Social media and “the great turning” conclusion

By Kathie Wallace

May this article rock your world, my Village Vancouver friends! Please spread widely!

Prayer for Peace at Earthdance Vancouver2009

I was shown Paul Potts' first YouTube British Idol audition three years ago. When I and the “hard-core” businessman who showed it to me were both moved to tears, I knew there was something happening on the planet
that was new and worldchanging.
Since then, social media tools like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have become
integral to my life despite huge initial hostility and resistance on my part.

As we humans are a multi-dimensional complexity of existence, I want to address the social media phenomenon on two levels.

Social media tools are changing our world. If the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics was an experience of how governmental control and restriction prevented ordinary people from being involved and telling their stories, the 2010 Vancouver Winter
Olympic Games was an opportunity for social
media to come to the forefront of our collec.... Unaccredited
stories from people through twitters, blogs, photos and videos all added a
diverse and rich texture to the Games that were far more reflective of our
complexity as humans. These tools afforded the opportunity for every (extra)
ordinary person involved to be part of the experience in creating the
collective Vancouver
Olympic story. At a post-Olympics Social Media Club event, people spoke about
their treatment by Vanoc and the IOC
shifting from control tactics to welcoming acceptance. At the W2Culture+Media House Olympic
open house on February 10, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson used his iPhone and
then said, “We are all media.”

The next 2012 Olympics in London has been labeled “the digital media games”. It is expected that social media will be finally embraced and integrated into the experience by the Olympic
organizations. The challenge is not allowing the Olympic machine to co-opt and
misappropriate social media input as theirs. This is already happening with mainstream traditional media inviting people to
post photos, videos, and news items on their media sites.

At a W2Culture+Media House discussion during the Olympics, it was noted that a big part of the Olympic experience was citizen engagement. Ordinary people took ownership of the dialogues happening around emergent social issues and
Olympic experiences. Someone else stated that while the battle between
developers and activists over social housing had largely been ignored by the
mainstream media, the Red Tent and Tent
City social media campaigns brought the issue to the forefront. Stephen Hui
from the Georgia Strait said that the image of the Red
Tent campaign impacted him. He was moved to come out to a Red Tent event and he
did a photo
gallery on it. James from AdHack shared
how he invited citizen participation on an Olympic Flickr page he started and,
in two days, 60 photographers contributed 10 photos each. Even though the IOC
asserted their ownership of the Olympic rings, many photographs were taken of
them by ordinary people and then shared with the world through social media. It
was also mentioned that without social media, the Olympics would have just been
another experience of Godzilla stomping on another city. In my opinion, one of
the most important roles that social media played during the Olympics was
witnessing, and so protecting, the many citizen dialogues that emerged in the
form of protests.

There is a deeper and more important level to understanding what social media is, I believe. It is the tool that has taken the power away from the systemic, capitalist monopolies that have been creating our world through their
storytelling. This oppressive, controlling dominator energy is being declawed
and defanged as we (extra)ordinary people move
front and center to reclaim our world t.... These stories offer the opportunity to manifest a new world
that is in service to the highest good for all life on Mother Earth.

When I asked Jean Houston a few years ago what she thought was necessary to bring peace on Earth, she replied, “radical specificity”. I agree and I see it happening all over the planet.
Social media tools are what millions of people are using to come together,
self-emerging and self-organizing
from their own passionate centers with their own stories, dreams and
wisdom, to exchange information and then
act based on interpersonal, radically localized relationships. Social media
tools like Twitter and Facebook reflect this reciprocal,
emergent quality of the collective human energy system with their unending
stream of information that spontaneously unfolds from everywhere.

This upwelling all over the planet, including Vancouver, always presents in the same way. It is people engaging …in relation with…each other and our planet to create community gardens, peace and sustainability groups, intentional
communities, ecovillages, spiritual gatherings, community celebrations, and on
and on. It does not present as hierarchical, systemic control; rather it
is decentralized power on a level playing field of
equals with the locus of control held by the
people as they aggregate around what they are passionate about creating.
The endeavours are always life-affirming and collaborative. They often include
honouring a sacred and direct interconnection with all life as the movie, Avatar,
showed. The power structure of society is shifting from the top-down,
power-over control of organizations and “experts” to ordinary people running
things from their own diverse, localized power bases. This is the
emergent resilience that can create true sustainability.

Paul Hawken spoke to this global revolution in a 2006 video called “Blessed Unrest”. He said, “We are part of a movement…. spreading worldwide ….it flies under the radar….a
male vertebrate is not in charge….no one is in charge….it has many roots
primarily indigenous cultures, environmental and social justice movements
intertwining, morphing, and enlarging….it is everywhere, with no center, no one
spokesperson…the first time a powerful non-ideological movement has
risen….humankind knows what to do.” The video shows a staggering list of
130,000 social and environmental groups that have arisen spontaneously all over
the world. That list has grown to over one million groups.

I believe social media reflects deeper layers of existence that speak to the current transformation of human consciousness and the awakening of humanity. These need to be understood to truly get what social media represents. As
“Blessed Unrest” documents, we full-potential
humans are an energy
system that gathers, shares, and exchanges information as equals on a level
playing field. As this system unfolds, it self-emerges and self-organizes into
patterns of actions and experiences that we self-select. This collective
emergence comes from what David
Bohm calls the “holomovement” and what I call the “rhizomic underground”
where we are all interconnected, albeit unconsciously at this point.

When I spoke with Mark Lakeman of City Repair, he defined “placemaking” as “...creating a shared vision. While professionals are respected as technical resources, the community is the
driving force so the world we inhabit reflects who we are. Placemaking is as
much about psychological ownership and reclamation of space as it is about physically
building a place. Creating a common ground that transcends the differences
among people powerfully addresses isolation and creates an environment where
people feel like they can do anything they set their collective minds to.” The
best example of placemaking, for me, is the self-sufficient Italian community
called Damanhur. I believe it is the
first "Noah's Ark"
in our present day world.

An example of placemaking from City Repair website http://cityrepair.org/how-to/placemaking/

Social media tools are the vehicles ordinary people are using for placemaking, collectively envisioning and acting on their own unique dreams and passions as to what must change to create a new world. A recent example of this
was The Great Kitchen Table
Debate that happened this past
Easter Sunday. Everyone involved in the debate impressed me with their
recognition and respect of each other’s brilliance and magnificence as they
took turns storytelling. There were no “talking heads” present.

Paul Potts’ British Idol audition moved me to my depths because he sang our magnificence as the (extra)ordinary beings we all are. How he was initially perceived, and who he revealed himself to truly be, changed my world
view. During that audition, I realized total world change could happen
through this current paradigm if we claimed our
magnificence as humans, each and every one of us. I realized that
was the revolution.

Buckminster Fuller said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

“The Great Turning” poem speaks about us choosing to turn away from our present model as lemmings hovering at the edge of the capitalist cliff. Stepping into
our interconnected, complex magnificence is the new model of humanity
inexorably unfolding, faster and faster through the Internet.

Geoff Olson in the article, “The Collective Unconscious”, speaks about the current traditional mass media as reveling “in a pornography of psychic and bodily destruction”. That dying world, for
increasing numbers of people, is “over there” and we, the people, do not live
there anymore. Using social media, we are experiencing the greatest mass
migration in the history of humanity to a new world of sovereign, free, equal
beings, affirming full-potential life for everyone. What does not serve us will
simply fall away.

Prophecy from the Elders, Hopi Nation, Oraibi Arizona:

“There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.

Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore,
push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above
the water. See who is in there with you and celebrate.

At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally. Least of all,
ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to
a halt.

The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves!

Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.

All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

We are the ones we've been waiting for.”

Previous blogs on this topic: Dimensions

This is the concluding blog for Social Media and “The Great Turning”

This article first appeared in the on-line Vancouver Observer http://ow.ly/1xVFW