A word on white elephants, expectations, and changing normal.

[Discovery Fuel]

A few of you have begun to ask questions. THIS IS SO WONDERFUL!

Interesting though, I am watching the level of expectation that immediately follows a question that is not getting quickly answered in a satisfying way. I noticed how quickly frustration set in because they didn't have an answer to the dilemma of why the Changing Normal community is so quiet and unengaged. The level of impatience goes sky high. Why is that? How did we get so programmed for wanting change to happen now, or never?

This needs to be resolved in order for Changing Normal to emerge with powerful solutions. And it has to be done using principles and interactions based on "dialog". It is the way for a different future to begin. And we must relax into the 'what is wrong' feelings and hold onto our innate sense of the profound being able to hatch here. Because if we race toward large volumes of seemingly high levels of activity; its probably because folks are getting responses that match they're old expectations. And that will not change normal.

This subject is truly the white elephant standing in the middle of the room here. It is an issue that Changing Normal as a community, has to address early on. We must consider principles for altering solutions that affect our social and planetary "design processes" themselves. That's not even to speak of the designs that are then the eventual outcomes of those processes. This is what I call "design for design sake", or design squared. Addressing creation at this level allows our behavior and expectations as to what should come from a design process to be tempered. In the end, the actual tangible designs themselves are merely outcomes that result from a chosen way of thinking and defining problems, as well as the decision-making methods we use for choosing those solutions.

A large portion of our world society of people, especially those influenced by 'Western' cultural norms, unconsciously expect to understand, right from the get go. Even when what we are working with is essentially the unknown. When major shifts occur in the ecology of a system, our knowledge capacities do not have the information to know what the outcome will be. If there's one fact to state: NOBODY KNOWS - really. So, when our understanding doesn't match our curiosity within x minutes, we must consciously practice managing and quieting our logical brain so that our intuitive brain has the opportunity to learn. For most of us, this is painful. The feeling of not knowing is truly scary, and being in that chaotic space is where we MUST go in order to learn something new.

It is here that we must start the world community design process. It is here where the 'myths' that pilot HOW we act with each other, WHAT we expect from a process, WHY we believe in something, WHERE we think solutions come from, and WHEN it's all going to happen ... all these transparent tendencies that generate an inner tension, which drive our design outcomes into manifested, unsustainable artifacts.

Changing Normal is a learning system. It is poised on "the question" and is not initially interested in answers. Einstein was known to say that if he had an hour to solve a problem, he'd use 55 minutes to determine the question and the other 5 to generate the answer. I love that! And he's right!

Changing the code of culture, especially a world of inter-meshed cultures, is challenging. How we language with each other (through dialog) will plays a key role in changing normal. So does patience, done by taking a lot of deep breaths, will need to be used for us all to stay open as we step into conversations that are not clear, that do not have a solid agenda, and do not make us feel comfortable all the time. Those are signals that you are exactly in the right place.

Now you can actually have a conversation with that white elephant in the room, and generate amazing insights from his wisdom. So go for answers? No, not yet. But believe me, I'm all for getting stuff done. Just not for the sake of completion. But rather, for the sake of creating real, deep, permeable, meaningful, juicy change ... a change from normal. Go have a chat with the elephant.