Grok, Talk, Walk and Rock
In July of this year, Grok, Talk, Walk and Rock was one of the special sessions on the World Future Society 2011 conference schedule. It was a privilege to be included in this “seedpod” as we are calling it, and to work closely with these three bright, interesting and generous women as we interacted in intentional configuration of generational endowments.
Here is the script of the entire presentation. An audio version is forth coming.
You can learn more about the women representing the Grok, Talk and Rock expressions of our generational constellation by clicking the pictures below:
Marilyn Hamilton
Barbara Marx Hubbard
Vanessa D. Fisher
Another piece of the leadership puzzle: Turn {on}
It’s not whether you are playing a big game or a small game,
it’s being IN the game that counts.
This was my closing statement from a post on Women’s Leadership where I painted a perspective across a large landscape of human existence, naming territories, life courses and generational groups. For this post I am asking:
- What is a way to blaze a trail across a wide and deep ocean-like playing field,
- What might be true as a general indicator of what the game is, and
- How do I know if I, as a woman, am playing this game.
To answer these questions, I returned to my root understanding of human nature. Humans are complex and adaptive organisms. We are continually responding to the life conditions in which we find ourselves by evolving toward more complexity and adapting our biological, psychological and social structures to fit these life conditions.
I tend to throw the concept of life conditions around like it’s common knowledge. And to some extent it is, and to a much larger extent our life conditions are as complex (especially today) as humans are- making the idea of life conditions very difficult to get my hands around. For this reason I am using a general statement to represent our life conditions so I can elude to their extensive complexity in a simple way. It is expressed thusly; all humans, in one way or another, are under pressure to adapt to the rate of change experienced in one lifetime. It appears, to those tracking such activity, we are on a trajectory of exponential change dynamics, potentially toward a singularity. Now conceptually, few even understand exponential change. Experientially, none of us know what to expect. One thing seems certain though, everything is on the table. Everything – potentially- will change.
If that is in fact that case, it seems logical to me, the best adaptive response is to learn to change and to change in a way that compliments, the rate of change in our life conditions. Sometime, perhaps often, this means moving in the opposite direction of what we’ve known. The ebb and the flow. Synchronized to ebb when it’s time to ebb, flow when it’s time to flow.
To be sure, changing, managing and investing in our own personal change is a very big game. The forces moving in the direction of maintaining a status quo (conventional ideas of right and wrong), of running away and hiding, and of stiffening up and aging are extremely strong. They are as strong the forces pulling us to flow when it’s time to ebb, pulling us to ebb when it’s time to flow.
Yes, it’s messy. And if it was easy, everybody would be doing it.
Nevertheless, changing ourselves is the injunction. Or rather, letting ourselves be changed, using the powers we have in a co-creative relationship with these forces is, from my own experience, an excellent strategy.
Having spent most of the past 15 years studying and experimenting with ideas and illuminations sourced from aggregations of the world’s wisdom, I have learned quite a bit about my own process of personal change. As I look around me, watching others as the pressure to not only change but evolve mounts, there are three primary insights I highlight.
- It’s possible to change ourselves by deepening and expanding our understanding of ourselves, of seeing who we are more clearly, and embarking on a path (one step after the another step) of oneness. Of becoming one within myself – tapping into a natural essence of being creative, resourceful and whole (The Coaches Training Institute.) This is a process of integration, of connecting my extremely fragmented self to more of itself. What I notice is the more I get connected to myself, the more aware I am that I and another are one. My awareness creates a desire to be connected to others. Then creativity and resources, often in the form of natural intelligences fill in me. And it’s these natural intelligences working within me and within you which source an appropriate response to our life conditions. It’s actually quite simple. Not easy, and simple.
The best part is, connection begins and sustains itself through a very pleasurable practice. Turn {on} A practice, I notice, also creates health and wealth – a prime source of vitality.
- The first and hardest shift is finding the come from place in which to make any change. My most common reaction is to try to change something on the outside, to blame others or to try to get others do what I want them to do in accordance with the way I see the world. When I come from this reactive posture, I suffer more and it makes my conditions worse. When I want another to do or be something, that is my clue, its actually mine to do. The next common reaction is to cling, attach and feed off of others, I have been shocked at the levels in which our vampirism occurs! It’s really an unhealthy manifestation, due in large part to the extensive fragmentation in our psyche, of a deep desire to connect. The optimal come from place for me has me standing as self authored, self directed and autonomous.
I am excited to embrace a language and context for naming such a come from place. It’s called Turned {on}.
- In any given moment, in any given situation in which I find myself, I have everything I need, always. Usually not what I have wanted, and definitely what I have needed. It’s a long term game of generative practices and competencies. Not a quick fix. Over time it has asked me to give up, to let go of everything I have, know or want, while it gives me all I desire to live a life..that is, well…worth living.
From a place of being turned {on} more of what life truly has to offer becomes available.
So…out of these highlights, in the context of one woman’s (mine) and in service of any other woman who wants to play into their leadership, I am answering my three questions for myself with one word. Prime.
I use the word Prime specifically as it is defined by Izack Adizes. Dr. Adizes has charted a map of corporate life cycles that applies to the human life cycle as well. He identifies two poles every one of our lives moves within, flexibility and control. We all come into the world through the first pole, a point of mostly flexibility and exit the world typically in mostly stability. Obviously, babies can put their feet behind their head, and can’t stand up. And at the end of our life we have so much stability we get stiff. The apex of the life curve is named as status quo. Once our way of living, our way of operating, our way of moving through the world drops into the status quo, it’s all down hill from there. Prime is located before we reach the apex- living at the edge, a zone where there is enough stability in our flexibility to be highly functionally, yet does not become statue quo.
Busting the status quo is a big part of keeping ourselves flexible in accelerating change. Where retreating from or going over the edge happens quickly, often without awareness or intention.
Busting the status quo is a big piece of the leadership puzzle.
Good news! Women who are busting the status quo know what it takes. One of those women I have all ready written about. She has articulated a manifesto and created a circle of 25 ways for status quo busting women to turn {on}. And I love it.
The first step in busting the status quo is switching from -off- to {on}. It’s that simple. Not too mention, being turned off is part of the status quo. Big time.
I have spent enough time in the past couple weeks with the small network of women leading One Taste, a company filled with women (and men) committed to the purpose of the female orgasm, who are busting the status quo of all the stories, baggage and misinformation around women’s sexuality, to tell you that being the company of turned {on} women is juicy, powerful and energizing. Even for someone like me who self identifies as turned {on}- I experience a surge in the company of these woman. So much so, it fueled a deep desire in me to be a source of and have as a constant force in my life juicy, powerful and energizing connections.
The creative power inside a turned {on} woman is contagious. It spreads, it includes, it will not be contained. It flexes and it flows, it expands and contracts, it travels in waves, dances with the light and captives the dark. It’s the very movement of Prime; a movement initiating 25 ways to turn {on}. 
One of them is to get behind another woman’s turn {on} and that is exactly what I am doing. I am getting behind the women connected to the Turned {on} Woman’s movement.
I am explicitly integrating 25 ways into my life, so if you are reading this post now, consider the idea you have been touched. If being turned {on} appeals to you, please to “touch” back. I am interest to know who you are.
Putting a Finger on the Pulse of Pleasure
There are very few people I’ve met in the 40 odd years I’ve been on this planet with whom I share such a profound and significant alignment of purpose and premise. Nicole Daedone is one of those people.
I, in person, have not spent much time with Nicole. I am not a working member of her community, yet my path in the last three years has crossed hers many times. I watch how she is orchestrating her passion with respect and with eyes of learning, taking a very edgy topic and creating a comfort zone in which this edge can be talked about, explored, practiced, and this week – amplified with a collective voice that I hope gets heard around the world.
Nicole and I meet one another because we both understand women’s awesome power to connect, grow and ultimately create through the one of the least understood and least activated access points, the orgasm. I join now, following Nicole out onto this cultural edge to ready to play full-out. In doing so, I call myself into the best part about being a woman- into our deepest desires.
After years of teaching, coaching and researching, topped off by 58 consecutive days of upbeat video tips, Nicole’s first book, Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm is premiering this week to a medley of mainstream interest and interviews. I mean really, is there another topic we want to know more about than this one. Or as a partner we would like to master more than this one. Is there one person male or female, if they are being totally honest with themselves, who wouldn’t welcome having a candid, informed and enlightened conversation about the mysteries of the female orgasm? And don’t we have some sense deep down inside that somehow all of our lives, yes all, could be off the charts satisfying if women having orgasms was the rule rather than the exception. Is there even one woman out there, who will tell you she having too many orgasms? Mmmmm.
The time is here, the platform has been built, the support system created and the premiere party planned so that from here on the female orgasm can take its place, center stage, in what I sense could be the beginnings of the next sexual revolution. No joke! I intend to stand right next to Nicole as she carves out a path for women everywhere to stroke their way into personal power; with or without a man, with or without a job, with or without a degree.
My own experience comes through a 15 year personal practice of intentional masturbation that has been one of the core pillars of a cultivated lifestyle designed to support my development into a emerging mindset that up until now, I’ve shared with only a handful of my friends. It’s through the art and craft of orgasmic meditation (as Nicole calls her practices) fostered over that time that I have come to believe, there is no problem I encounter that 5 orgasms can’t solve. I mean 5 orgasms, in one sitting, sometimes more, a lot more.
Over the coming months, I will be blogging about my point of view on the subject of sex. Today I celebrate and acknowledge Nicole who has, through trials, tribulations and triumphs found a way to open up a conversation about sex through a safe and intelligent framing, Turned-On Women, that enables us to view our lives through the context of slowing down. Slowing down so we can truly connect with ourselves and each other, in order to give and receive attention to the richness found in this most basic of human experience. My hope is that the ensuing conversations will spark a new narrative about what it means to be sexual woman and a sexual man; fueling nothing less than an evolutionary jump into our future.
One thing “I know for sure”, Nicole is not afraid to put her finger on the pulse, specifically in the upper left quadrant of the inner labia, inviting the heat of real cultural change, to tell us in plain and clear terms, what is going on.
Surprisingly Well-N-Wise
Today the Howard County bloggers, rather a subset of them, are gathering at Union Jack’s for the monthly HocoBlogs event. This month, the co-hosts are Howard County’s General Hospital and Library, in acknowledgement of the launch of their new site, Well and Wise.
The event-brite invitation asked if I was well-n-wise. I answered yes. Here’s why-
I don’t get sick much any more. I can’t even remember when I last had a cold or the flu. It’s been years. Two years ago, when the nasty epidemic flu was closing schools across the county, I found myself cloistered in my sister’s home with 6 other family members when my 7 year old niece came down with this highly resilient strain of flu on Christmas Eve. The next morning, two other family members arrived for breakfast, exposing themselves for a couple hours to the virus. All 8 of my family members came down with the same flu. Throwing up, diarrhea, congestion, aches– the works.
Everyone played host to these bugs, except me. Feedback which indicates to me, something different is happening. It’s not an indicator that I won’t ever get sick again. So what is different?
I’ve never set a goal to change my health, to get healthier. Health is byproduct of my lifestyle. I started because the “good life” I was living 20 years ago resulted in depression rather than happiness. To cope with my situation, I began saying yes to several of things I wasn’t supposed to do, activities I thought I would never do. Lo and behold my life started to be fulfilling in ways that just didn’t make sense. Then I really had a problem. How could I reconcile these two experiences? I started looking for my own answers about how live. I found them.
Interestingly, I have not focused on, although I have included at times in bits and pieces, traditional approaches to healthiness: eating right and lots of exercise. What I am focused on is developing ways of thinking that are appropriate for the conditions I/We live in. That’s the secret. A mindset. A field of intelligence that continues to change, grow, develop, emerge and evolve as time changes me, you and our world. I cultivate intelligence which results in a releasing of and building capacity. One of which is health.
My direct experience tells me this about cultivating a new mind:
- It’s natural. It’s hard work. It matters.
- Appropriate action often flies in the face of conventional standards about how to live. It’s an intelligence that develops through interaction with each other and our environment because as humans we have the codes to change and meet complexity “mind first.”
- Margaret Wheatley says it brilliantly: “If we want something to be healthier, connect it to more of itself.” Humans have the intelligence to connect to ourselves, each other and our environment. This intelligence arises from vMeme codes found 5 Deep within us.
My steps to wisdom regarding my own health is about a deep dive, tapping into the intelligence sources and the source of life-force found in the core of our being. As I connect to myself at the core, I notice I am also connecting to a greater spectrum of life around me. It’s that simple. Not necessarily easy or comfortable, but simple and elegant in the approach.
We have all the world’s wisdom and sophisticated technologies in our life conditions to work from.
And, the foundational piece of wisdom I have to offer: the pathway into my core is “paved” using the most basic and ecstatic of human experience.
The Orgasm.
A Puzzling Story of Women’s Leadership: Pieces of the Puzzle
I came across Elizabeth Debold’s blog post on The Puzzle of Women’s Leadership , which included an embedded video of Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg’s from TEDwoman, on the EvolveWomen website. As I sat down to write a comment to Elizabeth, this post was the result. Way more than a comment!
I am interested in women being called forward and supported as we reach to live into our potential. Where I think my voice differs and compliments both Elizabeth’s and Sheryl’s, is by virtue of the narrative, the story we are telling about women’s leadership positions. And it’s here, in our stories, where I think we have a lot of work to do in understanding ourselves as cultural beings and as women.
Really, though, it’s the come from place that motivates me to participate by writing to my point of view. Elizabeth’s post and Sheryl Sandberg’s TEDtalk have more to do with our relationship to each other, particularly as we continue to break free from past constructs that entrained a dependence for safety and survival on men, with a desire to know:
- what can we expect from,
- what can we ask of, and
- what can we offer to each other.
It’s our relationship to each other, as women, that is in need of much attention. It’s attention that I offer back to Elizabeth, Sheryl and others who are willing to invest in the intention to call and to be called forth in support women’s rights, responsibilities, roles and relationships in world that appears to be demanding more of exactly that: our attention and intention.
I am still digesting the points of view I am hearing from Elizabeth and Sheryl, with a general codification in noticing the essence of both narratives center on leadership that we don’t see happening around us. Both valid and both express very interesting insights.
To begin, for me, in order to let these ladies’ perspectives inform my own, to create from their experience, knowledge and purpose, I look through a lens that includes at a minimum three perspectives. In this case, my desire is also to offer a third point of view, triangulating the perspectives offered by Elizabeth, Sheryl and myself on the topic of women and leadership. I was inspired to write this post, because my own narrative, the story I am living into and want to promote, is one more centered in the leadership that IS happening. Leadership that doesn’t show up in the data, nor in the views of most the women currently regarded as leaders.
One of the leading indicators referenced here is the lack of women in institutional leadership positions; business, government, education, science, etc. And a general pronouncement that women’s leadership isn’t growing, expanding, or gaining in power, influence or authority. While this might be true when looking at top positions of leadership, if we relegate our measurements to only such indicators we will forever be disappointed or worse, partake a delusion. Primarily, because, at a basic level, there are so many more leadership positions than those at the top. Secondarily, simply putting a women in top positions and calling it women’s leadership, is going to bat with two strikes. I can’t tell you how many times in the last months I’ve heard women complaining about working for women and how they would much rather work for men. Why? I am guessing it’s because the measurements of success for women not in leadership positions in the current structures are easier to attain when there is strong masculine leadership. And because I assert, culturally, today, we actually want something different from women other than to experience each other leading like men.
My point of view allocates such an indicator as a partial representation of what is really happening within a much larger, whole system adaptation to a very complex environment that includes cycles in addition to linear progressions. To conclude that numbers are moving in the wrong direction, or that it will be 100 years before there is parity at the top -assumes the present trends will continue much like we’ve in the past. This is an error of dimensionality. There is a much bigger story here.
I will not attempt to speak to all the dimensions and dynamics of a bigger story in this post, only start by framing it with a three sided lens that initially (because over time it changes) locates an individual or grouping:
- in time,
- in psychological space, and
- through an identity
as a way to address dimensionality gaps in our thinking.
A location in time.
As humans we are moving through a life span that can be segmented into five different phases; childhood, young adult, mid life, elderhood and late elderhood. At each phase there are different social roles that have in the past, anyway, been a natural fit. I think there are leadership positions at each phase of life and for the entire life span of both an individual and the various collective groupings. Most of these leadership positions are not yet named, or have yet to be created.
Sheryl, Elizabeth and myself are all in our midlife years where we are naturally interested in leadership. We are looking around and asking where are all the women? Some women in the elder years, according to Elizabeth’s post are pointing to a contradiction, that makes Elizabeth nervous and makes sense to me only when I assume these elder women expect us, as we go through our midlife years, to be motivated to live and act like they did in through the same midlife stage.
We won’t because it is not part of the life rhythm for it to be so.
Women in their midlife years today have different mindsets. Today the problems we face as midlifers AND elders are also different. Midlife is not midlife is not midlife. Strauss and Howe in their seminal research discovered every 80 years, not every 20 years, peer groupings experience the various stages of life similarly. The next 15 years or so, as most of us already can see, will have a dramatically different feel and tone to them then the past 40-60 years. We have made a significant historical turn, into the winter of our cultural mood, a winter that will include the convergence of ongoing breakdowns and breakthroughs in political, financial, business, technological and educational forums, that make the future, while more, less predictable. understandable
Many of us sense, a ‘great shift’ taking place (institutions breaking down and new values implanting) that are changing every aspect of life as we know it. Very different leadership skills have been developed across a different lifespan of experience between current midlifers and current elders- culturally appropriate for these times. Leadership, across the board, requires a different mindset than was needed to lead the women’s liberation movement (or any other movement for that matter) of the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s and even 90’s.
Conditions related to time drive leadership. In Don Beck’s integral change equation, he keeps asking “How should Who lead whom, to what, when?” I think we should asking that question too.
Psychological Space
Generically speaking, in terms of psychological space, I have to differentiate any understanding of leadership by naming three VERY distinct cultural landscapes arising across the planet where I want to look and see where leadership is occurring.
- in developmental territory– the various steps, stages and trajectories that define pre-modern, modern and post-modern conventions. Within these steps and stages are various configurations of psychological capacities and leadership directives. The tension of having babies and career certainly arise inside this territory as women seek a full development capacity and integration of the temptress, mother and queen roles that look, sound and feel different in at each stage. I suspect if and when we are able to see clearly, we will find most women are stuck (for a variety of reasons, several of which Elizabeth and Sheryl point out) somewhere in this territory.
- in emergence territory– including the spiritual surgery as Elizabeth called it; including the recovery, regeneration, renewal of the divine human coding and the appearance of new codes that support the conscious re-incarnation of the human mind/body/energetic system. The new human as Elizabeth referred to it. Here we find the chaotic-emergent-edges of a psychological space that are intense, uncomfortable and with few, if any, social structures that support the movement. Few, if any, models to follow. Few, if any, women talking about it. Although I hear echos of this territory in Elizabeth’s post and an urging for women to come together here- my struggles with this transition come from the crucible of a soul-based marriage, supported by a natural/mystical phenomenon of our DNA literally being locked on each other so I can’t get out of this territory, until I can. What I needed, and found came from the leadership of one woman, my best friend- not a group of women.
- in the next paradigm territory– a new earth, the rebirth, the resonance field, the next higher order of evolution, [whatever is it] for those who have successfully been recreated as “new humans.” As more people enter this territory in the next 15-20 years, I anticipate a shift in the entire planetary landscape and an entire redefinition of a conversation around leadership. I am with this [flag/blog] post, digging a (w)hole for one flag to fly in.
Again, different functional needs depending on what kind of leadership is needed in which territory, at what stage in life. There are so many different worlds, lots of cultural bubbles that are creating a reality most barely see, let alone can lead. The humans who find their way to next paradigm territory will be at a top never before inhabited. Leading and following within the natural tension and stability that arises with existence of all three psychological spaces. Those future/present leaders are out there now, invisible to most sets of eyes, most survey questions, and data streams – living and creating self-directed, self-authored and autonomous bubbles of culture.
Having spent considerable time myself wandering about the psychological space I’ve just named, I can tell you I “dropped” out of my corporate career path because I was not finding the leadership I needed coming from the top. I needed various hubs, programs and experiences in the expanse of this territory to fill in the development gaps which support any future leadership position I might reach out toward. The guiding principle here is who is leading whom to do what, where. It’s diffused power, to be sure, but power nevertheless. It happens more inside of the networks rather than the hierarchies of social systems and structures. A lot of which is beginning to appear on the surface with the technological innovation and cultural integration seen most recently in social media platforms.
Are these people envisioning how to guide the future of humanity and how to build a habitat that reflects the entire spectrum of human expression? Asking what is important during the major transition that occur over time? What will it take to lead the change that is wanting to happen from every corner of the human condition, and how will we communicate with the leaders from all those corners to ensure All Of Life is being led with wisdom, competency, and in full alignment with the universal creative principles? Well, the people talking about it are talking about it. The people walking about the territory are more interested in creating a world the way they desire to live in it.
Who has the leadership capacity to weave together the leadership needs of both the hierarchical structures and the network relationships? I am looking to the formation of a constellation, rather than a single position. And that takes me to the third side of this frame.
Identity
There are lots of possible identities to name here. The most potent, I believe, in terms of power and change dynamics are found with generational mindsets. Sourcing again the work of Strauss and Howe, there are 3 primary and 2 secondary generation cohorts forming, reforming, moving through time together and within a vertical and horizontal psychological landscapes.
Women from (according the research of Strauss and Howe):
- Silent generation born 1925-1945 - moving into late elderhood
- Boomer generation born 1946-1960 are moving into elderhood
- GenX generation born 1961-1981 are moving into midlife
- Millennial generation born 1982- 2002/3 are moving into young adulthood
- Homeland generation born after 2002 or 2003 are in childhood.
It’s the constellation of generations moving, changing and shaping our culture, our institutions, our behaviors as we respond to the mistakes and excesses and gaps of the others, while moving through life phases, stages of development and a significant process of emergence that is at play here. It’s a perfect orchestration of human endeavor that depends first, on natural cultural programming coded for an evolutionary process of life itself, and second, asks what do we chose? Whether we have leadership that sees it, understands it, aligns with it or not. It’s happening.
What are we choosing and why? Now there is an interesting study.
Marilyn Hamilton has enrolled an all female ensemble; one woman from the first four generations, to present at this year’s World Future Society conference in Vancouver at special event titled: Grok, Talk, Walk and Rock – the essence of the richness from each generation is respectively named.
I suspect the reason there is no parity at the top as we currently define it- has more to do with Boomer women, who won the fight for equality, know their job is done, yet they can’t seem to move onto what’s next. GenX women often over looked and even locked out of positions and career paths Boomer’s in general are entrenched in, now care about other cultural problems, and Millennial women, peer oriented, overwhelmed with mixed messages and polarizing debates are maturing at a slower pace. Women leading like men is a Boomer phenomenon. Thank goodness for them. Because they have been successful, we moved beyond that, not in just a post modern understanding but because the entire cultural mood has changed and GenX women moving into mid life, have an entirely different set of objectives as leaders. To my eyes even Sheryl is exhibiting more feminine attributes to a top position. She, like other GenXer’s is carving through a cultural niche as generational leader. The Millennial women, will have yet again, a different set of objectives when they collectively move into a mid life phase.
I also suspect, that if we looked, we would find generationally more parity between the number of GenX men and GenX women in top leadership positions. There are not a lot of GenXer’s in institutional leadership positions. Why? Because most GenX’s don’t have jobs. Most GenX’ers are doing the work that needs to be done, and then figuring out how to get paid for it. Now there is some real risk taking in leadership. They exist in every crack and crevice with in the entire landscape, working hard to open it up, moving things out of the way, building the new infrastructures both in technology and consciousness- and if I am any example, are continually frustrated but not deterred when people look around and clearly think they are moving “in the wrong direction.” (and much of it comes from inside our own generational cohort, by the way). Quite the contrary. Generational history suggests it’s our GenXer’s, many of them women, who will emerge from all domains of life as the “Generals” in this cultural turning, because they are in the trenches, and the corner offices. The GenX women are leading by leading themselves first, their partners, then their families and perhaps their friends, a few have larger “armies” today.The movement is not straight up, either. The deeper they go, the higher they gain access to. The higher they go, the deeper they will be called to.
When I look through my own frame, my attention and intention are drawn toward the come from place to answer the questions related to our relationship with each other.
Personally, I have pointed myself towards identifying break throughs in women’s leadership today by understanding what is happening and what working so woman’s authentic power to create, nurture and guide life comes forth.
How are we leading our own lives, first, from the inside out? What is it that works when we set out to take responsibility for our own development? From what and to what are we changing, and how do we know we have actually changed, to inform a wide-open understanding of evolution itself.
Sheryl is right-on to ask us as women to honor each others achievements whether our leadership path leads us: to reach for the corner offices; to admit ourselves to the spiritual surgery center for a complete overhaul; to become the CEO of our lives- particularly if the products we offer to society are our children.
Elizabeth is right-on to ask us to come together, in some form or fashion, aided in large part by a transcendent purpose to evolve. We can ask each other to sit at the table, because after all women learn from other women, what it means to be a woman.
What can we expect from each other? Whether we chose to play a small game or big game, it’s being in the game that counts.
Cultural Geographer: An Emerging Career
Go into the field that barely exists: cultural geography. Study why and how people cluster, why certain national traits endure over centuries, why certain cultures embrace technology and economic growth and others resist them.
This is the line of inquiry that is now impolite to pursue. The gospel of multiculturalism preaches that all groups and cultures are equally wonderful. There are a certain number of close-minded thugs, especially on university campuses, who accuse anybody who asks intelligent questions about groups and enduring traits of being racist or sexist. The economists and scientists tend to assume that material factors drive history – resources and brain chemistry – because that’s what they can measure and count.
But none of this helps explain a crucial feature of our time: while global economies are converging, cultures are diverging, and the widening cultural differences are leading us into a period of conflict, inequality and segmentation.
Not long ago, people said that globalization and the revolution in communications technology would bring us all together. But the opposite is true. People are taking advantage of freedom and technology to create new groups and cultural zones. Old national identities and behavior patterns are proving surprisingly durable. People are moving into self-segregating communities with people like themselves, and building invisible and sometimes visible barriers to keep strangers out.
If you look just around the United States you find amazing cultural segmentation. We in America have been “globalized” (meaning economically integrated) for centuries, and yet far from converging into some homogeneous culture, we are actually diverging into lifestyle segments. The music, news, magazine and television markets have all segmented, so there are fewer cultural unifiers like Life magazine or Walter Cronkite.
Forty-million Americans move every year, and they generally move in with people like themselves, so as the late James Chapin used to say, every place becomes more like itself. Crunchy places like Boulder attract crunchy types and become crunchier. Conservative places like suburban Georgia attract conservatives and become more so.
Not long ago, many people worked on farms or in factories, so they had similar lifestyles. But now the economy rewards specialization, so workplaces and lifestyles diverge. The military and civilian cultures diverge. In the political world, Democrats and Republicans seem to live on different planets.
Meanwhile, if you look around the world you see how often events are driven by groups that reject the globalized culture. Islamic extremists reject the modern cultures of Europe, and have created a hyperaggressive fantasy version of traditional Islamic purity. In a much different and less violent way, some American Jews have moved to Hebron and become hyper-Zionists.
From Africa to Seattle, religiously orthodox students reject what they see as the amoral mainstream culture, and carve out defiant revival movements. From Rome to Oregon, antiglobalization types create their own subcultures.
The members of these and many other groups didn’t inherit their identities. They took advantage of modernity, affluence and freedom to become practitioners of a do-it-yourself tribalism. They are part of a great reshuffling of identities, and the creation of new, often more rigid groupings. They have the zeal of converts.
Meanwhile, transnational dreams like European unification and Arab unity falter, and behavior patterns across nations diverge. For example, fertility rates between countries like the U.S. and Canada are diverging. Work habits between the U.S. and Europe are diverging. Global inequality widens as some nations with certain cultural traits prosper and others with other traits don’t.
People like Max Weber, Edward Banfield, Samuel Huntington, Lawrence Harrison and Thomas Sowell have given us an inkling of how to think about this stuff, but for the most part, this is open ground.
If you are 18 and you’ve got that big brain, the whole field of cultural geography is waiting for you.
E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com
Newborn Friends: Social Media and me
For 3 years now, I have been learning about what social media is, what actions to take, how to think strategically about using social media for my personal interests, as well as philosophizing about it’s impact on the larger cultural landscape. I’ve been comfortably lost in this strange new world into which, quite suddenly, I’d dropped. It’s been a progressive set of experiences involving a pathway filled with lots of play, experimenting and rethinking, most of which I’ve done with a good friend of mine, JessieX (as she is known in our local SocialMedia community.)
Reflection #1: It helps and it’s a heck of a lot more fun, to have a buddy to play with in this new territory.
Anyway, my interest, my skills and the realization that social media is the developing infrastructure for an emerging global culture continues to expand within me. I have recently taken on a leadership position with the Chesapeake Bay Organizational Development Network (CBODN) as a SIG (Special Interest Group) chair. It’s a geographic based SIG, focused on connecting people in the Howard County area, extending to Baltimore and Annapolis. The direction I am setting is one that is rooted in social technology and media applications.
The strategy is much like that my “buddy” and I used with American City Girls, which includes a principle of: expanding local relationships through social media. Translated that means, ultimately social media is CONVERSATION online to: communicate with each other, get know each other, and share and update each other on relevant information; while sponsoring local face to face social events- mainly coffee and cocktails at local establishments.
Why? So we can increase the opportunities to engage each other, which in turns makes it easier find our alignment to each other. If aligned, the increased engagement serves to deepen our connection. With a deep connection, we are more likely to collaborate… on something! Most networking groups I have been a part of consist of once a month meeting, structured around someone educating others, which is never consistently attended. They become sound bytes and slices of people over long spans of time. I think social media offers an attractive addition as a layering in and around what I’ve typically found in network associations.
The Balt/Wash SIG will organize around and focus on the domain of Organization Development. The SIG is open to others interested in social media as well if it seems useful to our mutual purposes. As chair of this SIG the job is to introduce members to the trappings of online conversations and create the support structures needed as they learn to navigating a new territory of interaction on their own, and , as an autonomous, dynamic and functioning (that means I expect that there will be something we can produce together) network forms.
My challenge is to lead people to a path so we, as autonomous practitioners in this domain, drive OD content through the infrastructure of social media, rather than social media content through the infrastructure of social media. Yet, to become embedded, which is where the greatest benefits are procured, I eventually realized, that a new mindset is needed to navigate this world. Thus, the content of social media is also an important aspect to the learning the process.
Reflection #2: The rules are different. You can’t take old thinking and ride it on top of this infrastructure and expect to succeed, or have fun!
The good news is there is a tremendous amount of content available about how to have a presence in the Web 2.0 landscape. You can learn this yourself. No money needed, just openness, time and motivation.
Reflection #3; It’s okay to be late to this party, it’s not one you want to miss, though.
The people to watch are the folks using social media to talk about social media. Novel idea, I know! It’s base camp one, if you will, a first stop on your way to acclimating to the environment. Connecting with the people who are using social media, creating content for it, and servicing the needs of the social media industry itself, is like hooking up with the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion, along the yellow brick road to the “Emerald City“, a metaphorical city of wondrous technology and wizardry. There are even lots ‘wizards’ or “rockstars, as they are called in the community, who’ve mastered the territory. Find them and follow them. We have several here in Howard County. If you are game to come out and play, be sure to check out what the local peeps are doing near where you live. And don’t limit yourself to these folks, find a couple of people you think might be only a half step ahead of you, reach out and follow them too. After all, it’s people under all this technology that is important, not technology by itself.
Reflection #4: The people are very social in the world of social media. Lot’s of invitations to dance at this party.
Below is a slide show created by Kevin Glasier which in my opinion is a nice “lay of the land.” If you click through Kevin’s link, you’ll see from his site that he is also in the business for that which he creates content. Selling, marketing, educating and building relationship all happen at the same, through authentic expression of adding value to those whom he engages. Whether or not I ever do business with Kevin is secondary. And look, I am leveraging his content on a site that is about me. The greater good to come out of social media is not only how it benefits me, but the added capacity for peer production. For me, this is living on an edge, where the greatest amount creativity and productivity is to be found, generating the collective benefits of social media through peer production. I was fortunate to get my lessons early on in my learning curve from Alex Rollin of Peer Producers, Inc. and I am still working on effective execution.
Reflection #5: Find yourself a good guide, and open your mind about intellectual property and copyrights.
And at the end of the day, it’s really about connecting with people you are interested in. Often that might be the people you know pretty well already. Again, its deepening and expanding the relationship we have with the people that are meaningful to us in some way that social media/technology amplifies. Maybe the truth is, the only people you care about connecting with are your kids. From everything I’ve seen about our current youth tells me this environment is where you’ll find them, today and tomorrow. Knowing how to navigate this world will help you, help them, and them help you. As JessieX and I talked about yesterday:
Reflection #6: The act of judging, of applying right and wrong, includes the perspective from inside. It’s a leap into what is happening now.
I have found my entire experience, thus far, to be very worth the jump.
(By the way, notice the application that allows you to post slide shows on web!)
