With Reason and Vision

Structured Dialogic Design A Science with Wings It enables people To voice their aspirations To pool their wisdom And unleash their power To create the future. It provides the backbone on which The sinews of the people Can reinvent democracy. Vision is evident in all three stages of Structured Dialogic Design, especially as participants voice their aspirations, organize their vision, and identify the vision’s most influential components. It is visible in their identifying obstacles to that vision and finding the most influential barriers. It is also evident in their identifying ways to overcome those obstacles and devising an effective strategy for overcoming them. Reason is also present in all three stages: As intuition and abductive logic in every step of SDD As inductive logic in its testing of the axioms, laws, and practice As systemic modeling in its structure and methodology And as deductive logic in the coherence of its theory and practice. This careful articulation of vision and reason in the pursuit of effective dialogue results in elegant colaboratories, jubilant conclusions, and committed action. This book explores the difficulties of dialogic decision making and presents a systemic method for avoiding them. It also demonstrates the efficiency and relative ease of SDD when applied in colaboratories of democracy.

Kenneth Bausch, Ph.D. is a one-time priest, organizer, homebuilder and university professor. He is executive director of the Institute for 21st Century Agoras. With Aleco Christakis, he is cofounder of Agoras and co-author of How People Harness Their Collective Wisdom and Power. He is the author or co-author (with Tom Flanagan) of: Body Wisdom, Interplay of Body and Ego, A Democratic Approach to Sustainable Futures, Body Wisdom in Dialogue, and (in press) Back Stories for Robust Postmodern Living. A recent article among many was “The theory and practice of Third Phase Science.” He has also pioneered in providing Internet-based courses in Structured Dialogic Design.