Book Review: The Practice of Peace by Harrison Owen

Book Review: The Practice of Peace.  Harrison Owen.  Open Space Institutes, Bellevue, Washington, 2003. usa@openspaceworld.org                                                   

Humans Can Accomplish Amazing Things Together

Now that Hurricane Gustav has passed, the people of the U.S. are beginning to appreciate what didn’t happen in New Orleans. Three years after the horrors of Katrina, in the days leading up to Gustav’s impact on the still-recovering city, what we saw was a marvel of well orchestrated and coordinated activity by local, state and federal authorities determined to  safely evacuate it ahead of time. They succeeded. There has been minimal loss of life and property. 

Harrison Owen–Inquirer into Life Itself

How do human beings accomplish marvelous things together? In this book Harrison Owen, better known as the originator of the Open Space Technology, meditates on self-organizing systems and the fundamental processes of life itself.  He asks how all of it can be harnessed to enhance wholeness,  health and harmony,  enlisted into the creation of peace itself.  That Harrison Owen is someone who has been thinking, reading, inquiring and exploring into the very nature of life itself all his life, makes this small book an inspiration.

Peace is Dynamic, Not Static

Owen sees peace as a flow, a dynamic, not a static state.  Three factors are critical in his thinking: chaos, confusion and conflict.  These processes are built into the way the universe works and how it creates new life.  Chaos is always opening space in the old order for the new to appear and is thus an essential part of life.   Destructive conflict ensues when passions collide and there is not enough space to work things out.   Owen’s   approach to peacemaking has been to build the understandings of chaos theory, as well as other seminal thinking such as Ken Wilber’s work on the evolution of consciousness and work on Complex Adaptive Systems into his work. 

Self-Organizing Systems Are Key

Another key idea in Owen’s work is that of self-organization, which is that so many things in life seem to happen all by themselves.  We have only to look at our bodies and notice that breathing, digestion and elimination happen almost effortlessly. Many living systems operate this way. Humans think they can control other people, things and organizations tend to muck things up!  This principle was incorporated into the design of Open Space Technology, one of the simplest, quickest and most effective ways for bringing people together to work on problems, that has ever been invented.

Peacemakers Create the Space for Healing to Occur

After sharing many stories and examples of people who have used the OST principles, Owen concludes the book with some quasi- spiritual questions on the nature of healing and what can happen when people are give enough space for that healing. The job of the peacemaker, he says, is to “hold the space” so people and organizations can do whatever they need to do to become fully themselves.   Peacemakers, he suggests, need to “do their reps”, do the daily work of being, rather than doing, which is critical in supporting people and organizations who are in deep conflict.  One might say it is all about cultivating the ability to be present to others with great love and compassion but also with equanimity, trusting that they will be able to work out what they need to work out. The point, he says, is to do as little as possible in order to achieve the desired effect!  And that, my friends, makes a whole lot of sense to me.

Contact information: http://www.openspaceworld.org/.  You may also contact Harrison Owen at: owenhh@mindspring.com