Highlights

• How the prime directive of wise democracy can help guide change agents who are navigating the non-linear complex system that is the whole that we are all part of.
• Tom talks about how we need to out-Gandhi Gandhi.
• Discover the world of the Wise Democracy  Pattern Language.
• Learn how technology is revolutionizing democracy.
• Uncover why activism isn’t working. 
• Learn why we need to include climate deniers in the discussion.
• Tom recounts an incredible story about dialogue bringing people in conflict together. 
• Understand why we need to focus on the whole.
• Learn about processes that exist to engage diverse groups and elicit their collective wisdom in service of the whole.
• Learn about how those processes work and feel.
• What it will really take to bring wise democracy into reality. (Hint: it’s about recognizing that we are already participating, whether we want to or not, and then striving to do it with wisdom.

About this episode’s guest

Tom Atlee is the creator of the Wise Democracy Project and a lifelong advocate for co-intelligence. Tom researches and promotes ideas and approaches for generating collective wisdom about public affairs, which he presents in an encyclopedic vision called “Wise Democracy”.

Connect with our guest

Pattern Language Examples

“Canadian Adversaries Take A Break to Dream: The Maclean’s 1991 Experiment”

One weekend in June, 1991, a dozen Canadians met at a resort north of Toronto, under the auspices of Maclean’s, Canada’s leading newsweekly. They’d been scientifically chosen so that, together, they represented all the major sectors of public opinion in their deeply divided country. But despite their firmly held beliefs, each of them was interested in dialogue with people whose views differed from theirs. That dialogue was facilitated by “the guru of conflict resolution,” Harvard University law professor Roger Fisher — co-author of the classic Getting to Yes — and two colleagues.

Read Tom Atlee’s full article here.

Interviews with major players in the Maclean’s 1991 “People’s Verdict” experiment

• •  The People’s Verdict – A Description of the Project
  •  The 12 Who Shared – Bios and Pictures of the Participants
  •  A Canadian Renewal – A Summary of the Process and Conclusions
  •  A Weekend of Candor – A Blow-by-Blow Account of Who Said What
  •  To Clarify a Vision – The Citizen Council’s Recommendations

Maclean’s-Canadian TV “People’s Accord” Documentary

Canadian TV filmed the entire two-and-a-half day interaction and then wove highlights into an hour-long special edition of their regular public affairs program W5 which they dubbed “The People’s Accord”. Below you will find that program in its six parts with the advertisements clipped out.

Here’s a google drive folder with all the videos.

Part 3

Part 6

Finding Our Way Together – Collective Coherence Series

• • Finding our way together – through innovations in voting (Collective Coherence Part One)
  • Finding our way together – through innovations in shared understanding (Collective Coherence Part Two) 
  • How to scale up conversations to embrace millions (Collective Coherence Part Three)
  • Scaling up powerful conversations: Examples, methods, and approaches (Collective Coherence Part Four) 

Topics Discussed in Episode

Dynamic Facilitation releases the innate creativity of people. In the face of difficult issues people rise to the challenge, pull together, and create practical, unanimous solutions.

Dynamic Facilitation evokes “choice-creating,” a special quality of thinking where people use all their capacities to achieve breakthroughs on impossible-seeming issues. Choice-creating is like what often happens naturally in a crisis, where everyone drops their old ways of thinking and comes together to achieve the impossible.

Citizens’ Assembly in Austria makes proposals on climate policy  (Buërgerrat)

About citizens’ assemblies
What are citizens’ assemblies?
How do citizens’ assemblies work?

Healthy Democracy 

Healthy Democracy is a U.S.-based nonpartisan nonprofit that works to elevate everyday people in public decision making.
They use democratic lotteries to empower new voices and guarantee representation across our many diversities.  They design deliberative processes that prove a more collaborative politics is possible. They partner with governments, nonprofits, and other organizations to bring together Lottery-Selected Panels that tackle our most difficult policy issues –¬ from housing to health care.

Pol.is 

Polis is a real-time system for gathering, analyzing and understanding what large groups of people think in their own words, enabled by advanced statistics and machine learning.

Getting to Yes
by William L. Ury, Roger Fisher & Bruce Patton

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving in

Is the key text on problem-solving negotiation.
Getting to Yes has helped millions of people learn a better way to negotiate. One of the primary business texts of the modern era, it is based on the work of the Harvard Negotiation Project, a group that deals with all levels of negotiation and conflict resolution.
Getting to Yes offers a proven, step-by-step strategy for coming to mutually acceptable agreements in every sort of conflict.