The name of this blog, Rainbow Juice, is intentional.
The rainbow signifies unity from diversity. It is holistic. The arch suggests the idea of looking at the over-arching concepts: the big picture. To create a rainbow requires air, fire (the sun) and water (raindrops) and us to see it from the earth.
Juice suggests an extract; hence rainbow juice is extracting the elements from the rainbow, translating them and making them accessible to us. Juice also refreshes us and here it symbolises our nutritional quest for understanding, compassion and enlightenment.

Tuesday 25 July 2017

Climbing a Group Process Ladder

Anyone who gets into community development, social justice or other community work will end up working in groups.  An understanding of group dynamics and group processes can be beneficial.  There are many models that attempt to describe or explain the stages of a group coming together (being born), living together and ending.  One of the earliest, and still useful, is Cog’s Ladder – a model proposed by George O. Charrier (hence the c.o.g.) in 1972 when he was an employee of Proctor and Gamble.

Cog’s Ladder has five stages:
  1. Polite stage
  2. Why We’re Here stage
  3. Power stage
  4. Cooperation stage
  5. Esprit stage
Let’s look at each of these stages briefly.

Polite Stage

This initial stage is marked by cordiality, simplicity, lack of controversy, and (of course) politeness.  It is a time for group members to acquaint themselves with one another, or perhaps to become re-acquainted.  Most individuals in the group are keen to be liked and not cause waves.  Self-disclosure is kept to a minimum and ideas and actions are simple ones.

Why We’re Here Stage

In this stage people begin to leave aside their concerns about being liked to focus more on the purpose of the group.  There can be much discussion about group goals, agendas, and processes.  If a facilitator or leader is not already present, one may emerge at this stage who will set agendas and the topics for meeting and discussion.  It may also be a stage in which cliques begin to form, although often not rigidly so.  On a personal level, it is the stage at which people will begin to feel that they “fit in” and that the group is one they wish to remain part of.  This stage can see some members drift away.

Power Stage

This is the stage that requires patience and tolerance to get through.  It is the stage at which some group members may attempt to convince, or coerce, others into adopting their solution or way ahead.  There are bids for control of leadership of the group, with others forming alliances around the various power-players.  Many may go silent in this stage, wishing to stay out of the power games.  Conflict in the group rises and decisions taken in this stage may not be optimal.  The unity of the group that seemed to be emerging in the earlier stages dissipates and there is little sense of group identity.  For a facilitator of group processes this is possibly the stage at which your knowledge, skills and wisdom will be at their most useful.  Using this model can help a facilitator remain focused, at ease, and not get caught in a “what the hell is going on” merry-go-round.  it is not a time for a facilitator to step in and save a group.  Doing so could well back-fire.   The needs of the group at this stage are wide and include individual and group needs.  Individually, people may be in need of reassurance, acceptance, being heard.  The group may be in need of reframing its purpose, defining its structure, sharing of skills. 

Cooperation Stage

If a group can enter into a problem-solving mindset towards the end of the previous stage then it will be ready and willing to the cooperative stage.  In this stage, the conflicts of the previous stage are seen as opportunities to learn and to improve rather than as win-lose power battles.  A sense of group identity emerges, and leadership begins to be shared.  Solutions and decisions are better developed in this stage.  Solutions posed in the power stage that were initially rejected or resisted, may re-surface in this stage and be creatively explored.  Hallmarks of this stage are greater levels of listening and accepting of differences.  Once a group gets to this stage it is difficult for new members to fit in and be accepted.  To enable new members to fit in a group may need to go back to an earlier stage and repeat those stages.  Induction and/or mentoring practices may be of assistance in enabling new members to join without the need for the group to go back to earlier stages. 

Esprit Stage

The French word esprit means the quality of being lively, vivacious or witty.  Such liveliness certainly captures the sense of this stage well.  It is a stage at which groups feel as if they could do anything – almost take-on-the-world.  Not all groups reach this stage.  In order to get here they usually must pass through the previous four, including the power stage.  Once at this stage, the sense of cohesion is at a peak with contributions from members building on the contributions of others.  Creativity is high and the group often achieves more than it ever expected to.  Loyalty levels are high and the sense of satisfaction and achievement for individual members can be significant.  It is almost impossible for new members to join at this stage without the group having to go back to an earlier stage. 

Do you recognise these stages?  Have you experienced a group, or groups, that have attained the Esprit Stage?  For a facilitator of group processes and understanding of these stages can be useful.  Remember, however, that this is only a model of group process.  It works well – unless it doesn’t.  There will be times when it doesn’t.  That is the magic of human group processes.  None are ever the same, and none can ever be predicted in advance.  Where this model is useful is in allowing us to become comfortable with a process, including during the times of conflict, turmoil and disruption, knowing that we are all on the same journey.


Play with the ideas, and if you find them useful, it may even be worth outlining this model to a newly formed group early in its life so that group members are also more comfortable with the journey.

Tuesday 18 July 2017

Questioning Memorials

Someone once said “what we memorise, we memorialise.”  Just five words, yet they summarise an unhelpful approach to our unfolding social development.

When we memorialise something we place it on a pedestal, or put it in a museum, and accord it an unquestioned status.  We place it in a state of reverence, locked away to be looked at and memorialised.  We place it beyond question.

Our memorialisation of war is a classic example.  Look around the countrysides and city squares of most nations and we will see statues, plaques, and other memorials to battles, famous generals, or memorials to the victims of those battles.  Some historical battles will be memorialised and remembered by services or parades.  We memorise – we memorialise.

But, do we question, do we learn, do we seek alternatives to war?  Mostly, the answer is no.

Questioning our past battles is often derided as being disrespectful towards those who fought for our country and our way of life.  Yet, is it not more respectful to acknowledge those who went before, and honour their memory by asking how their sacrifice can be something we can learn from, something we can build on.  It was the 18th century Irish statesman, Edmund Burke, who noted that “those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.”

Yes, we must know our history.  If we do not question it then how can we ever learn from it, so that we do not become doomed to repeat it.  The example of war, is only the most glaring of our cultural avoidance of questioning our past.  We must learn, or rediscover, how to question.  Not by forgetting or dishonouring, but by being respectful in our questioning. 

Our culture, however, steers us away from questioning.  Beginning in school, sometimes even earlier, we are told, as children that “kids should be seen and not heard.”  We are told to not ask so many questions, yet it is how we learnt as children.  We asked: why is the sky blue? why does grandpa use a walking stick? how do birds fly? what’s that?  Questions, questions, questions.  By the time of the age of four most children are asking around 300 or more questions each and every day.  School drums that out of us – answers become more important it seems.  If we don’t get the right answers then somehow we are unintelligent, or perhaps lazy. 

Once out of school, our culture doesn’t relent.  Our culture reminds us that our job in life is to toe the line, not question.  How many of us have been told in a work situation, “don’t ask questions, just do the job,” or “that’s not the way we do it round here.”  Follow the rules, don’t ask questions.

It is no wonder then, that when it comes to us attempting to learn from our past, from our history, we don’t seem to be able to do it.  Most of us, by adulthood, have lost the art of questioning.

We need to rediscover the art of questioning.  We need to be asking questions like: is there a better way? can we find alternatives to war? how do we avoid famine and poverty? how do we avoid species loss? how do we ensure a brighter future for the generations to come?

We start with each and every one of us not giving in to a  culture that says memorise this and don’t question it.  Then we move on to our families; we encourage our children to keep questioning.  We don’t stop there though.  We teach the art of questioning, the art of thinking for ourselves.  We teach and expect critical thinking.  We teach and encourage creative thinking.  In everyone!

We stop memorialising.  We start honouring our past so as to build on it.

Thursday 13 July 2017

Happy Birthday Henry David Thoreau

This week (12 July 2017) marks the 200th birthday of Henry David Thoreau.  Thoreau is generally acknowledged as one of the prominent forerunners of the modern day environmental and simplicity movements.  He also influenced many of the great civil disobedience activists such as Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King.  The anarchist movement also claims him as an ancestor, although his writings are sometimes a bit ambiguous in this regard.

To acknowledge Thoreau Rainbow Juice decided to interview him on his 200th birthday.  What follows is a (fictional) transcript of that interview, using Thoreau’s own (italicised) words from his many writings.1

Rainbow Juice:  Happy birthday Mr Thoreau.  May I call you Henry?

Henry David Thoreau:  You may, and I thank you for the felicitations.

RJ:  Henry, you have been described as a forerunner of today’s environmental movement.  When you look around at the world today, 200 years after your birth, do you have any observations to make?

HDT:  I do.  Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of human on human, – a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilisation destined to have a speedy limit.  I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.  Yet, adults become disconnected.  Girls and boys and young women generally seem glad to be in the woods.  They look in the pond and at the flowers, and improve their time.  Men of business, even farmers, think only of solitude and employment, and of the great distance at which I dwell from something or other; and although they say that they love a ramble in the woods occasionally, it is obvious that they do not.

RJ:  You speak of a civilisation destined to have a speedy limit.  Do you think that limit is closer now than at your time?

HDT: I cannot say whether we are closer to that limit, however, I will say that in Wildness is the preservation of the World.  All good things are wild and free.  There is something in a strain of music, whether produced by an instrument or by the human voice, which by its wildness, to speak without satire, reminds me of the cries emitted by wild beasts in their native forests.  It is so much of their wildness that I can understand.  Give me for my friends and neighbours wild people, not tame ones.  I would also say that if a person walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, they are in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if they spend the whole day as a speculator, shearing off these woods and making earth bald before her time, they are esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.  As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down.

RJ:  So, you’re saying that we should calm down, take it easy, enjoy the woods and Nature.  And, in doing so we might discover something about ourselves?

HDT:  Indeed so.  This world is a place of business.  What an infinite bustle!  I am awakened almost every night by the panting of the locomotive.  It disrupts my dreams.  There is no sabbath.  It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once.  It is nothing but work, work, work.  I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents.  If I were to offer one piece of advice it would be this: You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.  But lo! people have become the tools of their tools.  We no longer camp as for the night, but have settled down on the earth and forgotten heaven.

RJ:  Thank you.  You mention becoming tools of our tools.  You might have noticed how many people today are hastening around with tools stuck in their ears or their eyes gazing at a tool in the palm of their hands.  And those are just the more blatant examples of our tool-bearing culture.  Is there anything further you would like to say about tools and technology?

HDT:  Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things.  They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.  Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?  We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.  Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.  People say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches to-day to save nine tomorrow.  When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.  By consenting to be deceived by shows, people establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations.  Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than adults, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.

HDT:  You make it sound so easy.  You seem to be suggesting that we re-discover our childhood innocence and take it easy on ourselves, and in the doing of that we will naturally take it easier on the earth.  What is the essential message you would have for those of us living 200 years after your birth?

HDT:  Simplify, simplify.  I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship, but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely.  It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.  I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. 

RJ:  How do you suggest we begin to forget?

HDT:  First, it is not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.  It is a matter of shifting consciousness.  Once you can do that you will find that by living your beliefs you can turn the world around.

RJ:  Thank you so much Henry.  Thank you so much for spending this time with us on your 200th birthday.

Notes:

1. Some of the works from which Thoreau’s italicised words are taken include:  Walden (1854), Walking (1862), Life Without Principle (1863), Autumnal Tints (1867).  Thoreau wrote many other works for publications and magazines as well as the highly influential Civil Disobedience (1849)

Tuesday 4 July 2017

Devotion to Voting

Every few years we head to the local church hall or community centre.  We get handed a slip of paper and are pointed to a private cubicle in which there are pens with which we can put marks on the paper we’ve just been handed.  We dutifully place our ticks or crosses on the sheet, leave the cubicle and drop the slip of paper into a box with a slit in the top.  Our slip of paper drops into the box and mingles with hundreds of other, similar, slips of paper.  We leave the hall and go back to our homes, our jobs, our families, our lives.

We have just voted.

What have we done in those few minutes that we were inside the polling booth?  Some say we have exercised our power.  Some say we have done our civic duty.  Others claim it as our democratic right.  Still others suggest that it is a waste of time.  Have we achieved what we intend?  And, what really is our intention?

In the western world power was wrested away from the monarchs and landed gentry and placed within the hands of ordinary people in what we call democracy.  And it did what we intended it to do – at least for awhile.  But, can we truly say that democracy fulfils our intentions today?  Take a good long hard look at democracy and we may just find that we have to answer that question with a resounding NO!

No, democracy no longer fulfils the intention of equality.  No, democracy no longer fulfils the intention of fraternity.  No, democracy no longer fulfils the intention of liberty. 

When we vote we are voting not for the wellbeing of all of us, we are voting for power.  We vote for ideologies.  We are voting so that one political party can win, and the others lose.  We are voting for winners and losers.  No longer are we part of “we the people” – we are now caught in the trap of dualistic power plays: National/Labour, Republican/Democrat, Liberal/Conservative, Tories/Whigs.  If we are part of the majority then we come out as the winners.  We shout and rejoice.  If not, we are losers.  What happens to the losers in our current democratic system?  More so, what happens to the minorities who cannot even aspire to being losers?  Often they are completely excluded.

In a winners/losers game what happens to the intention of wellbeing for all?  It is sidelined, and mostly completely ignored.  The winners come to power to implement their agenda.  A big part of that agenda is to gain more power, or at least the chance of more power at the next election.  The best that can be achieved in terms of wellbeing for all under that scenario is short-term decision making.  Decisions are made with the intention of consolidating support from those who are likely to vote for the winners at the next election.  Hardly a scenario for healthy long-term planning and decision-making.

Yet, we remain devoted to voting.

Democracy is No Longer Representative

Our elected representatives have become less and less representative.  Our representatives more and more come from wealthy backgrounds, high status occupations, or from the realms celebrity-hood.  Ominously, our representatives are more and more likely to represent a newly emergent occupation – the career politician.

Yet we continue our devotion to voting.

Democracy should not be considered a static thing.  Democracy can, and should, evolve and change.  Unfortunately, it is presently moving in unhelpful and unhealthy ways.  No longer are we the people exercising our power – we are throwing it away.  No longer are we doing our civic duty - big money and big business are draining democracy of any civics that may have been there.  

What To Do

What then to do in the face of the collapse of representative democracy?  Campaigns to get people out to vote are only going to exacerbate the problem.  People are deserting the voting system in increasing numbers – certainly in the western democracies.  Many would claim this is because of widespread apathy.  Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.  What if the decline in voter turnout is due to dissatisfaction and disgruntlement with politics, politicians and the voting system itself.  There is evidence to suggest this may be the case.

If it is the latter, then what are the next steps for the democratic journey?  This site has previously suggested sortition (the selection of decision-makers by lot) as worthy of consideration.  Previous posts can be see here, here, here, and here.


In the meantime we will need to let go of representative democracy, reject electoral politics, and give up our devotion to voting.