Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘values’

Guiding Step 3: Make Better Sense of the City – Provide Integrally In-formed Information

Posted in B. Individual Intelligences, C. Collective Intelligences, Integral Maps, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 17, 2013 | 2 Comments »


Is information in your city easy to come by? or is it difficult to make sense of your city because information is scarce or misaligned?

Integral City AQAL

Information in the Integral City is critical to the city’s functioning, wellbeing and thriving. But when we are overwhelmed by electronic news blasts it can be difficult to know what to pay attention to, because over-stimulation  can make us shut down. Ironically in the midst of the internet’s mediation of our news frenzy we can feel socially cut off from our nearest neighbours.

How can information that is Integrally In-Formed prevent both the overwhelm and help us interpret what really matters?

Firstly we can use the 4 quadrants of the Integral City map to be mindful that we are receiving and noticing information through all our lenses. For instance, consider information that is useful for your neighbourhood’s transportation system – how would you answer these questions?

  1. How safe do I feel in all the ways I travel?
  2. What modes of travel do I use? walking, bicycling, busing, rail, car driving, flying?
  3. What relationships impact the way I travel? family, friends, work colleagues, strangers?
  4. How does the city maintain city transportation systems? roads, buses, railway, airports?

We can use this simple system to filter the information overwhelm that too often deluges us. And we can also use it as a simple checklist to gain information from all 4 quadrants, when we are in dialogue with others about anything in the city that is important to us. Those conversations can be easily catalyzed by simple starting questions such as:

  1. Why is this [issue] important to you (how is it valuable, or not)?
  2. What is working?
  3. What is not working?
  4. What could work better?

The answers to these questions can then be sorted into the categories of the 4 quadrants noted above.

Using this simple integrally informed information gathering and management system, organizes our personal and collective realities (of thought/feelings, actions, relationships and systems). It creates an intelligent, wholes systems way of  impacting and actually in-forming our decisions, behaviours, cultures and economic opportunities.

Read Full Post »

Guiding Step Two: Identifying Assumptions for a Planet of Cities

Posted in A. Contexting Intelligences, E. Evolutionary Intelligences, Master Intelligence, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 15, 2013 | 4 Comments »


Assumptions in the city arise not only from the four voices of the city – but from the worldviews being expressed in those voices.

earthb

Worldviews emerge from the beliefs of what is important around here and how those values are translated by the city’s voices.

In the most basic ego-centric way, assumptions are implicit – how do I access the basics of life (food, shelter, clothing)? how do I fit into my family? how am I earn my living (or not)?

When these needs are met, more complex ethno-centric assumptions build upon them – what language do we use to communicate within our groups or clans (the one from our home country, our special dialect or the one(s) we learn in school)? how does our group or neighbourhood relate to other groups or neighbourhoods (in being entitled to schooling or healthcare) ? how do we practise and express our spiritual and religious assumptions? who are our leaders and who are the authorities we follow?

Smaller cities have traditionally been able to coalesce around shared ethno-centric assumptions.

But as a city grows in size, the multiplicity of ethno-centric assumptions can make the Tower of Babel seem like an apt metaphor for the mixture of voices and clashes of worldviews that vie for air-space and audience.

Large cities that mature create a city-centric worldview that embraces the multiple ethno-centric and ego-centric assumptions into a coherent perspective of how the city can be governed for the greatest benefit of all.  With a city-centric worldview we can make decisions about the infrastructure that supports Citi-Zens’ daily life; the relationships that Civil Society can bridge between ethno-centric groups; the resources needed for thriving Business; and the governance that City Hall, Education and Healthcare institutions require to coordinate city-centric functions.

The most mature cities go beyond even a city-centric set of assumptions and realize that they are part of a Planet of Cities – that their exchange of resources and commerce depends on assumptions about planetary economy; that their exchange of ideas produces assumptions contributing to planetary generativity; that their demands on the environment require assumptions about evolution, sustainability and resilience; and that their cultural embrace of the shared story about their city on the planet, emerges a world-centric set of assumptions that aligns ego-ethno-city-world-centric assumptions and connects cities together as a Planetary System of Cities.

When you consider this holarchy of worldviews – what assumptions do you hold about your city? How do your assumptions impact the way you practise the Master Code for the Human Hive?

Read Full Post »

Navigating Intel Works With Meshworking Intel

Posted in city, tagged , , , , , on August 24, 2012 | 1 Comment »


From an Integral Vital Signs Monitor design, the Integral Scorecard can become the reporting vehicle for informing all the stakeholders of the city.

It tells us whether we are achieving the purpose and objectives of the city in a sustainable way. It reveals to us if we are amassing the energy, matter and information that we need to sustain ourselves. It is a way of mapping capacity and potential and has the power to reveal imbalances that indicate unsustainable practices.

Navigating intelligence using IVSM works hand in hand with Meshworking intelligence to design new governance systems that research, plan  and manage the city.

Three simple rules for applying Integral City Navigating Intelligences

  1. Select the future destination of the city based on its vision.
  2. Design and implement integral dashboards, using integral indicators of wellbeing for the city.
  3. Notice outcomes and make course corrections to enable progress naturally.

===

This blog is a prologue to the Integral City webinar conference  City 2.0 Co-Creating the Future of the Human Hive . We are inventing a new operating system for the city.  Click to get more details re the Free Expo and eLaboratory membership  scheduled September 4-27  2012. You are invited to attend and participate.

Read Full Post »

Values-Based Inquiry Shows Many Answers to One Question

Posted in D. Strategic Intelligences, Inquiry, tagged , , , , , , , on August 9, 2012 |


Inquiry is so much more productive for the wellbeing of the city, than prescriptions for health, because it opens the doors of innovation and generativity.

For a truly vibrant city, each inquiry question reveals a whole system of values all of which must be healthy, in order for the whole city to be healthy.

The eight value systems that have currently evolved are represented in these themes:

  1. Individual safety and survival
  2. Bonding, family relationships, clan and tribal customs
  3. Individual expressiveness, joy, personal power
  4. Order, authority, rules, laws, bylaws, ordinances, infrastructure
  5. Organization, efficiency, effectiveness, strategies, results
  6. Community, diversity, acceptance of differences, equal rights
  7. Whole systems thinking, ecological connections
  8. Global worldviews, shared world emergence

The deficiencies and blocks identified in an inquiry indicate the barriers to the natural flow of resources to, within and through a healthy human hive. In our quest for city improvement, how can we overcome the causes of such blocks and recreate the vibrant health that sustain our city?

One of the most powerful outcomes of using this values mapping inquiry process is that it creates a common language to interpret and talk about our Human Hives. And we learn that we can have many answers to one question.

===

This blog is a prologue to the Integral City webinar conference  City 2.0 Co-Creating the Future of the Human Hive . We are inventing a new operating system for the city.  Click to get more details re the Free Expo and eLaboratory membership  scheduled September 4-27  2012. You are invited to attend and participate.

Read Full Post »

Valentine for Gaia’s Reflective Heart

Posted in city, Spiritual intelligence, tagged , , , , , on February 15, 2012 | 1 Comment »


I want to love the city as my self. I want to care for the city – not just take her for granted.  I want to observe and think and feel and want for the city, as if she were a living person – because she is an extension of me and all the people who live within her as Gaia’s Reflective Heart.

   

I want to love the city as a whole, so that I can grasp her as an integrated whole system made up of massively interconnected sub-systems, each of which needs to be healthy in relation to all the other sub-systems. I want to become aware of the health of the city, just as I am aware of the health of my self.  I want to develop and use monitors of the city’s vital signs so that I can understand the city as a living system with complex, and interrelated sub-systems.

I want to love the external and internal life of the city, so that I can appreciate it through my powers of observation, but also through how the city reflects how I and others think, feel and desire about the city – how is the city an extension of all ourselves?  That means that I need to be able to be open to understand how other selves (people) in the city think, feel and want.

I want the city to love herself – to have a sense of pride in herself; to develop an ethic and set of values for how people choose to live together; to develop a vision for herself for tomorrow.  I want the city to understand she can choose to flourish, just as I can make choices for my self to flourish.

I want to love being an intentional city dweller.  I want to understand the part I play in a healthy city – as body, mind and soul.  I want to contribute the appropriate part of my resources to the city’s sustenance and health, not just through fair taxation, but through active participation in decision-making and voluntary contributions of time and skills. I want to support through voting, referenda and direct participation, the tough decisions that elected officials and city managers might need to make, in order for the city to be well.

I want to love my elected officials because they think, feel and want for the city in an integral way, so they can represent city thoughts, feelings and desires.  I want intentionally integral city managers and staff, to manage the processes of the city as a living system, so that she is healthy and balanced.

I want to love the upper levels of government (provincial/state and federal) because they value the city – because they know without her success, the success of the upper levels of government is undermined.  I want the upper levels of government  to translate their valuing of the city into political support and the resources that honour that value.

I love the city and I want the city to flourish, because if she flourishes, my peers will flourish and my self will flourish.  If the city suffers, some or all of my peers will suffer and my self will suffer.  The city is my self. The city shows her love for me in so many ways. And I love her as I love my greater Self.

Read Full Post »

Integral City 2.0 Economists Create Cracks & Open Light

Posted in Building - Structures, Emergence, Navigating - IVSM, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 19, 2012 | 1 Comment »


There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. Leonard Cohen

If City 2.0 is to support more life-giving options for behaviours, intentions, cultures and systems, City Economics 2.0 will have to emerge as an integral part of the whole.

A pessimist would say we have been witnessing the disintegration of the old economy in the last ten+ years with the waves of meltdowns surging across the globe like tsunamis, engulfing in turn Asian Tigers, Japan,  Southern Asia, BRIC, USA, PIGS, Europe.

An optimist might way we are witnessing a whole new economy being born – like a new life emerging from an egg that is cracking open. The tsunamis are merely the result of  new life pushing to the surface, seeking light as people outgrow the old systems that enabled survival but now curtail the next natural stage of emergence. The Occupy movements and their cousins are pecking away at the old shells, too brittle now to hold the flex and flow needed to nurture City 2.0.

The new economics is being created from the bottom up and the top down at the same time. We are growing a whole new metabolic system for City 2.0.  Christian Arnsperger’s Eco-Transitions describes an eco-system with processes for exchange that are more reasonable, more ecologically viable  and more socially equitable. Long a visionary voice for the invisible economy and the champion of an ecologically balanced and socially responsible economy Hazel Henderson has been developing systems, investment vehicles and metrics for the new economy for decades. Other economic voices like MacLeod and even the Euro’s ”father” Bernard Litaer are dialoguing with regional experts like Gwendolyn Hallsmith  call for multiple currencies that can co-exist in cities for different purposes and different markets. Values-based economic pioneers like Said Dawlabani  recognizes that “memenomics” explains the natural stratification of wealth that emerges along with the values systems (Vmemes) of societies.

Actually new wealth is emerging because people are inventing not just new economies but ecologies of economies that break open the hard shells created by the old banking systems, national governments and organizational oligarchies.

As Integral City 2.0 emerges a lot of light is breaking through. City 2.0 is going to have to accustom itself to the glare and learn how to dance in it.

Read Full Post »

Remembering for the Future: Freedom Manifesto for 11-11-11

Posted in E. Evolutionary Intelligences, Emergence, Storytelling - Cultures, tagged , , , , on November 11, 2011 | 2 Comments »


 On this Remembrance Day of 11-11-11 let us be grateful for the Freedoms  gained by our ancestors, that equip us for the Future. May we Celebrate the Resilience of Life in Remembering our Evolutionary Commitments:

  • to protect our individual needs for physical and spiritual safety and survival; and prevent harm to all individuals.
  • to honour the traditions and heritage of each group of persons so long as they do not threaten the health of *PPPPP; and honour the contributions of the elders so long as they do not threaten the health of  *PPPPP.
  • to defend the freedom of each individual to express their development and creativity without infringing on the freedom of others to express their development and creativity.
  •  to respect the value of order without imposing restrictions that harm individuals or groups; and honour the need for order that serves the entire *PPPPP.
  •  to promote the success of persons; to be accountable for the integral and fair exchange of products, services and ideas as long as resources do not accumulate for the benefit of a few interests, organizations and/or levels of development, at the expense of (or while depriving resources to) *PPPPP;  to publicly recognize the origination/originator of ideas, products and services.
  • to accept the dignity of groups; ensure fair opportunity for all persons to pursue happiness as long as no individual or group is prevented from doing likewise; to not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, gender, creed as long as such action ensures the health of *PPPPP; to not seek to favour any group at the expense of another group as long as such action ensures the health of *PPPPP.
  • to facilitate the integral flex and flow of energy across all aspects of *PPPPP; to unblock the barriers to the emergence of new ways of thinking, doing, being as long as they respect the health of *PPPPP; to mesh the elegance of natural patterns, processes and structures.
  •  to value the geo/bio/noetic capacities of the planet; to respect the integral ecology of *PPPPP; to co-emerge the evolutionary intelligence of Life inherent in *PPPPP.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

May the Manifesto of Freedom Honour Life’s Universal Values of

*PPPPP= Place, Plant, Phyla, Person, Planet

Read Full Post »

Neuroimaging Research Confirms Values Preferences Are Visible in Brain Patterns

Posted in B. Individual Intelligences, C. Collective Intelligences, Outer, Storytelling - Cultures, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 24, 2011 | 1 Comment »


Dr. Clare Graves(1) (and many researchers since) proposed that human values systems emerged in alternating stages of Individualistic expression and Collectivist embrace. He had the insight to propose that evidence would be found in the biological domains (as well as psychological and social) long before technology like fMRI scanning had been invented.  Graves proposition is fundamental to the framework (developed by Dr. Don Beck) that has become Spiral Dynamics integral.

Now Dr. Marc Lucas and his research colleagues in Cologne Germany are proving Dr. Graves’  propositions were quite correct. In a just published article they summarize their findings, showing that distinctive brain patterns can be associated with Individualistic versus Collectivist preferences .  With permission, we have reprinted the Abstract below. Click on the title to access the full article.

Moral Concepts Set Decision Strategies to Abstract Values

Abstract

Persons have different value preferences. Neuroimaging studies where value-based decisions in actual conflict situations were investigated suggest an important role of prefrontal and cingulate brain regions. General preferences, however, reflect a superordinate moral concept independent of actual situations as proposed in psychological and socioeconomic research. Here, the specific brain response would be influenced by abstract value systems and moral concepts. The neurobiological mechanisms underlying such responses are largely unknown. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a forced-choice paradigm on word pairs representing abstract values, we show that the brain handles such decisions depending on the person’s superordinate moral concept. Persons with a predominant collectivistic (altruistic) value system applied a “balancing and weighing” strategy, recruiting brain regions of rostral inferior and intraparietal, and midcingulate and frontal cortex. Conversely, subjects with mainly individualistic (egocentric) value preferences applied a “fight-and-flight” strategy by recruiting the left amygdala. Finally, if subjects experience a value conflict when rejecting an alternative congruent to their own predominant value preference, comparable brain regions are activated as found in actual moral dilemma situations, i.e., midcingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Our results demonstrate that superordinate moral concepts influence the strategy and the neural mechanisms in decision processes, independent of actual situations, showing that decisions are based on general neural principles. These findings provide a novel perspective to future sociological and economic research as well as to the analysis of social relations by focusing on abstract value systems as triggers of specific brain responses.

Citation: Caspers S, Heim S, Lucas MG, Stephan E, Fischer L, et al. (2011) Moral Concepts Set Decision Strategies to Abstract Values. PLoS ONE 6(4): e18451. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0018451

————————–

Reference:

(1) Graves, C. (2005). The Never Ending Quest: A Treatise on an Emergent Cyclical Conception of Adult Behavioral Systems and Their Development. Santa Barbara, CA: ECLET Publishing.

Read Full Post »

Executive Summary, Mapping Abbotsford Values & Developing Integral Vital Signs Monitor

Posted in A. Contexting Intelligences, B. Individual Intelligences, C. Collective Intelligences, city, D. Strategic Intelligences, E. Evolutionary Intelligences, Ego, Ethno, Global/Worldcentric, tagged , on July 1, 2010 |


I have posted to the website the Research Report on Mapping Abbotsford’s Values and Developing an Integral Vital Signs Monitor. This 2010 research updates the reserach I completed in 2003.  You can read the full study at http://integralcity.com/discovery-zone/research.html 

This study contributed Knowledge and Development Exchange (KDE) for a Welcoming and Inclusive Communities and Work Places project, named “Food for Thought” located in Abbotsford BC. 

The objectives of this study were:

  1. Values mapping to identify the location of differences: cultural sources of misunderstandings, conflicts and differing expectations. This contributed directly to effective decision making in the “Food for Thought” Demonstration Project (DP). 
  2. Mapping values of newcomers and immigrants to Abbotsford, identifying postal code locations, languages (and thereby culture and ethnic backgrounds) and age (with a special focus on youth), to help locate the geographic clustering or distribution of newcomers and immigrants.  This revealed the interconnections and disconnections of people.
  3. Creating a framework for a capacity and asset map of Abbotsford that embraces Place Caring and Place Making capacities.
  4. Developing a framework for a vital signs of wellbeing monitor for Abbotsford based on the values and asset maps, which can contribute to the strategic planning process of the City, the Fraser Health Authority, the School District, UFV, Civil Society and private firms.

Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from a random population sample of 479 residents including youth, and residents whose first language was Punjabi, Korean and Mandarin. Analysis showed that Abbotsford adults prefer collective-based values of family, order and caring; while youth and Punjabi and Korean language groups have stronger individual-based values, particularly related to personal expression. Overall the data showed that Abbotsford was experiencing a deficit of values related to results, planning and strategy. Most respondents from all the data samples agreed that what was not working well in Abbotsford related to unhealthy personal expression, showing up as drugs, gangs and violence.

Recommendations proposed that :

  1. Abbotsford grow its capacities for success, results and planning at all ages. The Chamber of Commerce is a key stakeholder in enabling this to happen.
  2. The agriculture sector promote the whole trajectory of jobs from the farm gate to the food plate to young people in an annual agriculture career fair.
  3. Policy makers across the city incorporate  the results of this research into values-based strategies in their programs and services.
  4. Key city stakeholders collaborate to activate the prototype of the Integral Vital Signs Monitor (IVSM) to track effective changes to Abbotsford’s wellbeing. 
  5. Key city stakeholders collaborate to create a Community of Practice to administer the Integral Vital Signs Monitor (IVSM) and meshwork community organizations so that their services are aligned.
  6. Other recommendations included: approaching Abbotsford wellbeing with a whole systems, all quadrant, all levels, cross cultural, all faiths meshwork.

 Details of the research on the Integral City Meshworks Inc. website www.integralcity.com and Food for Thought website www.hungryforfutures.ca . Presentations of key Research Findings to interested parties can be scheduled with charter partner Integral City Meshworks Inc. at kde@integralcity.com .

Read Full Post »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 784 other followers

%d bloggers like this: