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Why Expanding Circles of Goodwill?
Basic Premise:
Goodwill is the super-fertile field of living energy wherein our common wealth — social coherence, cooperation, sharing, caring, abundance, peace, and much more – and the virtues we treasure — joyfulness, helpfulness, wholesomeness, etc. — grow abundantly. Goodwill is the goose that lays these proverbial golden eggs. To have more of the latter, we need to acknowledge, nurture and expand each of our own unique Circles of Goodwill.
Friends and family are natural starting points for increasing our Goodwill output. Most also have Circles of Goodwill that include non-humans, flora and fauna. And the strength of the presence of Goodwill within the whole structure of organizations—whether they be business, religious, social, or governmental entities—is directly related to the social beneficence of the output of those unique entities. We need to increase the presence of Goodwill within all of our personal circles, and the resulting resonance will power our personal and social capacities.
Why expanding? Because when you try to find where the "edge" of your personal Circle of Goodwill is, you inevitably find that there is no edge. The circle simply gets bigger and bigger, its radius extending as far as our consciousness will care to explore.
Brief History:
Whatever the immediate cause and true reason behind the events of 9/11 , it triggered a historically unprecedented avalanche of international Goodwill towards the victims, and, at least for a while, was accompanied by deep soul-searching by millions of people around the globe about "the true meaning and value of life." Earlier in 2004, in the midst of the Democratic presidential nomination debates, I was pondering about the need for giving this outpouring of Goodwill more exposure and due acknowledgment in the global social consciousness—so that we may all be empowered by it. Our level of true and deep empowerment is directly related to our capacity to get ourselves out of the troubles we now face together as Humanity. To move boldly forward from the situation that made 9/11 possible, we need to CLEAR FEAR and INSTILL GOODWILL.
Self-Organizing Grassroots Movement:
Here we will take as a given that, though not always in the forefront as it ideally should be, Goodwill is an attitudinal facet built into all humans and, most likely, in all living beings. So the task is to coax Goodwill to the forefront and nurture support systems that will help keep it there: at the forefront.
Open Space Technology for Optimum Self-Organizing Capability — I believe Harrison Owen's Open Space Technology (OST) is an important transactional tool for making all this work optimally, given this project's need for quick, high-quality results and consistent replicability, something OST is well-noted for. The quicker we, as a Human Family, get into this higher mode of problem-solving (heart-intelligence-based), the less damage we will need to repair later on.
The simplicity and high-output/quick-result capacity of OST is facilitated by the adoption of four simple, common sense principles and one "law" (the Law of Two Feet, also called the Law of Mobility), and armed with the right question which then becomes the primary self-organizing principle for that specific transaction, whether it be between two people or a thousand participants of a meeting or conference. More on this later. (Shyam, December 26, 2004, L.A.)
Some Basics of Open Space Technology
Four Simple Principles: 1. Whoever comes is the right people; 2. Whenever it starts is the right time; 3. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have; and 4. When it's over, it's over.
The One Law of Mobility: If during the course of the gathering, any person finds himself or herself in a situation where they are neither learning nor contributing, they MUST relocate himself/herself and go to some more productive place.
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