We had a fantastic time at the Gathering of Emerging Leaders. I learned many things from this five-day interactive group experience.
One insight is that it is a very challenging to balance individual and collective needs to create emergence. I enjoy the process of group interaction because it offers the chance for people to come together and learn from their diversity as well as experience the powerfull element of oneness that flows as a thread between us all. It takes communication, tolerance and the balance of structure and flow to create a collective vision from many diverse needs.
Most importantly, I realized how important it is to visualize and birth new solutions in a time of change and confusion.
This video proposes a vision for a healthy democracy and media and talks about the importance of imagining and creating new paradigms of hope and possiblity.
I have often been the kind of person who sees the glass as half empty rather than half full. I take pride in the fact that I am realistic and willing to look at the entire picture of what is going on. However, I am learning that looking at what is wrong is only the first step and the next step is to take that awareness to reinvent possiblities for change.
From 9/11 to the time the United States began bombing Afghanistan and then into Iraq, Kent and I both grew increasingly depressed. Our empathy for the suffering of so many people cataylzed feelings of powerlessness and a desire to help, and to have our voices heard. From this place is where the Echo Chamber Project was birthed.
The Echo Chamber Project is an open source, investigative documentary about how the television news media became an uncritical echo chamber to the Executive Branch leading up to the war in Iraq.
By developing collaborative techniques for producing this film, then this project can potentially provide some solutions for incorporating a broader range of voices and perspectives into the mainstream media.
You can read more about the birth of this project in this newspaper story.
