You know, truth has been in short supply in the American “debate” over health care reform. Today now everyone is quoting the outgoing and incoming presidents of the Canadian Medical Association using the word “implode” to describe our system. So here is my last input to the American debate, as if facts and truth matter. Read the speeches of the CMA Presidents. It is true that they are shilling for more private care, to make more money, have more opportunity and maybe some of them even believe that patients will be better served by choice. But nowhere do they say …
Sometimes we describe what we do with practing the Art of Hosting as bringin participatory leadership to life. THis can be a major shift in some people’s way of thinking. To describe it, Toke Moeller sent this around a few days ago – an explanation of participatory leadership in one sentence. How do you explain participatory leadership in one sentence? o Imagine” a meeting of 60 people, where in an hour you would have heard everyone and at the end you would have precisely identified the 5 most important points that people are willing to act on together. o When …
Cleaning my plate: Bella Gaia, a poetic view of earth from space. Donella Meadows‘ classic piece on places to intervene in a system. Nancy White on her software and web apps set up. True North Records has a great podcast of contemporary Canadian singer/songwriters. Common Dreams reports on Starbucks’ intention to fool us all. Beware of the Blog posts something funny and absurd. Ria Baeck tweets a Bodhisattva on the subway.
Check this quote: Social scientist Herbert Simon wrote in 1971 IN an information rich world, the wealth of information means the death of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence the wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. via Green sandbox: Since 1971. It’s just plain obvious that information consumes attention, but it is not always apparent how it is working on us. Last night, I was at my weekly TaKeTiNa session with friends Brian Hoover and Shasta Martinuk, exploring what …
In the US right now, the health care “debate” is raging and town hall meetings being held across the country are being deliberately hijacked by those who don’t want to see reform go ahead. This tactic is discouraging but predictable. “Town Hall” meetings are not usually conducive to democratic deliberation, and they are never about dialogue. Over the past few days an amazing conversation has unfolded on the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation listserv about what these events mean for deliberative democracy. Tom Atlee has summarized a lot of the learning from these in a long blog post which …