Collaborative Writing project – what happens next
Thanks to everyone who contributed to the collaborative writing project over the last couple of months. The comments were extremely thoughtful and a range of views emerged, especially on the question of ”leadership”. We plan to launch other collaborative projects soon that are more accessible and interactive.
The importance of what we are trying to do was underlined by Ann in one of the last comments when she wrote: “There will be social unrest, people will start to look for answers and what will influence them will be the ideas that are on the table, so-as-to-speak. In other words if we want our ideas to be taken up by the vast majority of the people we have to get our ideas out there into the mainstream of public opinion.”
One comment contrasted the concept of a network-driven heterarchical approach to creating an effective organisation with more conventional hierarchies and suggested that this is a way to “clearly set us apart from the current state of affairs”.
Frank noted: “Because the networking model of organisation reflects how material reality functions, I think it may well be the necessary developmental form of collective leadership necessary to overcome the limitations of previous attempts to express collective democratic consciousness through united action.”
Earl Gilman in San Francisco wrote that leadership is “looking ahead, warning and preparing our brothers and sisters”.
There were also many different points of view about the state and power and other questions put up for discussion.
The next step is a face-to-face, network-inspired event in London on March 24.
We will draw together the results from the online discussion and present them at the event (as well as to those who took part in the project). We will circulate the outcome of the project and March 10 as widely as possible in a way that encourages more discussions, comment and development.
This will form part of our collective contribution to working out practical solutions to the multi-layered challenges facing humanity in 2012.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
2 February 2012
