LoD

Updated Thursday, March 26, 2009

A Deeply Transformative New Deal

By Vigdor Schreibman

Background image of painting by Jasper Johns. USA Flag. 1954-55.
Encaustic, oil, and collage on fabric mounted on plywood (three panels)
42 1/4 x 60 5/8 (107.3 x 154 cm).
Original painting on exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY.
What the artist who produced this masterpiece of Contemporary American pop art has done,
"is to at once love and question the US. And perhaps no artist ever did both quite so compactly
as Jasper Johns when he painted an American flag."
Johnathan Jones, The Guardian, London, UK (April 22, 2003).

Introduction

In a companion essay we consider the striking importance of Moral Imagination, in enabling individuals to see clearly and vividly exactly what is going on; a goal dependent upon our attempt "to increase the strength and the courage of the individual in the face of the potential rebirth of the self." The present document is devoted to helping citizens of a democracy to realize the latter goal.

In order to realize this ambitious goal we want to invite participants to engage in meaningful group dialogue that can support self-development of understanding and grasp of A Deeply Transformative New Deal that individuals or groups might be interested in learning, to sharpen their ability to guide the evolution of democracy. LoD will facilitate participants in exploring the three pivotal components that govern effective decision-making of public or private organizations, in a democracy, which comprise the Setting for decisions of the Information-Age, illustrated below in table 1.

Each of these three pivotal components is further elaboraed into a set of four subcomponents based on a set of theories of action, or mental models that tell people how to act in any given situation. These subcomponents and mental models may be further elaborated by participants, in the dialogue, to reflect their own personal perspectives. Finally the point of this focus is to organize this information under two categories that reveal in detailed dimensions the incommensurable theories of action and deep values-gap plaguing the American people and society, which:

1. drive the current situation defined by decadent capitalism, and

2. provide a countervailing vision of the desired future defining democratic sustainability.

We want to focus attention on these critical leverage points of decision-making in order to enable democratic groups to guide the evolution of change in the structures of power that directly affect their lives. This focus is founded upon an extensive body of professional research and best practices by the leading authorities on this topic. See e g., C. ARGYRIS AND D. SCHON, ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING, 1978; email message from J.N. Warfield to V. Schreibman, Feb. 19, 1998 (on Synergy Model). The need for deliberate focus in the application of technology toward the normative ends and values of the “willed future” that can most likely realize human betterment, is critical. “All of our exalted technological progress, civilization for that matter,” Albert Einstein declared, “is comparable to an axe in the hand of a pathological criminal.” Letter to Heinrich Zangger, Dec 1917, quoted in Jürgen Neffe, Einstein: A Biography 256 (trans. S. Frish, 2007).

This focus of discussion on the critical leverage points of decision-making will enable participants to clarify the ideas and discover the structures that are the actual sources of psychic power in the current situation, which drive decision-making of public and private organizations. This will provide a basis for designing a new system of countervailing ideas. Participants can thereby learn about these critical ideas and structures,and discover for themselves the democracy tree, by participating in its establishment. In the process of discovering the democracy tree participants will have the opportunity to internalize and take ownership of the governing principles.

Indeed, this is the strategy for development of a real democracy, one in which every citizen is a leader of democracy engaged to the maximum of their creative capabilities. The organization of such a democracy requires a cellular structure the nucleus of which is explored in A Really Transformative New Deal. This is the imperative structure of all natural elements and all life forms, rather than a fascist style top-down political structure of leaders and followers. How could an authentic American democracy be any different from such central structures of existence? For a democratic society the basic cell is the community group: 10 or 20 individuals organized to explore paramount community needs and interests, and committed to their realization (the “DEMg”).

Every “true individual” everywhere, as Mary Parker Follett explained, should organize one or more of these DEMg, and all citizens can participate in many others, unfolding the multiple dimensions of our civil personality.

Boundary-spanning Email Dialogue
Building The Democracy Tree

Step 1. Form a group of citizen participants who desire to advance the public interest. This should including from 10 tro 20 persons who represent a broad diversity of perspectives that all together comprise the will of the whole population of your community. The group perspective should allow participants to understand and grasp the whole situation.

Step 2. Choose a group leader. The group leader should be able to assist citizen participants in realizing their group goal: to build the democracy tree. The group leader will assure that democratic participation is free and fair, that participant autonomy is respected, and that participant ideas are treated as authentic.

Step 3. There are three branches of the democracy tree, which assure the most effective decision-making. These are the three pivotal components described below in table 1. By majority vote the group will decide, which branch to develp first, second, and third.

Step 4. Citizen participants will asynchronously examine the eight listed "thories of action" (mental models) that govern the selected pivotal component of decision-making in each of the three branches of the democracy tree. If any word or phrase is unclear a participant may present a question seeking clarification or suggest one or more alternatives, by sending an e-mail message to the group leader and each participant. These questions should be discussed by participants, via e-mail, and ideas should be recorded by the group leader.

Step 5. The group leader should prepare and send to each participant a revised set of critical factors, defined in terms of the driving "theories of action," which the group has determined:

1. presently governs the community; and

2. ought to govern the community in the future.

Step 6. The group will engage in synchronous voting to integrate the set of critical factors into an influence pattern, using Onlined Meeting Presenter, together with the unique "consensus building" software called Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) to obtain collective synthesis of the participants' valued ideas. The original software version and users manual are available online free of charge courtesy of the inventor John N. Warfield Institute for Advanced Study of the Integrative Sciences, George Mason University. Final adjustments will be discussed.

Steps 7-8. The group will repeat steps 4-6, with regard to the second and third pivotal component of decision-making, to complete the three branches of the tree of democracy. The group leader will then produce and send to participants a composite map of the influence pattern of the three branches of the tree of democracy.

Boundary-spanning Email Dialogue
Building The Democracy Tree

Table 1.
LoD VALUES TRANSFORMATION MATRIX
Setting for decisions in the Information-age ^*