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I am back home again after yet another green world café. We might not have been a huge crowd, but for me to experience the connections and conversations that emerge among diverse people, young and old, businessmen and students, environmentalists and just “ordinary” people are so inspiring. As I have written before, diversity is really powerful. Facilitation dialogue is the most exciting (and challenging) thing I have done for a long time. If you haven’t heard of conversations like the World Café, read about it at theworldcafe.com.

On-line cafés

Afterwards a few of us discussed the possibilities to include people from other countries in the conversations through video-conferencing systems. Imagine discussing sustainability issues with people from Greenland, Malaysia or Borneo, or having “joint-cafés” happening at the same time at different places.

We need mirrors

We have ways of thinking and solving problems in Europe that we believe is right. Many people are not aware of that their way of thinking is just a way of thinking. Do you follow me? We have one perspective, but there are more. We try to be “objective”, but in a fact we have blind spots that become visible to us only through meeting people from other cultures. These people are gifts to us! This is an alternative way to look at immigrants. They are gifts, not problems. We are often so eager to export our thoughts and solutions. We have good ideas, yes, but do we know it all? People from other cultures are in a way like mirrors. Through conversation and friendship with them, we can see ourselves in new light and we change to the better.

On-line conversations

We have people with different ethnicity close by, in our own city, but wouldn’t it be a fascinating to utilize new technology to connect across cultures? You might read this and live in New Zealand, Kenya or Singapore. You are a gift to the Swedish culture and I am a gift to yours. Would you say yes to a cross-cultural conversation?

Some time ago I came across this video. I don’t remember where I found it, it might have been at KarmaTube. The language is foreign to me, but the message is clear. This video became very special to me.
It’s title is: Be The Change.

I am going to get personal now. As I watched this video I was very much moved and started to cry. It came from deep within my heart. I was taken aback because of the intensity of my feelings. I decided not to control myself and did not hold back. Something was stirred and awakened in me. When I look back, I can see that this experience brought faith into my heart that we as humans can cooperate and that I could be part of it. For me it was like finding a deeper level within myself or maybe that a deeper level made itself known. It was special event.

We live every day surrounded by information, possibilities and choices. Among this noise there are encounters that can affect us deeply. It is hard to describe how to find them, but they are out there waiting for us. When our hearts are touched deep down we become passionate and compassionate.

I began to reflect on the importance that we have our feelings as well as our thoughts engaged in what we do. We need a holistic perspective in our dealings with the world today and that is possible to achieve when our feelings and thoughts go together. Wholeness. Intellectual solutions is not enough. Compassion is the foundation because we are dealing with the living.

I had a similar experience a little later when I saw this video where Juanita Brown explains the vision of The World Café. It moved me deeply in a way I cannot describe. I had heard about The World Café earlier, so the information was not new. Perhaps you don’t feel anything special when you watch the videos. They are not magical. But it was an opportunity passing by for me at that time. There are other opportunities for you. That second experience strengthened my conviction; yes, we can do it.

I believe opportunities of deep connection like these are given more often than we realize. Sometimes we fail to find them, but when we recognize them and embrace them, the change is profound. Learning by heart and doing things out of your heart, have new meanings for me now.

There is a blog called “Conversation as a co-evolutionary force” hosted by the Word Café that recently had an interesting post: “Maturana and humanness” written by Juanita Brown, one of the originators of The World Café. After a visit to the Institute of Professor Humberto Maturana in Chile, she wrote some reflections.

Maturana explains (in Juanita’s words):

“Humanness is not a genetic mutation. It is a manner of living where there is pleasure in each other’s company, sharing food, nearness, caressing and tenderness – nor is the capacity for language a genetic mutation – it is an evolutionary drift emerging from the intimacy of human community and the coordination of actions in language together.  It is in the intimate community where humanness arises as a network of conversations that is conserved over generations as a lineage through the raising of children over hundreds of generations in manners of living that are conserved in that lineage.  Humanness did not arise in competition, struggle etc.  It arose in intimate family/community co-existence.”

Inside images

Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela have done some interesting scientific work on cognitive systems, in plain language: how our mind works. Their research has shown that we as humans live inside the images we hold of the world. This is true even for how we perceive colours. We think our individual understanding of the world is absolute and correct, a representation of what is out there, but it is not. We live very much in our thoughts about the world and in our thoughts about the people around us. Our culture has favoured conceptualization for a long time and as a result we get stuck in preconceived ideas of reality.

Conversations

Maturana also says that we as humans “live in our language” and through the networks our conversations, we bring forth a world.  We shape our culture. Dialogue is our human way of creating and sustaining the realities in which we live.  We think and coordinate our actions together through conversation. We create through our talking, for good or for bad, we know that. What a responsibility!

Networks of intimate conversations are true humanness. Mindful conversations, an evolutionary force, that shapes the future, how about that?

Create opportunities

What if we designed our lives and communities according to these (scientific) truths? What if we let go of our own stiff ideas and began to listen deeply to each other? What if our future on earth depends on that we on purpose create opportunities for conversations?

We believe that if we inform people enough, they will choose the right things. No, it doesn’t work as we think, because it is one-way communication. There is no cooperation and involvement. It is someone telling others what to do.

In the family

Think about it in a family setting. We ought to create opportunities for intimate conversations with our mate. That’s not always easy and automatic. As time goes by in a relationship and, since we often live a busy life, we develop separate worlds. Instead of living in two worlds, you and your mate could create a world together. Living with each other is listening deeply to each other. What if love is not something that suddenly comes and one day just disappears, but something that grows and is nurtured in close conversations.

Think about your children. What if intimate and personal conversations are the main ingredient in bringing up children. Taking the time. Listening. It is better to create a shared understanding, interest and involvement than commanding them what to do and what not to do. As your children grow up and become teenagers their world of thoughts change and you can be left behind. You might want them to come to your world,  but I believe there is a fantastic possibility in respectfully growing together with your teenagers.

In the city

Think about it in a wider setting, concerning city planning and administration. We ought to create places and opportunities for intimate conversation all over the city. We should plan our libraries and meeting halls so that they are inviting for small conversations; build cafés acoustically for easy talking. It is especially important to create opportunities for people from different backgrounds, different ages, different interests and different kind of positions and ethnicity to meet and talk. Let’s work on tearing down barriers and fragmentation.  What if small intimate conversations are the key to a thriving city?

Your city

I have a number of friends who are also thinking along these lines and we explore the possibilities together. What can we do for our city? What can you do for your city?

I and my friend Daniel Norman arranged a Green World Café last week at the Red Cross in our town. It was the first in a series of four, with the last one taking place in November at a big sustainable fair in Umeå. We had a great time with every one actively exploring the two questions of the night; they were “what is a sustainable lifestyle?” and “What is our personal responsibility?”. It is all too easy to get paralyzed or passivated concerning environmental issues, believing that it is only experts, politicians and technology that can make a change. No, we can make a change if we are many and if we begin to think together!

What is a World Café, you may ask? It is a way to have conversations in small groups and explore a given theme. It was originally “invented” by Juanita Brown and David Isaacs. They put together a number of proven principles about dialogue, creative thinking, appreciative inquiry and collective intelligence and it has been used successfully, world-wide in different contexts. The conversations in small groups build on each other as people move between groups (tables), ideas are cross-pollinated and people discover new insights into the questions that we choose to discuss. Seeing things from a broader perspective is a key.

We tried to create a relaxed and inviting café-atmosphere. The age-span was wide and we had people from all kinds of backgrounds. It is very exciting to look at diversity as strength. By having these cafés we hope to inspire people and help them to become more active to explore a sustainable lifestyle on their own. I really look forward to the next meeting, Oct 8. We have a swedish site about these meetings. You will find it here.