consent ....................................................................173

Limitations of the Methodology ..........................................................................174

CHAPTER 4: ENACTING THE DESIGN INQUIRY ...................................................178

Overview ..............................................................................................................178

Recruitment and Formation of Inquiry Group .........................................180

Summary of Participant Interests .............................................................184

Learning Conversations .......................................................................................188

Inquiry Group Session 1. .........................................................................188

Physical Setting ........................................................................... 188

Sharing, Reflecting, and Planning .............................................. 189

Conversation ............................................................................... 192

Inquiry Group Session 2 ..........................................................................198

Physical Setting ........................................................................... 199


Conversation ............................................................................... 203

Stakeholder Community Design: The Cleveland Vital Neighborhoods Innovation Session. ........................................................212

Conversation ............................................................................... 215



Conversation ............................................................................... 223



Conversation ............................................................................... 241

Summary ..............................................................................................................252

CHAPTER 5: SYNTHESIS OF THE RESEARCH OUTCOMES .................................255

Overview ..............................................................................................................255

Synthesis of the Work ..........................................................................................256

Generative Dialogue as a Strategy for Inquiry Group Formation............257

Refining and Responding to the Research Questions Through Community Design Inquiry .....................................................................262

Exploring the Praxis of Designing Conversation Within the Broader Community Setting ....................................................................266

Converging Perspectives Regarding the Problem Situation Under Study ........................................................................................................270

An Evolutionary Guidance System for Place-Based Community Revitalization .......................................................................................................280

Reflections on Facilitating the Inquiry Group .....................................................291

CHAPTER 6: SUMMARY AND EVALUATION OF RESEARCH OUTCOMES....................................................................................................................295

Criteria for Evaluating Quality and Validity of the Action Research ..................307

Dialogic and Process Validity ..................................................................308

Outcome and Catalytic Validity...............................................................314

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Tacitly Constructed Theories Guiding the Group Learning Activities ..................................................................................... 317

Use of Outcomes to Critically Examine and Validate Emerging Theoretical Perspectives............................................. 320

Democratic Validity .................................................................................324

Reflections ...........................................................................................................327

Recommendations for Continuing to Move the Work Forward ..............327

Conclusion ...........................................................................................................333

REFERENCES ................................................................................................................339

APPENDICES .................................................................................................................353

A. Template for Structured Interviews ................................................................353

B. Group Presencing and Learning Activities .....................................................358

C. Practices to Build Capacity for Generative and Strategic Dialogue ...............360

D. Approach and Techniques of Integral Inquiry ................................................363

E. Recruitment E-Mail Templates .......................................................................368

F. Evolutionary Learning: Key Concepts and Definitions...................................373

G. Vital Neighborhoods Innovation Session: Themes and Proposals .................382

H. Community System “Root Definitions” and CLD Models .............................387

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List of Tables

Table 1. Jackson’s (2000) Four Generic Systems Perspectives .........................................92 Table 2. Flood and Jackson’s (1991) System of System Methodologies ..........................94 Table 3. Summary of Activities and Intended Outcomes for Inquiry Cycle 1 ................154 Table 4. Summary of Activities and Intended Outcomes for Inquiry Cycle 2 ................162 Table 5. Summary of Activities and Intended Outcomes for Inquiry Cycle 3 ................166 Table 6. Participant Interests Related to the Study ..........................................................185 Table 7. Summary of the Major Research Results Attained by Inquiry Group Participants .......................................................................................................................300 Table 8. Herr and Anderson’s (2015) Five Quality/Validity Criteria for Action Research ...........................................................................................................................308

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List of Figures

Figure 1. Sustainable Cleveland 2019 Strategic Framework: Priority Areas and Goals ..................................................................................................................................17 Figure 2. Dimensions of Evolutionary Competence ........................................................144 Figure 3. Creating Conditions for Self-Guided Evolution ...............................................152 Figure 4. The Design Architecture for Designing the Evolutionary Guidance System ..............................................................................................................................158 Figure 5. Diverse and Overlapping Disciplinary Backgrounds Among Study Participants .......................................................................................................................183 Figure 6. Divergent Pattern of Questions Generated at Second Inquiry Session ............265 Figure 7. Integration of Themes Considered During the Third Inquiry Session .............273 Figure 8. Facilitative Strategies and Emerging Group Dynamics ...................................275 Figure 9. Systemic Model of the Problem Situation ........................................................278 Figure 10. Model of an “Ideal” Evolutionary Guidance System for Revitalization of Place-Based Community ......................................................................283 Figure 11. Inputs, Outputs, and Transformations ............................................................288 Figure 12. Schematic Representation of the Multiple Domains of Knowledge Attainable Within the Self-Organizing Dynamics of an Evolutionary Learning Community ......................................................................................................................296

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Chapter 1: Introduction

Learning together, we are thinking differently. We are consciously engaged in

processes of being and becoming. We are a living ecosystem: complex, and

resilient, an embodied intelligence and a strongly woven social fabric leading

change with vitality and creativity. We are self-organizing and self-guiding,

motivated by a natural impulse to appreciate our differences as well as our

common humanity; committed to deepening our understanding of ourselves and

our local situation which enables us to access our hidden potentials and to

flourish amidst the uncertainties of this ever-changing world.

We are life, and we are evolving – peacefully and purposefully!

This dream-like vision is both a present intention and perhaps a gift from the

wellspring of future consciousness. Having joined with other social activists and

organizational leaders to pursue a learning journey within the context of a place-based

community revitalization initiative, I set out to discover whether, by honing the practical

skills of systemic thinkers engaged in designing conversation, these participants might

together express emerging and collective potentials as a community of evolutionary

learners. I envisioned that, in this way, the participants might develop a shared capacity

that would enable them to catalyze and guide conscious evolutionary change within

themselves, their local communities, and the society at large.

As a point of departure, while contemplating the learning journey ahead, I offered

certain questions that seemed to arise naturally as an invitation for shared inquiry: What

future is ready to emerge from within the complex web of social, technological, and

2

ecological relationships that shape and define the fabric of community life within our

local settings? Is it possible through conscious effort to change well-practiced and

pervasive habits of thought and behavior that may prevent community residents and

stakeholders from realizing their collective potentials? How might participants, as

community stakeholders, organizational leaders, and citizens, become both the authors

and the collective embodiment of an image of the collectively desired future,

understanding its meaning and significance in the ever-changing contexts of their lives; at

home, at work, and in society? How might they acquire interpersonal and cultural

competencies that enable them to navigate the turbulent waters of a global political

economy undergoing rapid change, driven by a complex array of progressive and

regressive forces, powered by technological innovations and shifting environmental and

social dynamics that transcend conventional spatial, temporal, and institutional

boundaries?

Organizational and community leaders conducting business in the 21st century

global economy face a daunting array of complexity-related challenges which demand

new approaches to institutional design, socio-economic development, and civic

engagement. These leaders are confronted with the challenges of creating value pursuant

to their respective organizational missions, while consciously assuming the individual

and shared responsibilities of global citizenship, including a common ethical imperative

to affirmatively build towards a socially just and sustainable future.

As a research consultant I imagined that, by collaborating in a process of

disciplined inquiry converging around shared interests and values related to community

and place, community stakeholders might self-organize in a manner that enables them to

3

acquire knowledge, understanding, and related practical competencies needed to lead

purposeful change in the manner of an evolutionary learning community (K. C. Laszlo &

Laszlo, 2004). As envisioned, drawing upon the relevant theoretical literature, such a

community would embody the qualities and characteristics of an appreciative social

system (Jantsch, 1975; Vickers, 1968) that facilitates ideal-seeking social and

institutional change at the community level, and thereby contributes to the emergence of

a thriving human (and post-human) society in this dawning era of the Anthropocene

(Braidotti, 2013). I imagined that, on the strength of this mutual intention, study

participants might summon their diverse intelligences and skills, and create a shared

space for self-guided inquiry, collaborative action and deep reflection that allows them to

become the authors of such a collectively desired future.

Converging theoretical perspectives suggest that today’s socially responsible

organizational leaders and practicing organizational consultants, using approaches,

methods, and tools of applied systems science and collective design within a framework

of community action research, can distinguish the place-based, inter-organizational

learning community as a purposeful, appreciatively guided socio-ecological system

serving to catalyze and lead cultural and institutional change within its larger stakeholder

community and society at large.

This dissertation study was an investigation into cross-sector collaboration as

ideal-seeking social action within the context of a current inter-organizational and

stakeholder-led initiative to foster place-based community revitalization in the City of

Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It engaged organizational leaders and citizen activists to

develop and refine the praxis of design conversation inspired by an appreciative

4

awareness of values and qualities found in communities as thriving, living systems. As

community action research, a small group of socially engaged professionals created a

common space for disciplined inquiry and a relational field enabling participants to

acquire knowledge and understanding in the manner of an evolutionary learning

community. Through facilitated design inquiry, participants sought to consciously

transform habitual patterns of thinking while shifting awareness towards appreciative

qualities and activities of Cleveland’s place-based communities as living socio-ecological

systems. In this way, participants sought to collectively develop practical competencies

that would enable them to purposefully guide the unfolding of individual and collective

human potentials, thereby enabling the self-organization of communities as evolving

socio-ecological systems.

Overview and Background

Humanity seems to be approaching a historical moment of great consequence.

Just as advanced information processing technologies and transportation systems are

enabling the emergence of a global civil society, the realities of daily life for much of the

human family reflect a deepening crisis of declining quality of life; a crisis with social,

environmental, and spiritual dimensions. Inquiry across multiple disciplines is

converging around a common theme: This human generation finds itself in the midst of a

global crisis, stemming in part from the failure of major institutions and their leaders to

transcend certain deeply embedded ways of thinking that perpetuate a current “landscape

of pathologies” and systemic disconnects across multiple spheres of human activity

(Gore, 2013; Huesemann & Huesemann, 2011; Scharmer & Kaufer, 2013).

5

In recent years, influential voices across multiple sectors of the global political

economy have called for systemic change at all levels of human activity, including

individual, organization, community, and society. Organized efforts to align human

designing activities with patterns and qualities found in living systems include

Biomimicry 3.8, the Presencing Institute at MIT, University of Adelaide’s (Australia)

Evolutionary Learning Labs, the United Kingdom’s Schumacher College, the Transition

Network, Germany’s Institut für Partizipatives Gestalten, and Bhutan’s Gross National

Happiness Centre, among others. A common thread running through all these efforts is a

commitment to whole systems thinking, co-creative stakeholder participation, and the

cultivation of nature-inspired values based on a deep appreciation of the complexity and

emergent qualities of healthy, living systems.

Concepts such as sustainable value, defined as the “valuation not only of

economic capital but also of other forms of capital” including natural capital and social

capital (Figge & Hahn, 2005, p. 47; Hart, 2007), and regenerative investment, defined as

investment to create regenerative systems that are inspired by nature and guided by

“longer term and more multidimensional measures of profit [and] cost” (Collins, 2014,

p. 160), are gaining currency among progressive thinkers in business and academia.

Many thought leaders today no longer advocate “sustainability” as their global policy

objective, believing that the concept has run its course in the popular mind and should be

superseded by the idea of “flourishing,” defined as the creation of “the world for which

we all yearn” with conditions that reach well beyond “mundane notions of continuity”

and “bleak material survival” and that are inclusive of “radiant health, thriving

enterprises, and humming communities” (C. Laszlo et al., 2014).

6

Unfortunately, despite these dedicated efforts by global citizens coming together

to pursue systemic solutions and engage in the creation of a sustainable future, to date

little progress has been made in transforming the largest and most dominant financial,

legal, and governance institutions that are major drivers of the global political economy

(Capra & Mattei, 2015; Ostrom, 2015; Scharmer & Kaufer, 2013; United Nations

Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability, 2012).

However, the opportunity may be at hand for this generation of organizational and

community leaders to leverage societal change by restoring and revitalizing “the

commons” as a cultural, legal, and economic institution, as well as by articulating the

“business case” for sustainable value creation; utilizing previously unavailable sources of

collective knowledge, including big data, social networking technology, and interactive

systems models. By guiding strategic investment in social and ecological capital, and by

enabling the development of reliable outcome measures keyed to both quantitative and

qualitative aspects of sustainable value creation, such sources of data-rich systemic

feedback invite community leaders and stakeholders to reach across organizational,

demographic, and disciplinary boundaries, using tools and techniques of applied systems

science to enable collaborative design inquiry that catalyzes and guides transformative

change from the bottom up. Community action research affords stakeholders the

opportunity to access these sources of common knowledge through the praxis of

appreciative and collaborative inquiry that supports inter-organizational capacity building

(Geddes, 2008; Lomi, Negro, & Fonti, 2008). The knowledge and skills gained in this

research, in turn, can generate new career opportunities within emerging disciplines that

call upon practitioners to engage in systems and design thinking, including ecological

7

economics, law of the commons, bioethics, emotional geographies, permaculture,

educational systems design, and biomimicry.

At the most fundamental level, this action research is motivated by a desire to

contribute to the emergence of economic and governance systems that function in

accordance with sound ecological principles to yield high systemic “returns” for all of

humanity. As global citizens and evolutionary learners, we might learn to reject zero-

sum, scarcity-based thinking in favor of integrative, wealth-oriented, asset-based thinking

that leads to improved human quality of life while rebuilding the social and natural

capital that is the legacy of each succeeding human generation.

Research Aims, Purposes, and Rationale

The research participants and I share an interest in strengthening community and

leveraging transformative change in society by creating conditions that bring diverse

local stakeholders within a field of conversation that is generative and conducive to

strategic and collaborative solution design in the face of complex social and ecological

problems. Through a discursive and spiraling process of planning, action, data collection,

reflective analysis, and feedback, the participants investigated the praxis of ideal-seeking

designing conversation in the public sphere, enabling a potentially self-sustaining process

of value creation and value capture. They explored how community leaders, including

organizational managers and practitioners in the emerging field of social systems design

and capacity building, together with their diverse stakeholders, might equip themselves

with new language, shared competencies and qualitative assessment techniques that

enable them to enact sustainable solutions while redefining popular notions of success in

8

terms of holistic concepts such as the “flourishing” enterprises and “revitalized”

communities (C. Laszlo et al., 2014).

Building upon this shared interest, a general aim of this community action

research is to examine whether designing conversation as inter-organizational learning

and community-based praxis, informed by evolutionary and hermeneutic theory and a

nondualistic appreciation of values and dynamic qualities found in thriving living

systems, might serve to catalyze and guide self-organizing processes of social and

institutional change. The change processes we seek to generate are marked by the

unfolding of collective human potentials and by the emergence of a shared evolutionary

consciousness that fosters sustainable community revitalization and socio-ecological

capacity building. By guiding these processes at the community level, this community

action research seeks to build capacity for appreciative and purposeful social change “at

scale” within our major institutions and our globally interdependent human societies.

A corresponding aim of this dissertation was to generate learning and social

change dynamics that lead to, not just knowledge, but common understanding that builds

a cohesive social fabric and strengthens community amidst demographic and cultural

plurality. With a view towards cultural transformation, this research as community praxis

was undertaken as an effort to equip participants, as community practitioners, with

knowledge, understanding, and dialogical skills needed to fill the conceptual gaps opened

by the ongoing critical deconstruction of scientism and naturalistic images of homo

economicus (Patel, 2009), and to build upon current efforts to operationalize a more

holistic approach to socio-economic value creation. Such community praxis capitalizes

upon new opportunities created by systems thinkers who, as social entrepreneurs working

9

to produce real value in a world of social, economic, and ecological interdependency,

build open innovation networks and designing communities that facilitate collaboration

across conventional disciplinary and institutional boundaries. Thus, as an instance of

critical, purposeful, and participatory inquiry into the praxis of designing conversation

within the place-based community setting, this research is intended to create socio-

ecological conditions that, simply put, are favorable to the thriving of life in all its

complexity.

According to the stated purposes and chosen methodology of this study, the

dynamics of social change sought by the participants as co-inquirers would exhibit the

qualities, characteristics and outcomes of an evolutionary process. Described variously as

evolutionary learning (Bosch, Nguyen, Maeno, & Yasui, 2013), evolutionary learning

community (K. C. Laszlo, 2001), conscious evolution of society (Banathy, 2000),

organizational community evolution (Aldrich & Ruef, 1999), self-transcendence (Jantsch,

1976; Pankow, 1976), or design for evolution (Jantsch, 1975), such an intentionally

orchestrated process of transformation is: (a) purposeful, in the sense that it is self-guided

according to the shared ideals, meanings, values and intentions of the participants

themselves; and (b) discontinuous, in the sense that it involves nonlinear changes to the

internal dynamics of the relevant socio-ecological system; in essence a “state shift” from

one level or manner of complexity to another.

Rosen (1991) suggested that to seek understanding is to find ourselves asking

“why?” more often than “what?” He noted that “a fact or datum, by itself, is essentially

meaningless; it is only the interpretation assigned to it that has significance” (p. 17). Yet

modern science, by and large, has cultivated the habit of asking “what” when the answers

10

actually being sought call for an explanation of causality, more properly framed in terms

of the “why” question. Deacon (2012) suggested that this habit of the modern mind may

have something to do with a

methodological presumption [that] has come to be known as eliminative

materialism; [which] presumes that all reference to [purpose, meaning, values, mental images and other] ententional phenomena can and must be eliminated from our scientific theories and replaced by accounts of material mechanisms. (p. 81)

In the context of an initiative to foster sustainable community revitalization, such

eliminative materialism would seem to preclude any and all disciplined inquiry into the

causal relationships between our human purposes and the complex matrix of “material”

factors such as physical infrastructure, residential and commercial buildings, tools and

equipment, natural ecosystems, energy and water flows, disposal or repurposing of

“waste” materials, and other tangibles. These material structures and processes

undoubtedly can be described in great detail, yet without bringing us any closer to an

understanding of the role, if any, of human meaning, human values, and purposeful

human agency in guiding change towards a desired sustainable future. Unless we are to

assume that our human purposes can be treated as given and lacking any significant

causal relationship to community evolutionary dynamics (an absurdity that would be

tantamount to a rejecting the very existence of human agency as a scientific fact), we

must consider the legacy of eliminative materialism in terms of its logical implications,

including an underdeveloped scientific understanding of the complex evolutionary

dynamics of organizations and communities as socio-ecological systems.

My key premise in conducting this study as an action research project, therefore,

was that now more than ever the scientific academy and the society at large stands to

benefit from such insights, findings, and conclusions as might be obtained by the sacred

11

task of collective self-transformation. By accounting for the “something more” that

distinguishes human activity systems from those purely mechanistic systems, such as

locomotives and power grids, that are the products of human design but lack the capacity

for self-organization and self-transformation, we can effectuate a shared intention to

embody within our place-based communities the qualities and characteristics that enable

us, through human agency, to create futures of health and abundance while meaningfully

locating ourselves within the larger community of life. Together, we can embody the

dynamic functions and qualities of an evolutionary guidance system; a “system within a

system” that serves to inspire, mobilize, illuminate, and guide community-wide changes

aligned with our higher human potentials (Banathy, 1996, 2000).

The general purpose of this study, therefore, was to develop and utilize the praxis

of designing conversation to build capacity for leading self-organizing processes of

appreciative system design and thereby to guide the unfolding of evolutionary potentials

within the social, ecological and technological dynamics of Cleveland’s place-based

communities.

The more specific purposes of the study were:

1. to orchestrate a purposeful, systemic process of conscious evolutionary design inspired by the values and dynamic qualities of thriving living systems, generating awareness, knowledge, and understanding to serve in guiding the unfolding of evolutionary potentials within Cleveland’s place-based communities, and within the larger society; and

2. to build and evaluate the effectiveness of a self-organizing appreciative system to catalyze and guide processes of social and institutional change within the context of a place-based community revitalization initiative.

To achieve the above purposes, I invited a selected group of community leaders

and practitioners to self-organize as a designing community and lead designing

conversations within their respective stakeholder communities. Through successive

12

cycles of planning, action, and reflection, participants sought to develop their leadership

and practice competencies in a manner that consciously embodies the idea of a

purposeful socio-ecological system operating within the community practice setting to

shift awareness in ways that demonstrably transform habitual patterns of thinking and

support the emergence of collective consciousness that sustains the collective unfolding

of human evolutionary potentials within the context of Cleveland’s place-based

communities.

Organizational Setting and Systemic Context

The City of Cleveland, Ohio, situated in the American heartland along the south

shore of Lake Erie, was once a world center for innovation, economic development, and

cultural expression. However, during the latter half of the 20th century, Cleveland

became known as an icon of post-industrial urban blight. In the course of about two

generations, Cleveland’s once thriving neighborhoods endured a period of precipitous

decline, suffering the combined impacts of slowing immigration rates; discriminatory

housing policies, including racial “redlining”; aging and underutilized physical

infrastructure; toxic pollution and other forms of environmental degradation; labor

outsourcing and loss of its manufacturing sector; a declining tax base; political

corruption, rising crime and poverty rates; “white flight” and declining investments in the

inner suburbs; and perhaps most troubling of all, an urban population loss in the order of

50% (Cleveland City Planning Commission, 2014; Lincoln Institute, 2006; Sustainable

Cleveland 2019, 2009). These combined systemic forces contributed to a downward

spiral that nearly overshadowed Cleveland’s rich legacies of cultural and civic

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investment, including its vibrant music and arts communities, its many colleges and

universities, and its world-class medical research establishments.

In June 1969, Cleveland’s reputation before the nation and the world was

devastated when a thick floating sludge of volatile chemicals released by local

manufacturers into the Cuyahoga River ignited, sending a giant plume of black smoke

aloft over the Cleveland skyline, captured in media images of a “burning river.” These

images served as a catalyst for national policy action leading to the passage of the Clean

Water Act of 1972, a major benchmark in the evolution of the modern American

environmental movement (Scott, 2009). Ironically, while the subsequent river clean-up

effort stands unequivocally as an environmental success story and marker of progressive

change, for decades following that incident, Cleveland was treated as an object of ridicule

in the national media and the national consciousness. Concerns over this negative

attention at the national level prompted a group of local civic leaders and marketing

executives to launch a $750,000 a year “New Cleveland” campaign, the aim of which

was to resurrect the City’s brand image before the global business community.

As of the late 1990s, the major strategy for orchestrating a turn-about of the City’s

declining fortunes was to attract renewed interest among corporate investors, by

“portray[ing] Cleveland as a steadily improving area with major strengths in professional

and business services, medical care, polymers, and measuring and control devices” (The

Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, 2004, para. 1). During the 1990s and early 2000s,

Clevelanders, many of whom came of age during the early years of the modern

environmental movement, began searching in earnest for ways to turn the City’s

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difficulties into opportunities, coalescing around an emerging public awareness of the

linkages between ecological sustainability, social justice, and quality of life:

During this time the Great Lakes Energy Task Force was formed, investments were made in the urban core, and the EPA designated the Cuyahoga River as a Heritage River. David Beach, [Director of the Sustainability center at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History], created EcoCity Cleveland which became the GreenCityBlueLake Institute and many other grassroots organizations were formed. The City and the Metroparks began creating more bicycle infrastructure and Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s Healthline down Euclid Avenue was built. Cleveland developers began to embrace green building practices and the Cleveland Environmental Center was renovated to LEED standards. On a global scale, climate change concerned citizens and they read more books and articles about the environment and sustainability. (Sustainable Cleveland 2019, 2014, p. 6)

In 2009, Cleveland Mayor Frank W. Jackson, building on the citizen-led EcoCity

Cleveland revitalization efforts, joined forces with key local institutions including the

Cleveland Institute of Natural History and the Weatherhead School of Management, Case

Western Reserve University (CWRU), to form a steering committee and launch a major

10-year action initiative called the “Sustainable Cleveland 2019.” Through a competitive

bidding process, Mayor Jackson commissioned the New York-based Economic

Transformations Group as consultant to develop a “Sustainable Cleveland Action and

Resource Guide.” In September 2009, the collaborators held the first Sustainable

Cleveland summit, engaging 700 citizen leaders in a 2-day facilitated large group

appreciative inquiry (AI) process held at the Cleveland Convention Center (Neiswender,

2011).

In a pre-summit briefing paper, Dr. David Cooperrider, Faculty Director of the

Fowler Center for Sustainable Value, CWRU, initiated a citywide conversation with the

following question:

How do you engage thousands of people and institutions or organizations in the common cause of turning sustainability into an innovation engine—strengthening

15

our economy, our ecology, and our life as a thriving community? (Cooperrider, 2009, p. 8)

He suggested, as a partial response to this question, that

Our pre-summit research of successful change efforts—whether in business, society, or across industries—shows that one simple but overarching success ingredient is the formulation or articulation of the “shared body of beliefs” that serves to unite people and groups in a common cause. (Cooperrider, 2009, p. 8)

Referring to the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the United Nations Global

Compact as examples of successful societal change movements whereby, in each case, a

“powerful statement of purpose” served to mobilize people and institutions alike around a

common cause, Cooperrider (2009), on behalf of the summit conveners, articulated a

“call to action” in the form of a “question for our community”:

What are our beliefs for a “green city on a blue lake”? If anything imaginable were possible, how might we design an inspiring charter or statement of powerful purpose and principles for this growing initiative? How might this statement of purpose and principles be used—to invite individuals, companies, schools, non-profits, government entities, and associations into common cause? How might it be used to spotlight purpose-driven innovations and successes? How might this “body of belief” be used to create a citywide culture; a context that draws in like-minded companies, for example, or becomes a “way of life” in our community? How might this be used to design communication materials, inspire innovation, and ignite the speed and spread of positive developments? (p. 9)

Using the AI framework (Cooperrider, 2009), summit participants were invited by

the facilitators to gather at tables in random groups of between six and 10 persons,

network and engage in dialogue across organizational and disciplinary boundaries.

Initially, the participants shared their personal interests, aspirations, intentions, and

visions for the future of their City, after which the participants engaged in a process of

ideation and self-organization around broadly defined thematic areas. Forming into

breakout groups, the participants engaged in rapid prototype development, identified next

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steps, and presented their conceptual opportunities and solutions to the plenary group in a

final report-out session.

A similar process was employed in each of the first six years of the 10-year

initiative. In this way, summit participants were able to pool their knowledge and skills,

forming into work groups to initiate projects and activities aligned with mutual interests

within the overall framework of an emerging common vision captured in the image of a

Green City on a Blue Lake. In some instances, the work groups evolved into new start-up

organizations or sustainable business enterprises.

Given its emphasis on AI and self-organization, the Sustainable Cleveland 2019

initiative (S2019) was able to function as an open system, benefitting from a combination

of new ideas and community feedback generated during each annual cycle. The collective

intelligence of hundreds of citizen leaders coalesced around an emerging common vision.

As articulated in the 2014 “Report from the Community,” they affirmed that:

Cleveland will surprise, amaze, and inspire the world with its transformation to a bright green city on a blue lake.…Determined people from every walk of life will work together to shape vibrant livable communities, innovative businesses, and a flourishing natural environment that will result in health, wealth, creativity, and economic opportunities for all. (Sustainable Cleveland 2019, 2014, p. 3)

The citizen leaders went on to project a “futureline” for the remaining four years of the

initiative, as follows:

Summit participants predict a further shift from “I to We”. They envision a cyclist friendly city with net zero energy buildings. Cleveland is moving toward energy independence and carbon neutrality—a model of sustainability. Local sourcing of food and energy serve as economic drivers. The paradigm is “Sustainability is the new normal” and “Sustainability is a family value.” (Sustainable Cleveland 2019, 2014, p. 7)

Also in 2014, the Mayor’s office, with contracted assistance from the Institute for

Conservation Leadership, using data gathered from the community along with

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information in the 2010 Action and Resource Guide, and advice received from the

Sustainable Cleveland Stewardship Council, produced a cohesive set of performance

indicators as a further strategy to create a common language for measuring progress tied

to the values of S2019. Using a web-based platform, the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability

offered these performance indicators (see Figure 1) to the citizenry in the form of a

dashboard containing frequently updated metrics, affording citizen-activists a continuous

source of feedback relevant to their various areas of engagement.

Figure 1. Sustainable Cleveland 2019 strategic framework: Project areas and goals. From “Working Groups: Vital Neigborhoods,” 2014, by Sustainable Cleveland 2019, p. 9.

The Vital Neighborhoods Working Group. In early 2010, civic leaders formed

a Social Capital Working group to organize a pre-summit orientation for local residents

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registered to attend the annual summit hosted by the Cleveland Mayor’s office in

September of each year of the 10-year initiative. Members of this working group

subsequently collaborated with other community leaders during the September 2010

summit to form the Vital Neighborhoods Working Group.

The mission of the working group is “to cultivate sustainable neighborhoods of

choice where residents are engaged, empowered, enlightened, resilient and self-reliant”

(Sustainable Cleveland 2019, n.d., para. 1). A description of the workgroup is provided

on the S2019 webpage:

In order for sustainability to be successful, people have to join together and everyone has to make a contribution. Sustainability has to be inclusive and this working group strives to reach as many people as possible in all Cleveland’s neighborhoods at all socio-economic levels. (Sustainable Cleveland 2019, n.d., para. 2)

The goals of the Vital Neighborhoods Work Group are to:

1. Focus on a different element of sustainability each year that contributes to the creation of vital neighborhoods;

2. Give a tangible example of a project that will demonstrate what we need to do to change the culture and create safe communities that are equitable and healthy; and

3. Encourage collaboration between residents that will lead to strong communities that are mobilized and empowered to take advantage of the assets and resources in their community and address community concerns (Vital Neighborhoods Community Organization, n.d.).

During the first three years of its existence, the work group hosted a “Green Your

Block Energy Efficiency Challenge,” and a “Local Foods Challenge.” In 2012, the group

hosted the first of a series of annual (zero waste) Citywide Local Foods Potlucks, with

each such gathering held at a different neighborhood location so as to take advantage of

the opportunity to showcase local assets and bring a diversity of people together across

socioeconomic and geographical boundaries. In 2013, the group developed a “skill share”

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micro-grant program providing small grants to fund purchases of materials and supplies

for neighborhood residents to teach skills to each other, thereby providing an avenue to

affirm and leverage local talent in furtherance of the group’s goal of community

empowerment. Finally, the work group in 2014 launched a series of three neighborhood-

based “mini-summits” to provide further opportunities for neighborhood self-

organization and to foster emergent leadership.

Several established organizations have collaborated with the Vital Neighborhoods

Working Group in support of its mission, including Neighborhood Connections, a project

of the Cleveland Foundation providing grants for citizen-led neighborhood projects,

Cleveland Neighborhood Progress, a local community development funding

intermediary, Environmental Health Watch, a nonprofit firm providing advocacy and

educational outreach to improve human health and environmental sustainability, and the

Greater Cleveland Neighborhood Centers Association, a management support

organization providing fiscal, administrative, and technical support to neighborhood

centers within the larger Cleveland metropolitan area.

At the September 2014 S2019 summit, the existing and new members of the Vital

Neighborhoods Work developed a prototype of a plan for “Advancing the people-

centered development potentials of the Vital Neighborhoods Movement” (Sustainable

Cleveland 2019, 2014). The plan would involve a series of actions to develop a

community-based feedback, self-assessment, and leadership development capacity within

the Vital Neighborhoods movement. The intent going forward would be to leverage

lessons learned from the first three years of accomplishments, and build strategic capacity

needed to reach all neighborhoods of the City, based upon a continuously improving

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model of self-organizing, citizen-led collaborative action. In subsequent personal

communication with the author, the chair of the Working Group affirmed that the group’s

leadership committee would be interested in action research as an aid to accomplishing

these purposes: fostering mission-oriented organizational learning that enables emerging

community leaders to access their individual and collective potentials as agents of broad-

scale systemic change within the context of this highly decentralized, citizen-led initiative

(M. Fields, personal communication, October 2014).

Researcher Background

I was 10 years old when the river burned in my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. I

recall having difficulty processing this incomprehensible event, which in my mind

merged with even earlier images of burning neighborhoods occasioned by the infamous

“Hough Riots” of 1966. Yet, within a month of the “burning river” event, another

memorable image captured my imagination, along with people the world over. Astronaut

and Ohio native Neil Armstrong stepped onto the dusty surface of the moon, and enabled

us to vicariously witness the rise of a gem-like blue planet above the lunar horizon. Seven

months earlier, the crew of Apollo 8 had treated TV viewers to the first-ever sight of our

celestial home, with its complex of land masses, rivers, oceans and polar ice caps; all

constituting the patterned surface of a spherical wholeness. Our living biosphere appeared

as an almost imperceptible thin green layer beneath the halo of a life-sustaining

atmosphere. When viewed against the backdrop of a dark and impersonal celestial ocean,

few of us at the time could help but to be impressed by the improbable and precious

nature of life as we know it. No longer could we assume that we are masters of the

universe, or that the resources that sustain us are inexhaustible. No longer could we

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assume that actions affecting the land, water, or air could be the exclusive concern of any

one nation or tribe.

With the advantage of hindsight, I now realize that the historic juxtaposition of

these two seminal events, the burning river and the first whole Earth images from outer

space, marked a moment in the long course of human evolution when the possibility of a

global shift in consciousness became a reality. Our Nation and the world bore witness to

simultaneous, dreamlike images of ultimate hubris and ultimate transcendence. The

burning river signaled that we could no longer think of the natural world as a limitless

frontier; a place apart from human society capable of supplying our unbounded demand

for raw materials and free natural services while simultaneously absorbing our industrial-

scale wastes. Meanwhile, the images from space gifted all of humanity with a revelation

that we share a singular world without national boundaries, where all that has sustained

us (and probably ever will sustain us) exists within a thin blue film and a few green

patches on the surface of a marble-like planet drifting alone within an incomprehensible

void. Insofar as these events precipitated a shift in global perspective, it did not come

about through reasoned analysis or political consensus. In my memory, at least, the shift

seemed to have the quality of an awakening, a collective passage from one conscious

state to another. My personal journey through life was profoundly shaped by these shared

revelations.

Having been influenced by these events of my childhood, as a teen and young

adult, I often wondered whether something important—even fundamental—might be

missing from the received cultural narratives being taught at school and through the

mainstream media. I began to seek answers in hidden places, in the subtleties of nature

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and the backwaters of society, in the low places and on mountaintops, in books and in

conversation with fellow travelers.

In 1985, I enrolled at Case Western Reserve law school to pursue a career in

environmental law. The following year, I along with my girlfriend and future wife

collaborated with staff at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History to organize a

nonprofit organization, the Midwest Biosphere Coalition. Later, after graduating law

school I moved with my wife Martha to Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC and

from 1991 through 2005, I worked as an attorney-advisor for the National Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). While working for three years on assignment to

the agency’s Seattle office, I served as both a litigator and a negotiator on behalf of the

National Marine Fisheries Service, working with multiple stakeholder groups in search of

collaborative solutions to address a complex matrix of factors that were threatening the

continued existence of wild salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest. Meanwhile, in my

personal capacity, I engaged in various forms of social activism. For example, during the

fall 1999 global protests against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Seattle, I wore

a turtle costume and marched in front of the cameras to bring attention to the adverse

impact of trade liberalization policies on the global commons.

As of the summer of 2001, I was carrying the responsibilities of parenthood, and

this got me thinking about the future in a different way. As I gained awareness of various

cultural, political, and economic influences that delimited environmental law as a

patchwork of short-term technical “fixes” I struggled to understand how applying these

mechanistic “solutions” to complex living systems could ever be sufficient in the long

term. I was no longer satisfied that laws and policies, no matter how artfully crafted or

23

executed, would be sufficient to turn the tide in favor of a sustainable future, when the

culture itself celebrated atomistic self-interest, profit maximization, and rapacious

consumption at every turn. At this time, I began to inquire into the deeper causes of the

social and environmental crises that seemed to be accelerating and enveloping our world.

Then, after witnessing first-hand the terrorist attack on the Pentagon in September 2001,

and the way our democratic institutions were subsequently co-opted to wage an

unjustified war using the politics of fear, I decided to commit myself to the study of

human psychology and human potential, an opportunity afforded to me via the unique

distance-learning program at Saybrook University.

While at Saybrook, I enrolled in an 18-month certificate program in Socially

Engaged Spirituality. I joined a small cohort group to hone my research skills while

engaging in a cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary exploration of the transpersonal and

spiritual realms. My master’s thesis, a cooperative inquiry into the transformative

dimensions of ancestral memory, documents several months of deep personal exploration

where I sought to deconstruct and revision core aspects of my worldview and my very

identity as an American male of European descent. Upon leaving my employment at

NOAA, I returned with my family to Ohio where we purchased a small farm. I learned

permaculture design, sold vegetables at the farmers markets, explored alternative and

cooperative business models, and became involved in educational system reform,

working to promote sustainability education in the Cleveland-area schools. In early 2011,

I re-enrolled at Saybrook as a doctoral student, following my interest in organizational

systems design as a practical approach to community-based problem solving with

implications for societal transformation. In the past few years, I have served as an

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educator, a social systems design consultant, and a researcher. I founded the nonprofit

Center for Ecological Culture, Inc. to carry out these activities, and accepted a part-time

position as Sustainable Agriculture Program Coordinator and adjunct faculty at the

Lorain County Community College.

My habit has been to read incessantly, filling my head with theory and analysis,

yet as I embrace the opportunity to contribute original research, I realize that the source

of my motivation is located fully within my body, something that I experience as a

hunger for all that is most real, most alive. In fact, this life that I feel can at times seem

limitless, resonating like the intimate echoes of sound created by those cans and strings

we used to play with as kids; as we claimed for ourselves the power to defy the limits of

distance long before the era of the smartphone.

I mention these things because, as I prepare to invite learning cohorts into a

collaborative inquiry, centered on the societal potential for self-guided evolution, I am

finding that it is important to mark those important passages that, from the vantage point

of shared reflection, enable us to derive meaning by experiencing the narrative qualities

of our lives. I am interested in how my story, when combined through dialogue with the

perspectives of others, might inform a shared inquiry into the unfolding of future

possibilities, based on our human capacities for self-transformation.

Charles Eisenstein, author of Sacred Economics (Eisenstein, 2011) assures us that

gratitude is “the feeling of having received a gift, and the desire to give in turn” (p. 5). It

occurs to me that this very revelation, too, is a gift; the notion that something properly

understood as an economic transaction can also be experienced as a heart-felt connection.

My present intention is to honor this gift of life by building upon my diverse professional

25

experiences in organizational systems, ecological design, education, action research,

sustainable agriculture, psychology and international law to serve as an effective

researcher and change agent, applying my knowledge and skills in collaboration with

others to find long-term solutions to the pressing social, environmental, and economic

challenges facing our local communities and our emerging global society; promoting

environmental sustainability, social justice and improvement of the human prospect

within my personal sphere of influence.

Research Questions

This dissertation study, having its basis in community action research as described

more fully in Chapter 3, engaged a small group of participants as co-inquirers focusing

upon the following three-part question:

As engaged organizational leaders seeking to create sustainable value within our

stakeholder communities while building towards a sustainable and just world,

• How might we understand and describe our community system of interest, so as to encompass and facilitate dialogue regarding its emergent qualities and characteristics, its intrinsic social, physical, technological, and ecological elements, and its dynamic relationship with the larger systems in which it is embedded?

• How might we translate the constructs and language of evolutionary systems theory into a community praxis that yields measurable outcomes indicative of the progressive unfolding of values, qualities, and emergent potentials found within healthy, thriving social-ecological systems?

• How might we illuminate, critically deconstruct and transform our habits of perception, thought, and behavior, including our prevailing language and cultural narratives concerning values and institutions, in ways that enable us to access our individual and collective potentials as change agents and leaders of regenerative political economy?

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Philosophical Orientation

A tentative synthesis of relevant and complementary philosophical perspectives

rooted in critical and embodied realism, hermeneutics, and critical posthumanism

provides a coherent ontological and epistemological foundation for the present study.

This foundation lends itself to rigorous critical analysis and validity testing in a manner

that is appropriate within the vital, pluralistic, and participatory worldview that defines

the pragmatic and emancipatory aims of the community action research approach. As

discussed more fully below in the review of relevant philosophical and theoretical

literature (see Chapter 2), these complementary philosophical perspectives, taken

together, warrant that this study is best undertaken as a process of engaged learning that

seeks interpretive understanding via an evolutionary systems design approach that

facilitates an integral and multilens approach to inquiry.

Overview of the Methodology

In keeping with the holistic, participatory, and emancipatory aims of community

action research, the participants and I sought to accomplish the stated research purposes

by engaging as co-inquirers within an agreed methodological framework; as informed by

the collective intelligence of the group, the research context, and the relevant literature.

This basic framework for inquiry (described more fully in Chapter 3) is designed to

utilize the praxis of designing conversation as a primary strategy to facilitate

collaboration and co-learning across organizational and disciplinary boundaries. It is

designed to engage the collective intelligences of the group through generative and

designing discourse; thereby to transform theoretical knowledge and a plurality of

experientially and culturally mediated perspectives into a unified and enhanced

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appreciative awareness, and nondualistic, interpretive understanding of evolutionary

potentials existing within the social, technological, and ecological domains of the

relevant community systems, as well as within the society at large.

The chosen research methodology summarized below represents “the researcher’s

best thinking about how to set an action research process in motion;” expressly with the

understanding that “the process will continue to emerge during the course of the study”

(Herr & Anderson, 2015, p. 7). Drawing upon insights gained from the relevant literature,

which involves a synthesis of the study’s philosophical premises and core theoretical

ideas, I briefly explain why these premises and ideas taken together constitute a reliable

and appropriate conceptual basis for the choice of community action research. I further

explain my reasons for selecting and adapting an evolutionary systems design approach

as an affirmative strategy for action leading to social transformation and institutional /

cultural change in keeping with the stated aims and purposes of this study.

Furthermore, this overview is intended to render the methodology transparent in

terms of its integrative, dynamic, and evolutionary dimensions. Together with the more

detailed description of methodology set forth in Chapter 3, it provides the basic

architecture of a design inquiry system, which the participants adopted, refined, enacted,

and embodied as their common framework for evolutionary design inquiry leading to the

outcomes documented and synthesized in Chapters 4 and 5, respectively. Following this

overview, I address the significance of the study and proffer certain key definitions,

concluding with a description of the basic organization of this dissertation.

The described research methodology is designed to uphold the basic defining

values of community action research, including social equity, democratic participation,

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human emancipation and development of human potential, via an adapted version of the

“standard” cyclical pattern of investigation, interpretation and engaged action, often

depicted as a “look-think-act” cycle that exhibits the basic patterning of the action

research approach as currently practiced in a wide variety of research settings (Reason &

Bradbury, 2001; Stringer, 1999). As an instantiation, within the action research setting, of

principles and concepts properly described as “systems research,” the described

methodology is intended to engage participants in knowledge development and

application that builds common understanding and learning capacity in a manner that

enables them to solve, or creatively transcend, such complex “real world” problem

situations as are often encountered in the daily work of sustainable community building.

Furthermore, the expressed emphasis on creating conditions favorable to the

healthy self-expression and evolutionary unfoldment of living systems (including both

human and nonhuman elements), warrants that the described methodology should be

understood as a nonlinear phased process, marked by evolutionary transformations and

emergent qualities that reflect successively higher levels of complex self-organization.

According to this understanding, the several cycles of inquiry set forth in the

methodology describe a process of approximately six months duration that is both

recursive and discontinuous, in contrast to the linear step-by-step pattern of inquiry

commonly exhibited by research within the conventional positivist-reductionist tradition.

Entry and preparation. I invited community revitalization practitioners to

participate on a volunteer basis, after having selected them from among public, private,

and nonprofit organizations directly involved in current community revitalization work,

including those organizations currently represented on the Vital Neighborhoods working

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group: an existing interorganizational network and an organized entity recognized as a

constituent, functional component of S2019. As a member of the Vital Neighborhoods

Steering Committee, I performed my role as researcher from the vantage point of an

“insider” with regard to the working group, as well as from the position of an “outsider”

in relation to the other community-based organizations represented by the study

participants and their stakeholder communities.

During the preparatory stage identified as Inquiry Cycle 1, I engaged participants

through dialogue and experiential learning activities to build familiarity, group cohesion

and a culture of inquiry, and to initiate a conversation regarding the aims and purposes of

the study. To establish a baseline for analysis and create conditions favorable to a process

of evolutionary learning, I engaged participants in the practices of generative dialogue

and presencing with a view towards surfacing the mental models and working

assumptions that participants brought into the collective inquiry. Next, I invited the

participants to turn to the task of sharing knowledge and engaging design activity to

generate community systems models delineating the scope and boundaries of their

respective stakeholder communities. As group facilitator, I assisted participants in

collaboratively building evolutionary competence and a common design architecture

using systems approaches, models, methods and tools that together formed the

architecture of a design inquiry system.

Evolutionary design. Following the preparatory activities of Inquiry Cycle 1, the

participants engaged in dialogue with a view towards co-creating an image of the ideal

future situation that they hoped would enable Cleveland’s place-based communities to

realize their evolutionary potentials as appreciatively guided, living systems. They also

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identified corresponding “evolutionary markers” that could be used to evaluate outcomes

(including transformation of mental models and acquisition of evolutionary

competencies) realized through ongoing capacity building efforts as well as progress

towards the collectively desired future. As a group, participants agreed to the basic

system design methodology and a means of qualitatively assessing progress towards

desired outcomes relevant to the identified evolutionary markers. During the action phase

of Inquiry Cycle 2, participants generated multiple “fields of conversation” using the

praxis of designing conversation to actively engage local residents and stakeholders in

social discourse strategically facilitated to generate awareness and appreciation of

existing and emerging evolutionary potentials within their respective practice settings.

As group facilitator and research consultant, I enlisted the aid of participants in

collecting and evaluating data co-generated in the course of each cycle of inquiry, and I

organized the data as a source of feedback leading into each successive cycle of group

inquiry. Participants were thereby afforded the opportunity to reflect upon their actions as

a designing community, and to interpret the outcomes emerging from the process in a

way that might inform further development of the theory and praxis of self-guided

evolutionary learning within the context of place-based urban communities. Specific

tasks accomplished during the 2nd inquiry cycle included design conversation,

evolutionary learning, social systems design, and encountering and collecting data.

Embodying the evolutionary learning community as an embedded

community system. During the third inquiry cycle, I invited participants to explore the

implications of their developing community praxis for cultural and institutional

transformation, and for the prospect of conscious self-guided evolution within the broader

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society. I invited them to engage in a search for language and other expressive, embodied

means to model, organize, and implement an evolutionary guidance system as a dynamic

attractor; illuminating, unfolding, and mobilizing previously unseen evolutionary

potentials within the local communities and the larger society.

During this phase of the research, the primary aim was to both deepen and expand

awareness of those appreciative qualities of local community systems that might enable

new potentials for self-guided evolution to unfold. Specifically, I invited participants to

focus on any indications of emerging evolutionary consciousness within the local

business community and public sector, where the praxis of designing conversation might

serve as a strategic complement to current sustainability initiatives, enabling communities

of place, as appreciative social systems, to self-organize and generate common value at a

higher level of complexity. For example, such emerging consciousness might be

indicated by conversations centered on concepts such as “communing,” “flourishing,” or

“sustainable value” that are suggestive of an historic opportunity to create conditions at

the community level that in turn might leverage the emergence of ecologically literate

culture at all levels; thereby guiding the further evolution of our economic, legal, and

other societal institutions towards the embodiment of principles reflecting our common

humanity and the dynamic characteristics of healthy living systems.

Finally, participants were invited to collectively engage the methods of integral

inquiry to deepen understanding and awareness of appreciative system dynamics. By this

means, they were invited to explore deeply and build understanding of the causal

influence of relational, ententional, and syntropic phenomena in the generation and

unfolding of evolutionary potential within Cleveland’s place-based communities.

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Through dialogue, knowledge dissemination, and data collection, participants

enacted the praxis of designing conversation within a framework of disciplined inquiry,

allowing for rigorous, participatory evaluation leading to the synthesis and validation of

“theories-in-use” that equipped these community practitioners with practical knowledge

and holistic-interpretive understanding needed to guide the future-seeking activities of

their neighbors and associates during this era of great uncertainty and shifting realities.

Significance of the Study

The outcomes demonstrated and understanding gained by means of this

dissertation should be useful to managers, community planners, organizational

consultants, policy-makers, and citizen activists who work in the areas of inter-

organizational capacity building, community revitalization, and sustainability. By

emphasizing learning and design outcomes collaboratively attained in the community

practice setting, this study should serve to forge a link between theory and practice that

opens new pathways for strategic decision-making and effective collaboration that align

with current policy trends favoring pragmatic, evidence-based and locally adapted

solutions to today’s complex socio-ecological problems. By offering a rigorous

evaluation of these results attained through discursive inquiry by participants representing

a diversity of backgrounds, skills, and perspectives, this study should help to validate and

encourage propagation of community action research as a viable approach to conscious

evolutionary design that supports the emergence of vibrant and resilient place-based

communities. This study should inform other local capacity-building efforts by equipping

community leaders with knowledge and skills needed to lead designing conversations

among diverse community stakeholders and thereby build capacity for evolutionary

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learning that supports effective community revitalization; enabling the emergence of self-

organizing and appreciative community system dynamics that transcend limitations of

conventional approaches to economic and community development.

Furthermore, the results of this study should serve to clarify how the methods and

tools of applied systems science can be made accessible outside the rarified world of

academia, and effectively be adapted for use within the highly participatory community

action research setting so as to build social and natural capital from the “bottom up”;

thereby strengthening the cultural and institutional foundations that are needed to support

the emergence of a truly regenerative and sustainable society.

Definition of Terms

The following terms used in this study have been defined in the literature with

varying degrees of specificity. These definitions, were (and are) intended to be treated as

tentative or partial, and subject to such revision or refinement as might be deemed

appropriate by the research participants based upon knowledge and understanding gained

in the course of the present inquiry.

Design conversation is defined as communicative action occurring as a socially

constructed process situated within multiple interrelated design activities and including

not only the intersubjective understanding exchanged within the discourse, but also “what

is being talked about”: the referential and semantic contents of communication, including

social languages, co-constructed meanings, and ideals being generated. Accordingly,

design conversation provides “a medium through which participants in the design process

may engage in a multidimensional inquiry leading to the creation of a new system.” It

further is defined as a dynamic human activity system “comprised of different forms of

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[social] discourse, each with a particular purpose and mediational importance as semiotic

tool in the system design activity” (Jenlink, 2008a, pp. 220–221). In addition, design

conversation is defined as “the combining of strategic and generative dialogue, forming a

type of conversation that enables stakeholders to create an ideal system” (Banathy as

cited in Jenlink, 2008a, p. 221), and as a “disciplined inquiry grounded in systems

philosophy, theory, and thinking and practice” (Jenlink & Carr, 1996, p. 34).

Ententional phenomena are defined as non-material or mental phenomena,

including consciousness, thoughts, information, function, purpose, subjective experience,

value, meaning, and significance, that are intrinsically defined in relationship to

something absent (Deacon, 2012).

Evolutionary guidance is

a dynamic process in which human activity systems operating at the various levels of the society engage, in order to give direction to their evolution. Engaging in evolutionary guidance implies building into the various human activity systems arrangements and operations by which those systems can move toward the realization of their envisioned evolutionary image. (Banathy, 2000, p. 310)

An Evolutionary Guidance System is “an arrangement of a set of interacting

dimensions of the wholeness of human experience” (Jenlink, 2002, p. 399), constituting

an intentional system which can be built into the various human activity systems to

enable these systems to guide their entry and their work into their own evolutionary

design space” (Banathy, 2000, p. 311). An evolutionary guidance system further has been

defined as “a set of interrelated constructs, developed from a consistent worldview, in

dimensions relevant to a particular social system. In a sense, it is a system of attractors,

leading members of the social system to attend to particular relationships and issues, and

to adopt certain criteria for judgments” (Rowland, 2004, p. 291; see also Banathy, 1989).

For purposes of this study, the evolutionary guidance system is further defined as an

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intentional and purposeful socio-ecological system that operates to transform habitual

patterns of thinking so as to shift awareness towards ententional qualities or potentials

within the larger system of interest, thereby serving to guide the self-organization and

unfolding of human evolutionary potentials within the community and society.

An evolutionary learning community is a dynamical ideal image of a future

educational system, that is:

1. Learning-oriented, rather than teaching oriented—focusing on life-long learning and development of human potential;

2. Synergistic and collaborative—learning that is self-directed, flexible, collaborative, and involves learning how to be in community; and

3. Purposeful—it seeks an alignment between evolutionary processes of which we are a part, and empowers people to participate in conscious evolution (K. C. Laszlo, 2000, pp. 34–38).

Evolutionary potential is “the generative force of evolution. The story of

evolution is the creative unfoldment of evolutionary potential, which was implicit and

enfolded in the previous generation. New potential is built on emerged potential”

(Banathy, 2003, p. 313).

Evolutionary qualities are “qualities that evolution values. Core qualities include

balance, harmony, internal consistency, synergy, symmetry, and self-organization. Co-

evolution and cooperation are enabling qualities. And collective consciousness,

wholeness, and creativity are meta-qualities” (Banathy, 2003, p. 313).

Syntropy is “the tendency towards energy concentration, order, organization and

life” and is also described as “a form of organizational energy which generates viability”

(Barile & Saviano, 2013, p. 70). “Entropy and syntropy are complementary parts of the

same unity” (Di Corpo, 2013, p. 13). “According to the new thermodynamics the law of

36

entropy describes physical energy, whereas the law of syntropy describes Life Energy”

(Di Corpo, 2013, p. 9).

Syntropic phenomena are a category of phenomena “totally different from the

entropic ones, of the mechanical, physical and chemical laws, which obey only the

principle of classical causation and the law of entropy,” are instead “represented by those

strange solutions of the “anticipated potentials,” [that] should obey two opposite

principles of finality (moved by a final cause placed in the future, and not by a cause

which is placed in the past) and differentiation, and also non-causable in a laboratory”

(Fantappiè as cited in Di Corpo & Vannini, 2013, para. 1).

Organization of the Dissertation

The main purpose of Chapter 1 was to provide an overview of the rationale for

this dissertation, in terms of its historic and situational context, its aims and purposes, its

philosophical orientation, its basic methodological approach, and its anticipated social

significance. The subsequent chapters cover areas outlined in Chapter 1, specifically the

theoretical basis and methodological design of the study, in much greater depth, followed

by an account of the learning journey and synthesis and analysis of the research

outcomes.

Chapter 2 provides a review of literature that informs current practices in the

areas of sustainability and community revitalization, with specific emphasis on literature

supporting the major philosophical and theoretical premises of this study, literature

encompassed within the emerging field of evolutionary systems theory, and other

relevant literature encompassed within the broad heading of “field theories” that provides

37

a tentative alternative basis for understanding and explaining causal relationships and

evolutionary dynamics within communities and other complex human activity systems.

Chapter 3 provides an in-depth review of the study methodology and design,

including the community action research approach and the specific design elements

which are intended to equip participants with relevant knowledge and systems design

tools that will enable them to engage in a discursive, self-organizing and co-creative

process of evolutionary learning guided by the research questions and undertaken via a

series of three inquiry cycles.

Chapter 4 presents a representation of the experiences, activities, and changes that

occurred thus far in the research. The account of the learning journey provided in this

chapter may prove most informative to readers who are interested in reviewing the

specific details of how this study, as action research, was implemented through each

successive cycle of group learning. Readers who are mostly just interested in reviewing

the study outcomes and their significance may wish to skip over Chapter 4 and move

directly to Chapter 5, which presents a synthesis of the work highlighting the major

learning tasks accomplished, together with observations regarding formative and

transformative patterns of change expressed via the group discourse. The synthesis

provided in Chapter 5 describes the multiple ways in which the participants were able to

capture and reflect upon a collective body of knowledge emerging from the group’s

designing conversations. This chapter concludes with a reflection on my experiences as

facilitator of the group learning and design process.

Finally, Chapter 6 presents an evaluative and reflective presentation of the

knowledge and social gains attained by this dissertation study as a response to the stated

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research questions and a context-specific instantiation of systems research drawing upon

evolutionary learning theory and using the community action research methodology.

The evaluation is based upon the qualitative data and distilled themes emerging

from the participant’s learning and design conversations, and includes: (a) a summary of

the major pragmatic, emancipatory, and integral research outcomes; (b) an evaluation of

the research outcomes using quality and validity criteria relevant to the specific context

of community action research; and (c) an examination of how “theories of action”

generated and enacted during the course of this study might reinforce or invite critical

reconsideration of premises found in the theoretical literature. The dissertation concludes

with personal reflection and discussion of implications for continuing to move the work

forward, and for future research leading to possible adaptation and improvement within a

diversity of other place-based communities that may be facing similar challenges and

opportunities.

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Chapter 2: Literature Review

Purpose and Scope of the Literature Review in Community Action Research

In the context of this study, the basic purpose of the literature review is to: (a)

situate the research within the relevant literature; (b) reveal how the initiating researcher

is thinking about the topics at hand; and (c) provide a starting point for building a

common pool of organized knowledge that informs interpretation and constitutes an

essential part of the learning infrastructure that will continue to be shaped by the

participants in support of their intended learning outcomes (Herr & Anderson, 2015;

Park, 2001; Stringer, 1999).

Herr and Anderson (2015) described metaphorically this relationship between

knowledge developed via the literature review, and knowledge developed through

participatory co-inquiry, as “designing the plane while flying it” (pp. 104–105).

In action research, there is a conceptual framework that guides the data gathering and analysis, as well as a conceptual framework embedded in one’s particular approach to action research. The former is guided by the literature that has been reviewed and the latter by the knowledge interests of the research. (Herr & Anderson, 2015, p. 104)

This Chapter 2, therefore, is intended to present such a “conceptual framework that

guides data gathering,” beginning with a synthesis of certain conceptual premises and

core theoretical ideas. The intent is to invite critical inquiry into the interdisciplinary,

historical, and cross-cultural context that shapes current and emerging perspectives on the

questions considered, without presuming to assert privilege regarding any such

perspectives and interpretations as may be found in the literature.

In keeping with the emphasis on participation and socially engaged action that is a

defining characteristic of action research, the conceptual framework mapped below

reflects a basic philosophical orientation towards inquiry that is dialogical and

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interpretive (hermeneutic), as well as pragmatic. Furthermore, this dissertation is

undertaken with a view towards harmonizing theoretical and practical understanding in a

manner that enables collaborative, discursive action and reflective learning, all of which

is intended to fulfill local needs and aspirations of the participants while meaningfully

contributing to the larger societal conversation transmitted through the literature (V. J.

Friedman, 2001). An ideal outcome of such research would be to provide a richly

generative foundation for shared interpretation and understanding, leading to “right”

action:

We may call this action knowledge. It subsumes knowledge of the stable and enduring structures of social reality (representational knowledge), but goes beyond it to include knowledge about desirable directions that the construction process itself may take. Action knowledge is akin to Schön’s notion of knowing-in-action (1983, p. 50) and it is such knowledge that action research generates. (Babüroḡlu & Ravn, 1992, p. 26)

In sum, this dissertation is undertaken as a strategy to create an appreciative system of

evolutionary learning that enables participants, as co-researchers and citizens with a long-

term stake in the future of their communities, to participate fully in the emancipatory co-

generation of knowledge and understanding leading to the collective unfolding of human

potentials at the community level, free from the constraints and knowledge-power

dynamics of the positivist tradition. As intended, this appreciative system is not only

informed by, but serves to guide, the larger societal conversation concerning

sustainability and social justice, all while “help[ing] us actualize our potentials as a

human community” (Park, 2001, p. 90).

Conceptual framework and major premises of the inquiry. In keeping with the

“hermeneutic attitude” (Bernstein, 1983), and in light of the aims and intentions

discussed above, the following premises derived from the literature serve to form the

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basis of an initial set of tentative agreements regarding the “real world” context of the

shared inquiry. This interpretation of context serves as a starting point for dialogue

without foreclosing the possibility that new information or analysis may require some or

all of the premises stated below to be modified as part of an ongoing process of

interpretation, transformative learning, and conscious, evolutionary design:

Premise No. 1: As members of an emerging global community, we share a

common interest in ensuring that our human activity systems at all levels will

generate conditions that enable the further progress of humanity; meeting basic

human needs, and enabling the fulfillment of human potentials.

In his introduction To Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemmingway included a quotation

from the 17th century poet John Donne, who stated that “No man is an Iland, intire of it

selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine…” (J. Donne as cited in

Hemmingway, 1940, p. 1). On the surface, the premise that we all share responsibilities

as members of an interdependent global community may seem unremarkable, but for

extensive evidence that on the whole our existing societal institutions have failed to

prevent widespread poverty and environmental degradation (L. Brown, 2011; Speth,

2008), and have failed to move us in a direction worthy of our higher aspirations as a

common humanity (Eisler, 2007; Loeb, 2010; Orr, 2004; Zinn, 2003).

Therefore, to consciously affirm our shared interests as members of the human

family and of the larger community of life is not a frivolous matter. Global consciousness

begins here; perhaps in the manner of those astronauts who upon first seeing planet Earth

from the perspective of outer space found that they were profoundly transformed by the

experience as represented by The Overview Institute (http://overviewinstitute.org/); or in

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the manner of those who, by signing a “Declaration of Interdependence,” sought to raise

public awareness of that which appeared to them and countless others as a self-evident

truth: We are completely interdependent with each other as members of a unitary human

family, and with all other evolving life forms as members of a unitary, living biosphere,

existing within a unitary planetary system (Commager, 1975).

Given the pervasive global influence of economic and governance institutions

born of a deeply rooted mechanistic and neo-Darwinian worldview oriented towards

extractive resource consumption and atomistic self-interest (Capra & Mattei, 2015), and

perpetuated insidiously through the channels of global media culture, we cannot

reasonably assume that an affirmation of global interdependence and responsibility by a

handful of opinion leaders alone will be enough to change long-standing system

dynamics that clearly are contributing to a deepening global crisis. By orienting this

inquiry within the larger context of global interdependency and global change, researcher

and participants alike seek to nurture a perspective that can deepen our understanding of

current socio-ecological trends in the local context of Cleveland’s place-based

communities. From this vantage point, we can explore the challenges and opportunities

presented by our local situation within a larger systemic framework that allows us to

better understand those embedded causal structures that combine to shape outcomes at all

levels.

Premise No. 2: We are in the midst of a global crisis, stemming in part from the

failure of major institutions, policy-makers, and shapers of mainstream culture to

transcend certain deeply ingrained ways of thinking that perpetuate

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institutionalized pathologies and systemic disconnects across multiple spheres of

human activity.

Gore (2013) distilled six major drivers of global change from a large body of

empirical and cross-disciplinary evidence and analysis, while asserting that “all six of

these emergent revolutionary changes are threatening to overtake us as a moment in

history when there is a dangerous vacuum of global leadership” (p. xv). These six drivers

are summarized as follows:

1. The emergence of a deeply interconnected global economy, operating as a fully integrated, holistic entity;

2. The emergence of a planet-wide electronic communications grid, and a ubiquitous web of sensors and technologies for high volume data processing;

3. The emergence of a new balance of political, economic, and military power, with influence shifting from West to East, from a few wealthy countries to multiple emerging power centers, from nation-states to private actors, and from political systems to markets;

4. The emergence of rapid unsustainable growth and resource consumption, that is measured and guided by metrics that blind us to the “destructive consequences of the self-deceiving choices we are making” (Gore, 2013, xiv);

5. The emergence of powerful biochemical, genetic, and materials science technologies “that are enabling us to reconstitute the molecular design of all solid matter, reweave the fabric of life itself, alter the physical form, traits, characteristics, and properties of plants, animals and people, seize active control of evolution, cross the ancient lines dividing species, and invent entirely new ones never imagined in nature” (Gore, 2013, xiv); and

6. The emergence of “a radically new relationship between the aggregate power of human civilization and the Earth’s ecological systems, including especially and most vulnerable – the atmosphere and climate balance upon which the continued flourishing of humankind depends” (Gore, 2013, pp. xv).

While Gore’s (2013) analysis is notable for its comprehensive treatment of the

global problématique and its implications for the future of humanity, other authors

provide similar assessments of our global predicament (Hartmann, 1998; McKibbon,

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2010), the major factors driving change (Eisenstein, 2011; T. L. Friedman, 2007; Putnam,

2000; Rifkin, 2014), the systemic characteristics of these change factors (Huesemann &

Huesemann, 2011; Prilleltensky & Prilleltensky, 2006; Senge, Smith, Kruschwitz, Laur,

& Schley, 2010), and the role of conscious human choice in shaping associated outcomes

(Capra & Mattei, 2015; Dispenza, 2007; Eisler, 2007; Ostrom, 2015; Patel, 2009; Sandel,

2012; Scharmer & Kaufer, 2013).

A closer look at the historical context and present realities of environmental

injustice, socio-economic disparity, gender inequality, and information inequality

discloses that the global expansion of the capitalist political economy has been

accompanied by a shift in the relationship between public political authority and private

personal relations, with results that have been hardly emancipatory:

The distinction between nature (both the [ecosphere and noosphere] and partially the domestic private sphere), and culture (both the public sphere of political authority and the private sphere of civil society), was aligned in the Enlightenment…with the distinction between male and female. The result was, as Nancy Fraser suggests, that “the bourgeois conception of the public sphere […] was a masculinist ideological notion that functioned to legitimate an emergent class rule” over, I would add, both other classes and nature. This function has progressively been taken over by civil society in the form of [transnational corporations] TNCs, which has extended its reach, its class rule and its masculinist ideology to the point where it encompasses the globe and the ecosphere. A process, which began in the era of colonialism and achieved efficiency in imperialism has reached its height in “globalization” for, as the editors of a special issue of The Ecologist on globalisation put it, “while the global economy is not new, the scale and circumstances in which globalization is occurring has enabled capital to pursue a much more aggressive class politics.” (Fraser & Gardiner as cited in Giblett, 2011, pp. 48–49)

Thus, the prevailing system guiding socio-ecological change, founded upon a

naturalistic economic rationality as the moral and normative foundation of the global

capitalist economy, has functioned on the basis of an imperialistic and gendered model,

embedded within the mainstream culture of capitalist society; a model which among

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other problematic attributes lacks a sufficient cybernetic capacity for feedback and

adaptive response. This system, built upon assumptions about human nature captured in

the idea of homo economicus (and its counterpart in the “reasonable man” standard of the

legal positivist tradition), as a whole lacks a capacity for conscious normative guidance

amidst the plurality of cultural and ecological realities of an emerging global society

(Capra & Mattei, 2015; Patel, 2009). Consequently, the institutions of the global

capitalist system have imposed a homogenous cultural imperialism based upon a

mechanistic/extractive worldview that lacks a conceptual framework for managing

systemic complexity or valuing diversity, caregiving, gift-giving, or the commons, even

as it measures all value against a legally enforced standard of the atomistic, self-serving

individual. This institutionalized system driving economic and cultural globalization thus

has failed to co-evolve with the realities of daily life for a large portion of the human

family (Eisenstein, 2011; Eisler, 2007).

From a constructivist perspective, this implicit commitment to abstract premises

has ensured that over time our dominant global institutions would become increasingly

antiquated and out of step with changing realities. Scharmer and Kaufer (2013) pointed to

the formation of major fault lines that today are symptomatic of “the decoupling of the

structure of societal reality from the structure of economic thought” (p. 11):

• the ecological disconnect—we consume resources at 1.5 times the regeneration capacity of Planet Earth;

• the income and wealth disconnect—the top 1% of the world’s population own more than the bottom 90%;

• the financial disconnect—the decoupling of the financial economy from the real economy;

• the technology disconnect—responding to problems with quick technical fixes that address symptoms rather than root causes;

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• the leadership disconnect—decision-makers who are out of touch with the people affected and working through institutional silos creating results that nobody wants;

• the consumerism disconnect—material consumption that does not lead to increased health and well-being;

• the governance disconnect—current coordination mechanisms that rely on market-based competition are unable to fix the most pressing problems of our time, the crisis of common goods; and

• the ownership disconnect—traditional property rights regimes contribute to the massive overuse of scarce resources.

According to Scharmer and Kaufer (2013), the global convergence of these eight

structural disconnects spells a true crisis. The fact that they are all manifesting at the

same time in the history of human civilization is not a coincidence. Rather, each of these

structural disconnects can be traced to a fundamental separation between that which

passes for economic rationality reinforced by the elite instrumentalities of an ever-

expanding culture of consumption-oriented market capitalism, and that which is

experienced as the lived, daily reality by most members of the human family.

G. Taylor (2008), viewing the global situation through an evolutionary lens,

surveyed “some of the vital signs of the global economy and our planet” (p. 30),

including growing energy, water and food shortages, increasing climate change,

accelerating rates of extinction, spreading environmental pollution and widening socio-

economic and political inequities, all of which leads him to arrive at the blunt conclusion

that “the world we know is about to collapse” (p. 30). G. Taylor located “the fundamental

problem” in the world’s dominant culture of industrial capitalism within the fact that it

“is organized by a belief system that does not recognize the need for limits” (p. 64). He,

therefore, concluded that “as long as the world system is organized by values that

promote materialism and violence, global consumption will continue to increase and the

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environment will continue to degrade. In order to preserve the environment we need not

only better technologies but also better values” (G. Taylor, 2008, p. 84; see also L.

Brown, 2011; Hartmann, 1998; Huesemann & Huesemann, 2011).

Premise No. 3: Today’s predominant institutions of global industrial capitalism

are built upon a system of culturally reinforced beliefs and mental habits that,

upon deconstruction, reveal an underlying set of abstract, naturalistic

assumptions about human nature and human evolution.

According to Boulding (1981), the main difference between biological and social

processes is that the latter processes “are the result of the intervention of an extraordinary

organ, the human brain, and its associated nervous system into its environment” (p. 126).

If, as suggested by Brodie (1996), cultural memes are prone to parasitizing and

replicating within the human brain, then the human brain through its sophisticated

capacity to orchestrate broad-scale environmental changes in furtherance of human

survival can lead humans haplessly into assuming a parasitic relationship relative to the

Earth’s living biosphere. Rosen (1991) posited that this parasitic relationship and its

implications are concealed behind the “machine metaphor” in biology (and in modern

science generally), which he traces back to the work of Rene Descartes (p. 20). Having

once observed some realistic hydraulic automata, Descartes concluded that “life itself was

automaton-like” (as cited in Rosen, 1991, p. 20). This metaphoric idea “was perfectly

timed; the triumphant footsteps of Newtonian mechanism were right behind it; the

apparently unlimited capabilities of machines were already on their way toward a

complete transformation of human society and human life” (Rosen, 1991, p. 20).

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Giblett (2011) described how the “scientific conquest of nature” inevitably led to

“the basically capitalist ideology of culture against nature” and “an emergent form of

class rule over the earth and its resources” whereby “the philosophy of science

participated in the agri-cultural culture/nature split, and capitalism pitted culture against

nature in such a way that the former would inevitably win and the latter lose” (F. Alford

as cited in Giblett, 2011, p. 49). Consequently, “parasitic citizens even become…

astronauts floating in space…connected by an umbilical cord to the ‘mother ship.’ They

try to live away from home without the earth instead of living at home with the earth”

(Giblett, 2011, pp. 52–53). In contrast to this inherited dualistic perspective (otherwise

known as separation consciousness), Boulding (1981) emphasized our complete

dependency upon the integrity of the Earth’s life support system, and deconstructs the

nature/culture split with a perspective that in the end is not metaphoric, but literal. The

human presence is in fact undermining the integrity of the Earth’s living systems

(Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005).

While often attributed to the classical works of the western Era of Enlightenment,

including the writings of Thomas Hobbs, John Locke, Adam Smith, among others, the

above-described assumptions about human nature have propagated down through the

generations as received dogma, over time becoming more the product of rhetoric and

cultural transmission than of reasoned analysis (Braden, 2011). This received dogma

largely consists of decontextualized propositions about what is essential in our nature that

have become articles of faith; propositions that are rarely stated explicitly, yet defacto are

treated as logical givens. When stated expressly, these propositions often would be

cloaked in the language of universal truth not unlike the “laws of nature” that

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contemporary scientists construed as irreducible axioms and as the universal foundation

of all reasoned analysis (Wilson, 1998).

Among the most prominent of these propositions about human nature is the notion

that each of us is primarily motivated by individual self-interest and the pursuit of

material gain, a notion attributed to the writings of Adam Smith that persists today in

mainstream economic discourse as a naturalistic image known as homo economicus

(Eisenstein, 2011; Eisler, 2007; Patel, 2009). By logical extension, this core belief about

our essential nature has enabled other dogmatic propositions to persist and shape the

culture of the mainstream political economy. For example, Patel (2009) recalled how the

conservative American economist Gary Becker, writing in the mid-1970s, invoked a

highly simplified construction of Darwinian selection in concert with his assumption that

humans were fundamentally self-maximizing animals to conclude that “allowing Homo

economicus to do as he wants, to give Ayn Rand-style freedom to let the market reign,

will by Becker’s measurements, increase welfare” (Patel, 2009, p. 29). Eisenstein (2011)

argues that the belief that humans naturally seek to maximize their “rational” self-interest

represents one of two basic axioms govern mainstream economic thought, the other being

a universal “assumption of scarcity” (Patel, 2009, p. 23). The insidiousness of this

assumption is well demonstrated by the manner in which Garrett Hardin’s (1968) notion

of the “tragedy of the commons” was celebrated as a foundational insight guiding the

modern environmental movement. Having unconsciously subscribed to the idea that

collaboration is antithetical to human nature, a generation of well-meaning

environmentalists logically inferred that the commons is our enemy, inadvertently

perpetuating separation consciousness and leading many to discredit as presumably

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unrealistic solutions based upon a human capacity for appreciative engagement in

community with the life world.

Having been transmitted as powerful cultural memes, and woven into the

institutionalized structures and processes of today’s globalizing economy, these and other

persistent beliefs about human nature and the human condition repeatedly lead

economists, politicians, and the public at large down a string of inferences that operate

daily to shape common perceptions, thoughts and behaviors to the point where the

scientifically and historically unsound image of homo economicus appears to have a basis

in some objective reality (Eisenstein, 2011). In other words, our global political economy

is largely governed by policies and institutional structures that are anchored in a neo-

classical libertarian philosophy and “market fundamentalism” (Henry, 2008, p. 210). Like

other fundamentalisms competing for the minds and hearts of people worldwide, this

standardized framework for resolving matters of contested policy at all geopolitical levels

answers real world complexity with rigid ideology; a deceptively simple set of

abstractions that, for a growing percentage of the world’s population, only serve to

increase the distance between reality-as-assumed and reality-as-encountered in the

embodied experiences of daily life.

The prospect of such a widening gap between our culturally mediated and

phenomenal realities, when viewed through the lens of evolutionary theory, begs for a

critical reassessment of the institutionally embedded premises of market capitalism and

its manifestations as industrial society and consumer culture, proceeding from a shared

interest in human survival and the progressive unfolding of human potential.

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Premise 4: To create future conditions around the world that are genuinely

favorable to human quality of life, we must fundamentally transform the

predominant mindset (or level of consciousness) that created many of the

institutions of modern global capitalism.

This premise follows from the preceding one, and reflects a primary theme

running through the works of Mackey and Sisodia (2014), C. Laszlo et al. (2014),

Scharmer and Kaufer (2013), Braden (2011), Hart (2007), McIntosh (2007), McKibben

(2007), Banathy (2000), Capra (1997), Hawken (1993), Checkland (1981), Jantsch

(1975), Schumacher (1973), and many others who have inquired deeply into the

relationship between human economic thought and human well-being. Each of these

writers has contributed to an emerging perspective centered on the notion that we can and

must assume conscious responsibility for transforming our patterns of thinking and

communication at all levels within our global community. As responsible global citizens

confronted with awareness of mounting evidence that a global system premised on

unbridled growth is fundamentally unsustainable, we are compelled to ask: How might

we enable critical, purposeful, and participatory inquiry into the praxis of leveraging

institutional change at all levels, so as to create socio-ecological conditions that are

favorable to life and to the progressive and equitable unfolding of human potentials

across diverse cultures and worldviews?

Several of these authors have made reference to evidence of a growing unrest or

dissatisfaction with solutions offered by conventional economic rationality, a sentiment

that appears to be shared by community activists, conscious consumers, educators,

clerics, nonprofit managers, corporate CEOs, and even many institutional “insiders” such

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as lawyers, bankers, corporate board members, and government officials, many of whom

daily experience a moral tension between personal values and the institutional norms they

are bound to uphold (Hawken, 2007; Loeb, 2010; G. Taylor, 2008). Such widespread

discontent stems in part from a growing gap between conditions predicted by

conventional economic theory and actual conditions observed in the real world; a form of

cognitive dissonance that can produce either constructive or regressive responses (G.

Taylor, 2008; see discussion of Premise 5).

For some people who are familiar with the language and concepts of the post-

modern social justice movement, this observable disconnect is clear evidence that the

modern market economy perpetuates the normative structures of neo-colonialism by

reducing all things in the public sphere to objects-as-commodities; including cultural

artifacts and human identity itself (Eisenstein, 2011; Giblett, 2011; Patel, 2009). Social

activists who are concerned with the causes of ecological sustainability and social justice,

respectively, who in the past have tended to operate in separate spheres of engagement,

are today rapidly coming to the realization that these causes (ecological sustainability and

social justice) are inseparable. For example, environmental justice advocates cite recent

studies that have shown dramatic socio-economic and racial inequalities across a wide

range of metrics pertaining to environmental health (World Health Organization, Europe,

2010; Stiglitz, 2013). Along the same line, Nelson and Pound (2012) documented how

social justice groups pioneering the global “fair trade” movement have demonstrated the

effectiveness of ecosystem protection efforts based on strategies that focus on

empowerment of local communities who stand to benefit most from the long-term

sustainability of their resource base.

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Premise No. 5: An integrative, participatory approach to economic and social

development, informed by evolutionary theory, and a nondualistic appreciation of

values and dynamic qualities found in thriving living systems, might serve to

guide self-organizing processes of social and institutional change across the

broad spectrum of cultures and institutions that comprise our increasingly

interdependent global community.

Global change, as described by Senge and colleagues (2010), G. Taylor (2008),

Eisler (2007), McKibben (2007), Hawken (2007), and Korten (2006) is being driven by

an evolutionary dynamic that juxtaposes the current “dominant trend”—expansion and

consolidation of the global industrial economy—with an “emergent trend”: a new force

developing in response to “better scientific paradigms” and “real human and

environmental needs” and involving “material and societal technics that support the

transformation of our unsustainable system into a sustainable system” (G. Taylor, 2008,

p. 160). This emergent trend has the characteristics of a social movement which can be

understood within a dynamic global context that also reveals a dangerous growth of

misguided “reactive and reactionary social movements.” These movements are misguided

insofar as they pursue a return to pre-industrial lifestyles. G. Taylor (2008) posited that

these more reactive movements thrive in the wake of economic and environmental

devastation tied to unsustainable patterns of capitalist expansion, but they must ultimately

fail because they do not advance societal evolution.

Csikszentmihalyi (1993) similarly posited that societal cultures and institutions

during times of instability can trend towards relatively more or less complexity, where

the former trend can be associated with progressive social change, and the latter to a

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regressive deterioration of the human prospect. Unlike G. Taylor, Csikszentmihalyi was

not prepared to assume that evolution among human societies necessarily favors one

trajectory over another. Rather, he invoked the human capacity for conscious choice

among possible future scenarios as an argument favoring an agenda of self-guided

evolutionary capacity-building and the conscious nurturing of human evolutionary

potential. Similarly, Banathy (1996) cited the above point of distinction, between the

assumption of universal progress and the acceptance of responsibility for consciously

guided evolution of our species to mark the turning of our present era.

To give G. Taylor (2008) his due, it should be remarked that his expressed

optimism is not based on anything close to a passive attitude towards societal evolution.

Rather, G. Taylor suggested that as a global community, our way to a better future lies in

proactive societal innovations that support “transformation to a sustainable global

system” based in “holistic and integrative values and views, inclusive of multirelational

art forms, [and] new forms of cooperative and participatory social organization” (pp.

160–161). The possible scenario that would lead to such transformation involves a

process whereby more and more citizens around the world begin to “question the

destructive values and institutions of the industrial system and begin to look for

constructive alternatives—pathways to survival” (G. Taylor, 2008, p. 192; see also L.

Brown, 2011; Hawken, 2007).

Accordingly, G. Taylor’s (2008) analysis queues up an inquiry into the conditions

that might support constructive rather than reactive/destructive responses to the growing

global crisis. Viewed in the light of Gore’s (2013) emphasis on shifting centers of power

and an associated leadership vacuum, the question becomes: From where shall the

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leadership emerge that supports deep questioning and revisioning of the dominant

institutions and values upon which our current system is built? According to Gore (2013)

such leadership for a sustainable and flourishing world must involve the collective

acquisition of new, ecologically oriented consciousness that reflects a commitment to

whole systems thinking, co-creative democratic participation, and the cultivation of

shared values based on a deep appreciation of the complexity and emergent qualities of

healthy, living systems. This conclusion begs further questions: What are the practices

that might foster such collective acquisition of a transformed consciousness within the

public sphere? At what level of social engagement might such practices be undertaken?

Other 21st century authors, including Capra (2002), Christakis (2006), Jenlink

and Banathy (2008), Rifkin (2014), Scharmer and Kaufer (2013), Shepard (2013), and

Waddell (2011), while addressing this question of emergent leadership for a sustainable

world, coalesce around a common theme not often carried in the messages delivered by

mainstream media outlets. These authors point to evidence suggesting that today we are

witnessing a broad-based resurgence of interest in purposeful institutional design,

centered on an appreciation of shared values emerging from a sense of common

vulnerability and common responsibility within an economically and ecologically

interdependent world. This evidence of an emerging common perspective regarding the

global problématique and implications for human agency invokes questions of great

consequence for human society encompassing a variety of cultural and disciplinary

perspectives. From this common vantage point, it may appear that we humans are

transitioning rapidly into a new evolutionary stage where our very survival may depend

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upon our collective ability to develop new potentials within reflective and integrative

consciousness.

Similarly, theorists advancing a critical posthuman perspective suggest that such a

shift in consciousness within the public sphere, capable of transforming societal

institutions, inevitably would entail a shift in our collective thinking about rationality and

values respectively, including a transformed conception of scientific method and rational

discourse that is at once non-dualistic, non-relativistic and non-anthropocentric

(Braidotti, 2013; Hayles, 1999; Herbrechter, 2013; Wolf, 2010). These writers agree that

such evolving consciousness will, of necessity, ultimately extend beyond conventional

dualistic thinking to encompass something like a nondualistic post-human Self identified

within the larger systems of life of which we are a part and recognized as a new center of

moral concern (see discussion in next section).

Philosophical foundations. In the context of community action research that is

committed to consciously guided action that builds understanding of behaviors and

qualities of communities as complex socio-ecological systems, a clearly articulated

philosophical foundation is particularly important as a foundation for shared inquiry. The

following discussion, therefore, is intended to map out the philosophical ground, as

informed by the relevant literature, upon which new pathways of evolutionary inquiry

might be explored. Further discussion regarding the ontological and epistemological

premises of community action research and applied systems methodology is reserved for

Chapter 3, where such premises are made explicit as a part of a context informing

decisions regarding choice of methodology, methods, and tools for action research that

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aims to guide and transform the evolutionary dynamics of the relevant community

systems.

In his landmark collection of essays entitled Wholeness and the Implicate Order,

quantum theorist David Bohm (1980) set out to explore how “reality and consciousness

are related” (p. xii) in a way that develops a “new form of insight [which] can perhaps

best be called Undivided Wholeness in Flowing Movement” (p. 14). Bohm posited that

there is a universal flux that cannot be defined explicitly but which can be known only implicitly, as indicated by the explicitly definable forms and shapes, some stable and some unstable, that can be abstracted from the universal flux. In this flow, mind and matter are not separate substances. Rather, they are different aspects of one whole and unbroken movement. In this way, we are able to look on all aspects of existence as not divided from each other, and thus we can bring to an end the fragmentation implicit in the current attitude toward the atomic point of view, which leads us to divide everything from everything in a thoroughgoing way. (p. 14)

Bohm’s stated aim was to free our thought from the “illusion that reality actually is of a

fragmentary nature” (p. 15) and in so doing to resurrect the ancient Greek notion of

formative causation as “an ordered and structured inner movement that is essential to

what things are” (p. 16). Upon these premises, Bohm makes the striking statement: “True

unity in the individual and between man and nature, as well as between man and man,

can arise only in a form of action that does not attempt to fragment the whole of reality”

(p. 20).

Having located the formative cause of fragmentation within thought itself, Bohm

suggested that we might learn how to gain insight into how the instrument of thought is

working, and thereby transcend the habit of misperceiving the abstract and fragmentary

objects of thought as if they arose from a fragmented reality; that is, from someplace “out

there” apart from the movements of thought itself.

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In keeping with his idea of an undivided wholeness in flowing movement, Bohm

(1996) in later writing suggested that “attention [emphasis added], unlike thought, is

potentially unrestricted, and therefore capable of apprehending the subtle nature of the

‘unlimited’” (p. xxvi). This emphasis on conscious attention, rather than thought, as a

potentially more reliable pathway to understanding, is also found in works of Abram

(1996), Bergeson (1988/1999), Merleau-Ponty (1962/2007), and others who have

advanced the field phenomenological inquiry and research (Valle & Mohs, 1998).

For present purposes, Bohm’s insights warrant that we assume a critical stance

towards any stated premise that is mainly the product of human thought; which in turn is

to suggest that regardless of the epistemological perspective one assumes along the

continuum from positivist to constructivist worldviews, no foundational premise(s)

represented in thought or words reliably can be assigned the status of absolute truth.

This insight is consistent with Habermas’s (1968/1971) statement that “the only

thing standing at the beginning of critique is the radical project of unconditional doubt.”

Habermas (1968/1971, p. 13) suggested that such “radical doubt” would preclude the

unconditional adoption of premises as a basis for critical inquiry into the genesis of

knowledge itself. Insofar as it represents a radical deconstruction of positivism, this

insight also appears consistent with Bohm’s (1980) notion that thought fragments the

knowable world and therefore cannot be relied upon as a basis for claiming absolute

knowledge. Bohm’s rejection of thought as a basis for knowing fundamental truth

furthermore coincides with Maturana and Varela’s (1987/1998) notion of cognitive

“blind spots,” captured in their statement that “the business of living keeps no records

concerning origins” (p. 242).

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This is not to foreclose the prospect of encountering an objective reality in the

search for reliable knowledge extending beyond the realm of human subjectivity; rather,

it is simply to observe that such holistic and embodied encounters with the real inevitably

lose their immanence and are subsumed within abstract and constructed forms of

knowing at the point of being represented as factual or “true” in human perception,

thought, and language. Thus, Bohm (1980), unlike Habermas (1968/1971), expressly

allowed for the possibility of an implicate wholeness preceding all formative causes and

therefore existing beyond the reach of human cognition. Other 20th century philosophers,

including Schweiker (1990), Bernstein (1983), Gadamer (1976), Dewey (1925), and

James (1911/1997) suggested that, in the area of epistemology, if not ontology, certain

limitations are imposed by our very existence as embodied human beings. Maturana and

Varela (1987/1998) reached a similar conclusion in their comprehensive study of the

biological roots of human cognition.

Whether or not we accept Bohm’s rejection of a universal rationality, or

Habermas’s (1968/1971) steadfast commitment to critical deconstruction, as the final

word on this point, it behooves us to reflect deeply rather than assuming we can find a

solid foundation upon which to unify our fragmented world within some fixed, abstract

propositional claim. Following these deconstructionist thinkers, it may be more reliable

to locate the roots of human understanding within the ever-changing, ever-unfolding

processes of an undivided wholeness, or—following Maturana and Varela (1987/1998)—

within life itself. Such living wholeness might be understood as a transcendent and

participatory reality where human knowledge and all that it entails unfolds as a fully

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embedded system within the larger systemic processes of a living biosphere, or perhaps, a

living cosmos.

Without attempting to reduce reality to absolutist propositional claims, Ervin

Laszlo’s (1972) philosophy of natural systems employs systems thinking and systems

modeling to reveal what appears to be an ordered reality underlying Nature. Rousseau

(2013) later described this revelation as the basis for a “Broad Naturalism”; presenting a

moderate “middle ground” between the absolute authoritarianism of Reductionism and

the absolute tolerance of Constructivism. As explained by Rousseau (2013) such a Broad

Naturalism would “go well beyond both Physicalism and Reductionism to give an

adequate account of the world, and find non-dismissive ways to embrace consciousness,

subjectivity, values, meanings and goals within a wider notion of Naturalism” (p. 13).

This perspective, in my view, is compatible with the well-vetted perspective of

“Embodied Realism” offered by Lakoff and Johnson (1999) which likewise constitutes

just such a middle ground between the polar extremes of absolute Reductionism and

absolute Constructivism, reflecting a naturalist stance that admits of a reality that is

“other” and having an existence beyond the pale of subjective human experience, but

unlike Enlightenment-era naturalism, does so without imposing a dualistic worldview

which would seek to privilege its conception of objective reality by presuming to separate

all mental phenomena and all subjectivity from the realm of that which can be studied

and known empirically. In such a world, multiple subjectivities are able to co-exist within

a pluralistic natural order that can be appreciated by human consciousness, leading to

interpretation and improved understanding amidst the continuous flow of events, without

the presumption of knowledge in the absolute sense.

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Just as Laszlo’s critical realism employs systems models to “capture the

functional patterns and principles that recur across all Systemics” (Rousseau, 2013,

p. 11), Lakoff and Johnson’s (1999) “Embodied Realism” is derived from observable and

consistent patterns of conceptualization that appear to guide human logical and

metaphorical cognition:

Our embodied system of basic-level concepts has evolved to “fit” the ways in which our bodies, over the course of evolution, have been coupled to our environment, partly for the sake of survival, partly for the sake of human flourishing beyond mere survival, and partly by chance. It is not that every basic-level concept exists because of its survival value, but without such an embodied system coupled to our environment, we would not have survived. The basic level of conceptualization is the cornerstone of embodied realism. (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, p. 91)

Thus, it appears that the dimension of human experience that we assign to the category of

“mind” is in the end more or less an expression of our human embodiment and its

various, embodied ways of knowing (Abram, 1996; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Wilson,

1998). Furthermore, our embodied reality is understood to encompass all manner of

mental “objects” that emerge from an ever-expanding human capacity for empirical data

gathering and analysis facilitated by the instruments of modern technology (Hall, 1976).

By rooting this study in the perspectives of both critical and embodied realism, a

sound ontological and epistemological foundation is established that enables the

researcher and participants to engage in rigorous, participatory inquiry that fulfills the

above-stated aims and purposes while avoiding the dual pitfalls of absolute

authoritarianism and absolute relativism. In practical terms, this perspective tracks

closely with the hermeneutic attitude which in its essence maintains that “we are

essentially beings constituted by and engaged in interpretative understanding” (Bernstein,

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1983, p. 137). Drawing upon the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Bernstein (1983) invited

us to

always aim (if informed by an “authentic hermeneutical attitude”) at a correct understanding of what the “things themselves” say. But what the “things themselves” say will be different in light of our changing horizons and the different questions that we learn to ask. (p. 77)

When enacted within the context of a study investigating socio-ecological dynamics

within complex community systems, our quest for an interpretive understanding of the

“things themselves” necessarily extends beyond the sphere of social interaction between

autonomous human individuals, and brings us into encounters with expanded,

nondualistic conceptions of being-in-the-world and the knowing subject as viewed

through the lens of critical post-humanism (Braidotti, 2013; Hayles, 1999; Herbrechter,

2013; Wolf, 2010). This notion is captured well in the magnificent statement by Abram

(1996) that “we are human only in contact, in conviviality, with what is not human”

(p. 22).

A critical posthumanism…is positioned in between the notions of system and subject, autopoiesis and the multiplicity of life forms [vivants], and thus also

between deconstruction and systems theory [emphasis added]. The challenge posed by the effects of technologization and of posthumanist culture has to be met by critical and cultural theory, deconstruction and systems theory together (Herbrechter, 2013, p. 198)

Braidotti (2013) expanded upon this critical-theoretical lens by calling for an affirmative

posthuman subjectivity that is “materialist and vitalist, embodied and embedded, [and]

firmly located somewhere” (p. 51). Arguing for a nondeterministic and post-

anthropocentric rethinking of evolutionary theory, Braidotti (2013) emphasized

The collective project of seeking a more adequate understanding of the complexity of factors that structure the posthuman subject: the new proximity to animals, the planetary dimension and high level of technological mediation. Machinic autopoiesis means that the technological is a site of post-anthropocentric becoming, or the threshold of many possible worlds. (p. 94)

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This perspective, in turn, harmonizes with that of Hayles (1999) who assured us that the

emergence of a post-anthropocentric self does not necessarily leave us with a

disembodied subjectivity, but rather a fully embodied awareness that is extended in

“highly specific, local and material ways that would be impossible without electronic

prosthesis [emphasis added]” (p. 291)

In sum, this study proceeds from an ontological and epistemological foundation

that is tentatively rooted in a perspective of critical and embodied realism, hermeneutics,

and critical posthumanism. This perspective aligns well with the pragmatic and

emancipatory aims of community action research, and with its commitment to

stakeholder participation and engaged learning leading to purposeful action that is

intended to bring about progressive improvement to the human condition within the

specific context of the research setting. The above synthesis of complementary

perspectives provides an intellectually rigorous foundation for an inquiry approach that

seeks interpretive understanding via intersubjective discourse and multiple, embodied

ways of knowing that are attainable through evolutionary learning, design conversation

and integral inquiry.

It is on this tentative basis—a perspective that is neither purely relativistic nor

contingent upon proof of universal first causes—that the design of this study proceeded,

joining participants in the quest for practical solutions that are urgently needed within our

communities and within the larger society.

Unity of knowledge: Science, humanities, and the prospect of a “New

Enlightenment” for the 21st century. In his work entitled, The Meaning of Human

Existence, acclaimed biologist and evolutionary theorist E. O. Wilson (2014) retraced the

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17th and 18th century Western intellectual tradition known as the Enlightenment, to

disclose its guiding vision captured in the “concept that science and the humanities share

the same foundation, in particular that the laws of physical cause and effect can somehow

ultimately account for both” (p. 37). He described how

The Enlightenment quest was driven by the belief that entirely on their own, human beings can know all that needs to be known, and in knowing understand, and in understanding gain the power to choose more wisely than ever before. (p. 38)

This quest, however, was stalled by the converging circumstances of the “exponential

pace” of new scientific discoveries, and skepticism on the part of the founders of the

Romantic tradition of literature, who would not accept the premise that the

Enlightenment worldview, with its reliance on public scientific knowledge, could yield

the kind of inspiration and deep meaning that was attainable in “more private venues”

(p. 38).

With this history in mind, Wilson (2014) argued that a “New Enlightenment” is at

hand, given that “enough is known today to make it more attainable than during its first

flowering” (pp. 39–40). Building upon his earlier work, Consilience (Wilson, 1998), the

idea that natural laws comprise principles underlying every branch of learning, he

delivered an impassioned call for a new “unity of knowledge,” while cataloguing the

formidable hurdles that stand in the way. These hurdles include:

1. incentive structures supporting specialization among disciplines within the mainstream academy;

2. the obsession with dispassionate-objective reporting of scientific findings, notwithstanding the fact that creative thought often plays a major role in scientific inquiry; and

3. the “addic[tion] to anthropocentricity” in humanities scholarship, a habit that reflects our highly evolved social intelligence and our evolved capacity to

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mentally explore past and future scenarios in support of our species’ survival needs (Wilson, 1998, p. 42).

Despite these obstacles, our present prospects for attaining a unity of knowledge are

bolstered by the fact that science, with its unique methods that allow humans to map the

“continua” of natural phenomena across scales of place and time, today reveals “with

increasing precision the place of humanity, here on Earth and beyond in the cosmos as a

whole” (Wilson, 2014, p. 51).

According to Wilson (2014) we now know that “we occupy a microscopic space

in each of the relevant continua that might have produced a species of human-grade

intelligence anywhere, here and on other planets” (p. 51). The realm of human

experience, thus greatly expanded, begs for a correspondingly expansive scope of

creative inquiry that transcends anthropocentricity and launches us into “a new cycle of

exploration—infinitely richer, correspondingly more challenging, and not by coincidence

increasingly humanitarian [emphasis added]” (p. 52).

Herbrechter (2013), writing from the critical post-humanist perspective, offered a

complementary view suggesting that rapid technological innovation is influencing the

popular consciousness in a manner that leads towards transcendence of the “two cultures”

of science versus the humanities. He described:

The Third Culture [which] comprises the vast field that reaches from the debaters of evolutionary theory (Dawkins and Daniel Dennett versus Gould) through physicists dealing with quantum physics and cosmology (Stephen Hawking, Steven Weinberg, Fritjof Capra), cognitive scientists (Dennet again, Marvin Minsky), neurologists (Oliver Sacks), and the theorists of chaos (Benoit Mandelbrot, Ian Stewart)—authors dealing with the cognitive and general social impact of the digitalization of our daily lives—up to the theorists of an autopoetic system who endeavor to develop a universal formal notion of self-organizing emerging systems that can be applied to “natural” living organisms and species and social “organisms” (the behavior of the markets and other larger groups of interacting social agents). (Herbrechter, 2013, p. 17)

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In harmony with this notion of a Third Culture, encompassing new

technologically mediated visions of a nondualistic and post-anthropocentric reality,

Rousseau (2013) drew upon the foundational premises of von Bertalanffy’s (1968)

formal model of nature, described as General Systems Theory (GST), to offer a systemic

argument for a new unity of knowledge. He posited that,

The unity of the world, and hence of knowledge representing it, is grounded in the ontology of Nature, and is the same for all disciplines. By implication promoting the unity of knowledge then includes promoting unification between the foundational commitments of the special sciences. (E. Laszlo, 1972, p. 12)

Casting his view beyond the pale of post-modern deconstructionism, Rousseau suggested

that while critical deconstruction may serve as a necessary response to the imperialistic

and dogmatic tendencies of positivistic science, such deconstruction does not inevitably

foreclose the prospect of a empirically informed discourse capable of unifying knowledge

across disciplines and cultures. Such unity of knowledge, as reflected in GST can serve as

a reliable foundation for inquiry insofar its derivative theories and applied applications

yield demonstrably reliable practical outcomes when applied to the challenges of

complexity in a world of living communities and ecosystems that are increasingly coming

under the influence of human agency, as enacted on a global scale.

The idea that we can rely on an action plan to give us a good chance of achieving the desired practical outcome in a complex situation entails that what we regard as our (unified) knowledge at least to some degree reflects the way things really are, either actually or potentially. (Rousseau, 2013, p. 7)

This view carries a not-so-subtle flavor of pragmatism, and promises to rekindle the kind

of debates encountered by William James (1911/1997) and John Dewey (1925) in the

early 20th century. Once again, we encounter reality in the dynamic flux of living

systems, and we come to know this reality, as we come to know ourselves; through the

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unifying, if not unified, lens of critical reflection, appreciative interpretation and engaged

participation.

From GST to evolutionary systems design. In an effort to bridge worldviews

while enhancing the coherence of systems science as a meta-discipline, E. Laszlo (1972)

and other proponents of GST have inquired deeply into the prospect of a meta-

paradigmatic unity of systems science. As discussed previously in relation to the

philosophical perspectives guiding this study, such ontological unity expressed as GST is

based upon certain conceptual “isomorphisms” that reflect empirically demonstrable

coherent patterns and dynamics found across the full spectrum of living and autopoeitic

systems, and that give systems science a logical and methodological autonomy relative to

other scientific disciplines (Pouvreau & Drack, 2007; Rousseau, 2013). This quest for

ontological unity is found in the more recent philosophical works of both Nagel (2012)

and Mingers (2011), and with the biological works of Wilson (1998) and Maturana and

Varela (1987/1998) who rejected the universal-materialist assumptions of the mainstream

scientific academy, and call for a broadening of the naturalistic worldview to encompass

both material and mental phenomena in keeping with the stance of “critical realism.”

Building upon the works of evolutionary systems design theorist Bela H. Banathy,

and the synthesis of General Evolutionary Theory captured in the work of Laszlo,

Masulli, Artigiani, and Csányi (1993), A. Laszlo and Laszlo (2002) mapped the

theoretical and practical implications of a unified, transdisciplinary theoretical systems

approach to understanding human and natural systems which can be referred to as

Evolutionary Systems Theory:

Through transdisciplinary study drawing on the sciences of complexity—general systems theory, cybernetics, nonequilibrium thermodynamics, autopoeitic systems

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theory, chaos theory, and dynamical systems theory—it offers a robust explanatory model of general cosmic evolutionary processes as they manifest across both natural and cultural realms. (p. 353)

These authors described how GST “focuses on patterns of change; it invites us to

appreciate our part in the creative process of the universe,” while social systems design

“provides us with a tool for shaping the systems in which we work, learn, and live; it

empowers us to be proactive participants in the creative process of our social world” (A.

Laszlo & Laszlo, 2002, p. 362). Following this process of theoretical mapping leading to

identification of conceptual and practical tools for the praxis of evolutionary learning,

and with a view toward deepening our understanding in connection with the questions

addressed in this study, I turn now to a review of relevant developments in evolutionary

systems theory.

Evolutionary Systems Theory

Theoretical foundations: Enfolded potential, natural selection and self-

organizing systems. A major focus of this study is on the systemic and evolutionary

dynamics of our local communities and of the larger society. Accordingly, each of the

research questions derived from the above premises calls for an inquiry into these

dynamics. Specifically, they call for an investigation of: (a) how best to describe the

structures, dynamic qualities, and relational characteristics of the community system of

interest; (b) how to translate evolutionary systems theory into a community praxis that

facilitates the progressive unfolding of values, qualities, and emergent potentials found

within communities as thriving socio-ecological systems; (c) how to purposefully and

collectively transform our habits of perception, thought, and behavior so as to become

agents of conscious, self-guided community and societal evolution. Interwoven into each

of these questions, implicitly, is the concept of evolutionary potential. The above

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questions reflect an assumption that this concept is important, and that by pursuing a

more complete understanding of evolutionary potential we might arrive at a shared

practical understanding of certain evolutionary dynamics at the levels of community and

society. As stated in Chapter 1, Banathy (2003) defined evolutionary potential as an

enfolded set of possibilities that “exists” within a given evolutionary generation or phase,

that is built upon the emerged potential of previous phases, and that has been defined in

the literature as “the generative force of evolution” (p. 313). This concept of potential

aligns with N. Bateson’s (n.d.) concept of “difference that makes a difference” and

extends our understanding of human activity systems to encompass causal structures and

system dynamics consisting of both material and ententional (or teleological) components

(Deacon, 2012).

Boulding (1981) found within this concept of evolutionary potential a common

thread running through both scientific and religious narratives of cosmic origin:

All we can say with any security is that in the beginning was potential [emphasis added]. Clearly something happened, and it is almost a matter of formal logic to say that if something happened, it is because there was potential for its happening. The universe started as an undifferentiated mass of something and since has tended to differentiate into complexity through a great variety of processes. Whether it started with an active creation of a potential out of some previous system of inconceivable complexity, as the religious metaphor suggests, we do not know. Whatever message was emitted from the creation of the universe has not reached us and we speculate in faith. (pp. 44–45)

E. Laszlo (1987) provided an oblique description of this same concept, by characterizing

evolutionary change as a nondeterministic process governed by “ensembles of

possibilities” enfolded within any evolving system:

The evolutionary paradigm challenges concepts of equilibrium and determinancy in scientific theories; and it modifies the classical deterministic conception of scientific laws. The laws conceptualized in the evolutionary context are not deterministic and prescriptive: they state ensembles of possibilities within which evolutionary processes can unfold. (p. 20)

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Such indeterminacy, according to E. Laszlo, is the very antithesis of the concept of

predestination, whether framed in religious terms, or in terms of the scientistic notion of a

universe governed and ultimately determined by mechanical laws of nature. Thus, the

evolutionary paradigm carries its own logic based in the idea of enfolded potential:

“evolution is always possibility and never destiny. Its course is logical and

comprehensible, but it is not predetermined and thus not predictable” (E. Laszlo, 1987,

p. 20). It is this very logic which frees evolutionary systems theory from dependency on

linear causal explanations; it is a logic based upon the simple existential truth and

empirical fact that we live in a heterogeneous universe where things happen.

Evolutionary potential, therefore, is more than an abstraction. It is an empirical

fact confirmed by the observation that we live in a world comprised of difference. By

way of contrast, a completely stable and homogenous state, lacking any intrinsic or

extrinsic potential for change exists only as a theoretical possibility. We imagine such a

changeless state as a logical extension of the construct entropy, which can also be

described as used up potential. Entropy is said to increase, in absolute terms, with the

changes that occur over time through the interaction of matter and energy in the physical

universe. Boulding (1981) explained how the concept of potential is inferred from the

concept of entropy:

The famous second law of thermodynamics, which states in effect that when anything happens, entropy increases, can be restated in a very general form as the law of potential. This states that if anything happens, it is because there was potential for it to happen, and that after it has happened that potential has been used up. Any process of this kind is irreversible, and so gives directionality to time. It is indeed one of time’s arrows. (pp. 34–35)

Entropy is increased with unfolding potential, and yet some new enfolded

potential also is thereby created. Thus, we encounter potential, in the first instance, as

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something that is both used up and created in the dynamic flux of the universe, and that

in absolute terms is deemed to have been pre-existing within some original state of

disequilibrium (Boulding, 1981, p. 34). Potential, thus understood, is part of an

irreversible process giving direction to time itself. However, this understanding offers no

explanation for how potential is, or was, created in the first instance. Yet, if we fall into

the habit of mechanistically thinking of potential and entropy as binary opposites, where

potential is “used up” in the process of creating entropy (think of the potential in a log

that is used up as it is consumed by the fire and dissipated as heat and ash), it is difficult

to imagine how life could exist. Since we are obviously alive, and existing within a living

biosphere among life forms that have, over time, expressed increasing levels of

complexity, something more must be happening.

At this juncture, we encounter one of the major reasons why attempts to elucidate

living systems by means of mechanistic causal explanations have tended to obscure those

very qualities of “aliveness” that account for the self-organizing, generative and

purposive dynamics of these systems that drive evolutionary change and make them most

relevant to our current human prospect. Deterministic science, despite its many

accomplishments that have yielded technological solutions giving rise to the modern

industrial society, has utterly failed to account for the observable processes of self-

organization found in virtually all living organisms and ecosystems (Rosen, 1991). Thus,

while modern science has described a unidirectional pattern of change moving forward in

time from an original state of disequilibrium toward an ultimate “equilibrium of chaos,”

such explanation then immediately confronts the question “what is life?”

Life is material, but the laws framed to describe the properties of matter give us no purchase on life. Something is missing here, perhaps something essential for

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the understanding of matter in general, however much the physicists insist not. Biology has so far spent itself in cataloguing the endlessly interesting epiphenomena of life, but at the heart of it there is still only a gaping void. And the parables of the system theorist cannot as yet be incarnated in material reality. As I said, something is missing, something big, but it is hard to see even the biggest things when they are not there. We can only sense the void of its absence and try to fabricate what is necessary to fill it. (Rosen, 1991, p. 14)

Rosen (1991) observed that this failure can be traced, at least in part, to the fact

that the canons of explanation developed by the early pioneers of the physical sciences,

including Renee Descartes and Sir Isaac Newton, were inadequate to deal with the

substantially higher levels of complexity encountered in biological systems; that the

founders of the relatively young discipline of biology lacked an appropriate factual basis

upon which to proceed, and therefore borrowed concepts from the physical sciences that

are ill-suited to describe the dynamics of living systems. In the 21st century, as the

boundary between biological and other types of cybernetic systems is becoming less

distinct (Maturana & Varela, 1987/1998), this mismatch between the conventional

methods of scientific reductionism and important questions such as “What is life?” or

“What does it mean to be alive?” is more problematic than ever.

In our effort to explain this “something more,” we turn to evolutionary systems

theory. Csikszentmihalyi (1993) recounted how 19th and 20th century evolutionary

theory was centered on the question of how species of living organisms multiplied,

changed, or died out. Within this limited scope, natural selection in its various iterations

was viewed as a largely mechanical process, and yet questions remained regarding the

steep statistical odds that seem to weigh against the conclusion that selection alone could

have produced the Earth’s many highly complex life forms (Rosen, 1991). With this

background in mind, Csikszentmihalyi (1993) posited that an extension of evolutionary

principles is essential for our understanding of evolutionary change as it relates not only

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to biological, but also to physical, social, and cultural (including teleological) systems in

the 21st century context and beyond. Specifically, he suggested that: “Somehow the

definition of ‘organism’ must also include crystals and memes—artifacts, symbols, and

ideas that exist and reproduce only in our minds” (p. 150).

These extended principles of evolution, as formulated by Csikszentmihalyi

(1993), are stated as follows:

1. Every organism tends to keep its shape and to reproduce itself;

2. In order to survive and to reproduce, organisms require inputs of external energy;

3. Each organism will try to take as much energy out of the environment as possible, limited only by threats to its integrity;

4. Organisms that are successful in finding ways to extract more energy from the environment for their own use will tend to live longer and leave relatively more copies of themselves;

5. When organisms become too successful in extracting energy from their habitat, they may destroy it, and themselves in the process;

6. There are two opposite tendencies in evolution: changes that lead toward harmony (i.e., the ability to obtain energy through cooperation, and through the utilization of unused or wasted energy); and those that lead toward entropy (or ways of obtaining energy for one’s purposes through exploiting other organisms, thereby causing conflict and disorder); and

7. Harmony is usually achieved by evolutionary changes involving an increase in an organism’s complexity, that is, an increase in both differentiation and integration (pp. 151–156).

Csikszentmihalyi (1993) thus construed the evolutionary process in a manner that

underscores its indeterminacy; a process that, at least at the level of the organism, may

express tendencies in the direction of either chaos or complexity. Most notably, the latter

tendency is understood as an increase in both differentiation and integration, which is to

say a process moving forward in time that, at the level of a given system, will yield new

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complex forms and a corresponding decrease in entropy within the relevant systems

level(s). In terms of conventional linear causation, this tendency found in all living

systems seemingly presents an insurmountable conceptual challenge, as it implies that

creation is ongoing; that we occupy and are the embodiment of a universe filled with

generativity and potential: more animate, living presence than machine.

By focusing on evolutionary potential as a construct, Csikszentmihalyi (1993),

Rosen (1991), Boulding (1981),Vickers (1968) and other later 20th century theorists

succeeded in greatly strengthening the explanatory power of the evolutionary story,

extending it into the realm of physical and social, as well as biological systems, while

overcoming some of the difficulty encountered in using natural selection exclusively to

explain the emergence and rapid evolution of highly complex, purposive systems such as

human consciousness (Jantsch, 1976), altruistic social behavior (Wilson, 1981), and

societal institutions (E. Laszlo, 1987; Prigogine, 1976). From this perspective, we

encounter material, biological, and social reality as a series of “non-equilibrium” states

realized as emergent potentials, and arising from the very same dynamic processes that

we also associate with the unfolding (or development) of previously existing potentials.

Thus, Boulding (1981) defined “the evolutionary process [as] the result of generation

[emphasis added] of evolutionary potential” (p. 35):

Some potential for change emerges; as time goes on the potential is realized. In the process of realization, however, new potentials for change are developed. Equilibrium is never reached and evolution continually proceeds. The generation

of evolutionary potential of all kinds is a profound mystery, but also a profound

reality [emphasis added]. Without it, the universe would surely have settled down to an equilibrium of chaos long ago. (p. 46)

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Systems evolution, therefore, is understood as a dynamic process whereby systems self-

organize to create new heterogeneous structures and to generate new systemic potentials,

while progressively moving from one non-equilibrium state to the next.

The essential conditions for evolution, according to Nobel Prize winning chemist

Ilya Prigogine, include the existence of a non-equilibrium state and some manner of

energetic throughput. He described a property of open systems (those described by

Ludwig von Bertalanffy that import flows of energy from outside, transform, and release

it back to the system’s environment), whereby complex new forms can emerge through a

processes of self-organization (Prigogine, 1976). Only open systems can evolve, because

the generation of new enfolded potential requires dissipation of energy, and therefore a

closed system (something rarely if ever encountered on Earth) will eventually reach

homeostasis. Prigogine’s theoretical breakthrough complemented earlier work of

cybernetics researcher Stafford Beer who, like von Bertalanffy, applied open systems

theory to the long-standing question of how a negentropic system (one that seems to defy

the 2nd law of thermodynamics by evolving, not towards greater entropy, but towards

higher levels of order and complexity) can arise in Nature in the form of living organisms

(Flood, 1999).

Prigogine’s (1976) theory of dissipative structures, therefore, offers “a description

of the self-organization of matter in conditions far from thermodynamic equilibrium”

(p. 120). He observed that whereas classical thermodynamics permits the interpretation of

equilibrium structures, those that appear in an isolated system after a sufficiently long

time (like crystals, for example), the theory of dissipative structures addresses those

situations where “instead of a closed system one considers an open system exchanging

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matter and energy with the outside environment;…dissipative structures are associated

with an entirely different ordering principle, which may be called order through

fluctuation [emphasis added]” (Prigogine, 1976, p. 95). According to this ordering

principle, the difference between equilibrium structures and dissipative structures

corresponds to the difference between closed and open systems.

In the natural environments of planet Earth, it is difficult to find examples of

closed systems. Moreover, a perspective offered by Boulding (1981), a contemporary of

Bohm (1980), seems to echo the latter’s conception of an “implicate order” in the way

that he treated indeterminate movement as an essential quality of living systems:

Equilibrium…is a figment of the human imagination. It is a partial pattern perceived in the great four-dimensional complexity. It is a product of our limited perception. We see the world of objects- persons, houses, mountains—only because they are ‘frames’ of a very slow movie. With faster and longer perception, we would see persons growing and aging, mountains rising and eroding—a constant flux of irreversible change. (Boulding, 1981, p. 36)

Earth, itself an open system, is constantly being bombarded with solar energy

which produces a “throughput” of energy. Boulding (1981) hinted at Lovelock’s (1979)

Gaia hypothesis by noting that this planetary throughput of energy, viewed from an

evolutionary perspective, exhibits the life cycle dynamics of a living system.

With a little stretching of the metaphor and the imagination we can…see very clearly that the earth is not just a stationary stack of energy, but is a population of energy with births continually coming in from the sun and deaths radiating out into space. (Boulding, 1981, p. 48)

The earth is a great heat engine, receiving radiation at high densities and potential from the sun, and emitting radiation at lower intensities from the earth’s surface. This heat engine not only produces the weather, but it has driven the whole evolutionary process in life and in society. It is indeed the throughput of energy in

the earth that has made evolution possible [emphasis added]. (Boulding, 1981, p. 47)

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Thus, we see that the Earth, with its dynamic weather patterns, ocean currents, and varied

bioregions, environments that host a vast diversity of evolved life forms, functions on the

whole to capture and store energy in a manner that generates dissipative structures and

thereby drives evolutionary change.

Ervin Laszlo’s (1987) “grand synthesis” of evolutionary theory provides an

integration and extension of theory regarding the behavior of complex systems, including

the theory of chaotic attractors derived from the empirical work of meteorologist Edward

Lorenz and others, to describe a logical pattern of evolutionary change exhibited by self-

organizing systems at all levels of scale, inclusive of physical, biological, and social

systems alike (Gleick 1987; E. Laszlo 1987). E. Laszlo described a basic model whereby

dynamic systems at a given level of organization and scale enter into a state of

disequilibrium, whereupon through mutual attraction and a process of emergence

(“bifurcation”) they enter into a higher level of organization, thereby establishing a

hierarchy of emerging, self-organizing systems; from subatomic particles up through

living cells, organisms, ecologies and societies. In this way, E. Laszlo reconciled the

long-standing conflict between the perceived cosmic implications of the 2nd law of

thermodynamics and Darwinian evolutionary theory; the former maintaining that all

matter descends towards a state of entropy, and the latter maintaining that all life ascends

towards progressively higher levels of organization.

We have now come to see that the conflict between the two great processes—the two arrows of time—is only apparent. Evolving systems are not closed; the universe as a whole is not mechanistic; cosmic processes do not point the arrow of time toward a state of universal heat-death; and life is neither an accidental aberration nor the manifestation of mysterious metaphysical forces. (E. Laszlo, 1987, p. 17)

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Consistent with E. Laszlo’s (1987) theoretical synthesis, if we follow the logic of

the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which associates an increase of entropy with a reduction

of complexity, then any empirically demonstrable process which leads to an increase in

complexity must be understood to entail something like the inverse of entropy. Inspired

by earlier work of Italian mathematician Luigi Fantappiè (1947), Di Corpo and Vannini

(2013) invoked the term “syntropy” to describe this process involving the generation of

potential, with reference to its nondeterministic and anticipatory characteristics which

cannot be explained by the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Accordingly, evolutionary

potential is best understood as potential generated through syntropy. Unlike other types

of potential such as “potential energy” which we associate with the dynamics of entropic

systems, evolutionary potential is not “used up” as an increment of lost heterogeneity;

rather it is transformed via the syntropic processes of evolutionary unfolding that generate

new dissipative structures and new potentials. Within open systems receiving a

throughput of energy, unfolding potential yields progressively higher levels of

complexity. In other words, evolutionary potential is constantly being transformed into

new material forms and new, qualitatively different, potentials without being “used up” in

absolute terms.

The theoretical literature summarized above, while mostly drawn from work in

the physical sciences, provides a basis for generally understanding evolutionary systems,

and specifically the construct of evolutionary potential, in a manner that informs inquiry

into the praxis of evolutionary designing conversation at the levels of community and

society. This construct is useful insofar as it enables inquirers to conceptualize the

generative qualities and anticipatory causal structures of complex human activity

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systems. However, by virtue of its inherent indeterminacy, there may not be a precise

way to measure or test evolutionary potential; at least not in the same way that one might

quantify the irreversible expenditures of energy within entropic systems. But, query

whether the limitations of our measuring instruments should make us blind to its

existence! For example, Winder (2005) described how, within human activity systems,

historic events may change the balance of probabilities by creating conditions of

epistemic openness or altering a community’s “appreciative setting” in a manner that

enables integrative solutions to emerge. Nooteboom (2006) similarly investigated

embodied cognitive and relational capacities as variables regulating the unfolding of

learning and innovation potentials within inter-organizational networks.

Systemic qualities which we may associate with evolutionary potential, such as

heterogeneity, energetic throughput, and disequilibrium, may well provide us with a

means to characterize evolutionary potential in a more rigorous, empirical manner.

Furthermore, if we are to understand evolutionary potential as a characteristic existing

within a given system, like the way we might consider water behind a dam as an existing

quantity embodying or having a certain amount of potential energy, such understanding

may lie in our ability to account for something that exists not in the material sense, but as

an absence; and not just any absence, but an “absence that matters” (Deacon, 2012, p. 8).

Such an absence exists in the form of a relationship or set of relationships among

heterogeneous system components that can be said to define the range of future

possibilities that might emerge by virtue of anticipated system dynamics. These

relationships define syntropic causal structure whereby that which is absent (e.g., some

purpose, value, or similar “mental object”) attracts, or shapes the unfolding of, changes

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within that which is in a process of forming and unfolding. Bohm (1980) seems to

capture this idea in his concept of formative causation, which (as mentioned above) he

describes as “an ordered and structured inner movement that is essential to what things

are” (p. 16). An absence that matters, therefore, is understood as a non-material system

quality that bears a syntropic causal relationship to enfolded evolutionary potential within

a given system.

This concept of an absence that matters also is similar to G. Bateson’s (1987)

concept of a “difference which makes a difference”; a concept derived from the

Lamarkian concept that “Mind” is a unit of evolution which bears a causal relationship to

other system components, although via patterns of interaction that are not contingent on

energy transfer.

In the world of mind, nothing—that which is not—can be a cause. In the hard sciences, we ask for causes and we expect them to exist and be “real.” But remember that zero is different from one, and because zero is different from one, zero can be a cause in the psychological world, the world of communication. (G. Bateson, 1987, pp. 458–459)

All this may seem to involve a level of abstraction that is difficult to reconcile with a

philosophical commitment to critical, embodied realism. However, the above references

to the works of Bateson, Maturana, Varela, and Beer serve to remind us that the young

science of cybernetics arose from an understanding that “ideas” or units of “information”

operate within the causal structure of complex systems to produce outcomes in the

physical world by enabling the encoding and transmission of—not energy, but—

“difference” (G. Bateson, 1987, p. 459).

Thus, we can derive theoretical guidance by observing that, in the physical world,

as well as in the world of biological and social phenomena, nothing happens that cannot

be attributed to some manner of difference between heterogeneous system components,

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or between a given system and its environment, that would distinguish such a system

from a random assembly of parts that, in theory, would constitute a state of absolute

equilibrium. Just as no system can evolve without throughput of energy, no system can

evolve without throughput of information.

Societal evolution. Having touched upon the idea of societal evolution within the

context of evolutionary systems theory generally, it was useful for purposes of this study

to review this concept from the additional vantage point of its historical development, and

as a prelude to a discussion of its implications for praxis.

From the very earliest articulations of evolutionary theory, following Darwin’s

publication of The Origin of Species, questions arose regarding the evolutionary

implications of human learning and its transmission through social interaction. In the late

19th century, Herbert Spencer advanced a particular application of Darwin’s theory of

natural selection to social, political, and economic issues that came to be known as

“Social Darwinism.” Unfortunately, this first attempt to apply evolutionary principles to

human society was based upon certain unfounded assumptions regarding the relationship

between genetic and cultural determinants of human behavior. This lead to the

popularization of a false and dangerous philosophy used to promote White European

imperialism, eugenics, systematic persecution of Jews and gypsies in Europe and Blacks

in the United States, and a callous disregard for the plight of the poor of late 19th century

and early 20th century society (Dickens, 2005; Pichot, 2001).

It was not until the latter part of the 20th century that Social Darwinism, in all its

forms, came to be broadly discredited as a corruption of evolutionary theory. Its many

critics asserted that it promoted a “rigorous dualism between ‘society’ and ‘nature’ [with]

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women and nonwhites being allocated to the category of ‘nature,’ for example, and

European men being allocated to ‘culture” (Dickens, 2005, para. 33). Later theoretical

articulations of the relationship between biological and societal evolution assumed a

distinctly nondualistic turn, thereby locating human consciousness and human agency at

the very center of the evolutionary story.

Social Darwinism attempted, often in crude, premature, and dangerous ways, to link insights from the social and natural sciences. But there remain exciting possibilities for developing new, more complex, nuanced, and transdisciplinary ways of linking the social and biological sciences. These are likely to throw important new light on the nature and well-being of humans as they interact with one another and their environment. (Dickens, 2005, para. 33)

Accordingly, evolutionary theorists of the late twentieth century, including Jantsch

(1975), Prigogine (1976), Dawkins (1976), Boulding (1981), E. Laszlo (1987),

Csikszentmihalyi (1993), Wilson (1981, 2012) and Banathy (1989, 2000), among others,

each have made important contributions to our current understanding of the theory of

societal evolution; combining neo-Darwinian perspectives with perspectives drawn from

complexity theory and the systems sciences. Together, these works offer an

interdisciplinary lens and an emerging framework through which the tools and practices

of applied systems science can be brought to the crucial tasks of investigating societal

evolutionary potentials, leading to the acquisition of evolutionary competencies that

enable us to formulate effective, practical responses to the challenges of global

citizenship in the early decades of the 21st century.

Somewhat ironically, it was biologist Richard Dawkins’s (1976) introduction of a

“gene’s eye view of nature” that, from the vantage point of retrospect, marks the

beginning of a period of renewed interest in societal evolution that continues to this day.

Dawkins offers a unique, neo-Darwinian perspective, whereby the basic unit of selection

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and therefore of the evolution of life itself is not the group, population, or species, but a

more basic entity which he calls the replicator; the molecule, gene, or similar unit which

has the “extraordinary property of being able to create copies of itself” (Dawkins, 1976,

p. 15). By distinguishing the “selfish” behavior of genes-as-replicators from the many

observed species or group-level behaviors that exhibit cooperation or the equivalent of

altruism as a primary survival strategy, Dawkins in one stroke refuted many of the

problematic cannons of social Darwinism, while inviting renewed interest in the

application of evolutionary theory to the study of social behavior.

Dawkins’s (1976) posited that in the social sphere just as in the biological sphere

all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities. He coined the term

“memes” as a way of conveying the idea of “a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of

imitation” that, having the power of self-replication, should be regarded as a living

structure in its own right. In an elegant reversal of the anthropocentric metaphor, he

compares memes to viruses with the suggestion that “when you plant a fertile meme in

my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme’s

propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host

cell” (Dawkins, 1976, p. 192). Dawkins postulated that memes, like genes, will over time

form into co-adapted meme-complexes capable of exploiting the prevailing cultural

environment (also consisting of memes) to their own advantage, eventually coalescing

into stable meme pools that resists penetration by other competing memes. This

articulation of a neo-Darwinian perspective on cultural evolution, by implication, refutes

the classical teleological notion that evolutionary forces per se favor the long-term

survival and advancement of human culture. In this way, Dawkins offered an important

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lens for interpreting the evolutionary implications of our 21st century, posthuman

condition.

E. Laszlo (1987), in contrast to Dawkins, posited that both biological and social

systems evolve towards progressively higher organizational levels. Whereas the

theoretical views of Dawkins adhered to the classical Darwinian concept of selection as a

step-by-step process of incremental change, Laszlo instead applied the theory of

“punctuated equilibria” and the related concept of “convergence” to explain how “high

levels of complexity can be achieved in relatively short time frames” (E. Laszlo 1987,

pp. 81–82). The concept of punctuated equilibria

recognizes the occurrence of long periods of stasis, during which the catalytic cycles that maintain organic species in their environments perform adequately and correct for a limited range of perturbations, and it claims that when the epochs of stasis come to an end, evolution is sudden and unpredictable in detail. (E. Laszlo, 1987, p. 77)

“Convergence” describes a process that allows for rapid change arriving at progressively

higher levels of complexity. When living systems, whether species, ecosystems, or

societies, through the processes of mutation and speciation, and through interaction with

their environments, enter a state of critical dis-equilibrium, they form catalytic cycles

“that maintain two or more dynamic systems in a shared environment through

coordinated functions, similar to but even more integrated than symbiosis among organic

species” (E. Laszlo, 1987, p. 34). These “hypercycles” allow for dynamic systems to

emerge at higher levels of organization. For example, in the context of societal evolution,

“as the flows of people, information, energy, and goods intensify, they transcend the

formal boundaries of the social system” enabling “neighboring tribes and villages to

converge into ethnic communities and integrated states” (E. Laszlo, 1987, p. 90).

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Also contrasting with Dawkin’s narrow focus on the behavior of genes, and by

extension cultural memes, Kenneth Boulding, building upon the theoretical work of

Teilhard de Chardin (1959/1964), adopted a wide-angle perspective, describing how,

just as there is the genosphere or genetic know-how in the biosphere, so there is a noosphere of human knowledge and know-how in the sociosphere. The noosphere is the totality of the cognitive content, including values, of all human nervous systems, plus the prosthetic devices by which this system is extended and integrated in the form of libraries, computers, telephones, post offices, and so on. (Boulding, 1981, p. 122)

This perspective clearly locates human culture and consciousness as a significant driver

of evolutionary change at this particular moment in the history of planet Earth.

Consciously guided evolution. In the context of action research, the above

perspectives on societal evolution drawn from the relevant literature can be treated as

tentative; as a foundation for inquiry that seeks to move freely between abstract ideas and

embodied experience with a view towards gaining new competencies that enable us to

develop our unrealized shared potentials and design effective solutions that will carry us

toward a sustainable and regenerative future (Checkland, 1981). The following is a

survey of other influential perspectives found in the literature on societal evolution that,

through synthesis, might serve as an initial basis for mapping this well-covered

conceptual territory in a manner that can become the generative field from which new

ideas relevant to the emerging praxis of consciously guided societal evolution can

emerge:

Once again, G. Bateson (1987) is informative. He observed that “ecology…in the

widest sense, turns out to be the study of the interaction and survival of ideas and

programs (i.e., differences, complexes of differences, etc.) in circuits” (p. 491). Such a

cybernetic, ecological, and teleological approach to community and societal revitalization

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is in keeping with G. Bateson’s general notion of heterogeneity or “difference” as an

evolutionary driver. G. Bateson further posited that

if…we correct the Darwinian unit of survival to include the environment and the interaction between organism and environment, a very strange and surprising identity emerges: the unit of evolutionary survival turns out to be identical with

the unit of mind. (p. 491)

In his work, Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, he set about the task of

reclaiming certain available “tools of thought” which we do not use, in part, because the

mainstream academy and culture has been “unwilling to accept the necessities that follow

from a clear view of the human dilemmas” (G. Bateson, 2002, p. 20). Several of these

tools have to do with deconstructing the scientific academy’s long-standing habit of

thinking of causal relationships in strictly linear terms. Finally, he deduced (in what

clearly ranks among his most striking and memorable statements) that “the major

problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the

way people think [emphasis added]” (G. Bateson as cited in N. Bateson, n.d., para. 2).

Erik Jantsch (1975) refocused the lens of inquiry once again, this time upon the

human capacity for purposeful or appreciative engagement with the world. Building upon

earlier work by Vickers (1968), Jantsch located the unit of evolutionary survival within

the volitional potentials of human consciousness, as these are realized through values and

norms effectuated at the levels of organization or community. Similar to Bateson’s

“ecology of mind” perspective (mentioned above) Jantsch (1975) offered a way for us to

think about complex human systems as living entities, evolving through processes of self-

organization:

Human systems are not only devices for processing information and making decisions. They have a life far richer and deeper—a life which heightens, magnifies, focuses, and restrains the life of all the human members which express themselves through these systems. They have a consciousness which holds

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systems values and norms that may differ significantly from individual values and norms. They nourish aspirations and are capable of a creativity which differs from individual creativity. And they are capable of a feeling and insight transcending these faculties in the individual sphere. Certainly, we could not even speak of human systems if they were not more than the sum of individual expressions of their members….If human systems are alive in an evolutionary sense, they also play a role in design—perhaps a very important role since they constitute the

highest evolved form which noogenesis has brought forth on our planet [emphasis added]. (pp. 73–74)

Jantsch (1975) called for an evolutionary perspective whereby “the jump toward higher

complexity in our conscious view of the world, and particularly in our appreciated world,

means the mutation of our appreciative system toward new dynamic regimes, toward ever

renewed spiritual life” (p. 205).

Regarding the role of “decisive institutions” in resisting systemic changes that

may be at variance with long-established cultural norms, Jantsch (1975) observed:

Most of the elaborate system models in use, and particularly in the economic area, are of a deterministic-mechanistic type, and few attempt to go beyond the purposive level….Yet, in a period of cultural transition like ours, in which new values and new norms come into play and new roles for institutions (and possibly also new institutions) are gradually emerging, it is the highest step in self-organization which becomes of crucial importance for planning and actual change. (p. 73)

Jantsch (1975), therefore, posited that through his capacity for design thinking informed

by the continuous flow of lived experience and reflective social interaction, “man the

cybernetic actor” engages through consciousness to create “the appreciated world” as

“man’s unique device for relating to a reality in whose shaping he is actively and

creatively participating” (pp. 106–107).

This appreciated world came into being with the development of man’s capability for self-reflection, a faculty encompassing much more than just thinking. It holds the world—the physical, social, and spiritual aspects of man’s world—as we view it not just through the understanding which our mind composes of it but through all forms of experience. It embraces our appreciation of what this world can do to and for us, and what we can do to and for it. It reflects our own place and movement in the world as well as our responsibility toward it, the demands which

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we make on it, and the personal concept we have formed of it. Most importantly, it holds the differences between the world as we want it to be and the world as we actually perceive it. Thus, the appreciated world becomes the motor for change

induced by human action [emphasis added]. (p. 106)

Finally, Jantsch (1975) suggested that by activating purposeful planning across various

sectors of society, including initiatives for defining the “systems design role of business”

(p. 221), we can achieve balance in the vertical integration of three levels of planning:

The “know-how” of operational or tactical planning, corresponding to behavior and to a mechanistic type of system; the “know-what” of strategic planning, corresponding to moral action and to an adaptive type of system; and the “know-where-to” of policy planning, corresponding to purpose and direction and to an inventive type of system. (Jantsch, 1975, p. 256).

Similarly, Capra (2002) suggested that from the perspective of evolutionary

systems theory, the dynamic and emergent qualities of purposeful, self-organizing, and

creative human systems are precisely what enable us to distinguish them from rigid,

mechanistic institutions in the sense that they have a certain “aliveness.” These human

systems are able to co-evolve with their systemic environments, and like all living things,

they express themselves through embodied structures and processes, which include the

embodied processes of human cognition and conscious experience.

Other complementary perspectives, focusing on the central role of human

consciousness in unfolding societal evolutionary potentials, are provided by A. M. Taylor

(1976), Csikszentmihalyi (1993), and Banathy (2000) as well as prominent theorists in

the field of integral studies including Wilber (1996), Combs (2002) and McIntosh (2007).

Like the evolutionary systems they describe, these and the other major theoretical works

described above draw us into an integrative vision of societal evolution that holds the

promise of a nature-culture continuum emerging from the chaotic field generated by the

rapid diffusion of self-replicating technological and cultural memes converging at a

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higher level of complexity through conscious self-organization of appreciative systems

(autopoiesis) and complementary processes of nature-inspired mimesis (or biomimicry;

Benyus, 1997), and presencing (Louv, 2011; Scharmer, 2009). With particular emphasis

on the emancipatory and transformative dimensions of evolutionary learning, Giblett

(2011) called upon practitioners and citizens to engage “memory,” “spiritual

interactions,” and “multi-sensory ways” of knowing, together with the critical

deconstruction of “all theory” (p. 54).

What emerges from a review of the above theoretical works is an evolutionary

perspective centered on human consciousness. In its application, this emerging

perspective may offer an opportunity for deconstruction of harmful meme complexes, and

for the formation of appreciative human activity systems enabling a more dynamic

process of self-organization around emerging, value-based evolutionary potentials.

However, insofar as the target of deconstruction and transformation is precisely

“the way we think” at a collective level, it should be no surprise that individuals acting in

isolation often will encounter great resistance in challenging long-standing societal

norms. Such resistance is indicative of the depth of understanding and learning needed to

move between incommensurable worldviews. For example, the mainstream political

economy of global capitalism may be said to constitute just such a harmful, self-

replicating meme complex, insidiously converting the world’s vast stores of “natural,

cultural, social and spiritual capital into money,” and thereby shaping our collective

thinking according to a homogenous system of market-based value. As discussed more

fully below, this globally dominant meme complex inhibits the emergence of

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heterogeneous local appreciative systems that might better serve to build quality lives

through the progressive unfolding of evolutionary potentials (Eisenstein, 2011, p. 79).

Influential works by Banathy (2000), Korten (2006), Mackey and Sisodia (2014),

and Senge et al. (2010), all call into question the “purposelessness” of conventional

economic thought based in the aforementioned discredited naturalistic philosophy of

human nature and a failed multigenerational social experiment that we know today as the

Efficient Markets Hypothesis (Patel, 2009). These complementary perspectives represent

a call for purposeful engagement centered on the teleological-systemic role of human

consciousness, including questions of human values. It is through such purposeful self-

organizing dynamics that human activity systems will be able to evolve and transcend the

binary that has separated a mechanistic logic of the marketplace from an inherently

wholistic reality-as-experienced.

Finally, Scharmer and Kaufer (2013) observed that “the difference between

natural laws and the social field is that the actors in social systems are able to initiate

change” (p. 69). In a manner similar to Jantsch’s (1975) notion of the appreciated world

as shared consciousness and evolving social construct, Scharmer and Kaufer (2013)

characterized purposeful social change as a co-creative alignment between the “exterior

challenges that can no longer be ignored” and the “internal resonance with an awakening

human consciousness and will” (p. 73).

At the level of community, therefore, we are faced with the challenge of moving

away from a disembodied, homogeneous reality consisting of values-as-ideologies and

mediated by highly abstract ideas such as free enterprise, equal opportunity, or progress

that have far outlived the original context of their creation. Our corresponding challenge

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is to move toward an embodied, heterogeneous reality, where difference is celebrated as

generative potential, and values are understood in relational terms, “conceptions of the

principles and enduring themes governing personal relations and processes between

ourselves and reality” (Jantsch, 1975, p. 138). Values, accordingly, can be understood as

emergent qualities of complex living systems, mediated and unfolded through acquired

habits of presencing, dialogue, and co-creative meaning-making that can reliably guide

our thoughts and actions in the ever-changing field of lived experience.

Theoretical approaches to systemic analysis and problem solving. In

Jackson’s (2000) survey and analysis of the systems literature, he identified four

“generic” and incommensurable perspectives regarding the nature of reality and

knowledge—functionalist, interpretive, emancipatory, and postmodern. Table 1 briefly

describes the differences between these multiple perspectives:

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Table 1

Jackson’s (2000) Four Generic Systems Perspectives

Systems Approach

Root Metaphor(s) Tenor Perspective(s)

Functionalist (Hard Systems Thinking)

Mechanism, organiscism, and formism

Modernist, positivist

Assumes the real-world is systemic and aims to reveal law-like relations between a system’s parts, structures, or mechanisms governing its behavior.

Interpretive (Soft Systems Thinking)

Contextualism, culture, politics

Subjectivist, hermeneutic

Accepts that multiple perceptions of reality exist and it seeks to understand and embrace a plurality of subjectivities, including the perceptions, values, beliefs, and interests employed in constructing social reality.

Emancipatory Psychic prisons, organizations/ institutions as instruments of domination

Radical reformist, deconstructionist

Suspicious of the current social order, seeks to radically change societal structures so as to alleviate unequal power relations, “false-consciousness” and other systemic forms of oppression

Postmodern (post-structuralist)

Carnival Contextualist; pragmatist.

Aims to debunk “grand narratives” and promote novelty and disorder through methods of deconstruction and genealogy; seeks to reclaim conflict and difference while ensuring that marginalized voices are heard.

The apparent incommensurability of these multiple systems approaches, arguably,

is one of the factors that can limit efforts by proponents of applied systems science to

achieve a true, cross-disciplinary adoption of systems thinking in education, in research

and in diverse practice settings. However, in the dialogical and participatory context of

community action research, this apparent limitation might also be transformed into a

strength; an opportunity to enlarge the scope of inquiry so as to encompass multiple

perspectives, or even multiple worldviews, reflecting the plurality of cultural

backgrounds and life experiences of the participants. Such diversity, while presenting its

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own set of unique challenges, also can be a source of generativity when undertaken

pursuant to a well-facilitated process that invites deep transformative learning. As

discussed below, such a process would build the metacognitive competencies of the

participants in ways that enable them to become more effective in designing sustainable

solutions in the face of complex systemic problems.

Total Systems Intervention. As described by Flood and Jackson (1991), the

current lack of unity within the field of applied systems science has led to a situation

where, in general, “the idea of system has become contentless in everyday language”

(p. 22). To address this situation, Flood and Jackson (1991) articulated a strategy, Total

Systems Intervention (TSI), which strategically employs metaphor as a tool for managing

complexity while translating theory into practice:

Consciously looking at a problem situation using different metaphors should help a manager in creative thinking. Once it has been decided which metaphor best captures the essence of the issues of concern, it is a short step to identifying the perceived nature of the problem context in terms of the classification of systems methodologies. Using the “system of systems methodologies,” a relevant systems approach can then be chosen. (p. 22)

This approach posits that the selection among applied systems methodologies should be

responsive, not only to differences in worldviews of the practitioners, but also to

differences in the nature of the problems to be addressed and the contexts in which

solutions are being sought. “Systems approaches are based upon different metaphorical

understandings, different views of reality and this conditions the way each advises

seeking to intervene in and change organizations” (p. 32). Flood and Jackson (1991)

therefore suggested that “[we can] reestablish interest by showing how [a general

conception of system] could be filled with content, and provided with different

‘flavorings,’ to produce a number of systems metaphors” (p. 22):

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• Machine (closed system)

• Organism (open system)

• Brain (viable system involving neurocybernetic “thinking” )

• Culture (nebulous, shared characteristics within group, corporation, or society)

• Political (unitary, pluralistic, or coercive).

It is further understood that these metaphors are not mutually exclusive. Thus, in the

community-based context of this study, participants might gain shared insight by

exploring community system dynamics with reference to one or several of the above

metaphors, depending upon the questions asked and the meanings these metaphors carry

for the co-inquirers.

With respect to consideration of problem context, Flood and Jackon (1991)

offered the following way of organizing intervention approaches (see Table 2), depending

upon both the nature of relationships between participants and the level of complexity:

Table 2

Flood and Jackson’s (1991) System of Systems Methodologies

UNITARY PLURALISTIC COERCIVE

SIMPLE Operational research Systems analysis Systems engineering System dynamics

Social systems design Strategic assumption surfacing & testing

Critical systems heuristics

COMPLEX Viable system diagnosis General system theory Socio-technical systems thinking Contingency theory

Interactive planning Soft systems methodology

??

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In the context of this study, the research questions as framed would appear to

entail social, technological, and ecological systems dynamics that range from simple to

complex. Furthermore, the context of this study would appear pluralistic to the extent that

participants engaged within the place-based community setting, particularly in the setting

of a cosmopolitan and rapidly changing urban environment, may well be found to

entertain divergent worldviews. Finally, if we maintain that an important aim of this

study is to explore evolutionary potentials through dialogue and other practices holding

out the possibility of an emergent evolutionary consciousness—a pluralistic-yet-

ontologically unified perspective within a non-dualistic, non-anthropocentric conceptual

framework of critical, embodied realism derived from our close observation of the

dynamic qualities and characteristics of living systems—GST and Viable Systems theory

would appear to provide a rich set of tools for transformative learning, collaborative

design, and shared reflection (see discussion “Viable systems model” section).

Also, considering our process for choosing among alternative methodologies and

methods from an ethical perspective, we immediately encounter the question of whether

we are upholding core democratic principles (Banathy, 1996; Churchman, 1979). Flood

and Jackson (1991) addressed this question with the suggestion that, under the total

systems intervention approach, the participants themselves should be engaged in the

choice of methodology(ies). This, of course, begs the further question of how such

selection might be made, given that participants will be immediately confronted with the

task of self-organizing and collective decision-making within a socio-ecological context

involving a high degree of systemic complexity; specifically, a context involving

questions touching upon both physical, and mental, system dynamics.

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Critical Systems Thinking and Social Systems Design. In addition to upholding

democratic principles, relevant literature suggests that social context should be taken into

account as a relevant factor informing our choice of systems approach(es). Specifically,

the literature on critical systems thinking and social systems design, respectively,

emphasizes the importance of considering the context-specific interests and continuously

evolving assumptions and purposes of the participants in designing the inquiry system.

The former approach follows from a critique of the functionalist assumptions of hard

systems thinking, based upon the view that “very few real-world problem situations

present themselves in terms of systems with clearly defined goals and objectives”

(Jackson, 2000, p. 356). This approach calls for the development of “critical awareness”

(which encompasses “social awareness”) including awareness of the “strengths and

weaknesses, and the theoretical underpinnings, of available systems methodologies to be

unearthed” (Jackson, 2000, p. 357) and calling for increased attention to be given to “the

importance of the social context in which the methodologies were used” (Jackson, 2000,

p. 357). Proponents of critical systems thinking, therefore, assert that what is needed is a

“critique of the assumptions different systems approaches make about social science,

social reality and organizations” (Jackson, 2000, pp. 356–357) including a critique of the

aspirations of soft systems methodologies. Habermas, for example, in developing his

“theory of three human interests, the technical, practical and emancipatory” (as cited in

Jackson, 2000, p. 357) warned about the dominance of instrumental reason (wedded to

the technical interest) in many systems approaches, which may prevent various systems

methodologies from addressing different human interests. Similarly, Foucault questioned

the legitimacy of all “systematizing” and “totalizing” endeavors (Jackson, 2000, p. 357).

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Also emphasizing the dynamic, and at times discontinuous, nature of participatory

inquiry and design activity, the Social Systems Design approach, as articulated by

Banathy (1996) advances a perspective that “the constantly emerging new realities

require continual design activity at all levels of society” and “the building of a design

culture enables us to create participative democracy” (p. 37). This perspective, which

maintains that the task of building design culture is the “prime directive” for society,

follows from observing that we are confronted with the “ever accelerating and dynamic

changes and transformations of the current era, [and therefore] piecemeal adjustments of

systems that are still grounded in the design of the industrial machine age will create

more problems than they solve” (Banathy, 1996, p. 37). Social systems design provides a

“new intellectual technology” by enabling “future-creating disciplined inquiry” whereby

“people engage in this inquiry in order to design a system that realizes their vision of the

future society, their own expectations, and the expectations of their environment”

(Banathy, 1996, p. 45). Social systems design contrasts with traditional social planning in

that it “seeks to understand a problem situation as a system of interconnected,

interdependent, and interacting issues and create a design as a system of interconnected,

interdependent, interacting, and internally consistent solution ideas [emphasis added]”

(Banathy, 1996, p. 46).

Interpretive Systems Approach (Soft Systems thinking). The rejection of

deterministic thinking, or the notion that social systems are goal seeking, in favor of a

view that social systems are “relationship maintaining,” lies at the heart of Peter

Checkland’s (1981) soft systems methodology, which in turn draws upon Geoffrey

Vicker’s (1968) earlier work on appreciative systems. This approach is concerned not

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with problems per se, but with “problem situations.” Thus, in organizations, institutions,

and other real world human activity systems, problems arise that are neither clearly

defined nor clearly structured. Simply put, in these situations, “history always changes

the agenda” (Checkland, 1981, p. 155). From this perspective, we can understand a

problem situation as “a condition characterized by a sense of mismatch, which eludes

precise definition, between what is perceived to be actuality and what is perceived might

become actuality” (Checkland, 1981, p. 155). This approach focuses on “conditions to be

alleviated” rather than “problems to be solved” (Checkland, 1981, p. 155). Checkland’s

(1981) soft systems methodology specifically utilized action research as a programme

that “could be used in tackling soft, ill-structured problems [where] its criterion of

success was that the people concerned felt that the problem had been ‘solved’ or that the

problem situation had been ‘improved’ or that insights had been gained” (p. 146).

Checkland (1981) defined his soft systems methodology as an indeterminate process that

will “lack the precision of a technique but will be a firmer guide to action than a

philosophy”:

Where a technique tells you “how” and a philosophy tells you “what,” a methodology will contain elements of both “what” and “how.” In this sense the research programme sought a methodology for using systems concepts which would have four characteristics: it should be capable of being used in actual problem situations; it should be not vague in the sense that is should provide a greater spur to action than a general everyday philosophy; it should be not

precise, like a technique, but should allow insights which precision might exclude; it should be such that any developments in “systems science” could be included in the methodology and could be used if appropriate in a particular situation. (p. 162)

As outlined by Checkland (1981) this generic methodology entails a nonlinear

process of interpretation that moves between real world activities (including “expression”

of the problem situation and action in furtherance of its improvement) and systems

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thinking activities (including development of root definitions and system models). Based

upon his pioneering action research in a variety of organizational settings, Checkland

(1981) found that, “the most effective users of the methodology have been able to use it

as a framework into which to place purposeful activity during a systems study, rather

than as a cookery book recipe [emphasis added] (pp. 162–163). This emphasis on

purposeful activity and organizational learning in the face of indeterminate problem

situations places Checkland’s generic approach squarely within the category of “soft

systems” approaches that also includes Warfield’s (1990) interactive management,

Churchman’s (1979) strategic assumption and surfacing and testing, Senge’s (2006)

organizational learning and transformation and Jackson’s (2000) generic interpretive

systems methodology.

Emancipatory Systems Approach. Consistent with the above participatory

worldview that lies at the heart of community action research, emancipatory systems

approaches aim to

provide a critique of current social arrangements, the way they benefit some groups at the expense of others, and [offer] a vision of a better state of affairs that can be brought about by social action—a rational society governed by communicative competence, a classless society, a society free of racial and/or gender oppression, etc. (Jackson, 2000, p. 328)

This approach, as it has developed in the literature, is compatible with the emphasis on

participation and interpretation carried in the soft systems approaches mentioned above,

and offers an enhancement in the form of a critique stemming from the generally

inadequate treatment of power relationships found in much of the relevant systems

literature. Its practitioners also seek to change societal structures in a manner that is

compatible with the above-mentioned critical systems and social systems design

approaches, but with a specific emphasis on the alleviation of unequal power relations

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and all systemic forms of oppression (Jackson, 2000). While this approach is understood

in theory to encompass a potentially wide range of engaged, emancipatory practices, a

unified emancipatory systems methodology has yet to be developed in the practice

setting. Jackson (2000) described three forms of emancipatory systems:

• Emancipation as liberation: follows from social theory which allows critique of the existing social system and indicates some alternative, improved social arrangement.

• Emancipation through discursive rationality: same thought tradition as liberation but leading to a new critical standard – communication free from domination.

• Emacipation through oblique use of systems methods: extending the basic emancipatory rationale but combining it with more traditional systems methodologies or methods, taking advantage of their “critical kernel” (p. 292).

Jackson (2000, pp. 328–330) offered a generic emancipatory systems

methodology in an effort to overcome some of the difficulties that have tended to limit

the emancipatory systems approach in developing a clear methodology that links theory

with practice. These difficulties include a rejection of “piecemeal improvement

strategies” attributed to the above-mentioned interpretive approaches by some

emancipatory systems theorists, and a commitment to what some may view as “grand

narratives” of “utopian change” that leads to the imposition of impossible standards,

while possibly foreclosing more achievable, pragmatic strategies for improvement in the

real world context. By and large, these difficulties can be summarized as stemming from

a failure of some emancipatory systems thinkers to recognize the quality of

indeterminacy found in complex human activity systems.

As described by Capra (2002), however, the prospect of radical institutional

changes affecting the fundamental structures of the current global capitalist system is

rapidly becoming a real world inevitability, due to an increasing mismatch between

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inherently unsustainable institutionalized practices of that system, and the practical

realities imposed by complexity itself. We can anticipate profound change as 20th

century power structures encounter the rise of the networked society, and as the excesses

of an industrial system designed for endless growth encounter the reality of a living

planet consisting of fragile, life-sustaining ecosystems subject to natural limits. Thus,

while emancipatory systems methodology is still an area predominated by theory, works

by Flood (1999), Midgley (2000, 2004), Christakis (2006), Stephens (2013), and Jones

(2014) are giving shape to a new praxis-oriented emancipatory systems methodology that

is focused less on the articulation of grand narratives, and more on strategies to leverage

opportunities presented by current conditions of societal plurality and indeterminacy to

bring about fundamental, systemic change at the institutional level in pursuit of a better

alignment with ecological and social realities.

Viable Systems Model. In human activity systems, diversity is often viewed as a

common asset in theory and a challenge in practice. Flood (1999) considered how in

modern society, the differences in gender, race, disability and other issues often lead to

differences in “knowledge-power” whereby “what is considered to be valid knowledge

may be determined by powerful people” (p. 72). Flood (1999) suggested that leading

proponents of applied systems thinking, including Senge (2006) and Argyris and Schön

(1991) gave inadequate treatment of issues of power relationships “that lead to

entrenched patterns of behavior that bias outcomes from discussion and dialogue” (Flood,

1999, p. 72). To address this concern, people must be able to decide for themselves

whether the ways that problem situations are defined and system boundaries delineated

are sufficient to uphold participatory values. By moving from “systems thinking” to

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“systemic thinking,” it is possible to attain a greater appreciation of the ethical judgments

that inevitably are involved in our attempts to employ systems principles and models to

address complexities of organizational and community life.

The Viable Systems Method represents a move towards systemic appreciation that

recognizes the fluidity and indeterminacy of problem situations, and the role of

subjectivity in characterizing situations in terms of “dilemmas” (a rejection of a priori

problem definitions coupled with a recognition that “each person experiences issues in a

different way” (Flood, 1999, p. 88; see also Beer, 1974; Flood & Jackson, 1991). As a

methodology, Viable Systems Method utilizes recursive design to uphold the principle of

participation, whereby organizations or communities are said to “contain themselves” by

means of their constituent functions, each being performed by systemic subunits that,

when viable, express the qualities of autonomy and continuity with dynamics that make

for an integrated wholeness.

From this perspective, a sustainable organization or community is one that is

regulated, learns, adapts and evolves. It is constructed around five main management (or

governance) functions:

• Operations: it performs primary activities of the organization.

• Co-ordination: it harmoniously ensures efficient and stable use of resources.

• Control: it interprets policy decisions and ensures they are implemented.

• Intelligence: it captures and transmits SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) information of internal and external environments.

• Policy: it makes strategic decisions on the basis of SWOT information, and arbitrates between antagonistic internal and external demands, representing essential qualities of the whole.

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Barile and Saviano (2013) further developed the above model as an articulation of

the Vital Systems Approach interpretive framework which is offered to serve as “a

stimulus to a frontier research interdisciplinary effort of scholars, researchers and

practitioners that should aim at achieving ‘resonant’ outcomes, through a knowledge co-

creating approach” (p. 85).

We argue that, given that any social entity acts according to a consonance / competitiveness relational logic, the possibility for (dyadic or multiple) interacting entities to achieve their goals by reciprocally gaining access to resources depends on their capability to create a harmonic relational context in which each of them achieves his/her own goals through what can be considered a co-creation process. (p. 70)

This framework, which places equal emphasis upon systemic context and relational

dynamics in the multi-stakeholder setting, seeks to transcend the conventions of

deterministic thinking that have tended to treat social participation as if it were at odds

with organizational effectiveness. The concept of viability, derived from close

observation of the dynamic patterns emerging among natural systems, offers a unifying

set of principles derived from GST that in the application are less likely to impose a

priori privileged perspectives upon the problem situation than might be the case under

the system dynamics orientation that pervades much of the systems thinking movement

(Flood, 1999).

Open systems and self-transcendence. The above survey of approaches to

systemic inquiry is intended to place us as co-inquirers in a better position to accomplish

our primary task of transmission, interpretation, and embodiment of knowledge, by

highlighting those approaches that appear to be most relevant to our quest for deep

understanding and practical competencies that enable us to serve as agents of conscious

evolutionary change. One important inference that can be drawn from the above survey

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pertains to the notion that our methodology of choice, and the manner in which it is

framed and undertaken, should exhibit the characteristics of an open system; one that

exhibits recursive dynamics and a capacity for self-transcendence. In other words, our

aim should be to design, embody, and give effect to an inquiry system that enables

processes of change leading to sustainable outcomes in both the internal realm of human

consciousness and the external realms of community, place, and society.

By giving attention equally to internal and external dynamics, within a conceptual

framework that is constitutive of a larger systemic wholeness, we hold out the promise of

an emerging integral consciousness; one that transcends the conventional binaries of

subject and object, individual and collective and so forth (McIntosh, 2007). We seek new

consciousness, not as a subjective construct, but as a field of potential ready to unfold at

the pre-perceptual level of awareness (Merleau-Ponty, 1962/2007), continuously shaping

the flow of events amidst the complexities of community life (Jantsch, 1976). As

suggested by Pankow (1976), “consciousness is a metaperception, the vindication of

perception, the perception of perception” (p. 29). This understanding of human

consciousness and its relationship to evolutionary potential is consistent with an

expanding notion of the human self that locates both causality and emergent value within

the field of relationships that connects us in a web of interdependency with all that lives.

We create, are co-created, by virtue of the formative, cybernetic, and evolutionary

processes that are known to govern all living systems on Earth.

A. M. Taylor (1976) provided a useful model for mapping the dynamics of

societal change that applies systems concepts to the evolutionary principle of order

through fluctuation (E. Laszlo, 1987; Prigogine, 1976). This model may prove

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particularly useful in the context of community action research, because it offers a

conceptual tool for analyzing societal and ecological change processes, respectively, in

relation to the systemic properties of stability, resilience, complexity, and discontinuity;

in a manner that brings into sharp relief those evolutionary dynamics that appear to be

emerging from within the 21st century context:

Whereas in the past science and technology were the chief agents of positive feedback in transforming the man–environment relationship, while societal technics provided the negative feedback mechanisms to stabilize that relationship, perhaps what will be required in the years ahead is a progressive reversal of these traditional roles. Given our finite resources and the need to accommodate a still burgeoning planetary population, our science and technology must devise new methods for conserving those resources and stabilizing our global ecology, while we must also in turn give full rein to the creation of new social institutions and values to encourage heterogeneity and new states of awareness among our cultures. (A. M. Taylor, 1976, p. 183)

This model encompasses the relationship between systemic feedback and the

dynamics of stability and change, while also accounting for the fundamental

indeterminacy of societal institutions which “constitutes a challenge to self-awareness”

(Pankow, 1976, p. 28). Using this, and similar models derived from the Viable Systems

Method, Social Systems Design, and other approaches mentioned above, we as co-

inquirers may better be able to conceptualize how community and societal institutions

may contribute to the maintenance of virtuous and vicious cycles that drive change and

thus are likely to mediate the complex relationship between intentions and outcomes at

all levels of social engagement.

Theoretical Exploration: Evolutionary Guidance as an Integral Systemic Process

In anticipation of a common quest to recognize, understand, and appreciatively

work with the evolutionary potentials of Cleveland’s place-based communities, I have

framed certain questions and explored certain premises found in the literature. The

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foregoing review of relevant philosophical perspectives and theoretical insights on

societal and conscious evolution presents an opportunity to highlight certain thematic

continuities, and to synthesize an integrative perspective which might further inform and

clarify the initial choice of constructs used in this study, thereby setting the stage for a

more detailed discussion of methodology and research procedure. Among these major

themes carried forward from the literature as a foundation for shared inquiry are the

following:

• A philosophical perspective rooted in critical and embodied realism, hermeneutics, and critical posthumanism serves to locate this study within an intellectually rigorous and coherent framework for disciplined inquiry.

• This framework emerges from radical deconstruction of the dualistic worldview of mainstream reductionist science, and a pragmatic epistemology that eschews the polar extremes of absolute authoritarianism and absolute relativism. It locates the roots of human understanding within the ever-unfolding processes of an undivided wholeness, encountered within an embodied reality where human consciousness and understanding are realized as unfolding potentials within a dynamic, appreciative system embedded within larger systemic processes of a living biosphere and cosmos. In other words, we can only know life by participating fully in it.

• Current literature discloses a global context that begs for radical transformation of certain institutionalized habits of thought that are based upon outdated, abstract premises that are out of step with today’s social, ecological, and technological realities.

• These persistent mental habits (or memes) are systemically reinforced within the mainstream institutions of the global political economy in ways that replicate system dynamics and outcomes that threaten to permanently undermine human quality of life and irreversibly degrade the social and ecological fabric upon which human life depends.

• Multiple 21st century challenges posed by the persistence of institutionalized cultural memes based upon a fragmented and mechanistic worldview must be met by the conscious cultivation of nondeterministic and post-anthropocentric thinking which together form the basis of an emerging evolutionary consciousness.

• Accordingly, leadership for a sustainable and flourishing world must involve the acquisition of new consciousness that reflects a shared commitment to

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whole systems thinking, co-creative democratic participation, and the cultivation of common values based on a deep appreciation of the complexity and emergent qualities of healthy, living systems.

Summary and Conclusions

In summary, the above survey of literature is intended to create a learning

infrastructure that can inform a context-specific inquiry undertaken as community action

research by organizational and community leaders who seek to address the questions

posed by this study via a normative planning approach using the methods and tools of

evolutionary systems design. The review, therefore, is not primarily intended to identify

gaps in the relevant literature. Rather it is intended to orient and ground a collective

inquiry within a set of philosophical and theoretical premises that can serve to clarify the

prevailing understandings of current thinkers who have considered various relevant

dimensions of the problématique from which the study questions are derived, thus

moving the inquiry from being a purely theoretical exercise to one that is situated within

a clearly defined real world context.

In this way, the literature review constitutes a first step towards developing the

architecture of an inquiry system that will enable participants to forge a synthesis of

theoretical and practical knowledge that is ideal-seeking and that transcends conventional

problem definitions. This literature review further provided a conceptual framework to

guide data gathering and analysis, enabling participants to reach beyond the given

perspectives of published authors, and those of the initiating researcher who compiled

and synthesized the referenced literature, to build a common pool of organized

knowledge that allows participants to reach a transformed understanding of the topics

considered. In this way, the literature review supports critical inquiry that is open-ended

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and not beholden to any assumed privileged perspective, in keeping with the

emancipatory aims of the action research methodology.

The literature furthermore serves to situate this study within a basic philosophical

orientation towards inquiry that is hermeneutic (dialogical and interpretive) and

pragmatic. The context for this inquiry is stated via a series of five core premises that are

expressed tentatively, yet reflect what appears to be an emerging consensus among

authors whose combined perspectives, based upon an accumulating body of empirical

evidence, represent an urgent call to action. These authors urge us all, as citizens of an

interdependent global community, to reconsider long-standing conventional assumptions

that continue to influence global economic policy, in order to address what appears to be

a growing disconnect between conventional economic thought and the actual conditions

that constitute the lived reality of a growing percentage of the human family during this

time of ever increasing global interdependency.

The above call to transformative and emergent leadership defines the pragmatic

and emancipatory aims of this study. As informed by the literature, these aims warrant an

integral and multilens approach to inquiry, utilizing a process of transformative learning

leading to interpretive understanding and engaged action via conscious evolutionary

systems design. The long-term aim of this approach to inquiry is to re-establish symbiosis

between human activity systems and the Earth’s living biosphere by emphasizing

conscious, appreciative attention, rather than abstract-representational thought, as a

reliable pathway to understanding, self-transformation and community building.

Specifically, it warrants that we treat abstract truth claims (including such claims as form

the basis of our mainstream financial, governance, and educational institutions) as

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contingent and subject to critical deconstruction, and that we seek to develop our human

capacity for knowing as a function of our embodied, evolutionary potentials; including

such individual and collective potentials as may be realized through the processes of

critical reflection, appreciative interpretation, and engaged participation.

Building upon these core premises, I reviewed relevant literature on evolutionary

systems theory. A synthesis of views accumulated over the past several decades warrants

an understanding of evolution, including societal evolution, as an indeterminate process

made possible by the throughput of energy on Earth that is the result of the generation of

evolutionary potential. Evolution, thus understood, it is a dynamic process whereby

systems self-organize to create new heterogeneous (dissipative) structures and to generate

new systemic potentials, while progressively moving from one non-equilibrium state to

the next. Accordingly, it can be said that nothing happens that cannot be attributed to

some manner of difference between heterogeneous system components, or between a

given system and its environment. Thus, evolutionary potential is increased under

conditions of heterogeneity and disequilibrium (difference and openness), but decreased

under conditions of homogeneity and equilibrium (uniformity and closure). In sum, this

literature appears to warrant the conclusion that diversity and openness are necessary

conditions that further the evolution of human society.

The review also reveals how human activity systems from which society emerges

are distinguishable from other types of systems (including physical and biological

systems), insofar as they encompass appreciative subsystems; those manifestations of the

embodied human mind that express human values and human intentionality, and that in

the broader sense can be understood as the locus of all interpretive engagement from

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which we construct our individual and collective realities. Maturana and Varela

(1987/1998) suggest that “every act of knowing brings forth a world” and “all doing is

knowing, and all knowing is doing” (p. 26). The “act of knowing” can either contribute to

homogeneity (e.g., through classification and abstraction), or contribute to heterogeneity

(e.g., through generating awareness of uniqueness, sacredness).

A synthesis of several of the themes found in the literature reviewed, including

the literature on “sacred” or “caring” economics and related literature criticizing the

institutionalized abstraction known as homo economicus, coalesces around the

proposition that economic and technological (information processing) systems that

mediate our societal interactions by means of money and language can have a

tremendous influence on the unfolding and creation of evolutionary potentials. As

extensions of appreciative human activity systems, these institutionalized systems govern

the way that value is perceived and communicated in society. As currently used in the

absence of conscious cybernetic guidance, these systems of representation tend to foster

uniformity in the name of efficiency and therefore cannot be relied upon to generate the

evolutionary qualities of diversity and functional interrelatedness; conditions favorable to

life on Earth. When advanced economic and information processing systems are guided

by abstract cultural memes (e.g., profit, growth, commodification, market share), rather

than being consciously guided by human intentionality informed by ideal images

answerable to the embodied qualities of place and context, they will tend to function in

ways that promote atomistic uniformity leading to equilibrium and entropy; thereby

undermining the systemic capacity to generate new evolutionary potential.

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This perspective, along with constructivist perspectives developed within the field

of quantum physics and articulated by McFadden (2000), Goswami (1993), and Bohm

(1980) seem to add weight to the practical notion that habitual attempts to solve societal

problems by resort to abstraction are more likely than not to contribute to entropy and

decay.

Building upon this perspective, we might conclude that contemporary practices

such as “mindfulness,” “suspension,” and “presencing” that enable us to focus on that

which is unique among our relational interactions with each other and the things of the

world tend to contribute to the emergence of appreciative systems that foster

heterogeneity and the systemic unfolding of our collective evolutionary potentials. In the

mental sphere, the act of presencing (active cultivation of nondualistic awareness, or

giving attention to the unique beingness of the human or nonhuman “other”) is conscious

embodiment and an expression of complexity (differentiation and integration) which

generates evolutionary potential favorable to the emergence of more complex living

systems. It includes practices that cultivate the sense of the sacred and the sense of place.

What emerges from the above literature review and theoretical synthesis is an

evolutionary perspective centered on human culture and consciousness, and a set of

related themes that provide a basis for linking theory with the strategic praxis of

evolutionary learning and evolutionary design in furtherance of community (and global)

revitalization. In its application, this emerging perspective offers an opportunity for

emancipatory deconstruction of harmful meme complexes within our communities and

societal institutions, and for the formation of appreciative human activity systems that

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guide and support more dynamic processes of community self-organization around

emerging, value-based evolutionary potentials.

A primary means of achieving this deep understanding and the development of

practical competencies leading to transcendence through conscious evolutionary design,

is through one or more of the approaches to systemic inquiry surveyed above. To test the

usefulness and validity of this set of theoretical perspectives in the practice setting, the

study participants were engaged in design conversation and related collaborative

practices to build relationships of trust and foster integral learning within a supportive

community environment. Using conversation to collectively accomplish a set of defined

learning activities and design tasks as described in Chapter 3, and demonstrated in the

account of attained research results presented in Chapters 4 and 5, the researcher and

participants set out to embody the qualities of an evolutionary guidance system; enabling

discontinuous-transformative change by unfolding hidden potentials within the internal

realms of human consciousness and the external realms of community, place, and society.

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Chapter 3: Methodology

This dissertation, as community action research, is intended to catalyze and

investigate a process of socio-ecological capacity-building undertaken by community

leaders for the purpose of guiding self-organizing processes of cultural and institutional

transformation. The study is intended to complement a current, citizen-led effort to foster

community revitalization within the framework of the Sustainable Cleveland described in

Chapter 1. The specific aim of this study was to create a space for disciplined inquiry that

enabled participants to coalesce as an evolutionary learning community, equipped with

knowledge, skills, learning architecture, and a common purpose that enabled them each

to effectively engage as a conversation leaders within a diversity of community practice

settings. Such transformative learning and social action is accomplished using the praxis

of designing conversation to facilitate ideal-seeking social change inspired by an

appreciation of values and qualities found in communities as thriving, living systems.

Using the methodology described in this chapter, the study complements and supports

Cleveland’s community revitalization agenda. The participants, by engaging in a

facilitated action research process, gain proficiency as integrative learners, change agents

and design thinkers equipped to master complexity using selected approaches, methods,

and tools of applied systems science.

Specifically, the participants as co-inquirers and as conversation leaders

collaborated to implement an appreciative system as a mutual strategy to guide social

change. By enacting a discursive process of evolutionary inquiry, the participants

developed shared images of Cleveland’s neighborhoods as living systems expressing

unique ecological and cultural attributes of place and community corresponding to “real

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world” context of diverse local community settings. Through successive cycles of

planning, action and reflection, participants developed leadership and practice

competencies that enabled them to convene and facilitate designing conversations that

guide the progressive unfolding of collective human potentials at the group, community,

and institutional levels. Through such discourse and shared reflection, participants

developed metacognitive awareness of appreciative qualities and dynamics of the

relevant community systems, and evaluate progressive change using relevant markers of

socio-ecological health; including markers that may reveal emergent qualities of

generativity and resilience at the levels of neighborhood, institutions, and society. The

quality of generativity is deemed to encompass attributes of creativity, optimism,

courage, interactivity, rootedness, immanence, spontaneity, dynamic tension, and

complex unity, whereas the quality of resilience encompasses attributes of adaptability,

agility, cooperation, connectivity, and diversity (Zolli, 2012).

This intention to foster progressive change within and beyond place-based

communities via a shared strategy for catalyzing and guiding societal evolution aligns

with a perspective offered by Scharmer (2010):

I have found that the biggest roadblock to moving from institutional paralysis to profound systemic renewal is the same: it’s the missing collective leadership capacity to draw together all key stakeholders and involve them in a process that begins with uncovering common intention and ends with collectively creating profound innovation on the scale of the whole system. (p. 2)

Drawing upon this perspective, the study methodology was designed to encompass within

the socio-ecological system of interest both conscious and subconscious dimensions of

community culture; the latter being comprised of cultural assumptions and structures of

consciousness that mediate how we individually and collectively experience the world

and interpret the events of daily life (Adams, 2000; Schein, 2010; Senge, 2006). As a

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relevant construct, human culture, including language, artifacts, and institutions, is

understood as a systemic expression of collective human consciousness. Affirming this

view, Combs (2002) stated that “each structure of consciousness can be understood as an

attractor, a process pattern of the brain and mind that produces a unique configuration of

experience” (p. 81). Accordingly, evolutionary consciousness as a relevant construct

encompasses the ability to illuminate and holistically integrate these (often hidden)

structures of consciousness in a manner that allows us to purposefully guide the dynamic,

future-creating processes of those complex socio-ecological systems in which we are

embedded (Banathy, 2000; Combs, 2002).

Building upon these theoretical premises, the participants form as an inquiry

group and strategically use dialogue and other forms of social discourse to develop

interpretive, holistic understanding and hone their practice skills through several learning

cycles, progressively expanding the scope of inquiry along a continuum that proceeds

from self, to community, to society at large. At each stage, participants seek to

understand and embody the qualities of evolutionary consciousness and evolutionary

competence that enable them to generate fields of conversation supporting the collective

attainment of desired outcomes, including ideal images of community as a healthy, living

system. By situating this learning and change strategy within the unique physical, social,

environmental, economic, and historical context of the City of Cleveland, Ohio, the

research method aims to foster the emergence of complementary qualities of

heterogeneity and pluralistic unity, whereby Cleveland’s place-based communities

emerge as complex evolving systems undergoing progressive evolutionary change in the

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manner posited by Csikszentmihalyi (1993) and several of the other evolutionary

theorists mentioned above.

Overview of Research Methodology

This study engages a selected, diverse group of community leaders as participants

in planning, implementing, and evaluating the praxis of designing conversation in the

community development context, undertaken as a strategy for enabling purposeful and

systemic change marked by the evolutionary unfolding of human potentials and realized

as the collective attainment of sustainable value within a diversity of community practice

settings. Using the method of community action research the participants together design,

engage with, and reflect upon an evolutionary learning process applied to build capacity

for evolutionary learning and conscious evolutionary design at the levels of community

and society, thereby enabling movement towards a vision of community revitalization

and societal transformation inspired by an appreciation of values found in healthy living

systems.

Between six and 10 study participants, reflecting a diversity of backgrounds and

organizational affiliations, were recruited to form an inquiry group to meet on multiple

occasions and interact in person, and also with the aid of an online learning platform, by

means of which they contribute their complementary skills, insights, and creative

potentials. The study proceeded through three cycles of learning and action: (a) entry and

preparation, (b) evolutionary design, and (c) embodying the evolutionary learning

community as an embedded community system. Through each of these learning cycles,

participants are afforded an opportunity to directly participate in complementary

processes of data collection, evaluation, and reporting, with the understanding that I

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retain sole responsibility for the specific findings, analysis and conclusions presented in

this dissertation and in furtherance of my academic goals and responsibilities as a

doctoral candidate. Using the research methodology described herein, my task was to

engage with the participants in a search for shared understanding and practice

competencies that support human capacity building at multiple levels, leading to self-

organizing community action and progressive societal change. The research participants

assisted with collection of data, thereby providing a mechanism for feedback informing

the shared inquiry process. The data were summarized as research outcomes, and

interpreted through critical, systemic evaluation and hermeneutic analysis, presented by

myself as initiating researcher working under the guidance of the Saybrook University

dissertation committee.

Senge and Scharmer (2001) defined a learning community is a diverse group of people

working together to nurture and sustain a knowledge-creating system, based on valuing

equally three interacting domains of activity: research, capacity building, and practice (p.

197). K. C. Laszlo (2000) defined the construct “evolutionary learning community” as “a

dynamical ideal image of a future educational system [merging] three interrelated

concepts (i.e., evolution, learning, and community)” (p. 40). Such a system is: (a)

learning-oriented rather than teaching-oriented—its “focus is lifelong learning and the

development of human potential” (p. 40); (b) synergistic and collaborative—it focuses on

learning that is self-directed, flexible, collaborative, and involves “learning process issues

about how to be in community” (p. 40); and (c) purposeful—it “seeks an alignment

between evolutionary processes of which we are a part, and empowers people to

participate in conscious evolution” (p. 40).

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In this study, the collaborating research participants worked towards becoming

and being an evolutionary learning community in furtherance of a common set of

purposes: (a) to generate awareness of appreciative system dynamics, practical

knowledge, and embodied-integral understanding that builds systemic capacity for

conscious evolutionary design inspired by the values and dynamic qualities of thriving

living systems, and (b) to engage in designing conversation as a strategy for revitalizing

Cleveland’s place-based communities and for attaining sustainable outcomes within the

larger society.

To accomplish the above-described tasks of transmission, interpretation, and

embodiment of knowledge in its multiple forms, participants are invited to engage in a

socially constructed process of “disciplined inquiry grounded in systems philosophy,

theory, and thinking and practice” (Jenlink & Carr, 1996, p. 34), known as design

conversation: “Design conversation is not a singular type or form of social discourse, but

rather a dynamic system comprised of different forms of discourse, each with a particular

purpose and mediational importance as semiotic tool in the system design activity”

(Jenlink, 2008a, pp. 220–221).

This discursive process of inquiry combines generative and strategic dialogue

with other forms of discourse, whereby the design conversation can be viewed as a

human activity system functioning to build evolutionary competencies and transform the

consciousness of participants to the point where they collectively embody an

evolutionary learning community that expresses the appreciative qualities and purposeful

characteristics of an evolutionary guidance system (Banathy, 1989, 2000). The intended

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outcomes of this discursive and formative process encompass both human understanding

and systemic change at the levels of individual, community, and society.

The study is designed to proceed through three inquiry cycles, each addressing a

specific research question. During each cycle, participants engaged in:

1. planning (including identification of stakeholder communities and relevant outcome measures);

2. action (as designing conversation within the group and diverse practice settings); and

3. learning conversations (including reflection, integration of knowledge, and feedback on how the process is working).

Most of the group conversations occurred during four monthly meetings scheduled at a

mutually convenient time and place, and supplemented by interaction occurring via e-

mail and video conference communication. Information regarding practice tools and

approaches to evolutionary inquiry was shared within a common knowledge space, and

each participant was free to decide which among these tools and approaches are best

suited to their individual practice settings.

The intended benefit for the participants is the opportunity to learn together and

participate in exploring and developing the potential of designing conversation as a

transformative community practice; a practice enabling beneficial social change guided

by discourse centered on consciously appreciated human values and ideals; and

exhibiting a strong commitment to democratic participation in shaping our collective

future. The inquiry process was designed to be completed in approximately four months.

Research Questions

To delineate the scope of the study, I return to the initial research questions which

were stated in Chapter 1. These questions are restated now in a way that clarifies how

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they served to guide participants towards exploring multiple domains of knowledge

within the dialogical and relational space created by the research. The general aim of

such holistic inquiry is to enable participants to acquire a set of evolutionary learning

competencies and to catalyze the emergence of a shared evolutionary consciousness,

thereby making evolutionary inquiry possible (Banathy, 2000). The multiple domains of

knowledge invoked by the stated research questions are:

1. interpretive-systemic description;

2. praxis-oriented knowledge; and

3. integral understanding.

Using this framework, the research questions articulated in Chapter 1 are restated here:

Interpretive-systemic knowledge: How might we understand and describe our

community system of interest, so as to encompass and facilitate dialogue regarding its

emergent qualities and characteristics, its intrinsic social, physical, technological, and

ecological elements, and its dynamic relationship with the larger systems in which it is

embedded?

Praxis-oriented knowledge: How might we translate the constructs and language

of evolutionary systems theory into a community praxis that yields measurable outcomes

indicative of the progressive unfolding of values, qualities, and emergent potentials found

within healthy, thriving, social-ecological systems?

Integral knowledge: How might we illuminate, critically deconstruct, and

transform our habits of perception, thought, and behavior, including our prevailing

language and cultural narratives concerning values and institutions, in ways that enable

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us to access our individual and collective potentials as change agents and leaders of

regenerative political economy?

Given its deliberate emphasis on self-organization and systemic emergence, this

study methodology was not designed to unfold as a neatly compartmentalized, linear

succession of knowledge-generating tasks. Rather it was designed to unfold through

transmission, dialogical interpretation, and living embodiment of knowledge within the

relational space created by the community-learning context.

Research Design

Community action research. The research design is structured to catalyze and

facilitate design conversation and related learning activities among the participants in a

manner that enables emergence of collective competencies and self-transformation

leading to engaged, community-level action in furtherance of the aims and purposes of

this study. As mentioned above, the primary purpose was to utilize practical knowledge

acquired via a purposeful self-organizing process of appreciative system design, inspired

by the values and dynamic qualities of thriving living systems, to guide the unfolding of

evolutionary potentials within the social, ecological, and technological dynamics of

Cleveland’s place-based communities and the larger society. This purpose called for an

approach to inquiry that will yield understanding at the interface between values, theory,

and engaged action:

Knowledge resides in processes of social reality construction. To know is to know how to act. We may call this action knowledge. It subsumes knowledge of the stable and enduring structures of social reality (representational knowledge), but goes beyond it to include knowledge about desirable directions that the construction process itself may take. Action knowledge is akin to Schon’s [sig] notion of knowing-in-action and it is such knowledge that action research generates. (Babüroḡlu & Ravn, 1992, p. 26)

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As a first step towards generating such a framework for transformative learning and

strategic, values-guided praxis, it is necessary to locate and provide a clear articulation of

the methodology (together with its philosophical underpinnings) that will guide the

inquiry and inform a rigorous and critical evaluation of the research outcomes, in terms

of both quality and validity.

The basic approach of this study—action research conducted within a place-based

community setting—distinguishes it from the more common types of dissertation

research where the primary aim is to test hypotheses regarding causal or correlative

relationships in support of generalizable, empirically supported propositions, and thereby

to “fill gaps” in the relevant disciplinary literature (Herr & Anderson, 2015). The aim of

community action research, in contrast, is to create a learning infrastructure within the

specific community context; a process involving research participants as co-inquirers,

enabling a dynamic and participatory process of knowledge development and engaged

action guided by a common set of principles and purposes, leading to desired social

change.

This action-oriented process was framed by several research questions as initially

stated in Chapter 1, which the participants were invited to consider and reshape through

on-going dialogue and interpretation. As co-inquirers, participants are invited to draw

upon both theoretical and practical domains of knowledge, and to engage their collective

intelligence through multiple cycles of planning, action, and reflection; functioning as a

cohesive learning community in the pursuit of mutually desired systemic improvement

(Senge & Scharmer, 2001).

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Such a process of co-inquiry may involve an effort to integrate multiple epistemic

or disciplinary perspectives in a manner that serves to generate an “appreciative setting”

for free and open inquiry among community members (Winder, 2005, p. 299).

Participatory research is a form of praxis that mirrors the history of human evolution. It is praxis that helps us to actualize our potentials and develop ourselves as a human community in which rationality plays an active role. For this reason, it is relevant to think of what we do as agents of change in terms of [representational, relational, and reflective] forms of knowledge. That is, we need to be conscious of cultivating all three forms of knowledge whenever we engage in rational activities aimed at making our lives more whole and satisfying. [This has] significance for emancipatory human endeavours in general, not just for participatory research. (Park, 2001, pp. 90–91)

As summarized in Chapter 1, the particular aims and circumstances of this

community action research study also warrant the incorporation of an evolutionary

systems design approach into the basic methodological framework. This approach

equipped participants with useful conceptual tools and enable them to better locate their

present inquiry within its broader societal context; a context that is ever changing as new

events unfold revealing emerging social, technological, and ecological dynamics that are

continuously reshaping human perceptions, thoughts, and actions in the world. As an

instantiation of evolutionary systems design, this research furthermore utilizes a

“normative planning approach” which “encourages the stakeholders of a system to

transcend conventional definitions of what is possible and realistic and engage freely in

the creation of more desirable states of the system” (Babüroḡlu & Ravn, 1992, p. 23).

Since this research also was intended to serve as a basis for a dissertation, my choice of

the community action research methodology entails an expectation that the

aforementioned participatory and co-creative learning process generates a synthesis of

theoretical and practical knowledge. I further expected that such acquired knowledge

would make a valuable contribution to the general literature on the topics considered. As

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reported in this dissertation, this study provides a basis for deepening (and transforming)

understanding of the topics considered and, where appropriate, propagating effective

action that is reliable and transferable to those practice circumstances where other place-

based communities may encounter similar challenges and opportunities, and where the

learning and transformative change outcomes realized during this study might be adapted

and improved upon within a diversity of community contexts.

Reason and Bradbury (2001) argued that action research, being rooted in a

“participatory worldview,” requires a different approach to questions of quality and

validity relative to the positivist research tradition as practiced by the mainstream

scientific academy. In action research, quality and validity are attained, not by attempting

to construe empirically supported inferences as universal truth claims, but by asking

“questions of emergence and enduring ways of knowing” (Reason & Bradbury, 2001, p.

12). This approach tends to emphasize relational practice, practical outcomes, and

significance, and it “encourages us to consider validity claims of different forms of

knowing in themselves and the relationship between different ways of knowing” (Reason

& Bradbury, 2001, p. 12).

Similarly, Herr and Anderson (2015) posit that the goals of action research

encompass multiple quality criteria, including: (a) the generation of new knowledge, (b)

the achievement of action-oriented outcomes, (c) the education of both researcher and

participants, (d) results that are relevant to the local setting, and (e) a sound and

appropriate research methodology. Each of these five criteria implies a corresponding

approach to testing validity of the research process and outcomes. These validity testing

criteria applied in action research stand in sharp contrast to the conventional stance of

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positivist science which places strong emphasis on the trustworthiness, or “truth value,”

of inferences drawn from data, as well as on the extent to which inferences can be

generalized beyond the particular population or practice setting. In contrast, validity

testing in the action research context enables us to rigorously evaluate both process and

outcomes against the pragmatic, emancipatory, and evolutionary goals of the action

research approach (Anderson & Herr, 2015, p. 62).

Evolutionary Learning and Applied Systems Science

To engage as an evolutionary learning community in the pursuit of interpretive

understanding leading to transformative action, we must encounter the challenges and

opportunities of complexity that arise from a characterization of the community as a

dynamic, self-organizing, socio-ecological system evolving within its larger societal

context. Such understanding should enable us to acknowledge “the chaotic, unpredictable

nature of complex dynamics” found within such human activity systems, while further

understanding that “subjectivity is emergent rather than given, distributed rather than

located solely in consciousness, [and] emerging from and integrated into a chaotic world

rather than occupying a position of mastery and control removed from it” (Hayles, 1999,

p. 291).

The field of applied systems science is relevant to action research in the complex

community setting insofar as it “refers to that part of the systems movement that has as its

primary concern the use of systems thinking to promote ‘problem solving’” (Jackson,

2000, p. 100). As currently delineated within the scientific academy, applied systems

science is understood, not as a discipline in its own right, but as a “transdiscipline” which

contributes “theories, models and methods [that] can add value in a variety of fields”

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(Jackson, 2000, p. 100). However, applied systems science also challenges action

researchers to think deeply about their assumptions and purposes leading into disciplined

inquiry, given that it encompasses a plurality of ontological and epistemological premises

that so far have not been reconciled under a unified approach to disciplined systems

inquiry (Jackson, 2000; Rousseau, 2013).

Cleveland Neighborhoods as Evolving Socio-Ecological Systems

Global context and the emerging posthuman condition. Accumulating

evidence suggests that our daily behaviors in society rarely conform exactly to our

espoused values or official policy directives (McKenzie-Mohr, 2011; Winder, 2005), and

that even the most sophisticated techniques of policy analysis often fail to account for

unexpected, hidden, or emergent causal relationship within complex socio-ecological

systems; often leading to unintended and costly consequences for all concerned (Nguyen,

Bosch, & Nguyen, 2013). Today, the human “footprint” can be detected in virtually every

part of the biosphere, and it is becoming increasingly clear that humanity has entered a

new phase in its evolutionary story; the age of the Anthropocene (Wilson, 1998).

Metaphorically speaking, we humans find ourselves standing at the helm of a

massive cruise ship built of the institutions, technologies, and prevailing mental models

of the global political economy, and strong indications (in empirical fact and analysis)

suggest that we are heading full steam for an iceberg. Without foreclosing the possibility

of divine intervention, or the appearance of some yet unknown natural corrective

influence (which may or may not be favorable to our future quality of life), all the best

available options that might avert ecological unravelling and a precipitous global decline

of human quality of life seem to require conscious human agency. We find ourselves at a

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moment in history when our species, through our technological mastery and exploitive

behaviors, has assumed a collective burden of responsibility that places us more or less

“in charge” of the future conditions of life for ourselves, our fellow human beings, our

fellow living creatures, and our descendants.

While the challenges before us may appear formidable, we have today the benefit

of perspective gained from our deployment of highly sophisticated earth monitoring

systems combined with digital processing capabilities that enable us to analyze local,

regional, and global trends (including trends in social behavior) revealed by

extraordinarily large data sets. These feedback mechanisms, like the consciousness

raising “overview” vision of planet Earth mentioned in Chapter 1, hold the promise of

collective action based upon a holistic vision of global interdependency. However, such

feedback may have little value as policy guidance in the absence of corresponding

advances in our understanding of the ways that conscious human purpose functions to

guide the self-organizing dynamics of complex socio-technical systems.

The local context: Ecology, history and culture. Cleveland’s Buckeye,

Collinwood, Slavic Village, Detroit Shoreline, and other neighborhoods are undergoing

profound changes attributable to the combined influences of poverty and economic

inequality, racial and ethnic inequality, shifting demographics, aging housing stock and

physical infrastructure, prevalence of toxic “brownfield” environments, scaled back

public services, property foreclosures, and limited access to financial capital. These

neighborhoods currently also stand to benefit from new entrepreneurial vision, renewed

community spirit, citizen engagement, urban planning initiatives, and targeted public and

philanthropic investments (Miller & Wheeler, 1997; Van Tassel & Grabowski, 1996).

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While the particular situations of these communities have changed over time in ways that

appear to present exciting new possibilities for this generation of community activists, a

more complete understanding of context warrants consideration of the long history of

urban problems and social “reform” interventions (Van Tassel & Grabowski, 1986) that

have shaped life in the city, and contributed to the emergence of unique cultural enclaves

that embody, at once, the legacies of the past and the promises of the future.

Evolutionary Consciousness and Systems Design

Csikszentmihalyi (1993) posited that a shift towards a shared ecological (or

integral) consciousness that is not accidental, but rather is brought about through

consciously guided human activity, could have profound evolutionary implications:

All major world religions, all synthesizing philosophies, despite the great superficial differences due to accidental historical developments, agree that unless a person learns to control consciousness, he or she cannot achieve harmony with the cosmos, but will forever remain prey to the random forces of biology and society. Nor will we know how to direct evolution in the direction of greater complexity unless our consciousness becomes more complex. (pp. 169–170)

Following a similar thread of logic, Banathy (2000) suggested that the

development of evolutionary consciousness is a prerequisite to engaging in evolutionary

design. Such consciousness involves a move towards greater complexity via participatory

thought and embodied knowing, and it also involves a structural simplification

occasioned by the development of a new objective capacity within the mind-body system:

the transcendence of fragmented subjectivity via more reflective and holistic ways of

knowing (Combs, 2002; Wilber, 1996). Banathy (2000) stated that a “central component

of attaining evolutionary consciousness [is] an understanding of the nature of collective

consciousness that operated at the various stages of sociocultural evolution” (p. 180).

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However, the above suggestion that evolutionary consciousness is a pre-requisite

to evolutionary design, considered with a view towards research methodology, begs the

question of how to overcome an apparent tautology: the suggestion that transformation of

consciousness is the very aim of consciously guided human activity involving the

collective unfolding of human potentials (Banathy, 2000). A recurring theme carried in

the works of Banathy (1989, 1996, 2000, 2003), Jenlink (2002, 2008b), K. C. Laszlo

(2000, 2001) and other writers on evolutionary learning and design suggests that when a

relational and discursive space is created by co-inquirers and sustained through design as

a participatory community activity, evolutionary consciousness can emerge and function

as a systemic attractor catalyzing profound cultural change. Under these circumstances,

community learning and community action involving the practice of designing

conversation can yield the shared competencies needed to master complexity. With

further development as an attribute of an “appreciative system” embedded within the

community’s social fabric, such consciousness becomes more integral, in the sense that it

exhibits structural characteristics that represent the “achievement of a significant degree

of objectivity towards one’s own inner process [and] inner complexity of the sort that

allows diverse feelings, thoughts, memories, beliefs, and perceptions, to become

conscious at the same time” (Combs, 2002, p. 202; see also Laszlo, 2001)

A way to better understand this relationship between “the process and product of

evolution” (Banathy, 2000, p. 182) is to consider how Banathy describes consciousness

as a “marker” of each stage of human evolution, as well as a “system of evolutionary

consciousness” with multiple components. One of these components, according to

Banathy (2000), entails understanding of our human evolutionary stages and the role of

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collective consciousness within each stage. Banathy suggests that societal evolution is a

spiraling process of systemic change marked by phase shifts from one level of collective

consciousness (or “evolutionary generation”) to the next. He posits that by “building

[each] component of the system of evolutionary consciousness, [we are able to] further

advance our attainment of evolutionary consciousness” (Banathy, 2000, p. 182).

Therefore, what at first may seem like a conflation of means and ends becomes more

coherent when we choose to embrace an understanding of societal evolution as a

consciously driven process. Another way to state this proposition is that design thinking

becomes a quest for the ideal future that is best achieved by deliberately assuming the

level of consciousness we may together associate with that future ideal, and then

“working backwards” to make it a reality in the here and now.

The above conceptual framework for understanding evolutionary learning begs a

further question: whether evolutionary consciousness as part of the ideal future can only

exist as an “ideal image” in the present, or conversely, whether such consciousness

should be understood as simultaneously “the process and product” of evolution as

suggested by Banathy (2000, p. 182). This question brings to the foreground the

relationship between evolutionary consciousness as a representation of the ideal image

and evolutionary consciousness as a living, embodied reality; the latter is understood as a

flowing process of emergence occurring within the continuously unfolding present and

collectively experienced as a dimension of human consciousness. This apparent dynamic

tension between image and embodied experience can be understood as a tension existing

within consciousness itself, allowing for a perspective that views human consciousness as

an evolutionary attractor. K. C. Laszlo (2000) hints at this perspective regarding a

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dynamic tension within collective consciousness in her conceptual description of

evolutionary learning community as an “attractor,” the purpose of which is “to catalyze

the evolution of consciousness that could lead towards of conscious evolution” (p. 180).

Similarly, Banathy (2000) reflects this tension in his description of the evolutionary

guidance system as an “intentional system, which can be built into the various human

activity systems to enable these systems to guide their entry and their work into their own

evolutionary design space” (p. 311).

Building upon the above theoretical premises, a systemic and empirically based

understanding of human consciousness in terms of its collective and evolutionary

dimensions would appear to lend credence to the notion of consciousness as movement:

an energized flow and embedded system within the larger systems of life that is

evolutionary insofar as it is continuously seeking to bridge the distance between what is

and what might be (Bohm, 1980). Banathy (2000) captures this idea of an attractor in his

description of how an evolutionary guidance system operates within the consciousness of

a designing community: “We place the ideal out there on the horizon, way out in the

future. The ideal becomes a magnet that pulls us toward it. The ideal inspires us. It is the

ideal to which we can make a commitment” (p. 311).

Furthermore, in considering the collective dimensions of evolutionary

consciousness, inquirers might readily turn to language as a major factor shaping

consciousness by virtue of its strong (causal and anticipatory) influence on human

perception, action, and communication. For example, when language functions to

perpetuate a worldview that imposes a static and fragmentary conception of “what is,” it

might operate to limit the processes of self-organization and the wholistic emergence

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associated with evolutionary learning. Bohm (1980) speaks to this notion that the

“ordinary mode” of language may limit conscious evolution, as follows:

One of the major defects of the ordinary mode of using language is just its general implication that it is not restricting the world view in any way at all, and that in any case questions of world view have to do only with “one’s own particular philosophy”, rather than with the content and function of our language, or with the way in which we tend to experience the overall reality in which we live. By thus making us believe that our world view is only a relatively unimportant matter, perhaps involving mainly one’s personal taste or choice, the ordinary mode of language leads us to fail to give attention to the actual function of the divisive world view that pervades this mode, so that the automatic and habitual operation of our thoughts and language is then able to project these divisions…as if they were actual fragmentary breaks in the nature of “what is”. It is thus essential to be aware of the world view implied in each form of language, and to be watchful and alert, to be ready to see when this world view ceases to fit actual observation and experience, as these are extended beyond certain limits. (Bohm, 1980, pp. 59–60)

Thus, to pursue a collective aim and strategy for creating conditions for evolutionary

learning at the community level means that inquirers must carefully consider how human

consciousness is shaped from moment to moment, in an anticipatory way, by those social

and environmental factors that define the field of possibilities. Foremost among these

factors is language—our primary means of thinking together.

A generic model of an evolutionary guidance system. Banathy (2000) defined

evolutionary guidance to mean “a dynamic process in which human activity systems

operating at the various levels of society engage, in order to give direction to their

evolution” (p. 310). His corresponding concept of the evolutionary guidance system, as

mentioned above, is defined as an “ideal seeking” human activity system, or “an

intentional system which can be built into the various human activity systems to enable

these systems to guide their entry and their work into their own evolutionary design

space” (p. 311). These definitions reflect Banathy’s stated theoretical perspective that

evolution “aspires to perfection” (p. 311). Banathy furthermore offers an image of the

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generic evolutionary guidance system which can be represented in terms of its key

functions:

• It is deal seeking, oriented towards the horizon, way out in the future;

• It “turns the arrow around,” allowing us to work back from the ideal system image. We ask the question, “How much of the ideal can we put into operation right now?”

• It provides a moving horizon. “As we move toward the horizon, the horizon moves ahead of us. We develop ever higher levels of collective consciousness that give birth to ever higher quality values, aspirations, and images” (Banathy, 2000, p. 312)

• We learn as we evolve and evolve because we learn. We learn from what we do and we are conscious of the way we evolve.

• It facilitates the unfolding of new potential. In the course of the life of an evolving evolutionary generation, new potential is built upon unfolded potential.

• It allows us to realize evolutionary qualities. These include core qualities, enabling qualities, and meta-qualities; and

• It enables us to break the vicious cycle, including the evolutionary traps of change denial, the institutional status quo, rigidity, and inflexibility (p. 312).

As a methodological approach to evolutionary design, this formulation of the

generic evolutionary guidance system might be problematic insofar as it seems to rely

upon the construction of a relatively static “ideal image” of an evolutionary guidance

system, even though this construct is defined as an “ideal-seeking human activity system”

and as an attractor for self-organizing design activity? It is foreseeable that evolutionary

inquirers might to inadvertently confuse the image of the evolutionary guidance system

with actuality of the evolutionary guidance system as an embodied, living system.

Banathy seeks to address this problem via the concept of the “moving horizon;” the idea

that the guiding future ideal will change as a given social system progresses along the

path of design implementation leading to the continuous (evolutionary) unfolding of

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human potentials. However, if the primary attribute of the evolutionary guidance system

as a human activity system is understood as its capacity to generate a moving horizon

based upon a series of ideal images, it is not entirely clear how this systemic capacity

differs from the capacity of any group to engage in ideation or prototyping activities.

Banathy (2000) does not explicitly address this potential limitation; however, he does

imply that the key difference between the evolutionary guidance system as attractive

image and one as dynamic system involves the collective consciousness and dialogical

skills of the participants who aspire to become the embodiment of an evolutionary

guidance system. It remains to be seen whether a moving horizon tied to successive

iterations of an ideal system image can serve as a reliable attractor guiding evolutionary

design, or whether such an approach might yet be limiting with respect to other

“guidance” strategies. For example, rather than building off a generic model of the ideal,

evolutionary inquirers might instead work to shift attention away from dualistic structures

(e.g., current vs ideal states) to build cultural awareness of process, dynamic tension and

reality-as-movement itself, consistent with Bohm’s (1980) notion of “wholeness in

flowing movement” (p. 14) and his notion (borrowing from Aristotle) that “formative

cause always implies final cause” (p. 16).

Banathy’s approach to the evolutionary guidance system further begs the question

of how a group of inquirers can reliably engage in conscious evolution without inviting

common pitfalls encountered within thinking about cultural “ideals.” For example,

inquirers who adopt the perspective of critical posthumanism might consider whether the

process of formulating such a collective ideal might only serve to project current cultural

memes, or to privilege current notions of the “ideal subject” of moral concern (Braidotti,

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2013). The checkered history of the eugenics movement and other lessons from history

urge caution when considering social system design guided by collective notions of the

“ideal” human state or condition (Pichot, 2001), thus underscoring the importance of

adhering to Banathy’s (1996) core standard of authenticity applicable to the culture and

practice of social systems design, that “an authentic design has to be built on the

individual and collective values, aspirations, and ideas of those who serve the system and

who are served and affected by it” (p. 228).

“Field theories” and the evolutionary guidance system. The evolutionary

guidance system thus offers a potentially useful conceptual model of the relationship

between evolutionary inquiry and the self-organizing dynamics of communities as living

systems, holding out the prospect of societal transformation via the practice of conscious

evolutionary design in the applied community setting. However, since much of this

theory summarized above has yet to be carried into the study of community-level

practice, it remains unclear how the dynamics of systemic self-organization might be

consciously guided towards emergent, shared ideals within the real world community

setting, so as to uphold core principles of democracy, social justice, ecological integrity,

and relational interdependence; all while enabling access to yet-to-be discovered human

evolutionary potentials.

The evolutionary systems design approach, implemented through community

action research, invites participants to examine whether as stakeholders, co-learners, and

co-designers we might succeed in developing a collective capacity for consciously guided

evolutionary change amongst themselves and within their respective communities. As a

primary strategy for developing this collective capacity, the participants are invited to

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embody the characteristics and qualities of an evolutionary guidance system by engaging

with each other and with their stakeholder communities through designing conversations

and other ideal-seeking practices that enable them to embody a pluralistic and holistic

perspective of the community as living system (encompassing interrelated physical,

social and mental components).

The idea of participation within an embodied and pluralistic wholeness, while

difficult to reconcile with the dualistic-reductionistic worldview of modern science,

nonetheless fits well with the systemic, hermeneutic and post-anthropocentric

perspectives discussed in Chapter 2 above, including the Bohm’s (1980) emphasis on

wholeness, G. Bateson’s (1987) emphasis on difference, and Csikszentmihalyi’s (1993)

emphasis on the evolutionary qualities of differentiation and integration. Insofar as these

expanded notions of wholeness and embodiment can be distinguished from conventional

notions of the self-as-individual (atomistic subjectivity), or the self-as-separate from the

objective “other” (disembodied, dualistic consciousness), it draws inquirers into the

transpersonal realm where, as discussed below, embodiment means participation; the

immanence of lived experience where we find our humanity within a nondualistic,

dynamic, and relational tension field of a pluralistic unity.

In the absence of this, or some similar, conception of the embodied Self-as-

collective or Self-in-relationship, there would seem to be little sense in exploring

evolutionary guidance system as something other than a model or representation of an

abstract set of concepts. Yet, by construing communities as socio-ecological systems

encompassing the dynamic interplay of physical, social, and mental phenomena,

including multiple embedded human activity systems comprised of interacting

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appreciative elements and relational dynamics, the praxis of conscious self-guided

evolution at the community level contextualizes and enacts the aforementioned

ontological stance of critical and embodied realism, including a commitment to Lakoff

and Johnson’s (1999) notion of the embodied mind. A corresponding challenge for this

inquiry, therefore, is to deconstruct dualistic consciousness against the background of

culturally and institutionally propagated memes (or habits of mind) reflecting the

continued dominance of a mechanistic worldview, all while engaging community praxis

to individually and collectively embody qualities of an appreciative system that

encompasses both physical (entropic) and mental (syntropic) phenomena and causal

structures within an evolving systemic wholeness.

To achieve its socially transformative purposes, such evolutionary praxis requires

a strong commitment to dialogue and reflective, co-creative meaning-making. However,

given the limitations of thought discussed in connection with the works of Bohm (1980)

and Maturana and Varela (1987/1998), the participants might find it beneficial consider

other practical ways to implement and embody elements and qualities of the evolutionary

guidance system, including innovative practices that might shift awareness or bring them

into presence and catalytic engagement with each other, their stakeholders and their

physical and cultural environs.

Therefore, to better inform inquiry into such embodied and heterogeneous design

elements and practices, it may be useful to consult an eclectic selection of

interdisciplinary literature within a broadly defined theme which can tentatively be

described as field theories. A common thread running through these theories is the notion

of a causal relationship between an event (unfolding potential) and the systemic,

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relational, and multilocal “field” from which it emerges (enfolded potential plus catalytic

or attractive system elements within a dynamic state of disequilibrium). Such a definition

of field theories encompasses a very large body of interdisciplinary literature, and a

comprehensive treatment of this topic of field theories would require a substantial

expansion of the scope of this study beyond its current, pragmatically oriented focus.

However, in keeping with the stated aims of this study, the following tentative integration

of current works in the area of field theories may serve as an initial, tentative step in the

direction of understanding and possibly mapping a relationship between nonlinear causal

structures or “attractors” and our collective human potential to consciously guide the

unfolding of evolutionary potentials bearing on the human prospect. These posited causal

structures, discussed below, are derived from empirical observations that so far have

evaded explanation according to the conventional premises regarding physical causation-

as-energy-exchange between units of atomistic matter, handed down by the modern

scientific worldview. Specifically, recent theorizing informed by close observation of the

behaviors of complex and living systems, including studies positing a formative influence

of human consciousness itself as a creative force shaping the evolution of the material

world, points to a new paradigm of integral knowledge development and invites a

fundamental shift in the way scientists think about causation in explaining and predicting

natural phenomena.

Callero’s (2013) work in the field of sociology is emblematic of an emerging

body of literature critically deconstructing long-standing assumptions regarding the

primacy of autonomous human agency, by pointing to evidence suggesting that we are

“both free to act on our choices and, at the same time, very powerful social forces shape

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us” and furthermore, that “social forces rooted in the past shape our options in the

present” (p. 9). This view of the human as “social animal” is carried forward in recent

theoretical work by Wilson (2012), who describes the social or kinship unit as a driver of

evolutionary change, as well as Pentland’s (2014) suggestion that “the search for new

ideas and information, like the formation of new habits, appears driven primarily by

social exposure [and] people choose to change their environment in order to change

behaviors they were exposed to” (p. 54).

Bohm (1980), who was mentioned above, advances the idea of a nondual, pre-

cognitive and generative field as the source of all that emerges within human

consciousness and all that we perceive as “real,” whether viewed from the perspective of

the individual or the collective. He posits that human thought, as well as matter itself,

emerges from a collective source or “implicate order” which he describes as an

“Undivided Wholeness in Flowing Movement” (Bohm, 1980, p. 14). He further suggests

that “flow is, in some sense, prior to…the ‘things’ that can be seen to form and dissolve

in the flow” (Bohm, 1980, p. 14). Thus, our acquired habits of thought produce a reality

comprised of categories as fixed images and units of meaning; a form of mental enclosure

that enables us to perceive a world that is coherent and communicate meaningfully with

our fellow humans. However, by turning our attention towards that which is flowing, we

may be able to find our way back to the generative and collective source of our being and

thereby communicate in ways that are less prone to the kind of dogmatic thinking that,

according to Bohm, contributes to so many of our current problems in society.

Csikszentmihalyi (1993) offered a complementary perspective to Bohm’s by examining

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the praxis and evolutionary implications of finding our way to a state of “flow,” as

discussed in Chapter 2.

Another complementary perspective, extending beyond thought to encompass the

affective dimensions of human consciousness, is offered by Conradson (2005), who

stated:

The formulation of affect is akin to a field, or line of force, that exists prior to the individual who encounters it. When an individual states they feel happy or energized…this feeling [may be] reflective of an individual’s encounter with a broader, supra-individual or transhuman affective field. (pp. 104–105)

This idea of an “encounter” with an affective field or “line of force” presents a challenge

to those who are in the habit of thinking in strictly atomistic terms; especially because

such a force as described by Conradson, like the idea of a flowing movement that

precedes all things and seems to emanate from within consciousness itself, as described

by Bohm and Csikszentmihalyi, respectively, has so far only been detected

phenomenologically, not as a physical object or force that can be isolated and studied

through the reductionistic means of conventional science. Other theorists, including Von

Ward (2014); Di Corpo and Vannini (2014), Goswami (1993), and Sheldrake and Bohm

(1982), have explored the empirical basis for describing nonlocal, nonatomistic, and

anticipatory causal structures, including the notion of consciousness itself as a generative

field that creates the material world.

A similar challenge to atomistic thinking is expressed by Deacon (2012) who

offers a

counterintuitive hypothesis that whenever we recognize that a system exhibits ententional properties, it is not because of something added to the physical processes involved, but rather quite literally because it depends on the physical fact of something specifically missing from that object or process. (pp. 42–43)

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While Deacon endeavors to map systemic and causal relationships arising from

the qualities of absence from an object or process, Isaacs (1999) employs the concept of a

“fields of conversation” to describe “containers that hold potential” for emergence within

dialogical human activity systems and that encompass qualities of “pressure, energy, and

knowledge” (pp. 254–255).

These various theoretical perspectives all converge around an expanded

understanding of causation in the world of systemic complexity, and they provide

multiple lenses for viewing the evolutionary potentials and processes of emergence

within human activity systems.

Participant Recruitment

The recruitment and selection of study participants was guided by the precept that

design should be carried out by the stakeholder community of the future system

(Banathy, 1996, p. 276), and with a view towards the overall aim of the study: to

orchestrate a purposeful, systemic process of conscious evolutionary design inspired by

the values and dynamic qualities of thriving living systems, generating awareness,

knowledge, and understanding to serve in guiding the unfolding of evolutionary

potentials within Cleveland’s place-based communities, and within the larger society.

Banathy (1996) described a “designing community [as] a group of individuals who have

developed a deep and significant commitment to each other and to a shared vision and

purpose” (p. 239).

The methodology used for this dissertation study began with recruiting a small

group of seven participants from among local citizen leaders who are currently engaged

in community revitalization activity, and who satisfy the other criteria stated below. The

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general aim in recruitment is to convene a team consisting of “a small number of people

with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance, and

approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable” (Banathy, 1996, p. 238).

Prospective participants possess a high degree of commitment to the goals of the study,

and the ability to contribute complementary skills, experiences, insights and creative

potentials.

K. C. Laszlo (2000), in her study mapping the attributes of an ideal evolutionary

learning community, adopts a systems perspective in describing the various attributes of

the potential evolutionary learning community designer, building upon Paul Ray’s (1996)

work profiling the attributes of the cultural creative. She describes how all of these ideal

attributes might not be found in the individual evolutionary learning community

designer. However, in organizing a group of inquirers and considering how best to

facilitate the development of these attributes, the research might consider the ideal profile

as “a description of the characteristics that are desirable to have among the members of

the designing community” (K. C. Laszlo, 2000, p. 170).

Thus, the ideal evolutionary learning community designer would be authentic,

empathic, creative, pragmatic, optimistic, and passionate, and also would exhibit the

characteristics of: a lifelong learner, a systems thinker, an environmentalist, and a

planetary citizen. K. C. Laszlo (2000) suggests that the profile is best understood from a

systems perspective; as “more than the sum of the ten attributes. One emergent property

is the sense of purpose and spirituality that is implied by this profile” (p. 177). With

perspective gained from working with co-inquirers, K. C. Laszlo (2000) finds that it was

is not necessary to consider these overlapping and interrelated attributes as pre-requisites,

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but rather as “areas of opportunity for learning and personal development in the

community” (p. 251). By treating these attributes as “an ideal pool of dispositions that are

desirable to have available in the community” (K. C. Laszlo, 2000, p. 251) the profile of

the ideal evolutionary learning community designer is not be “meant as a suggestion

toward the homogenization of the community, but rather as a set of unifying elements in

a diverse community” (K. C. Laszlo, 2000, pp. 251–252).

K. C. Laszlo’s (2000) findings and analysis described above provide useful

guidance that informed recruitment of participants in the context of this study, as well as

the development and voluntary sharing of profile information for prospective study

participants. For purposes of this study, K. C. Laszlo’s (2000) ideal profile was

considered together with Banathy’s (2000) synthesis of work by Ray (1996) and Goerner

(1999) to describe the characteristics and acquired attributes of a learning community

equipped with evolutionary competence; a necessary condition for engaging in self-

guided evolution, thereby providing an initial basis for assessing diverse and

complementary participant attributes within a systemic framework that also allows the

participants themselves to develop consensus regarding group learning objectives.

The following image (Figure 2) is intended as a systemic representation of the

attributes of evolutionary competence that, together with a structured interview template

(see Appendix A) guided both participant recruitment and the group preparatory activities

labeled under the Community Action Research Method and Procedures section.

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Figure 2. Dimensions of evolutionary competence. Adapted from Guided Evolution of

Society: A Systems View (pp. 256–257), by B. H. Banathy, 2000, New York, NY: Kluwer.

Prospective participants were recruited by means of personal contact, followed by

a formal letter of invitation. To make initial contact, I utilized a current list of individuals

who are affiliated with local organizations, and who (as individuals or organizations or

both) are active contributors to revitalization efforts in the City of Cleveland. I

endeavored to communicate clearly the purposes of the study and its potential value to

the prospective participants and their affiliated organizations. I utilized these initial verbal

contacts, in conjunction with publicly available background information regarding the

organizations and their current activities, to determine whether the following criteria for

selection or exclusion are met. Then, I sent a letter of invitation to selected persons

inviting them to participate in this study.

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Selection criteria: Characteristics of anticipated participants. Persons selected

for initial contact and recruitment were identified based on:

1. their stakeholder interest in the long-term vitality of Cleveland’s urban neighborhoods;

2. the nature and extent of their involvement with Cleveland sustainability and neighborhood revitalization efforts;

3. their current organizational affiliations;

4. the nature and extent of their involvement with related collaborative activities at the inter-organizational and/or community levels;

5. whether their roles at the organizational, inter-organizational or community levels likely will permit them to accurately represent, reflect upon, and influence the current and evolving interests of their affiliated organizations (or sub-organizational units) related to the aims and purposes of the study;

6. whether they would bring to the table distinctive affiliations, interests, skills, and perspectives that would not be more fully contributed by other prospective participants; and

7. whether upon initial contact the individuals indicate that they may be interested in participating and would be available to do so without presenting significant conflicts with their existing obligations.

Exclusion criteria. Any prospective participants who failed to satisfy one or

more of the above criteria were excluded from further consideration and were not sent a

recruitment letter. In addition, prospective interviewees who might have otherwise met

all of the above selection criteria were excluded so as not to exceed the number of

participants permitted by the design of this study. Under such circumstances, I have

documented this reason for exclusion of a prospective participant with a view to

recognizing their appropriateness as a potential future research participant.

Research setting. The specific research settings were selected following

recruitment of the participants, based on the following criteria:

1. location that is convenient to all of the participants;

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2. availability of the space during the scheduled meeting times for the duration of the study;

3. sufficient indoor space to accommodate the group in comfort, and with a minimum of distraction during those times when the group met;

4. a “neutral” location that allows participants to express themselves freely and in mutual trust, while allowing for the protection of confidentiality;

5. sufficient space to allow the group members to either sit in a circle or arrange themselves to view individual or audio-visual presentations; and

6. adequate access to snacks and refreshments and other amenities.

The Role of the Researcher

In sharp contrast to those common approaches to social science researcher

undertaken within hierarchical organizational structures, where the researcher might

assume the role of an outside expert who does the research by assuming exclusive

responsibility for the study design and implementation, my role during all phases of this

study was that of resource person acting to catalyze and facilitate conversation, and assist

participants as they sought to gain understanding of the problem situation and co-create

viable solutions for themselves and their stakeholder communities. Thus, in

communications with participants, I made sure to describe my role as that of a research

consultant and facilitator who applies my knowledge and skills to the work of:

• catalyzing self-organizing learning activities;

• stimulating people to address issues that presently concern them;

• assisting participants in the development of effective learning and change processes;

• encouraging participants to start where they are, rather than where others think they ought to be;

• helping participants analyze their situations and reflect upon research findings;

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• enabling participants to consider alternative courses of action;

• assisting with the implementation of plans and self-organizing processes for improvement; and

• focusing on human development, rather than only on attaining solutions to problems (Stringer, 1999).

Because I do not actually live within one of Cleveland’s urban neighborhoods

(rather I live in a nearby Cleveland suburb), my position as research consultant was that

of an “outsider in collaboration with insiders” (Herr & Anderson, 2015, pp. 49–52).

Therefore, “the issue of what each participant as stakeholder wanted out of the research

needed to be negotiated carefully so that reciprocity would be achieved” (Herr &

Anderson, 2015, p. 50). My aim throughout the process was to facilitate participation in a

manner that treats each participant as a knowledgeable contributor to the activities of an

emerging evolutionary learning community, equally engaged with learning cohorts in the

dynamic processes of cooperation, co-learning, and collective action. As an outside

researcher, my primary role was “to nurture local leaders to the point where

they…understand the methods and are able to carry on when the initiating researcher

leaves” (O’Brien, 2001, “Role of Action Researcher,” para. 2). While performing this

role, I endeavored to “take the time to facilitate dialogue and foster reflective analysis

among the participants, provide them with periodic reports, and write a final report when

the [my] involvement has ended” (O’Brien, 2001, “Role of Action Researcher,” para. 3).

Community Action Research Methods and Procedures

To build and evaluate the effectiveness of a self-organizing appreciative system to

catalyze and guide processes of social and institutional change within the community-

based context of a Cleveland’s Vital Neighborhoods initiative, the participants engaged in

the following series of facilitated activities, as warranted by the action research

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methodology and the interpretive and evolutionary perspective discussed above

(Babüroḡlu & Ravn, 1992). These activities were centered on the stated research

questions and utilized an inquiry procedure that follows a cyclical pattern of:

• problem identification;

• normative and interactive planning;

• practical and attainable social action;

• data gathering and analysis;

• feedback to participants; and

• evaluation of results.

The following is a description of: (a) guiding questions, tasks and objectives, methods,

procedures, and timeframes for each of three inquiry cycles; and (b) a description of the

tools and techniques that were used for data generation, capture, and analysis of results.

Inquiry Cycle 1: Entry and preparation.

Research Question 1: How might we understand and describe our community

system of interest, so as to encompass and facilitate dialogue regarding its emergent

qualities and characteristics, its intrinsic social, physical, technological, and ecological

elements, and its dynamic relationship with the larger systems in which it is embedded?

Intended outcomes. During Inquiry Cycle 1, the participants met both online and

in person to:

1. establish working relationships;

2. create conditions for evolutionary learning;

3. map the field of inquiry, including preliminary appreciative evaluation of the boundaries and qualities of the community system(s) of interest;

4. engage in preparatory learning activities to develop evolutionary competence;

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5. co-create a cognitive map of our present evolutionary state;

6. acquire a shared capacity to “see” evolutionary potentials; and

7. develop shared consciousness (image) of a desired future for Cleveland’s place-based communities.

Preparation. To initiate the study, I met with each prospective participant

individually to introduce the study and its purposes, and to gather information regarding

each participant’s interests in the study, along with some individual profile information

and participant’s perspectives regarding community problems and emerging

opportunities. Subsequently, I convened the participants as a small inquiry group to

facilitate the following introductory activities to build familiarity, group cohesion, and

culture of inquiry:

• engage in conversation regarding the aims and purposes of the study;

• present the research agenda, establishing working relationships, and a common purpose and understanding of context;

• clarify and develop consensus regarding research aims, purposes, and questions;

• share background and community profile information; and

• learn to communicate using the praxis of generative and strategic dialogue to create a field of conversation among the participants (Jenlink, 2008c; Isaacs, 1999).

To facilitate the establishment of working relationships, I invited participants into a series

of group presencing activities (see Appendix B) that began the process of building

cohesive relationships around the performance of simple learning tasks while creating an

atmosphere of mutual trust and collaborative inquiry. During this important initial phase

of group formation, I suggested ground rules for dialogue and invited participants to

amend or adopt those ground rules, including processes for resolving conflict and

providing constructive feedback to the facilitator (see Appendix C). I also endeavored to

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structure these activities in a way that would afford each participant an opportunity to

become familiar with the background, intentions, and learning style of the other

participants.

Normative and interactive planning. During the first group inquiry session, I

initiated and facilitated dialogue regarding the aims and purposes of the study, and

invited participant feedback regarding ways to optimally align these research aims and

purposes with their individual and collective interests as co-inquirers. I invited

participants to use the praxis of dialogue and presencing to identify and reflect upon their

“mental models” and working assumptions that tend to shape the way they “show up”

and approach their own work as facilitators and change agents within their respective

stakeholder communities.

Practical and attainable social action. The following three activities involved

participants in a first round of moving from planning to action; where the intended

outcomes of this action were: First, creation of social and environmental conditions

within the group setting that will be favorable to the intended processes of evolutionary

learning; and second, development of a systemic appreciation of the existing structures,

processes, stakeholders, cultural and social agreements, ambient qualities, and system

dynamics that together delineate the community system(s) of interest to the participants:

1. Create initial conditions favorable to a process of evolutionary learning,

including:

a. Nurturing climate: Create and mutually maintain a learning environment that possesses physical characteristics and a secure social environment that enables participants to build mutual trust and a climate of mutual caring;

b. Offering multiple learning types: Collaborate to promote socially supported individual learning, self-directed learning with access to resources; team learning arrangements; and technology facilitated learning;

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c. Creating learner-relevant functional contexts: Identify and generate social systems that offer actionable task environments where learners can apply what has been learned;

d. Assembling broad-based learning resources: Endeavor to make diverse learning opportunities available through alliances among all relevant societal sectors that have the capability to support learning (Banathy, 2000, pp. 257–259).

2. Mapping the “Field of Inquiry”: The participants performed the following “community system mapping” activities in a manner that also enabled them to take into account the dynamic relationship between the described community system(s) and their systemic environment(s), as well as the ethical issues and judgments that are involved in drawing up system boundaries for purposes of design inquiry.

a. Community system mapping and boundary analysis. This activity serves to delineate within the overall community and societal context the defined, evolving socio-ecological system(s) that the evolutionary guidance system serves to guide (Flood, 1999, pp. 90–97).

b. Assessing and modeling the “baseline” systemic functions, dynamic relationships, and “ententional” features and qualities of the existing “field of inquiry” (Deacon, 2011).

3. Engage in preparatory learning activities to develop evolutionary

competence. This facilitated learning activity was intended to enable participants, individually and collectively, to attain “specific knowledge, ways of thinking, skills, and dispositions that jointly and interactively constitute the domain of evolutionary learning” (Banathy, 2000, p. 253). This activity aimed to equip participants with:

a. evolutionary knowledge, values, and ethics;

b. cooperative group interaction skills;

c. perspectives and mental habits of the systems thinker;

d. mastery of evolutionary epistemology; and

e. a common attitude toward learning that embraces and values complexity.

Other learning tools and activities were introduced to the group to advance a shared

agenda to develop evolutionary competence and thereby to build capacity for self-guided

evolution via a scaffolded learning process as depicted in Figure 3. These included:

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present moment awareness exercises (M. Brown, 2005; Scharmer, 2015); systems

thinking exercises (Sweeney & Meadows, 1995), rights and responsibilities in

conversation practice (Dyer, 2008); and scenario building for an unknowable future

(Flood, 1999; see Appendix B).

Figure 3. Creating the conditions for self-guided evolution. From Guided Evolution of

Society: A Systems View (pp. 253–254), by B. H. Banathy, 2000, New York, NY: Kluwer.

Data gathering and evaluation. As participants engaged in several cycles of

planning, action, and reflection, I invited them to assume the role of co-inquirers engaged

in a formal research process, by joining me in devoting a portion of their time and effort

to the task of encountering and “harvesting” qualitative data generated during the Cycle 1

inquiry phase, according to the schedule set forth in Table 3, and using the means

described in the section entitled Data Generation, Capture, and Analysis of Learning

Outcomes.

I offered to work closely with the participants to create the means by which this

information could be recorded, organized, and made accessible to all participants (via

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online file-sharing applications and other means) in support of their further learning and

design activities.

Integration, feedback, and reflection. This activity focused on the use of

facilitated dialogue, informed feedback, and group reflection to collectively focus

attention on the relationship between initial assumptions and the discursive validation of

experiences gained through the above preparatory activities, enabling the emergence of a

collective evolutionary consciousness that transcends conventional ways of defining

problems and solutions in the community development space (Bohm, 1996; Churchman,

1979; Jackson, 2000; Senge, 2006). The learning outcomes sought at this stage were:

1. Co-creation of a Cognitive Map of our present evolutionary state: an activity that includes identification of possible evolutionary “markers” that might enable participants to track changes involving discontinuous or formative processes of community diversification and integration, and to discover and describe the emergence of syntropic causal structures and catalytic influences within the communities and the society at large.

2. Suspension and Transcendence: acquisition of a shared capacity for deep reflection with intention to shift awareness in a manner that enables us to “see” enfolded evolutionary potentials and develop a shared consciousness of a desired future for Cleveland’s place-based communities as a basis for purposeful intervention.

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Table 3

Summary of Activities and Intended Outcomes for Inquiry Cycle 1

Process steps

Activities Intended outcomes Data

gathering*

Inquiry Cycle 1:

How might we

understand and

describe our

community system

of interest, so as to

encompass and

facilitate dialogue

regarding its

emergent qualities

and

characteristics, its

intrinsic social,

physical,

technological, and

ecological

elements, and its

dynamic

relationship with

the larger systems

in which it is

embedded?

(approx. 30 days)

1. Establish working

relationships;

A, C, F

• Preparation.

Introductory

activities (dialogical

and experiential) to

build familiarity,

group cohesion and

culture of inquiry;

• Planning. Facilitated

dialogue regarding

the aims and

purposes of the

study.

• Action. Use dialogue

and presencing to

identify initial

“mental models” and

working assumptions;

• create initial

conditions favorable

to a process of

evolutionary

learning;

• Generate a map of

the community

system and field of

inquiry;

• Engage in selected

learning activities to

build evolutionary

competence.

2. Create conditions for

evolutionary learning;

A, C, F

3. Map the field of inquiry,

including preliminary

appreciative evaluation

of the boundaries and

qualities of the

community system(s) of

interest;

B, C, D,

4. Develop evolutionary

competence.

C, F

5. Co-create a cognitive

map of our present

evolutionary state

B, C, D,

6. Acquire a shared capacity

to “see” evolutionary

potentials;

A, C, E, F

7. Develop shared

consciousness (image) of

a desired future for

Cleveland’s place-based

communities.

A, C, F

Integration, feedback, reflection. Facilitated dialogue, informed

feedback, and group reflection to collectively focus attention on the

relationship between initial assumptions and the discursive validation

of experiences and competencies gained through the above

preparatory activities.

F

Note. *Data Gathering codes: A = Interview notes, B = Data sheets, C = Real time documentations, D = systems models, E = Descriptive narrative and autobiographical data, F= other qualitative feedback data. A detailed description of these codes is included in the section Data Generation, Capture, and Analysis of Learning Outcomes.

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Inquiry Cycle 2: Evolutionary design. Banathy (2000) describes a stage in the

process of inquiry when participants have acquired the individual and shared capacity to

consciously engage in a process of self-guided evolutionary design. This is the moment

when, in Banathy’s words, we as learners and collaborators are able to “enter the

evolutionary design space and guide our own evolution” (p. 263). The reflective activities

in Cycle 1 provided an opportunity for the participants, through a combination of

generative and strategic dialogue and other complementary tools for engaged co-creative

learning, to reach a stage in the learning process whereby the dual qualities of

evolutionary competence and evolutionary consciousness have systemically and

definitively emerged within the relational space of a cohesive, well-functioning learning

community. Once these qualities were attained, the participants were ready to engage in

an affirmative process of conscious evolutionary design, by means of the following

activities:

• Self-organize: Using the organized knowledge, design architecture, acquired competencies and reflective feedback generated during Cycle 1 to create a shared design space, and through consensus, the participants made selections from among available, context-relevant inquiry methods, and practice tools so as to encompass multiple modalities of dialogical, experiential, and transpersonal inquiry.

• Self-created meaning: participants were provided opportunities to internalize, integrate, and construct meaning from what is being learned;

• Creating evolutionary images: participants were challenged to create a vision of an ideal future that is elaborated into an evolutionary image—the product of evolutionary consciousness and evolutionary learning; and

• Bringing the image to life: participants assumed the task of creating a system that brings the evolutionary image to life.

Research Question 2: How might we translate the constructs and language of

evolutionary systems theory into a community praxis that yields measurable outcomes

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indicative of the progressive unfolding of values, qualities, and emergent potentials found

within healthy, thriving social-ecological systems?

Intended outcomes. During Inquiry Cycle 2, the participants met both online and

in person to:

• Create ideal images of Cleveland’s communities as living, healthy, self-organizing systems;

• Engage in (feasible and contextually adapted) designing activities that would consciously embody core values, ideas, and qualities of the ideal community system.

• Increase awareness and understanding of appreciative human activity systems operating within their relevant stakeholder communities;

• Develop new pathways for collective action inspired, energized, and guided by the conscious unfolding of evolutionary potentials within a variety of community practice settings.

Normative and interactive planning. Through designing conversation, the

participants self-organized as a cohesive design team, using the acquired competencies,

organized systemic knowledge, and an emerging shared image of a desired future

(developed during Inquiry Cycle 1). Through practical application of systems and design

thinking, the participants endeavored to suspend their pre-existing mental models and to

appreciatively (through dialogue and presencing) generate and articulate a generic set of

shared values, principles, and ideal qualities that they collectively would interpret as

unfolding evolutionary potentials within their respective stakeholder communities. The

participants developed a set of evolutionary markers that could be used to describe the

current problem situation, and to evaluate progress towards the collectively desired

future.

By engaging together in designing conversations as described above, the

participants shared systemic knowledge and gained familiarity with practice tools and

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techniques of evolutionary design that they would seek to validate through application in

the community practice setting and through reflective evaluation following each cycle of

the community action research process. Finally, the participants would built consensus

regarding the means by which they would detect, measure, evaluate, and represent

progress towards the realization of desired outcomes relevant to the evolutionary markers

identified in Cycle 1.

Practical and attainable social action. The participants, through the praxis of

designing conversation, implemented an inquiry program to design and guide the

implementation of appreciative systems and evolutionary change within their respective

practice settings.

1. Implement an evolutionary systems design architecture:

I introduced the participants to Banathy’s (2000) generic architecture for the

evolutionary guidance system, with the suggestion that they could decide to either adopt

or modify it so as to optimally fit the planned and emerging circumstances of this study.

In so doing I indicated that the participants were free to choose to develop an alternative

conceptual model of the evolutionary guidance system based upon their collective

knowledge and insight gained during the preparatory phase of this study.

This generic design architecture is depicted in Figure 4.

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Figure 4. The design architecture for designing the evolutionary guidance system. From Guided Evolution of Society: A Systems View (p. 336), by B. H. Banathy, 2000, New York, NY: Kluwer.

2. Generate fields of conversation within a variety of community practice

settings:

The participants, with ongoing mutual support afforded by the peer learning

process, and with a view towards attaining the purposes of this study, were invited to

engage with their stakeholder communities, using and adapting the praxis tools and

strategies shared during Inquiry Cycle 1. The participants were invited to adapt the

dialogical and systems design tools to generate fields of conversation within each unique

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local context to enable purposeful systemic change while focusing on the evolutionary

markers identified during the planning stage of this Cycle 2 (Isaacs, 1999, pp. 252–290).

3. Use the selected approaches to generate awareness of existing and emerging

evolutionary potentials within the participants’ respective practice settings:

The participants sought opportunities to engage within their respective

community practice settings to build collective awareness of appreciative system

elements, and collective understanding of existing and potential system dynamics within

their stakeholder communities. Available methods and tools included: learning

conversations, use of systemic metaphor, surfacing and testing of assumptions,

interactive planning, viable system diagnosis and interpretation, social systems design,

and other selected approaches (see Chapter 2, Evolutionary Systems Theory).

4. Engage in a variety of self-selected approaches to the praxis of facilitating and

guiding design conversation within the community practice settings:

The participants used their acquired knowledge and understanding to engage

within their respective community practice settings, to facilitate both interpretive and

ideal-seeking designing conversations, supplemented by group learning activities that

invite and empower stakeholders to transcend conventional understanding of the problem

situation and consciously guide the emergence and unfolding of evolutionary potentials.

To accomplish this task of purposeful transcendence, participants elected to pursue one or

more of the following pathways of transcendence:

• Generative Dialogue (Transcendence Strategy “A”—creating common ground —surfacing assumptions—suspension to generate shared consciousness—learning to think together);

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• Strategic Dialogue (Transcendence Strategy “B”—Leaving behind old ways of thinking and doing—learning new ways of thinking, perceiving and communicating—envisioning a new “guiding image” of the future); and/or

• Other approaches to inquiry (recursively implementing and re-evaluating the inquiry system).

Data gathering and evaluation. The focus during this Cycle 2 process of

observation and interpretation was upon generating useful feedback regarding the

dynamics observed and practical experiences gained via the evolutionary learning

process. As knowledge was “harvested” through a combination of individual, group (in-

person), and online inquiry, I worked closely with the participants to create the means by

which this information could be organized and made accessible to all participants (via

online file-sharing applications and other means) in support of their further learning and

design activities.

Integration, feedback, and reflection. As in Inquiry Cycle 1, I invited the

participants to integrate their acquired knowledge and reflect upon their learning process

using a combination of facilitated dialogue, informed feedback, and group reflection.

Once again, the participants were encouraged to collectively focus attention on the

relationship between their initial assumptions and the discursive validation of knowledge

gained by means of the designing conversations, practices, and experiences undertaken

during this Inquiry Cycle 2. Through constructive feedback and reflective learning

conversations participants sought to track any observable shifts to the group dynamics,

evaluate learning outcomes against the relevant evolutionary markers, and reach

consensus on the practical utility and validity of the selected methods, tools, and outcome

measures. Through a process of facilitated hermeneutic interpretation, participants

evaluated the outcomes attained during Inquiry Cycle 2, and undertook to build

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consensus on how these outcomes might be represented to a broader audience using the

context-relevant evolutionary markers (see Table 4).

Using the observation and evaluation tools and approaches developed during

Cycle 1, the participants worked to develop and maintain a “meta-cognitive” perspective

on their own learning and design process which enabled them to track the progress of

their learning journey as an emerging appreciative human activity system. I assisted with

this process by conducting routine “check ins” with individual participants, and at

appropriate intervals by inviting the participants to share feedback on their experience of

process itself, thereby setting the stage for interpretation that encompasses both

theoretical and experience-based perspectives on the evolutionary learning process.

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Table 4


Process steps Activities Intended outcomes Data

gathering*

Inquiry Cycle 2

How might we

translate the

constructs and

language of

evolutionary

systems theory into

a community praxis

that yields

measurable

outcomes

indicative of the

progressive

unfolding of values,

qualities and

emergent

potentials found

within healthy,

thriving social-

ecological systems?

(approx. 60 days)

• Planning. Identify the desired

core values, ideas and qualities

(outcomes) to realize within

stakeholder communities;

• Identify corresponding

“evolutionary markers” that can

be used to evaluate current

state and progress towards

desired future;

• Agree to system design

methodology, measurement

tools and techniques;

• Agree to means of assessing

progress towards desired

outcomes relevant to

evolutionary markers.

• Action. Implement an

evolutionary systems design

architecture to enable collective

design inquiry within a variety

of community practice settings;

• Generate fields of conversation

within a variety of community

practice settings;

• Engage in a variety of self-

selected approaches to the

praxis of enabling, facilitating,

and guiding design conversation

within the community practice

settings;

• Use the selected approaches to

generate awareness and

appreciation of existing and

emerging evolutionary

potentials within the

participants’ respective practice

settings.

1. Create one or more

ideal images of

Cleveland’s

neighborhoods as

living, healthy, self-

organizing systems.

C, D

2. Engage in (feasible and

contextually adapted)

designing activities that

consciously embody

core values, ideas, and

qualities of the ideal

community system.

C, D, E

3. Increase awareness

and understanding of

appreciative activity

systems operating

within the relevant

stakeholder

communities.

C, E, F

4. Develop new pathways

for collective action

inspired, energized,

and guided by the

conscious unfolding of

evolutionary potentials

within a variety of

community practice

settings.

D, E, F

Integration, feedback & reflection. Use a combination of facilitated dialogue, informed

feedback, and group reflection to shift attention and build collective understanding of the

systemic dynamics and emergent qualities realized during the Inquiry Cycle 2 process;

evaluating learning outcomes against the relevant evolutionary markers, and reaching

consensus on practical utility and validity of the selected methods, tools and outcome

measures.

F

Note. *Data Gathering codes: C = Real time documentations, D = systems models, E = Descriptive narrative and autobiographical data, F= other qualitative feedback data. A detailed description of these codes is included in the section Data Generation, Capture, and Analysis of Learning Outcomes.

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Inquiry Cycle 3: Embodying the evolutionary learning community as an

embedded community system.

Research Question 3: How might we illuminate, critically deconstruct, and

transform our habits of perception, thought, and behavior, including our prevailing

language and cultural narratives concerning values and institutions, in ways that enable

us to access our individual and collective potentials as change agents and leaders of

regenerative political economy?

I explained to the participants that the third inquiry cycle could be initiated at any

stage in the research process when they decided through consensus that it would be

appropriate to expand the scope of the inquiry to consider how integral and systemic

understanding attained via designing conversations undertaken within the community

practice setting might be applied to build capacity for consciously guided evolutionary

change at the institutional and societal levels.

A major aim of this stage of the research process was to collaboratively search for

language and other expressive means by which an appreciative human activity system

could be actualized and embodied as an evolutionary guidance system capable of

illuminating, unfolding, and mobilizing collective human potential within the society at

large. A further aim of this stage of the process would be to explore pathways of

knowledge dissemination that generate collective awareness of relational, ententional, or

syntropic phenomena in a manner which might transform our collective ways of

understanding economic and social value, and which might enable self-organizing and

ideal-seeking processes of institutional and societal change.

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Intended outcomes.

• Gain experience and practical competencies that enable participants to catalyze, facilitate, and assess evolutionary learning processes within multiple practice settings;

• Acquire in-depth, integral understanding of the structures and processes of appreciative systems that enable consciously guided evolutionary design at the institutional and societal levels;

• Develop (new) pathways for effective dissemination of knowledge that builds capacity for evolutionary learning and design at the institutional and societal levels.

Normative and interactive planning. Participants utilized knowledge and shared

capacities developed during the preceding two inquiry cycles to consider practical tools,

techniques, and practices to catalyze and facilitate purposeful, transformative change at

the societal level. The Participants would use the relevant evolutionary markers identified

during Cycles 1 and 2 to detect, measure, evaluate, and represent progress towards the

realization of desired outcomes.

Practical and attainable social action. Participants engaged in designing

conversation to build understanding of the causal influence of relational, ententional, and

syntropic phenomena in the generation and unfolding of evolutionary potential within

Cleveland’s place-based communities.

Participants used methods of integral inquiry (see Appendix D) to deepen their

understanding and awareness of appreciative system dynamics. Also, they engaged in a

search for language and other expressive, embodied means to model, organize, and

implement an evolutionary guidance system as a dynamic attractor; illuminating,

unfolding, and mobilizing previously unseen evolutionary potentials among themselves,

within the context of the larger community of stakeholders, and within the society.

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Data gathering and evaluation. During this Inquiry Cycle 3 process, participants

generated data by means of “real time” documentation of their inquiry and designing

activities, through individual journaling, and through collectively allocating a portion of

their time to the activity of reflective and interpretive documentation of their learning

outcomes (see Table 5).

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Table 5


Process steps Activities Intended outcomes Data

gathering*

Inquiry Cycle 3:

How might we

illuminate, critically

deconstruct, and

transform our habits

of perception,

thought, and

behavior, including

our prevailing

language and

cultural narratives

concerning values

and institutions, in

ways that enable us

to access our

individual and

collective potentials

as change agents

and leaders of

regenerative

political economy?

(approx. 30 days)

• Planning. Co-create a design

implementation strategy that

would utilize knowledge and

shared capacities developed

during the preceding two inquiry

cycles;

• Formulate practical tools,

techniques, and practices to

catalyze and facilitate purposeful,

transformative change at the

societal level using the relevant

evolutionary markers.

• Action. Engage in designing

conversations to build

understanding of the causal

influence of relational,

ententional, and syntropic

phenomena in the generation

and unfolding of evolutionary

potential within Cleveland’s

place-based communities;

• Engage the methods of integral

inquiry to deepen understanding

and awareness of appreciative

system dynamics;

• Engage in a search for language

and other expressive, embodied

means to model, organize, and

implement an evolutionary

guidance system as a dynamic

attractor; illuminating, unfolding,

and mobilizing previously unseen

evolutionary potentials within

the larger community and

society.

1. Gain experience

and practical

competencies that

enable participants

to catalyze,

facilitate, and

assess evolutionary

learning processes

within multiple

practice settings.

C, D, E, F

2. Acquire in-depth,

integral

understanding of

the structures and

processes of

appreciative

systems that

enable consciously

guided

evolutionary design

at the institutional

and societal levels.

E, F

3. Develop (new)

pathways for

effective

dissemination of

knowledge that

builds capacity for

evolutionary

learning and design

at the institutional

and societal levels.

B, E, F

Integration, feedback, and reflection: Engage in facilitated learning conversation while

seeking to consciously suspend habitual patterns of thought and shift awareness

towards an appreciative understanding of systemic dynamics and emergent qualities

that are observable “at scale” within the larger community system. Evaluate any

observed patterns of change using the evolutionary markers, and reach consensus on

measured outcomes.

F

Note. *Data Gathering codes: B = Data sheets, C = Real time documentations, D = Systems models, E = Descriptive narrative and autobiographical data, F= other qualitative feedback data. A detailed description of these codes is included in the section Data Generation, Capture, and Analysis of Learning Outcomes.

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Once again, as knowledge was “harvested” through a combination of individual,

group (in-person), and online inquiry, I worked closely with the participants to create the

means by which this information would be organized and made accessible to all

participants (via online file-sharing applications and other means) in support of their

further learning and design activities.

Integration, feedback, and reflection. The participants engaged in facilitated

learning conversation while seeking opportunities to consciously suspend habitual

patterns of thought and shift awareness towards and appreciation of systemic dynamics

and emergent qualities that are observable “at scale” within the larger community system.

I encouraged them to evaluate any observed patterns of change using evolutionary

markers and to work towards consensus on relevant outcome measures.

Data Generation, Capture, and Analysis of Learning Outcomes

During each of the three inquiry cycles, I collaborated with the participants to

utilize selected tools and techniques to collect qualitative data generated by the research

participants for the purposes of informing our analysis of research outcomes, as described

below:

A. Interview notes containing participant responses to questions posed during structured interviews conducted by the researcher;

B. Data sheets containing participant responses to one or more surveys prepared by the researcher and soliciting evaluative feedback from the participants;

C. “Real time” documentation of the inquiry and designing activities of the research participants, including:

• Recorded, transcribed conversations with and among research participants;

• electronically stored data files containing copies of recorded voice and text communications generated by research participants during their research activities;

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• photos, video recordings, and other forms of audiovisual media, including expressive arts generated at the initiative of individual participants or during researcher (or participant) facilitated reflective exercises;

• digitally recorded images and symbols, gestures and other nonverbal forms of communication; and

• other forms of written or visual documentation of the inquiry and designing activities of the research participants;

D. Any systems models, including definitions, key constructs, narrative descriptions, and visual representations of system structure and dynamics used or generated by participants during the design and construction of such systems models;

E. Descriptive, narrative, and autobiographical data, generated via participant journaling and used in describing, modeling, and analyzing emergent community dynamics and appreciative qualities, as generated by the activities of the research participants within their stakeholder communities;

F. Other qualitative “feedback-type” data, including reflective and interpretive descriptions of the learning and change process generated by the participants themselves.

Once each of the above types of data were collected and organized, I conducted a

thorough review, summary, and analysis of the research outcomes using a hermeneutic-

interpretive approach with a view towards describing the learning journey and

synthesizing themes reflecting shared understanding emerging from the inquiry process

that contribute to a forming body of knowledge responsive to the several core research

questions posed in this study. The intent of such review, summary, and analysis was to:

(a) capture and report relevant learning outcomes, (b) provide timely feedback in support

of the ongoing design discourse, (c) support analysis leading to the development of more

effective practices for engaging design conversation as a strategy for social improvement,

and (d) empirically inform the framing of more sophisticated questions for subsequent

inquiry. This process of review and analysis also served to establish, based upon

empirical evidence, whether relevant validity criteria had been met, and whether some

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manner of self-transformation had occurred, at the individual, group, and/or community

levels. Specifically, the data were gathered and analyzed to reveal any learning and

change outcomes that express qualities and values understood by the research participants

to indicate:

• An emerging evolutionary consciousness and/or the acquisition of evolutionary competence;

• Emerging and shared perspectives regarding appreciative activities and qualities of the participants’ respective stakeholder communities;

• Emerging ways of understanding and appreciative qualities and potentials of stakeholder communities as a living, self-organizing systems;

• Evidence of significant change with respect to one or more of the evolutionary markers described during Cycle 1 of the study, and deemed by the participants to be indicative of human evolutionary potentials unfolding within the community and society at large;

• Evidence of the existence of a causal relationship (either linear-deterministic or attractive-syntropic) between the application of knowledge acquired by participants in the course of this study and any (evolutionary phase) shifts in systemic qualities or dynamics of the larger community; including in particular such evidence as may be related to the evolutionary markers described in Cycle 1 of the study.

Validity and reliability. As discussed under the section Research Design:

Community Action Research, five basic quality criteria were used for evaluating the

validity and reliability of results. These criteria, and the corresponding evaluation

questions, are stated below:

Generation of new knowledge. What, if any, new knowledge was generated

during the implementation of the study that had not previously been covered in the

literature and/or was not previously known by the participants, and that significantly

contributed to the attainment of successful learning and practical outcomes aligned with

the purposes of the study? How was this knowledge acquired and what forms did it

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assume (e.g., propositional, experiential, enactive)? In what ways might this knowledge

be more effectively generated, embodied, recorded, critically evaluated, and/or rendered

transferable to other practice settings?

Achievement of action-oriented outcomes. How, and to what extent, did the

participants accomplish their intended learning and practical outcomes? What, if any,

assessment tools and techniques were utilized in any effort to accurately record each of

the attained outcomes, and what is currently known (or needs to be known) about the

validity of these assessment tools and techniques? What specific metrics were used, and

of these, which are likely to prove most useful in reliably demonstrating goal attainment

with respect to both the learning and practical outcomes sought by the study participants?

How useful are these assessment tools, techniques, and metrics likely to be in other

applied practice settings?

Education of both researcher and participants. What educational value was

received during the course of the study by the researcher and individual participants,

respectively? To what extend were the “lessons learned” limited to the specific context of

the study, or conversely, to what extent might they be transferable to other settings

involving individual, organizational, or community learning and practice? How might the

researcher or participants, respectively, share and extend the educational value each

received during the study so as to contribute to the education of others in the community

and in society?

Results relevant to the local setting. In what ways and to what extent were each

of the study results relevant to the specific community settings targeted by this

community action research, including the diversity of neighborhood, organizational,

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institutional and other settings that together comprised the community system(s) of

interest? With respect to each specific setting, which features, characteristics, and

qualities (e.g., formal vs. informal, public vs. private, temporal and spatial dimensions,

presence of other social or environmental variables) seemed to be most relevant in terms

of their actual or potential influence in either shaping, or being shaped by, the particular

results attained. On what basis did the researcher or participants evaluate relevance?

Sound and appropriate research methodology. What conclusions might be drawn

from the study results regarding the soundness and appropriateness of the chosen research

methodology? What, if any, problems were encountered in the practical application of the

chosen methodology, and how did the researcher and participants work through these

problems? In retrospect, might the researcher or participants conclude that the purposes

of the study likely would have been better served by the choice of an alternative

methodology? What conclusions can be drawn with respect to specific strengths and

weaknesses of the chosen methodology, and how might the latter be addressed in the

context of future research?

Ethical Considerations

In conducting action research within the “real world” circumstances of the place-

based community setting, the researcher assumes a responsibility to consider the full

range of ethical implications and take proactive steps to uphold those ethical principles

that are applicable to the particular situations in which each phase of the research is being

conducted. Stringer (1999) posited that “as a participatory approach to investigation,

community-based action research confronts ethical issues rarely acknowledged in other

types of study” (p. 177). These issues include the need to guard against unwarranted

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intrusion into the lives of the participants, to protect their privacy and avoid unwarranted

or unauthorized disclosure of information acquired from participants, to establish and

honor agreements regarding the appropriate ownership and uses of the products of

investigation, and to maintain a sensitivity to cultural values and protocols of the research

participants.

Winter (1996) operationalizes such considerations via a number explicitly stated

principles as follows:

• Make sure that the relevant persons, committees, and authorities have been consulted, and that the principles guiding the work are accepted in advance by all;

• All participants must be allowed to influence the work, and the wishes of those who do not wish to participate must be respected;

• The development of the work must remain visible and open to suggestions from others;

• Permission must be obtained before making observations or examining documents produced for other purposes;

• Descriptions of others’ work and points of view must be negotiated with those concerned before being published; and

• The researcher must accept responsibility for maintaining confidentiality” (pp. 16–17).

To these, O’Brien (2001) adds the following additional points:

• Decisions made about the direction of the research and the probable outcomes are collective;

• Researchers are explicit about the nature of the research process from the beginning, including all personal biases and interests;

• There is equal access to information generated by the process for all participants.

The outside researcher and the initial design team must create a process that maximizes

the opportunities for involvement of all participants (“Ethical Considerations,” para. 3).

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In conducting the research using the methodology described herein, I discussed these

ethical considerations and principles with the participants during the introductory phase

of the study, encouraging them to voice any related concerns that arise at any point

during the study, and I further obtained the explicit consent from each participant with

regard to the manner in which these principles would be upheld and to review these

principles at any time during the study, should the occasion warrant such review.

Confidentiality and consent. In my role as initiating research, process consultant

and facilitator, I assumed responsibility for maintaining the confidentiality of

conversations that occur among participants within the facilitated in-person and online

learning spaces created pursuant to the study methodology described herein. Furthermore,

I strongly encouraged the other participants to likewise honor the confidentiality of those

conversations in furtherance of a common intention to create a space for open sharing and

exploration, where participants are given to feel that they can safely and under conditions

of mutual trust share their thoughts and experiences without incurring a risk of disclosure

to third parties.

I also explained to the participants that the process of collecting data and

analyzing research findings would require recording and synthesis of participant

conversations, and some of this material, including quoted participant statements given

within the framework of the confidential learning community conversations, would be

submitted as part of the findings to be reviewed by the dissertation committee and

ultimately incorporated into the published dissertation. At the time of participant

recruitment, I requested and obtain written consent from the participants for such limited

disclosures. I also asked participants to verbally renew this consent at the beginning of

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each of the three inquiry cycles. I explained that neither the full names of the participants,

and nor other information likely to reveal the personal identities of the participants,

would be reproduced in the study findings or associated printed materials.

Limitations of the Methodology

The community action research methodology employed for this dissertation study

constitutes a departure from conventional approaches to dissertation research which draw

a sharp distinction between formal and practical knowledge, and which draw clear

boundaries delineating the scope of activities to be undertaken by the researcher. These

boundaries pertain to the scope of interests of individuals or groups who, as subjects of

the inquiry, may be affected either beneficially or adversely by the research process and

outcomes. As stated in the introduction to this Chapter 3, the decision to select and adapt

a form of community action research, using the praxis of designing conversation within

recursive cycles of planning, action, and reflection as the primary strategy for attaining

research outcomes congruent with the study aims and purposes, constituted a decision to

accept certain limitations inherent in the action research approach in order to deconstruct,

work through and transcend such other limitations, following from the positivistic and

reductionistic orientation of conventional science, as might foreclose the possibility of

investigating those intersubjective, practical, relational, and systemic domains of

knowledge and embodied understanding that are the central focus of this dissertation.

Moreover, action research proceeds from an stance towards authenticity and validity that

explicitly deconstructs the Cartesian duality of subject and object so as to open the way

for disciplined inquiry into the emerging qualities of knowledge co-created within a

holistic framework that encompasses both subjective human experience and experiences

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of common identity, self-hood, collective consciousness, transpersonal identification with

the nonhuman other, and other qualities that are treated as off limits and beyond the pale

of the conventional scientific enterprise. Certainly, other methods are available to the

social science researcher, wishing to investigate constructs identified within human

consciousness, culture, and relationships. However, when the primary research interest

and agenda involves a commitment to emancipatory, evolutionary, and systemic change

leading to the collective realization of human potentials amidst the complexities of “real

world” practice, as is the case with this dissertation, then action research surfaces as a

methodology uniquely adapted to such a socially progressive research agenda undertaken

in the community context. That said, there are indeed limitations imposed by this choice

of methodology:

First, the social change outcomes pursued via community action research, and the

qualities of emergence sought via evolutionary systems design reflect emancipatory

values that, by definition, are responsive to the unique culturally embedded needs of the

participating stakeholders. These values are attained through strategies of engagement

that, of necessity, are shaped by the unique attributes of local context. While this may be

viewed as a strength of the methodology, as it allows for deep exploration of those

unfolding human potentials, attainable social outcomes and evolving structures of

meaning that constitute the daily experiences of life within our pluralistic communities, it

also is a limitation in that it precludes the formulation of empirically supported

propositional statements that are generalizable across boundaries defined by culture,

geography, and historic circumstance. This limitation inherent to the action research

process does not, however, preclude the attainment of results and the formulation of

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reasoned analysis that would serve to inform other similar efforts to the extent future

action researchers and their participants may choose to investigate and enact community

revitalization within analogous local circumstances.

Second, the community action research methodology, as adapted for the purposes

of this dissertation, is designed to generate multiple learning outcomes, including both

propositional and practical forms of knowledge, as well as “real world” capacity building

and improvements in the performance of the relevant social system(s). However, any

conclusions that may be drawn regarding causal relationships, including observed

differences between results intended and results attained, must be deemed tentative at

best. Given the degree of open-endedness to the action research process, and the level of

complexity involved in pursuing transformative “whole system” change in the

community learning context, it is virtually impossible to account for all outcomes

attained. Some of these outcomes may be attenuated in space and time or occurring in

ways that evade detection via the quantitative and qualitative means of evaluation

employed in the study. Other outcomes, while relevant and potentially detectable, may

simply be overlooked due to limitations that are inherent in the constructive processes of

sensing, measuring, recording, and interpreting results.

Finally, the level of personal commitment that would be required of participants

more fully to step into the role of co-inquirers, climbing a steep learning curve to acquire

a range of novel evolutionary and praxis competencies, and engaging in all aspect of

information gathering, self-study, dialogue, data collection, methodological refinement,

thematic analysis, system modelling, and collective capacity building using a variety of

praxis tools and techniques, all within a four to six month timeframe as allotted for this

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study, likely would be impracticable for even the most dedicated of learning cohorts

given a variety of competing professional and personal demands. To place such an

onerous demand on study participants would severely limit the available “talent” pool,

and introduce a form of de facto inequity that is inconsistent with the stated emancipatory

aims of community action research. Therefore, this methodology requires a degree of

selectivity with regard to those tasks that are to be accomplished through collective effort,

with remaining tasks falling upon the researcher rendering this form of research a rather

labor intensive process. Special care must be taken to ensure that the products of

recording, review, analysis, and design that result from the researcher’s individual effort

between sessions, yet brought back into the group setting as “feedback” in support of the

collective research effort, are presented in a manner that is transparent and supports

authentic, consensus-based collaboration and co-learning. Future efforts to refine this

approach to community action research may well lead to improvement that optimizes the

balance between facilitative and generative roles while preserving the quality of the

research experience as an authentic expression of context-relevant evolutionary learning

community.

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Chapter 4: Enacting the Design Inquiry

Overview

The purpose of this Chapter 4 is to represent and provide an accounting of those

experiences, activities, and changes that have occurred thus far in the research, and that

were observed and recorded by various means devised to: (a) capture and report relevant

learning outcomes, (b) provide timely feedback in support of the ongoing design

discourse, (c) support analysis leading to the development of more effective practices for

engaging design conversation as a strategy for social improvement, and (d) empirically

inform the framing of more sophisticated questions for subsequent inquiry.

In keeping with the epistemological premises of community action research, as

described in the preceding chapter, the purpose here is not to present propositional

knowledge converging on a set of research findings. Rather, it is to demonstrate on the

basis of relevant data obtained in the process of enacting the design inquiry how and to

what extent this research activity has led to the learning and other outcomes intended by

both the researcher and the stakeholder-participants. As detailed in the preceding chapter,

this study was designed to provide a framework for discursive action and assessment of

an evolutionary change process, in general pursuing a shared intention to:

• Co-create language, meaning, and ideals;

• Build evolutionary consciousness and competencies;

• Produce metadisciplinary, ideal-seeking conversation;

• Acquire a progressively deeper understanding of the questions posed; and

• Generate new perspectives and associated questions as an attraction for further inquiry.

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These intended outcomes, as specified in the design of the research methodology, were

further articulated and refined during the recruitment and group formation stages of the

research, with a view towards establishing an authentically participatory framework for

design inquiry and discursive, collective action. In conversations prior to and during the

initial group inquiry session, the participants identified other desired research outcomes

and mutually acknowledged that attaining these additional outcomes (described below)

would be consistent with their shared interests and with the general purposes of the study.

During group formation, the participants were able to deliberately and

transparently bring their well-articulated individual interests and visions for the process

into a common discursive space. They entered the process of inquiry with a common

attitude of sharing, thereby facilitating the formation of a cohesive learning cohort, while

setting the stage for collaborative design inquiry rooted within a common framework of

intention and reflecting the multiple and overlapping interests of the participants as

community stakeholders and professional practitioners.

In the remainder of this Chapter 4, I describe the formation and learning activities

of the inquiry group, as well as related designing activities undertaken by the participants

through both group conversation and facilitation of designing conversations within a

larger community of Cleveland-area stakeholders. Unless otherwise indicated, the data

reported here are based on recorded and transcribed conversations, with excerpted

quotations and models included where appropriate to qualitatively demonstrate how and

in what manner intended outcomes were attained in the process of this co-creative

evolutionary inquiry.

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Recruitment and formation of inquiry group. Following approval of the

dissertation proposal in the spring of 2015, I immediately set about to recruit, from within

my local network of professional community practitioners, individuals who satisfied the

criteria for participation as set forth in the methodology. I initiated recruitment by

sending an e-mail invitation to each prospective participant, asking to meet individually

for the purpose of conducting an interview related to the study topic. For purposes of

invitation, I stated the study topic as follows: “to investigate the praxis of convening and

facilitating designing conversations in a variety of place-based community settings, using

community action research as an approach to systemic capacity building among

organizations and institutions working to revitalize Cleveland’s neighborhoods”

(Appendix E). By this means, I invited each of eight selected individuals to meet with me

one-on-one at a mutually convenient location, to participate in a 1-hour structured

interview.

Of a total of nine e-mail invitations sent, eight produced an affirmative response

to the request to schedule an interview, and one (for reasons unknown) did not elicit a

response. We selected each of the interview locations on the basis of mutual convenience.

The interviews were held at the following locations: a coffee shop in suburban

Willoughby Ohio, a faculty office at Cleveland State University (CSU), a CSU student

center cafeteria, the researcher’s private office located in Cleveland, a reserved library

conference room in suburban Independence Ohio, the interviewee’s private office located

within a Cleveland nonprofit organization, the interviewee’s private office located in

suburban Lakewood, and a vegetarian restaurant located in suburban Cleveland Heights

Ohio. Five of the eight interviews were conducted in a private office setting, whereas the

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other three were conducted at private tables located within public dining establishments,

where we determined that interruptions would be few and the level of background noise

would not be so great as to preclude voice recording.

With each of these eight prospective participants, I conducted a structured

interview using a common interview template (Appendix A). Upon receiving permission

from the interviewee, I electronically recorded and subsequently transcribed each of the

interviews. Using the template, I verbally provided a brief summary of the research

purposes and methodology. I showed the written interview template to each interviewee

so that the background information and questions could be viewed during the interview.

Next, I posed open-ended questions formulated to invite free, reflective, and nonintrusive

self-disclosure by the interviewee and to invite open sharing of information related to our

respective interests in the research topic. In this way, interviewees were invited to

describe their “current areas of practice” related to Cleveland’s place-based communities,

and to share any thoughts they might have regarding their “current interests” related to

the research, what they would imagine as “ingredients of a successful process,” and

“ideal outcomes.” I also invited the interviewees to share any thoughts or perceptions

they might have regarding “yet unrealized potentials” existing among Cleveland’s local

communities. The final question was formulated to invite each interviewee to consider

his or her level of interest in joining as a participant in the formation of an inquiry group

to engage in collaborative exploration of the research topic. This question was presented

in a manner that made clear that the interviewee was not expected to make a decision

regarding group participation during the interview itself. In this way, I sought to ensure

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that no participant would feel obliged to join the study group without having fully and

independently considered their individual interests and availability.

As follow-up to the structured interviews, I sent each of the eight community

practitioners a formal letter of invitation to join in the formation of a community action

research inquiry group. In the letter, I indicated that the purpose of this group process

would be to explore the stated research topic, and by various means of discursive action

and interaction over a period of between four to six months, build capacity to effect

mutually desired social change; specifically the conscious design and implementation of

a practitioner-led “guidance system” to support the evolutionary unfolding of collective

human potentials from within Cleveland’s existing place-based communities. I also sent

each invitee (via a separate e-mail message) an electronic copy of their interview

transcript, so that he or she would have an opportunity to confidentially review the

recorded statements for accuracy.

Seven of the eight invitees responded affirmatively; agreeing to participate. The

one who declined to participate stated that this decision was based not on lack of interest,

but on unforeseen logistical constraints imposed by a change in employment status. Of

the seven voluntary participants, four were men and three were women. Also, four lived

within the municipal boundaries of the City of Cleveland, and three lived in adjoining

suburban areas but worked at least part-time in the City. Four of the seven grew up in or

near Cleveland, and the other three originated from Michigan, New Jersey, and

Minnesota respectively. Other places where participants formerly resided include:

Boston, Alaska, California, and Australia. All participants represented that they had

significant travel experience which had helped to broaden the perspectives they brought

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into their current work in Cleveland. All participants were professionally educated and

currently were involved in some aspect of community revitalization. Together they

comprised a diversity of disciplinary backgrounds, albeit with significant areas of overlap

(see Figure 5), as follows:

P1: Architecture, political science, political communication, economics

P2: Environmental science, anthropology, sustainability learning communities

P3: Urban planning, architecture

P4: Sales and marketing, teacher education

P5: Anthropology, urban planning

P6: Psychology, diversity management, environmental policy, institutions and

behavior, education

P7: Psychology, field biology, landscape architecture, restoration ecology, art

Figure 5. Diverse and overlapping disciplinary backgrounds among study participants.

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Summary of participant interests. During the recruitment interview cycle, I

invited each participant to share some initial thoughts about how they might find value in

the process or outcomes of this research, either personally or professionally. Afterwards,

I reviewed each of the interview transcripts for the purpose of excerpting and distilling

those statements that, upon review, seemed to most clearly reflect the major substantive

themes carried in the participant responses, including in each case language relevant to

each participant’s interests and intentions related to the general research topic. These

statements revealed both considerable diversity, and a considerable amount of overlap in

professional areas of focus as depicted in Figure 5 above. Table 6 depicts the major

themes that emerged from these narrative statements of interest and intention. In

combination with the above-mentioned general outcomes projected in the methodological

design, these expressions of intentionality established an initial common framework for

purposeful collaboration leading into the first cycle of group inquiry.

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Table 6

Participant Interests Related to the Study

Participant Interests in Study

P 1 Bring different voices and diverse local perspectives into conversations about the big issues;

Learn mind-mapping techniques and other tools that can be helpful in fostering innovation;

Learning narrative and other ways of engaging people on complex issues without necessarily using esoteric language of complexity theory;

P 2 Improve facilitative skills for engaging of the community in a manner that tests assumptions and uncovers barriers to action and identifies benefits;

Learning how to be effective in leading conversations where the outcome is uncertain, and while guiding a process of community conversation leading to a sense of shared identity;

P 3 Engaging the process of consciousness, evolving towards something that is more reflective of where our consciousness needs to evolve now, in these current times;

Developing a more unified (based in common language and understanding), and therefore more sustainable process of planning, action, and reflection, based on real time evidence and real-time experiences;

P 4 Putting together a nucleus of educators and people with shared interests (on a leadership, political, and intellectual level) within our community to create a creative learning circle (or a circle of “learning bubbles” that include diverse voices) as a shared space where we can collaborate towards social change;

P 5 Learn how to design better conversations at community meetings;

Strengthen awareness of self-potentials that can be engaged to facilitate system-wide improvement in the City;

P 6 Enable continuous personal and professional growth and learning;

Imagine new possibilities and new ways of being, and create structured conversation around that;

P 7 Working together on a vision for a better world, and moving towards a new culture at large with an integral viewpoint of ecology.

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Again, while reviewing the interview transcripts in preparation for the first

inquiry group session, I noticed that whereas the interview questions tended to focus on

personal or professional interests, the responses revealed how each of the participant’s

interest extended beyond an immediate desire for personal or professional development

towards what appeared to be a common thread of broader interest arising from concerns

with the context of larger societal trends and their implications for the future at all levels.

Through their responses, the participants intimated what appeared to be a perception held

in common: that this research might serve as an important opportunity not only to

acquire new professional competencies, but also to embody and catalyze broader societal

change.

For example, when asked to share initial thoughts about how either the process or

outcomes of this research might be of value “in your work and in your life,” one

participant stated:

It is going to be like that pebble getting thrown into the pond. It has a ripple effect in other communities who have the opportunity to see, because other people are creatures of habit and they will see what we are doing and will want to copy it. Hopefully that would be the goal, that they would want to try it, because if it’s working, and it has truth in it, then it has the greatest possibility of becoming something spectacular. (P4, excerpt from recruitment interview)

Similarly, another participant expressed a concern with the larger societal context

coupled with a sense of being called towards personal (and collective) self-

transformation:

I have to move forward in some way. I reflect a lot on the past, but in the present moment I think I have to be open; whether it’s my personal, professional, or community life—my family—at any level in which I am consciously engaged. It’s a good moment in a sense, where I cannot not be open to what I no longer think of as randomized things. I don’t think of it as mystical. I think it’s the nature of life in almost an eco-bio sense of redefining—I am allowing myself to find ways—collective experiences of engaging with people where my own

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consciousness can be transformed. It is not a choice anymore! (P3, excerpt from recruitment interview)

And again, alluding to the need for not only personal transformation, but cultural

transformation, another participant stated:

I think what really needs to happen is a movement towards a new culture, and I’m very encouraged by the Pope’s encyclical that just came out recently where he’s saying that very thing: that our culture at large needs to move towards one with an integral viewpoint of ecology. Pardon the way I phrase this, but when I heard that it was hearing angels sing!…So I think that certainly has been my effort to move towards a more responsive culture, one that’s based in ecology. (P 7, excerpt from recruitment interview)

These and other reflective statements, as recorded in the interview transcripts, enabled me

to gain a deeply appreciative perspective regarding the motivations and expectations of

these voluntary participants leading into the initial stages of group formation. I found this

perspective was helpful as I stepped into the role of a convener and facilitator; I was able

to clearly see a commonality of interest and potential for collective revisioning and co-

creative action that would build upon the existing talents of the participants within a

learning space that would be conducive to collective meaning-making and discursive

social action.

Anticipating our first group interaction, I was eager to bring these engaged

community practitioners together in a way that would enable us to co-create conditions

that would be most favorable to an evolutionary learning process within the immediate

context a professional learning cohort. I anticipated that our conversations might move

from an emphasis on individual interests towards an articulation of common intentions.

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Learning Conversations

Inquiry group session 1.

Physical setting. On July 2, 2015, in the late afternoon, the participants gathered

in a room of the Hildebrandt Building, 3619 Walton Avenue, Cleveland, for the first of

what would be four inquiry sessions. I selected this site for the first session because of its

convenient location on Cleveland’s near west side, and because the building itself had

been repurposed from its former status as a meat packing plant to become the home of an

artist collaborative and community kitchen. These studio and culinary facilities had been

developed through a combination of entrepreneurial initiatives and self-organizing efforts

at the neighborhood level to support bottom-up economic development activity within the

context of ongoing revitalization efforts in Cleveland’s historic Ohio City neighborhood.

It therefore seemed an appropriate venue for our first gathering as we sought to enter into

social discourse centered on community revitalization. Prior to the meeting, I received a

message from P7 (who had been the last individual to receive an invitation in lieu of the

one initial invitee who could not join) indicating that he had a scheduling conflict and

could not attend the first group meeting.

Although the scheduling e-mail contained directions to the location of the

building, several of the participants initially encountered difficulty finding the meeting

location, given that the layout of the building itself contained multiple entry points and

was otherwise difficult to navigate. This situation caused several participants to show up

late, and delayed the start of the meeting. Although the room was sufficiently private, it

lacked certain aesthetic qualities deemed important by the researcher and participants

alike, such as comfortable chairs and the ability to arrange them in a circle. Upon arrival,

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participants sat at a long cafeteria-style table, which made it difficult to make eye contact

during conversation. The room made available by the building owner had not been

viewed in advance of the meeting, and in retrospect I decided it had been sub-optimal as

a learning space. We agreed that the next meeting would be located in a different venue.

Sharing, reflecting, and planning. I did not prepare a written agenda for the first

inquiry session, but arrived prepared with several handouts and a PowerPoint

introduction to the research purposes and method to be shown on a video monitor

positioned at the end of the conference table. Having been impressed by the eloquence of

some of the participant statements given during the recruitment interviews regarding

interests and “ideal outcomes,” I decided to print out and post some of these statements

on the wall of the meeting room so that everyone could read and talk about them while

gathering and enjoying refreshments prior to the start of the meeting. Those few

participants who arrived early did in fact comment that they enjoyed reading each other’s

statements, whereas others arrived well after the scheduled start time and therefore

entered directly into the group conversation without having an opportunity for such

informal sharing. However, in the conversations that followed, it became clear that a brief

verbal introduction of each participant was sufficient to “break the ice” and prompt

conversation.

After brief introductions, I opened the meeting by referring to my observation that

based on the individual interviews I had discovered several points of intersection among

the participants’ practice areas and interests. I proceeded to describe some of these

commonalities, including: (a) the overlapping disciplinary backgrounds; (b) my

observation that several of the participants had shared the experience of having moved

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away from Cleveland for a period of time and upon returning seeing the City and its

potentials in a new light (the experience of being a “boomerang” resident); (c) my

observation that several participants had expressed frustration at the lack of opportunities

for peer learning; and (d) that several participants had expressed how it often seemed to

be the “difficult conversations” that were also the conversations that mattered the most in

life and at work, yet these meaningful conversations were a rarity in daily life due to lack

of a safe “container.”

The tasks I set out to accomplish at this first meeting were fairly simple. I wanted

to utilize this occasion mainly to facilitate the process of group formation, and also to

provide a more detailed introduction to the research than previously supplied during the

recruitment interviews, so that the group conversations to follow would be informed by a

common pool of knowledge grounded in the study’s theoretical premises. I also came to

the meeting intending to offer the participants an opportunity to learn about and

experience generative dialogue as a step towards developing individual and group

competencies that, according to the theoretical literature, would be a step towards

embodying the ideal of an evolutionary learning community (Van den Heuvel, 2012;

Appendix F).

However, because of the late start of the meeting, I realized that the important

objectives of group formation and the opportunity to experience generative dialogue

might be curtailed if I spent too much time with the introductory presentation. I therefore

decided to give priority to group formation and competency building dialogue; tasks that

could only be accomplished via the face-to-face group meeting. I decided to forego the

PowerPoint presentation, knowing that, I could subsequently make it available to the

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participants electronically to view at their convenience. Therefore, I kept my introduction

short and endeavored to communicate the theoretical premises of the study concisely with

a minimum of technical jargon. An excerpt of my verbal introduction to the group, based

on the meeting transcript, follows:

What would a more participatory, more inclusive, a more organic and self-forming system—human social system—look like, that could coalesce around the rebirth of our communities? And that complements or can actually take it beyond what might otherwise be possible just through the conventional planning processes. I think we’ve each touched on that question, and that’s really central to this research. We look at the designing conversation in this context: the context being place-based community. So there are many different types of communities, but as a general scoping idea, we are talking about the connection between people and place, and what that entails in terms of the 21st century complex world that we are in; where there is a lot of uncertainty, there’s a lot of distraction, there’s a lot of challenge to us cognitively in terms of different ways that we are pulled, and the ways that we might think of community. But then there’s some deeper level stuff there as we start to unfold it. And we realize that there’s baseline fear there sometimes, there’s some hesitancy to reach out, there’s some missed opportunities just because people may be using the same language but having different meanings. What are the particular challenges of communication that we face? What might be possible if we were to really work on building our capacity to consciously think about the process of dialogue? You know, kind of have that extra track going, so that the processes that we use to try to build community themselves can evolve. Anyone that is involved in various parts of design knows that where design happens is when you reach that point of maximum chaos. And it either just completely falls apart into entropy, or something starts to serve as an attractive pull. And in the social realm, it’s an experience. You know, you’re in a group and there’s a shift. Something happens where things are starting to coalesce. And then you might start to ask the question “What was that shift?” In quantum terms you would talk about the “attractor” —Can the attractor be something like “shared values” or “shared images”? So the theory behind evolutionary systems design is just that…it’s this point that we not only can consciously control, but where we put our awareness. So often it’s hard to control the thought that comes into our mind, and a number of the authors in the literature say it’s really not about thought, it’s about awareness. And if we can start to shift our awareness just a little bit, we can start to see that thing which may have to do with values. You know, the “beautiful” the “good” the “true.” All those Platonic values! And how we experience those tugging at us. And then it’s not just coming from the mind, it’s coming from the heart and spirit as well. And that is at the heart of design. It’s that kernel of mystery that’s at the heart of design. But it’s also were design touches on the way life works. It’s that generative, formative process of becoming. It’s where we are reminded that we too are a part of life—

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that we are participating in a larger world of life. And communities are living systems, that’s kind of my mantra. Again, I can’t take credit for that, many people have said that. So that’s what I’m sitting with in the research, is a very general scope. It comes down to the practice, the art of conversation as a way to ferret out some of these ideas experientially, and in terms of applying our capacity; building our higher capacity as design thinkers and systems thinkers so that we can make a difference in the world.

Had I not already given a brief introduction to the research during the recruitment

interviews, I might have found it necessary to dedicate more of the meeting time to

introducing the research purposes and methodology. However, given our initial task of

group formation, this brief introduction seemed enough for the time being and the

suggestion to forego the PowerPoint was viewed favorably by the participants. It

provided an opportunity to demonstrate how we could function as an adaptive social

system, allowing the flow of the conversation to carry us towards task accomplishment. I

found that by keeping the presentation informal and in a “conversational mode,” and

especially by deciding not to draw attention to a video screen away from the center of the

table, I was able to minimize disruption to the flow of conversation that had already

begun during the participant introductions.

Conversation. I referred the participants to a single page handout describing the

ground rules of generative, or Bohmian dialogue. After briefly introducing the concept of

generative dialogue and walking through these ground rules, I opened the floor to group

conversation as follows:

Brett: I can offer some triggering questions or framing questions, but if anyone now is sitting with any questions they can offer to just get us started, I’d like to use the remainder of the time trying out this process of generative dialogue. So, I would invite anyone to share a question having to do with this general topic that can point to an image of what’s possible with community revitalization. Or really anything that is on your mind, really this is just an exercise so all things are on the table at this point.

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After a few moments of silence, P5 stated appreciation for the shared information, while

voicing the idea that we did not need a new place to start; that in fact we already had

entered into dialogue:

P5: Thinking about some of the things that you initially gave us as we started going through, I think that as we initially started kind of talking to each other and sharing our stories or paths working through and different things like that, we were kind of finding out from each other and beginning to pick out the commonalities. I think that was a really good basis for some of the stuff that you talked about as far as Bohm’s dialogue, and it might be good to go back to that thing you indicated in thought because we were kind of doing this organically, working off some of the things that we had shared with each other. So it might be good to kind of let us have the conversation, I don’t know about what but it would be good to get back to that space.

I responded by mentioning how some people often experience a tension in Bohmian

dialogue, fighting back the urge to simply “get to the point” or move towards

deliberations over task accomplishment rather than taking the time to learn how to “be

together.” Upon reviewing the transcript of this conversation, I realized that in my

response to P5, I was still acting in the role of presenter speaking from my theoretical

knowledge base rather than from a place of being fully present with the flow of the

conversation. It took me several more minutes to make this adjustment and as I worked to

suspend my own thought process so as to listen more closely to the “yes and” statements

being shared around the table, the group as a whole seemed to resonate with P5’s

description of an “organic” process of group formation through dialogue.

Again, at risk of disrupting the level of comfort already achieved, I attempted to

demonstrate how we might begin to test our assumptions in dialogue, even as we sought

to build a safe and trusting space for group interaction:

P3: When you [Brett] said, or what I heard—that it’s about being, which is how you started out. “How do we be together?” You started in the broader sense of being, and [P5] was saying that’s really what we were kind of already doing. But this kind of thing’s coming together…sharing the experience of the process itself,

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even if it is just getting to know each other. I shouldn’t say “just,” because what’s more important than that, for anybody or for any opportunity to be together?

Brett: I’m wondering if, when you kind of checked yourself just then, about saying “just” being together, whether you experienced or became aware that there might be an assumption behind that.

P6: In clarifying for yourself that you assume that people would think that saying that phrase…yeah.

P3: I was just aware of, maybe, my own sense of how the word “just” can be taken different ways…right, and so kind putting it out there, I guess, whether I was conscious of it or not. Yeah, I mean it just occurred to me as a figure of speech that I had to even clarify for myself, I guess. That that word “just,” especially at this point in time getting to know each other for the first time and beginning to hear and get interested in some of each other’s stories. I put that word up there, whether it was from my assumptions, or whether that was from….I guess in the end to answer your question it was more about just acknowledging that that’s enough, it gets back to “the being” I guess. I’m just going to be …[laughter]

As the dialogue proceeded, certain other themes started to emerge. However, during the

dialogue itself, neither I nor any of the participants attempted to name or describe

emerging themes as such. On the basis of practicability, I consciously decided to forego

any attempt to simultaneously generate and distill thematic content; instead allowing

themes to emerge in a manner that was not forced and that respected the group’s shared

intention to engage in a “generative” dialogue, whereby ideas would arise from within the

natural flow of the conversation. My premise was that this less directive approach would

allow ideas to emerge via the self-organizing dynamics of the conversation as a fluid

process of collective meaning-making, and that themes emerging through such fluid,

unrestricted conversation might represent a more authentic expression of the collective

consciousness of the group.

Upon review of the session transcript, I was able to step outside the facilitative

role and read the transcript while searching for moments in the conversation when a

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participant would either make a statement that summarized an idea collectively

developed during the dialogue, or state an idea that was affirmed by some overt

expression(s) of concurrence or resonance. Once restated as emergent themes, I was able

to prepare and send to the participants a synthesis along with the full transcript, so that

each would have an opportunity to review for accuracy and offer any clarifying

comments.

The major themes that emerged during the first inquiry session, along with

relevant excerpts capturing the participants’ own words, included the following:

Theme 1: Collective purpose starts with learning to be together. During group

formation, an agreement to initially suspend assumptions about the “task at hand” while

consciously “learning to be together” via an organic process of dialogue may lead to

better understanding a group’s “common purpose”:

P2: I think right here we are not all entirely sure of what that purpose is, and so your point of just being together is well, that’s OK, that is just being together and you work through what the purpose is. It’s a little like in research, you know, there is hardly any more research done just for the sake of doing research, and mix stuff together and seeing what happens, where so many beautiful inventions come from over the years.

Theme 2: The practice of suspending does not necessarily mean being judgment

free. In introducing the idea of “suspending” judgment, people may have different

interpretations of this task. For example, a facilitator who represents an authority like a

government agency likely confronts an expectation that they will be “neutral” or able to

create a “judgment free zone,” whereas an educator teaching a course in diversity might

confront the expectation that “everyone in the room is biased.”

P5: Perhaps all of us understand what we want to get out of this overall so that we can get into this topic better, and um, so I’m really intrigued by the idea of suspension. I’d like to say that I am in a judgment free zone…I’d like to say that. …

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P6: When you said judgment free zone, my judgment was that’s impossible. You know, so I had that awareness as my judgment, can I set that aside? And can I be willing to, you know, not totally get rid of it but say “OK” in the same conversation “Let me hear what you have to say.”

Theme 3: Creating a safe container is not the same as becoming comfortable.

Especially when engaging dialogue across disciplines, the challenge may be to both

consciously acknowledge and set aside the biases that inevitably exist so as to create a

safe container for having “difficult conversations.” Therefore the goal in facilitating

dialogue is not as much to ensure people are comfortable, but rather to use ground rules

and other techniques to ensure people feel safe.

P6: When I work with clients…I give them a list of guiding principles, how to operate. And one of them is “I cannot promise that the work that we do will make you comfortable. In fact, you may be very uncomfortable. All I can promise is you will have a safe space in which to do the work, but that’s very different than being comfortable.” Because, I do believe we have to at times get very uncomfortable, especially on things that really have never been discussed.

Theme 4: Suspending ego unfolds into appreciative awareness. The practice of

suspension may require us to move from ego-centered awareness to appreciative

awareness of the personhood of the other.

P4: So initially, we have to humble ourselves.…And it’s all a process, but by nature I guess we’ve just been trained or conditioned (maybe that’s the word to use) to be apprehensive. And this part here where is says, don’t judge them good or bad.…Again that’s going to be on a spiritual level too. Because I can tell when you don’t like me, I can tell when you do love me, so let’s set all that aside and just let go…, set your ego aside.

Theme 5: Collective creativity means working with uncertainty. One of the values

of conscious suspension is that it enables a group to access its creative potentials, but this

requires individual acceptance of a certain amount of vulnerability, and mutual

acceptance of a certain amount of indeterminancy or operating “just this side of chaos.”

P3: I guess what I’m putting out there now is that dialogue is a process—acknowledging our biases, our judgments, but the calling is to be vulnerable, to

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being judged even, but knowing that without that vulnerability is a necessary precondition for that creativity. Especially when you know that it’s so different than any of us have done as individual creative acts, creating something where you are part of a creative process of a group.

P2: The only way you do that is by sitting with uncertainty, right. There’s a group of people passing through this space which is a transition, right. And to get through that can be personally hard (going through transitions I can speak to those myself) or as a group coming together and making this space to be creative and to be open to uncertainty and have that experience of passing through just a vastness that gets you to somewhere else, I don’t know what that is, but that’s a good thing.

Theme 6: Personal triggers are also opportunities for deeper learning. When we

feel triggered by another’s statement, we might consciously maintain openness and invite

deeper understanding by observing the particular manner of “interesting” it evoked.

P2: I heard you say how that’s interesting. [laughter] There is a way of noticing “Oh, well you sure said something that fired me up somehow,” instead of going, “Oh well that doesn’t fit with my paradigm of the world,” to go “Well, that’s interesting.” Yeah.

P4: When we put all that other ego tripping and trying to be cute and all that out of the way, and we really start talking with each other one on one—for real, for real. Then you will understand what my “interesting” is which is going to be enlightening to you, you see, and then that’s going to create unity and all that other stuff that comes—I’m guessing.

The dialogue continued for about 40 minutes essentially generating a momentum of its

own; with minimum facilitation other than that which was necessary to encourage and

invite participation by all group members. Having introduced just a few key concepts

related to Bohmian dialogue, I found that the group readily used the opportunity to co-

generate knowledge, and that this “group knowledge” was emerging from a combination

of interdisciplinary knowledge dissemination and “real time” discursive meaning-making

inspired by the experience of the dialogue itself. It felt to me like we were only able to

get a “taste” of the group’s potential for transformative peer learning through dialogue

within the limited time available.

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Towards the end of this first inquiry session, I attempted to invite reflection on

emerging themes while also referring back to the major theoretical premises of the study:

Brett: So, the task of evolutionary learning or becoming part of an evolutionary learning community—learning conscious evolution as it were—in the design context is building competency to working in that arena, working amidst chaos, working within uncertainties. And most importantly as we have started to see in the course of this conversation, starting to pay attention to the subtleties, the assumptions, the things that are happening inside as well as outside—things that are happening in the relational spaces between us that we normally are not paying attention to, because we are just looking at the outcomes but not the process.

I invited reflection, in part to confirm my own impression that this short exercise served

to create an atmosphere of openness and appreciative interest among individuals who

clearly shared a common interest in forming as a cohesive inquiry group. P1 and P3 both

offered reflections which appeared to capture a sense of the emerging group sentiment.

P1: So I’ll just see where all this goes, but a few triggers. So I guess that could be an assumption. I tend to be an internal processer initially, and I’m more comfortable initially speaking one on one, or uncomfortable in a group at some level until some level of trust is built up. At the same time, I’m also processing this (what do you call it) container, narratives or frames, taking a look at that. At the same time, OK just how am I reacting or internalizing this without trying to figure it all out? That’s why I was also intrigued with the “just being” statement, also, or just diving into some level and seeing what happens, so they’re just a few thoughts or reflections that come up.

P3: There’s an argument that it’s enough to just be together.…There’s partly a sense that coming anywhere to do anything is some kind of act of faith, and risk to whatever, or…whomever, you know? Its faith born out in that together the common threads that were shared in just hearing…people’s stories…what drives that commonality for each of us as individuals, just as P4 said, I think that would be different [from our usual ways of communicating], because we have different kinds of “interesting.” [laughter] So, in that sense I would say it feels honest to me, it just feels good to be here, I’ll say that.

In closing, I reminded the group that I had invited a seventh participant (P7) and they all

confirmed that he would be welcomed at the next session.

Inquiry group session 2. To establish a common resource for sharing knowledge

during the interim period between group inquiry sessions, I utilized the web service

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Wikispaces (https://www.wikispaces.com/) to construct an online digital platform which

could be accessed by the study participants by means of a dedicated weblink. I organized

this digital space in a manner that reflected the major components of Banathy’s (2000)

generic inquiry system model, including separate web pages denoted as “participant

conversation space,” “organizing perspectives,” “definitions space,” and “organized

knowledge space.” To facilitate data gathering and analysis, I also created and posted two

other documents, a “data capture sheet template” and an “evolutionary markers

spreadsheet.” In addition, I used my account with the service WebEx

(https://www.webex.com/) to record a PowerPoint presentation introducing the research

purpose, theory and method. I subsequently made this online webinar available to the

participants via a weblink, which allowed each participant to view the presentation on a

computer screen at their convenience and thereby provided a convenient way for each to

review essential background information that would inform our subsequent group

conversations.

Physical setting. On September 3, 2015, I met with participants at the Hope

House of Prayer, located within Cleveland’s Detroit Shoreline neighborhood at 1709

West 69th Street, for the purpose of conducting a second inquiry session. I had asked the

participants to consider the adequacy of our physical meeting space during a short period

of reflection at the end of our first inquiry session. Several of them had affirmed my own

impression that the physical venue of that first session was inadequate for our purposes.

While located within a re-purposed building that was emblematic of Cleveland’s

community revitalization efforts, as a practical matter, the building was hard to navigate

and its “factory-like” meeting room with table and chairs bolted to the floor lacked

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certain functional and aesthetic qualities that one might properly expect in a space

dedicated to purposeful group conversation and co-creative learning.

Upon a recommendation by P6, I arranged for us to meet at the Hope House of

Prayer because it was located within a modified single-family house that had a

comfortable, private, and quiet “living room” type space that would allow us to engage in

conversation free from interruption. The house was in a relatively convenient location,

also on Cleveland’s near west side, and its address was clearly marked and easy to find. It

was currently used by a faith-based organization, but had no other occupants scheduled

during our meeting time. The meeting room itself was of sufficient size to easily

accommodate 6 to 8 individuals with room to spare, and with our chairs arranged in a

circle so that during our conversations each participant could face each other without

difficulty. The owner of the venue did not charge a rental fee but accepted a small

donation for use of the space in keeping with a spirit of sharing and reciprocity.

As we gathered for our early September group session, I asked the participants if

they felt this was a better space for our purposes, and all agreed that it was. One of the

participants observed that it had less of an “institutional feel” and therefore felt more

intimate. Also, being associated with a faith-based organization, the venue felt more

inviting as a community space than perhaps might be the case if we had chosen to meet in

a private residence.

Sharing, reflecting, and planning. Two of the group members, P4 and P5, had

contacted me prior to the second session to advise they had run into a schedule conflict

that precluded their attendance. However, P7, who had missed the first session was now

able to join us. I began the session by introducing P7 to the other four participants in

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attendance. I also invited P7 to introduce himself and share some thoughts about his

interest in the research and its relevance to his work as a landscape design consultant,

restoration ecologist, and artist interested in exploring cultural and transpersonal

dimensions of community revitalization practice. For the benefit of P7, and each other

given that it had been two months between meetings, the other participants also briefly

introduced themselves.

As a prelude to our learning conversation, I made an announcement inviting any

participants who might be interested to join me in co-facilitating a Vital Neighborhoods

Working Group “innovation session” scheduled at the 7th annual Sustainable Cleveland

Summit (September 16–17, 2015) to be held at the downtown convention center. The

session, entitled: “The designing community: Collaborating to access our hidden

neighborhood potentials” was proposed as a way to advance the mission of the Vital

Neighborhoods Working Group and generate broad-based designing conversation among

residents and stakeholders in furtherance of the purposes of this study. Two of the

participants, P1 and P2 agreed to serve as co-facilitators at the upcoming work session.

P7 also expressed an interest in utilizing this opportunity for practical application of the

concepts and tools we were currently exploring in the inquiry group.

Next, I handed out an agenda for the meeting, together with a set of “trigger

questions” and several pages of dialogical task descriptions and related background notes

drawn from the relevant literature, including a summary of Peter Checkland’s (1981) soft

systems design methodology. I explained the suggestive list of inquiry tasks was intended

as a sort of roadmap to guide our conversation towards our intended learning outcomes,

and that we should not expect to accomplish all these tasks in the course of a single

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meeting. The first three of these named tasks, especially, might best be understood as an

invitation to collaboratively design system(s) of process that enable a continuous

unfolding of human potentials for collective self-transformation guided by shared ideals

and occurring within the context of place-based community revitalization. These are:

Task 1: Co-create a cognitive map of our present evolutionary state;

Task 2: Create conditions for evolutionary learning;

Task 3: Develop evolutionary competence.

The next three tasks would serve to more clearly delineate the scope of our group inquiry,

as a framework for subsequently modeling the structures and dynamics of those

community systems that are considered most relevant and of interest to the participants:

Task 4: Create one or more ideal images of Cleveland’s neighborhoods as living, healthy, self-organizing systems;

Task 5: Map the field of inquiry, including preliminary evaluation of community system boundaries;

Task 6: Identify evolutionary markers.

I suggested that if our common aim was to accomplish these design tasks, a good place to

start would be to begin focusing our dialogue in a way that would enable us to define and

reach collective understanding of the nature and scope of the community system(s) of

interest to us, and of the current “problem situation” related to Cleveland’s place-based

communities.

I suggested that such an approach, engaging dialogue in a purposeful way to

disclose our current ways of understanding the problem situation as a point of departure

for group dialogue leading us into an evolutionary design space, could be adapted from

Checkland’s (1981) soft systems design methodology:

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Brett: Through dialogue maybe [we can] find some collective notions of the scope of our exploration which we generally set forth as “community” or “community revitalization.” The premise here is that it is helpful to start with—not with a problem per se—but with what Checkland calls a “problem situation.” In other words, the problems are embedded within the system, but the selection of how we define the system is a very important step, because that’s where we kind of bring our world view into the inquiry. And so, following Checkland’s process, what he recommends is that you start by coming up with, not just one, but a number of different systems or subsystems. When we think about community, when we think about where the work needs to be done, or where the opportunities for change may be, what bubbles up to the surface as far as areas that would be worthwhile to pay attention to?

In this way, and with the aid of a set of trigger questions printed on the second page of

the written agenda, I opened the floor to group conversation.

Conversation. Rather than prompting conversation with a single trigger question,

which might have framed the conversation in a way that inadvertently and prematurely

limited the scope of our group inquiry, I presented a list of open-ended trigger questions

and invited participants to treat them as suggestive, but to start with any question (or

formulate their own question) that presently attracted their interest at this stage of the

process. Based on my own brainstorming in advance of the meeting, I offered the

following as suggested trigger questions:

• For those of us who are residents and stakeholders in Cleveland today, what is the promise and reality of living in community?

• What does it mean (or should it mean) to be “living in community”? Are there certain shared “core assumptions” that must be upheld as common understanding in order for communities to thrive?

• What is the current status and condition of community life within Cleveland and its diverse neighborhoods?

• What are some of the essential values and qualities of relationship that currently, or in the past, have contributed to the experience of “living in community” among Cleveland residents and stakeholders?

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• What current trends (either intrinsic or extrinsic) are shaping conditions and qualities of community life as currently experienced by Cleveland residents and stakeholders?

• To what extent, and in what manner, is the reality of community life shaped by individual and collective mindsets or prevailing cultural norms existing among today’s local residents and stakeholders?

• What new realities are emerging which have either beneficial or detrimental implications for the continued vitality of Cleveland communities?

• What images, metaphors, or symbols might be considered emblematic of the current status of community life within and among Cleveland neighborhoods?

I thus opened the floor for any participant to initiate conversation. After about 30

seconds of silence, P2 then asked for further clarification of how the term “community”

was to be understood for purposes of the study. I realized at that moment that, by asking

participants to initiate conversation that could lead to shared understanding of the scope

of the problem situation based on a set of trigger questions I had prepared in advance of

the meeting, the participants might reasonably infer that I had a particular area of focus in

mind. I decided I had a responsibility to be as transparent as possible regarding my own

reasons for wanting to focus specifically on “place-based community” in the Cleveland

context, and also that such clarification regarding my own interests and intentions might

be a catalyst for group reflection as we together attempted to navigate the transition from

generative to strategic dialogue. I responded to P2’s question as follows:

There’s all kinds of “communities” and it is a very broad, very inclusive, arguably overused term. But the particular interest I’m bringing to the table is “place-based community.” My reason for that is…first of all, it is an area that very readily ties into all these questions around sustainability, because it is in place that everything happens, where we are interacting with the Earth itself. In addition, if we think of it in terms of the historic evolutionary stage that we are in as a species, this whole question of a community being other than place-based is a really new question because of digital communication, virtual community, and so forth. So it does beg the question of: As we move headlong into global community, virtual communities, we are also seeing this trend where the traditional place-based communities seem to be under great stress (you know, neighbors not knowing

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their own neighbors, and all the tensions we see, the sense of isolation that we see in young people, and all those things that are documented in Putnam’s book on the decline of communities). So, there are problems there [and] from my perspective, [I think] we need to maybe start there…to me that is a place where we can really be intentional.

Following this clarification of my own intention, the conversation among participants

started to flow, which signaled to me that not only the suggested trigger questions, but

also clarification of my own interests as facilitator and researcher was beneficial in

catalyzing and focusing the group conversation to follow.

The first trigger question, “What is the promise and reality of living in

community?” clearly engendered the most interest among the participants. This may have

been simply because it was first on the list, but from the conversation itself, I received a

strong impression that the participants consciously made the connection between this first

question and our inquiry tasks no. 4 (create the “ideal image”) and no. 5 (map the “field

of inquiry”).

From this initial question, the conversation moved along a trajectory of its own.

Although the participants would occasionally refer back to the list of questions provided,

a number of other questions relevant to the research topic were framed by the participants

themselves and refined in the course of the conversation. This process exhibited a pattern

of discourse where each new question engendered a thoughtful response that in turn

engendered the articulation of new questions. The following is an example of this pattern:

P7: I think that’s an important first step, to define who we are as a community and what that means to people, but one thing I’m constantly reminded of in my work and my worldview too is, where is all this headed…in the big picture? And there are two questions on here that speak to that: “What current trends are shaping conditions or qualities of community life?” and “What new realities are emerging that may be beneficial or detrimental implications?”…I had this visual come to mind, you know, how would it change this whole process that we are engaging in if we were having this conversation on the fantail of the Titanic? If we were aware of that, through some sort of science fiction…or if we could be taken back

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and somehow we were sitting on the fantail of the Titanic, and we know the story of the Titanic, where its heading…how would that inform our process of learning? I kind of feel in some ways with climate change and some of the other issues we are facing not just locally but globally we are somewhat in that situation. So I think there may be two levels to this: There are unique issues, opportunities, constraints of our locality, but also how does that fit into the next level—the larger thrust of culture, and really global civilization if you want to think that far?

Another example of this discursive pattern, where one of the trigger questions

engendered a participant response that coalesced as another arguably more refined

question is the following:

P6: One of the things I struggle with in regards to this question about “to what extent, and in what manner, is the reality of community life shaped by individual and collective mindsets or prevailing cultural norms existing among today’s local residents and stakeholders?” In my experience it’s so all over the place, it’s all across the board! And I can’t help but to tap into my background, my educational background, and really tie it to, you know just some basic theory and principles. It’s hard for people to pay attention to or to even think about “what does it mean to be in community” when there are so many basic needs that are trying to be met on a day-to-day basis. I probably don’t live in a community with quite the extremes that you mention, but certainly there are extremes in my neighborhood. So I just really struggle with—can we even have this conversation about living in community when we literally have people that are just basically trying to live?

As facilitator, I discovered that I could just let the conversation follow its own

course with minimum “external” direction. Having initiated the group process with a set

of prepared trigger questions, and now observing how these prompts in turn inspired

participants to frame additional open-ended questions informed by their experiences and

unique individual perspectives, I found that the conversation proceeded in a manner that

was clearly relevant to the accomplishment of several of our self-appointed learning

tasks. Specifically, conversation began to express a quality of strategic group thinking; as

mutually guided visioning informed by our diverse personal and professional experiences

and coalescing around a set of complementary descriptions of the problem situation and

complementary emerging images of future social action directed towards place-based

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community revitalization. As discursive action, the conversation invited consideration of

alternative perspectives and served to expand awareness of our individual and shared

assumptions, enabling the emergence of a pluralistic yet unified understanding of our

collective learning potentials and our imagined ideals. These multiple perspectives and

emerging themes regarding assumptions, potentials, and ideals are summarized below.

As the second inquiry session drew to a close, P7 brought up the role of

technology as a factor influencing community cohesion:

P7: Technology probably should be thrown within the whole matrix, too. Modern technology tends to be somewhat fracturing of communities – the Skype and Facebook and cell phones and all the other things we have now. People have a tendency sometimes to be more in contact with a friend or family member in Phoenix than they do with their neighbors.

P1 responded with an alternative view:

P1: Well, sometimes it also restores that too, where people who have been scattered, were at one time they were one place, can now also reconnect at some level too. So, in some ways that could be an improvement in certain ways.

This, in turn, prompted P3 to share his reflections following a recent visit to California’s

Silicon Valley. He observed how people living in a given place can acquire a sense of

community identity based upon something other than the history of the place.

P3: A place where I was just 10 days ago, Silicon Valley, a place where technology originates and the playgrounds around it. There is the people, the place…and people talk about and describe it as a kind of social experience, it really was “we are the center of the world,” because we are the “masters of the technology.”

At this point in the conversation we had reached the end of our session. I shared my

reflection that the conversation had demonstrated how we might learn to pay attention to

multiple perspectives expressed in relation to any given question, and how by closely

examining these perspectives and the way they are communicated in dialogue, we might

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begin to shed light on those underlying worldviews that shape our perceptions, thoughts,

and actions within the local community context:

Brett: So we can continue the conversation…I just want to point out on this last question [and observation], which really thrills me is, you could start to see how the responses to the questions I posed brought in three answers that to me all seemed like “yeah, of course,…like, those answers make sense” but reflecting slightly different takes on the window in which the question is viewed—that “worldview” aspect. So when I review this conversation, this is one of the things that I’m going to try to highlight and even articulate in feedback to the group, just for further enhancing our perspective on what is occurring in the conversation.

As described above, the group conversation at the second inquiry session had

been focused on a set of open-ended trigger questions formulated to guide the

conversation towards accomplishing the system design task of mapping the field of

inquiry in terms of each participant’s understanding of the local context and the relevant

community system characteristics and boundaries. I found that this initial design task

could be accomplished, consistent with Checkland’s (1981) Soft System Design method,

by first engaging conversation among the participants with this design purpose in mind as

a shared intention, and by subsequently reviewing the conversation transcript for themes

that could be captured and summarized as alternative rich descriptions of the problem

situation.

I found that the conversation during session 2 moved back and forth between a

focus on defining the problem situation, and a focus on envisioning the ideal future

situation, thereby exhibiting the emergence of group competency in generating within the

space of the dialogue itself conditions favorable to social systems design as a collective,

discursive activity. As mentioned above in relation to themes emerging in the first inquiry

session, I decided to prepare multiple descriptions of the problem situation based on the

transcript of the second inquiry session, upon considering that our time together in face-

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to-face conversation might best be utilized if we could avoid the time consuming process

of distilling themes as a group. This decision on my part was based furthermore on my

impression that the conversation had been very rich, yielding many well-articulated

participant statements regarding the problem situation. Thus, I was able to distill coherent

themes without materially altering the substantive ideas generated and shared through the

process of design discourse. In addition, I considered the fact that I could send my

distillation of themes to the participants in advance of the meeting, and use them as a

starting point for renewed conversation, thereby affording the participants ample

opportunity to review and confirm the accuracy of the alternative descriptions of the

problem situation based upon their own statements in the group discourse.

The conversation generated by the trigger questions brought up a number of

interrelated themes, revealing multiple perspectives regarding the scope of inquiry within

the broad framework established by the group design tasks, and specifically regarding the

problem situation afflicting Cleveland’s place-based communities. Accordingly, using

content exclusively drawn from the group dialogue, including the participant statements

quoted below, I was able to summarize the following emerging themes and descriptions

of the problem situation in a way that revealed structural, dynamic, and teleological

qualities of a range of human activity systems which the participants individually and

collectively deemed relevant for purposes of mapping a common field of inquiry:

“Normal” is isolating. People feel separate and isolated from each other, living

with highly individualized daily routines that, under “normal” circumstances, fail to build

a sense of community cohesion.

P2: I suppose for many people the reality is that, you are living in what is a neighborhood, but I think lots of people feel very separate from each other, as you

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mentioned, and you go about your business and you come home and sleep, and you know, you go off and do whatever you need to do in your own life.

Resigned to nostalgia. Nostalgic or romanticized images of community seem

unreal and indeterminate, and leave only a sense of resignation, insofar as people lack

regard or awareness of the larger context and realities that are shaping our collective

future. It is essential to have awareness of the big picture, lest we have this conversation

as if “on the fantail of the Titanic” (P7). Solutions arrived at the community level may be

for naught “if we don’t have any kind of regard or awareness of the future and realities

shaping the larger thrust of culture, and global civilization” (P7).

Ancestral connection broken. Our communities suffer from displacement of the

ancestral memory and a disconnection from a deep sense of place. In Cleveland, as in the

American mainstream culture generally, community identity tends to be a “fabrication,”

not connected to any sense of “deep roots in the landscape or sense deep history”

identified with the land and the original cultures that were here.

Nothing in common. People’s individual experiences are vastly different, even if

living in close proximity, which calls into question whether common unity and common

understanding is still possible. There is no uniform definition of community, and the idea

of a common set of core assumptions may be illusory. People have vastly different (and

unequal) experiences even within the same neighborhoods, as related to the notion of

“community,” which raises the “question whether it’s is even possible to come to a

common unity, common understanding?” (P1).

Too busy surviving. Individual mindsets are “all over the board” with many

people devoting virtually all their vital energies towards just facing daily challenges of

living, making it difficult to have meaningful conversation about community. It is hard for

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people to pay attention to, or to even think about what it means to be in community when

there are so many basic needs that are trying to be met on a day-to-day basis.

P6: This idea of the individual and collective mindsets and the cultural norms, in my experience is so all over the board; for me that creates the largest challenge in having a meaningful conversation around “how do we be together in community?” [In other words,] can we even have this conversation about living in community when we literally have people that are just basically trying to live? [Furthermore,] while I do see a lot of things happening in regards to helping people come together and have conversation about what it means to be in community, I also see an awful lot of energy of the individual level of many of the members of the neighborhood who are literally just—all their energy goes into just living!

No reason to stay. Loss of place-based connectivity seems to be accompanied by

a loss of a collective stake, or place-based sensibility, making it increasingly difficult to

“come together” in the face of adversity.

P3: There seems to be this inner tension between individuality and community. There is something to be said for different kinds of adversity, [as there appears to be] some kinds of adversity that can build community, depending on how individuals in community choose to respond, [whereas we also are seeing individuals who] don’t really feel like [they] have a stake in the outcome as a member of the community. How many people choose to leave, rather than stay in any community that begins to lose its place-based connectivity? The fact that we are part of [an emerging] larger network [may account for the way some communities are] sort of losing their bonds in terms of place-based sensibility.

Struggling to adapt. Stressors can create community, but stressors can also isolate

and fragment community. How people respond to stressors, as individuals, may either

contribute to a sense of community cohesion, or cause communities to unravel,

depending on how individuals form bonds as members of social or family units that

enable them to collectively adapt over time. Social isolation or fragmentation that causes

a loss of the reciprocal relationship between individuals and community engenders a

human need to create community elsewhere, wherever it can be found and often in ways

that are disconnected from memory and place.

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P5: It really kind of depends how strong your bonds are to other individuals in that community, as well as how well our accustomed ways of engaging are adapted to your changing circumstances. If you are used to relating in one specific way, and all of a sudden you have a plethora of ways to relate like in a college setting, or you have to figure out new ways to relate, you may not recognize yourself as immediately a part of that community.

Divided we fall. People are becoming more socially isolated and losing a sense of

common identity, making it increasingly difficult to respond to complex challenges in

ways that uphold common democratic and emancipatory values, common purpose, and a

spirit of “unity in our diversity.”

Brett: As we move headlong into global community and virtual communities, we are also seeing this trend where the traditional place-based communities seem to be under great stress: neighbors not knowing their own neighbors, and all the tensions we see, the sense of isolation that we see in young people, and so forth.

Stakeholder community design: The Cleveland Vital Neighborhoods

Innovation session. During the interim period between the second and third group

inquiry sessions, two of the participants (P1 and P2) and I volunteered to serve as co-

facilitators of a community learning event coinciding with the 7th annual Sustainable

Cleveland Summit. This summit was planned as a continuation of the 10-year, citywide

initiative that is more fully described in Chapter 1. The overall framework for the 2-day

summit was a large group AI process, during which stakeholders interested in advancing

the City of Cleveland’s sustainability agenda were invited to share ideas about problems

and opportunities in the City related to various sustainability themes, and design

prototype initiatives guided by an overarching vision of Cleveland as a “Green City on a

Blue Lake.”

The study participants agreed that this event provided a timely opportunity to

engage a larger community of stakeholders by means of the facilitated practice of

designing conversation in a manner that would complement and inform our ongoing peer

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learning process within the inquiry group, while also helping to advance a larger

community agenda in keeping with the premises of this study as community action

research. Working through the Cleveland Vital Neighborhoods Steering Committee, we

organized and convened one of nine concurrent “innovation sessions” held in the late

afternoon on the first day of the Summit. At the appointed time, a diverse group of about

30 community leaders and stakeholders met in a conference room underneath the main

floor of the Cleveland Convention Center. As co-facilitators, we immediately invited the

session attendees to self-organize into “break out groups” around four circular tables.

During the first 15 minutes of the innovation session, I introduced myself, P1, and

P2 as research associates, and together we provided a brief introduction to the topic and

agenda for the session. We posted a sheet of paper on the wall listing a set of “ground

rules for dialogue” based upon the theoretical work of David Bohm (1996). With express

permission from the session attendees, I placed voice-recording devices on three of the

four tables, while leaving the fourth table available for anyone who might prefer not to

have their voice recorded.

Having been inspired by the experience of the second inquiry group session,

whereby a conversation of rich quality and depth had been attained utilizing a set of

open-ended trigger questions, we decided to use these very same questions as a catalyst

for conversation within this larger gathering of stakeholders and residents at the

Cleveland summit. Also, realizing that this large group would not have the luxury of a

long period of time to build group cohesion, nor any opportunity to share information

about the topic and its theoretical basis in advance of the meeting, I felt challenged to

figure out a way to introduce the idea of community design conversation as an

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evolutionary process of collective self-transformation. As co-facilitators, we faced a

practical question: How might the purposes of this study be presented in a concise

manner that would be meaningful to this interdisciplinary and culturally diverse gathering

of interested stakeholders in the context of this highly public citywide conversation?

In preparation for the innovation session, I worked with my co-facilitators to

prepare an agenda which, we hoped, might be conducive to a pattern of self-organizing

small group conversations similar to what we had attained during our first two group

inquiry sessions. Specifically, we sought to use a combination of ground rules, guiding

questions, facilitative feedback, and group reflection to facilitate a flow of conversation

that would move along an overall trajectory from generative to strategic dialogue. We

anticipated that each breakout group would exhibit its own unique pattern of discourse

within a general framework established by the short introduction to the topic and the

written agenda. We also expected that the opportunity to observe and reflect upon this

variation might yield further insight and practical knowledge regarding how best to

orchestrate the design conversation as discursive social action leading to evolutionary

learning in the place-based community context.

Accordingly, we introduced the session with a “focusing question” and a series of

“tasks” as follows:

Focusing Question: How might we create social, economic, and environmental

conditions within Cleveland’s diverse neighborhoods that:

1. promote healthy place-based communities where all residents and stakeholders experience enhanced quality of life;

2. foster an emerging culture based in the common values of caregiving, inclusiveness, collaborative engagement, and the celebration of our interdependency; and

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3. enable us to access our collective potentials?

Task 1: Invite dialogue that generates awareness of our multiple perspectives about what it means to be living in community (in terms of both people and place);

Task 2: Strategically pursue “questions that make a difference” using dialogue to explore as a “field of possibilities” the difference between our collective notions of what is and what should be with regard to Cleveland’s place-based communities.

Task 3: Develop one or more images of a process that could be implemented to sustain community-based dialogue that is both ideal seeking and authentically real.

Conversation. Following a 20-minute introduction, we opened the floor to

separate conversations among attendees at each of the four “breakout” tables. Of the three

breakout groups that were recorded, two were facilitated by a research participant and the

third was not. The conversation at the fourth table, although facilitated by one of the

participants, was not recorded. The groups at the facilitated tables moved immediately

into a conversation centered on the written trigger questions, whereas the third

(nonfacilitated) group devoted relatively more time to sharing personal introductions.

One of the members of that same (nonfacilitated) group then posed a question for

discussion that was not among the trigger questions provided: “My question is, how do

we make these communities self-sustaining?”

This prompted the other members of the group to share information about several

place-making initiatives currently being funded by the neighborhood-specific

“community development corporations.” In contrast, the participants at the two other

recorded tables devoted most of the available time to conversation centered on their

various experiences and observations as Cleveland residents and stakeholders relevant to

the general topic of community. From these conversations, a number of themes emerged

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(listed below). These themes were distilled from both the session transcript and from

written notes generated by the attendees and posted on the wall at the conclusion of the

session.

About half-way through the session, I invited each of the groups to start engaging

in conversation that was not only generative, but also purposeful and strategic. My exact

words were as follows:

Brett: Quick check in—I want keep the discussion going but I want to encourage everyone to start to segue into thinking about action items. The question being: How can we take action to create conditions that lend themselves to the movement towards communities where we are sustainable, in the sense of sustaining our own social infrastructure? What spaces can we create? What opportunities for dialogue? What kind of community interventions? Everything is on the table, but [I encourage you all to] think in terms of some real tangible action steps we can take in the coming year and beyond, to move into that proactive process of community building.

At this point, the conversations among the several tables all began to focus on practical

actions to improve community life in Cleveland neighborhoods. However, the

conversations were distinguishable in terms of emphasis. One group moved into a

conversation about specific neighborhood projects that might serve as good models to be

emulated in other parts of the City. Another group moved into a conversation about the

importance of civic pride and factors that might account for an apparent recent shift in the

general mood of Clevelander’s, a renewed sense of hope which at the neighborhood level

also has been manifested as a renewed sense of place-based identity. A third group used

the opportunity to have conversation about an imagined future scenario where certain

unrealized potentials, such as the potential for citywide youth mentoring by neighbors

and private-sector stakeholders alike would have been manifested through a process of

engaged community action.

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With about ten minutes left in the session, I invited the members of each group to

capture its action ideas in writing so that they could be reported out at the next plenary

session of the conference. The following is a sampling of themes, including problem

statements, observations regarding community system dynamics, envisioned strategies,

shared ideals, and new inquiry questions emerging from these conversations. A full list of

these emergent themes is reproduced in Appendix G:

• Too many “siloes” – there is a lack of direct interaction among individuals;

• Q – What are factors that bring communities together?

• A key to community is “sharing”;

• Q – Are communities of place still viable and attainable even though we live in a more complex time?

• Children in neighborhoods need to be known and engaged by the adults;

• A Viscious cycle: Just trying to survive – leads to social isolation – leads to burden of “going it alone”;

• A Virtuous cycle: The concept of the “sharing economy”– sharing builds community and creates a sustainable society – sustainability innovations foster opportunities sharing;

• Historically and even today, East-side and West-side are separate worlds;

• Segregation involves many types of separation (not just racial); for example, it still exists between individual neighborhoods;

• Q – How do we break down boundaries so we have a “whole City” not just “my neighborhood”?

• We need more ways to disseminate information about all the good things that are happening today in various Cleveland neighborhoods (e.g., a neighborhood calendar);

• A catalyst for community: people who decide to “try out” new events in different parts of the City;

• Q – How can we intentionally reach out to build connections within and among neighborhoods after years of division?

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• A culture of sharing can be promoted through various informal contacts – willingness to walk down street and say “Hey” to neighbors;

• Geographic communities often amount to just the “perceived neighborhood” that is just based on physical proximity with very little actual connecting;

• Some neighborhoods have a strong “community presence,” whereas others do not;

• Volunteering is best viewed as an “investment in community” as it leads to a “sense of openness” among people who are “looking for hope”;

• A virtuous cycle: People get involved in doing something – makes them feel connected – they are more likely to get involved in other community activities;

• Q – How to get people to get into that cycle (above)?

• It is important to reach out to “frazzled people”;

• Clevelanders are bonding together under the “underdog mentality” – perhaps this means they are “investing in hope”;

• Role models help to change attitudes about the City;

• We need to establish more “local places to go” in neighborhoods – this would mean less driving in the car and more interaction with neighbors;

• We need to bring back the practice of “apprenticeship”;

• A Good model: Greater Cleveland Congregations: Citywide conversations about big issues like gun violence;

• Another approach – link neighbors who happen to have common interests (a way of breaking down the separation between communities of interest and communities of place);

• Strategy – Having several neighborhoods plan and event together;

• Connecting to give a neighborhood an identity over something like food or ethnic heritage can create an attraction to communities as “cultural hotspots” – creating community pride and bringing visitors to the neighborhood;

• Strategy – Investing in “cultural creatives” as catalysts for community (e.g., favorable rent treatment for local artists).

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These many ideas regarding both problems and solutions were utilized by

community stakeholders (including innovation session participants and others who joined

when we reconvened during day 2 of the Summit), as the starting point for the design of a

set of prototype initiatives to be offered to the Cleveland Vital Neighborhoods working

group to inform its deliberations about a citywide community revitalization agenda and

funding for the coming year. Also, as discussed next, these many ideas were used as

feedback to inform the third inquiry group session, affording participants the benefit of

having input from a much larger and more diverse group of community residents and

stakeholders.

Inquiry group session 3. On October 6, 2015, the participants gathered again at

the Hope House of Prayer to engage in a third group inquiry session. Once again, we met

in a comfortable and quiet “living room” which was not part of a private residence, but

which had many of the aesthetically pleasant qualities of a safe, clean, and intimate living

space where we could sit in a circle and engage in conversation without distraction or

interruption. P5 had contacted me and said that she would be unable to attend this session

because her schedule had been disrupted by an unexpected development requiring the

Cleveland nonprofit organization she managed to move into a new location. Likewise,

P4, who worked for the City of Cleveland had unexpected scheduling problems and

therefore was unable to attend this third meeting.

In preparation for this meeting, I again drafted a written agenda. As with the

previous inquiry group session, I intended that the agenda might serve as a tool to focus

our conversation on a clearly defined set of inquiry tasks formulated to help contextualize

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and guide our work through the sequence of learning cycles outlined in the study

methodology.

After having invited the participants to again review the themes attached to the

draft written agenda, I invited the participants to agree upon and undertake the following

learning and design tasks:

Task 1: Identify problem situations and formulate “root definitions” of the relevant community systems;

Task 2: Creating an Ideal Image(s) of the relevant community systems;

Task 3: Identify the relevant evolutionary markers; and

Task 4: Review and reflect upon the conversations about neighborhood revitalization generated during the S2019 innovation session and involving a larger gathering of Cleveland-area residents and stakeholders.

Three of these scheduled tasks (1, 2, and 3) were treated as part of the first inquiry cycle,

as set forth in the study methodology. These agreed tasks called for a continuation of our

group designing conversation that had been initiated at the second inquiry session, albeit

this time with an opportunity to focus our collective awareness on any emerging systemic

patterns of thought that might be observed and brought explicitly into our collective

awareness via feedback afforded by the opportunity to review the transcription and

summary of our earlier conversation. These systemic patterns of thought could be

inferred from thematic consistencies carried in the language and causal attributions

employed by participants in the earlier conversation to described community dynamics

related to the problem situation and community ideals. By using feedback in this way to

increase our individual and collective awareness of guiding assumptions governing our

perceptions and thoughts regarding the matters considered, we created a common

scaffold and new launching point for further purposeful dialogue leading towards the

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development of system definitions, modelling of the future ideal, and attainment of our

other intended learning outcomes.

The fourth of the above tasks was entirely new: an invitation to compare and

contrast our own group interaction with patterns of discourse emerging from the resident

and stakeholder designing conversations facilitated at the recent Sustainable Cleveland

summit. My intention in suggesting this task was to further contextualize our group

conversations regarding community systems and community praxis with the benefit

perspectives and knowledge shared among diverse stakeholders attending an annual event

having a complementary focus on local sustainability and future possibilities for the City

of Cleveland. As mentioned above, an important point of contrast between these two sets

of designing conversations (small inquiry group and public innovation session) was

presented by virtue of the fact that, unlike the inquiry group conversations, the

conversations held at the sustainability summit had been undertaken among self-selected

participants without any prior attention given to group formation and group capacity

building.

My aim in placing task 4 on the agenda, therefore, was to provide an occasion for

the participants to initiate a second cycle of planning, discursive action, and reflection,

specifically by inviting the participants to reflect upon outcomes attained through

conversation amongst themselves and in the community practice setting.

Sharing, reflecting, and planning. The October 6th session began with a brief

“check in”; a mutual opportunity for us to become fully present to those things that are

currently happening in our lives, and also to share relevant events or activities undertaken

since our last conversation. A couple of the participants immediately voiced their support

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for this practice of beginning with a group check in. I began with a reflection on my own

experience facilitating the 2-day Sustainable Cleveland innovation session, and then

opened the floor for other reflections and updates regarding our recent experiences as

community practitioners.

The participants responded to this invitation by sharing personal updates without

any particular limitation based on professional roles and responsibilities. This gave me

the impression that the group had already attained a level of cohesiveness that enabled the

participants to share openly on the basis of mutual trust. One of the participants (P2)

expressed that she was excited and a little nervous about an upcoming interview for

employment as a community liaison with a local renewable energy firm. Another (P7)

had just been hired as a consultant for a major landscape design project and was excited

about the possibilities. The next participant (P5), who recently started work as an

architect with the City, shared how he had been emotionally impacted by recent incidents

involving gun violence in the City:

P3: There’s just the growing, I don’t know what to call it, random violence, that’s emerging. It’s weighing on my being, you know. Because it’s happening, so there’s this social awareness about the institutional violence, and then the awareness of this violence that seems to be coming from within elements of the community. People are really struggling! It’s like there’s these two things that are in some ways interconnected, and in some ways seem to be pulling in completely different directions. I’m just observing in conversations with the people.

Similarly, another participant (P6) shared how he was feeling personally overwhelmed

with the process of teaching, and trying to be present to the real world needs of over 200

urban students, many of whom had special needs or experienced difficult situations at

home and in their neighborhoods:

It’s very real what people are experiencing—what we’re experiencing in my own community. You know, we’ll sit there on any given night and go “Was that gunshots?” You know, and then even if you hear them you got to wonder are they

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[the police] even going to come, because we’ve had that situation before where several of us neighbors have called, and it’s like you don’t see a police in sight! So these things are very real.…So the sense of community then that my students are faced with, you know, it runs the gamut because some of them come from very well-to-do suburban families, and others are on the opposite end of the spectrum, so you really get—we get it. But what holds them all together is many of them have a shared experience of feeling like we’ve lost the sense of community, which we talked about last time.

This reflection evoked a supportive response from P2:

It’s really interesting and really important dialogues between all these students coming from all these different walks of life, and it just occurred to me that what you are doing is really making that classroom experience into something very real. Like, so often you think about classrooms as preparing you for the real world, and I always think it’s the real world right there!

Finally, P1 observed that similar concerns among Cleveland residents and stakeholder

had been expressed at the recent sustainability summit, including specifically concerns

stemming from exposure to gun violence and feelings of social isolation.

I was impressed by the depth of sharing that was already occurring at the very

start of the meeting even though it had been a month since our last group conversation.

As a lead-in to our designing conversation, I sought to articulate the value of this process

of “presencing” in relation to our potential for engaging dialogue to access an emerging

collective consciousness:

What we are sitting with at the moment will shape how we perceive reality. And as we are talking about such a broad topic as community, through this process of capturing multiple themes and then trying to distill them in terms of what is bubbling up, or where the common thread seems to be, we can start to see beginnings of what, for lack of a better term, you might call a kind of collective consciousness of the problem.

Conversation. To facilitate a transition from open sharing to a group designing

conversation, I directed the attention of the participants to review the summary of themes

from the previous conversations that I had attached to the meeting agenda, and “just use

these initially the way we used the trigger questions last time.”

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Immediately, the participants began commenting on perspectives regarding the

problem situation expressed by their learning cohorts. I observed that none of the

participants voiced concern that the thematic summaries had failed to capture their views.

I also observed that, rather than focusing on disagreement or attempting to exploit

weaknesses in the views expressed by each other, the participants used this opportunity to

explore how each other’s views might connect with their own. Accordingly, the pattern

of conversation that began to emerge was one of integrating ideas. For example, P2

expressed interest in a perspective shared by P7 in a way that also tied it back to her own

previously expressed views:

P2: It just struck me as—your [P7] comment about romanticized images of community, but how we can’t actually seem to build anything meaningful. Because…we’re so busy, because we are just trying to feed our kids and put them to sleep at night. You know, daily needs kind of stuff take up too much time.

In this way, P2 linked two of the previously expressed problem statements, in essence

suggesting that the high level of distraction and daily workload is undermining our ability

to have meaningful conversations with neighbors [P2’s earlier point], which in turn is

contributing to the proliferation of inauthentic or “romanticized” images of community as

a sort of compensation for a felt lack of authentic connection [P7’s earlier point].

Another example of this pattern of integrative thought and dialogue among

participants responding to the written summary of their earlier conversation is the

following:

P1: One [idea] that’s kind of coming up is hearing your [Brett] comments about people becoming more socially isolated and losing a sense of common identity. I’m just reflecting on violence, and most of it is caused by a certain subset of the population that you can certainly say is younger and would have a more short-term view of things. That makes me wonder whether some of that is also coming from a sense of isolation generationally speaking, or connection to others outside the gang realm.

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Here, P1 is making a connection between my statement regarding the impact of social

isolation on identity formation, and his own earlier characterization of the problem

situation as a lack of dialogue across differences.

Again, this same pattern, linking themes across mental models through dialogue,

is seen in the way P6 responded to my summary of P5’s earlier statement that

when change is so rapid that you don’t quite identify with the community network, or you don’t quite feel or experience your ways of adapting to stress as being adaptable to the new community setting that you’re in, there is a kind of disconnect…[whereby] stress can cause fragmentation.

P6 linked this idea to his own observation regarding the impact of social media as a

stressor and a limitation on the ability of young people to have “meaningful” interactions.

P6: I see a lot of young people saying—even though they are of course totally embracing technology and social media and all this which can actually contribute to the problem—but they’re feeling that stress, or I should say that tension! They want to be using all this stuff that can actually contribute to further social isolation, even though we think that it does the opposite, but they also start to realize, like—“Hmm, I guess I don’t really know people that well, because I’m not having these more meaningful interactions.”

Here P6 appears to be suggesting that his young students have tended to avoid difficult

conversations about controversial topics in part because the change in social dynamics

brought about by their increased use of social media has produced a felt sense of

exposure and vulnerability, and accordingly, a rising tension among young people; a

tension between feeling a need to have these conversation, and feeling afraid to have

these conversations.

This observation by P6 prompted me to express a concern related to the current

community context in a manner that linked both semiotic and somatic elements:

Brett: Just in terms of the experience of opening up, following that instinctive, primitive, you know, evolutionary desire to extend from a heart place to someone else to try to find that human resonance, when you are in a very mixed, fragmented, indeterminate community context, with perceptions that don’t align

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in terms of what people view as the meaning of what is being said, it’s a very risky business. Because all it takes is for someone to respond in a negative way, or an indifferent way, and you feel shut down.

The participants continued to engage in conversation in which they responded to each

other’s individual perspectives as captured in the written summaries, building towards a

more integrative understanding of the current problem situation related to Cleveland’s

place-based communities. As the conversation proceeded, several of the participants

made reference to complementary ideas contained in books or articles they had read,

thereby also integrating ideas shared in conversation with relevant ideas found in the

relevant literature (see Chapter 3).

Eventually, this pattern of discourse integrating the earlier themes prompted P7 to

venture a perspective which he attributed to an earlier moment of personal insight; a

“biological” perspective which he posited might guide the conversation towards a deeper

level of understanding:

I think that’s really been a blind spot for us to try to recognize or define what is our basic biology? And many of us won’t even admit that we have any, you know, for religious reasons or whatever. And so I think we’re almost at times victimized by that unwillingness or inability to look at that dimension. And so then as a desire I ask myself: “What would be the optimum model for a human community?” And really, “As humans what does that even mean, from a biological standpoint?” And it seems like our neighborhoods and our communities in a physical sense are often built with many other concerns in mind—economic ones, efficiency in terms of the grid (we’re big on the grid in the United States). …And I don’t know how deep you want to go with this, but I think that’s really the foundation of all of this. Without acknowledging that or looking at it, then I don’t know how we can really come up with meaningful solutions.

At this point, the conversation shifted towards a relatively more theoretical exploration

centered on this concept of biological determinism. P6 suggested,

I think it’s pretty fundamental, what you [P7] were saying—this biology piece…we’ve done studies around group dynamics and how do you create the most ideal [conditions]. Why haven’t we done that with communities, as far as even, well, the same thing?

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P6 then expanded on this idea to suggest that our common quest for the “ideal” might

benefit from a more scientific approach to problem-solving:

P6: I’m fascinated by what you [P7] just said, and I would love to engage with anybody else on that, not only from a biological standpoint, but just from a more scientific [standpoint]. You know we’ve done it for other things, and of course we can always say the optimal or the ideal. You know it’s very rare that you can get an optimum or ideal. But it still guides you, it still says OK if you got 14 people, OK you are pretty close, you’re likely to be more effective than if you got 26 or whatever. Well, could we be doing the same thing with communities and how we design them? Or redesign them quite frankly, because in so many cases we’re so invested in the way they’ve been designed. At least maybe we can begin to redesign or redevelop them. Who’s talking about this? I’m very interested in that!

As the other participants listened with interest, P6 and P7 continued to explore how

density or population and patterns of development (like the standard “grid” pattern of

streets) might be factors that in the context of a large industrial City like Cleveland have

failed to accommodate our basic biological needs and therefore have produced less than

optimal quality of life in our communities. Others, P2 and P3, further expanded on this

idea by suggesting that the City’s physical patterns of development have limited the

ability of urban residents to achieve quality of life, not only in a physical sense, but also

in relation to their common human need to find meaning, and to “have control over the

meaningful aspects of their lives.” P2 offered an historical perspective:

P2: Perhaps they wouldn’t be like “The fence has to face your line a quarter inch! Like really! OK, and it’s because I think we don’t have this sense of what’s meaningful, what’s purposeful, or bigger than that. You know? So as [our ancestors] moved west it was, “We control this” – like at least we got that, you know, it’s a grid. It makes sense, I control it [and] the lot’s this big. To me it’s sort of a small-minded control kind of thing, which when you look at it from our kind of perspective—that tribal lifestyle that preceded it has so much value and makes so much sense. But that wasn’t what was valued, as you moved westward.

In this way, the conversation about our human biological needs became a conversation

about values, generally. P3, who had been mostly quiet to this point, was inspired to jump

in:

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P3: I think that’s bringing up really forcefully—what is the emotional resonance or lack of resonance with the physical manifestation of our urban-emotional spaces.…I think it’s healthy to have discussions about that, both in terms of our biology, because there’s our literal biology, and then there’s our more psychic biology where it does come down to questions of meaning. It’s almost like when you look at a consumer basis which we are in; the multitude of possible choices is almost inversely proportional to its importance. You can choose a million kinds of breakfast cereals or whatever, but when it comes down to a lot of my choices of living in community – priorities of “what is best for my kids,” for instance. “What’s going to be safe?” “Yeah, I want this diversity thing, but on the other hand, you know, I gotta kind of hold things together.” I think it becomes very deep instinctive stuff that I think does bring us back to a sense of the tribal; the tribal removed from nature. Does it become a gang? I’m just throwing it out there as a thought that occurred to me, based on what we are talking about.

As group facilitator, I realized at this point that the process of conversation had opened

up a deeper level of inquiry and that we were now examining questions related to

community that were centered on basic human needs and human values. I decided this

might be a good moment to add another idea into the mix, that of “intentionality”:

Brett: Where this conversation seems to be moving—for me, what I’m hearing—is something having to do with what we have written on the landscape, or built into the landscape, is really in part that we are writing our history, but more fundamentally we are writing our worldviews on the landscape. And then when we inherit that or when we pass that along, we are confronting each successive generation with the challenge of trying to form themselves, form their identity, form community bonds and so forth in a physical world, a physical context, that may not reflect the worldview that is trying to emerge - and is thus limiting and oppressive in that sense. And so how can we grapple with this idea of intentionality on a spectrum where when it comes up to conversation—you know we talk about “intentionality” in community?…I want to suggest that we start to explore that a little bit. Try to make a little pivot towards talking about the ideal, and suspend some of our disbelief about what might be possible, in the true spirit of designers.

For the remainder of the session, the conversation was about images of “the ideal.” I

encouraged the participants to think about the ideal, not just as a static image but as a

“process” that enables us to respond to the necessary question “How do we get there?” In

the course of this conversation, the following themes emerged:

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• Even as “separate tribes” we are able through dialogue to find common identity in areas where we have common ground, and from that place learn to appreciate our differences.

P1: I would agree that it does begin with some conversation, and it may mean… these tribes all kind of overlap in different ways too, but can we break out of these in some ways and just really speak to people that are really different from ourselves?…I might say I’m a left wing Democrat but I hang out with my right wing Republican friends rooting for the Cleveland Browns. So we’re in the “Browns tribe,” but yet we disagree fundamentally on say political issues, for example.

• We let go of the societal taboos that keep us from having conversation about difficult topics such as politics, religion, and sex that are actually “fundamental to our being,” and then create a safe container for having these difficult conversations.

P6: I think we need to do the same thing with issues around talking about community. We can’t promise this is going to be an easy conversation. There are going to be things that you probably never used to talk about. You may not be comfortable! But we’ll create a safe container for these conversations to take place. That’s the first piece. I mean its way more than that. But we’ve got to start by first saying, “I know you’ve been told we’re not going to talk about X, Y, & Z, but we are because its fundamental to our biology, so to speak, to go back to what [P7 was] saying.

• We “keep the conversation going” by reaffirming the importance of dialogue itself as a discipline that, with practice and appropriate ground rules, enables us to observe our own emotional triggers, and rather than “throwing up walls” respond by asking “could there be value in what you are saying?”

P2: [Explicitly] teaching people to think like that is a really good starting point for having a good conversation, which is like your [Brett’s] rules that you laid out at the summit dialogue. One of them is “yes, and” – so you keep the conversation going not by going “whoa”[or “I disagree”] but “yes, I see your point, and …” You build on that instead of shutting down and building up walls, which is so easy to do.

I observed that our conversation invoking these first several themes brought up

for me the image of a sporting event, such as rugby, which may seem chaotic at first and

is in fact a very rough activity, but one that can be a source of common value if

conducted within the safe container of a common playing field with mutually understood

ground rules. I then asked the group, “What are the other common threads that are almost

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the precondition to being able to have community building processes work? What do we

need to develop in ourselves in this zero sum, consumer-based economy?” These

questions elicited further conversation about a common set of ideals relative to our

emerging understanding of the local problem situation:

• We expand the conversation to include a wider range of potential realities, leading to a radical cultural shift to include integral ecology.

P7: I think that’s a critical question. Because if you’ve only been exposed to X, Y, and Z in your life, and that’s all you know and that’s what you live on a daily basis – how can you possibly have a conversation about A, B, & C?…All these “brush fires” that we fight with environmental causes. Anti-this or anti-that, we’re always reacting to the big crisis, you know. And I think a large part of that is because we are functionally, ecologically illiterate!…So when these larger issues come up like wetlands, or deforestation, and then climate change, they are like “What? That’s a liberal hoax designed to [take away my car].”

• We recognize and deconstruct false dualities and scarcity-based thinking.

Brett: We recognize looking through a systems lens, looking through a lens of understanding the complexity of how things self-perpetuate, that we are in a system that’s just perpetuating these tendencies towards polarization, on things that might not have previously been considered polarizing. And then, that’s where we move the conversation, like “Why is that? What can we do to change the trajectory or dynamics of that pattern?” One thing that comes to mind, as already mentioned, is this kind of zero-sum, scarcity-based thinking.

• We cultivate empathy as an act of imagination enabling us through conversation to get at the deeper, most common, human needs.

P6: As an operative conversational, or relational, place to put oneself…you have to do it almost as a meditation.…to be able to imagine where the other person is coming from, and to be able to ask questions in a way that evokes a response that helps you actually be able to come a little closer to understanding what they are feeling, or what that topic, taboo or otherwise, brings up for them in terms of getting at the deep needs, and therefore we know what the most common needs are.

• We create space for having conversations about love and compassion.

P2: I’ve been thinking about empathy over the course of this evening, as well. And it struck me that we really just need to be having conversations about love and compassion. But there’s no space for that. You know, people don’t feel like you can talk about that kind of stuff, or think about that. Unless you are the Dali

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Lama walking around talking about happiness, love, and compassion. You know, but that needs to be a fundamental thing that we think is OK to talk about.

• We transcend separation consciousness that is beneath the ingrained habits of thinking in competitive and power relation terms.

P7: Maybe that’s part of the new model, it’s just what you said, the love and the empathy. If you want to categorize it, I suppose, in a spiritual sense, that to me is the ultimate illusion—one of separation—that we are individuals on our own journey’s, and that we have no effect on each other and there’s no common bonds or future.

• We cultivate awareness of the small ways that we are talking about bigger picture things.

P3: The first time we met [as an inquiry group] we were talking about the awareness of how we name things, how we talk about things, the words we use when we converse, and how, it seems like many little examples now, in small ways we are talking about bigger picture things. I just think a lot about that. It turns out when you think of that you think about love.

• We come back to an accurate biological model of what a human being really is, both individually and socially.

P7: In terms of competition with the young men, they need to do that. It’s that warrior energy that young men have and it needs to go somewhere.…There’s all kinds of mythology around that about the young hero who goes on the quest…. So that’s a natural impulse, I think, for that segment of the population. Any kind of answer would have to define those unique pathways for everybody. What’s the ideal situation for an elderly person? Or for a newborn? How does that work?

• We recognize the need to connect, in our tribe and in our neighborhood, as an innate drive of humans and, therefore, a “fundamental human right.”

P6: I think in part because they don’t understand…they don’t understand basic biology. As a person who teaches psychology, it’s like the need to connect is a fundamental need that we have as humans.…If they understood it was an innate drive then we might be a little more open to saying, “well, since that’s an innate drive, then maybe we ought to consider this a fundamental human right,” you know, and do things to protect that fundamental right.

As the session drew to a close, I shared some of my own final reflections on how the

process of transcribing and summarizing our earlier conversations had served to increase

my awareness of the subtle differences in meaning expressed by individuals engaged in

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conversation around a common topic. I then invited the participants to reflect on a further

set of questions in anticipation of our next, and final, inquiry group session, as follows:

Brett: I really am glad that we’re in conversation where we’ve been really getting into questions of process, questions of the things that are not talked about, and so forth. As practitioners, or people that are involved in some way with conversation in our work and with leading conversations of others, I would like to suggest that we think about and perhaps share some thoughts about a basic question of: How do we further embody (beginning with ourselves in our work) the kind of ideal that we can imagine? How can we start to be practicing from that space? Or at least have it as a part of our awareness so that it becomes clear, and becomes more a part of our reality, as opposed to just something we might imagine “out there.”

I suggested that, for purposes of our fourth and final inquiry session, learning to embody

the change might be considered our “Task 1.” I further described as our “Task 2” our use

of conversation to translate our images of the ideal into evolutionary markers; a process

whereby we would begin to “think more as co-researchers about how we might mark

those gains, should we be successful as being agents of change.”

Reflecting upon the conversation that occurred during the third group session, I

thought it might be useful to consider how the conversations and themes that emerged

from that session contrasted with those that had emerged during the more public

“innovation session” held at the Cleveland Sustainability Summit. I observed that:

• In both settings, a facilitated conversation among a small group of stakeholders using ground rules for dialogue and open-ended trigger questions had produced among the participants a shared experience of meaningful social interaction.

• In both settings, participants were actively engaged and expressed themselves in ways that demonstrated mutual interest in sharing knowledge and diverse perspectives, with nearly equal emphasis being given to articulation of problems and ideation of solutions.

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However, I also noticed certain differences regarding both the patterns and qualities of

group interaction and the substantive themes emerging from these two conversational

settings.

• The themes and images that were emerging from our discursive interaction within the inquiry group were largely focused on how the context and practices of dialogue and designing conversation might be employed to transform habits of thought and human interaction, whereas the images and themes that had emerged from the innovation session were relatively more focused on the varieties of public policies and social interventions (e.g., volunteering, community outreach, apprenticeships) that might be implemented to address problems and needs identified with specific Cleveland-area neighborhoods.

• Most notably, in responding to the same set of trigger questions, the inquiry group participants devoted much of their time in conversation focusing on a set of generic themes related to community as a concept, whereas the innovation session participants devoted relatively more time sharing information about specific problems and interventions currently affecting

Cleveland neighborhoods.

• Thus, while innovation session participants focused on specific local solutions, they appeared relatively less inclined to focus conversation on deeper causes or the broader societal context shaping life in Cleveland’s communities. This difference was further reflected in the way that images of

the community ideal emerged in each setting, respectively.

Factors that might account for these differences, as between the two conversations

settings, include:

• the greater opportunity for group formation and cultivation of group cohesion that had been attained during the several inquiry sessions;

• the fact that the inquiry group members were a highly select group of community practitioners sharing much in common in terms of their professional experience, whereas the innovation session participants were randomly self-selected from among a larger group of community stakeholders attending the summit;

• the fact that the inquiry group members, unlike the attendees at the innovation session, had been given an opportunity to review and reflect upon their own prior statements regarding the problem situation and images of the ideal, from one session to the next, where the innovation session attendees were

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confronted with a “one-shot” opportunity to weigh in, similar to the pattern seen at many public design sessions;

• the fact that the inquiry group members, unlike the attendees at the summit, were engaged in cyclical process of learning and reflection; and

• the greater diversity of the summit attendees presented more opportunity to talk about specific neighborhood situations, but with less opportunity for deep reflection afforded to each.

Finally, I observed that many of the attendees at the Sustainability Summit who

had become familiar with the AI process as a collective design activity expressed a sense

of frustration, and in several instances expressed a desire to “get to the action” and move

beyond “just talking.” I shared this observation with the inquiry group, and suggested that

although it is encouraging to hear people express a feeling of being called to action, it

appeared that some, perhaps many, dedicated stakeholders and residents may be

operating according to an assumption that design conversation is something that can lead

to social action but is not a form of action in itself. I shared that I had not observed any

such expressions of frustration in either the innovation session or in our inquiry group

sessions, but that it might be worthwhile to explore the assumptions that underlie such a

dualistic perspective that treats designing conversation and social action as separate. For

example, if it is assumed generally that conversation or dialogue is an activity that is

empty (in other words, “just talk,” devoid of meaning in terms of actually making a

difference) then as facilitators our first challenge may be to invite a fresh way of

understanding the relationship between dialogue and socially beneficial activity. We

might ask: What is it about the common understanding of “action” that gives it a

preferred status over conversation or dialogue? Furthermore, what implications might

follow from a shift in perspective that enables members of our community to understand

certain types of conversation, for example conversation that transforms, or that shifts

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awareness, or builds relationships in community, as discursive social action that truly

makes a difference in its own right? Finally, if communities are understood as social, or

socio-ecological, systems, what systemic components or processes are best transformed

by means of the designing conversation as a form of engaged social action?

Inquiry group session 4. On November 10, 2015 the inquiry group gathered

again at the Hope House of Prayer for the purpose of conducting its fourth (and possibly

final) session. As of this stage in the group inquiry process, the participants had already

made significant progress towards attaining learning outcomes, as specified in the study

design (see Summary section). Again, P4 and P5 were unable to attend due to

circumstances beyond their control, although both contacted me and expressed

continuing interest in the study and its outcomes. In preparing for the fourth inquiry

session, I reviewed the transcript of the most recent (October 6) group conversation to

inform my own, and subsequently the group’s, consideration of the manner and extent to

which our self-appointed inquiry tasks had been accomplished to date, and the manner

and extent to which our mutually intended learning outcomes were being attained.

Based on my review of the conversation transcripts, as well as my own reflective

“notes to self,” I found that the participants, in their interactions leading up to this final

session, had demonstrated a high level of cohesiveness as a group, and that through rich

sharing of experiences, knowledge, and insights they already had exhibited considerable

proficiency in both the generative and the strategic use of dialogue for purposes of

professional development and collective meaning-making. The conversation during the

third session furthermore was suggestive of an expanding participatory awareness and

emerging implicate consciousness within the group as a whole, with potential to guide

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and shape understanding at the level of place-based community culture. Based upon these

observations, I decided to formulate the agenda for this final session with a view towards

guiding the group conversation into a third cycle of inquiry focusing on ways to critically

deconstruct and transform our habits of perception, thought and behavior, inviting the

participants to use systems models and narrative, respectively, to further access their

collective potentials within the evolutionary design space.

Sharing, reflecting, and planning. In preparation for this fourth meeting, I again

reviewed the transcripts of the earlier conversations, focusing in particular on the

multiple themes that had been generated and refined during the several prior group

conversations. Anticipating that the scheduled fourth inquiry session would provide a

final opportunity to engage in-person group conversation among the participants prior to

the reporting of study results, I reformulated the learning tasks for this final session so as

to build upon the work already accomplished. In so doing, I sought to optimize this

remaining opportunity to capture the value of designing conversation as a form of social

action, and thereby further advance the study purposes while setting the stage for ongoing

professional collaboration as informed by the study results. With a view towards building

upon the group cohesion, competencies, and shared knowledge that had been collectively

attained as of this stage of the study process, I formulated the following inquiry tasks for

this final session:

Task 1: Review and collectively respond to summaries of community system root definitions and community system models derived from the group’s prior designing conversations and expressed via the use of causal loop diagrams;

Task 2: Utilize these system modeling tools as an aid to group designing conversation, the purpose of which is to refine and deepen our collective understanding of those community system dynamics that might be leveraged through the praxis of conscious evolutionary

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design at the community level, as guided by the following evaluative questions:

i. What are the inputs and outputs?

ii. What is being transformed? (E.g., process, structure, meaning, power);

iii. What are the small changes (“trim tabs”), if any, that can yield big change?

iv. What are the key evolutionary markers (measurable indicators of a “shift” in system dynamics), e.g., realizing human potential, emerging learning culture, acquiring community competency, self-organizing, empowering people?

v. What title or phrase best captures the overarching perspective represented by this model?

Task 3: Utilize the distilled themes and system models as a basis for collectively exploring alternative approaches to the praxis of designing conversation, including specifically the use of narrative or storytelling as a form of collective design discourse with unique potential for generating common understanding in the face of complex problem situations, thereby facilitating transformative change at the place-based community level.

In support of these group tasks, I prepared and attached to the agenda a concise

“root definition” for each of the “ideal” human activity systems mapped by means of the

prior group designing conversations. Also, using Vensim’s open-sourced digital system

modelling tool (http://vensim.com/), I prepared a set of causal loop diagrams depicting

each of the human activity systems in a manner that would enable participants to view

both the problem situation and the systemic ideal within a single image. These definitions

and system images prepared in support of the final inquiry group conversation are

reproduced in Appendix H.

At the top of the written agenda, I included a reminder of a “primary outcome”

which the study was designed to attain: “To fully embody and consciously work with the

creative tensions that lend vitality to community as a dynamic living system.” I also

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included on the agenda an opportunity for individual check-ins and information sharing,

as well as a couple of group exercises derived from the systems thinking literature that

might serve to further strengthen the participants’ appreciation of the systemic qualities

of human thought and perception (Sweeney & Meadows, 1995).

Having gathered in a circle, I invited the participants to take a moment and

become present and when ready to share any thoughts or updates in way of a “check in.”

The sharing was informal and everyone seemed quite relaxed, as if welcoming the

opportunity to step outside the regular flow of their lives and share a few moments of

unstructured conversation among friends. Several of the participants expressed

appreciation for the group inquiry process, and a hope that it would continue in some

form:

P7: I’ve been looking forward to our last meeting tonight, but also with some trepidation because I’ve really enjoyed this group. Maybe we can have some discussion about how if we want to continue this.

Following the check-ins, I distributed the written agenda and provided a brief explanation

of the process I had used to translate the themes emerging from our earlier conversations

into a set of suggested “root definitions” and associated causal loop diagrams. I explained

how I had utilized these system modeling tools to capture themes and patterns emerging

from my review of the transcribed earlier conversations. The following is a partial

reproduction of my explanation to the group, which is provided to document the manner

in which I presented this material as feedback in support of the participants’ further work

in the design conversation space:

Brett: I’m just using a very non-sophisticated way here just to create little diagrams, and also to try to distill down themes so as to move from the conversation into developing a way of defining or naming what each of us deems to be a relevant community system. “Relevant” being, this is a system that as we look at it is the one that is worth paying attention to because therein lies the

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opportunities for finding ways to leverage change in a positive direction....If you haven’t had a chance to look at it until tonight, I understand. We’re not going to lean on these too heavily. But it’s something that is a distillation of our previous conversations that attempts to provide a kind of overlay between those dynamics like the vicious cycles that constitute the perpetuation of what we deem to be the problem situation, as well as those elements that are more aspirational. And looking at it all together focusing on: “Well, if we tweek these this way maybe we can turn a vicious cycle into a virtuous cycle, and move the dynamics of the system so that it kind of cycles in a better direction.”

I further explained my thought process in preparing and offering these systems

definitions and images:

Brett: Even if we frame it in terms of Cleveland neighborhoods, place-based community, we still are talking about very complex human activity systems. And so there’s multiple ways to come at it. And then when we get to modelling, there’s multiple ways we can model it, so this is not necessarily something that you would use in all situations because for a lot of people it looks like an engineering diagram that can be very intimidating. But it’s something that can be a useful tool for practitioners to then ask the question: “OK, as I am starting to get a picture of the system, or systems, how might I work with the different groups, different stakeholders, that I work with in my daily work to try to invoke a more systemic perspective—a more holistic perspective—and also get at some of what we see in here which is the work of trying to invite new perspectives—new ways of focusing awareness—the idea of evolving our consciousness, both individually and collectively. So this is going back to that basic idea of intentional cultural design. Can we self-evolve in the sense of: as we become aware of our own cultural lens, our own process of constructing our realities as we approach problems, can we then through this kind of work gain a perspective and work with others to be more intentional about creating the futures that otherwise tend to emerge out of our habits of thinking? Just the reflexive aspect of our thinking that just keeps reinventing the same limiting assumptions, the same limiting problems….I wanted to work with that a little bit and tease out some other information that comes to us, and then move that into a more narrative way of coming at systems: “storytelling.”

I then shared some information I recently received from two members of the Lanape

tribe, descendants of Ohio’s first people’s, who are currently engaged in cultural

mentoring work for the benefit of indigenous people in northeast Ohio, western

Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. This information pertained to the Medwin “Laws of

Peace,” and included a related statement of “aims and goals” used by these indigenous

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leaders as a cultural foundation for conscious community building. I shared my

impression, based on the presentation of these tribal leaders, that they were engaged in

work that was in many ways similar to our efforts at conscious evolutionary design. I

noted how they had expressed their understanding of indigenous community as a self-

organizing living system. Finally, I shared that a former mentor of mine, Jürgen Kremer,

Ph.D., of the Saybrook faculty had just published a handbook for engaging in cultural

revisioning using an approach known as “ethnoautobiography” (Kremer & Jackson-

Paton, 2014). I explained that this approach might be quite useful in community practice

as we work to create spaces for “conversations that matter” or those “difficult [but

necessary] conversations” centered “around deconstructing whiteness and the colonial

mindset.” I said that it is:

Very much using a kind of visioning, creativity, a variety of creative practices… kind of revisiting some of the assumptions about identity and self. So it’s deconstructive in the sense that we are having to confront those shadows of colonialism, displacement, etc.; but then it’s very generative in that it’s also an opportunity to find your voice so that we can get into those conversations and speak from a more grounded perspective.

After some further information sharing, I led the group through two short “mind

grooving” exercises derived from “The Systems Thinking Playbook” (Sweeney &

Meadows, 1995). My purpose in leading these exercises was to provide an experiential

demonstration of David Bohm’s (1994) ideas regarding thought as an active agent

continuously unfolding from an “implicate” common stream of consciousness and

shaping our moment-to-moment perceptions of reality. I shared Bohm’s (1994) statement

that “we speak of thought as being inside. It isn’t really because it’s also the whole

world” (p. 130), and I suggested that one of our tasks as practitioners in the area of

community revitalization may be to develop a certain metacognitive awareness of the role

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of thought in shaping our realities, an ability described by Bohm as “proprioreception”

(p. 121).

As a group, we then reviewed those several discursive tasks set forth on the

agenda which would involve the participants in using system modeling tools as an aid to

group designing conversation. Each participant reviewed their own and each other’s “root

definitions” and corresponding system images (causal loop diagrams). Then, I invited the

participants to join in designing conversation for the purpose of clarifying, with regard to

each system:

1. the relevant systemic “inputs” and “outputs;”

2. the thing being transformed, whether process, structure, meaning, or power;

3. the small changes or “trim tabs” that might be leveraged to yield systemic changes;

4. the “evolutionary markers” that might serve as measurable indicators of discontinuous shifts in system dynamics; and

5. the overarching perspective captured in each model.

Upon opening the floor to conversation as informed by these models and clarifying

questions, the participants began sharing their impressions of the models, and then turned

their collective attention to a conversation mostly focusing on the first two of the above

questions, but touching on the other questions as well.

Conversation. The following excerpts from this designing conversation are

reproduced to capture the major ideas shared among the participants regarding this first

design task, and also to convey a sense of the group interaction at this stage of the study.

It should be noted that in my facilitative role at this stage, I found that I was using task-

oriented questions in a manner that was similar to my questioning during the initial

structured interviews. This use of questions to focus the conversation signaled a return to

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a more convergent pattern of group discourse, in contrast to the relatively divergent

pattern of discourse attained during the second and third inquiry group sessions:

P7: I think that’s very cool how you were able to extrapolate from all our different comments these flowcharts, it’s really fascinating.

Brett: What fascinates, I mean, do you want to elaborate on that? How do you find it useful?

P7: Well, I’m still exploring it at this point. It’s just not something that my mind would have created. I just don’t think in this way. So it’s novel to me to see it, and I’d like to sit with it for awhile. Naturally, I’m more familiar with my stuff than everybody else’s, but it would be interesting to really study it so we knew each other better, to be able to function in the sense of studying everybody else’s too and understanding it better.

We decided to focus first on “System Model 4,” which describes a human activity system

to build core competencies of ecological literacy and awareness of global systemic

context, as a foundation for cohesive community life anchored by an authentic shared

sense of place-based identity, and nurtured by inclusive, spiritually inspired conversations

that foster a local culture deeply rooted in the landscape and its history:

Brett: So maybe we can just try to look at a couple of these questions. For example, with [System Model 4] what would be the inputs and the outputs? If your task was to generate more consciousness of the big picture, or of ecological reality, what would be the input?

P7: Consciously involving the human spirit. Community level conversations…

P2: So looking at [Model 4], and thinking about inputs, I mean, I would say that the input into a starting point of getting to where I think this is going, is something experiential. Right, an outdoor—providing not necessarily education, but an experience, right. So you are avoiding the Last Child in the Woods kind of thing [referring to Louv, 2005], you are trying to get people to have some sense of [pause] something profound, happening to them that involves landscape or a sense of place, as a way of moving towards your place-based identity and this sort of understanding of landscape and history.

P7: And then engagement with a group like the Lenape, too. Potentially!

Brett: So conversation with groups that are already doing work in the area of the indigenous mind, indigenous consciousness; [groups] who never stopped being

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indigenous, perhaps. Maybe this would work with ethnoautobiography, something like that; those kinds of practices. You know, going back into, not just genealogy, but the cultural history of the European experience, and then having those encounters with the past, but then looking at, well, how does that manifest in terms of the way we present ourselves, the way we show up? And how can we show up differently, perhaps?

P7: And we touched on this a little bit too, at the very beginning with the Encyclical models, and what would that look like. You know, if we had a local church that was all “gung ho” about if we did a totally native, urban landscape, to model the eco-sanctuary. So people could see it.

Brett: So what would be transformed in that process?

P7: Well, you’d certainly move from alienation. I hate to use the word ignorance, but alienation—literacy towards a working knowledge of what’s native to place and the sense of place. And not just in a theoretical way, or “isn’t that nice, pretty” way, but in a functional, everyday sort of “this is your culture” sort of way that’s meaningful! So it would be a substitution of something artificial for something that’s real [pause] more real, deeper.

Brett: So it would be encounters with the real. Or revisioning, recovering the sense of the real.

P7: Yeah. Ecological reality.

The group next turned to consideration of System Model 2, describing a system that

engages conversation to build common understanding by acknowledging the realities of

personal struggle, as well as small signs of improvement, as an invitation to discover

unrealized capacity to transcend limiting mindsets and engage in difficult but meaningful

conversations that matter:

P6: Um, some of the inputs that would be required for how it’s been captured for me is some groundwork on how to be with each other in difficult conversation. So there would need to be some…basics of how to be with each other in difficult conversations. And, what you might call some fundamental group dynamic principles, I think would be some inputs.

Brett: So, creating ground rules?

P6: Yeah.

Brett:…would be part of the inputs that would help to create conditions that would enable those conversations to happen?

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P6: Yeah. Those might be some of the inputs. I think the main output is just, for lack of a better term, an opening of each individual’s circle of influence, so to speak. The realization of each individual’s – that their circle of influence has been opened, deeper…or wider, I should say.

Brett: Do you think they would experience that as a transformation?

P6: Yeah, and that’s why actually when I was first looking at these conversation questions…when I was looking at the questions themselves, 1 and 2, and I thought to myself, is 1 and 2 kind of saying the same thing? Are the inputs and outputs also the things that are being…Well, at least the outputs, is that also the thing that is being transformed? So I was a little unsure about how to see those questions. But yeah, I would hope that that would be one of the pieces that would be transformed.

I perceived the clarifying questions raised by P6 as an opportunity to further surface my

own premises regarding the relationship between “what are the systemic inputs and

outputs?” and “what is being transformed?” in the context of human activity systems, and

also once again to help steer the conversation towards an articulation of leveraging

strategies and evolutionary markers:

Brett:…I think for present purposes, and perhaps the more difficult part but where we can really draw some good learning is to really think about what’s being transformed. Because unlike most of the systems we are accustomed to working with, or in the mechanistic mindset, we are talking about ourselves—human systems! We are thinking of very tricky concepts like culture. Or consciousness. But again that’s just words. So if I say “consciousness is being transformed” and we have multiple different ideas or images that brings up, it goes back to the whole idea of mindset. Then the question is, OK, it draws us further into it. How can we tell that story or how do we capture it? So this is the idea of first trying to get a handle on what that thing is when we are talking about ourselves that would represent and unfolding potential, or would represent a departure from the past? Something that really marks a change in the pattern of what’s happening. And then secondly, how do we know when it’s changing? Is it something that we can observe, is it something that we can measure? What are the signs, and indicators? And, I think there it can get us back down to earth because we might look at things like empowerment. When we see someone, a student for example, suddenly jumping in and getting engaged where previously they hadn’t, that may be an indication that something has shifted. We’ve all experienced those kinds of moments with ourselves or people that we know that is not just an incremental change, but an actual shift; a discontinuous departure from the past pattern. And if we can identify those things, then the theory of conscious human evolution starts to have some grounding in the reality of what we can actually attain in practice.

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Otherwise, it’s just theory. It’s difficult stuff, I’ll grant you. But it’s just a way of trying to get us thinking in those terms.

P6: At least the ones that I was able to look at in more detail. I think the thing that is being transformed—one of the common themes that I have noticed of what’s being transformed, to that second question, is the way people (excuse my English here) the way people “be with” each other and the environment. And everyone that I’m looking at, I see that as one of the things that’s being transformed. How [pause] the way people are being with each other and with the environment.

Next, the group looked at System Model 6 describing a system that builds capacity

among neighbors and stakeholders to think and work together systemically, enabling self-

organizing bottom-up action to restore community bonds in the face of wicked problems

by helping them feel empowered as shapers of neighborhoods sharing common place-

based identity and joined to a common destiny:

P7: Three things that I see this statement calling for, you mention one, empowerment and actualization, maybe self-actualization through community engagement. So it would be a collective self-actualization. Maybe this sounds corny but it came to me too that maybe the most powerful motivator that could make that happen is love. And that’s in somewhat short supply these days, in many regards. I remember I went to a Bioneers conference here in Cleveland a few years ago and they did a survey and right off there were some common comments, and one of those was that the people wished that Cleveland was a more loving place. And more supportive! People felt that it was kind of a cut-throat, back-stabbing environment. And that prevented people from taking risks, and speaking up, and achieving what was stated or through interpretation needed saying. So, what’s the risk to love? I’d think that love would be a powerful motivator for all of these statements here.

Next, the group looked at System Model 3, a system that engages neighbors to celebrate

“small wins” derived from empathic and supportive responses to each other’s daily

challenges, so as to bridge the distance between shared ideals and personal realities,

progressively moving from social isolation to a sense of place-based community cohesion

that builds capacity for social engagement at all levels.

P6: I think one of the things that’s being transformed is people’s awareness of their holistic nature. I don’t know if that makes sense.

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P2: Yeah, I think certainly meaning, but when you say that, I think it’s sort of personal power and understanding that you have; that there’s a locus of control, right. There’s that sense of an ability on the individual’s part to form a group that then can have inputs and power. So the understanding that that’s possible, I suppose, is one of the things being transformed. So this is like going back to basics in order to come together as people.

Brett: Again, starting with the reality. That’s a theme that keeps coming up, the “reality” being a challenge. You know: “I’m just trying to get by, I’m just trying to survive” …

P2: And I think people need guidance on how to think that way. Because we tend to lump it all together and we think about big problems and we want to make big changes. And those little things are really important along the way. But we leap over those, and it’s really hard, you bite off more than you can chew, you get burned out. You know, so sort of guiding people in how to think about that is really important…you take little baby steps along the way.

P7: Build confidence.

At this point in the conversation, we had succeeded in examining four of the six human

activity systems that had been described and modeled. Together, we had affirmed the

relevance of each system definition, and through conversation we had made headway in

building shared understanding regarding the systemic nature of the problems as well as

common values that might be captured in a range of possible design solutions.

At this point, we turned to the next task on the meeting agenda. I invited the

participants to explore the remaining two system definitions and models through use of

story or narrative as an alternative discursive tool. I suggested that our intention in

making this shift in approach might be to consider how the use of narrative as a

collective, discursive design activity might enable the participants to model these human

activity systems through a lens that more explicitly draws upon the creativity of the

group. I further suggested that by combining narrative with discourse as a collective

design activity, the participants might gain a more imminent and embodied sense of these

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relevant community systems, whereby each can be understood as a dynamic and

continuously unfolding experiential reality.

Brett: I’d really like to see, again through a research lens here, what happens if we move from the engineering diagrams, as it were, into a more narrative way of thinking about these systems? I’m very interested to see if that makes a difference. It’s the same challenge, we are still trying to deal with complexity. We are still trying to deal with a lot of things that are still very close to home, but challenging in terms of finding the right language: Where do you enter in, where do you focus your attention?…Now, this is inviting the imaginal realm in a sense that, you know, I’m suggesting that we think of some kind of “main idea” image that could grab the attention if we were telling it to, say, our stakeholders or audiences and just put ourselves in their shoes, but also make it real. OK, so we could tell it through mythology and fantasy, but in this instance let’s see if we could just describe it as something that is very accessible, speaking in our own authentic voice and drawing from our personal experience.

The two remaining human activity system definitions, based on the ideas and images

shared during our earlier conversations:

System Model 1: A system that enables reflection on past experience to test core

assumptions and reduce siloed and polarized thinking while promoting equitable and

inclusive community engagement leading to effective and authentic community

revitalization.

System Model 5: A system that builds community by generating a “welcoming

table” where individuals experiencing an inner tension between individuality and

community are invited to participate in activities that nurture shared place-based

sensibilities and community consciousness, making it easier to perceive one’s self as

having a stake in the outcome as a member of a place-based community.

I invited the participants to focus on these two definitions, as well as on the

corresponding causal loop diagram models, as a starting place for constructing a storied

image of the place-based community ideal. Without hesitation, P7 offered the beginning

of a storyline:

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P7: P6 invited P2 and I down to the community garden to see what’s been done, and we were interested to volunteer three hours a week, and in return we would get part of the produce.

With this prompt, and with the aid of some further facilitative encouragement, the group

began to explore how story might be used to further design and model these ideal system

images:

Brett: Alright, so – anyone want to pick up on that? Thank you. Are you working off of [System Model 5]?

P7: Yeah.

Brett: The welcoming table, right? People experiencing inner tension between individuality and community, invited to participate in some activities that nurture having a stake and place-based sensibility.

P7: P2 and P7 were the two folks that lived at the end of the street with a high fence around the yard, and who yelled at all the neighborhood kids for being noisy. And his effort was finding a way to engage them into the community.

Brett: So, [to the group] P7’s trying to help us shift into a story voice, so we have some characters. Do you want to start again? Let’s see if we can get some momentum here.

P7: I agree it’s a powerful tool, to do it this way. It taps into something that I think is almost primal in us. We come from a long line of storytellers. So you want me to start over with that narrative?

At this point, the participants appeared ready to engage in storytelling as a collective

activity. Following P7’s lead, each in turn made a contribution to the unfolding of a

narrative that exhibited themes derived from both of the above-referenced system

definitions. Just as the participants previously had engaged conversation guided by

trigger questions to elucidate certain systemic characteristics of the first four system

models, they now engaged conversation guided by the imagery of a narrative unfolding

through a process of collective discourse to elucidate other systemic characteristics of the

remaining two system models. Over the course of about 20 minutes, the story unfolded

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and gained momentum. As the group narrative unfolded, the conversation became lively

and energized, in a manner that contrasted with the relatively more subdued conversation

that preceded it.

The transcribed conversation captures how, using each of these alternative

approaches to designing conversation, the participants used language artfully in an

attempt to describe and mutually affirm the strategic importance of certain systemic

qualities pertaining to the teleological dimensions of human consciousness and human

culture that are often overlooked in traditional neighborhood planning approaches, and

that emerge within the discursive space itself. For example, while considering how the

local community system models might reveal processes of societal or cultural

transformation, participants described how the thing being transformed might be

understood as:

• “consciously involving the human spirit”

• “some sense of something profound”

• “moving towards place-based identity”

• “an opening of each individual’s circle of influence”

• “people’s awareness of their holistic nature”

• “a substitution of something artificial for something that’s … more real, deeper”

• “the way people ‘be with’ each other, and the environment”

• “[understanding and] a sense of the individual’s [ability to] form a group that then can have inputs and power”

• “a collective self-actualization [motivated by] love.”

Then again, through the latter approach utilizing narrative as a collective design strategy,

the participants similarly represented the shared community ideal via a story about two

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reclusive neighbors who were transformed by the experience of being invited to

participate in the development of a community garden. Again, this imagery coalesced

around two systems definitions, related to the themes of “equitable and inclusive

community engagement,” and “the welcoming table” respectively. Compelling imagery

of the experience of the community ideal was revealed in imagined dialogue and

everyday interactions of fictional characters actively engaged in growing a web of

supportive relationships, as follows:

• “… in our garden we build a lot of good relationships with people around us, and we did that without placing a fence around our garden. And surprisingly nothing has been stolen here, or taken, and we watch out for each other.”

• “You don’t know these people, but you should meet them Charlie…P1, P7 meet Charlie…You can make salsa now!”

• “…the kids showed up and they were looking to the adults for some further guidance on what that [garden mural] theme should be. And so P3, who hadn’t really anticipated that question from the kids thought he would consult with the people that were present.”

• P7 showed up at work with that jar of the cilantro salsa that had been given to him and his colleagues were asking him what that was all about. And P7 was able to share…so they liked the whole idea of the community garden and asked if they could start one in their communities as well.

In contrast to the prior conversation in which participants engaged in the creative use of

language to describe qualities of the ideal community system, the participants upon being

invited to explore the strategic use of narrative in the designing space used dialogue to

represent and enact the experience of the community ideal, as informed by their

collective awareness of the local context.

As the time for ending this final group session approached, I invited the

participants to reflect upon these two approaches to community designing discourse, and

how the overall process of group inquiry had shaped their perspective and understanding

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of designing conversation as applied practice to build capacity for conscious societal

evolution at the level of place-based community. The following quotes are excerpted

from the transcript of final group reflections:

P1: This does seem a more reflective process in terms of some of the other “sticky note and prototype” type of things, it seems to be more equipped for us to generate something maybe a bit more external, what’s in the moment. There’s a lot to be gained from being more reflective.…So, yeah, that’s something I’d like to see, is just more being able to remove those labels and have some deeper reflective-type conversations, and have some time to do some analysis on that.

P2: So rapid prototyping is useful for lots of things, but I think that you can pretty easily just go off and do a thing or implement a program that you’ve made an assumption about is the answer to your problem. But you’ve got to dig deeper, you know, why? And people want to feel connected, right? People do! … I think fundamentally people want to feel connected. So why don’t they? And then, you know, because of how our City is set up. That’s probably not the right path there, but why? OK, why? And you start to get down to the real issues which may not even be what it seems the problem actually is. So I think that’s exactly right, is asking … the right questions and getting people to think about things beyond the quick process we do, that that’s how it is. You know, keep going deeper.

P3: I think that what’s interesting, and why I think the diagrams are interesting and why the narratives are interesting in terms of a process for this, is because, it’s really…I don’t remember much about the specifics of the theory behind appreciative inquiry, but in design you keep circling back. This is what I know from my experience…also in terms of community. You know, the hard conversations and the set-backs, the challenges. What happens when someone becomes alienated? How do you take the risk of reaching out to that person, even in the context of a very small group of people all working together to try to invent something? It’s your job to. Those kinds of tensions come up even between two people, you know. So, I guess I’m wondering at a much broader level, getting to P7’s point about “love” we were speaking last time we were together about “empathy”…you know, you can’t love outside of a context! You can’t have community without it! Community is the context in which love occurs. It’s on a basic level right? Love can occur where the conditions for relationship are there. And what’s the old Kabala saying about “God created people because God loves stories.” It’s why we exist! From one perspective anyway.…I think there’s stories embedded in [the diagrams] and I think there’s also even in the story we just did together, I think there is something systemic embedded in it. You know what I mean?

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Summary

The effort in this Chapter 4 has been to accurately report the major

accomplishments, emerging themes, observations, and reflections of a small group of

professional practitioners and community stakeholders who were recruited to voluntarily

engage in a facilitated process of evolutionary inquiry over a period of approximately six

months, during the summer and fall of 2015. Following recruitment, the participants

came together and formed as a cohesive group of seven professional inquirers. Through

collaboration as guided by a series of learning tasks formulated by myself as facilitator

and adopted by the group as a framework for discursive action, the participants honed

their practical skills in the use of generative and strategic dialogue, established conditions

for evolutionary learning, mapped a common field of inquiry offering multiple lenses for

viewing and understanding the local problem situation regarding place-based

communities, constructed a common pool of knowledge relevant to the scope of inquiry,

developed shared competencies relevant to the praxis of evolutionary design discourse,

and consciously engaged in conversation as recursive, ideal-seeking social action. In the

process of accomplishing these tasks, the participants utilized dialogue, feedback ,and

reflection to examine their own and each other’s assumptions, and to gain in-depth

understanding of those multiple perspectives that were brought “to the table.”

The learning outcomes, including those learning outcomes articulated by the

participants themselves and listed at the beginning of this Chapter 4, were:

1. elicited initially by open-ended questions posed during the initial one-on-one structured interviews;

2. incubated through individual sharing and generative dialogue during the first group session;

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3. invoked within a collective designing space during the second session, by means of “trigger questions” posed to the group as a whole for the purpose of stimulating conversation about the problem situation, community potentials, and images of the ideal future scenario;

4. explored further and refined on the basis of designing conversations facilitated among a larger group of community residents and stakeholders; and

5. distilled from the recorded session transcripts and offered back to the group as a common basis for developing a multilens model of the ideal human activity system(s) for guiding integral revitalization of Cleveland’s place-based communities.

The basic pattern that emerged was one of convergence (group formation),

followed by divergence (mapping the field and multiple system perspectives), followed

again by convergence (integration of knowledge across those multiple perspectives).

Through this recursive learning process, the participants engaged multiple variations of

designing conversation to critically test assumptions and gain a more complete, mutual

understanding of professional challenges and opportunities presented in the community

design space.

The account of the participants’ learning journey set forth above provides an

evidence-based representation of how, and to what extent, the intended learning

outcomes were attained as of the time of reporting. To be clear, the data reported above

are not the study results per se, but a representation and demonstration of outcomes

attributable to a facilitated, recursive process of designing conversation. It is an imperfect

representation of those actual learning outcomes that accrued as changes to the

participants’ awareness and understanding of the topics considered, and that manifested

within the real world dynamic of community-level interaction as experienced by the

participants and stakeholders involved. Accordingly, the reported results provide a partial

qualitative measure and demonstration of how the participants’ collective efforts effected

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change relevant to the purposes of the study at the levels of self, group, and community.

These documented learning outcomes are examined more closely as against the

theoretical and methodological premises of this study in Chapter 5.

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Chapter 5: Synthesis of the Research Outcomes

Overview

By virtue of the learning journey documented in Chapter 4, the study participants

collaborated for the purpose of honing professional competencies that would enable them

to serve effectively as catalysts and facilitators of evolutionary learning as a collectively

enacted strategy for community revitalization. Their common agenda was to equip

themselves with understanding and practical competencies needed to engage local

residents and stakeholders in designing conversation as a progressive, ideal-seeking

response and strategy for cultural transformation amidst the increasingly complex matrix

of problems afflicting Cleveland’s neighborhoods during this era of post-industrial

challenge and uncertainty.

Following recruitment, the participants coalesced as an inquiry group and

proceeded to utilize the praxis of designing conversation to accomplish a series of

learning tasks formulated to build common understanding, and to enable them as

practitioners to facilitate the self-guided transformation of Cleveland’s neighborhoods, as

guided by democratic, ecologically sustainable, and emancipatory ideals. The participants

sought to become the collective embodiment of an evolutionary guidance system,

attracting and energizing processes of change from within, whereby Cleveland’s place-

based communities might be self-guided along an evolutionary trajectory that expresses

emergent qualities of health, wholeness, and resilience at progressively higher levels of

systemic complexity. Their common purpose, therefore, was to afford themselves and

their community stakeholders with an opportunity to discover unrealized human

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potentials enfolded within consciousness and human culture at the levels of individual,

group, and community.

This Chapter 5 presents a synthesis of the work highlighting the major learning

tasks accomplished, together with observations regarding formative and transformative

patterns of change expressed via the group discourse, including:

• generation of new or revised inquiry questions,

• development of a common pool of knowledge drawing upon the experiences and multiple perspectives of the participants,

• acquisition of evolutionary consciousness and competencies at the individual and group levels,

• mapping of the field of inquiry to disclose systemic characteristics of the problem situation(s) and future ideal(s) as perceived through multiple and converging perspectives; and

• practical and strategic application of design discourse as a social change strategy.

Synthesis of the Work

This study was initiated for the purpose of building capacity among local

community activists seeking to develop and strategically use the praxis of designing

conversation to catalyze self-organizing and consciously guided processes of

evolutionary change within Cleveland’s place-based communities. By viewing

communities as appreciative social systems, the participants collaborated to develop an

approach to community revitalization that would account for the systemic influences of

human values, intentions, perceptions, beliefs, assumptions, understandings, and other

implicit and explicit manifestations of human consciousness and culture. The participants

thereby adopted a holistic perspective to the systems design inquiry that would account

for various semiotic, teleological, and other “intangible” elements of their local

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community systems. Under conventional planning approaches, such elements might be

treated as qualities of the designer or the beneficiaries of design, but not of the designed

system itself. However, by adopting a more holistic perspective during the course of this

study, the participants found that they were able to conceptualize designing conversation

as a form of engaged social action through which enfolded potentials existing within

human consciousness and culture might be made explicit and realized as either adaptive

or discontinuous (transformative) changes contributing to the long-term health and

viability of Cleveland’s place-based communities. In other words, for purposes of this

action research study, designing conversation was undertaken, not as a process of

planning discourse leading to future community action, but as a form of ideal-seeking

community action targeted towards human potentials unfolding in the here and now;

within in the ever-present domains of consciousness and culture.

Generative dialogue as a strategy for inquiry group formation. To achieve

this common purpose as an agenda for change in the “real world” of Cleveland’s place-

based communities, the participants were invited to consider how a set of well-articulated

research questions might serve: (a) to delineate the general scope of the inquiry; and (b)

to establish a point of entry and general, task-oriented trajectory for the group inquiry.

The research questions thus were formulated to invite open-ended and searching inquiry,

while preserving the ability of the participants to refine and reformulate the questions and

thereby engage in self-guided discourse as a strategy for collective knowledge

development. The general research questions, therefore, were framed to invite further

questioning, exploration, encounters with ambiguity, creative tension, deep reflection,

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and collective meaning-making; thereby operationalizing the research purposes stated

above by employing design conversation as a collective approach to design inquiry.

During the individual structured interviews, each participant considered the stated

premises of the study against their own reasons for accepting the invitation to join as co-

inquirers. This process of clarifying each participant’s individual interests related to the

study expressed a pattern of divergence that extended into the first inquiry session. Then,

after having been convened as a group, the participants utilized the opportunity to share

background information about themselves and their diverse interests and also to practice

dialogue as an organic process of group formation centered on the identification of

common interests. As facilitator, I decided to treat group formation and capacity building

through generative dialogue as a priority task for the first session and to defer collective

examination of the research questions themselves until the second inquiry session. This

strategy, giving priority to group formation and emphasizing suspension as a strategy for

inviting self-disclosure and collective self-reflection, enabled rapid development of a

cohesive group culture.

The group thereby self-organized in a manner that yielded a nondirective or

“open-space” quality of interaction. With minimal prompting, the participants began to

collaborate “at the edge of chaos” to achieve a level of cohesion reflecting the emergence

of common purpose and shared meaning. During this formative process, a few

participants expressed mild confusion over the ultimate purposes to be accomplished by

the group process, but all seemed to quickly embrace the idea that simply getting to know

each other in furtherance of building group cohesion was a value in itself. My concerns

about frustration emanating from the lack of a clear action agenda were soon assuaged as

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the participants readily accepted the invitation to openly and appreciatively reflect upon

the experience of mindful suspension or being together for the simple purpose of being

together. Also, in the course of the conversation, initial feeling of tension that

accompanied suspension of the impulse to “get to the task at hand” was quickly

transformed through dialogue into a deeper level of mutual self-disclosure and

affirmation of meaning. This pattern of searching amidst uncertainty, followed by deep,

reflective sharing, is captured in the process-oriented themes that emerged from the

participant’s initial foray into generative dialogue:

Theme 1: Collective purpose starts with learning to be together.

Theme 2: The practice of suspending does not necessarily mean being judgment

free.

Theme 3: Creating a safe container is not the same as becoming comfortable.

Theme 4: Suspending ego unfolds into appreciative awareness.

Theme 5: Collective creativity means working with uncertainty.

Theme 6: Personal triggers are also opportunities for deeper learning.

Upon reviewing the transcript of the first inquiry session, I observed that

notwithstanding the open invitation to generate new questions for purposes of dialogue,

the participants did not utilize this particular opportunity to expand the scope of inquiry.

Rather, most of the conversation consisted of sharing views and perspectives as a form of

self-disclosure and mutual affirmation of diverse perspectives and sentiments. The

participants at the first session thus enacted a pattern of interaction that rapidly moved

from divergence (open-ended dialogue) to convergence; coalescing around the above

themes related to the participants’ common interests in the praxis of facilitated group

inquiry. Furthermore, given the participants expressed mutual emphasis on self-

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disclosure and learning to be together, it is perhaps not surprising that each of the themes

captured above emerged in dialogue, not from searching questions, but mostly from an

exchange of propositional statements which were generated, affirmed, expressed, and

synthesized in a scaffolding “yes and” pattern of discourse.

I also observed that the genesis of the above thematic statements in dialogue

occurred only after participants were confronted with the lack of a pre-determined agenda

other than simply exploring the process of generative dialogue. I had encouraged the

participants to reflect upon and share their interpretations of the experience of real time

collaboration in generating a common space for open-ended inquiry. As their various

assumptions about the process of dialogue itself were brought to the surface, made

explicit, and examined in an atmosphere of mutual trust, they together exhibited a pattern

of interaction that invited metacognitive awareness of the subtle movements of thought

and perception. The resulting stated themes reflect the synthesis of a common

understanding regarding dialogue as a process of holding tension within a common

relational space delineated by the interplay of diverse perspectives and governed by a

common set of commitments, as expressed via the premises and ground rules of dialogue

as purposeful human activity.

Reflecting upon practical implications of this approach to, and emerging pattern

of, group formation, the invitation to generative dialogue at an early stage of the group

formation process ended up producing a “dialogue about dialogue” that enabled

participants to coalesce as peer learners and share a mix of philosophical and practical

perspectives in a nonintrusive and self-directed way. By inviting explicit reflection on the

process of group interaction, the initial exercise using generative dialogue served to build

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capacity for effective group inquiry, which in turn supported the development of

metacognitive awareness of the dynamics of the dialogical process itself. Thus, as a

practical matter, the use of generative dialogue served effectively as a strategy for

cohesive group formation.

In this way, the participants succeeded in accomplishing an important task relative

to the design of the study as community action research; that of rapidly establishing an

interpersonal “space” that is nonthreatening and mutually perceived as inviting

meaningful interaction. Most notably, the participants managed with relative ease to

accomplish this task of group formation notwithstanding the lack of a clear agenda for

collective action and notwithstanding the logistical challenges encountered at the initial

session. In retrospect, it appears that several factors likely contributed to (or at least did

not impede) the formation of a cohesive group consciousness:

1. preparation of each member via one-on-one structured interviews in advance of the first group inquiry session, where open-ended questions allowed for a moderately high level of self-disclosure between participants and facilitator;

2. the early discovery of significant areas of overlap among the participants’ professional interests and areas of expertise, including the mutual recognition of complementary existing competencies among peers working in the field of community revitalization;

3. a mutual willingness to explore the practice of suspension in the group setting, coupled with an expressed mutual intention to make group formation (or “learning to be together”) the primary objective of that first session; and

4. the establishment of explicit ground rules for generative dialogue in a manner that invited participants to freely explore emerging themes related to the experience of group formation, including an opportunity to affirm the experiences of certain areas of tension or responses to personal “triggers” in a spirit of mutual understanding and mutual respect.

In sum, the learning and practice of generative dialogue during the initial phase of

group interaction combined with other situational factors to yield cohesive group

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formation even in the absence of a common challenge or explicit task orientation. It

appears the suggestion of common interest and the hint of a common opportunity to learn

within a supportive framework was sufficient to elicit a collective sense of the value of

“being together.”

Refining and responding to the research questions through community

design inquiry. As of the second inquiry session, the stage had been set for the group to

take on a further set of inquiry tasks focusing explicitly on the purposes of the study and

the articulated research questions. After each participant reviewed the several research

questions via a printed handout and a prepared “webinar” containing background

information about the study purposes and methodology, the participants re-convened and

appeared ready to consciously transition from a process of generative dialogue to a

process of strategic dialogue.

Thus, the second inquiry session afforded participants an opportunity to consider

and, in dialogue, refine the following research question:

How might we understand and describe our community system of interest, so as

to encompass and facilitate dialogue regarding its emergent qualities and

characteristics, its intrinsic social, physical, technological, and ecological

elements, and its dynamic relationship with the larger systems in which it is

embedded?

The participants undertook to respond to this first research question by engaging

in the design activities set forth in inquiry cycle 1 in the study methodology. Specifically,

they engaged in designing conversation while approximately following a generic process

model for appreciative social systems design borrowed from Checkland (1981). Using

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this approach, the participants collectively undertook the dual tasks of mapping the “field

of inquiry” and creating a multilens framework for defining and understanding the

current problem situation within Cleveland’s place-based communities. To accomplish

these initial design tasks within the framework of praxis-oriented inquiry suggested by

the above research question, the participants engaged conversation as a strategy to build

consciousness of the systemic and evolutionary dynamics involved, and as a strategy to

build individual and collective capacities needed to become effective facilitators of

evolutionary design activity within the local community context.

With the above complementary tasks agreed upon as a framework for design

inquiry, the resulting conversation exhibited a divergent pattern that was quite different

from the converging pattern exhibited during initial group formation. With the above

general question articulated as the basis for a first cycle of design inquiry, I initiated

strategic conversation among the participants by offering a more specific set of prepared

trigger questions. So as not to pre-determine the trajectory of conversation or displace the

participants own premises and current understandings regarding the task at hand, I invited

the participants to select from among these trigger questions or formulate entirely new

questions that might expand upon or “unpack” the above-stated general research

question.

In addition to focusing on the prepared trigger questions, the participants

generated a series of other questions that both deepened and expanded the scope of the

inquiry, and that also afforded them with an opportunity to share a diversity of

perspectives regarding both the problem situation and community ideals. Many of the

questions generated reflected personal awareness of the difficult life circumstances

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encountered by many local community members, accompanied by a measure of critical

uncertainty regarding the value and feasibility of describing “ideal images” of

community.

Figure 6 reveals how the participants undertook the design task of mapping the

field of inquiry by strategically expanding upon the prepared trigger questions, so as to

bring into the collective design space a more inclusive range of framing perspectives,

critical concerns, and images of the ideal.

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Figure 6. Divergent pattern of questions generated at second inquiry session.

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By engaging conversation to accomplish the dual tasks of mapping the field of

inquiry and defining the problem situation, the participants succeeded in raising their own

awareness of a number of significant tensions within the field of inquiry that apparently

could not be resolved by means of any static image of community, ideal or otherwise. In

this way, the initial strategic use of discourse enabled the participants to build collective

consciousness of the indeterminate and dynamic characteristics of the local communities

as complex systems, and to mutually affirm the value of open-ended, discursive inquiry

as a strategy for accessing, within shared consciousness, certain appreciative elements

and qualities of those systems.

For example, none of the prepared trigger questions included explicit reference to

“identity,” “trust in the ideal,” encounters with “adversity,” or awareness of the “big

picture” as appreciative elements within community systems. However, these factors

were brought to the surface in awareness during the conversation, which in turn

highlighted a range of systemic characteristics deemed clearly relevant by the

participants, but which might have been overlooked in conventional planning efforts.

Figure 6 furthermore reveals how explicit reference to the trigger questions mostly

occurred during the earlier part of the conversation, and how subsequently, as new

questions were generated, the conversation diverged from those questions but still

remained on task in terms of the activities and intended outcomes of the study.

Exploring the praxis of designing conversation within the broader

community setting. During the interval between the second and third inquiry sessions, I

invited the participants to continue reflecting upon the themes emerging in conversation,

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and to specifically consider possible implications for practice so as to begin moving into

a second cycle of inquiry, as guided by the following research question:

How might we translate the constructs and language of evolutionary systems

theory into a community praxis that yields measurable outcomes indicative of the

progressive unfolding of values, qualities and emergent potentials found within

healthy, thriving social-ecological systems?

The planned Vital Neighborhood Innovation Session at the September 2015 Sustainable

Cleveland Summit, provided one important opportunity to explore this question, while

also extending the inquiry group’s community systems mapping effort into a broader

conversation among community residents and stakeholders.

Various factors marked contextual differences between the conversations

occurring among professional peers in the small inquiry group versus the more random

assembly of community residents and stakeholders convened at the September summit,

and these differences were discussed more fully in Chapter 4. While it is, perhaps, not

surprising that less group cohesion or depth of conversation was observed at the latter

event, in both instances the use of open-ended trigger questions resulted in a pattern of

diverging, exploratory conversation leading to increasing collective awareness of the

complex problems and untapped potentials of Cleveland’s local communities as living

social systems.

Two of the participants and I, as co-facilitators of the Vital Neighborhoods

Innovation Session, were able to afford attendees with a community-building experience

that, according to feedback received, many found meaningful as: (a) a demonstration of

the power of conversation to advance a collective design agenda, and (b) as an effective

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strategy for increasing awareness of the appreciative characteristics and hidden potentials

of place-based communities as complex adaptive systems. To a limited extent, and as

more fully described in Chapter 4, we were able to accomplish these outcomes even

within the constraints of a 2-hour workshop involving attendees with no prior

preparation.

Specifically, we as co-facilitators of the larger community dialogue endeavored to

present the theoretical premises of conversation as a strategy for conscious evolutionary

design while employing nontechnical language that would be accessible and meaningful

to the broadest possible audience. We described the task as a “proactive process of

community building” and invited attendees to consider how we might “take action to

create conditions that lend themselves to the movement towards communities where we

are sustainable.” In these and other ways, we searched for language that would

communicate well within the setting of a broad-based public discourse and that would

help move those in attendance towards a shared understanding of communities as

dynamic, evolving systems subject to strategic guidance by conscious and caring citizen

leaders.

I observed that the responses of the session attendees clearly and unambiguously

exhibited a common emphasis on certain appreciative and systemic qualities of the local

communities. These included emphasis on the strategic relevance of sharing economy,

reaching across divisions, nurturing community presence, investing in hope, mentoring

young people, and finding common identity at the neighborhood level. In addition to this

strategic focusing on the appreciative characteristics and qualities of Cleveland’s

communities, the conversations among session attendees exhibited a pattern of mutual

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affirmation, largely expressed through sharing of stories and experiences hinting at an

emerging collective awareness of certain “vicious cycles” and “virtuous cycles”;

including awareness of dynamic relationship between distress and social isolation,

between sharing and innovation, and between citizen engagement and the sense of

“having a stake.”

Reflecting upon the experience gained from the public innovation session with

my co-facilitators, I found tentative support for the idea of that a shared understanding of

place-based communities as living systems could emerge within the collective

consciousness of residents and stakeholders, and that the praxis of design conversation

could be made effective as a community-level strategy for shifting awareness and

promoting integral thought.

However, as facilitators we also encountered relatively greater difficulty in

attempting to convey some of the more subtle themes emerging from the small group

inquiry. Among these was the idea that certain tensions within community systems could

reveal enfolded potentials for transforming consciousness at the levels of society and

human culture, thereby advancing the evolution of our species and our world. Whether it

is possible to achieve greater awareness and mutual understanding related to the idea of

enfolded evolutionary potentials within existing community system dynamics, by means

of language and dialogical inquiry employed within the larger community setting,

remains an open question inviting research.

As practitioners, we knew we had much more work to do to translate the

constructs and language of evolutionary systems theory into community praxis. However,

the experience gained during the second cycle of inquiry on the whole reinforced our

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interest in the potential of facilitated design conversation as a sound, long-term strategy

to empower residents and stakeholders with capacity for such “big picture” thinking as a

meaningful context for community engagement, even as these residents and stakeholders

necessarily must encounter and struggle with the daily realities of the local “place-based”

context. As co-facilitators, we came away from this community learning event with a

shared understanding and perspective that the value of design conversation as a strategy

for place-based community revitalization, with potential to foster deeper cultural

transformation, had been affirmed.

Converging perspectives regarding the problem situation under study.

Following a month-long interlude, we reconvened whereupon I invited the participants to

engage in the practice of presencing as a way to re-enter the common design inquiry

space, and then through design conversation to seek to build upon the work they had

accomplished at the previous session. At this stage of the inquiry, participants assumed

the tasks of: (a) identifying the problem situation and formulating “root definitions” of

the relevant community systems; (b) creating an ideal image of the mutually desired

future situation; and (c) identifying relevant evolutionary markers. In addition, I invited

the participants to reflect upon their experiences within a range of practice settings, which

for two of the participants included experience gained from the recent public innovation

session.

Looking towards this third inquiry group session, I enacted my dual roles as

learning facilitator and co-inquirer to frame a series of designing tasks for the participants

that would guide an otherwise open-ended process of group dialogue, and thereby move

us along a trajectory towards more complete attainment of our cycle 1 learning outcomes.

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Departing somewhat from Checkland’s (1981) soft system design approach, I opted to

refrain from insisting that the participants perform the instrumental task of formulating

“root definitions” of relevant community systems as a specific strategy for bringing

individual guiding assumptions to light. It seemed to me that this process of surfacing and

testing assumptions could best be accomplished in a more “organic” (i.e., less

formalistic) way, through the complementary processes of presencing and dialogue. I

furthermore observed that by simply allowing the (above mentioned) shifting pattern of

discourse to unfold, and by letting the conversation carry itself on the basis of recursive

feedback, it in fact resolved towards a collective search for integral understanding of the

topics considered. This recursive process, moving from ideation to integration to

reframing (exhibiting a self-organizing pattern of bifurcation and emergence,

characteristic of an evolutionary “phase shift”) appeared consistent with Checkland’s

(1981) premise that the collective design task is not a linear process but rather one that

can be accessed via multiple points of entry and adapted to accommodate processes of

emergence encountered within the general scope of the design inquiry. Furthermore, this

recursive use of collectively generated feedback, organized and distilled by the facilitator

and offered back to the group in lieu of trigger questions, invoked neither debate nor any

explicit effort to account for the differing perspectives such as might be expected upon a

more restrictive application of Checkland’s (1981) soft systems design method. Upon

subsequent reflection, the participants shared that the feedback enabled them to more

consciously appreciate the multiple perspectives that were being revealed, and therefore

to acquire a more comprehensive and pluralistic understanding of the problem situation

and the relevant community systems.

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Despite my having framed the context of the third inquiry session as a

continuation of the dialogue begun at session 2, the conversation that ensued did not

exhibit the same pattern of divergence that had been previously exhibited. Instead, the

conversation at the third session exhibited a new pattern of group interaction that can best

be described as one of thematic convergence leading to a collective search for meaning

at progressively deeper levels of inquiry. To account for this change in the pattern of

interaction from one session to the next, it may be important to consider that the design

tasks themselves had not changed significantly. Rather, the pattern change from

divergence to convergence correlated with my decision to alter certain “inputs” to the

dialogical process: foregoing the use of trigger questions while providing feedback in the

form of a distillation of themes already generated by the group. My intent in providing

alternative input was to build upon design outcomes attained from one conversation to

the next, in a scaffolding manner that might enable the participants to establish a cycle of

planning, action, and reflection. As facilitator, I used such feedback as a point of re-entry

into the designing conversation space by expressly encouraging the participants to “use

these [themes] initially the way we used the trigger questions last time.”

Figure 7 provides a graphic representation of the manner in which participants

sought to formulate several rich definitions of the problem situation that integrated two or

more of the major themes distilled from the more divergent designing conversations of

the earlier sessions. As this figure shows, the process of integration was not used

explicitly to achieve a “reconciliation” of alternative systems definitions. Rather, the

outcomes as depicted in the center column present more complete descriptions of the

relevant problem situations rendered in “systemic language”; which is to say language

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that more explicitly characterizes the causal structures and dynamic processes that might

account for the continued existence of the problem situation.

Figure 7. Integration of themes considered during the third inquiry session.

In conversation, the group appeared to be moving towards a unified, systemic

articulation of the problem situation, although not all of the previously identified themes

were expressly taken up in this dialogical process of integration. For example the

following theme captured from the second inquiry session and identified in feedback was

not explicitly addressed during the subsequent integration phase of the conversation:

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Loss of place-based connectivity seems to be accompanied by a loss of a

collective stake or, place-based sensibility, making it increasingly difficult to “come

together” in the face of adversity. This theme is captured in the phrase: “No reason to

stay.”

Although this idea of “stakelessness” as a factor contributing to community

decline was not explicitly addressed at this stage, it was in fact reiterated at various other

points during overall group inquiry process. Therefore, the lack of explicit consideration

of this perspective or systemic marker does not support an inference that the group

necessarily deemed the foregoing perspective less important than the others.

A review of the transcribed conversations revealed that the dynamics of group

interaction shifted from one session to the next in a manner that implied a causal

structure, whereby feedback provided to the group and reflecting themes emerging in

conversation and distilled from the prior inquiry sessions appears to have contributed to

a shift from a divergent to a convergent pattern of discourse (see Figure 8).

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Figure 8. Facilitative strategies and emerging group dynamics.

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By distilling multiple emerging perspectives and offering these back to the group

as a basis for further task-oriented design conversation, my actions as facilitator appear to

have catalyzed a spontaneous effort among participants to integrate their multiple

perspectives regarding the relevant problem situation. Significantly, this occurred even

though the design-inquiry tasks set forth in the study method and undertaken by the group

did not explicitly call for an integration of themes. However, the pattern of integrative

conversation observed at the third inquiry session was short-lived, and was followed by

an equally distinctive and spontaneous shift towards a pattern of discourse that exhibited,

not integration, but a search for a more fundamental, mutual understanding of the

problem situation. The ensuing designing conversation exhibited a progressive deepening

of the inquiry, a trajectory that had not been pre-planned, but that nonetheless emerged

from the dynamics of the conversation itself.

The following model of the problem situation (see also Figure 9) represents a

synthesis of the multiple complementary perspectives shared by the participants during

conversation that was facilitated through processes of data capture, analysis, and

feedback, and that was otherwise allowed to self-organize around a common agenda

centered on a set of learning tasks. What emerged was a conversation expressing qualities

of generative, critical, interpretive, and recursive discourse, and yielding (by virtue of

integrative and systemic language emerging in the dialogue itself) a substantively rich

description of the problem situation as a human activity system that is empirically

validated in terms of: (a) its basis as a social construct reflecting common understanding

among the participants, (b) its authenticity as an expression of shared understanding

drawing upon their multiple disciplinary backgrounds and experiences in practice setting;

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and (c) its integrity as the product of a genuinely participatory and emancipatory group

learning process:

The Problem Situation

• “Normal” is isolating (highly individualized daily routines contribute to sense of isolation);

• The ancestral connection is broken (displacement of memory and loss of sense of place);

• We are resigned to nostaligia (romanticized images and lack of regard for the big picture create sense of resignation);

• Struggling to adapt (rapid changes can either strengthen or undermine community, depending on strength of social bonds);

• No reason to stay (Loss of place-based connectivity leads to loss of having a stake and makes it increasingly difficult to “come together” in the face of adversity);

• Too busy surviving (difficult to have meaningful conversation about community when so distracted with daily challenges – increasing fragmentation and isolation);

• Fearing for the heart (instinctive desire is to extend from the heart place, but that is risky in fragmented world where perceptions and attributions of meaning do not align);

• Nothing in common (people have vastly different experiences, undermining common understanding);

• Divided we fall (social isolation and loss of a sense of common identity).

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Figure 9. Systemic model of the problem situation.

About mid-way through the third session, I again observed a shift in the pattern of

discourse. Having received feedback derived from the prior inquiry sessions, the group

through conversation was able to self-organize and with minimal facilitation sustain an

ideal-seeking design inquiry. From this point forward, until the end of the session, the

group conversation assumed the quality of a search for fundamental causes that might

inform the group’s effort to model one or more community ideals.

Specifically, as the participants were exploring the idea that rapid changes in

community and societal context might interfere with the natural processes of social

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identity formation among young people, P7 seized the opportunity to reframe the relevant

inquiry question, and thus redirect the inquiry as follows: “As a desire I ask myself:

‘What would be the optimum model for a human community?…As humans what does

that even mean, from a biological standpoint?’” Inspired by P7’s suggestion that our

efforts to model the optimal community system should be guided by an understanding of

“basic biology,” P6 offered the complementary suggestion that our common quest for the

ideal might benefit from a “more scientific” approach to problem-solving in the

community context.

The conversation continued to evolve as: (a) an exploration of the relationship

between patterns of physical space development and human well-being; and (b) an

exploration of the relationship between density of population and human social behavior.

Then, P2 and P3 expanded the inquiry further by suggesting that the City’s physical

patterns of development have limited the ability of urban residents to achieve quality of

life, “not only in the physical sense, but also in relation to their common human need to

find meaning,” and to “have control over the meaningful aspects of their lives.” In this

way, a conversation about human biology flowed seamlessly into a conversation about

human values and human emancipation. For example, this process of deepening inquiry

was well captured in the following reflection offered by P3 towards the end of the third

inquiry session, where he observed that a conversation about human biological needs had

led to a conversation about human values:

I think [the conversation about biology] is bringing up [a new question] really forcefully: What is the emotional resonance or lack of resonance with the physical manifestation of our urban-emotional spaces?…I think it becomes very deep instinctive stuff that I think does bring us back to a sense of the tribal.

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Thus, by allowing the questions themselves to evolve without being governed by

an imposed disciplinary or epistemological perspective, the conversation itself exhibited

characteristics of a self-organizing system drawing upon the multiple intelligences of the

participants and emerging into progressively deeper level of inquiry. What emerged from

this free-flowing process of designing conversation, as distilled from subsequent review

of the session transcript, was a set of descriptive “future propositions”. When these

thematic propositions are restated so as to describe their distinguishing systemic

characteristics and corresponding evolutionary markers, they together form a collective

image of the community ideal.

An Evolutionary Guidance System for Place-Based Community Revitalization

A Process Model of the “Ideal” Future Situation

Nurturing the Indigenous Self – A system that builds core competencies of

ecological literacy and awareness of global systemic context as a foundation for cohesive

community life anchored by an authentic shared sense of place-based identity, and

nurtured by inclusive, spiritually inspired conversations that foster a local culture deeply

rooted in the landscape and its history.

Evolutionary Markers:

• We expand the conversation to include a wider range of potential realities,

leading to a radical cultural shift to include integral ecology.

• We come back to an accurate biological model of what a human being really is,

both individually and socially.

Inviting Conversations That Matter – A system that engages conversation to build

common understanding by acknowledging the realities of personal struggle, as well as

small signs of improvement, as an invitation to discover unrealized capacity to transcend

limiting mindsets and engage in difficult but meaningful conversations that matter.

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• We let go of the societal taboos that keep us from having conversation about

difficult topics such as politics, religion, and sex that are actually

“fundamental to our being,” and then create a “safe container” for having

these difficult conversations.

• We “keep the conversation going” by reaffirming the importance of dialogue

itself as a discipline that, with practice and appropriate ground rules, enables

us to observe our own emotional triggers, and rather than “throwing up

walls” respond by asking “could there be value in what you are saying?”

United (Here) We Stand – A system that builds capacity among neighbors and

stakeholders to think and work together systemically, enabling self-organizing bottom-up

action to restore community bonds in the face of wicked problems by helping residents

and stakeholders feel empowered as shapers of neighborhoods sharing common place-

based identity and joined to a common destiny.


• We transcend separation consciousness that is beneath the ingrained habits of

thinking in competitive and power relation terms.

• We recognize the need to connect, in our tribe and in our neighborhood, as an

innate drive of humans and therefore a “fundamental human right.”

Winning With Each Small Step – A system that engages neighbors to celebrate

“small wins” derived from empathic and supportive responses to each other’s daily


progressively moving from social isolation to a sense of place-based community cohesion

that builds capacity for social engagement at all levels.


• We cultivate empathy as an act of imagination enabling us through

conversation to get at the deeper, most common, human needs.

• We cultivate awareness of the small ways that we are talking about bigger

picture things.

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Equitable and Inclusive Engagement – A system that enables reflection on past

experience to test core assumptions and reduce siloed and polarized thinking while

promoting equitable and inclusive community engagement leading to effective and

authentic community revitalization.


• Even as “separate tribes” we are able through dialogue to find common

identity in areas where we have common ground and from that place learn to

appreciate our differences.

The Welcoming Table – A system that builds community by generating a

“welcoming table” where individuals experiencing an inner tension between individuality

and community are invited to participate in activities that nurture shared place-based

sensibilities and community consciousness, making it easier to perceive one’s self as

having a stake in the outcome as a member of a place-based community.


• We recognize and deconstruct false dualities and scarcity-based thinking.

• We create space for having conversations about love and compassion.

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Figure 10. Model of an “ideal” evolutionary guidance system for revitalization of place-based community. As a group having arrived at an articulation of a complementary set of images,

together comprising the elements of multidimensional process model of the ideal future

situation as informed by the combined experiences of the participants gained in the

specific context of Cleveland’s place-based communities, I invited the participants to

engage in a further round of reflection leading into the third cycle of inquiry, as guided

by the following set of questions:

• How might we further embody (beginning with ourselves in our work) the kind of ideal that we can imagine?

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• How can we start practicing from that space? Or at least have it as a part of our awareness so that it becomes clear, and becomes more a part of our reality, as opposed to just something we might imagine “out there.”

• What implications might follow from a shift in perspective that enables members of our community to understand certain types of conversation, for example, conversation that transforms, or that shifts awareness, or builds relationships in community, as discursive social action that truly makes a difference in its own right?

• If communities are understood as social, or socio-ecological, systems, what systemic components or processes are best transformed by means of the designing conversation as a form of engaged social action?

In preparation for our final group inquiry session, I again used the transcribed

conversations to distill multiple rich descriptions of the problem situation. In addition, I

extracted themes from the prior meeting transcripts to formulate a revised set of root

definitions and causal loop diagrams depicting causal structures and processes implied

by the views expressed in conversation (see Appendix H). This process of modelling

community system functions and dynamics based upon content expressed in the

transcribed conversations was quite time-consuming, but nonetheless worthwhile as an

effort to develop a high resolution image of communities as complex adaptive systems,

and as a basis for generating feedback to inform our third cycle of inquiry.

My objective leading into the fourth and final inquiry session, once again, was to

facilitate a group conversation that would build upon the insights gained and collective

knowledge developed in preceding sessions. This time I invited the participants to

consider the following general research question:

How might we illuminate, critically deconstruct and transform our habits of

perception, thought, and behavior, including our prevailing language and cultural

narratives concerning values and institutions, in ways that enable us to access our

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individual and collective potentials as change agents and leaders of regenerative

political economy?

As an approach to this question, I invited the participants to use feedback (presented as

community system root definitions and causal loop diagrams) as well as narrative

(storytelling), to enact strategies for collective self-transformation within the evolutionary

design space. Specifically, I invited the participants to build upon their earlier work for

the purpose of building a shared understanding of the collective human potentials

enfolded within Cleveland’s multifaceted and evolving community systems. These would

include the interaction of soft system elements such as values, intentions, beliefs,

worldviews, relationships, and ways of “being together,” empathy, cultural memory,

scope of awareness, emotional affect, and “sense of place,” and other ententional and

embodied qualities that might be accessed and transformed through the praxis of

evolutionary design conversation.

Our final task, therefore, was to purposefully utilize conversation, as informed by

the discursive activity of community system modeling, to implement a strategy for

evolutionary change at the levels of self, community, and society. To accomplish this

task, I invited the participants to consider inputs, outputs, processes of transformation,

opportunities to leverage change, and ways of measuring progress in the evolutionary

unfolding of community potentials. I suggested that as we undertook these remaining

learning tasks, our primary objective should be “to fully embody and consciously work

with the creative tensions that lend vitality to community as a dynamic living system.”

Thus having articulated design tasks remaining for the inquiry group, I realized

that I was introducing modeling tools and related systems concepts that some of the

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participants would be encountering for the first time. I therefore devoted a few minutes at

the beginning of the final session (after check-ins) to share my understanding of both the

advantages and limitations of the modeling techniques used, and to invite participants

similarly to consider and express views regarding the benefits and/or limitations of

system modeling in the context of community conversation and community design

praxis. I also led the participants through a couple of experiential “mind grooving”

exercises, providing an occasion to shift from a semantic to experiential mode of inquiry

and thereby to cultivate “proprioreception” (Bohm 1994, pp. 121–123) or an embodied

and metacognitive awareness of how our socially and culturally mediated thought

processes operate at the community systems level to shape our individual and shared

realities. I suggested that by cultivating awareness, we might develop a more integral

understanding of ourselves as community change agents; in keeping with Banathy’s

(2000) theoretical construct of the evolutionary guidance system as an expression of

human consciousness unfolding towards the imagined (and discursively affirmed)

common ideal.

The participants thereupon re-entered the designing conversation with intention to

integrate various elements of the imagined systemic ideal, and eventually to converge

upon a set of common understandings regarding the types of high-leverage interventions

or “inputs” that might effectively catalyze the unfolding of human potentials within

Cleveland’s local communities. As inquiry proceeded, participants remained focused on

the praxis of using conversation as a form of engaged social action, driving change

towards a collectively desired future by enabling self-organizing processes of capacity

building and emergence to be realized by the residents and stakeholders engaged in

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various facilitated processes of community discourse. The participants considered how

such change from within the relational fabric of community life might express the

patterning of a living evolving system, consciously guided by and realized as unfolding

potentials within human culture and consciousness. Finally, the participants considered

how progress towards the ideal horizon might be marked by a plurality of personal and

transpersonal experiences of self-transformation.

As an attempt to integrate multiple process models explicitly targeted to the local

problem situation as understood and defined by the participants based upon their diverse

experiences in the Cleveland context, the synthesis achieved during the fourth inquiry

session provides a unified, if not perfectly comprehensive, image of evolutionary change

at the place-based community level, rendered first in the semiotic language of soft

systems design, and subsequently (as discussed below) in the metaphoric-improvisational

language of storytelling. The systems model emerging from this conversation, while

necessarily generic as a representation of community dynamics governed by values,

intentions, and other aspects of consciousness and culture, provides a framework for the

use of design conversation as a form of emancipatory social action (Figure 11).

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Figure 11. Inputs, outputs, and transformations.

As a final design task, the participants undertook to utilize narrative as an

alternative and complementary mode of design discourse. The shared intention at this

stage was to gain direct experience in the process of becoming a collective embodiment

of a self-evolving, appreciative community system. I invited them to observe how an

emerging image of the community ideal might be both represented and enacted through

conversational storytelling as the lived-embodied representation, afforded the participants

an opportunity to draw upon the wellsprings of imagination while mutually validating a

common sense of the authentic. In this way, a mutually desired future ideal momentarily

is experienced as present reality. This strategy of employing imagination to become

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present to the desired future situation, in turn, drew participants into the lived experience

of a searching and appreciatively guided community discourse, where the integral reality

of such experience might potentially serve as an attractor for evolutionary learning. In

other words, the participants were afforded an opportunity to experience what it might

feel like to enter the problem situation, experience its tensions and culturally mediated

dynamics, and within the unfolding reality of that relational space pursue a common

strategy of collective self-transformation through open, generative discourse, collective

meaning-making, and “conversations that matter.”

The following reflective comment by P3 illustrates how the experience of using

imagination and narrative to embody ideas about community generated in the design

conversation served to promote integral understanding that moves the community

discourse towards an emerging collective ideal:

Toward the end…where we did the narrative. That had the biggest impact on me, and I realize that that could have only happened after we had already had numerous other conversations together. Because we felt comfortable enough with each other, and we had enough of a shared language at that point, where we were then able to play off of each other. I was surprised at how easy it seemed to flow, once it got started, and how it was even somewhat playful. And, I mean, why not? Why shouldn’t this kind of work be somewhat playful?…Because that narrative to me—that truly was co-creative. That truly was a collective wisdom of the group, as I like to remind people when I am working with a group. I remind them that the collective wisdom of the group is far greater than any one individual.

The final group session concluded with a brief period of reflection. Each

participant shared a perspective regarding how the experience of how the use of visual

and narrative models as complementary strategies to enact processes of collective self-

transformation had shaped their awareness and understanding of praxis opportunities in

the evolutionary design space. Each reflected upon how this praxis had brought to light

human potentials that might be ready to unfolded within Cleveland’s multifaceted and

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evolving community systems, and upon how the process of group inquiry as a whole had

shaped their perspective and understanding of designing conversation as a form of social

action at the community level.

While acknowledging the challenge inherent in any such effort to articulate and

capture in words such deeper or integral understanding as might be attained via co-

creative experiential learning, the participants nonetheless made the attempt. Through

their individual observations they generated a plurality of perspectives that converged, at

least tentatively, around a view that both processes were valuable, but in different and

complementary ways. They agreed that understanding achieved via these practices had

been enhanced by the prior learning activities of the group; and that the use of narrative

endowed the inquiry with a felt sense of authenticity and collective presence within an

image of the shared ideal. The participants’ multiple reflections also converged around a

core idea: that this praxis held promise as a “more reflective” process of collective design

than the common approaches to stakeholder engagement that rely upon “rapid

prototyping.” They expressed how systems modeling cultivated holistic awareness of

appreciative dimensions of community systems, and how the use of narrative as the

experience of “being the change” afforded a quality of fluidity, spontaneity, and even

“playfulness” to the discourse that, with adequate preparation, might enable people to

transcend surface appearances regarding “the problem” and “getting down to real issues.”

Finally, the participants agreed that the praxis engaged in the study had contributed to a

meaningful, shared understanding of place-based community as the context in which

empathy, love, and other expressions of a transformed consciousness and embodied

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wholeness occur so as to guide evolutionary unfolding at all levels towards a new societal

era of pluralistic unity emerging from the common daily experience of “community.”

Reflections on Facilitating the Inquiry Group

This dissertation study, based on community action research, provides an account

of a shared learning journey that was initiated and carried out with the intention to

produce two basic types of outcomes: the one being systemic change that is recognized as

progress towards a desired future condition, and the other being practical knowledge or

improved understanding of “what works” relative to the change being sought. The

general research questions guiding this learning journey were formulated to catalyze and

frame the inquiry within a context of theoretical premises and other interpretive

knowledge made accessible in the first instance to myself as initiating researcher and

subsequently to the participants via the review of literature summarized in Chapter 2. The

questions, therefore, were not problems to be solved or hypotheses to be tested pursuant

to the conventions of positivistic science. Rather, the questions were articulated as entry

points into an inquiry system; serving to initiate a process of design discourse within a

learning architecture that enables the participants to achieve a co-creative synthesis of

interpretive, practical, and integral knowledge. Such knowledge, having direct

applicability in the real world context of community practice, spells progress in the

participants’ mutual quest for a “difference that makes a difference” (N. Bateson, n.d.),

enacted and experienced as the unfolding of evolutionary potentials within Cleveland’s

place-based communities.

In my role as facilitator, I experienced an ongoing tension between a felt need to

share a substantial body of theoretical knowledge received from the research literature,

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and a desire to invite conversation that reliably would capture a diversity of

interpretations and perspectives, and modalities of expressions, and properly be

understood as the collective knowledge of the group. I realized that, within the timeframe

involved in this study, it would not have been practicable to substantially involve the

participants in the initial design of the research methodology as described in Chapter 3.

Therefore, as facilitator I felt an obligation to frequently “check in” to ensure my

suggestion of “assigned” learning tasks would be adopted by the participants without any

hint of coercion as a genuine agreement on how to proceed at each stage of the inquiry

process.

Upon reflection, I found that I could rely on the instantaneous feedback afforded

by the process of conversation itself to navigate the field of tension arising from my dual

roles as presenter and facilitator, and that the participants through dialogue were able to

confirm that sufficient information had been shared so as to give meaningful context to

the inquiry without overwhelming. On several occasions, participants asked for

clarification and offered suggestions on how to proceed, and I felt no hesitation in

welcoming this feedback as affirmation that both the structure and content of the inquiry

process were arrived at through democratic and co-creative engagement of the group. For

my part, I sought to “show up” in the group setting as a peer learner bringing to the

common table a set of questions, concepts, and system design tools that would prove

valuable to the group, while simultaneously inviting the participants, individually and

collectively, to share knowledge that they deemed relevant to the common learning tasks.

At the beginning of the study process, I had anticipated that a substantial portion

of the time and effort spent together as a group would be devoted to the construction of

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system models. I further anticipated that the process of strategic dialogue would resolve

towards increasing focus on the details of the constructed system models, albeit while

also expressing spontaneity and qualities of emergence that could provide the basis for

meaningful reflection. In my actual experience of the process as enacted, however, I

discovered that model construction and processes of integrative synthesis occurred as

“natural” outcomes of interpretive and recursive discourse within the flow of

conversation, even though the task of distilling and representing these design outcomes

fell upon me, the facilitator, as a task best accomplished in between sessions and

delivered back to the participants as feedback guiding the each successive round of

inquiry. During the course of the study, I made a conscious choice to sequence the

presentation of information and feedback, articulation of learning tasks, and agreement

on group intentions, so as to precede that portion of the inquiry session that would be

devoted to free-flowing, interactive design conversation. I felt comfortable that, with

adequate preparation coming into each session, I could trust the process of conversation

to follow its own organic course of self-organization, fluctuating through “pulses” of

divergence and convergence as if in the manner of a living organism, thereby setting its

own course towards the emergence of common understanding marked by noticeable

shifts in the language, tone, and other patterning of the group interaction. In retrospect, I

remain confident in the soundness of this choice to “facilitate lightly” while relying

heavily on the processes of reflection, evaluation, and preparation between sessions as the

primary means of guiding the course of the inquiry towards intended learning outcomes

within the evolutionary design space.

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I shared with the participants these reflections regarding my experience in

facilitation, and one of my intentions going forward is to draw upon these experiences in

working with others in the community to develop further refinements to the methodology

of community action research, so that the inquiry system itself will continue to evolve as

transferable knowledge. In the following Chapter 6, I present and evaluate the major

learning outcomes that emerged from the group inquiry process, together with tentative

plans for moving forward using the community action research methodology.

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Chapter 6: Summary and Evaluation of Research Outcomes

To ensure that the stated purposes of this study were accomplished with a

requisite level of scientific rigor on the basis of the qualitative data and distilled themes

emerging from the participants’ learning and design conversations, an evaluative and

reflective presentation of the knowledge and social gains attained by this study is

warranted (see also Figure 12). Accordingly, this Chapter 6 is organized to present the

following:

• A summary of the major pragmatic, emancipatory, and integral research outcomes;

• An evaluation of the research outcomes using quality and validity criteria relevant to the specific context of community action research;

• An examination of how theories of action generated and enacted during the course of this study might reinforce or invite critical reconsideration of premises found in the theoretical literature; and

• Recommendations for continuing to move the work forward, including recommendations for advancing knowledge in the field through complementary research that might be undertaken in similar community contexts.

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Figure 12. Schematic representation of the multiple domains of knowledge attainable within the self-organizing dynamics of an evolutionary learning community.

In this study, a small group of professionals involved with current urban

revitalization efforts in the City of Cleveland gathered within a framework of community

action research to engage in a facilitated peer learning process guided by several research

questions formulated to invite collaborative group inquiry, specifically the praxis of

design conversation, as a strategy for community systems transformation. The

participants were invited to collaborate by means of generative and strategic dialogue to

pursue a common agenda for evolutionary learning and in the process to acquire

individual and group competencies that might enable them to become more effective

facilitators of conscious evolutionary change within their respective stakeholder

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communities. The synthesis of the work in Chapter 5 reveals how the participants, as

practitioners and co-inquirers, sought to better understand how their own formative and

culturally mediated assumptions regarding the problems and opportunities facing

Cleveland’s local communities might be brought into awareness, empirically tested

through a recursive process of design discourse, critically examined, and strategically

transformed. Each participant brought a unique combination of practical skills and

previously acquired knowledge to the common table; each dedicated time and effort to

the pursuit of collective knowledge and understanding such as might be attained through

a process of self-guided, evolutionary learning. Their common purpose was to build

collective understanding of how facilitated designing conversation might serve as a

systemic intervention to build capacity and create conditions for evolutionary learning

within Cleveland’s place-based communities, and thereby to effect desired social change.

As demonstrated via the detailed account of the participants’ learning journey

presented in Chapter 4, the participants actively engaged in the use of designing

conversation during four group inquiry sessions, and in their individual practice settings

including an organized “innovation session” co-facilitated by two participants and myself

during the study period. Through collaboration within the framework of the study

methodology, the participants accomplished a series of learning tasks which in turn

yielded specific learning outcomes (described in detail next) that were elicited and

invoked through the open-ended research questions, incubated through generative

dialogue, explored and refined through interaction with community stakeholders, and

represented and reflected upon via thematic analysis and systems modeling.

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Each of the several research questions represented an explicit call to action within

a field of human potential held open by the architecture of a common design space co-

created by the participants by virtue of their common intention to self-organize as an

evolutionary learning community. Each of the questions, beginning with the words “how

might we,” was formulated to be answered, not with a propositional claim presuming to

resolve uncertainty, but with embodied, socially constructed knowledge and

understanding emerging within the intersubjective, relational field formed by the

participants through social discourse and expressing the movements and emergent,

epiphenomenal qualities of consciousness and human culture. The questions, in other

words, were intended to be answered with a particular form of social action; that which

moves within human awareness, perception, thought, and behavior and which operates

cybernetically to drive the self-organizing dynamics of human activity systems at the

place-based community level. The questions called upon the participants to embody

change by enacting virtuous cycles of learning and action, leading towards progressively

higher levels of complexity and integration, as in the manner of a healthy living system.

Learning outcomes were observed, integrated, and modeled through design discourse.

In keeping with the action research methodology and systemic approach outlined

in Chapter 3, the results attained by means of designing conversation as a discursive

process of group interaction were captured, organized, and reported as data through the

use of transcribed recordings, system models, and other substantive work product that

was either generated or affirmed by the group as a whole. Each of the inquiry sessions

yielded emergent themes, from which it was possible to construct evidence-based system

definitions and ideal community system models. The thematic ideas and system images

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generated, as well as the dialogical process from which they emerged, all provide

observable evidence that the participants had attained, at least in part, the intended

learning outcomes specified for this study. These definitions and models captured

attributes and qualities of community deemed to exist as human potentials unfolding

within certain relational and intersubjective spaces that are often overlooked in

conventional planning efforts; thus revealing certain dynamic processes that constitute

local communities as complex adaptive human activity systems.

Having highlighted the emergent patterns of group interaction and the major

learning tasks accomplished via the above synthesis of the work, it is now possible to

articulate and examine explicitly the pragmatic, emancipatory, and evolutionary learning

outcomes that were produced via the several cycles of self-guided design discourse,

based upon the recorded session transcripts and the above synthesis of knowledge

collectively attained by the participants through the group inquiry process.

The following Table 7 is a summary of the major research results attained, and an

evaluation of the validity and quality of these results using criteria that are derived from

the epistemological premises and emancipatory aims of community action research as a

rigorous, scientific approach to disciplined inquiry within the field of practice.

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Table 7

Summary of the Major Research Results Attained by Inquiry Group Participants

Attained

Outcomes Interpretive, Praxis-Related, and Integral Knowledge

Emancipatory:

Building evolutionary consciousness and competencies

Research Question 1: How might we understand and describe our

community system of interest, so as to encompass and facilitate

dialogue regarding its emergent qualities and characteristics, its

intrinsic social, physical, technological, and ecological elements,

and its dynamic relationship with the larger systems in which it is

embedded?

• The participants performed a series of learning tasks which utilized selected tools and practices of dialogue and systems design within the inquiry group framework, and in the process created conditions for evolutionary learning, as follows:

o The participants, in task-oriented yet otherwise unrestricted dialogue, engaged in the joint creation of meaning leading to common understanding regarding the systemic challenges and unrealized potentials of local communities that exist at the levels human culture and consciousness.

o The participants employed conversation as a form of collective social action guided by an emerging metacognitive awareness of how appreciative qualities and potentials are structurally and dynamically interconnected within our local human activity systems.

o The participants explored dialogical practices and learning conditions that might enable progressive unfolding of these community potentials in the course of an ideal-seeking, self-guided, and self-organizing process of

evolutionary change.

o The participants shared perspectives, formulated new questions, searched for relevant knowledge, interpreted the local situation, and utilized systems design tools to build common understanding.

o The participants undertook these learning tasks voluntarily within a facilitated group setting, using designing conversation as a dialogical and “organic” (self-organizing and self-guiding) framework for achieving the common purposes of professional development and community transformation.

o The process exhibited emergent and synergistic dynamics, including patterns of divergence and convergence over the course of the study, whereby participants utilized feedback distilled from their own prior

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conversations to reflect upon emerging themes and to collaborate in working towards an integrative and pluralistic understanding of the topics considered.

o The inquiry process thereby exhibited qualities of an emerging “culture of participatory and anticipatory democracy” (K. C. Laszlo & Laszlo, 2004, p. 270).

• Using designing conversation as a primary strategy to build evolutionary competence, the participants achieved the following gains for themselves and their stakeholder communities:

o Evolutionary values, and ethics: Participants reflected that this was a particularly challenging topic, and, as one participant suggested, “one of those big things right now that has major polarities. Like, we totally play no part [in evolution] or we are absolutely co-creating everything” (P6). With very little prompting, the group conversation turned to how human needs might be viewed through a biological lens. Also, the group identified ecoliteracy, and the capacity to “go deeper” in conversation, as important aspects of the ideal future situation. In this way, participants affirmed their collective understanding that a process of self-evolution, involving transformative learning at the community level, might be way to align ourselves with life or living systems. However, this emerging understanding invoked a sense of caution, and memory of the many ways in which, historically, naturalistic arguments have been used to support eugenics, social Darwinism, certain economists’ unfounded assumptions about “human nature” and other really bad ideas. The participants expressed that much more conversation was needed in this area, and yet without sustained conversation about the values and ethical implications of designing for self-evolution, we likely will not get to where we need to be as a society.

o Communication methods and cooperation skills: Participants gained in this area by practicing and facilitating multiple forms of dialogue, and several participants expressed that the level of comfort with interaction involving open-ended conversation, presencing, and learning to “be together” increased over the course of the study.

o Ability to assess alternatives: Participants expressed how they found the process helpful as an invitation to explore alternative approaches to design. For example, P1 stated, “There’s a lot to be gained from being more reflective. Maybe some alternative approaches, I mean I’ve been kind of processing. Maybe just even the labels we put on others, or labels we would take on ourselves, that really get down to what are…there’s just really no meaning in that. So, yeah, that’s something I’d like to see, is just

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more being able to remove those labels and have some deeper reflective-type conversations, and have some time to do some analysis on that.”

o Ability to create future images: Notwithstanding the fact that the participants individually had limited familiarity with the use of social systems modeling tools, during the latter two sessions they responded to the agreed task of creating a desired future image by making a “pivot” in conversation which demonstrated an emerging collective ability to engage imagination, common purpose, and an awareness of unrealized collective potentials to co-create an holistic image synthesized from earlier group conversations and representing a shared ideal regarding the desired future situation for Cleveland’s place-based communities.

o Mastery of complexity: Participants identified mastery of complexity as a definite area of gain. Specifically, they reflected on having acquired an appreciation of the systemic complexity of issues and problems facing their local communities, and of how multiple, diverse perspectives related to a given topic can co-exist within a more holistic framework of discourse, as in the designing conversation. Participants also expressed how one could “feel” that complexity, and over the course of the study they become more comfortable “working with” that complexity.

o Creativity: Participants identified the use of narrative as a viable technique for integrating themes emerging in designing conversation across multiple, diverse perspectives. They reflected upon how imagination and creativity, including a shared sense of playfulness and an emerging ability to “see” enfolded community potentials, were evoked by the use of narrative that built upon the other modalities of conversation (generative dialogue, system modeling) that preceded it. Of all the techniques used in the study, the strategic use of narrative explored during the final session proved most inspirational to the participants, and this creative form of dialogue was singled out as a technique that could be most useful as a way of catalyzing individual and group transformation in the practice setting; provided however, that sufficient groundwork was laid during several preceding sessions involving group formation, multilens system mapping, and learning to “be together.”

o Pragmatic: The participants expressed a desire to further explore how the approach used in this study might be pragmatically applied within the context of specific groups and within the context of specific community projects. For example, P7 stated, “We can use this system or something like it, or just a discussion of solutions. That would be helpful.…I’d be really excited to…bring in more examples of things that we confront in our work lives. Potential projects and things like that, we could bring here and brainstorm and work together on solutions.”

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o Environmentalist and Planetary citizen: Upon reflection, participants shared how the group designing conversation had served to “remind us of” or “reignite” a shared sense of ourselves as planetary citizens. Participants reflected that there was “a lot of good, heightened awareness around” environmental policy, institutions, behavior (P6).

o Participants acquired shared capacity to “see” evolutionary potentials: Participants reflected that towards the end of the study, when the group moved from dialogue, to systems modeling, to creative use of narrative, they experienced gain in the ability to “see” potentials that are ready to emerge. Specifically, the gain was in the ability to “voice” potentials that appeared ready to unfold within the narrative itself, and in so doing to participate directly in their unfolding.

• The participants engaged with each other and with community stakeholders in a manner that raised awareness and initiated a broad-based conversation to deconstruct the binary notion that dialogue is “just talk” and not in itself a form of social “action.” Several of the participants affirmed that, through participation in this study, they gained awareness of how conversation, conducted for the strategic purpose of transforming community consciousness, and expanding awareness of appreciative system dynamics, can itself provide a pathway for dissemination of knowledge that builds capacity for evolutionary learning at the institutional and societal levels. For example, in her final reflections, P2 stated that “one key insight for me was the notion of conversation as action. [We] need to have the right conversations first. It is essential to dig deep and ask why and uncover barriers and understand the stakeholders’ needs before charging ahead.”

Pragmatic:

Co-create language, meaning, and ideals

Research Questions 2: How might we translate the constructs and

language of evolutionary systems theory into a community praxis

that yields measurable outcomes indicative of the progressive

unfolding of values, qualities, and emergent potentials found within

healthy, thriving social-ecological systems?

• The participants utilized conversation as a vehicle for self-disclosure, presencing, knowledge sharing, empathic listening, and mutual affirmation, surfacing and testing of assumptions, scoping and exploration of emergent themes, co-creative storytelling, collective interpretation, synthesis of ideas and perspectives, collective strategizing, system modeling, and group reflection. Through all these group activities, the participants established a rich and multifaceted set of working relationships. During the course of the study each of participants expressed interest in exploring other opportunities for professional collaboration, as well as a desire to “keep in touch” and seek opportunities for informal social interaction extending beyond the formal research setting.

• The participants each undertook to reflect upon the learning that took place via the group design inquiry, and to consider whether and in what ways the knowledge

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and understanding might be applied so as to develop new pathways for collective action within each of their respective community practice settings. In reflections shared during the opening “check ins” at the beginning of each inquiry session, during the final session, and in subsequent correspondence and meetings, it was revealed that the participants were actively seeking to apply their learning by exploring new dialogical and appreciative approaches to facilitating collective self-transformation and capacity building within a variety of personal and professional settings. These applications included professional consulting practice, volunteer stakeholder group facilitation, public administration, nonprofit management, urban planning, working with undergraduate students, and engaging institutional clients in the process of ecological landscape design. Also, several new and revised community-based design initiatives emerged from the public innovation session held at the Sustainable Cleveland 2015 Summit. Those initiatives providing opportunities for future-seeking designing conversation include: a local money study group, using ideas and information developed through neighborhood-level conversation to design a new local currency system building upon the existing Cleveland Time Bank; a prototype of a community “dream board” program as a strategy for engaging local residents in the process of neighborhood place-making; an annual “Potluck in the Park” event incorporating an opportunity for neighborhoods to showcase their unique and emerging contributions to citywide revitalization; and the launch of a Northeast Ohio Urban Farmers Coop utilizing conversation and relationship-based strategies for improving food access and community health.

• The participants utilized both generative and strategic conversation to share knowledge and perspectives acquired via experience within the local community context. Through a dialogical process of co-inquiry, assessment, interpretation, feedback, and group reflection, the participants together articulated multiple root definitions and models of human activity systems, each depicting boundary conditions and appreciative dynamics that the participants (individually and collectively) deem significant as contributors to the “problem situation” currently afflicting Cleveland’s place-based communities. See “Problem Situation” and Figure 9.

• The participants, through their collaborative development of systems models encompassing themes emerging in conversation and representing the current problem situation and an collective image of the community ideal, affirmed that they had gained increased awareness and understanding of how local neighborhoods and stakeholder communities functioned as “appreciative” human activity systems, guided and influenced by human intentions, culturally mediated assumptions, mental models, and the like. Through subsequent reflection on the process used in developing these models, participants began to explore implications for use in their respective practice settings, with a view towards increasing awareness and understanding of these appreciative human activity systems within and among their respective stakeholder communities.

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Evolutionary:

Produce metadisciplinary, ideal-seeking conversation

Research Question 3: How might we illuminate, critically

deconstruct, and transform our habits of perception, thought, and

behavior, including our prevailing language and cultural

narratives concerning values and institutions, in ways that enable

us to access our individual and collective potentials as change

agents and leaders of regenerative political economy

• The participants engaged with each other in a spirit of inquiry, using practices of presencing, open and inclusive sharing, creating a welcoming space, routine “check ins,” expressions of empathy and mutual support, valuing and celebrating each other’s accomplishments, engaging in “conversations that matter,” and other activities within the design inquiry space that consciously embodied the core values, ideas, and qualities that the participants collectively identified with the emerging community system ideal.

• The participants employed generative and strategic dialogue, thematic analysis, systems modelling, and strategic use of narrative, all within an action research framework to create and subsequently integrate multiple ideal images of those elements and system dynamics that express qualities of healthy, self-organizing living systems. They demonstrated how design discourse might be undertaken as a collective form of social action so as to build human and ecological capacities while catalyzing the unfolding of intrinsic potentials at the community level, thereby shaping the evolutionary trajectory of Cleveland’s neighborhoods. While the primary outcome of this future-seeking and future-creating design activity is embodied within the unfolding awareness and collective learning competencies of the participants themselves, as well as those of the stakeholder who will benefit from their learning as applied, a representation of the collectively designed ideal system image was provided in Figure 10.

The research outcomes summarized in Table 7 demonstrate how the group had

successfully formed and established a level of cohesion and explicit common intention

that enabled rich sharing of ideas, experiences, knowledge, understanding, and insights,

with clear potential for continuous improvement as an appreciative social system and

self-sustaining peer learning community. These outcomes further demonstrate, at least

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tentatively, how designing conversation as a strategic approach to community

revitalization praxis enabled participants to coalesce as a dynamic learning community,

expressing evolutionary consciousness and competency and developing a more integral

(or holistic and multidimensional) shared understanding of Cleveland’s communities as

continuously evolving and appreciatively self-guided, living systems. Finally, the

evidence provided by individual and group reflection is suggestive of an expanding

participatory awareness and emerging implicate consciousness within the group as a

whole, with potential to guide and shape understanding at the level of place-based

community culture. The following participant reflections, shared after the final inquiry

session, provide further evidence of expanding awareness and transforming

consciousness:

P2: I appreciated discussions about optimal models of community, love, and empathy and compassion. I really enjoyed watching our own group process with an anthropological eye. The stages of group dynamics were quite visible as we went through the process of forming and building trust and then sharing more personal stories and insights. It occurred to me that humans want so badly to connect and, in some cases, all it takes is an invitation to contribute in a meaningful way or to be recognized as having something to contribute.

P3: I think that what’s interesting, and why I think the diagrams are interesting and why the narratives are interesting in terms of a process … in design you keep circling back….What happens when someone becomes alienated? How do you take the risk of reaching out to that person, even in the context of a very small group of people all working together to try to invent something? It’s your job to. Those kinds of tensions come up even between two people, you know. So, I guess I’m wondering at a much broader level…you know, you can’t love outside of a context! You can’t have community without it! Community is the context in which love occurs. It’s on a basic level, right? Love can occur where the conditions for relationship are there. And what’s the old Kabala saying about “God created people because God loves stories.” It’s why we exist! From one perspective, anyway.

P6: I look forward to using [narrative as and co-creative approach to systems design], and I’ve been thinking about it ever since we did that, about what group to use that with. What context would it be most appropriate? But that was to me very impactful, and I can see the application of that in my professional work….

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Because that narrative to me, that truly was co-creative. That truly was a collective wisdom of the group.

P7: We can use this system or something like it, or just a discussion of solutions. That would be helpful.…There is so much meaningful work to be done in the world! And it’s so critical now in my judgement, in this time in history. I’d be really excited to…bring in more examples of things that we confront in our work lives. Potential projects and things like that, we could bring here and brainstorm and work together on solutions.

Criteria for Evaluating Quality and Validity of the Action Research

The above synthesis offers a glimpse at the multiple ways in which the

participants were able to capture and reflect upon a collective body of knowledge

emerging from the group’s designing conversations, including an integral, collective

understanding of the local problem situation and ideal future situation emerging through

use of systems modeling, narrative, and other dialogical and integral learning practices.

This evidence of attained learning outcomes, while incomplete as a representation of the

actual learning realized by the participants within the group inquiry setting, provides an

empirical basis from which to examine the quality and validity of results achieved via this

study as a response to the stated research questions and a context-specific instantiation of

systems research drawing upon evolutionary learning theory and using the community

action research methodology.

In community action research, as in action research generally, quality and validity

are attained, not by attempting to construe empirically supported inferences as universal

truth claims, but by asking “questions of emergence and enduring ways of knowing”

(Reason & Bradbury, 2001, p. 12). This approach tends to emphasize relational practice,

practical outcomes, and significance, and it “encourages us to consider validity claims of

different forms of knowing in themselves and the relationship between different ways of

knowing” (Reason & Bradbury, 2001, p. 12). Consistent with this multimodal approach

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to validity testing advocated by Reason and Bradbury (2001), and as discussed more fully

in Chapter 3, validity of the outcomes is evaluated using Herr and Anderson’s (2015) five

quality/validity criteria for action research. These criteria are summarized in Table 8.

Table 8

Herr and Anderson’s (2015) Five Quality/Validity Criteria for Action Research

Goals of action research Validity criteria Evaluative questions

The generation of new knowledge

Dialogic and process validity

To what extent do the methods, evidence, and findings resonate with a community of practice?

The achievement of action- oriented outcomes

Outcome validity To what extent has action occurred that leads towards resolution (and/or reframing) of the identified problem(s)?

The education of both researcher and participants

Catalytic validity To what extent has the research process deepened and transformed participant understanding of the social reality under study?

Results that are relevant to the local setting

Democratic validity

To what extent has research been done in collaboration with all parties who have a stake in the problem under study?

A sound and appropriate research methodology

Process validity To what extent are problems framed and solved in a manner that promotes ongoing learning of the individual or system?

Dialogic and process validity. As convener and facilitator, I invited participants

to use dialogue, specifically that form of dialogue construed for purposes of this study as

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the praxis of designing conversation, to accomplish a series of pre-defined and

methodically scaffolded learning tasks:

• To identify and reflect upon their “mental models” and working assumptions that may shape the way they “show up” and approach their work as facilitators and change agents within their respective stakeholder communities;

• To co-create initial conditions favorable to a process of evolutionary learning;

• To describe and map the boundaries, causal structures, and dynamic processes of the various appreciative human activity systems that are most relevant insofar as they shape the trajectory of evolutionary change within Cleveland’s place-based communities;

• To collectively attain evolutionary competence as “specific knowledge, ways of thinking, skills, and dispositions that jointly and interactively constitute the domain of evolutionary learning” (Banathy, 2000, p. 253).

• To implement an evolutionary systems design architecture to enable collective design inquiry within a variety of community practice settings;

• To generate fields of conversation within a variety of community practice settings;

• To engage in a variety of self-selected approaches to the praxis of enabling, facilitating, and guiding design conversation within the community practice settings;

• To use the selected approaches to generate awareness and appreciation of existing and emerging evolutionary potentials within the participant’s respective practice settings

• To build understanding of the causal influence of relational, ententional, and syntropic phenomena in the generation and unfolding of evolutionary potential within Cleveland’s place-based communities.

• To engage the methods of integral inquiry to deepen understanding and awareness of appreciative system dynamics;

• To engage in a search for language and other expressive, embodied means to model, organize, and implement an evolutionary guidance system as a dynamic attractor; illuminating, unfolding, and mobilizing previously unseen evolutionary potentials within the larger community and society.

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By engaging in a spiraling pattern of inquiry, consisting of planning, discursive

action, evaluation/feedback, and group reflection, the participants were able to gain

practice in the strategic use of designing conversation as a catalyst for evolutionary

learning. During each inquiry session, the participants used Bohmian dialogue as a

purposeful strategy for building metacognitive awareness of their own and each other’s

mental constructs that, in the context of group problem-solving and design, operated as

“theories-in-action.” In addition, the process of recording and transcribing each group

session, and searching for patterns of inference, thematic consistencies, and other

indications of implicit mental models, provided a further opportunity to explore how

hidden theories-in-action might be influencing the process of group inquiry and its

outcomes.

This recursive inquiry process enabled the participants to experience first-hand

the movements of consciousness, including patterns of thought, influences of memory,

coalescence of meaning, shifts in awareness, creative tensions, emotions, inspiration,

affect, flow, empathy, harmonic resonance, spiritual transcendence, and other qualities

of being that can guide the participants towards a more integral understanding of

relevant community dynamics. Reflecting upon their experiences in conversation, the

participants learned to “see” potentials and patterns of emergence within the group

inquiry process, thereby inviting collective insight and further inquiry into the

implications for practice in the larger community context, including ways to mark

progress towards the collectively appreciated ideal horizon.

Furthermore, by adapting the tools and techniques of soft systems design to the

strategic use of group design discourse within the community praxis setting, the

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participants were able to uncover certain recurrent themes that, upon being made explicit,

allowed them to form a multidimensional and contextually rich set of working theories

regarding: (a) the interrelated problems afflicting Cleveland residents and stakeholders;

and (b) the combination of elements, processes, and appreciative qualities that through

system modelling and ideal-seeking discourse could be held out as a “high resolution”

guiding image of the collectively desired future.

For example, as documented in Chapter 4, during the third inquiry session P3

recalled an earlier conversation “about the awareness of how we name things” and

expressed how “it seems like many little examples now, in small ways we are talking

about bigger picture things. I just think a lot about that. It turns out when you think of that

you think about love.”

In another moment of insight, P1 openly reflected upon how our group process

had enabled us to find common themes across a plurality of perspectives, which in turn

made him think about the potential to transcend polarizing conflicts in his immediate

neighborhood setting. He observed “these tribes all kind of overlap in different ways too,

but we can break out of these in some ways and just really speak to people that are really

different from ourselves.”

In several instances, participants shared about how the flow of group conversation

prompted them to reflect on their past experiences in other settings, generating

heightened awareness of the absence of conversation regarding common human

experiences or “fundamental” human needs. For example, P6 shared how

the need to connect is a fundamental need that we have as humans.…If they understood it was an innate drive then we might be a little more open to saying “well, since that’s an innate drive, then maybe we ought to consider this a

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fundamental human right, you know, and do things to protect that fundamental right.”

In yet another example, P7 expressed a vision of the community ideal that was

pluralistic, involving multiple pathways within larger unitive pattern of conscious

interdependency, where people are “bonded by love and empathy.” He expressed that

“any kind of answer would have to define those unique pathways for everybody. What’s

the ideal situation for an elderly person? Or for a newborn?”

Overall, the decision to adapt the tools and techniques of Checkland’s (1981) soft

systems design methodology, opting for relatively more time in dialogue while limiting

the amount of time spent in conceptual model building, made it necessary to rely heavily

on transcribed conversations as a primary means of capturing the themes and assessing

the patterns emerging from the group’s designing activities. Such reliance on having an

opportunity to record, transcribe, analyze, and model patterns and themes emerging from

group conversations may well impose a limitation on the use of this particular

methodology in some community contexts, including community design efforts occurring

over a shorter timeframe and those involving larger groups of participants. This

methodology, therefore, appears best adapted to processes of group inquiry having

duration of at least six months and involving between 5 and 10 individuals. Subject to

these limitations, the chosen methodology, with its strong emphasis on capacity building,

seemingly has potential to reach and bring emancipatory benefits to a broad range of

community stakeholders by means of adaptive replication, or to use a more organic term

“propagation.”

The transcribed conversations, observed behaviors, systems models, and

reflective statements of the participants provide support for the conclusion that each of

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the learning tasks listed above was at least partially achieved. However, during the course

of the study, it became clear that a more complete attainment of certain tasks would have

required more of a sustained effort, beyond the limited timeframe of six months and four

inquiry sessions. For example, because the participants had only limited opportunity to

apply selected tools and practices within their respective practice settings, the inquiry

cycle 2 activities of “generat[ing] fields of conversation within a variety of community

practice settings” and “engag[ing] in a variety of self-selected approaches…within the

community practice settings” were not achieved to the extent that would have allowed for

a rich conversation comparing lessons learned from a diversity of community settings.

The participants did, in fact, reflect upon how they might apply in practice the knowledge

and experience gained during the study. For example, upon reflection, P6 stated:

Just that alone—heightening the importance of community—it keeps that at a higher level of consciousness so that the other things that I was doing, whether it be teaching or something with my business, or whether it be even in my own family, it was keeping it in the fore. And because it was keeping it in the fore, how I was showing up in the world was different. I was able to be more conscious of a sense of community, and my impact on community—like my choices.…I mean, it really got me thinking about some things—like that tension between what I feel in my heart around community and how we all impact community, and how we are uniquely called to contribute to community and more of the head stuff, like “you know, I’ve got to make sure [my son] gets the best education….” Even at my nuclear family level, it was getting me to just raise my consciousness. And so, whether I was talking with my own family, whether I was talking with the students, whether I was talking with clients, it just kept the focus on the importance of community.

Such evidence that indicates a shift in awareness or consciousness emerging from the

group inquiry process also supports an inference that, with time, the participants might

encounter or generate more opportunities for “illuminating, unfolding, and mobilizing

previously unseen evolutionary potentials within the larger community and society.” For

example, several of the prototype ideas generated during the public innovation session

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reported in Chapter 4, such as “investing in ‘cultural creatives’ as catalysts for

community” or “intentionally reach[ing] out to build connections within and among

neighborhoods after years of division” clearly reflected an emerging consciousness of the

value of conversation, intentionality, and creativity as ingredients of a self-organizing and

potentially transformative community revitalization process. These ideas were not simply

left on the shelf, but were subsequently placed on the agenda of the Cleveland Vital

Neighborhoods Working Group as a catalyst for further strategic dialogue which resulted

in several new Citywide initiatives. These included the following prototypes as “action

items” which attracted funding and volunteers during the 2015-2016 planning cycle:

• Dream together: Build community through envisioning a positive future. The Dream Wall would allow participants to share ideas on a whiteboard map of the neighborhood. Community meetings would be held to discuss the ideas on the board;

• Community storytelling: having storytelling through an artistic production(s) within each community. This tool could be used to build relationships, skills, entrepreneurship, and ultimately loving thy neighbor;

• United Minds: Have churches and community groups sponsor discussions led by youth. Similar to Network Night, but for youth;

• Cross-Pollinating Neighborhoods: Working with community members and community development corporations to fix up buildings as a party.

Finally, several of the attendees at the innovation session, including P1, who assisted with

co-facilitation, subsequently convened a “local money study group” with a view towards

using designing conversation as an approach to developing awareness, common purpose,

and other forms of “social capital” needed to launch a new local currency to facilitate

“bottom up” economic development within Cleveland’s struggling neighborhoods.

Outcome and catalytic validity. Victor Friedman (2001), building upon earlier

work of Chris Argyris and colleagues, employs the term action science to describe an

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approach to action research as “a form of social practice which integrates both the

production and use of knowledge for the purpose of promoting learning with and among

individuals and systems whose work is characterized by uniqueness, uncertainty and

instability” (p. 132). In contrast with the “technical rationality” model of positivist

science, which construes practice as the skillful application of scientific knowledge

developed under conditions of control and assumed impartiality, often with minimal

regard for the real world complexities of the practice setting, practitioners of action

science work to “bridge the gap between social research and practice by building theories

which explain social phenomena, inform practice, and adhere to the fundamental criteria

of science” (Friedman, 2001, p. 132).

A basic premise of action science is that human beings “are theory builders who

mentally ‘construct’ theories of reality, which they continually test through action”

(Friedman, 2001, p. 133). When professional practitioners come together to form a

community of inquiry with an emerging common language encompassing shared values,

knowledge, terminology, and procedures, they become co-researchers committed to

making their tacitly constructed theories more explicit “so that they can be critically

examined and changed” (Friedman, 2001, p. 133). By thus examining how individual or

group problem-solving behavior is unconsciously guided by underlying theories of action

which people hold in their minds, practitioners as co-inquirers may uncover recurrent

patterns of behavior that enable them to formulate detailed, context-rich “theories of

practice” that can be mapped by means of various system modelling techniques. These

theories of practice then can be empirically tested for validity, not as “espoused theories”

constructed to explain “facts” in the abstract, but as theories-in-use inferred through

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direct observation of individual or group behavior in the action context (Friedman, 2001,

p. 134). By “bringing into awareness gaps and contradictions that may lead people to

experience doubt and, as a result, engage in inquiry,” this approach to validity testing

serves to promote change at the level of “double-loop learning”; which is to say, change

at the level of the actor’s “reality images, assumptions, goals and/or values” (Friedman,

2001, p. 135; see also Argyris & Schön, 1974).

These premises regarding action research as a scientifically rigorous synthesis of

theory and practice unfolding in the applied setting are fully consistent with the

theoretical and epistemological premises guiding this study, including the perspective

that place-based communities such as those considered herein are complex adaptive

human activity systems, consisting of both appreciative and material elements, and

expressing evolutionary dynamics and emergent qualities that are not reducible to

dualistic and mechanistic causal explanations of the type traditionally espoused by the

conventions of positivistic science. Moreover, community action research, as a form of

action science, explicitly pursues as its objective a course of engaged, inquiry-based

social action that deconstructs and rejects the conventional theory-practice binary, and the

corresponding implications of privilege assigned to theories that presume to guide

practice in the real world without accounting for the uncertainties, unique circumstances,

and ever-changing dynamics of each practice setting.

The evaluative task warranted by the above premises, therefore, is two-fold: (a) to

make explicit and critically examine those tacitly constructed theories that guided the

participants’ group learning activities; and (b) to uncover, model, and empirically test for

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validity as theories-in-use such recurrent patterns of thought and behavior as can be

observed emerging from within the specific action context of the study.

Tacitly constructed theories guiding the group learning activities. To evaluate

the manner in which tacitly constructed theories guided the participants’ group learning

activities, it is necessary to formulate an explicit interpretive statement regarding those

major guiding premises that initially were revealed by patterns and themes emerging in

the group conversation during the early stages of the study. Given the context of this

study as a participatory inquiry process initiated against the background of a literature

review and corresponding research questions, and facilitated with a view towards

building a common pool of knowledge and perspectives, the following statement is

formulated as a synthesis or “fusion of horizons” between literature-based and

experience-based theoretical perspectives:

Self-organizing processes of emergence and collective self-transformation can be

realized as expressions of unfolding collective human potential within the

evolving relational space of a fluid, self-guided, and recursive designing

conversation.

Following the principles of dialogue articulated and affirmed during the first session and

carried forward through subsequent cycles of the group inquiry process, it was evident

that beneficial learning outcomes might be attained if the group focused on creating

conditions where the design conversation would be allowed to develop organically in the

manner of a living system.

Furthermore, in this study, primary attention was given to the development of

understanding as a collective undertaking. This choice followed from a critical

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hermeneutic perspective (discussed more fully in Chapter 2) that seeks to advance a

pluralistic vision while inviting dialogical processes of co-creative meaning-making as a

unified, adaptive response to the profound ecological and social challenges of our era.

This quest for collective understanding as a basis for social transformation is, therefore,

fundamentally pragmatic in its orientation. However, for such a pluralistic and unified

vision to emerge, it is necessary to deconstruct long-standing atomistic and positivistic

assumptions about human nature reflected in the dominant legal, economic, and political

institutions of the modern industrial culture. Yet, even as we encounter daily reminders of

our ecological and economic interdependency on a global scale, our daily activities are

entrained by an institutionalized cultural narrative that elevates economic self-interest to

the status of a first principle. This narrative, popularized through the mass media and

framing our national political discourse, constantly reinforces an implicit neo-Darwinian

and naturalistic conception of the human subject. It celebrates unbridled consumerism

while denying the legitimacy of any natural human impulse towards community,

interdependency, or collective selfhood. As a consequence, our efforts to “be” and “act”

together, are often undermined by institutionalized habits of mind and behavior that

contribute to the systemic loss of the very “social capital” needed to build societal

resilience and unified strategies for societal change.

In Cleveland, as elsewhere, people are facing economic hardship, dislocation,

environmental degradation, and other manifestations of our post-industrial culture. These

daily experiences of hardship and struggle can be overwhelming, to the point where it

becomes difficult to imagine the experience of living in a well-functioning, healthy

community. Moreover, when such painful encounters with reality are filtered through a

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cultural lens that construes the human condition in terms of competition and self-interest,

and that obscures the fundamental truth of our interdependency, many people react

negatively, retreating more deeply into social isolation and hoping against hope that their

problems simply would go away if they did not have to deal with the presence of the

“other.”

Today, however, a growing number of Cleveland residents and stakeholders are

seeking to chart a new course for their city. These people understand implicitly that a

relationship exists between global trends and local conditions affecting all aspects of

daily life within Cleveland’s diverse and rapidly changing neighborhoods. Like most

Clevelanders, they share a common perception that we are living within neighborhoods

and urban environments that are ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of an

increasingly complex, fragmented, and (in many ways) impoverished world. Many also

believe that current social, economic, political, and ecological trends reveal dramatic

failures of past and current strategies based upon libertarian ideologies that counsel

isolation, atomistic self-interest, the “technological fix,” or blind faith the “wisdom of the

market.” Rather than blaming themselves or their neighbors for the difficulties they are

experiencing, these people are viewing the local situation through a lens informed by a

critical awareness that the institutional and mainstream cultural status quo at all levels is

not sustainable.

Among those local residents and stakeholders who are ready to question

mainstream ideological premises that do not square with current realities on the street,

some are beginning to consider whether through collaboration it might be possible to

reverse current trends toward deprivation, degradation, and conflict, and in the process to

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regain something of inherent value; the kind of value that emerges out of having

collective purpose. To know and realize a collective purpose, Clevelanders must eschew

the temptation to cling to failed ideologies or palliative abstractions. They must come

together in organized stakeholder groups and summon a renewed commitment to

affirmative, willful effort and practices that nurture effective collaboration.

Effective collaboration and co-creative learning in the group context involves

some measure of holding tension and it involves the complementary practices of

suspension and creative dialogical engagement; practices which invite collective self-

transformation. The practice of suspension can help learners transcend a perceived binary

of “judgment vs neutrality” and give rise to a shared “appreciative awareness.”

Use of outcomes to critically examine and validate emerging theoretical

perspectives. In the context of community action research, and according to the

epistemological premises of evolutionary learning as a collective design discipline

dedicated to progressive societal change, the above assessment of research outcomes

serves to disclose acquired evolutionary competencies and the emergence of appreciative

qualities and processes of self-transformation which, through practice and dissemination,

have potential to influence the trajectory of change within the community system as a

whole.

In the context of this study, involving experienced community practitioners as

participants, it became evident towards the beginning of our learning journey that certain

relevant competencies such as evolutionary knowledge, empathy, authenticity, passion,

and commitment to life-long learning were already embodied and able to be exhibited by

one or more members of the group. However, the process of convening and, through

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generative dialogue, forming a cohesive group culture, enabled these individual

competencies to emerge within the collective-relational space of a group of inquirers, as

they learned to think and act together, forming the basis of an emerging collective

intelligence in an atmosphere of mutual trust.

To reiterate: The aim of this research was to cultivate understanding, specifically

collective understanding that is shared at the inquiry group level and exhibited as an

emerging metacognitive and integral awareness, enabling participants to strategically

guide the unfolding of evolutionary potentials within their local community systems. As

facilitator, I sought to discover whether an approach to community action research

pursuing interpretive-hermeneutic understanding and guided by the theoretical premises

of evolutionary systems theory as applied within a place-based community setting, would

result in self-organizing processes of emergence and collective self-transformation. Based

upon the study results, and without presuming to venture beyond interpretation to give

some positive causal explanation for the attained results, it is possible on the basis of the

empirical evidence to offer a more refined theoretical perspective:

In the context of the group designing conversation, the participants and I found

that certain facilitative practices likely contributed to the attainment of beneficial, even

transformative, learning outcomes, including those described above as exhibited in the

group interaction and reflective comments of the participants. Based on the study results,

I submit that the following practices contributed to enhanced understanding and the

emergence of evolutionary consciousness amongst participants:

1. The facilitator “primes” the conversation with certain open-ended trigger questions relevant to the design task at hand;

2. The facilitator provides multiple versions of the trigger questions, while inviting participants to select which questions to respond to, and in what

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order, and also encouraging the participants to formulate revised or refined questions as needed;

3. The conversation is allowed to exhibit a “flow pattern” that varies between patterns of divergence and convergence;

4. A well-facilitated designing conversation will likely yield rich content that exceeds that which can be captured in “real time” but which can be distilled, thematically organized, and fed back to the inquiry group via recording or similar means of data capture;

5. By using data capture and review to identify emergent themes in between inquiry sessions, it is possible to create a recursive-feedback loop that can serve as the point of initiation for subsequent conversation, allowing for scaffolding of ideas and enabling development of metacognitive awareness as participants are better able to “see” their own and each other’s guiding assumptions;

6. A multisession designing conversation may shift from one flow pattern to another based upon the manner in which feedback is provided, and such a shift may occur within the same session as a converging process of thematic integration may enable participants to acquire holistic understanding, which in turn enables new, integral perspectives to emerge within the collective consciousness of the group;

7. The use of recursive feedback is also accompanied by the introduction of new tools and techniques for system modelling, including both visual tools such as systems diagrams, and tools that enable creative, multimodal and embodied ways of understanding emergent qualities and dynamics of the relevant community systems.

Our communities continue to suffer from the consequences of a consumer culture

that is founded upon institutionalized habits of mind and behavior stemming from a

profoundly flawed conception of human nature and the human condition. Yet, the

practice of facilitated designing conversation enables participants to gain a more holistic

and integral understanding of the problem situation, which is highly complex and

encompasses a number of self-reinforcing causal loops involving common perceptions,

thoughts, and beliefs, such as the belief that economic hardship is a personal failure, or

that sharing will inevitably lead to further impoverishment. These habits of mind function

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to undermine the impulse to collaborate and to erode the social fabric that might

otherwise enable place-based communities to thrive.

Each of us has a valuable perspective to contribute in conversation, but none of us

is equipped to see the whole problem situation without the benefit of social discourse.

Through designing conversation, however, community residents and stakeholders are

able to think together, and in the process, develop enhanced awareness and understanding

of the systemic dynamics that maintain the problem situation, including in particular

those community system dynamics that are perpetuated by the consciousness and culture

of the modern-industrial era of societal development.

The practice of facilitated designing conversation, therefore, can serve as a

powerful tool for transformative and emancipatory learning and self-guided community

revitalization. Because designing conversation is not subject to the individual self-interest

of those who would act out of the consciousness of power and privilege, it offers a

pathway for communities to resist culturally embedded forces of division and

exploitation that currently prevail and are daily reinforced by various unstated guiding

assumptions, media images, patterns of communication, and institutional structures of the

global market economy. Specifically, designing conversation offers a means to guide

social discourse as a form of strategic, collective action inspired by emerging images of a

desired future situation overtly marked by qualities and emergent properties that have

come to be associated with healthy living systems, including self-sustaining natural

ecosystems.

Thus, the participants in this study were able to mutually affirm, as a basis for

inquiry leading to common understanding, a theoretical perspective that the local

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communities as complex systems have potential to exhibit processes of emergence that

are limited by various untested cultural assumptions, but that can be catalyzed and guided

through purposeful and collaborative inquiry. They affirmed that a quest for common

purpose requires that we learn together, and it begins with learning how to “be together.”

When circumstances are favorable, learning to “be together” is a process that can occur

spontaneously and organically. It also is a process that can be purposefully orchestrated

within the “safe container” of a well-facilitated dialogue. Such learning requires that we

learn how to navigate an inherent tension between the impulse to seek certainty, comfort,

and self-affirmation on the one hand, and the desire for deeper meaning, authentic self-

expression, and community on the other.

P2: The group process highlighted the importance of inviting difficult conversations and creating safe spaces to have those—I see this as key to human evolution. We can’t solve our basic problems let alone rise to higher levels of consciousness by isolating ourselves, ignoring the problems of our fellow citizens, or by working in a social vacuum. Challenging conversations, facilitated appropriately, can change hearts and minds while fostering respect where once there was only antagonism and misunderstanding. Empathy is the pathway to a more humane and joyful future.

Democratic validity. In the context of community action research, an evaluation

of democratic validity requires consideration of the manner and extent to which each of

the study results are relevant to the specific community settings targeted by the inquiry as

social action. In this study, the identification of relevant community settings was

accomplished in two complementary ways. First, by initially delineating the scope of the

research to encompass place-based communities in the Cleveland context; and second, by

specifying an initial group design task of “mapp[ing] the field of inquiry, including a

preliminary evaluation of community system boundaries.” In this way, the relevant

community setting was defined to encompass those social and ecological systems that

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comprise a specific place, Cleveland, as a physical reality and as a social construct, while

excluding all other types of communities, including virtual communities or communities

of interest, that may be deemed to exist apart from any specific reference to the physical

or social environments of Cleveland, Ohio. Furthermore, the participants defined the

relevant community setting in conversation as they undertook the tasks of mapping the

field of inquiry and community system boundaries. As a collective strategy for

accomplishing these tasks, the participants engaged in designing conversation for the

purpose of surfacing a diversity of ideas and mental models regarding Cleveland’s place-

based communities as socio-ecological systems comprising not only material but also

“appreciative” elements and relationships which can be said to exist within the subjective

and intersubjective domains of consciousness and culture.

Having thus collaborated in defining the specific community setting targeted by

the research to encompass the participants’ diverse perspectives regarding the physical,

relational, and appreciative elements of Cleveland’s place-based community systems, the

question of democratic validity can be addressed by asking whether, and to what extent,

the task-oriented results emerging from the process of designing conversation were

relevant to those defined systems. As described and modeled by the participants, these

appreciative and place-based community systems included a variety of mental constructs,

including culturally mediated images, habits of thought, memories, perceptions, self-

narratives, understandings, and sensibilities that the participants have encountered or

experienced within their respective Cleveland-based practice settings. Therefore, insofar

as the research results followed from the collaborative tasks of mapping and modeling

structures, processes, and emergent qualities of these very community systems, as

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understood by the participants, it can be inferred that these results were relevant to the

community setting targeted by the study. Also, insofar as the research results consisted of

developing shared capacity and understanding amongst the participants regarding the

current problem situation, ideal future situation, evolutionary dynamics, and implications

for professional practice and community engagement, it can be inferred that these results,

too, were relevant to the targeted community setting.

In other words, the participants were engaged in a process of collaborative and

evolutionary inquiry that was intended to result in learning by the participants

themselves, which would in turn enable them as practitioners to embody systemic

change, and in so doing to engage with other Cleveland residents and stakeholders within

their diverse community practice settings as agents and facilitators of evolutionary

change. The research results followed from treating both the “within-group” setting, and

“external” community practice settings as complex adaptive systems that might be

strategically transformed and placed on a trajectory towards a better future by means of

the designing conversation; a facilitated community practice understood by the

participants as a form of discursive social action. As an instantiation of an evolutionary

learning process adapted to the specific problems and characteristics of each community

setting in which it is undertaken, the practice of designing conversation serves to enable

and empower residents and stakeholders as designers of their own collective future,

thereby advancing participatory democracy as a common value and community ideal.

Such practice, as understood by the participants in this study, aims to ensure that the

results attained via each community-specific application will be relevant to the particular

setting in which it is undertaken. The participants in this study appear to have internalized

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and embraced the forgoing understanding of democratic validity, with the recognition

that each new application of the method of designing conversation will require local

adaptation with the inclusive and equitable participation of local residents and

stakeholders to ensure that the standard of democratic validity is upheld.

Reflections

Recommendations for continuing to move the work forward. During the

plenary session at the Cleveland Sustainability Summit, held in September 2015, and in

various conversations I had individually with local community stakeholders at that time, I

observed that some of the people expressed a sense of frustration which at one point

prompted one of the conference organizers to say, in way of assurance (and I am

paraphrasing) we would surely “get through the talk very soon and move on to real

action.” When I heard this statement coming through the public address system and

echoing through the halls of the Cleveland Convention Center, I and my co-facilitators

were preparing to lead a public innovation session. At the session, scheduled for later that

afternoon, we intended to use an untested methodology involving designing conversation

as a strategy for community systems transformation. At that moment, I felt extremely

vulnerable, realizing that the big innovation we were about to offer our community might

be perceived by some, perhaps many, as an empty call for just “more talk.”

Fortunately, the session went well and I was pleased to receive feedback by a

number of attendees who indicated that they found it to be a productive use of their time;

that they had welcomed the opportunity to engage with fellow citizens and explore local

problems and solutions. This experience, however, prompted me to reflect: At what point

can conversation become the desired action? In what way might conversation manifest

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action that does not invoke the kind of frustration many people have expressed? It seems

these questions might serve as a point of departure for anyone who seeks to advance the

strategic use of conversation or dialogue in furtherance of a broad and ambitious agenda

of cultural transformation. The persistence in consciousness of a binary separating

thought from action may be indicative of a culturally induced blindness to the movements

of thought; a hurdle that, as conversation leaders and facilitators, we will need to

overcome in order to make significant process in the area of cultural revisioning.

So now I must ask, what is it about the common understanding of “action” that

apparently gives it a preferred status over dialogue. Certainly action is needed to bring

about real change, but do we even know the manner of change most needed? As we

discovered during the 2015 public innovation sessions, a common perception expressed

by many Clevelanders is that our City suffers from a persistent lack of interaction among

individuals and between neighborhoods. How can we undertake meaningful and effective

action as a community when we remain fragmented and segregated along racial, ethnic,

and socioeconomic lines? Our business, nonprofit, and philanthropic communities

continue to operate in “siloes” and many virtuous initiatives launched under the banner of

“collaboration” either fail or end up having a short life cycle; exhibiting a pattern where

the departure of single strong leader or the expiration of a single funding source will

cause an entire organized effort to fold.

Even as the general mood of the City appears to be shifting towards a willingness

to entertain new possibilities, few people, least of all public officials, seem willing to

openly support bottom-up community initiatives that are perceived as being motivated by

idealism or a deep commitment to place and community. Remarkably, such resistance to

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progressive change has surfaced even on those occasions when the social benefits are

clear and no one involved can explicitly point to a “down side” of moving forward. Yet,

notwithstanding all this, the study participants are continuing to have informal

conversation exploring a way forward that will put into practice the insights gained via

this study.

It appears one of the most important insights gained is the notion that the plans

and aspirations of many residents and stakeholders in Cleveland (and across northeast

Ohio) are governed by a common belief that a better life lies somewhere “out there” or

“away” from their local community situation. Conversely, within the general population,

as we find throughout the region known popularly as the “rust belt,” it is much less often

that we hear individuals expressing a dream for the future that involves “staying put” or

coming together to rebuild communities with a strong “sense of place.” As these beliefs

and attitudes have persisted, it also has become difficult to ascertain which future

narrative appears most “realistic.” Therefore, in light of the study results, we are asking

ourselves how best to free the impulse to act from the countervailing impulse to resist

change that may be perceived as either unrealistic or idealistic.

Contemplating the way forward, the study participants are each exploring

opportunities to create and maintain the safe container for ideal-seeking conversation that

will enable Clevelanders, as if for the first time, to dream together without succumbing to

fear that the very act of dreaming will only perpetuate disappointment or even grief—

grief attached to some loss that is so deeply buried within the collective psyche that is can

no longer be named. Is it about the ancestral or our relationship with Mother Earth? The

participants are exploring a variety of venues where such deeper conversation across

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worldviews and in an air of safety might feel natural: These venues include: (a) a pilot

project for a “community dream board” where local residents can express interest in

having conversation centered on an idea for community revitalization without fear of

encountering instantaneous public rejection; (b) a community survey using volunteers

trained in the use of structured interviews to gather expressions of interest and common

purpose in forming neighborhood-level inquiry groups to design for building social

capital needed to sustain a variety of proposed collaborative business enterprises; and (c)

a series of professionally facilitated “conversations in the park” and “conversations in the

garden” that are arranged in familiar types of community venues (e.g., around a campfire)

enabling self-organizing, spontaneous gatherings of people that feel safe and invite

reflective conversations and dreaming together.

In this study, the participants demonstrated how, properly facilitated and with the

right preparation, conversation-as-action can produce a deeply transformative, shared

experience that coalesces as an enhanced awareness of community potentials and an

enhanced capacity for collaborative problem-solving. Now, as I contemplate the road

ahead, I realize that opportunities for further exploration of designing conversation as a

strategy for self-guided societal evolution, whether in the Cleveland context or elsewhere,

are all around. Indeed, for this strategy to prove effective, it must be practiced in a wide

variety of settings, allowing for myriad ways of building human understanding via

multiple forms of social discourse, including language, physical presence, and creative

expression.

As we know, social discourse shapes the patterning of our thoughts and conscious

awareness, and if we follow the reasoning of David Bohm (1994) thought as a system is

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always active and never neutral. Behavior follows from thought, and thought is very

much shaped by the kinds of conversations we have in social space. Just as we have seen

movements for “slow food” and “slow money” we may need to create new structures

allowing for “slow dialogue” where it will be feasible and practical to engage diverse

stakeholders in a sustained, recursive process of design conversation. As we chart a path

forward, we might consider mimicking the types of conversation that in earlier times had

occurred quite naturally among community members whose interdependency was beyond

question, and whose daily activities involved sharing the familiar attributes of place,

along with an intergenerational wealth of memories held in common. We must learn to

reconnect with the ancestral in ways that can fortify collective memory, lest we lose the

capacity to know health and wholeness, as captured in the image of the old growth forest,

or the thousand-fold flock of sandhill cranes. We must avoid the impulse to retreat into

hopeless nostalgia, and instead summon the power of dialogue to project a forward image

of community vitality; validated and affirmed by an expanding awareness of human

potentials existing in the here and now.

Our society is in crisis because it lacks a coherent set of standards to guide daily

activities and decision-making towards health and wellness (the very concepts of health

and wellness are indeterminate). Without a coherent standard of health, the society as a

whole is adrift, lacking a common understanding of “democracy,” “family,” or “good

governance.” In a market-driven consumer culture where many voices are virtually

silenced by an existential fear induced by the misuse of language as a weapon by those

who are bent on profiteering, control and domination, practitioners in the community

design space will need to find ways to build a reliable and stable infrastructure consisting

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of multiple types of “safe spaces” for having “conversations that matter.” The work, must

involve creating images, models, language, demonstrable standards, and opportunities to

experience the condition of human and societal health and wholeness that are not derived

from the synthetic norms of the market economy. The cultural taboos, the things we don’t

feel comfortable talking about, the state of fear (of food, of each other, of nature itself),

the money system, the mass media, all these are forces that perpetuate social isolation and

fragmentation. This is the system that must be understood at the level of root causes, and

that must be changed at the level of culture through sustained, conscious effort.

I submit that our greatest generational challenge is to overcome the twin

pathologies of enclosure (aka unrestricted privatization) and social isolation that destroy

all vestiges of the ancient commons, and deprives us of our most basic (albeit

unacknowledged) human right to community. As if learning to walk again following a

traumatic injury, we must pull together as inquirers and learn to infuse our daily practices

of thought and conversation with intentionality. We must, in this way, form new habits of

thought and discourse that can build social cohesion and community resilience across the

urban landscape, even amidst the countervailing forces of chaos at large in the digital

media culture. Our common agenda for research and community engagement will

therefore be to empower ourselves and all those who might invent collaborative solutions

to our society’s most vexing social and ecological problems. We must continue to build

our competencies and refine our practices even as we work to disseminate our learning in

ways that will maintain a high level of rigor and thereby improve our prospects for

realizing a collective dream of emancipatory societal evolution.

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Conclusion

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, in his preface to The Price of

Inequality (Stiglitz, 2013), posits that our society is divided “between those…who see

America as a community and recognize that the only way to achieve sustained prosperity

is to have shared prosperity, and those who don’t; between those who have some

empathy for those who are less fortunate than themselves, and those who don’t (pp. xxi-

xxii). The high stakes involved in navigating this divide are evident when one considers

that the societal condition that Stiglitz (2013) describes as an “inequality crisis” is still

represented by many American media pundits, plutocrats, and leaders of the political

right as a necessary, or even desirable, state of affairs. The persistence of this divide,

furthermore, is revealed when one considers that the basic argument of these well-heeled

champions of socioeconomic status quo has not changed in its essentials from that of the

laissez faire economists of the mid-1800s (Schumacher, 1973).

Today in Cleveland however, the major conversation is not about macroeconomic

theory or political ideology. Rather it is about community. What is it? Why might it be

important? How do we create and sustain it?

We seem ready to have this conversation; at least those of us who are working

every day at the neighborhood level. And more than having conversation about

community, as borne by the results of this study, community practitioners working in and

among Cleveland residents and stakeholders appear ready to engage in conversation as a

primary strategy for the realization community.

This community action research utilized an adaptation of Checkland’s (1981) soft

systems design methodology to the place-based community setting, engaging a small

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group of local practitioner-stakeholders in formulating a multilens, systemic model of the

local problem situation as a first important task, setting the stage for the strategic use of

conversation guided by an emerging, pluralistic image of the collectively desired future.

The idea of engaging a multidisciplinary inquiry group in defining the problem situation

as a strategy for community revitalization followed from the premise that Cleveland’s

place-based communities are multicultural, social systems, where people convene and

conversation ensues daily in a wide variety of settings, including churches, community

centers, volunteer and work settings, and community gardens, confronting those who

would collaborate with a high level of complexity. Despite all these existing

opportunities to use conversation as a strategy for building social capital needed for

community revitalization, the current lack of community cohesion in many instances

indicates that something is not happening just in the natural setting of people trying to

talk together. Whether due to a lack of feeling safe, pervasive influence of unstated

assumptions and prejudices, divergence of personal realities, or difficulty sustaining

conversation amidst the many distractions of daily life, it can no longer be take for

granted that healthy, resilient communities of place will emerge organically through

sustained interaction and shared experience. In the context of post-industrial Cleveland,

there are many economic, technological, and other factors that are pulling people away

from the kind of in-depth, empathic, and nurturing social interaction that would allow for

the emergence of sustainable value amidst strongly cohesive and generative communities

of place.

With a view towards building social capital through conversation in settings

where people have some already pre-existing opportunity to collaborate, the study

335

participants and I set out to explore whether social discourse, as a natural and self-

organizing process of community building might be facilitated in a manner that is a bit

more intentional, yet still occurring in a way that would feel spontaneous and organic to

those involved. We set out to examine whether design conversation, as a strategy for

building awareness and enhancing the appreciative qualities of local communities, could

be facilitated in a manner that might be adaptable to a variety of existing social settings,

allowing such facilitative practice, and the language of design itself, to propagate and

evolve towards a more pluralistic and integral set of community ideals. The basic

facilitative approach used in this study was to “go light” on the actual process of

facilitation, allowing the conversation to take shape in a self-organizing manner, while

working to accelerate and enhance the process of relationship building and collective

meaning making by using careful preparation and recursive feedback as the primary

strategy for achieving outcomes. This process is analogous to the process of steering

succession utilized in ecological landscape design, where strategically targeted design

activities are used to complement existing natural processes of successional growth.

Thus, through this action research, I collaborated with participants to take a close

look at what happens when we just keep focused on the dialogue as the action. The

primary outcome for me was affirmation that dialogue can be viewed collectively as a

form of social action in its own right. And yet, there are reasons that need to be examined

as to why it tends to be discounted or worse, treated as frivolous. In many community

problem-solving settings, dialogue often is viewed as a waste of time when maybe it is

the most important thing that is happening. It depends on what our purposes are, and if

our purpose is building community, then maybe dialogue is our strongest means to get

336

there. This research points to the possibility that through suspending the impulse to move

to some other form of work, that is, other than dialogue, and through allowing ourselves

to appreciate what happens in the dialogue itself, we may be able to shift awareness and

start to see those values needed for community health and resilience in a more habitual

way. But that still is an open question. Other key study results included:

• Demonstration that by holding up to the group a very clear mirror of the thematic content they themselves are developing through what feels like a very organic process of conversation, it affirms to members of the group that there is a lot more relevant information being shared in the flow of the conversation than we are able to pick up within the limitations of human attention and awareness, representing unrealized collective potential;

• Demonstration that targeted facilitative practices, including use of collective

suspension during the group formation process, open-ended trigger questions and specified designing tasks, coupled with the strategic use of thematic, recursive feedback, served to catalyze the emergence of patterns and revealed consistencies in the group conversation that enabled participants to collectively express and embody the qualities of a generative, self-organizing, and purposeful social system;

• The facilitative use of system modeling tools to organize and present emergent themes, patterns of individual and group expression, and holistic images of systemic change, enabled the facilitator and the inquiry group members alike to rapidly develop a level of interpersonal familiarity and mutual trust that might properly be described as an emerging collective understanding or “pluralistic unity,” enabling each successive conversation to evolve towards greater richness and depth from an appreciative standpoint;

• As facilitator, I experienced an opening of awareness in certain areas that I experienced as a shift in consciousness, I became acutely aware of how little information I had been taking in during the “real time flow” of conversation, and as I moved back and forth between my facilitative and interpretive roles, I became progressively more aware of patterns and themes in the conversation that hinted at underlying assumptions, or worldviews underneath the dialogue, and habits of thought behind the words we actually expressed. I found that this growth in metacognitive awareness occurred even within the limited scope of four sessions, and was enhanced by the work involved in preparing for each session. It enabled me to steer the conversation in ways that were also meaningful, and similarly transformative, for the participants.

337

Our daily encounters with the reality of individuals, families, and neighborhoods

in distress afford us a certain common vantage point, even as we search for a common

frame of reference that would allow us to build understanding in the face of daunting

complexity. Our multiple experiences and perspectives seem to converge at the point of

knowing that community, as a socially constructed reality and source of mutual value,

cannot exist without conversation!

Having entered into this conversation, we now are discovering that the local

analog to the political divide between advocates of individualistic versus community-

based solutions is not so much a divide based upon ideology as it is a fault line

demarcating levels of consciousness; as among residents and stakeholders who might

notice, perceive, and interpret events and relationships presented within a given local

context in markedly different ways. This divide is less about competing ideals than it is

about competing realities. What on the surface may appear as a quest for the community

ideal is beginning to look and feel like a quest for collective self-transformation;

whereupon we are able to perceive and understand consciousness as an true expression of

our interdependency, having a common source within the deep structures of implicate

order that can only be known implicitly (Bohm, 1980), or as physically realized and

ubiquitous information that coheres with awareness (Chalmers, 1996), or as experiential

awareness that has its highest expression within the systemic and self-organizing

structures of culture (McIntosh, 2007), converging towards a self-reflective planetary

Wholeness (Teilhard de Chardin, 1959/1964).

Through designing conversation, therefore, we seek to catalyze and guide a

process of social change that will enable us to transcend current problems by redirecting

338

awareness in ways that attract collective movement towards integral consciousness,

enabling us to steer a new course in time to avoid the most harmful consequences of an

unsustainable status quo, and to create conditions favorable to the evolutionary unfolding

of human potentials that can bring us into a more harmonious relationship with each other

and with the Earth’s living ecosystems.

339

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Appendices

Appendix A: Template for Structured Interviews

Thank you for agreeing to meet with me today, I value your time and really appreciate

your willingness to enter a conversation with me about this research proposal. With your

permission, I am hoping to accomplish two things with you during this time together.

1. Present some background information about the research proposal, including its

aims and purposes, the primary research questions to be considered, and an

overview of the methodology, and

2. Conduct a short interview that will allow me to learn a little bit about your

interests and initial thoughts as they relate to the research topic.

First, some background information (please do not hesitate to ask clarifying questions at

any time)

The title I am giving to this study is Guiding Purposeful Revitalization of Cleveland’s

Place-Based Communities: Engaging Human Potential in the Public Sphere through

the Praxis of Evolutionary Systems Design

Let’s break it down - This study is about:

• Learning how to engage the practice of designing conversation in the context of

place-based community revitalization

• Exploring how the community action research methodology can be used to

sustain a process of evolutionary learning that accesses and develop our collective

human potential at the levels of community and society.

Aims and purposes of the study:

• The specific aim of this study is for the participants to coalesce as an evolutionary

learning community, equipped with knowledge, skills, learning architecture, and a

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common purpose that will enable them to effectively engage as conversation

leaders within their respective stakeholder communities.

• To develop and refine the praxis of designing conversation to facilitate ideal-

seeking social change inspired by an appreciation of values and qualities found in

communities as thriving, living systems.

Methodology

Through a process of evolutionary inquiry the participants will be invited to develop

shared images of Cleveland’s neighborhoods as living systems expressing unique

ecological and cultural attributes of place and community within the specific context

of each locality.

Participants, as co-inquirers and as conversation leaders, would collaboratively

implement an appreciative system to guide social change within a diversity of

practice settings.

Participants would be invited to reflectively evaluate their progress using relevant

markers of socio-ecological health, including for example markers that may reveal

emergent qualities of generativity and resilience at the levels of neighborhood,

institutions and society.

The study is designed to proceed through three Inquiry Cycles, each addressing a specific

research question.

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During each cycle, participants would engage in

• planning (including identification of stakeholder communities and relevant

outcome measures),

• action (as designing conversation within their existing practice settings), a certain

amount of collaborative data gathering, and

• learning conversations (including reflection, integration of knowledge, and

feedback on how the process is working).

My primary roles will be to serve as research consultant and process facilitator

The process is expected to completed in 4 months.

Most of the group conversations would occur during four monthly meetings, to be

scheduled at a mutually convenient time and place, and interim communication would

occur via e-mail and video conference communication.

Each participant would be free to decide which among tools and approaches shared

would be best suited to used their individual practice settings.

The intended benefit for the participants is the opportunity to learn together and

participate in exploring and developing the potential of designing conversation as a

transformative community practice enabling beneficial social change that is guided by

shared ideals, shared values, and a strong commitment to democratic participation in

shaping our collective future.

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Inquiry Cycle 1

How might we understand and describe our community system of interest, so as to

encompass and facilitate dialogue regarding its emergent qualities and characteristics,

its intrinsic social, physical, technological, and ecological elements, and its dynamic

relationship with the larger systems in which it is embedded?

Inquiry Cycle 2

How might we translate the constructs and language of evolutionary systems theory into

a community praxis that yields measurable outcomes indicative of the progressive

unfolding of values, qualities and emergent potentials found within healthy, thriving

social-ecological systems?

Inquiry Cycle 3

How might we illuminate, critically deconstruct and transform our habits of perception,

thought and behavior, including our prevailing language and cultural narratives

concerning values and institutions, in ways that enable us to access our individual and

collective potentials as change agents and leaders of regenerative political economy?

Interview Questions:

1. First, I would like to invite you to share a little background information about yourself,

including anything that you would like me to know about your current life situation and

work in the world, and perhaps a little bit about the things that most interest you in your

various roles, as private citizen, as member of one or more communities, and in the

context of your work-life.

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2. Having heard a little bit about the aims of the study, I wonder if you have any initial

thoughts about how either the process or outcomes of this research might be of value to

in your work and in your life?

3. Have you previously engaged in any inquiry processes similar to what I described a

moment ago? In other words, what experiences might you have had in collaborative

learning processes that might be analogous to some aspect of this research, and what did

you learn that you might wish to share with others.

4. What is your relationship to Cleveland area communities? Are you familiar with any

current or past efforts at community revitalization (formal or informal), and have you

been personally engaged with any such effort? If so, please describe.

5. What are some of the yet unrealized potentials that you believe might currently exist

within Cleveland’s neighborhoods and communities, and can you imagine a scenario

where these potentials would begin to be realized through collaborative stakeholder

initiative?

6. What do you imagine might be the ingredients of a process that would lead to such

successful outcomes in the area of community revitalization. What human or other

capacities would need to be further developed to enable change leading towards a future

that reflects shared ideals.

7. Should you want to participate in this research, what would you see as the primary

benefit to you of doing so? What scenario would you describe as an optimal outcome

from your participation in this experience?

Thanks for spending this time

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Appendix B: Group Presencing and Learning Activities

Present moment awareness exercises (Brown, 2005/2008):

Activating the process (weekly sessions):

1. Memorize the given Presence Activating Statement;

2. Review the written materials on presencing;

3. Sit still and connect with breathing for at least 15 minutes.

Maintaining momentum (between sessions):

1. Maintain momentum by practicing presencing techniques twice each day, as the

first thing we do after we are fully awake and as the last thing we do before we

climb into bed at night;

2. Repeat the given presencing activating statement for the session whenever we are

not mentally engaged;

3. Review the given reading materials and apply perceptual tools as needed.

Presencing (group) exercises (Sweeney & Meadows, 1995; Scharmer, 2015):

Belief release

Dialogue interview

Sensing journey

Stakeholder interviews

Systems thinking exercises (Sweeney & Meadows, 1995):

1, 2, 3, Go

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Arms crossed

Postcard stories

Monologue/Dialogue

Web of Life

Living loops

Rights and responsibilities in conversation practice (Dyer, 2008):

2 Domains:

Energy (using the enthalpy metaphor): Activation energy and catalysts (energy of continuing group interaction) Personal freedoms: Activity 1: Provide participants with draft list of rights and responsibilities and invite group reflection and proposed amendments. Activity 2: Invite participants to seek co-operation of a stakeholder group in discussing and agreeing to a set of rights and responsibilities for conversation. Have discussion and evaluate outcome. Scenario building for an unknowable future (Flood, 1999):

First, establish a timeframe over which improvement strategies might be implemented

and evaluated.

Next, engage in three lines of learning, or questioning –

1. Explore the current action area – Where might we be heading?

2. Draw forth shared vision – What ideal would we really like to work towards?

3. Projects to achieve shared vision – How might we change direction towards what

we would really like?

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Appendix C: Practices to Build Capacity for Generative and Strategic Dialogue

Dialogue – Consists of four basic types of practices:

Listening, respecting, suspending, and voicing (Isaacs, 1999).

• Set the container for dialogue (three elements: energy, possibility, safety) – Ask,

Is there a container to hold the pressure?

• Briefly describe the four practices:

o Listening practices – def. “a simple but profound capacity” that “requires

we not only hear the words, but also embrace, accept, and gradually let go

of our own inner clamoring” (p. 83):

� Be aware of thought;

� Stick to the facts;

� Follow the disturbance;

� Listen without resistance;

� Stand still.

Group practice:

o Listen for the dilemmas and be prepared to name them – What

are the dilemmas that are causing people to struggle to say

what they think?

o Respecting practices – def. “to be able to see a person as a whole being”

and “to look for the springs that feed the pool of their experience” and “to

see others as legitimate” (pp. 110-111):

� Stand at the hub;

� Centering;

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� Listen as if it were all me;

� Making it strange.

Group practice:

o Support the people who challenge-holding space open for

inquiry once new perspectives come out;

o Learn to hold tension without reacting to it- sustaining respect

for all the perspectives that arise long enough to inquire into

them.

o Suspending practices - def. “to change direction, to stop, step back, see

things with new eyes” (p. 135):

� Suspend certainty and mine for the questions;

� Seek the order between;

� Try “frame experiments”;

� Externalize thought;

� Ask, What am I missing? How does the problem work?

Group practice:

o Create a clearness committee;

o Sensing the system – look not only at what is changing, but

what is being conserved.

o Voicing practices – def. “revealing what is true for you regardless of other

influences that might be brought to bear”. “Courageous speech” and

“Learning to ask, What needs to be expressed now?” (p. 159):

� Ask: What is my music, and who will play it?;

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� Overcome Self-Censorship;

� Jump into the Void;

� Ask: What do you want to be known for?

� Speak the forbidden.

Group practice:

o Allow space for the sound of each person’s voice to cascade

into silence;

o Speak to (and from) the center.

Moving through the fields of conversation:

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Appendix D: Approach and Techniques of Integral Inquiry

The aim of integral inquiry is to be as whole and inclusive as possible, by means of the

following suggested practices (Braud & Anderson, 1998):

• Focus on questions of burning interest and importance – reflect on the aims and

purposes of the inquiry;

• Seek to find as complete an answer as possible using all relevant methods,

approaches, information, and means of knowing, understanding, and expressing

what has been learned (taking into consideration the possible or desired outcomes

of the research project itself).

• Consider how the form of the final research report will be determined by nature

the intended audience. Is the purpose to have a social or political impact? Is it to

elucidate possible mechanisms or causal factors? Is it to provide full and accurate

description of an experience that enables the reader to relive it with such

completeness that “the reliving carries with it its own explanation and

understanding of its nature?” (p. 59)

• Consult the obviously relevant, recent, primary research literature, as well as

venturing beyond the familiar territory into other areas of study (the humanities,

the arts, the spiritual and wisdom traditions) that might yield relevant

observations, useful ideas, and profound insights into human nature and human

experience.

• Look into the events of our lives and personal experiences for additional relevant

input. While incubating our ideas or plans, pay attention to insights that may arise

effortlessly during moments of reverie, and to signals from our bodies, or

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auspicious happenings (synchronicities). Carry the momentum of the research

“into our daily lives so that anything we do, experience, and read is seen for what

it might contribute to our fuller understanding of what we are studying” (p. 63)

• Continually question assumptions during all phases of research.

• Use a pluralistic (multimodal) epistemology throughout the research effort –

“polling all facets of [the self] (bodily reactions, imagery, emotions and feelings,

intuitions, and aesthetic sensibilities, as well as cognition) to learn about the

research topic from as many perspectives as possible” (p. 64).

• Consider alternative ways to express results, interpretations, and conclusions (e.g.,

poetic expression, analogies, metaphors, tropes, symbols, imagery, humor, and

various forms of artwork). “Provide opportunities for greater reader involvement

and interaction by providing the reader sufficient unprocessed or uncooked

materials with which to work” (p. 66).

• Explore validity as experiential adequacy of the research outcomes. Look for

coherence or conflict among the various (bodily, emotional, intellectual, aesthetic,

intuitive, and pragmatic) indicators. Indicate the extent to which each facet of the

project rings true in the experiences of all personnel involved (p. 66).

The following is a summary of relevant premises and conceptual models derived from the

literature on integral philosophy:

[W]hat all forms of consciousness really need, what feeds people spiritually and

causes them to grow, are services of kindness, teachings of truth, and expressions

of beauty. The skillful application of beauty, truth, and goodness makes any

situation more evolved. And the values of beauty, truth, and goodness can be

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applied most skillfully when we recognize how they work together in a dialectical

system. Thus, when we use integral philosophy to see how every conflict contains

a transcendent synthesis that is waiting to be achieved, we are practicing the

method of integral consciousness (McIntosh, 2007, p 309).

Integral Learning – involves the simultaneous awareness of the three spheres of

development, and of the lesser self and the greater Self.

Evolution can be marked by the interpenetrating forces that lead to increasing complexity

(the realm of science) as well as increasing unity (the realm of art):

The two basic forces of differentiation and integration create a self-similar pattern that

occurs both within the levels and across the levels of complexity.

Unity – inclusion – the tendency of higher levels to embrace lower levels (the

force of Agape – reaching down toward greater unification)

Complexity – transcendence - the tendency of the entities of each level to

combine to form new encompassing levels of organization (the force of Eros –

reaching up towards greater complexity)

Consciousness is a third evolutionary tendency that emerges as the tendency towards

autopoiesis - increased sentient subjectivity - perception of values and morality –

consciousness of intention (influenced by worldview systems)

The Cosmogenic Principle – Swimme and Berry (1992) – three central ordering

tendencies in the universe (governing themes of evolution):

Differentiation (complexity, thought, science, pull from the outside, reaching out)

– diversity, complexity, variation, disparity, multiform, nature, heterogeneity,

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articulation. Attracted by the ideal of Truth. Potential for more perfection. The

power to improve. Striving for increasing perfection.

Communion (unity, wholeness, feeling, aesthetics, pull from the center, reaching

down) – interrelatedness, interdependence, kinship, mutuality, internal

relatedness, reciprocity, complementarity, interconnectivity, affiliation. Attracted

by the ideal of Beauty. Completeness. Psychic rest.

Autopoiesis (consciousness, will, morality) – subjectivity, self-manifestation,

sentience, self-organization, dynamic centers of experience, presence, identity,

inner principle of being, voice, interiority. Attracted by Goodness. Synthesis in

the interplay of opposing forces. Dynamic equilibrium. Progressive, synthetic

harmony. Ideals influence the choice

Geometry of the evolutionary process (viewed through the eyes of mathematical

expression): “The opposing forces of unity and complexity are synthesized through a

transcendental movement that resolves the conflicting duality inherent in every

incomplete situation by moving in the direction of a new level” (McIntosh, 2007, p. 299).

Direction of the evolutionary process (viewed through the eyes of spiritual discernment):

Behind all forms of evolutionary development lies the lure of perfection represented by

the three “eternal forms” or “primary values” of beauty, truth, and goodness which

operate as subtle spiritual attractors.

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References

Braud, W., & Anderson, R. (1998). Transpersonal research methods for the social

sciences: Honoring human experience. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

McIntosh, S. (2007). Integral consciousness and the future of evolution: How the integral

worldview is transforming politics, culture and spirituality. St. Paul, MN: Paragon House.

The Cosmogenic Principle Source: (McIntosh, 2007, p.

306)

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Appendix E: Recruitment E-Mail Templates

Dear _________, I hope all is well with you and you are enjoying your spring. As you know, I am currently working on my dissertation using the community action research method, and I am wondering if you might have interest meeting with me at some time within the next week or so that is convenient for you to participate in an interview related to my topic: Guiding Purposeful Revitalization of Cleveland’s Place-Based Communities:

Engaging Human Potential in the Public Sphere through the Praxis of Evolutionary

Systems Design The aim of the research is to investigate the praxis of convening and facilitating designing conversations in a variety of place-based community settings, using community action research as an approach to systemic capacity building among those organizations and institutions working to revitalize Cleveland's neighborhoods. I would need about an hour of your time for the interview, and I would also provide you with more information about the research to help you decide if further collaborative exploration of this topic might be of interest to you. I recognize that your time is limited and so I would only expect you to participate if you were able and if you found this inquiry beneficial to your own professional development and practice. My aim is to complete interviews with about 8 people who are engaged in various aspects of "bottom up" community revitalization work, thereby providing a diversity of perspectives regarding the practical challenges and opportunities for engaging in designing conversation as a strategy for accessing our collective human potentials and thereby enhancing the life and vitality to our Cleveland communities. I look forward to hearing from you! Warm regards,

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CONFIDENTIAL - Please do not forward Dear __________, Thank you once again for taking the time to interview with me regarding your work in the area of community revitalization, and for allowing me to share with you some preliminary information regarding my proposed action research study and the opportunity it presents for mutually beneficial, shared inquiry. As you know, I am a doctoral candidate conducting this study under the ongoing guidance of a Saybrook University dissertation committee for the purpose of earning a Ph.D. in organizational systems. I am pleased to report that at this time I have obtain all necessary approvals from my academic institution as needed to proceed with the participatory phase of the the study! In other words, we can now move forward in the process of forming as a learning community. As I mentioned during our interview, this study utilizes the method of community action

research to investigate whether and how organizational leaders and citizen activists, by adopting and refining the practice of designing conversation within the context of a current stakeholder-led initiative to foster revitalization Cleveland’s neighborhoods and communities, might foster "ideal-seeking social change inspired by an appreciation of values and qualities found in communities as thriving, living systems." The purpose of this e-mail is to extend a cordial invitation to you to join with me as

a co-inquirer and study participant, joining with a small but diverse group of practicing professionals engaged within the broadly defined subject area of Cleveland community revitalization. As a first step towards establishing ourselves as a cohesive learning community, I will soon (within the next few days) be sending you a confidential summary of my notes from the recorded transcripts of our interview, with an invitation for you draw upon this feedback from the structured interview to introduce yourself and your interests to the other members of the forming inquiry group. I these notes are for your reference only and I will not be sharing them with other members of the group. Once we have all had an opportunity to introduce ourselves in this manner, I will follow up by scheduling a video conference and powerpoint presentation regarding the specific purposes of the study and the way forward. I am also pleased to announce that I have created a "wikispace" to serve as a common

online platform for sharing information. This is one of several means that I intend to employ to ensure that your participation in this study will be paced and facilitated to work around your busy schedule, with most of the interaction and collaborative learning occurring online, except for those few (3 or 4) occasions when we will meet in person for more in-depth sharing, skills building and group reflection. To join this interactive Wikispace, please use the following link and enter participant code: NN3J4F3. More background information in support of this invitation is attached.

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To accept this invitation, simply follow the link above to join the Wikispace, and of course feel free to respond to this e-mail with any questions or concerns. I look forward to work with you for the benefit of our local Cleveland communities and in pursuit of common professional development and shared interests in a sustainable future. Abundant blessings,

Cleveland Community Action Research

Supplemental information in support of e-mail invitation to participate

This study utilizes the method of community action research to investigate whether and

how organizational leaders and citizen activists, by adopting and refining the practice

of designing conversation within the context of a current stakeholder-led initiative to

foster revitalization Cleveland’s neighborhoods and communities, might foster "ideal-

seeking social change inspired by an appreciation of values and qualities found in

communities as thriving, living systems."

The results of this study should serve to clarify how the methods and tools of applied

systems science can be made accessible outside the rarefied world of academia, and

effectively adapted for use within the highly participatory community action research

setting so as to build social and natural capital from the “bottom up”; thereby

strengthening the cultural and institutional foundations that are needed to support the

emergence of a sustainable society.

Participants will be invited to form an inquiry group to meet and interact in person, and

also with the aid of this online learning platform, by means of which they would

contribute their complementary skills, insights and creative potentials. Most of the group

conversations would occur during four monthly meetings of approximately 1.5 hours

length, to be scheduled at a mutually convenient time in a public educational setting.

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Interim communication may also occur via e-mail and video conference communication.

Information regarding practice tools and approaches to evolutionary inquiry would be

shared within a common knowledge space, and each participant would be free to decide

which among these tools and approaches would be best suited to their individual practice

settings.

The study will proceed through three cycles of facilitated learning and action: 1) entry

and preparation; 2) evolutionary design; and 3) embodying the evolutionary learning

community as an embedded community system. During the design phase, participants

would be invited to adapt and utilize theoretical and practical knowledge shared via the

group inquiry process within their diverse community practice settings. Through each of

these learning cycles, participants would be afforded an opportunity to directly participate

in complementary processes of data collection, evaluation and reporting, thereby

providing a mechanism for feedback informing the shared inquiry process.

The collaborating research participants would work towards becoming and being an

evolutionary learning community in furtherance of a common set of purposes: 1) to

generate awareness, practical knowledge and embodied, integral understanding that

builds systemic capacity for conscious evolutionary design inspired by the values and

dynamic qualities of thriving living systems, and 2) to engage in designing conversation

as a strategy for revitalization of Cleveland’s place-based communities, and for attaining

sustainable outcomes within the larger society.

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As with any study utilizing action research methodology, participation is entirely

voluntary and participants will assume the role of co-inquirers involved in a facilitated

process of community learning. Participants will not receive financial compensation nor

will they be asked to incur any costs other than transportation to and from the group

meetings. However, participants will be afforded the opportunity to benefit educationally

and professionally by having the opportunity to learn together with co-inquirers sharing

similar interests in community revitalization, and by utilizing any and all nonproprietary

and nonconfidential knowledge shared and developed in the group inquiry process for the

purpose of personal and professional enhancement.

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Appendix F - Evolutionary Learning: Key Concepts and Definitions

Evolutionary Learning: “Evolutionary learning is learning that has to be mastered in

order to attain evolutionary consciousness and the competence to engage in conscious

evolution” (Banathy, 2000, p. 253)

• Learning to think in a new way that is systemic - constituting a move from

maintenance learning to learning that equips us to deal with the ethical challenges

intrinsic in today’s socio-ecological problems;

• Learning how to learn in harmony with the dynamics of change of which we are a

part;

• Learning that can create conditions for the conscious design of our future and

transcendence of contemporary social systems;

• Learning towards stewardship of ethical change in the socio-cultural world –

towards dynamic harmony and sustainability through systems thinking;

• Learning in ways that enhance the co-creative nature of evolutionary dynamics –

within and around us – that moves in the direction of evolution, into higher levels

of complexity, creativity, uncertainty, and possibility;

• Learning that addresses the gap between technological (“know-how”) intelligence

and socio-cultural (“know-why”) intelligence (Laszlo, 2000, p. 34-38).

Evolutionary Learning Community (Laszlo, 2000, p. 34-38):

• A dynamical ideal image of a future educational system, that is:

• Learning-oriented, rather than teaching oriented - focusing on life-long

learning and development of human potential;

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• Synergistic and collaborative - learning that is self-directed, flexible,

collaborative, and involves learning how to be in community;

• Purposeful - it seeks an alignment between evolutionary processes of

which we are a part, and empowers people to participate in conscious

evolution.

Evolutionary Inquiry: A disciplined inquiry by which evolutionary knowledge and

evolutionary competence are developed and applied in engaging conscious evolution”

(Banathy, 2000, p. 264)

Two (2) modes:

• Conclusion-oriented

• Decision-oriented

Creating the Conditions for Self-Guided Evolution:

Create conditions for evolutionary learning →

Evolutionary learning →

Evolutionary consciousness →

Core evolutionary competence →

Engaging in conscious evolution ….

Conditions for evolutionary learning include:

• Nurturing climate (mutual trust and caring between learners and those who facilitate learning);

• Offering multiple learning types (socially supported individual learning; self-directed learning with access to resources; team learning arrangements; technology facilitated learning);

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• Learner-relevant functional contexts (learning within social systems that offer actionable task environments where learners can apply what has been learned);

• Provision of broad-based learning resources (diverse opportunities made available through learning alliances among all societal sectors that have the capability to support learning);

• Self-created meaning (learners are provided opportunities to internalize, integrate and construct meaning from what is being learned);

• Creating evolutionary images (learner is challenged to create a vision of the future that is elaborated into an evolutionary image – the product of evolutionary consciousness and evolutionary learning);

• Bringing the image to life (the task of creating a system that brings the evolutionary image to life).

Evolutionary consciousness:

“We humans are the integral agents of evolution, we spearhead it on our planet and perhaps in our entire solar system. We are evolution and we are, to the extent of our power, responsible for it” (Jantsch, 1981, p. 4). “The value systems held by the declining culture, as well as individual values systems, have entered a phase of increasing instability—announcing an impending evolutionary jump …” (Jantsch, 1975, p. 140).

It becomes dramatically clear that in dealing with reality, we have to take all three

approaches [rational, mythological and evolutionary] simultaneously. Such an

integrated approach might then look as follows:

--An evolutionary approach provides a sense of purpose and direction—the

“know-where-to”;

--A mythological approach provides a sense of quality and systemic relation—the

“know-what”;

--A rational approach provides a sense of operational efficiency and

determinancy—the “know-how.” (Jantsch, 1975, p. 142, italics added).

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In a full evolutionary perspective, the ethics of whole systems would not only focus on the melioration of the human systems but of mankind in general—and, ultimately, on the melioration of evolution transcending the survival of any species, including the human species. A belief in evolution implies that man, and all mankind, share in a process of which the evolution of mankind is but a temporary aspect. Such a free attitude, going beyond any particular interests of the individual, system, or even the species, becomes possible if man is also understood as sharing in a universal mind, of being immortal as spiritual energy—whatever the material or non-material manifestation of this energy. In other words, the ethics of whole systems become possible only if we overcome fear—that same fear which is nourished by individualism and the concern with a process which is considered unique and terminates when the individual ceases to exist in its present form. The same fear of termination, of death, is at work in individuals, systems, and the whole human species. The approaches of “the inner way,” … focus on this general theme of sharing in a universal process in which nothing gets. (Jantsch, 1975, p. 138)

Evolutionary Guidance: A dynamic process in which human activity systems operating

at the various levels of society engage, in order to give direction to their evolution.

Evolutionary Guidance System: An intentional system which can be built into the

various human activity systems to enable these systems to guide their entry and their

work into their own evolutionary design space.

Key functions of the generic evolutionary guidance system:

• It is deal-seeking, oriented towards the horizon, way out in the future;

• It “turns the arrow around,” allowing us to work back from the ideal

system image. We ask the question “How much of the ideal can we put

into operation right now?”

• It provides a moving horizon. As we move toward the horizon, the horizon

moves ahead of us, “as we develop ever higher levels of collective

consciousness that give birth to every higher quality values, aspirations,

and images” (Banathy, p. 312)

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• We learn as we evolve and evolve because we learn. We learn from what

we do and we are conscious of the way we evolve.

• It facilitates the unfolding of new potential. In the course of the life of an

evolving evolutionary generation, new potential is built upon unfolded

potential.

• It allows us to realize evolutionary qualities. These include core qualities,

enabling qualities, and meta-qualities (see below);

• It enables us to break the vicious cycle, including the evolutionary traps of

change denial, the institutional status quo, rigidity, and inflexibility.

Qualities of an Evolutionary Inquiry System (5 Domains) (Banathy, 2000):

1. Design qualities:

a. Technical - Most up to date and tested design models, methodologies,

methods and tools.

b. Authenticity and sustainability – developed with full participation of

designing community, and sustainable because participants have

“ownership” of the systems.

c. Ideal seeking – enables us to seek an image that is the most ideal we can

create, reflecting our highest aspirations and expectations.

d. User-friendly – Technical language of systems and design technology

should be translated to become compatible with everyday language use of

designing community.

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e. Unique – the inquiry is built into it the capacity to take into consideration

and capitalize on the unique environment and unique designing

community.

f. Aesthetics – Members of the designing community can bring in their

aesthetic values and ideas, so that the design, once implemented, will be

aesthetically pleasing. Process of design itself should be an aesthetic

experience.

2. Individual and Collective Qualities (design becomes and individual and

collective learning & development experience):

a. Individual & collective intelligence – freely call upon the intelligence and

full scope of talents of each and every member of the designing

community, in a cooperative and collective way, with direction towards

the common purpose of evolutionary design.

b. Individual and collective potential – call upon and nurture these potentials

by providing resources and opportunities for continuing individual and

collective learning and human development.

c. Design competence – a special kind of learning which enables members of

the community to acquire a design culture, empowering members to shape

their own futures and participate competently in the design of evolutionary

systems.

d. Emancipation – There is equity among participants, with no designated

chiefs or authorities, and everyone has the same right and responsibility to

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make contributions. This may be one of the highest qualities to realize in

the process.

e. Creativity – This is central to design. Create internal and external

conditions meant to activate and sustain creativity, including removing

barriers to creativity.

3. Community Cultural Qualities:

a. An ethical community – individual members, as well as the collective of

the designing system, should manifest high moral and ethical standards.

Consider establishing a code of ethics as a guide.

b. Responsive and responsible – As part of being ethical, designers should be

responsive to not only their own aspirations and desires, but those of the

less fortunate, the oppressed, the weak, and specifically to effects of the

design on future generations. Also, the designing community collectively

takes responsibility for the design it creates.

c. Diversity – the evolutionary designing community should represent

cultural and racial diversity, which is essential to achieving broad

multifaceted design intelligence required for conscious evolution.

d. Unconditional acceptance and respect – More than a condition of civility

and humanness, the designing community should maintain such

acceptance and respect for each other as will allow team members to be

willing to offer solution ideas and creative contributions spontaneously

and without fear of being rebuffed and ridiculed.

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e. Being a learning system – The designing community needs to become a

learning system by ensuring that arrangements, operations, and structures

are in place by which to build the organizational capacity and human

capability to engage in continuous organizational learning within the

designing community.

f. Having a shared worldview – This quality is made explicit via shared core

values and ideas in the collective world view of the designing community.

This is a high order quality that emerges from an interaction and

integration of a systems view of the world, of the evolutionary systems in

which we live, and a design view of change and evolution. These views

create and guide the emergence of designing consciousness.

4. Evolutionary Qualities:

a. Balance – A state enabled by co-evolution, in which the various

evolutionary markers, animated by the new level of collective

consciousness, have coevolved, mutually influenced each other, and

attained a balanced state.

b. Harmony – The most desirable evolutionary state. It is a quality that is

enabled by intensive cooperation, internal compatibility, and mutual

assistance among the evolutionary markers.

c. Internal Consistency –A qualitative state of the sociocultural system

derived from the manifestation of the qualities of balance and harmony,

and from the continuous infusion of the meta-quality of collective

consciousness in all the evolutionary markers.

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d. Synergy – Manifested in the interaction and the integration of the parts

(components) of the system, and animated by collective consciousness. It

is a result of the whole organizing the parts, bringing forth the coevolution

of the evolutionary markers.

e. Symmetry – Develops from synergy. The depth and dynamism of the

material realm of evolution are mirrored by the corresponding depth and

dynamism of consciousness. When these are symmetrical, a conscious

organism has the capacity to become fully self-referencing and self-

organizing.

f. Self-Referencing, Self-Organization, and Self-Renewing - A continuously

ongoing process of self-reflection and self-referencing, when the system is

always aware of itself and its purpose. It knows how it is doing, knows

what it desires, what it aspires to attain, and how to attain it by self-

renewal.

g. Consciousness, Creativity, and Wholeness – These meta-qualities are

directly involved in attaining the above core qualities. Shared

consciousness will integrate the evolutionary markers so that the new

entity will have the above evolutionary core qualities. It is by a

continuously ongoing creating process that this infusion interpenetrates

the evolutionary markers and by which the core qualities are attained in

the evolutionary design space. The ultimate metaquality, wholeness,

becomes manifested in the life of an evolutionary generation when all the

other qualities are attained.

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Appendix G – Vital Neighborhoods Innovation Session: Themes and Proposals

(Sept. 16 & 17, 2015)

Day 1 – Themes Distilled from Transcribed Conversations

• We need to ask: Are people sustainable economically? Lack of economic

security undermines community

• An ideal - Making money in your community doing something you believe in

• We need to bring back the practice of “apprenticeship”

• Provide kids with access to the trades – “if you can see it, you can be it” – in

other words “model success”

• Mentoring - “Each one, teach one”

• We need more than service learning – i.e., actual apprenticeships

• Block parties – these events as a way of saying “Hey, we’re all together”

• We need to address the issue of people being in faith-based organizations to

the neglect of their neighbors

• A Good model – Greater Cleveland Congregations: Citywide conversations

about big issues like gun violence.

• Individuals communities of interest that have self-identified or self-selected

because their common activities involve working together with diverse

communities to accomplish something together

• Another approach – link neighbors who happen to have common interests (a

way of breaking down the separation between communities of interest and

communities of place)

• Strategy - Having several neighborhoods plan and event together

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• Something that brings people in neighborhoods together to have a “claim to

fame” (e.g., Little Italy)

• Connecting to give a neighborhood and identity over something like food or

ethnic heritage can create an attraction to communities as “cultural hotspots” –

creating community pride and bringing visitors to the neighborhood

• Create an attraction (E.g. Rid-All becomes an ecotourism destination or

agricultural hotspot)

• Cleveland’s emerging “local food culture” is becoming a strong identity –

Cleveland begin “put on the map” as a “food vacation spot”

• Strategy - Grants for small businesses to support “creative place-making”

• Strategy – Investing in “cultural creatives” as catalysts for community (e.g.

favorable rent treatment for local artists)

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Day 1 - Suggested Actions

These are the suggestions for action written down during the first day innovation session

of the Vital Neighborhoods group. These are just the rough ideas that were generated

during the last 15 minutes of that session, and moving from ideation towards action:

• Hire local young people for yard work/ projects. It helps them build a sense of

independence, connection to other adults, it helps integrate them to the fabric of

the community.

• Actively incent local businesses (i.e. Miles Rd) to hire or train neighborhood

residents

• Create intentional space (i.e., Network night)

• Utilize online intentional spaces – community building applications (Next Door

app., Street Clubs USA, Companion app.)

• Can be in multiple communities at once

o Communities can overlap without being acknowledged/interacting

o Community can be based on place (neighborhood) or activity (theater)

nowadays are more intention than place

o Community is based on personal relationships

o Community forms when threatened.

• Host cross-community conversations (bring people together from different

neighborhoods to begin breaking down barriers between neighborhoods)

• Community ideas: Action for low-income neighborhoods (listen to the people,

help and guide them in the ways that they want instead of just forcing ideas on

them)

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• Creatives change old crumbling neighborhoods: free rent for 10 years in exchange

for rehab or break in rent for eventual ownership.

• CDC leadership in grants for small businesses

• Reach out to people who are too frazzled/busy to commit a lot of time – over time

find small things they can do

• How might we make people feel welcome even if they do not show up?

• Develop the (internal) Sustainable Cleveland 2019 website into [a site promoting]

tourism and small business marketing

• I will knock on 10 doors in my neighborhood

• Support your neighborhood block party – one day that connects very different

together.

• Advertise community events, festivals, etc.

• Communities share something

• Need to encourage youth-adult interaction (multigenerational interaction) to form

bonds

• You need to have a stake in the community, go beyond the individual

• Find/create opportunities for overlapping groups (churches, block groups, clubs)

to work together on projects – bridging and creating sense of neighborhood and

city.

• Action items:

o More local activity/more interaction

o Community area for interacting

o Need economic sustainability to foster social sustainability. Examples:

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� Internships/apprenticeships

� Use education with service learning model, experience and

engagement

� Make shadowing/apprenticeships mandatory and include youth

from neighborhoods to show positive examples

� After school programs

� Need events to bring people together (e.g. block parties)

o “Taste of Cleveland Neighborhoods” - a tour of specialty cuisine and

talent of neighborhoods through food

o Inter-neighborhood gatherings: Not citywide, but specific, neighborhoods

(e.g., Buckeye-Woodland with Detroit Shoreway).

Day 2 – Prototype Proposals

1. Dream together – Build community through envisioning a positive future. The Dream Wall would allow participants to share ideas on a whiteboard map of the neighborhood. Community meetings would be held to discuss the ideas on the board.

2. Community story telling – Inspired by Naomi Davis who was a speaker at the SC2019 Summit, the group suggested having storytelling through an artistic production(s) within each community. This tool could be used to build relationships, skills, entrepreneurship and ultimately loving thy neighbor.

3. CLECoin Neighborhood Currency Alliance – Alternative currency based on skills and products rather than money. Youth apprenticeships provided on exchange of CLEcoins (time banking) which are the basis of local currency. Local businesses accept CLEcoins for discount or payment to supplement the monetary economy. CLEcoins remain in circulation.

4. Cross-Pollinating Neighborhoods – Working with community members and CDCs to fix up buildings as a party. (Similar to City Repair)

5. United Minds – Have churches and community groups sponsor a discussions led by youth. Similar to Network Night, but for youth.

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Appendix H - Community System “Root Definitions” and CLD Models

These root definitions and diagrams capture alternative, yet in many ways

complementary, mental models, and in each instance represent an overlay upon the

existing problem situation depicting imagined systems and strategies for leveraging

change to real world community dynamics. They entail discursive, perceptual, cognitive

and other “soft” factors shaping community culture and community dynamics that are

often overlooked in conventional neighborhood revitalization efforts, but that emerged

within the unfolding collective consciousness enabled by the group designing

conversations. The above definitions and diagrams, therefore, represent systemic

characteristics considered important by the participants, insofar as they express the

participant’s individual and collective understandings of real world community system

dynamics, including the persistence of certain vicious cycles that have been observed in

the Cleveland context and that may account for the role of local culture in either

contributing to the decline, or to the improvement, of community vitality over time.

The named ideal systems, therefore, invite intervention strategies that would

leverage emerging evolutionary consciousness and acquired evolutionary competencies

that would enable community residents and stakeholders to effectively navigate through

the seemingly insurmountable complexity that is inherent in human activity systems; by

engaging in well-targeted discursive and transformative social action within and among

Cleveland’s neighborhoods. Such a process would transform human consciousness and

culturally mediated patterns of social interaction; thereby altering the relevant system

dynamics, turning vicious cycles into virtuous cycles so as to leverage systemic change

“from within” and thereby transcend the named problem situations. The relevant

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“evolutionary leap” thus assumes the quality of a shift in the collective awareness, or an

unfolding of implicate human potentials that within a given community context can shape

human perceptions and interpretation of reality in more adaptive ways, leading to real

improvement to the local quality of life.

P1: A purposeful human activity system that enables reflection on past experience to

test core assumptions and reduce siloed and polarized thinking while promoting

equitable and inclusive community engagement leading to effective and authentic

community revitalization.

P6: A purposeful human activity system that engages conversation to build common

understanding by acknowledging the realities of personal struggle, as well as small

signs of improvement, as an invitation to discover unrealized capacity to transcend

limiting mindsets and engage in difficult but meaningful conversations that matter.

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P2: A purposeful human activity system that engages neighbors to celebrate “small

wins” derived from empathic and supportive responses to each other’s daily


progressively moving from social isolation to a sense of place-based community

cohesion that builds capacity for social engagement at all levels.

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P7: A purposeful human system that engages educators and community leaders to

build core competencies of ecological literacy and awareness of global systemic

context, as a foundation for cohesive community life anchored an authentic common

sense of place-based identity, and nurtured by inclusive, spiritually inspired

conversations that foster a local culture deeply rooted in the landscape and its

history.

P3: A purposeful human activity system that builds community by generating

“welcoming table” where individuals experiencing an inner tension between

individuality and community are invited to participate in activities that nurture

shared place-based sensibilities and community consciousness, making is easier to

perceive one’s self as having a stake in the outcome as a member of a place-based

community.

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P5: A purposeful human activity system that builds capacity among neighbors and

stakeholders to think and work together systemically, enabling self-organizing

bottom-up action to restore community bonds in the face of wicked problems by

helping them feel empowered as shapers of neighborhoods sharing common place-

based identity and joined to a common destiny.

the urban village as a living system

Documents

Transcript of the urban village as a living system