The goal of this series is to create a group of people with the perspective, knowledge, understanding and skills to engage with their communities and begin the process of creating networked, connected, resilient communities in a grassroots way.
The workshops are designed to be interactive and will change with the pieces you bring to them. There are four sections of three workshops broken out in this way:
Section One, Perspective
Workshop One: Addressing perspective part one, discussions on assumptions on “human nature” and our understanding of culture.
Workshop Two: Addressing perspective part two, understanding the tools culture uses to manipulate and coopt efforts of change. Words and meanings, why communication is so challenging, and is getting more so.
Workshop Three: Addressing perspective part three, seeing beyond the expected.
Section Two, Context on Culture
Workshop Four: Ishmael by Daniel Quinn (prerequisite reading). Exploring the development of Taker Culture, and how the human path was coopted by the Taker path.
Workshop Five: Historical Context, those who do not remember the past are destined to repeat it… ~George Santayana. Looking at human history through a contextual lens of the Taker vs the lens of humanity. What would a human future look like?
Workshop Six: The Siblings, Revolution and Evolution, Insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different outcome… AA. Taking a hard look at how the revolutionary cycles have fallen short of the necessary change, how the cycles start again, and how intentional evolution might change the outcomes.
Section Three, Communication and Connections
Workshop Seven: The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz (prerequisite reading). Peeling the onion by exploring the layers of the agreements and exploring how understanding them can help us have deeper connections and overcome the cultural labels that bind us.
Workshop Eight: Meeting people where they are, the art of listening. What we are doing is not new, but it is far outside the norm. Even in normal conversations we tend to think everyone shares our lens of the world and are shocked when there is misunderstanding… We will explore how we do not all see the same thing and how we need to spend time learning where we, and others are, so we can communicate effectively.
Workshop Nine: The Commonalities of our shared humanity. At the core, people want the same things, unfortunately we do not communicate at our core, but at the religious, gender, political, x-label level. An exploration of shared commonalities, priorities, and core connection.
Section Four, Laying Foundations and Planting Grass
Workshop Ten: Breaking Bread, the core human connection. Creating core connections in this group.
Workshop Eleven: Tipping Points, the math of human/cultural programming. Understanding the math of tipping points and change.
Workshop Twelve: Train the Trainer, and the core connection! You are the center of this workshop, acknowledge the connections with this group, know that you support each other and are the pieces of each other’s puzzle. You are the foundation!
This is about personal growth and you will be doing some challenging work on how you see the world, how you see community, people, and your place in it all!