I don’t know how I visited their website, but I ended up creating a profile at this networking site and within a couple of hours a guy named Bowo in Indonesia had added a picture and link on the homepage to a page they created about John Buck and Sharon Villines’ sociocracy book We The People.

WiserEarth serves the people who are transforming the world. It is a community directory and networking forum that maps and connects non-governmental organizations (NGOs), businesses, governments, and individuals addressing the central issues of our day: climate change, poverty, the environment, peace, water, hunger, social justice, conservation, human rights and more. Content is created and edited by people like you.

I wish I had more time to do this sort of thing. I wish I had more time to blog. I wish I had more time so I could create facebook and myspace pages, etc. Ah, well, perhaps one day I’ll be able to hire people to help me! As soon as I receive that first grant….

I found out about a book called ‘Scientific sociocracy, the dawn of a new era;: The dream of Jefferson and Lincoln coming true/ by John H Magdiel (Unknown Binding - 1933). I don’t know how to get one, but it started me wondering about what Mr. Magdiel said about Lincoln’s sociocracy dream. I decided to check first for quotes from Mr. Lincoln. I already have a pile of quotes from Mr. Jefferson. It’s always nice to add a few quotes into a documentary to make it seem like some wise thinker was studying sociocracy or, at least agrees with some of the ideas associated with it. Here are a few I recently found. They don’t seem to be verbatim. If I were to use any I would have to research further to find the exact source and quote. Now, voila:

“The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.” Winston Churchill quotes (British Orator, Author and Prime Minister during World War II. 1874-1965)

“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” Winston Churchill

“Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either [aristocracy or monarchy]. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” John Adams quotes (American 2nd US President (1797-1801), 1735-1826)

“The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery.” Dave Barry quotes (American Writer and Humorist best known for his weekly newspaper column. b.1947)

“The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.” John Fitzgerald Kennedy quotes (American 35th US President (1961-63), 1917-1963)

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group,” Franklin D. Roosevelt (American 32nd US President (1933-45), cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US president. 1882-1945)

“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner” James Bovard

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.” George Bernard Shaw (Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1856-1950)

“There are those who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American Dream.” Archibald MacLeish (American Poet and Critic. 1892-1982)

“He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still” Lao Tzu (Chinese taoist Philosopher, founder of Taoism, wrote “Tao Te Ching” (also “The Book of the Way”). 600 BC-531 BC)

“We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world - or to make it the last.” John Fitzgerald Kennedy

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any” Alice Walker (American writer, b.1944)

The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” Albert Einstein

“Which is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Playwright, hPoet, Novelist and Dramatist. 1749-1832)

“Good government is no substitute for self-government” Mahatma Gandhi (Indian Philosopher, internationally esteemed for his doctrine of nonviolent protest, 1869-1948)

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” Mahatma Gandhi

“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems” Mahatma Gandhi

How Great Decisions Get Made: 10 Easy Steps for Reaching Agreement on Even the Toughest Issues (Hardcover) by Don Maruska, Margaret J. Wheatley

1) enlist everyone including secretaries and maintenance folks;
2) discover shared hopes rather than differing problems;
3) uncover the real issues;
4) identify all options;
5) gather the right information, and all of it;
6) get everything on the table;
7) write down choices;
8) map the solutions;
9) look ahead; and
10) stay charged up.

Well, sociocracy guarantees 1) and 6). To some extent consent decision-making encourages 2): any problem that one person brings up is the problem of each and every person in the circle. Many of the others happen because sociocracy utilizes the intelligence and creativity of everyone involved.

Thabida, thabida, thabida, thabida, thabida, thabida, thabidazall folks!

I’m bad! I didn’t write for a whole week. Where do people find time to blog? Do people just blog about, ‘Well, I just found this site, or found out about this. The end.’ Or do they have to comment on what they’re writing about. I don’t feel like I have time to go read blogs. I’m caught in a dilemma’s horns. On that note - more about our contexts determining our actions.

From an academic: http://cdps.umcs.maine.edu/Papers/1998/IJHCS-Context/:
“Indeed, the term “appropriate” in relation to behavior is meaningless without recourse to some context. There is no such thing as context-free appropriate behavior. “

From: http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Top/ecomments/4742/: Years ago, I was living near to where part of the film, “Women In Love” was being shot. I went to the location to see a friend who was an extra. I arrived there at a break in filming about lunchtime. My friend pointed out the soldiers, who were also extras.

She said that they had been chosen to be officers or “other ranks” merely upon the basis of what size uniform they had available.

The officers were standing around in a loose circle, clutching small glasses of beer and making polite conversation. The “other ranks” were lying on the grass, drinking directly from bottles and playing poker.
Posted by Gary M on Wed Sep 26, 2007 at 12:28 PM

I remember reading about the filming of the original Planet of the Apes. The actors dressed up as non-human apes segregated themselves at mealtimes: the chimps all sat together, the gorilllas all sat together, and the orangutans all sat together, but they didn’t mix much. It seems like your uniform is part of your context, just as your job title is. It seems we’re very suseptible to changing our self-definition and our definitions of those around us very quickly and easily.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave
“The Third Wave was an experimental demonstration of nazism movement undertaken by history teacher Ron Jones with sophomore high school students attending his Contemporary History class as part of a study of Nazi Germany. The experiment took place at Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California, during first week of April 1967. Jones, unable to explain to his students why the German citizens allowed the Nazi Party to exterminate millions of Jews and other so-called “undesirables”, decided to show them instead. Jones started a movement called “The Third Wave” and convinced his students that the movement is to eliminate democracy. The fact that democracy emphasizes individuality was considered as a drawback of democracy, and Jones emphasized this main point of the movement in its motto: “Strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action, strength through pride”.

On Thursday, the fourth day of the experiment, Jones decided to terminate the movement because it was slipping out of his control. The students became increasingly involved in the project and their discipline and loyalty to the project were astounding. He announced to the participants that this movement is only a part of a nationwide movement and that on the next day a presidential candidate of the movement would publicly announce existence of the movement. Jones ordered students to attend a noon rally on Friday to witness the announcement.

Instead of televised address of their leader, the students were presented with an empty channel. After few minutes of waiting, Jones announced that they have been a part of an experiment in fascism and that they all willingly created a sense of superiority that German citizens had in the period of Nazi Germany. He then played them a film about Nazi regime. That was the end of the experiment.”

Even Jones - a consultant on Gansel’s film - was caught off-guard. “It was not a planned classroom activity; it came about as an improvisation,” says the teacher, now 68 and living in Haight-Ashbury where he plays in a punk band.

From:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/09/05/bfwave105.xml: “I think the Wave met their need for answers in a fearful situation. And I became intrigued by it myself. I discovered I liked the order and the control.

Does he now feel it was a mistake? “Definitely. You should never place kids in that danger.” Jones regularly rejects requests from teachers to replicate the project.”

I wonder why people exhibit Stockholm syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome) - “a psychological response sometimes seen in an abducted hostage, in which the hostage shows signs of loyalty to the hostage-taker, regardless of the danger (or at least risk) in which they have been placed.”

In the movie I am going to invoke the Stanford prison experiment, the New Haven shock experiment, the Asch conformity experiment, and conditions that let up to the Challenger explosion to show that systems can to a large extent determine how people behave.

Now that’s I’ve written what’s below, I need to do other things so I am going to comment on all this soon.

Now a little on each.

The Stanford prison experiment

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment: “The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted in 1971 by a team of researchers led by psychologist Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. Twenty-four undergraduates were selected out of 70 to play the roles of both guards and prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building.

Prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited “genuine” sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized and two had to be removed from the experiment early. After sensing that everyone had been too absorbed in their roles, including himself, Zimbardo terminated the experiment after six days.

The experiment are said to support situational attributions of behaviour rather than dispositional attribution. In other words, it seemed the situation caused the participants’ behaviour, rather than anything inherent in their individual personalities.”

The Milgram shock experiment
http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/01/milgrams_notorious_.html:
“In Milgram’s original study, participants were asked to give increasingly severe electric shocks to someone supposedly trying to learn a series of word pairs.

In fact, the ‘learner’ was an actor and no shocks were given, but they screamed as if they were in increasing amounts of pain, while the experimenter ordered the participant to increase the voltage.

The experiment tested how far someone would go in giving pain to another human being when being ordered by an authority figure. 65% of participants continued despite indications that the ‘learner’ might be unconscious or dead.”

From http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm: “Ultimately 65% of all of the “teachers” punished the “learners” to the maximum 450 volts. No subject stopped before reaching 300 volts!”

“In his book Obedience to Authority, he [Milgram] elaborated two theories to explain his results:

• The first is the theory of conformism, based on Solomon Asch’s work, describing the fundamental relationship between the group of reference and the individual person: “A subject who has neither ability nor expertise to make decisions, especially in a crisis, will leave decision making to the group and its hierarchy. The group is the person’s behavioral model.”
• The second is the agentic state theory, where, according to Milgram, “the essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes, and he therefore no longer sees himself as responsible for his actions. Once this critical shift of viewpoint has occurred in the person, all of the essential features of obedience follow.”

The Asch conformity experiment.
From http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/social/asch_conformity.html

“In 1951 social psychologist Solomon Asch devised this experiment to examine the extent to which pressure from other people could affect one’s perceptions. In total, about one third of the subjects who were placed in this situation went along with the clearly erroneous majority.”

“Apparently, people conform for two main reasons: because they want to be liked by the group and because they believe the group is better informed than they are.”

The Challenger explosion

I don’t have time to research this right now, but what I’ve heard is that some engineers who reported the O-ring problem were pressured and eventually consented to not stop the launch.

I think sociocracy could be a political form of governance. At the sociocracy center in the Netherlands they’ve talked about it and done scenarios and gameplay about it. I haven’t really studied much about that aspect, but plan to at some point.

I’ve had the idea that with sociocracy, we could have all private institutions take over the functions of government. It’s hard to picture because we’re so used to the corruption that comes with capitalism - as much wealth as possible is drained away as profit. In a sociocratic business, the aim would be a real goal: prevent house fires, or keep people well. We would probably become members rather than buy products, a bit like we pay insurance to be a member of the people covered by that insurance. The fire departments would insure houses, make sure building codes were geared towards fireproofness, inspect people’s houses and provide alarms, etc., and pay out when they couldn’t put out a fire. If they paid decent wages, but didn’t take profits, it would be affordable. Departments would be linked in decision-making all the way up to a global level. Or healthcare: the insurance providers now are incentivized to reject claims - people pay, but don’t receive coverage. Instead of the (huge) insurance profits being drained off into owners’ bank accounts, there would be more money to cover people’s needs.

Obviously I can’t know how this will really work. I’ve been calling this ‘profits vs. aim.’

I was looking for writings on “problems with democracy” and came across this article: http://www.oligarchy.net/ which is apparently originally from: http://www.truthbeknown.com/democrac.htm

The article claims that what we call a “democracy” here in the US now is actually an oligarcy. That seems to be about right from what I’ve seen of the world and this government. It also claims that since we have single rulers like presidents or prime ministers that we might even call our “democracy” an autocracy, ‘rule of the one.’ That’s a point John Buck made in 2001 when he was giving sociocracy workshops at Twin Oaks where I lived. He also pointed out that most of our businesses follow the autocratic principle without even trying to disguise it as democracy, so most of the organizations in our country are unabashedly autocratic.

I looked up Oligarcy and the definition is basically ‘rule of the few.’

This looks like a pretty good site, but I just don’t have time to read it!: http://www.oligarchyusa.com/ Part of the mission statement says: “To restore a semblance of effective democracy and true freedom Americans, and people around the world, need to re-educate themselves as to the true nature of their political and economic systems. Toward this end, OligarchyUSA.com is dedicated to providing old and new information, books, links, reform ideas and debates not easily found or accessed today in establishment media.”

I like that the site creator also talks about banking - the subject of my next documentary!

A quote from that site: “We are back to an oligarchy pretending to be a republic pretending to be a democracy.” Ed Henry

So, okay, we do seem to live in an oligarchy (Oiligarchy?) Can sociocracy potentially even out that power? Maybe. It seems like the best bet because it was designed to do that. Of course, it’s up to the people here who every day due to ignorance and dependency give up power to the oligarchs. They need to see that they are not getting an accurate picture from the mainstream media. They need to realize how the world and the US really work. They need to want to do something about it. They are going to have to see the options that many people have already worked out that will help us through this crisis that has already begun. Then they have to act. Stop laughing! It could happen!!

The day after putting my site up someone who isn’t on any of my lists (that is, someone I didn’t tell) saw it! It is at http://www.ranprieur.com/ and this is what was said about my site:

“September 2. Jim sends a link to a site about sociocracy, which appears to be a brand of non-authoritarian structure for communities and businesses, the same way permaculture is a brand of ecological design. Branding is useful because if you start talking to people about a challenging new concept, they won’t listen, but if you can hook them with a good word, they’ll say, “Oooo, what’s that?” and then you can explain it. But branding is also dangerous, because the same hook that pulls you in can hold you in, and make you think your answer is the only answer, or that it’s finished.

The page mentions that “most sociocratic experiments have been dropped,” and comes up with three good explanations, but misses the most important one: our own understanding and design are not yet adequate. If a big system without a single link of domination is an old growth forest, then right now we’re at the stage of weeds coming through cracks in a parking lot. Sociocracy is one species of weed, and there are many others, and if we stay diverse and keep evolving, maybe in a thousand years we’ll have a tree.”

Ted’s answer: This might be a somewhat accurate analogy, but sociocracy is a weed that adapts very quickly. From listening to people like CEO Marten Ditsburg of Reekx in the Netherlands, sociocracy is still, after 15 years, changing his organization under his feet. It’s one of the challenges of sociocracy that the form of the organization that uses it is never static very long. Intellectually this seems like a good thing, and it is, but it can be very difficult to deal with as well. I think this weed can be the same species of plant that grows into the old growth tree. I am definitely not saying that sociocracy is done evolving as it is now. I am saying that it allows for changing itself. Personally I think humans understand enough to create that old growth forest NOW – with sociocracy plus a lot of other wonderful ideas that many people have developed. The problem is that the systems we have don’t encourage these good ideas since they don’t end up consolidating power in a few people’s hands so they’re not encouraged and will take a long time to be adopted. As we encourage and experience these ideas we will evolve them more fully. I’m sure we won’t be totally where we want to be in a thousand years, but I think we could pull up a lot of the asphalt in that parking lot within a century or two.

One of the biggest challenges of telling others what sociocracy is about is that the assumptions about what it is come fast and furious and these assumptions are all based in the authoritarian structures we have now. Thinking about not dominating others is so far out of the box that people who are looking for that kind of thing can’t even wrap their brain around it.

Please check out the comments after each blog entry.

My friend John asked me what hurdles I see to sociocracy being widely adopted. I see three hurdles that have to be crossed. The first hurdle is just people finding out about it. The movie will help some with that. The second hurdle is then understanding what sociocracy means and why it is a better form of governance. Hopefully, I’ll be able to explain that in the movie as well. The third hurdle is reconditioning ourselves out of the only mindset we know right now: domination. Also, some people, especially those with power, are resistant to it. That is, some people have to learn to think outside the domination box and others don’t want to. This has proved to be a challenge for the sociocracy center in the Netherlands. It’s one thing I’m fascinated to study and try to solve. I’ve been calling this ‘domination vs. self-determination.’

Right now this is the big issue for me. I had a hard time coming up with a word that meant the opposite of dominance. I toyed with cooperative, freedom-based, non-violent, ahimsa, but they all require more explanation – we can’t just say them and everyone knows what we’re talking about. In the same way, we don’t think in these terms because we don’t talk about it.

Then I found (searchwords: linear, circular, domination) http://edocs.ub.unimaas.nl/loader/file.asp?id=262, an article by Georges Romme at the University of Maastricht where Gerard Endenburg teaches each week. He used the word self-determination. I like that and will start using it. I want to slip it into my subtitle ‘Beyond Democracy: Domination Versus Self-determination.’ Or ‘Beyond Democracy to True Self-determination.’ Something like that. What do you think?

Domination, by definition, doesn’t include giving power to those affected by decisions. A boss may consult others, but, in the end, the decision is the boss’s. Without guaranteeing a say in decisions to others affected, those decisions will end up ignoring people’s input and desires. It’s not too unreasonable to draw the conclusion that domination necessarily leads to violence – most of the time only subtle, but nonetheless, violence. We could almost say that it is violence, but the decisions made don’t always go against someone’s needs and desires.

Sociocracy helps its participants grow out of domination. To understand how we have to look at what skills people need to develop in order to use it. For this we can look at why many sociocratic experiments have been discontinued. The reasons include:

• The organization couldn’t create an environment where the participants felt safe enough to speak their minds honestly (without duress).
• Participants, even though provided a safe environment, are still conditioned to behave as subordinates.
• There can be peer pressure to go along with a proposal that might be objectionable.
• Someone with power feels threatened.

The changes people need to make:

• Superiors have to create safe environments free of duress.
• Participants have to proactively exercise influence in their organization.
• People have to differentiate themselves from others and speak up for themselves.
• Superiors have to buy in.

Encouraging these changes has been the biggest challenge for the Dutch Sociocracy Center to grapple with. Making this transition is crucial to moving from a system based in domination to a system based on shared interests. We have found that when people have a sustainably safe environment for a long enough period, they begin to act differently and become more proactive and differentiated. This, I believe, is the crucible of freedom. Sociocracy gives us a tool, but we can’t use it without creating the freedom to speak honestly. Sociocracy shows us clearly what freedom is and that we need to actively create it.

What do you think? Please add your comments!

I am starting my first blog!

What I would like to do here is have the “conversation” on this website pertaining to the issues that sociocracy brings up. I would really like anyone and everyone with an opinion to add to this – that means you!

As I’ve gotten more and more into sociocracy I find that it has brought up many, many important issues – many of which seem to go to the core of what it means to be human. Some of these include a number of issues brought up by the difference between linear and circular systems. These are issues such as domination vs. self-determination, why people in organizations spend time trying to maintain and amass power instead of working towards the organization’s goals, safety coming from obedience to the boss vs. coming from working in a team towards a common aim, the bottom line or lines, who owns and what is ownership, even whether there is a god or not (well, I think systems theory brings that issue up). There are many more important and interesting issues as well.

It may not be clear here just what import each of those things I listed has, but let’s take for instance the bottom line or lines. This, I think, is a major advantage of sociocracy. Most businesses are working towards profit maximization. This is partly due to ownership being the basis of decision-making and the disconnect of shareholders to the daily workings of the business itself. It is also partly due to the culture of capitalism we’re brought up in and the current ideas about what is necessary or proper. If a business has a second or third bottom line, it is usually, what, to care about people, or to care about the environment?

The method of sociocracy makes it so that the vision of an organization is not profit maximization, but to actually do something, and that being fiscally viable is part of the strategy to accomplish the vision and to measure its success for future decisions. This different focus would bring about major changes in the way humans operate were it to start being adopted. It is one of the strongest arguments for using sociocracy.

I’m sure many of you have more knowledge about different parts of this issue and can add to it in ways that I just can’t on my own. I don’t want to be like a boss, saying This is how it is. I want to be part of a team, saying Let’s look at all sides of this issue and see what it’s all about and if it is pertinent to the movie.

The goal is to get such deep and meaningful discussions that we attract to this site other people interested in these ideas.

Please never hesitate to add your voice: feedback, encouragement, and ideas.

Thank you,

Tedo