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Simple & minimal

My car was stolen yesterday (Subaru Legacy wagon PM7910 in case you are in Christchurch, if you see it call the police). For all the pain there is a sense of freedom too. I might not get another car! Walk, bike and borrow (I don’t intend complete abstinence!).

Strangely, the feeling is similar to having just installed Readability in Firefox. What beautiful clean pages. I love reading on my PC. Maybe I don’t need an iPad after all. I put my laptop on my chest in bed today and read using the Readability, Kindle and Comical. There is something in my astrology pulling towards the simple & minimal.

I have been impressed by Roger Ebert’s item on “frisson”, a delightful and sensible contribution to the trollish “Google makes you stupid” discussions. Google makes us smart! Individually and as a species. What if Gregor Mendel talked to Charles Darwin? Ebert discusses his own experience of finding it hard to sit and read a whole book as in the old days. I know that experience! He has a plan to read again. Re-train the mind. Makes sense to me.

The planets continue to conspire. I read: Alain de Botton, On Distraction, Our minds need to go on a diet. I like it.

I’ve never been impressed by the idea of “Internet free days” or “email free days” as I am strong on using filters and readers to manage information, there is no overload. It takes a bit of work but the Net comes to me quite intelligently. It knows what I want. Not just email filters, search, an RSS reader but socially mediated information via mailing lists and twitter create a stream that tunes into me, like a very good friend.

The Alain de Botton item puts it in perspective. Fasting. A meditative approach. I could do that with food and with information! Far from being anti-food or anti-Internet I can see how fasting can enhance experience, sharpen my senses & taste.

I won’t make any resolutions though. Lets see what the planets have in store.

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More about Readability – an item by Rich Ziade

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Adequacy

This is a word used in psychodrama circles. Used to describe roles. They can be

  • absent
  • embryonic – is a word used on occasions
  • underdeveloped
  • overdeveloped
  • conflicted

or

  • adequate

Adequacy is in the psychodrama domain is the pinnacle of performance – there is nothing more needed. It is not faint praise, as if a schoolteacher looking at an essay using the word might use it to mean. I’ll pass it but only barely.

The word is also used in the definition of spontaneity.

“An adequate response to a new situation.”

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I am reflecting on this word that I have come to appreciate. I like the humble tone. The implicit belief that adequacy is enough. Adequacy echoes the idea in other modalities of “good enough”. The delight of “adequate” is that there is no more required. Adequacy is fitting, nothing more is needed now.

But what is adequate in a new situation? Crying, running, fighting… who arbitrates these things?

Theory does not make sense on its own. Psychodrama theory requires a psychodrama context. Roles occur on a stage, one of the five instruments: Stage, director, auxiliary egos, protagonist and audience.

In such a context there is a warm-up, an enactment and sharing.

The enactment and protagonist emerge from the group. In an enactment there is never one role. The purpose of the endeavour is already defined and explicit. A warm-up may include a purpose and a yearning. Obstacles will be in the consciousness of the group. Adequacy is part of an outcome created collectively, and shared by the group. Adequacy is measured by applause, boos and hisses, laughter and tears.

And of course there will be new discoveries and new developments. After all the situation we have just seen on the stage is now an old one, demanding a new response. And the next time we meet what was adequate last time may be just a step towards the new.

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Outcomes in Small Group Process

My recent post: Can we Survive? is a draft for an item in a psychodrama publication. In that post I link Wisdom Councils and – Creative Insight Councils to the Sociometric methods of J.L. Moreno. The main idea is that there is a lager community and the small group resonates with the larger group in isomoprhic harmony, and can thus give back compelling insights and wisdom.

In this post I want to add a related idea.

From Dynamic Facilitation and the Wisdom Council theory I have got it clear that a small group can achieve something in addition to personal therapy for its members, and assist an organisation or community in developing its life, and in its decision making.

Jim Rough calls it “option creating”, I am not yet sure exactly what he means by this but it is not just a list of possibilities or wild ideas from a brainstorming session. The breakthrough in a group happens when there is an insight into a real option – something the whole group would like to see happen.

Such breakthroughs are possible over the longer time frame of a group, of diverse members, meeting for several days and sharing at a deep level. Traditional meetings can’t achieve this depth.

For a group to be of use to a larger community there needs to be a thorough warm-up before the event as to the purpose and context. While in psychodrama we are aware of the importance of the frame, I have not experienced a group in that tradition that has the focus of leading to outcomes for the whole community. In our organisations we tend to make decision in meetings, and while there is plenty of interaction and depth work, it is not specifically an clearly focussed on future actions. There may be specialist sub-committees, or work groups, but they tend to be by the people with special positions an ongoing positions within the organisation.

Imagine randomly selected diverse small group – from an organisation or community – doing depth work groups with the task of one or two of the following topics:

What is our strategic plan?
What is our vision?
Principles for the Constitution.
Who should be a member?

The group would present its findings to all members of the community or larger organisation and its governing in one a4 document, and 20 minute audio file at a special hui for the occasion.

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