Dear Associates,
Out of the blue [Kentucky, USA!] came a request from a radical enabler in the field of structural change, asking for comment on the experience of 25 years of  ‘Open Table’ explorations of collaboration. I hope my off-the-cuff response might be of some encouragement to you; knowing something of the dialogues that you have done so much to generate and which still bear fruit.  I would value responses or additions to the hasty summary I sent to…..  

Dear Paul,
Taking your paragraphs, I learned that society’s problems are much more complex and require a new set of skills and thinking to address them. So rather than a silver bullet solution, it requires a holistic approach towards more durable solutions. The short answer – It takes innovation that starts with new thinking….Let me think aloud on my slow keyboard……

I report here how we gradually learned the importance of differentiating between valuable and urgent Palliative initiatives [easing the path within a dying system]  and the more fundamental need of a societal Curative [likely to be learnt from finding harmony between humble science and equally humble spirituality] – basic structural redesign throughout the global society as hereto determined by badly biased human laws. We realised that there must always be a creative tension sustained between them. Each without the other is divisive and so fails the Common Good. 

So gradually we conceived some key clues to achieving our objectives;

BOTH – AND : understanding the necessary creative tensions to be held between all parts of earth’s natural inclusion, its integrity. [Matters thought to be opposite need to be seen as apposite as Yin and Yang.]

CURATIVE – PALLIATIVE: vital and urgent requirement of working on bothto garner the  insights found in each other.

PRINCIPLED-PRAGMATISM: each affecting the other in their different time-spans but vital in the inherent integrity of nature.

CONTEXT – LOCALE: echoing all great faith traditions’ understanding of the inseparable need of loving….both….

GOD – ALL NEIGHBOURS: effective only in their sustained and inseparable inter-dependence.

INTIMATE – CORPORATE – GLOBAL: Inevitably impacting on each other and their incessant interaction over varying but intrically connected time-spans. [so vital a constant in cultures where it is not understood that ‘I am because we are’ – Ubuntu]

This builds up to the need for such a dramatic Metanoia or New Paradigm that only a global awakening such as is being stirred up by the pandemic can encourage, ….helped by the advance of social media spanning global communities with increasing thoroughness.

It also implies that we must all learn to hold even our strongest convictions tentatively as we attend to different terms, starting points, experiences while also helping the specialists to explain their jargon more carefully, while themselves making their boundaries more permeable. [This requires a high tolerance for ambiguity in most exchanges seeking communal action] 

Old economics needs to be restructured as eco-nomics as we each and all experience our eco-theraphy and learn more of the laws of natural replenishable evolution.

We also learnt the importance of  ‘Nothing is impossible if you don’t mind who gets the credit’, however hard it is to work with that in a society moulded by individualism and consumerism. [”We live’ wrote one of our associates, ‘in a culture of socially acceptable cheating.’]

By-and-large we agree to examine how in three particular ways we need to work on change.

1. Introduce the solution of a land value tax to curtail the exploitative dangers of the ownership of land, property and intellectual insight. Creation is a gift, not a controlling agency…. i.e. facing that the evocative, evocative, pro-vocative force holding under the shadow of the human metaphor ‘God’, is embarrassed by possession!

2. To work on returning to a perception of money as a measure of value to end its deeply divisive role as a commodity. All great faith explorations have sought initially the abolition of usurious money transactions. Only Islam still wrestles seriously with that requirement.

 CCMJ has had very little impact on the church at large, where emphasis in ‘individual salvation’ obscures issues of global intergity.

3. Give dignity to every contribution of varied talents and express our shared tasks as co-operatives, not as controlling hierarchical institutions, such as often fail to face either the dignity that should be given to all positive work or to rapidly evolving needs for change.

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Then I added next day:….. inevitably with many omissions of course!

Among several hundred associates who have influenced and been influenced by the focus of the weekly ‘Open Table;  a specific collaborative drive on alternative democratic potential [www.icuk.life]

Five or more Professors [in Economics, Public Banking, Global Awareness, Islamic Finance. Replenishing the Earth]; 

Academaticians in Solar Energy [Solaroof.org], UBIncome, NHS development; and LVTax, Social Capital; clergy; authors [eg Fred Harrison’s ‘Traumatised Society]; radical economists; those advocating the key works of CH Douglas and Henry George, two networking thrusts to define and introduce Holism/Natural Inclusion; linking with a number of UK initiatives in fundamental structural reform – some in pursuit of Principled-Pragmatism, some still only in valuable Pragmatism.  

Radix Think Tank : hello@radixuk.org and www.radixuk.org/

And specific reference to in radical initiatives in the US, by for example Michael Hudson, Elizabeth and Denis Kucinich, Ben Savill and Ellen Brown.

Sylvana Caloni on aspects of open collaborative discussions – 1 Self-awareness: Share your beliefs, values, assumptions, emotions, and body dispositions. 2. Discernment; Distinguish between habits and conscious choice. 3. Practice and Development: Experiment, calibrate and embody. 4. Entreprenurial flexibility: Appreciate nuances, Respond appropriately

And I added our ppt. slides on ‘Our New Home on Earth’

Yours, as the celebration of insights about the potential for profound creatvity in our human incarnation draws near, Peter