Today Gemany Germany is celebrating 20 years after fall of the wall.

Berlin Celebrates the Day the Wall Fell

Instead of expressing my joy in a new post I am presenting a compilation of all 84 entries from 2006- 2009 I wrote here at Gaia:
Germany 1
Germany 2
Germany 3
Germany 4

The rest can be followed via the links at the bottom of the pages.

Its a good day for feeling the relevance o fhealthy  national idendity in a global world. And, regarding Germany, to enter a new chapter of postive history after 20 years after fall of the wall and nearly 65 years after WW 2.

And therefore for even more and deeper integration of Europe too.

I did read the blog entry from Jon Twigge, Center for human emergence UK:

The First Week - A MIlestone

The" Right to be be" blog is associated with the newly launched Centre for Human Emergence (UK.

I consider this pioneering effort in communication very relevant. As it is about an integrated approach of real world projects in innovative communication style. Yes, in its babysteps, but this baby will grow and demonstrate a potential not seen up to now.

I commented below Jons entry these considerations(Slightly modified)


"The dynamics of creating momentum in this medium and online-spaces certainly require at least 100 days for a minimum.

So called Alfa bloggers like Instapundit (f.) reach over 10.000 visits per day.

An integrated f2f/online strategy and communication approach is always more, far more than only connecting the dots.

Its about permanently igniting an inspired field of inspired connection and action. As Otto Scharmer recently put in a paper.

Its not replacable by any marketing, or or some YouTube videos and single blogs.

There is soul in it. I like how Howard Bloom is summarizing lots of it on last pages of his new book “The Genius of the Beast”. Collective intelligence is far more than ANY concept about it has revealed up to now..

Its not only about multiplication of efforts , announcements and some content communication.

It has the potential of memetic innovation. Right now the tipping point for such accelerated momentum has not been reached. The unique strength of such dynamics will be in the vibrant and fast paced interaction of individual and collective too.

However mass communication AND change needs to put into new equations with the meshworking concepts.

This will be pioneering work for the next decade(s).

The cross-effects here in inter-continental and infracultural, intercultural and subcultural convergence and emergence is basically dark matter for the moment.

I am absolutely confident that new discoveries will be made next years. Remember the innovation jam IBM did with tens of thousands in Beijing in 2006?

This was only a beginning. I will engage with strong confidence and appetite for adventure and a new journey in this endvor for German speaking countries.

Very best, have a great time! Once more, thanks for your initiative to get it started!

Albert

SPIEGEL ONLINE presents the transscript of German Chancellor`s Angela Merkel speech before the US Congress. I aggree nearly completely with the chancellor and support the complex partnership in leadership constellation with USA.

We have no time to loose

In her speech before the US Congress on Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel thanked the Americans for their decades-long support of Germany and for their role in helping to end the Cold War. She also reminded US politicians that the world will be looking to America and Europe in December for leadership in forging a global climate change agreement.

Editor's note: This is the official German government translation of the speech given by Chancellor Angela Merkel before the US Congress on Nov. 3, 2009.

Madam Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Distinguished Members of Congress,

I would like to thank you for the great honor and privilege to address you today, shortly before the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I am the second German Chancellor on whom this honor has been bestowed. The first was Konrad Adenauer when he addressed both Houses of Congress in 1957, albeit one after the other.

Our lives could not have been more different. In 1957 I was just a small child of three years. I lived with my parents in Brandenburg, a region that belonged to the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the part of Germany that was not free. My father was a Protestant pastor. My mother, who had studied English and Latin to become a teacher, was not allowed to work in her chosen profession in the GDR.

In 1957 Konrad Adenauer was already 81 years old. He had lived through the German Empire, the First World War, the Weimar Republic and the Second World War. The National Socialists ousted him from his position as mayor of the city of Cologne. After the war, he was among the men and women who helped build up the free, democratic Federal Republic of Germany.

Nothing is more symbolic of the Federal Republic of Germany than its constitution..

 

read more...

Its out . The new:

October 2009 IntegralL leadership Review

Leadership Quote: Mary Parker Follett Leading Comments: This Issue and More! Leadership Coaching Tip: Responsibility, Accountability and Leadership, Russ Volckmann Dialogue: Integral Leadership, Part II, Wendelin Kupers and Russ Volckmann A Fresh Perspective: An Interview with Annie McKee—Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Article: Predrag Cicovacki, Transdisciplinarity As An Interactive Method: A Critical Reflection On The Three Pillars Of Transdisciplinarity Review: Regina Schulte-Ladbeck, High-Altitude Leadership: What the World’s Most Forbidding Peaks Teach Us About Success Article: Michael Ben-Eli, The Cybernetics of Crisis and the Challenge of Sustainability, including an interview with the author Article: Mariana Bozesan, The Power of One: How Influential Business Executives Transform and Lead into a Sustainable Future Article: Yene Assegid, What Sets True Leaders Apart? Article: Elza S. Maalouf, Emerging Patterns in the Middle East: The Thirty Year Itch for Lebanon and Iraq Article: Otto Laske, On Change and Crisis Article: Theo Dawson and Katie Heikkinen, Identifying Within-Level Differences in Leadership Decision Making Developmental Testing Service Article: Kristoffer Nelson, It’s Time for the Bottom Line to Get a Little Bigger Leadership Cartoon: Mark Hill Notes from the Field • Gary Hawke, Integral Leadership in Action Conference • Erik Möller, Integral Leadership for Sustainability • Terri O'Fallon, A Gathering of Developmentalists • Raquel Torrent, Publication of Integral Evolution • Ichak Adizes Brief Interview Announcements: UK, Finland, US, Canada Leadership Emerging • Dalai Lama andLaurens Van Den Muyzenberg, The Leader's Way • Leigh Zimmerman Gilchrist, A Snapshot in Philosophical Practice: How Executives Frame Openness in Public Higher Education (Reviewed by Dan Jenkins) • David Cottrell, Leadership Energy • John Pisapia, The Strategic Leader Coda: Attending the the Collective, including attention to • Alan Briskin et al, Collective Wisdom and the Trap of Collective Folly.

Now available.   Now Available

Forewarded from Cindy Wigglesworth.

Highlights from 2009 Conscious Capitalism Conference:

next month, in November, India will see at least 2 great, global forums.

A Taste of India is the TEDIndia conference in Mysore.

And world economic forum is having his summit in New Delhi:

Indias Next Generation of Growth

The greatest English speaking democracy of the world has moved forewards in large steps since the days of independence via Gandhi and others. The community of expats and intelligent great people outside this country is making history worldwide too.

This culture, full of ancient wisdom, beeing the origin of the worlds greates spiritual teachings and figures, is on the way into modernity. Within the next 50 years India will be without doubt one of the global superpowers. its location on the IIndian subcontinent has geocultural realtions to the Mideast a well as to Asia.

And as part of former British commonwealth India is well connected for a long time already to the English speaking universe.

It has some Bollywoods and lots of Nigerias.As Fareed Zakrai said.  And, as Nandan Nilekani in imaginingindia.com says there are parts living in the 17th century, the 18th century as much as ones living in 20th century and 21st century. So to speak time zones measured in degrees of devlopmental dynamics.

My congratulations to all Indian friends here on Gaia and those who live in neigbourhood to India and were born there.

Namaste!

The Great Inidian Novel goes into a new big round and a new chapter:):)

Crossposting here something from the MUlti-Lingual Pod. Its about the power of mythological in the unconscious. Especially if and as much not felt and expressed in the developed and developing person. And of course in collective identity too.

This is an article from Carl Gustav Jung . Published in 1936. And an ecellent complimentary source to Heinrich Heines text Rat eines Traeumers presented here in Multi-lingual Pod too earlier.

Jung is referring precisely to the psychic side and the collective unconsciousness in German culture. Though this dimension is to be integrally broadened it nevertheless is abolutely crucial for any understanding .

And I am writing about it not simply as intellectual excercise. Its an existential endevor. And it was an even brutal experience within myself last 40 years.

Its clear that Nietzsche-as quoted here by C.G: Jung -felt and sensed this same psycho-physical force. He was the most lucid author from last 150 years in Germany. He ended as broken soul.

Its a fantastic and tough challenge at once to finally tame and galvanize Wotan for the 21st century

. Wotan

"...

In Germany shall divers sects arise,


Coming very near to happy paganism.


The heart captivated and small receivings


Shall open the gate to pay the true tithe.”



- Prophecies of Nostradamus, 1555

...

Itis above all the Germans who have an opportunity, perhaps unique in history, to look into their own hearts and to learn what those perils of the soul were from which Christianity tried to rescue mankind.Germany is a land of spiritual catastrophes, where nature never makes more than a pretense of peace with the world-ruling reason. The disturber of the peace is a wind that blows into Europe from Asia’svastness, sweeping in on a wide front from Thrace to the Baltic,scattering the nations before it like dry leaves, or inspiring thoughts  that shake the world to its foundations...."

 read more…

An excellent blog entry from Rachel Castagne. At the newly launched "Right to be" blog which is asscociated with British Centre for Human Emergence. Once again the power of identity awareness in a national frame is integrally demonstrated. Congratulations Rachel! I could not agree more.

Beeing on the German side I see the theme here too. As I often mentioned here on Gaia last years.

Believing in Britain -Crisis of British Identity



A guest post by Rachel Castagne.

Rachel Castagne

I am reading Ian Bradley’s book on ‘Believing in Britain’. I used to think it was ‘just me’ or that I was in a minority when I didn’t consider myself British (being born in Trinidad gave me the perfect excuse!) or want to, was in fact ‘ashamed’ of being British; when my daughter came home from school a few months ago and said she was ashamed of being British, I wondered if I had ‘passed on’ the sentiment, like a hereditary gene, although I knew she hadn’t always felt that way, she’s become aware of ‘Britishness’ as a national identity in her adolescence, turns out, its not ‘cool’ to be Brit, turns out she’s not the only teen that feels that way…

In fact Bradley reports some interesting stats:
2005 Social Attitudes Survey found 44% of the population said ‘British’ was the ‘best’ or only way of describing their national identity, as against 52% ten years earlier.
Amongst those in Scotland 14% described themselves as British compared with 70% who described themselves as Scottish
Wales: 35% and even England only 48% of the population considered themselves British, 15% fewer than in 1992.

The 2001 census was the first in which the majority in England marked their nationality as English as opposed to British

read more..

See also, earlier this year:

A Summit and a Meetup in London about Britishness

Today the worlds largest book fair will be opened in Frankfurt, Germany. For me a great event to showcase the full spectrum of global opportunites and chances in the fields of creative friction and poltical, cultural tensions and values differences. its god to have a pragmatic view on this.

Chancellor Angela Merkel will give the opening speech and certainly adress some points the Chinese polticians are not so amuzed about. However honoring, and hosting and presenting the literature and culture of this great , rich and fascinating country.

Controversy as Frankfurt Book Fair Fetes Beijing

By Wolfgang Höbel and Andreas Lorenz

China, which bans hundreds of books every year, was a controversial choice as the guest of honor at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair. But some of the Chinese authors appearing at the fair, which begins Wednesday, have managed to slip political works past the censors.

  I bookmarked a paper from Otto Scharmer prepared for a Round Table Meeting on Leadership for development impact. It contains lots of elements how to reach out deeply in to the fields and constelllations of a given culture, city, country or community

: Leadership development is not about filling a gap but about igniting a field of inspired connection and action

I agree with lots of points. Especially- as Otto elaborated in his online community at Ning - about going beyond any masterplan fantasies.

Igniting these fields -from whatever starting point one may engage - is an art and process of collective intention building not understood in conventional leadership. Its a big integral contribution too in my eyes.

What is missing seems to be a view adressing especially pre-orange worldviews and practices.  How to create impact in inner city realities? Afghanistan? Israel/Palestine? West and Eastern Germany? Kosovo? Turkey? London? Prague, Marseilles? ETC. etc..hotspots areas?

Inspired action and connection needs to be in contact with very hard truths.  So to breathe belly to belly.  And to embrace the total spectrum of individual and collective (as discussed here and elsewhere last months) spirit-in-action.

I will certainly adress it in the emerging German speaking SDi Ning Group. This project will embrace and present diverse fields too and finally put German speaking countries into the integral spotlights and any systemically oriented frameworks too.

I will co-moderate it and engage especially in building bridges from the German speaking countries to the Anglo-American sphere. I am happy to be able to contribute thus to  the" notes from the field" section for Integral Leadership Review.):)

And to gather voices, people, developments blueprints and passionate opinion from people who are living and working here. Natives, expats and migrants. In the broadest multicultural sense and values spectrum . With full reference to globalization and a multipolar world.

It should be a great evolutionary adventure:):)