By Barbara Marx Hubbard (studylib.net)

Over the past 40 years I have been developing certain social “templates” or patterns to facilitate the next stage of our evolution. All of them spring from an evolutionary perspective and a metaphor to describe our current situation. The metaphor is: “Our crisis is the birth of a universal humanity, capable of co-evolving with nature and cocreating with spirit.”This “birth” is dangerous, yet natural. The tendency in evolution at times of such crises is to develop evolutionary drivers that pressure us toward more consciousness, more freedom, and more life through more synergistic order. This is what we see happening now.In this paper I will place two of these key evolutionary social patterns in the context of evolutionary potential and describe them briefly so that those who are choosing to apply them in a variety of ways will know where they come from, and will help develop whatever their greater potential may be.These new patterns for social evolution come forth out of the recent revelation of the Process of Creation –cosmogenesis –understood as our own story, our own “birth narrative, from the origin of creation to us at the point of self-destruction or more conscious evolution.This Process is seen as an evolutionary spiral, proceeding quantum jump by quantum jump from pre-life to life, from single cell to animal, from animal to human, and now, possibly, from human to a more universal, cocreative, compassionate humanity.The spiral is experienced as directional, animated from within by an “implicate order,” a tendency, a universal intelligence or Consciousness Force leading to ever higher consciousness and greater freedom through more complex, synergistic order, as mentioned above.The “Core” of the spiral can be visualized as the designing universal intelligence animating every atom, molecule and cell, now becoming conscious within us as our own motivation to grow, to love more, to participate more fully in the process of creating a world equal to our aspiration and potential.From this perspective it appears that the universe is not neutral. It seems to be ‘coded’ with a prime directive: Create More Conscious Life. Transform Matter into Life. In this context the evolution of Earth Life including ourselves is understood as a vital stage in a universal developmental path toward a conscious universe. As James Gardner puts it: “The universe is coming to life,” We are a natural part of that life.When we place our current condition within the evolutionary spiral as the next turn, we realize that quantum changes are nature’s tradition; that crises precede transformation; and that nature takes jumps through greater synergy –separate parts coming together to form a whole system greater than and different from the sum of its parts. Intuitively we can imagine this greater whole pulling us forward to realize it.Revelation of higher states of being and creating are experienced as the next stage of evolution being born through us, in our midst.In the planetary developmental path we are at the stage of beginning to coordinate ourselves as a whole planetary body in order to survive. None of our current institutions or structures is designed for social synergy.We see that a vital key to our conscious evolution now is to create new forms of SOCIAL SYNERGY capable ofincreasing connectivity, communication and cooperation among diverse functions, groups, people, races, faiths forming a new whole system greater than and different from the sum of our parts.The theological definition of synergism is when human will and divine will join for the regeneration of the human race. In this sense social synergy is a way for us to tap into the deeper patterns of creation and align our individual motivation with that tendency in evolution toward higher, more harmonious order. We find that the “Big Bang”and the fourteen billion years of evolutionary transformation are alive and well within us as our own unique expression of the continuing creation. We are the face of evolution.From this perspective we see ourselves struggling to coordinate ourselves as a whole system, running out of non-renewable resources, over-populating, polluting, over-shooting our environmental base, in danger of collapse.This is the precise set of crises of birth of the next stage of our evolution that we are given which are in fact activating our new capacities and pressuring us toward social synergy in order to survive and thrive at the next stage of our unfolding.We also see that we are in need of longer-range evolutionary goals, an evolutionary agenda thatcan solve our problems in the light of the emergence of our extraordinary new capacities –spiritual, social and scientific/technological.In order to precede we now place our selves in the broadest context . We take the “overview perspective,” as the astronauts did, experiencing our t as the people of the Earth now entering the process of natural synergistic cocreation . If nature could take jumps through greater synergy and cooperation for billions of years with no guide book, then certainly, we can too!It’s innate. It the nature of nature. It’s the intention of creation. It’s not inevitable, but it is potential.The SYNCON process and the Wheel of Cocreation were both designed as processes to foster greater social synergy.The SYNCON PROCESS stands for synergistic convergence. It brings together diverse groups and interests to seek common goals and match needs with resources in the light of the growing potential of the whole system. It was tested 25 times in the 1970’s in venues as diverse as the gangs of Los Angeles, a rural group in the nation of Jamaica, Washington DC, the Generation Federation of Women’s Clubs and Huntsville Alabama. (More comprehensive description of the SYNCON Process is available).SYNCON was born out of this need to foster social synergy and to examine long-range evolutionary goals that have the potential of radically transforming the human condition for the good. It is a social acting out of the vision so many of us hold of a world wherein each person is free to do and be their best within the emergent whole system.It is a harbinger of a more “synergistic democracy,” a form of self-governance that is designed to foster cocreativity rather than. Synergy is the way nature evolves. When we create synergistic social structures, the evolutionary tendency in nature is supported by us and the genius of self-organization is facilitated naturally, because in fact it is natural.Here is a brief description of how the SYNCON worked. It can form an inclusive, coherent, evolutionary context upon which many advanced processes can be added.THE SYNCON takes place in a wheel -shaped environment representing vital functions of the social body, such as health, education, environment, governance, media, science and technology, etc. The Wheel symbolizes the whole, at the local, regional, organizational, or global levels depending on where and how it is used.DIAGRAMIn a more complex SYNCON it is desirable to have task forces at the growing edge of the Wheel representing evolutionary potentials not usually included in the social body, such as the biological evolution, space development, the psychologies of growth, the information evolution, etc.)The arts are also invited to symbolize, celebrate, and help the social body imagine and feel itself as a whole.A Coordinating Hub is composed of people from various sectors of the Wheel …

More at: https://studylib.net/doc/6775385/context-and-lineage-of-the-syncon-and-the-wheel-of

(Submitted by Sara Walker)