Peter Pula > Archive
Monday October 24, 2022
Perennial Community Conversation Matters
To reclaim our capacity to create the world we want to inhabit, we must prefigure that world in the way we gather and work together.
While deep dialogue, once experienced feels perfectly natural to us, it is not something we have built into the structure of our lives. It seems an anomaly, not the practice. Some structure for freedom, for belonging, containers, and practices make the difference. Martial artists, athletes, musicians, learn basic forms first. Basic forms teach us what gave birth to them. Practice in those forms builds muscle memory, cultivates understanding, and reveals insight.
Monday September 26, 2022
The Wellspring of Deepening Democracy
Reclaiming Our Capacity to Create the World We Inhabit is Democracy in its Deepest Form
What's the point? Why is it important to deepen democracy? What does it mean to deepen democracy?
What deepening democracy does not mean is tinkering with electoral politics. Turn away from this in your thoughts before continuing. Put it behind you. Never mind left and right, liberal and conservative, democrat and republican. Forget for now the stories liberal humanism and global capitalism proffer. Press all that noise and distraction, the sturm and drang, the circus and its players, the side shows and arcades beyond the horizon of your periphery.
All this is escape, abstraction, excuse. Frenetic, restless, immovable. Exhausting. Diminishing. Disempowering. Far Away. Untouchable. Unreachable. Let's stop wasting our wild and precious lives there.
Beyond all that is a field. Let's meet there. Take a deep breath.
Tuesday January 5, 2021
Generative Images of the Future
Twelve ways to deepen democracy where we live and work
The time to move well beyond representative democracy as the way we 'do democracy' is well upon us. Representative democracy has been found wanting. It has become the bastion of professional politicians, and the limits of its usefulness to the every day citizen are increasingly apparent. A strong argument can be made that worse than not being particularly useful, it has ensconced us in a system in which the political and state apparatus, in its habitual pattern, actually interferes with citizenry in a detrimental way. That does not mean that it must be abandoned, but it must be transcended. We must do better. And that means proliferating democracy into spaces where we as citizens can experience both agency and efficacy.
Thursday November 26, 2020
Let’s Step Into the Intersection
What’s next for all of us is at the intersection between big and small, system and life world, institution and citizen
We are in a global storm of shifting sands. Big, having the uses it does, has reached the limits of its usefulness. Doing more and more of Big isn’t going to get us any more significant results than it already has.
Wednesday November 11, 2020
Notes Towards a Definition of Generative Journalism
During the last eight months, a small group of Appreciative Inquiry practitioners has been exploring Generative Journalism.
Thursday July 30, 2020
What Piano and Social Procurement Have in Common
Unbearably practical words pointing to where new worlds of wonder await
So much mystery and romance are conjured by the word piano. The piano is a powerfully evocative musical instrument. A piano is capable of sounding as many notes, and by some mysterious art even more, as a pianist has fingers and in endless combination. The harpsichord, the piano’s predecessor, could do all that too.
Friday April 3, 2020
Journalists Changing Stance in Response to Pandemic
Media shift towards civic communications is worth appreciating
Over the past two weeks, the journalistic stance of media here in Canada, and I suspect other countries, has been changing in a manner worth appreciating.
Wednesday December 4, 2019
Notes Towards a Democratic Newsroom
Start with what brings each journalist alive
If one wanted to create a democratic and engaged newsroom the place to start is with what interests each journalist specifically. Find out what about their community is most important to them personally, what they care the most about.
Tuesday July 10, 2018
Generative Journalism and the Real Issues
After 15 years of producing stories that contributed to change after change for the better, people still come to us with the concern that all we do in Generative Journalism is publish positive stories at the expense of facing reality.
Thursday June 28, 2018
Inclusive and Generative Journalism for a New Narrative
The stories we tell shape our culture. Journalism as a civic art, to be of real assistance to democracy, has a few things to overcome.
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