Context

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In the dialogue business…for real -Aleco Christakis

 

In this issue of eBuzz:

• Two recent co-laboratories: one in Pennsylvania and one in Cyprus
• Four co-laboratories scheduled for the ISSS conference in Crete
• A recent publication
• Excerpt from Aleco on "Wisdom of the People."

On January 11, 2003, thirty-four residents of the Bryn Gweled intentional community in Bucks County, PA, applied the 
Co- Laboratory of Democracy process offered by the Institute for 21 st Century Agoras to define intentions for the future 
of their community. The session was sponsored by CW A Ltd. The Inquiry Design and Facilitation Team involved Tom 
Fetterman, a member of the community for over ten years, Ken Bausch, the Executive Director of the Institute 
(www.globalagoras.ore), Diane Conaway and Aleco Christakis. The session took place in the Bryn Gweled Community 
Center shown below.

In a one day working session, the community stakeholders generated and 
clarified 42 distinct intentions, such as:

• Learn to have fun together as a community .
• Encourage members to act on the saying "It takes a village to raise a child."
• Develop effective ways of resolving disputes so that no one feels like a winner or a loser .

They subsequently selected those intentions that they thought were of higher relative importance. In the voting, 39 out of the 
42 received one or more votes from the participants. The 5 most important intentions were:

1. Make the transition from our early stage of growth to one of stewardship. .Identify better ways to improve our 
   decision-making process.
2. Re-explore ideas to allow elderly members to remain on the Bryn Gweled Homestead.
3. Re-unite less active members of our community with an invitation to participate anew.
4. Use our past knowledge to enlighten our future planning.

In the afternoon, the stakeholders engaged in a strategic dialogue exploring the influences among the 12 intentions that 
received the most votes. The results are displayed in the following graphic (see Figure 1).

This influence pattern is a kind of "tree of meaning.
"The intentions at the base of the tree are the most
influential ones. In other words, if those intentions at 
the base of the tree were neglected, the community 
would be greatly handicapped in its efforts to 
accomplish intentions higher on the tree. 
The stakeholders were intrigued by the discovery of 
the most effective intentions, which were the 
following two:

• Use our past knowledge to enlighten our future 
  planning. .
• Identify ways to improve our decision-making 
  process.

The implication of this discovery was that the Bryn Gweled community should focus its energy on meeting those two 
intentions. If it fulfills these two most influential intentions, it will be much easier for them to accomplish the other intentions 
higher on the tree. In looking at the map, it became clear to the participants that the intentions they voted most important 
were not the most effective for attaining their goals. This is a recurrent phenomenon when stakeholders use the 
Co-Laboratory of Democracy process.

The two other intentions that should be given serious consideration by the community, because of their positioning in the 
influence map, are:

• Identify ways to involve children in the decision-making process.
• Reunite less active members of our community with an invitation to participate anew.

By working on the four intentions mentioned above, the community will be able to make significant progress towards 
accomplishing all the other important intentions shown in the influence pattern.

The commentary at the end of the session was very positive, including statements by the stakeholders that the map made 
explicit and transparent their long tradition of decision making. The community has been using Robert's Rules of Order 
for many years, and they appreciated the Co-Laboratory of Democracy dialogue, in the sense that it enables them to have 
a true dialogue instead of a debate.

Bryn Gweled Homesteads was created in 1940 to give 80 families enough land to raise their food. "Homesteading" is no 
longer practiced, and the community is now completely surrounded by Philadelphia suburbs. But Bryn Gweled has never 
lost sight of its founders’ dedication to cooperation, to environmentalism, and to racial, economic, and religious diversity. 
This Co- Laboratory of Democracy was called to reinvigorate processes dedicated to those ideals.

The 47^th annual conference of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) will be held in Crete, July 6-11, 
2003.  To date, people have registered from the following countries: Italy, Mexico, Spain, Greece, Sweden Slovenia, Algeria, Chile, Switzerland, Japan, Nepal, USA, New Zealand, Sweden, UK, Ghana, India, Colombia, Australia, Argentina, Canada, Russia, and the Georgian Republic. Abstracts will continue being accepted until April 16.

Cyprus is a divided island nation scarred by war and bloodshed. Since 1974, Cypriots have existed in two hostile enclaves,
Turkish and Greek, separated by a buffer zone. There is not even direct telephone communication between them. The 
antagonism has many roots including the 400 year occupation of Greece and Cyprus by the Ottoman Empire, the 
occupation of the island by the British, and a war for self-determination of the island people in 1956 -1964.

Marios Michaelides and Antigone Petropoulos are working to heal this rift. Using the methodology employed in 
co-laboratories, they hold bi-communal workshops in the neutral zone to build mutual understanding, respect, and 
cooperation. Recently in late January and early February, they facilitated a co-laboratory with Turkish and Greek Cypriot 
women professionals who "are interested in setting up a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that will offer services for 
the empowerment of women in their communities. The ‘Successful Women’ Project is part of their efforts at realizing this 
vision." A significant part of this project will be a video "that will be used in workshops for young women on the theme of ‘success.’"

The objectives of this workshop were:

• To provide the participants the opportunity to explore and obtain a deeper understanding of the concept of "success" 
  for women in the two communities of Cyprus today.
• To identify a set of criteria, that will be used by a small committee, to select three women from each community to 
  participate in the documentary film.
• To experience the consensus-building co-laboratory methodology.
• To develop a community of women with shared understanding and common language.

Using the co-laboratory methodology, this group generated 106 qualities of success and selected 24 of these as being more 
important. They explored the influence relationships among these 24 and generated the influence tree represented below. 
Also, they organized the 106 qualities in 11 categories shown in the Figure below.

As can be readily seen, the deepest drivers (18, 2, and 60) at the root of the tree influence everything above them. Thus, 
being an informed person (18) helps a woman be aware of gender discrimination (22), which in turn helps her have vision, 
which helps create opportunities (88), etc. Similarly, having a balanced and independent personality helps a woman be 
aware of her choices and opportunities (5) and bolsters her self-improvement efforts (12), which helps her generate the 
abilities, qualities, and relationships identified in the large box in the middle of the diagram. Finally energy, drive, and 
stamina (60) greatly influence a woman’s mastery of the qualities in the same larger box. Conversely, the big box at the top 
of the tree contain many of the ideal qualities of a successful woman, but these qualities will not materialize unless the 
qualities lower on the tree are achieved.

This tree will be used to design the "Successful Cypriot Women" video and will help in the selection of the women who will exemplify alternate conceptions of success and different pathways to achievement. The whole effort is designed to build bridges between Turks and Greeks on Cyprus.

A new young president, Tassos Papadopoulos, assumed office in Cyprus on March 1^st. It remains to be seen how he might use Co-Laboratories to build areas of consensus in his divided nation.

Aleco Christakis and Ken Bausch contributed "Technologue: Technology-Supported Disciplined Dialogue" to the volume: 
The Transformative Power of Dialogue, edited by Nancy Roberts and published by Elsevier Science.This essay 
describes a methodology that enables dialogue, decision-making, and transformational leadership in complicated and 
contentious situations. It is founded on thirty years of research and development. A hallmark of this methodology is the 
formalization of its scientific foundations, its use of technology, and its constant empirical testing in the arena of practice. 
The essay presents the guiding principles for conducting dialogue in complex situations and their implications in terms of 
laws of Variety, Parsimony, Saliency, Meaning, the Evolution of Observations, and Autonomy in Distinction-Making. The 
embodiment of these six laws within a technology- supported disciplined approach to dialogue, called "technologue," 
enables collaborative interaction amongst stakeholders, contributing to the emergence of a situation-specific, 
socially-constructed, consensual linguistic domain that enable participants to forge a social contract for designing their future.

The complete text of this article can be viewed at www.globalagoras.org in the Resources section.

At the 47^th annual conference of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), July 6 – 11, in Crete, four 
concurrent co-laboratories will be offered.

• Wisdom of the People Forum - facilitated by Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO; Laura Harris) and the 
  Advancement of Maori Opportunity (AMO). Proposed Triggering Questions: What are the challenges to reaching 
  out to and relating with other Indigenous peoples who may be in different places and different spaces? What actions, 
  if taken by the AMO and AIO, would address these challenges?
• Co-Laboratory of Democracy in Spanish – brokered by Enrique Herrscher (Argentina), facilitated by Reynaldo 
  Trevino (Mexico) and Cesar D’Agord (Brazil). The focus of attention will be on understanding the spontaneous 
  outbreaks of street corner democracy, such as those in Buenos Aires, and devising ways to harness their energy to 
  renew democratic governance in Latin America.
• Co-Laboratory of Democracy in Greek – brokered by Ioanna Tsivacou (Greece) and facilitated by Marios 
  Michaelides and Noni Diakou(Cyprus). This co-lab will focus on the challenges faced by traditional cultures 
  (specifically Greek) as they strive to retain their cultural values within the encroaching global economy.
• Co-Laboratory on Constructing Agoras of the Global Village – brokered by Ken Bausch (USA), facilitated by 
  Aleco Christakis (Greece/USA) and Surinder Batra (India). Recognizing that the trends towards some kind of 
  globalization are irreversible, this co-laboratory will apply boundary-spanning structured dialogue to the project of 
  constructing agoras of the global village. It will exemplify an efficient way that diverse groups of people can address 
  the inter-related and complex problems connected with globalization. Triggering Question: "What global and local 
  challenges do we anticipate in constructing Agoras of the Global Village with the engagement of stakeholders?"

The following excerpt is taken from Aleco’s introduction to Wisdom of the People, a book now in preparation.

People all over the world aspire to participative democracy, and yet the democratic planning and design of any 
social system from cities to national health care programs, is threatened by the inability to engage stakeholders in 
a meaningful and productive dialogue.…

In the dialogue business…for real -Aleco Christakis

 

This is an abbreviated version of eBuzz, as Aleco and I are taking care of the myriad details getting ready for the 7^th 
annual conference of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) that is being held in Crete on July 6 – 11. 
The contents of this issue are:

• Description of the conference
• Description of four co-laboratories that will be held in Crete
• An invitation to explore having a co-laboratory with your organization
• Notices for three upcoming publications

Among the Special Integration Groups at this conference the following deal with issues of special interest to friends of 
participative democracy.

• Applied Systems and Development
• Evolutionary Development
• General Evolution Research Group
• Organizational Transformation and Social Change
• Participatory Design and Planning
• Syntegration Group on the Future of ISSS
• Four Co-Laboratories of Democracy (described below)

Laura and LaDonna Harris will lead a Wisdom of the People Forum to follow up on last year’s exciting forum with 
Indigenous leaders from New Zealand and the United States that resulted in the formation of the Advancement of 
Indigenous Opportunity International. This co-laboratory will involve participants to continue the process of engaging 
Indigenous populations from around the world to advance their interests and the values that are so needed in today’s 
world. In the words of LaDonna: "By empowering leadership with a firm cultural identity, we can withstand the 
forces of globalization, and even more importantly, contribute our Indigeneity."

Marios Michaelides and Ioanna Tsvacou will lead a co-laboratory in Greek addressing the issue of ethnic conflict and 
peace building. The overall triggering questions are: "What obstacles do Greek peace activists face in promoting 
peace, especially with Turkey, and what are the options for addressing the system of barriers?" Related questions 
that would arise are: Do you believe that the difference between Western Morality on the one hand and the communal 
morality of the Islamic nations on the other generate an important barrier to global peace? Is there a specific Greek 
Morality that might help in addressing that barrier?

This co-laboratory invites conference attendees with an Arabic and/or Islamic background to join their dialogue. Should 
they attend, the group would converse in English instead of Greek.

Reynaldo Trevino and Enrique Herrscher will lead a co-laboratory in Spanish addressing the issue of effective democracy
in Latin America. The triggering question is: "Explorar las posibilidades de la participación ciudadana en el diseño, 
implantación, evaluación y seguimiento de las políticas públicas, pero desprendiendo la participación ciudadana 
del sistema de partidos y de su lucha por el poder, es decir, mirando hacia la conformación de un "ciudadano 
moderno" que sabe organizarse, proponer, criticar, exigir sus derechos y obtener respuesta del gobierno y del 
resto de la sociedad".

The following summary of the overall project of which the co-laboratory is a component was prepared by Roxana 
Cardenas:

Perspectiva general del proyecto. En cuanto al proyecto en general, creo que es importante que vayamos clarificando 
cómo daríamos continuidad al trabajo realizado en Creta. Esto tiene que ver con los objetivos generales del proyecto y 
además, creo que debe ser la base para el diseño de las reuniones en Creta. Pienso que hay varias líneas que podríamos 
seguir para dar continuidad al trabajo que se haga en Creta.

Continuidad del proyecto en Argentina. Creo que un punto crítico es tener la visión de Enrique y los demás colegas 
argentinos acerca de la utilidad que tendrían los resultados de Creta para su trabajo de investigación/intervención en 
Argentina. Posible continuidad del proyecto en otros lugares. En este punto, supongo que México es uno de los 
principales candidatos (somos 3 de por acá ¡!!), por lo que Carmen, Reynaldo y yo tenemos que pensar en esta 
posibilidad. Sin embargo, también será interesante explorar otras posibilidades.

Integración de este esfuerzo con el resto de las iniciativas e intereses que se están realizando alrededor del Congreso de Creta. Supongo que esta es una posibilidad que podemos trabajar durante los mismos días del congreso.

Aleco Christakis will lead a Wisdom of the People Forum in English that addresses the need to construct livable 
democratic communities in an era of globalization. The goals of this co-laboratory are:

• To create a shared understanding of the challenges that will need to be addressed in the construction of Agoras of 
  the Global Village in the context of globalization;
• To build commitment to an action agenda for collaboratively addressing the "system of challenges"; and
• To begin forging a "chain of interactions" to embrace the variety of stakeholders who will implement the agenda for 
  overcoming the system of challenges.

E-mail it to info@globalagoras.org

1. 8 Scenario II and 4 Scenario III co-laboratories in the first year, August 2003 through July, 2004.
2. 8 Scenario II, 8 Scenario III, and 4 Scenario IV co-laboratories in the second year, 2004-2005.
3. 8 Scenario II, 16 Scenario III, and 12 Scenario IV co-laboratories in the third year, 2005-2006
4. 8 Scenario II, 16 Scenario III, 16 Scenario IV, and 8 Scenario V co-laboratories in the fourth year, 2006-2007.

The contribution of Aleco Christakis and Ken Bausch is entitled "Technology to Liberate Rather Than Imprison Consciousness." The book is published by SUNY and will be available in November.

• Aleco Christakis is editing an issue of Systems Research and Behavioral Science reporting on the participatory design work done at the ISSS Crete conference.
• Ken Bausch is editing a double issue of World Futures reporting on the work being done as conscious evolution in constructing agoras of the global village.
• Aleco and Ken are finishing the first draft of the book, Wisdom of the People, and are looking for an appropriate publisher.

The Institute for 21^st Century Agoras (AGORAS) is a volunteer-driven 
501(c)(3) charitable organization that promotes vigorous democracy. It 
revives the spirit of the ancient Greek agoras for the age of globalization. 
With its Co-Laboratories of Democracy, it streamlines participatory 
democracy, making it efficient and transparent. Its mission is to employ 
these co-laboratories in complex situations with diverse groups of willing 
stakeholders to jump start new or stalling democratic processes. In this way, 
it aims to spread agoras around the world.

The immediate criteria of evaluation are the abilities of co-laboratories to 
draw together the relevant stakeholders of a situation, elicit a comprehensive 
list of responses to a well-devised triggering question, generate consensus 
on the deep parameters of the situation, and produce effective action plans. The mid-term results are measured in the 
extent that participants and their constituencies follow through on the action scenarios generated in the co-laboratories. 
The long-term results are measured in the vitality of the participating groups and their effectiveness in influencing 
problematic situations.

Co-laboratories require preparatory field work to interview stakeholder groups and compose a paper presenting their 
various views, to draft the proper triggering question, to obtain and set up the proper meeting room, computer projection 
equipment, etc. They require a minimum three-person team for two-plus days. They require a large expenditure of time and 
effort from AGORAS staff, facilitators, and local personnel. AGORAS works on a tight budget, but still needs $15,000 to 
$25,000 for each co-laboratory, depending on the size and complexity of the situation, travel, lodging, etc.

Grassroots organizations seldom have the resources to cover that expense. For that reason, we seek sponsorship from 
foundations, corporations, and individuals.

If your organization is having growing pains or is faced with many complex problems all at once, you might want to contact 
AGORAS. If you want to sponsor a favorite organization for rejuvenation, we would like to hear from you. You might want 
to contribute to our work. (You can contribute online and your donations are tax-deductible.) You just might want to find 
out more. In any case, go to www.globalagoras.org. and click the Get Involved menu tab. We would like to hear from you

Announcing the 47^th Annual Conference 2003
of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS)
www.ISSS.org

The conference theme has been chosen to focus attention 
on: (a) the challenge facing humanity as it transforms from 
"evolutionary consciousness" to "conscious evolution," 
and (b) the role systems thinking must play in constructing
 21^st Century Agoras in the context of globalization.

Globalization is being described by many as an emerging 
new system of world order that has accelerated following 
the end of the Cold War order in 1989. Systems thinking 
must make clear what is being eliminated and what constructed by globalization. We must rise to the challenge of 
democratizing the processes of conscious evolution to ensure that globalization empowers all peoples and not just elites.

Dialogue is essential for understanding cultures and subcultures in the emerging global village. Boundary-spanning dialogue 
across disciplines and civilizations, if conducted wisely, can generate democratic agreement on the courses we must pursue 
to create agoras and avoid Big Brother. Thus, the ability to engage in dialogue becomes one of the most fundamental and 
most needed human capabilities. Dialogue becomes a central component of any model of conscious evolution.

Dialogue was practiced very effectively in the agoras of Ancient Greece, like the one in Athens. The agoras were public 
spaces where people congregated and deliberated on their issues. If we want to democratize the emerging global village, |
we must provide agora-like places where people can engage in meaningful dialogue.

ISSS (www.ISSS.org) has long advocated "transdisciplinarity." This was indeed the common feature of the four aims of 
the Society for General System Research (the forerunner of ISSS) as stated by its founders in 1954. Concepts, laws and 
models developed in particular fields were to be investigated to see if they could be properly transferred to emerging 
phenomena which were less well conceptualized. The challenges of the 21st Century, associated with conscious evolution 
and globalization, demand the identification and general transmission of such concepts, laws and models in whatever field 
they were originally developed in order to enhance humanity’s capacity to design the 21^st Century Agoras. Systems 
thinking remains the best hope for this to be achieved.

ISSS 2003 will engage participants in earnest discussion and structured dialogue on topics such as the following:

• Defining what a democratic global discussion might look like (agora as process)
• Describing what a global village achieved by an effective global discussion might look like (agora as product)
• Exploring how local discussions as processes and agoras as product might come about
• Making explicit what thinking globally and acting locally means for individuals and groups within ISSS
• Fashioning ISSS into a model functioning agora
• Deciding how ISSS can become organized for influencing the course of globalization
• Discovering how to enhance the practice of boundary-spanning dialogue across disciplines and civilizations.

Conference Committee
Aleco Christakis, Aleco@CWALtd.com (Co-Chair)

Ken Bausch, ken@attbi.com (Co-Chair)

Evelyn Andreewsky, andreews@ext.jussieu.fr

Nikitas Assimakopoulos, assinik@unipi.gr

Oguz Babouroglu, baburoglu@sabanciuniv.edu

Surinder Batra, cimi@nde.vsnl.net.in

Sabrina Brahms, sabejams@pacbell.net

Diane Conaway, Diane@CWALtd.com

Cesar D’Agord, dagord.2@osu.edu

Ali Granmayeh, aligranmayeh@hotmail.com

Aretousa Ieronimaki, aretusa@her.forthnet.gr

Richard Jung, Richard.Jung@post.harvard.edu

Laura Harris, lharris@unm.edu

George Kokkinis, gkokkini@ebeh.gr

Kathia Castro Laszlo, kathia@syntonyquest.org

Larry Magliocca, Magliocca.1@osu.edu

Gianfranco Minati, gianfranco.minati@iol.it

Nikos Paritsis, paritsis@med.uch.gr

Karen Sanders, sandersk12@aol.com

Eva Stavrakaki, kesan@her.forthnet.gr

Reynaldo Trevino, rtrevino@presidencia.gob.mx

Ioanna Tsivacou, itsi@aegean.gr

• To work towards making ISSS a living model of a Society capable of appreciating and practicing "conscious evolution;"
• To explore and identify the role of systems thinking in the context of the emerging phenomenon of globalization;
• To identify action steps in the pathway of constructing the agoras of the global village;
• To enhance the praxis of boundary-spanning dialogue across disciplines and civilizations.

In the dialogue business…for real -Aleco Christakis

The Institute is assisting the U.S. Department of Agriculture in its campaign against Invasive Species (imported animal and 
plant pests such as: fire ants, chestnut blight, and West Nile virus). We are facilitating three 2-day co-laboratories where 
experts will formulate their 3-year strategic plan. The co-laboratory (CogniScope) methodology, developed by Institute 
president Alexander Christakis, will enable them to discover the most influential causes of the problems and prioritize 
recommendations dealing with:

• Prevention
• Early Detection and Rapid Response
• Control and Management
• Restoration
• Research
• Information Management
• Education and Public Awareness.

The Institute will also assist in the plan’s implementation.

In addition to the Department of Agriculture, the National Invasive Species Plan involves representatives from the 
Departments of Interior, Commerce, Defense, Transportation, State, the Customs Service and the Environmental 
Protection Agency. Two of these workshops are scheduled for later this year; the third will occur next spring.

Co-Laboratories of Democracy, a book by Aleco Christakis and Ken Bausch is in press with Information Age 
Publishers. The book is subtitled: How People Harness Their Collective Wisdom and Power to Create the Future. It 
presents a process, developed by Aleco and others, that makes participative democracy effective for the 21^st century.

The book describes Aleco’s disillusion with the social systems design of the 1970’s, his involvement with the first Club of 
Rome proposal, and his 30-year quest to develop a process that empowers ordinary people to democratically design their 
social lives. It presents the techniques, graphic languages, computer software, and the process that develops consensual 
action plans among diverse sets of people involved in complex situations. It recounts success stories. It also lays out a 
science of dialogic design and the kind of leadership that effects progressive change.

More news on the Department of Agriculture co-laboratories and the publication of the book will be given in the Winter 
eBuzz.

by Ken Bausch

The last issue of eBuzz was way back in the spring of 2003. At that time Aleco and I were pulling together the 47^th annual 
conference of the ISSS (the International Society for the Systems Sciences) with the theme "Constructing Agoras of the 
Global Village."

The conference was a joy. People from all over the world discussed the successes and lessons learned in their efforts to 
create livable communities. Some of these success stories from Australia, Russia, Germany, Italy, Cyprus, Colombia, 
Mexico, and the United States are recounted in the January-March 2004 issue of the journal World Futures (Bausch, 
2004). The September-October 2004 issue of System Research and Behavioral Science (Christakis, 2004) describes 
agora-planning efforts in Latin America, a Syntegrity session on the future of ISSS, and two co-laboratories: one on 
building agoras around the world; the other on building a worldwide Indigenous movement.

After the Crete conference, Aleco and I were both depleted. I had gambled that the conference would provide new 
impetus and some sort of funding for Institute operations, but was mistaken. As a result, I needed to devote all my energy 
into making a living.

In the following months, nothing much happened. Separately, we edited our journal issues. I did little more than keep the 
website afloat. Aleco worked on the book.

Early this year, Nancy Roberts of Information Age Publishers expressed interest in our book, prompting Aleco and I to 
work on it in earnest. Also a funding possibility arose and we developed a new version of our funding proposal. Then Aleco 
won a grant from USDA and decided that the Institute, being non-profit, was the fitting organization to run the project.

In brief, the Institute has come back to life and is ready to go roaring into the future.

Aleco (Greek/American), Surinder Batra (India), Sabrina Brahms (USA), and Marios Michaelides (Cyprus) were 
facilitators for the building agoras co-laboratory. Diane Conaway was Co-Laboratory Coordinator. Gianfranco Minati 
(Italy) and Ken Bausch were Project Leaders. This workshop combined explanation of the CogniScope process with 
strategic thinking:

• To define what a democratic global discussion might look like (agora as process);
• To describe what a global village achieved by an effective global discussion might look like (agora as product);
• To explore how local discussions as processes and agoras as product might come about;
• To make explicit what thinking globally and acting locally means for individuals and groups within the ISSS;
• To discover how to enhance the practice of boundary-spanning dialogue across disciplines and civilizations 
  (Hayes and Michaelides in Christakis).

The following diagram shows in red an influence pattern of the challenges faced in trying to establish global agoras. It shows 
in blue how action options affect the most influential challenges.

My analysis of the deep drivers at Level VI of this superposition diagram made the following points:

These options have the greatest leverage in efforts to construct agoras. By considering each of them individually and 
collectively, we may begin to see how we can efficiently contribute to building networks of functioning democracies.

Option 4: Identify/reveal dominators/owners: This is a research function that operates in small organizations and 
global ones. Checkland’s CATWOE requirements incorporate this need and specify the importance of 
Weltanschauungen (worldviews) in specifying who the owners might be. Critical Systems stresses the alternative to 
existing power structures. It seems that ISSS should tackle the project of identifying owners of organizations 
according to the Weltanschauung that they incorporate. We might generate a taxonomy that would enable common 
discourse and cooperative activity.

Option 24: Link to an established entity that has the capacity to initiate Agora construction activity: The 
Institute for 21^st Century Agoras was set up to meet this need and there are other organizations in the same field, 
notably the Institute of Cultural Affairs with its long history of active facilitation. There are no doubt other such 
organizations that might want to band together in some common endeavors. This practitioner’s circle might evolve 
into an effective coordinating instititution.

Option 18: Provide a climate of community ownership and partnership in addressing 
concerns/problems/issues: We all do that in our practices and we might devise ways to coordinate and 
disseminate our methods.

Option 2: Find the resources to support the process of construction: The resources are financial and personal.
If we were to formulate a strong program as a consortium of methodologies and practitioners, we would have the 
requisite personnel and would be a strong magnet for the necessary funds. This is especially true if our programs are 
practical, measurable, and on the ground.

Option 5: Provide infrastructure (that is, methodology and facilities) to continuously support the 
construction and sustainability of global Agoras: Among our various methodologies, some are especially useful 
in some area or stages of Agora-building: theoretical understanding, inclusion of stakeholders, initiating dialogue,
conflict resolution, generating quality observations, identifying leverage points, ongoing support, building coalitions, 
training practitioners, etc. by webbing together, we can provide the best of facilitation to our communities and 
organizations in a lively communal atmosphere.

Option 12: Organize planetary networks: There are hundreds of future-looking networks today. I have over 100 
links to them. Many of you no doubt are similarly connected. Some of them, such as Leonard Duhl’s Healthy Cities 
movement, are on the ground in hundreds of locations. We can make ourselves available to those groups to facilitate 
their efforts and help them to coalesce into a coherent world force (in Hayes and Michaelides)

• Bausch, K (ed.). (2004). Constructing Agoras of the Global Village. World Futures, Volume 60, 
  Numbers 1-2, January-March 2004.

• Christakis, A. (ed.). (2004). Wisdom of the People. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Volume 
  21, Number 5, September-October 2004

• Hayes, P and Michaelides, M. (2004). Constructing Agoras of the Global Village: A Co-Laboratory of 
  Democracy on the Conscious Evolution of Humanity. In Christakis, pp.539-554.

Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO)  and Advancement of Maori Opportunity (AMO)  jointly sponsored a Wisdom 
of the People Forum  In Crete to share Indigeneity with like-minded systems thinkers and to create a strategic plan for the 
newly formed international Indigenous organization, the Advancement of Global Indigeneity (AGI). The AGI used the 
products resulting from the WOPF to guide the first AGI board meeting that was held in conjunction with the ISSS 
conference.

AIO was founded 35 years ago by Institute Board member, LaDonna Harris to discuss provocative issues and to work 
on complex problems facing Native Americans. Her daughter AIO president Laura Harris and Kate Cherrington, 
co-founder of AMO, facilitated this WOPF (co-laboratory). The 30 or so active participants in addition to Native 
Americans and Maoris included persons from Crete, Germany, Slovenia, and non-Indigenous Americans. They engaged 
in spirited disciplined dialogue for four evenings during the conference

The triggering question for this WOPF was "What are the challenges for AGI when reaching out to and relating with 
other Indigenous groups/nations/peoples who may be in different places and different spaces? After identifying seven 
most important challenges, the participants plotted an influence pattern among them. Then they developed six strategies to 
address this system of challenges:

• First, AGI will have to develop a funding strategy.
• Next AGI will have to research and study specific countries and groups.
• AGO must develop educational materials and a public relations strategy.
• This strategy will be formalized into a training program for the staff, board of directors, and funders.
• AGI will need to continually work on the development of the transparency of the AGI vision, goals, motives, and its 
  attitude of wanting to learn and share with other Indigenous groups.
• Finally, the group agreed on the importance of not just talking about what AGI wants to achieve and not just 
  researching and studying other groups, but actually getting out into the field to apply and test what the group has 
  described as AGI’s work: in short, to ‘walk the talk’.

Subsequent to this WOPF, AGI has had major interactions with the Indigenous Peoples of Northeast Asia and Southern 
Africa, and is negotiating interactions in other parts of the world. They are planning to train other Indigenous people to 
conduct Indigenous WOPFs.

Harris, LD.and Wasilewski, J. Indigeneity an Alternative Worldview – Four R’s (Relationship, Responsibility, 
Reciprocity, Redistribution) versus to P’s (Power and Profit). Sharing the Journey Towards Conscious Evolution. 
Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Volume 21, Number 5, September-October 2004. pp. 489-504.

Harris, L. and Wasilewski, J. Indigenous Wisdom of the People Forum: Strategies for Expanding a Web of 
Transnational Indigenous Interactions. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Volume 21, Number 5, 
September-October 2004. pp. 505-517.

The new Institute proposal envisages several scenarios, each designed to eventually enable groups to conduct 
co-laboratories on their own. They range from co-laboratories with an initial training session through co-labs with intern 
assistance, and co-labs run by new facilitation teams with Institute guidance. We support stakeholders as they learn to 
function independently as leaders of co-laboratories and fund on-the-ground follow through coordinators. The new 
facilitation teams are paid proportionally to their roles as assistants or as leaders backed by a consultant. The new teams 
are then given the SDP software (value $5000) and are free to conduct co-laboratories, hopefully with financial and 
administrative support from the Institute.

We are actively and creatively seeking ways to fund this proposal. We would really appreciate any ideas you might want 
to offer.

Institute board member David Loye has found buried within the scientific thicket of The Descent of Man that Darwin 
actually wrote 95 times about love! By going to each of these entries, the author in the just published Darwin in Love 
uncovers long ignored, delightful, and often very funny tales of the love, sex, and family life of birds, apes, elephants, deer, 
earwigs, barnacles, grasshoppers, dogs and cats -- and much else including humans.

David is a leading proponent for the flourishing new reading of Darwin that pays attention to his words that are at odds 
with the ruthless social Darwinist application of survival of the fittest to human evolution.

www.globalagoras.orgo@globalagoras.org

In the dialogue business…for real -Aleco Christakis