Theory of change

The only way to effect sustainable change is working at the level of systems. If we fail to consider the whole system and ignore possible feedback and side effects, we are bound to end up where we started, at best, and possible worse off. That being said, it may be nearly impossible to attack the system at large directly. Systems that have persisted over time generally have a variety of good defensive mechanisms. How then can you effect system change if you can't really take on the whole system?

The best way is through attempting pilot projects that are microcosms of the system at large, reflective of its issues, stakeholders and challenges. In the course of getting these projects built, one will inevitably confront the same issues, and in the process learn how to address them. If stakeholders need to be educated, you educate them. If policies need to change, you lobby to get them changed.

It is important to keep the ultimate vision of what you want to achieve in mind, even if you are not able to bring all the pieces together right away. The goal is productive "stretch." Change is a process of adaptation: radical brakes that too seriously challenge the expectations of the status quo cause backlash and are counterproductive. It is important to create a productive (challenging but not too challenging) stretch in people's expectation, one that slowly closes the gap between our aspirations and our expectations, and then our reality.

For these reasons, I have chosen to be a developer and try to get real projects built. If policy change is needed, it will be undertaken as needed. This kind of development is not likely to be as profitable as a stock development, so it is essential to partner with foundations, non-profit and governments who can help subsidize the learning, public education, and policy change that may be needed.

The local and the global

In case it is not clear from the discussion above, it may be helpful to clarify an underlying assumption: to understand how to solve the world's problems, understand what's involved in solving your own problems and those of your friends and neighbhorhood. The problems are the same everywhere, and at every level of scale.

We know from nature that fractal patterns are very common: the pattern of a tree's growth follows the same pattern regardless of the level you look at. This is because the growth and development of all life is the result of repetition of a small number of simple instructions. Even a flock of birds in flight, which appears very complex, is actually just the result of a few simple rules being followed independently be each bird. Complexity theory tells us that very complex behavior can come from the repetition very simple instructions, and there are many examples. This is know as emergence or self-organization.

The human world works the same way: our entire culture and civilization emerge through a process of self-organization of some fairly simple instructions. What are these instructions? They are our reactions and intentions. Our reactions drive us subconsciously to recreate what we have learned growing up. (As an aside, I think I am a believer in something like what Sheldrake calls "morphic fields." Our culture cannot be reduced to a combination of genetic traits and socially learned skills and habits. There is something deeper that connects us.) These reactions are our simple instructions.

BUT, human will (I believe in environmentally-constrained free will) complicates the situation. When we become aware of our reactions, we can begin to override them, slowly. This "adaptive work" is a kind of stretching of our reactions and being. Yoga is a good analogy. Just as the stretching involved in yoga extends our range of physical motion, increasing our capacity for the future, there is "intentional yoga" in which we can use our willpower (focused intention, meditation, etc.) to stretch our reactions, opening up new opportunities for choice and action, increasing our capacity.

Our intention has the potential to breakthrough our reactions and past conditioning, liberating us to know our deeper selves and release our unique creative spirit, allowing it to play with the spirits of others. Our untention reshapes our being, and from this being flow our actions and impacts on others.

Applying this theory to human civilization, we can see that our culture emerges from the self-organization of our reactions and intentions. Create on earth the aspirational "heaven" that lives in our hearts and minds requires that we become masters of our intentions and being, seeing what reality we are manifesting around us, seeking feedback, and refining our intention through reflection and meditation. Said another way, our shared human reality is fundamentally a function of our own will. Our reality is what emerges from the the interaction of our subconscious reactions and conscious intentions. We are generative.

Therefore, in order to make progress at the global level, we must attack the roots of our problems: our subconscious reactions. These are never far away: they are within us and within those we live and work with. Refining our intentions will allow a better world to naturally unfold. Understanding and addressing problems locally will slowly unravel global problems as well.

Democratic intention

In general, people think about community development and real estate development as involving a process of building which results in a design that is then built. But the distinction between process and design is really an illusion. For example, one can employ an undemocratic process to develop a building intended to serve a community, but not only is it almost certain that building will fail to truly meet the needs of the community, but that process fails to invest in the capacity of the community to produce results for itself. In that way, the community begins to die as living, organic whole.

Before design or process is intention. It is out of our intention that we make choices about process and design. Therefore, it is essential to purify and enrich our intention to achieve our aspirations. Improving our intention requires a kind of ongoing inquiry, or perhaps meditation. We have gotten lazy thinking we can take shortcuts. Either we explicitly choose to let the ends justify the means, or we may simply be ignorant of the real consequences of our actions. This ignorance undermines our intention and the integrity of our efforts. Sometimes we are just too "busy" to think about what we are doing, but that can only result in more work that accomplishes less of what we are really hoping for.

The tools, techniques and technologies of democratic development

There are many tools, techniques, strategies and technologies that have already been discovered that are likely to prove valuable in democratic development. There is much to be learned, but it is more a matter of how to integrate the tools and techniques we already have, which comes simply through experience trying. This section lays out a variety of technologies that I have come across in my work. Note that the term "technology" includes social and organizational innovations as well as the hard, physical objects we usually associate with the term. The term is used to emphasize that democratic development requires as much social and organizational innovation as physical/design innovation. These other forms of innovation are too often neglected, so they are highlighted and explained here.