Wise Democracy Social Innovations

The Social Innovations ...

1. Choice-creating. It's important to distinguish the essential quality of thinking needed to address our current situation from dialogue, deliberation, negotiation, problem-solving, discussion, etc. (See the chart comparing dialogue, deliberation and choice-creating.)
2. Dynamic Facilitation. Here's a way to reliably evoke choice-creating in most small group settings. (See the chart comparing Traditional Facilitation with Dynamic Facilitation.)
3. The Wisdom Council provides a way that all the people of a large system can be included in a choice-creating conversation where they create a legitimate and wise voice of the people. It involves the random selection of 12 or so citizens (or employees, or members) who are dynamically facilitated to achieve the spirit of choice-creating. They create a unanimous perspective, which they report back to all. Then all are encouraged to visit about the results and indicate their level of resonance with these conclusions. Most people usually say, "Yes, I think so too." And even if they don't, they now find themselves in a respectful conversation seeking unity rather than an argument seeking to win.

1. The Wisdom Council Process can transform a system to Wise Democracy, where the ultimate authority becomes "We the People". A new 12-person randomly selected Wisdom Council is convened every four months or so. Each Wisdom Council chooses its own issue to address. (See the chart of all twelve Wisdom Council principles.
2. The Creative Insight Council is a variation of the Wisdom Council where the randomly selected group addresses a particular topic chosen ahead of time. Government, for instance, can randomly select a CIC to address a polarized, difficult issue like health care. This creates a legitimate voice of the people on that issue and orients the public conversation to become more respectful and creative.
3. Individual Wisdom Councils can be convened, where each Wisdom Council determines it's own topic and it's own solution, but where it's not an ongoing process designed to generate a "We the People" in charge . (See the chart comparing the Wisdom Council to the Creative Insight Council.)
4. Society's Breakthrough is how we can use the Wisdom Council Process to safely transform our global political and economic system. This must happen and here is a safe way to do it. Experience on a smaller scale indicates it will work. And it's so safe it's hard to find the risk! (What's the danger is there if randomly selected people are assembled, speak their unanimous voice, and go away?) ... Yet the positive benefits include breakthrough progress on most all public issues— the environmental crisis, local budget issues, poverty, special interest domination of politics, wars, etc. A brief strategy for how ordinary people can begin to spark this change is described at Wise Democracy Strategy Handout.