Trusted Space

Becoming Human Again - The Call

There will come a time when humanity will choose to go against nature, to exploit her bounteous gifts, causing a sickness across the planet. People will forget the ecstasies of communion, and life will become drab and colorless.

In these coming dark ages, though, a deep sense of loss will cause the beginnings of a Great Return. They will look at the landscape and the old temples, built to withstand the cataclysms of millennia and understand once again the sacred laws of Existence.

When this day comes, humanity will have come of age. It will consciously acknowledge its role in the creative impulse that comes from the Sun, fertilizes the Earth, and calls forth the flame in the hearts of men and women to worship Life and the miraculous forces behind Creation.

Miller, Hamish & Broadhurst, Paul. The Sun and the Serpent: An Investigation into Earth Energie

The Sleeper Awakes - Your Hero's Journey                    

This website is a kind of a book. It is an adventure story where I will tell stories of real people - they may be about you - as they go on The Hero's Journey. This, like all real hero's journeys is a voyage home. It will be about how a group of pioneers reject the world we live in today and set off to rediscover the way of living that fits our nature and that fits nature best.

I hope to show you that a life of adventure is availabe to us all if we choose it. All children know this to be true.

When I was a boy I yearned for a life of adventure. But, like most of us, I realized soon enough that adventure was to be found only in books. By my late teens, I, like most of us, turned away from adventure and magic and became a "realist".

But my friends, never before has mankind faced such dark forces as we face now. We need heroes for never before have we faced such a dread and terrible Dark Lord. "What is Rob talking about?' you might say. "There is no Dark Lord. There are lots of problems in the world but no Dark Lord. There are lots of bad people in the world but no Dark Lord. Dark Lords only exist in stories!"

But there is a Dark Lord. It is an idea.

This idea governs our sense of reality. Its defense is that we cannot see him. Its power over us is a story that is so deeply held, that we think of it not as a story but as reality. Its story is that we are separate from nature. Its story is that we are inanimate parts of a machine controlled by a few engineers.

For a long time this story worked but now it has become our problem. Our disconnection from Nature and from our Human Nature threatens the planet and prevents us from finding a solution to any of the symptoms of failure that confront us.

This failed story is at the heart of all our dysfunction. Defeat this idea and there is hope. But how to defeat it?

Many have seen its truth already. Many have have railed against it. It is not news that this disconnect from Nature and from our Human Nature is threatening the planet. Exposing this idea. Talking about it. Attacking its anointed ones. Protesting that we should be different has only given it more power. How to defeat it?I t is after all only a story so I believe that only a new story can defeat it. Where is this "Ring of Truth", that can give us back hope?

It is to be found perversely not in some spiritual practice but in the worldly practice of using a new set of technology. For part of our nature as humans is that we have evolved to evolve, not by changing our bodies, but by changing our culture. We do this by changing our prevailing technological tool set. We then embody this tool set in our very being. It shapes us and becomes our story. Fire was the first and most powerful of these technological embodiments.

The story that threatens us was born of a new technology. In the face of a desperate environmental crisis and a food shortage that occurred 10,000 years ago, humans reluctantly gave up living off the bounty of nature and took up a new living by using and controlling nature. In so doing, we not only domesticated some plants and animals but we also domesticated ourselves. For the price of a regular meal, most people became serfs. Most people today still are serfs. But, considering the circumstances, maybe it was the best deal we could have done at the time.

The wheel of time has now come full circle.

Now we once again face a desperate environmental crisis. Our food supply and our energy supply are in question. Just as our ancestors found, if we do not find a new way of living, we will have no future. The good news is that a new way of living is rapidly emerging. Once again, our ingenuity has thrown up a new tool set that paradoxically will enable us to change every aspect of how and where we live. It is of course the web and its most important child, Social Software. The pace of its development has been dazzling.

The web barely existed in 1995, the year that the first browser appeared. Now the web is becoming central to all organized activity. Social Software barely existed in 1998. In 2010 there will be 100 million bloggers. Gaming is becoming a new way of living for those in Second Life and World of Warcaft. Soon the boomers will retire and their children for how this new interactive and community based world is their norm will inherit.

I am not saying that the web or social software are themselves the way - the journey is up to us as humans. But it will help us get there by providing us better alternatives to the old way.

The issue is not the technology itself but its power to change us once we have used it. I believe that the Web and Social Software has the power to change the consciousness of mankind.

It is giving those in bondage to the old idea a voice and so it is giving them power. Power is shifting from institution to community. Honor and reputation are coming back. Community and Tribe are coming back. Allowing things to grow is coming back. Already it is clear that those enterprises that use natural principles are decisively defeating traditional alternatives.

But you don't have to believe me. I hope to show you.

That is my intent in this Space. I intend to say only a little of what I believe to be the new observed truth. I intend to show you the stories of other people's actions so that you too can see the truth with your own eyes. For just as there is indeed a Dark Lord, so there are real heroes right now. They live not in books or on film but next door to you.

Of course we need ideas to help us make the change. But we need hope and we need courage and we need support to make a life changing move.  Was it not the stories of the pioneers in America that called millions from a feudal life to the opportunity to become their true selves in 19th century America? Was it not then the steam ships and the trains that caused the trickle to become a flood? Will it not be the stories of our pioneers in our new world that will call to the rest of us. Will it not be the new tools that will cause the trickle to become a flood?

So this is my hope - to show you the lives of the pioneers in the new/old connected world in the hope that their lives will call you too to adventure and to the co-creation of a better world. The wonders of the web allow me to offer more. It allows me to offer you a real connection to the people behind the stories. You can help them and they you.

As I develop Trusted Space, you will see that it will have three parts.

In this Central Space I will offer up my best shot at what I feel are the few big ideas of how to do your best in this new but ancient way of living. It will be the Coles Notes of the ideas. My regular readers may have seen these ideas before. My apologies in advance.

The doorway to the novelty to the fun and to the power of the site will be found in the links on the left hand side of the site. This is the Story Gateway. Here you will find links to related sites that will have titles such as Work, Family, Energy, Food, War & Conflict, Health and Education and so on.

Each of these links will take you to a site where you will find stories of people who today are discovering and living a new life of interconnection with nature.  You will meet some wonderful people in these stories. Most of the people in these stories are just regular folks, Hobbits really, who have left the comfort of the Shire and are on the road to Mordor with a Ring of Truth and a few close friends.  A few are Wizards like Gandalf and a few are Knights who are questioning whether to take hold of their sword of destiny. All have a mythic role but all are real.

I will start the site with only a few stories. There is only me here. But it is my hope that by this summer there will be a foundation in each category and that the links between all can be seen.

Some stories will come from my friends who live all over the world. But many of the stories will come from PEI - my home. I hope that you will learn to love my home and these people as I do. For their story is of course yours as well. No society could be more vulnerable in the west as we are and so, if we can do it, well then so can you.

You will see on the right side of the page, the Mind Side of the Site. This series of Links will offer many of the same categories but here you will find access to research and to many books that offer the foundation of the science and the observed truth behind the stories. There are so many wonderful people that you have maybe never heard of that have been labouring for a lifetime to explore, in their field, the new truth. Many, being scientists or specialists, know nothing of each other and I look forward to making some connections here. Many have of course been persecuted as heretics. Some have died professionally as a result. Some have died of a broken heart. All have paid the price of being a pioneer.

I look forward to introducing you to people such as Michael Marmot, Christopher Alexander, Col. John Boyd, Brian Hall, David Brown and Andrew Clarke, Doug Wilms and to my other father Fraser Mustard. My aha has been that each of these pioneers has been telling the same story but unknown to each other. What fun I expect as the links are made between them.

Also on the Mind side of the site you will find the "Garden Shed". Humans are tool builders and it is our tools that shape our culture and how we live. Here I intend to offer the best set of tools that we know work well that help us see what is going on culturally and that help us design and implement a more human and natural environment so that we can indeed become more human again.

This is itself an organic work. The stories will unfold as I am able to do the interviews and to transcribe them. I may go off on tangents as I learn more myself and as you tell me more. So the site will begin only sparsely populated. But my hope is that, by the summer of 2007, it will be full enough for the truth to be clear - that we can know and trust our new story and hence we can set out on our journey home.

....... we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the heropath. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the centre of our existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world." Joseph Campbell - The Hero's Journey

What is Going On?

Midway upon the road of our life I found myself within a dark wood, for the right way had been missed. Dante

What is going on then? Why do our institutions now constantly fail us and even act to make the situation worse? Why do so many people that work in institutions feel so bad and so helpless - even if they are its leaders? Why is it that while we can see the predicament that we face now as a species, we cannot organize to find a way out of it? Why do so many people obsess with celebrities, money, their house, their car etc when it is clear that we stand on the edge of a precipice? Why do so many of our kids seem to have given up?

I think that the core reason is that we are lost in a species-wide Mid Life Crisis.

I think that just as every human life has its stages of development so does mankind as a species. I believe that we are in one of those messy transitions like the Terrible Twos, the Teens or worst of all and I think most likely - Mid Life Crisis.

I speak now as a 56 year old man who has had a typical messy, funny and in the end somewhat tragic mid life crisis. For all of you who have yet to encounter it, here is what I feel to be its essence.

This is the point in our development, as both an individual or as a species, where we have to choose to move forward out of the extrinsic world of needing to belong to the tribe and where satisfaction is met by the acquisition of tangibles to the path to reunion with the universe where all growth now tends to be spiritual and where honor and personal growth are the motivators. Where the idea of family and tribe extends ever more widely until in encompasses all life and all things. Where children expand from being ours to all children. Where home expands to be the world. Where life itself melds into the eternal.

To move forward, the "old us" that was anchored in the tangible, in the tribe and in the young body has to die. No one wants to grow old and then die and few choose to transform without either a terrible struggle or a retreat back to the familiar where development stops. We see this at every stage of development. The Two year old wants to be free from her mother but often wants to become part of her again. The Teen wants to be a kid and yearns to be an independent adult. Under stress we regress. We want to live here for ever. In wanting life as an end in itself, we risk losing our soul.

So the middle aged man or woman, like Dante wakes up one day to find themselves lost. Our body used to work well and now it doesn't. We used to know what to do and we had strategies that worked but now they don't.  So what do we do? We tend to look very silly for a while. Being lost we act out.

Yes I bought a red sports car. I did all - I mean All - the silly things that mid-life crisis men do. For me, all this silliness, bad behaviour and doubt created such despair that a dam broke in me and I began to awaken as a person now on a spiritual path. I wonder if the story of the Passion, the Crucification and the Resurrection is really the story that all men and women can experience as they struggle with the choice to awaken? I am not here talking about being a born-again Christian. That is a response to being lost but I fear it is a misplaced one. For at its heart, institutional religion is a tribal response where an outside force is in control. No I am talking about the Mythic Spiritual path than some men and women have walked for all time. This path is the Natural Human path that if chosen and walked brings us home to being that spiritual being that is the highest developmental achievement of mankind.

".....The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. "Live," Nietzsche says, "as though the day were here." It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal - carries the cross of the redeemer - not in the bright moments of his tribes's great victories, but in the silence of his personal despair." Joseph Campbell - Hero of a Thousand faces

The choice to take the path often demands death, misery, humiliation and rejection. So many in their own garden of Despair, choose to return to the Matrix.

They turn away from the hunter gatherer life of the natural human and they go back to the predictability and the helplessness of corporate life. They leave their wives and marry a younger woman and have a new family when they could have witnessed their grandchildren. They become obsessed with their own tangible condition and seek out more wealth at any price. They ignore the world around them and focus in the end only on themselves. They in fact regress to maybe a two year old again where the world is only them. This is the essence of Tragedy itself. Where the protagonist, like Macbeth, seeks the tangible reward above all others and ends isolated and in the end defeated by forces that could not even be seen in the self obsessed perspective of the Tragic hero. This of course is playing out now as the Corporate Giants obsess about their own needs, blind to the threat from Hobbit like new organizations that will destroy them.

Do you know people like this? Are not our institutions like this? Is this not the shift we see?

So this is what I think is going on

I believe that mankind is in its "Garden of Gethsemane". We are Dante at the opening of the Inferno. We are Odysseus leaving Troy.  We stand at a choice and we compete also in a race. The choice is to say yes to growing up or to say no and revert to being like a spoiled child. The race is that, if enough of us say no and buy the red car and return to the Matrix, nature herself will punish us. She may still do that anyway but at least as a grown up I can cope with even that.

  Here is another way of seeing the map of the seven stages of man. It is an image that I will use often. It is part of the Icon of this site. It is called a Fibonacci Curve and it is the trajectory of development that nature uses in all situations where the environmental conditions for development have allowed an entity, whether a galaxy or a human community, to reach its full potential. I won't go into a lot of detail here - (Here is more information if you want it now) the stories will take you to a deeper understanding without a lecture - but my point now is that until the age of 34 we are ideally still in the thrall of the Extrinsic demands of obedience to the Tribe's norms. We still live in an extrinsic world.

If we are on course to fully develop into the spiritual being that is the truly human, spiritual being that only a self-conscious  and self- aware person can become, then we have to make the painful transition to leave the rules of the Tribe and to leave the thrall of Stuff. We also have to embrace the reality that we will grow old and physically frail and that there will come a time when it is right to die. If we don't accept this path, we seem to fall back into the box of early childhood and all the narcissism that that choice represents.

So this then is what I see is going on.

Today there is a rapidly growing group of people that are making the choice to grow. In growing themselves as individuals, they seek to act in a new way.

So they are starting to build a new world based on the principles of an intrinsic motivation. They are raising their kids in this way. They are starting businesses that are organized like this. They write software that enhances this movement. They are designing places that help us develop. They are setting in motion new ways of helping our kids learn and helping us to become healthy. They are finding new ways to finance what we need.They are taking back the power of community and the individual to have a voice.  They will reinvent politics and even how we settle conflict and go to war.They are developing the foundations of a new society.

The more that we can help each other make this choice, the more of a chance that we may win the race and that we may indeed return home to where we can once again become fully human.

Please join me in this Trusted Space where will discover who these people are and how you too can join this great work.

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us - Joseph Campbell

Nature's Big Idea - Trusted Space

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Many a one believes himself the master of others, and yet he is a greater slave then they. How has this change come about?"

                                                            Jean Jacques Rousseau - The Opening of the Social Contract

The End of the Machine Age
In 1905, Henry Ford began to implement an idea that was to transform our world. It was to provide expensive and complex objects cheaply and widely to masses of people by organizing people at work as parts of a machine.

The money price for these goods was low but the social price was high. Those that worked in this new system had to give up all independence of thought and behaviour.

For nearly a century, this idea worked well. Unprecedented access to goods and services arose. The physical quality of life improved for most people. By the end of World War II this idea had spread to all forms of organization - not just manufacturing. Now Schools, Universities, Healthcare, Entertainment and, in particular, anything to do with Government, shifted to the model. It became our reality. It became normal. It became the only way.

But, at some time in the 1970's, something began to go wrong.

Some threshold was passed in the 1970's where the ever tightening grip of central control and the ever growing scale of complexity, that had to be controlled, meant that this model hit the point of diminishing returns. Now the system now builds friction and internal stress faster than output. In some cases, all it offers is more stress and dysfunction.

Rob exaggerates?

30% of boys in school are on drugs. Is this their fault or the system?  Food has never been cheaper but there are clear signs that industrial food is at the heart of a health crisis. Energy in the form of the income of the sun is infinite but our limited definition of energy restricts us to a technology and to a  supporting process that may end life as we know it on Earth. Never before have more resources been applied to healthcare and we yet have an epidemic of cancer, depression and of obesity.  The US military has never been so powerful and yet it is mired in a conflict that it can only lose. Governments have never had more resources but now seem unable to help people in real need such as post Katrina.

No one can say truthfully that allocating more money to oil exploration, to healthcare, to education, to the military has any chance of making our predicament better. More money only seems to make it all worse.

But Hope is not dead!

All over the world, pioneers have discovered by themselves, and as if by accident, a new model that had no name, but that works.

When I say works, I mean that this model enables the very small, the poor and the dispersed to offer better goods and services than the old system. It also allows people to leave the bondage of the machine system and to find again their voice, their spirit and their humanity. Using this model, we can have it all ways. We can have access to goods and services at low price but with a high utility. Unlike the Ford Model, the social impact is not more depression but more freedom and joy.

So what is this new model called?

In Software, it is called Open Source. In banking it is called Microcredit. In business it is called eBay, or Google, or Southwest or Starbucks. In gaming it is called Second Life or World or Warcraft. In academia it may soon be called Wikipedia. In politics it was the Dean Campaign. On the web it is called Blogging or Web 2.0 or Social Software. In office design it is called the Commons.

As we will see in the stories, all these ways of doing things are at a deep level the same. All these names are really based on one big underpinning idea. So let's name this idea.

Trusted Space

I call it "Trusted Space". Let me show you what it is and how it has the power to be used universally in all fields of human endeavour.

The Ford model has a primary metaphor and a primary process. It is the metaphor of the machine and the process of efficiency. Our new metaphor is Nature and our new process is Growth. At the heart of this new metaphor is the truth that Nature has a deep organizing model that she uses in all circumstances.

For Nature is not random. Every component and every entity in Nature has a destiny or a developmental life cycle. Everything in Nature starts somewhere small and then does it best to fulfill this developmental destiny. An acorn seeks to become a forest. Stardust seeks a young sun to form around to become planets. A fawn seeks to become a herd. A lion cub seeks to become part of that herd's health system. A baby seeks to become a tribe and then a society. Inside of this society, a self-aware individual seeks to expand their spirit to include the universe itself.

Every component in Nature has an ideal trajectory that defines its developmental destiny. Each component of Nature has an ideal trajectory that connects with others to fulfill this destiny. For Nature offers no guarantees. Every component does not meet this ideal but the ideal exists.

So what then is the process that can drive an acorn, a baby, a business, a university or a nation to develop along its optimal trajectory for development? There is no secret. There is no mystery. The answer is very knowable and understandable. It is what I call "Trusted Space".

In the last 20 years, the new science of Chaos and Complexity has given us an insight into the world of probability that governs all complex systems. Get the "Initial Conditions" right and your baby will tend to grow up to be a fine self-aware and social being. Get the initial conditions right and suns will tend to form into a spiral galaxy. Get the initial conditions right and the acorn will tend to form a tree, and then a wood and then a forest. Plant your tomato plants after June 8 on PEI and you will likely have fruit in August.

Mother Nature does not micromanage an entity throughout its life cycle. She uses leverage.

She allows for the best beginning to set the best course for the best potential. An entity that has enjoyed the best Initial Conditions will, all on its own, have a high probability of fulfilling its ideal potential. Conversely, if an entity has suffered from poor Initial Conditions, there is little chance of getting back on track let alone meeting the full potential. Nature is neutral. She just sets the rules.

Think about this for a moment. Think about how this will affect how we allocate social resources once we begin to have confidence in how Nature works. Where do we now invest most of the money - early or late? Think then about how well schools are working. Think then about crime and healthcare. Here are the financial costs in dysfunction that a small society like PEI has to carry because we invest late.

We are committed to investing late because we do not yet see the value of investing in Nature's design for development. But what if we could see this better way more clearly? What if we could get help and support from others? Maybe if we could see more clearly and get more support we could ourselves use this model in our own lives.

What would happen if our primary leadership role was no longer to act like a line foreman in a Ford plant but to behave more like a gardener? What if we stopped acting like Firemen and saw ourselves as Fire Marshals? What if we humbly accepted Nature's 14 billion years of experience and did it Her way? What if we stopped trying to control all the transactions and looked instead improving at the social climate instead?

If we were to do this, we would have to know what the best social climate is for humans. We would have to have a simple model to follow and to learn.

Here there is the good news. Nature's models are always simple and research has discovered the simple model for setting the initial conditions for human development for human babies.

So what then is the optimal family culture that sets up the trajectory for optimal human development? The Optimal Culture to set the optimal development curve into play is an "Authoritative" culture.

Authoritative Parents are Parents who establish a warm and nurturing relationship with their children but set firm limits for their behaviour.

This is quite different from Authoritarian family culture, where the parents are highly controlling, requiring their children to meet an absolute set of standards. It is quite different from Permissive family culture, where parents are overly nurturing and who provide few standards for behaviour and are extremely tolerant of misbehaviour. As an aside, can you see where I am going with this as we move into the realm of human organizations?

Babies do best when they find that they live in this optimal culture and where their parents do a lot of two principal activities.

They have lots and lots of conversations with their babies. They touch their babies all the time. If they do a lot of this for the first three years of life, their main job is done.

So as with all of Nature's rules, this is a simple equation and is easy to understand. Focus on the first 3 years of life. Embrace an Authoritative Culture and touch and converse a lot. But like all of Natures simple rules it is hard to do, if this is not your norm or your sense of reality

So what is happening to families today - think organizations while we think about children. What happens then if a baby has either the optimal or the less than optimal initial conditions? How does this work out in real life?

 

Here is a linear view of the difference in outcomes. At 2 the difference appear to be small. The babies that have had Authoritative Parents. Who have had their parents touch them a lot and who have had lots of conversations understand 300 words. Those that have largely experienced Authoritarian or Permissive parenting understand 150 words. But then look at the power of the developmental trajectories.

By grade 10, the Optimal kids have the cognitive ability of a typical 2nd year university student. The less optimal kids are stuck at grade 5 level. This research by Dr Doug Wilms at UNB is focused on cognitive ability but there are social aspects around behaviour and self worth that are tied in as well. It is the full potential of the person that is at stake here. Their health, their ability to get good work, the link to addictions and  their ability to parent the next generation are all involved.

This is true in organizations as well. This slide shows the mortality differences inside the UK civil service over a 25 year survey by Dr Sir Michael Marmot. (The Whitehall Project). Here the trajectories are reversed from the Wilms view of Cognitive development.

The lower, you are in the hierarchy the more likely you are to die early.

What is the reason? The less control you have and the more you are treated like a thing and are not allowed a voice, the more you shrivel as a person. You get ill and you die.

The whole search for Work Life Balance inside traditional organizations is false. It is their combination of Authoritarian and Permissive culture that causes the stress.

They tend to minutely control your task and your voice and yet allows very dysfunctional personal behaviour.

I am no longer sure that the traditional organization can be reformed as an act of will. To do so demands that it give up its culture. In most cases the new is emerging de novo

Now with the web as the facilitator, applying these new ideas has become possible outside the old system. The new is now emerging on its own and in some areas has enough scale to take on and to decisively defeat the old.

This then is how the Trusted Space for babies is being applied in many new organizations.

The adult version of Touch is an organizational norm of relationship of empathy. As we will see in the stories, organizations that work well in the new, have the norm of seeing the other as itself.

The adult version of Conversation is well Conversation. This does not mean talk, it means that we all speak to each other as peers. It does not mean that we know the same things, but that we converse with each other as human being who all have a voice and our dignity.

The ideal culture for management is neither Permissive nor is it Authoritarian. It is Authoritative. Leaders establish a warm and nurturing relationship with their colleagues but set firm limits for their behaviour.

Just as the optimal parent does pay attention to the essential hygiene issues, so does the optimal leader. But they know that Job#1 is to set and maintain the culture of Trusted Space.

What happens inside the Trusted Space of your organization is that all the people tend to use the same relational norms that you have set as the overarching culture and that they tend to help each other along their own trajectory to their full potential.

I see this as Einstein saw the potential of the atom. Before Einstein, people thought of Atoms as being components of physical things. So Uranium was only a metal. But he saw that inside every Atom was the potential power of all but unlimited scale.

Inside every man and woman is also the power of the universe. So long as we saw our power as being only physical, that's all it could be. Now, bathed in Trusted Space, we have the potential as self conscious and spiritual beings to unlock the power of the universe that is inside of us.

What organization based only on the physical power of the machine can compete with that?

Enough theory. On with the show. Go to the Heart side of the site and enjoy the stories that illustrate the theory. If you need to know more, then go to the Mind side of this site and I will back up what I have said here.