Conversare about take off in another dimension

This novel and interesting way of socialising is based on the idea of creating contexts in which people can join in face-to-face conversation purely for the joy of doing this. With the possibility that participants learn from the experience and subsequently do more of this in their own lives.

One of the early ‘triggers’ which led me to conceptualise the need for having such contexts was my noticing a statement by a person called Joanna Macy:

‘… and the disconnection among people” to mean ‘lack of spiritual fulfilment.’

I observed this statement in 2009 and set about doing something to increase wholesome connections among people. This happened while living happily in Hong Kong; I was there for six years before I returned to Adelaide in 2011 and continued with this endeavour here.

It would seem, at least from my experience, studies and reports, that ‘disconnection’ is on the increase for a variety of reasons.

Here are several observations which support this contention, with brief elaborations given below:

“We really don’t know anyone, and are barely known by anyone either.” *

“If you don’t regularly exercise your ability to connect face-to-face, you’ll eventually find yourself lacking some of the basic biological capacity to do so.” **

. “[There is a need] to hopefully re-enchant people with real time, with other human beings, to help people understand that we’re not in service of information …” ***

I wonder if you feel that these commentaries of how we live in our modern world are valid? Do they reflect your experience?

And further, can you see signs of systematic attention to how people can get to know and better understand each other through being curious and asking questions which express interest?

You may be interested to learn that I will be attending the World Open Space on Open Space  in mid May in St Petersburg, Florida, USA abw. This is an annual international gathering of facilitators of Open Space Technology.

Conversare will be one of the main social events at this conference.

We will get it going again in Adelaide once I return from these travels.

Also that an update of my booklet Time to converse – at the heart of human warmth is in production with Xlibris as an e-book; this has occupied much of my time of late.

In this I suggest that the kind of issues touched on here may be redressed through entering the ‘dance of conversation’ at every opportunity and what this can mean for wellbeing and spiritual fulfillment of those who do this.

Watch this space to be alerted to when it is up on Amazon and other sites so that you and people in your network can post rave reviews. <smile>

Alan Stewart
Social Artist
Adelaide

Here are very brief elaborations of items mentioned above.

*  “The situation in America, the most highly monetized society the world has ever known, is this: some of our needs are vastly over-fulfilled while others go tragically unmet. We in the richest societies have too many calories even as we starve for beautiful, fresh food; we have overlarge houses but lack spaces that truly embody our individuality and connectedness; media surround us everywhere while we starve for authentic communication. We are offered entertainment every second of the day but lack the chance to play. In the ubiquitous realm of money, we hunger for all that is intimate, personal, and unique. We know more about the lives of Michael Jackson, Princess Diana, and Lindsay Lohan than we do about our own neighbors, with the result that we really don’t know anyone, and are barely known by anyone either.” (emphases added)
Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition

** Your Phone vs Your Heart
Barbara Frederickson
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/opinion/sunday/your-phone-vs-your-heart.html?hp&_r=1&

Excerpts:

CAN you remember the last time you were in a public space in America and didn’t notice that half the people around you were bent over a digital screen, thumbing a connection to somewhere else?

Most of us are well aware of the convenience that instant electronic access provides. Less has been said about the costs. Research that my colleagues and I have just completed, to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, suggests that one measurable toll may be on our biological capacity to connect with other people. (emphases added)

… If you don’t regularly exercise your ability to connect face to face, you’ll eventually find yourself lacking some of the basic biological capacity to do so.

*** From the book Present Shock by Douglas Rushkoff which offers an interesting and thought provoking commentary on how digital technology has brought about a sense of ‘immediacy’ in the way we interact with the world and with each other. For this has significant implications for how we live.

He writes: “Our society has reoriented itself to the present moment. Everything is live, real time, and always-on. It’s not a mere speeding up, however much our lifestyles and technologies have accelerated the rate at which we attempt to do things. It’s more of a diminishment of anything that isn’t happening right now— and the onslaught of everything that supposedly is.”

Rushkoff said in an interview on Radio National in Australia:

“ …part of why I write a book like this, is to hopefully re-enchant people with real time, with other human beings, to help people understand that we’re not in service of information, that information is in service of us, and that these technologies can still be used to give us more time, to allow us to schedule around our own rhythms rather than try to conform our rhythms to the pings of these technologies, because these technologies are not in real time anyway, they’re asynchronous, outside time.”