The APA has apparently decided that Don Beck, of Spiral Dynamics fame, should help them create a new branch of psychology devoted to large scale systems. This is very cool for the SDi community, but moreso in that social psychology is being give a new lease on life through this formulation.
From the SDi newsgroup.
The American Psychological Association has asked us to introduce a new branch of psychology to be called "Large Scale Psychology," with an emphasis on cities, countries, cultures, countries etc. etc. Elza Maalouf and I will meet with APA officials in Washington DC on July 29 while at the World Future Society. We will debut the concept at the APA conference in Toronto next August.
Professor Clare Graves was pretty well rebuffed by academic psychology in his day so I know he will be pleased to "learn" about this. By the way, he has now "joined" the Center for Human Emergence and will represent New York along with Rafi Nasser.
No doubt several of you will be interested in what LSP could become, especially in academic/scientific research. This will open all kinds of grant possibilities and afford us the legitimacy that has been lacking, even in the Integral world. The Spiral Dynamics along with the Muzafer Sherif's concept of Social Judgment (Assimilation/Contrast Effect) will be included in theoriginal design, as will several other models that provide ways tounderstand large, complex cultures. We will work with John Petersenat the Arlington Institute and his horizon scanning technology thathe introduced into national leadership in Singapore as a primaryassessment/monitoring process.
Peter Merry and the CHE-Netherlandsare working on a project to design and implement the Hague Center for Global Governance (that is only a working title) and that could well be a laboratory for Large Scale Psychology. Dr. Jean Houston just sent a note encouraging us to move with all speed because, she says, we are way ahead of the game, and will lend her fullsupport. She has observed how many people are now copying our work and claiming ownership of the ideas, the use of colors as communication devices, etc.. This is most certainly the case with our Transpartisanship language and Third Way process that we introduced in 2000 and I presented at No 10 Downing Street and with several national leaders in the Netherlands. You will learn more about this in the months ahead as our presidential campaign and election focus on a number of issues we can address uniquely -- education, health care, community development, terrorism, sustainable cultures, environment crises etc..
Also, I have seen the proofs of Dr. Marilyn Hamilton's new book entitled Integral Cities and it is quite remarkable and informative. She uses a bee hive as a model for a city and does so in an interesting and attractive fashion. You will detect Howard Bloom's Pentad - conformity enforcers, diversity generators, inner judges, resource shifters, and intergroup tournaments --- in Marilyn's "human hive" application.. I will send Howard a copy of the book when it becomes available. He will be pleased to learn of this application of one of his evolutionary, metaphoric models of change and transformation. By the way, he is now leading a global effort to find ways to beam energy directly from the sun to the earth and has a number of NASA engineers and others working with him. The man is quite resourceful.
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