My Neighborhoods On Fire and I Feel Fine?
"Let's make our world better by pooling the power of collective wisdom for common causes. We advance collaborative practices that visionary companies, jazz bands, championship teams, and wisdom traditions have shown to help get groups into the "flow" of ingenious interplay. Applying findings from research across diverse disciplines, including cognitive science, media technology, brain studies, learning theory, management methods, leadership principles and sustainable development, we have a wealth of ways for mobilizing creativity in communities, companies, agencies and organizations across the social spectrum." AG
What is the "common good?" Who controls it, Allen?
The common good refers to virtues that ascend above competing special interests. When we elevate dialog beyond debate between static perspectives and engage in deeper dialog that includes purposeful flexing of our mental frameworks, vantages, and preconceived notions, we can invent "common goods" that serve societal interests far better than the petty, partisan politics prevalent today. Democracy deserves more considerate emphasis on our common good.
What do you mean by facilitation and innovation by collaboration? What is needed?
Facilitation as I practice it engages multiple mental powers by applying visual thinking using a variety of interactive graphics along with verbalization through empathic dialog and hands on activities, such as flexible model making and community site works to restore habitats, plants trees and gardens, clean creeks and do related types of urban greening together to grow community spirit as well as enrich our environments.
Where is the most hard-pressed neighborhood in your experience? How could you help?
Let's look at the planet as a neighborhood and realize a great crisis is at hand, especially in the abuse of women and children. In the U.S., one in fifty children are homeless. Vets fight futile wars and are abandoned when they return. Elders waste away in pathos. High school drop our rates are over a third of the students in many cities. We barely have a civilization. We have winner-take-all jackpot kind of capitalism driven by the Midas Touch of materialism. So, everywhere I go, I see the bottom dropping out of Consumer Culture and want to add my intelligence to inventing more civil social systems for supporting a decent way of life, inclusively.
One of the goals on your home page is "Advance the art and science of dynamic democracy applied to company integrity and community vitality." Can you give us three examples please?
Companies such as Canon, that have wise leaders, see themselves as integrated into the living fabric of their surrounding communities. Foolish firms that proliferate practices that harm people and places must be brought down by using the new media technologies to track their toxic practices and unplug economic support, since our government is too lax and/or corrupt to handle this fundamental fact of life. Examples such as CorpWatch and Annie's List show this growing trend toward consumer awareness of social responsibility is growing. Community vitality would come from entirely fresh approaches to planning, design and development that would raise the focus from mere physical improvement of real estate, which often leads to gentrification and further social division, and put the purpose of developing social potential at the forefront of urbanization. The whole point of making cities is to create a support system for humanity to reach its finer potential. That aim should color every aspect of the way we make places, from planning through planting. Every opportunity for investing local people's unique abilities into the creation of community contexts should be advanced.
Are you expert in both online collaboration and face-to-face workshops? Why? What tools do you use?
I wish online collaboration would live up to the hype, but it does not. Like playing music together, people engaged in creative interplay need the full spectrum of interaction that includes gestures, expressions, intonations, etc. in the flow of communication. When I organize and facilitate workshops, charrettes and college courses, I make the whole process increasingly open, interactive, co-creative, proactive and linked to local life while supporting each person's authentic self-actualization through genuine collaboration.
With so much economic trouble in this country and world, how are you doing on the financial front? Any advice to other consultants?
I thing we need to join forces and build our own communities from the ground up, inside out and not depend on conventional practices to deliver us from the serious dilemma we are in as a sinking society. My next long term goal is to round up folks who want to co-create urban eco-villages and rural retreats to form more sanctified lifestyles together. Neither the non-profits, nor the government agencies, nor the private firms are delivering the goods. We need to fire up a DIY (do it yourself) movement, pronto. I've done the whole process of planning and producing places, and have worked with entrepreneurs, public agencies (federal, state, local) plus many land trusts and other non-profit NGOs. What's needed next is a collective effort to mobilize folks who want to create healthier environments together, including every aspect of community life. It is do-able.
What does "localize" mean? Localize from what to what?
Localize simply means to involve people in creating their own cultural contexts rather than handing over development to outside investor driven projects and understaffed agencies who can't be expected to create a high quality lifestyle. The holistic intentions that must be invested into making places that have heart and soul won't come from either the narrowly focused profiteers who build economic enclaves and class-divided sprawl or the agencies managed like separate silos, operating in oblivion from the daily dynamic details of peoples' real lives.
Are you suggesting a major paradigm shift in values for the USA? If so, please describe this shift.
The big shift starts within as awareness of the corruption of our entire Consumer Culture, military industrial complex, entertainment corporations, failed educational system, morally bankrupt economy-the whole syndrome of unwise structures that are actually collapsing all around us right now. The new paradigm must be grounded in genuine empathy for the sanctity of all living beings. The intrinsic worth of every being can be perceived. Heaven is all around us, but we are blinded to its presence by ideas that imprison our minds into patterns that have no heart or soulfulness.
How do you personally live the green life?
I've made huge gardens, built businesses from recycled goods, made furniture from trash, saved regional ecosystems by organizing community campaigns, planned parks as commons by involving people of all ages proactively in every phase of land improvement. But I'm also trapped in an engineered social structure that forces me to waste precious resources on a car and all the other excesses we all depend on. I hope I get to join in making eco-villages in the very near future, to make a big jump toward healthier living as soon as possible. Anyone else interested in advancing this cause? Leaving Consumerism behind and creating a sustainable culture means building our own world with our own hands, hearts, minds and souls invested with collective wisdom. Money, land, plans, regulations, tools, teams, trucks and site work all come along when the idea is bright and the time is ripe.
Are the oil companies helping us or just their own profit margins?
Oil companies have done so much harm that it's hard to imagine them having any integrity. Perhaps individuals within the tyrannical empires still have humanity. Perhaps they need help to initiate change from the inside out.
What myths are critical to your spirit these days? Who are your heroes?
My heroes range from Krishnamurti to Miles Davis, with Jane Jacobs, Betty Edwards, Dr. de Bono and other creative spirits animating the mental movies that guide my mind. I generally admire do-it-yourselfers and appreciate humble people who keep our world softer and humane. The star system that focuses on avarice, ambition and dog-eat-dog competition have no appeal to me. As Joseph Campbell said, we need an entirely new mythology today, and Native cultures around the world have had far wiser worldviews that we can draw from now. That fact is that life is sacred and everything is alive. We are encompassed by breathing spaces and sentient beings who exchange energy with us continuously. A social paradigm that gets us out of the mechanistic rut of Euro-centric domination needs to be co-created by all of us. Tolle's recent books give good principles among many other emerging perspectives cropping up all around us now.
What is your view of the near future ( 3-5 yrs) on the planet?
Calamity is certain and the opportunity to form wiser multicultural contexts is at hand. Every motive is being activated, from fear to green greed. But the one I value most is what I've been calling our ETHICAL IMAGINATION. That force for good is something we all have within, and it's the ultimate energy for making a better world.
BIO: Allen Green, MLA, MS Arch, MA Inter-Arts & Instructional Design
Allen Green facilitates collaborative projects with activists, public agencies, NGOs, consulting teams, social entrepreneurs and youth groups joining forces for the common good. In projects spanning from urban gardens to regional ecosystems, his work unites economic renovation with habitat restoration to enrich local life. Allen has handled every phase of community development from planning through planting, with an emphasis on innovation embodied in bold ideas and hands-on site arts.
Applying media and methods that tap collective wisdom, Allen's pioneering partnerships have won grants from the National Endowment for The Arts, Reader's Digest-Lila Wallace Fund, Rockefeller Foundation, and many more sources for advancing ventures that address the issues of our times. He has taught courses ranging from Multicultural Leadership to Sustainable Planning and Advanced Communication at U.C. Davis, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, San Jose State University and other centers of innovation. His seminars at Asilomar, Yosemite, colleges and conferences draw enthusiastic responses to the passion and practices he shares for making places that express our ethical imagination.
Connections:
Allen Green Planning
greenplanning at gmail dot com
