Areas of Interest < click on areas below >

Learning Democracy
Democracy is less a means of governing than it is a mode of living in the world. The capacity for self-determined individuals to produce and act upon a will in common is essential to fulfilling both the true individual and the authentic community. The evident lack of this capacity in our world suggests that much more is required than structures that nominally provide opportunity for citizen input. Fulfilling the promise of creative democracy requires attitudes and skills that must be cultivated and exercised in the course of normal human learning and development.

This kind of learning will take generations to foster, and must take place at the most elementary levels of the home, the school, and the neighborhood. The Learning Democracy program will provide support to initiatives that contribute to the cultivation of democratic attitudes and personal skills at these elementary levels. The program will also support the development of new institutions that can afford greater opportunities for democratic interaction and learning.
- back to top -

Participatory Design of Social Systems
In many senses we live through our public institutions, corporate endeavors, and other human activity systems. We are dependent upon our systems of education, health, justice, governance, and economy. Unfortunately, these institutions and organizations have become separated from the individuals that they serve. They can become opaque, rigid, and distant. They seem to take on a life of themselves that is divorced from our aspirations and the needs of the environment in which they are embedded. The values and beliefs that underlie the system become fuzzy or opaque. There is no conversation about the very nature and purpose of the institution. Stakeholders - those affected by the system - are not involved in their design. In times of change, the institutions become unresponsive, and the result is chronic crisis in community that is often mistaken as a problem inside the system requiring simple adjustment.

The Foundation is committed to building literacy and competence in the participatory design of social systems. Design is defined in this context as a disciplined, creative, decision-oriented process by which the stakeholders in a system - everyone who serves, is served by, and is affected by that system - create the system that fits their aspirations and the needs of the environment in which it is embedded. This kind of design is continuous and involves democratic openness, dialogue, and idealization. It is proactive, creative, and ultimately human. The participatory design of social systems is a new kind of experience for our society, but it is one that may be essential for life in coming decades.
- back to top -

Dialogue as Community Reflection
Our experience of reality is constantly mediated by assumptions, many of them hidden. They are carried in the language in which we think, and in the images that form the glasses of perception that we wear. Yet it is rare that we think about our thinking. The results can be disastrous. One problem is that our view of the world remains fixed in a fragmented state. When we are then confronted with differences in values, beliefs, or ideas, we do not appreciate it as an opportunity. Instead, we too often seek to deny or to destroy the difference. It is in this way that conflict takes on negative and pathological forms such as war, which can be seen in microcosm in our own homes and cities.

Another problem with the lack of reflection upon the assumptions that shape our perceptions - particularly the lack of this experience in a social context - is that it maintains the sense that what goes on "out there" in the world is separate from what we think and do in our daily lives. In order to break down this barrier, to empower people individually and collectively, to advance the recognition of difference as opportunity for learning and creation, and to keep culture "fresh," the Foundation advocates and supports the experience of dialogue at the ultra-local level: neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. If dialogue as community reflection can become a regular and organic part of everyday life, it will go a long way toward reducing the fragmentation in our lives and in our world.
- back to top -

Evolutionary Inquiry
During the 20th century, developments in the biological, physical, and social sciences allowed for the emergence of a new kind of knowledge: the understanding of patterns of irreversible, unpredictable, transformative change that are common to all complex systems, whether physical, chemical, biological, psychological, socio-cultural, ecological, or cosmic. The inquiry into these patterns, sometimes called General Evolution Theory or Evolutionary Systems Theory, is best exemplified by the work of scientists and thinkers like Kenneth Boulding, Ilya Prigogine, Ervin Laszlo, Jonas Salk, and Bela H. Banathy. Evolutionary Inquiry has opened new opportunities for an integrated understanding of the world. It has also led to new questions, and potential answers, about the dynamics of our era and the meaning of our lives. It may also, therefore, be related to the choices that we make today.

This area of interest has two integrated aspects: General Evolution Theory and Evolutionary Advocacy and Activism. General Evolution Theory contributes to the fostering of evolutionary consciousness - an understanding of our position and role in a journey that goes beyond our own lifetimes. Evolutionary Advocacy and Activism refers to the skills, tools, movements, and new types of human organization that can enable the conscious co-evolution of cultures toward greater harmony with the evolution of the individuals who make them up and with the environments in which they are embedded. It is closely related to democratic experience. The Foundation recognizes Evolutionary Inquiry as a core competency for the 21st century, and will support its advancement.
- back to top -