Harrison Owen Archives - Restore Commons

Category Archives: Harrison Owen

Harrison Owen is a pioneer in Open Space Technology: an idea centered around self-organizing of people that leads to peace in the community. He also is the founder of H.H. Owen and Co. and the author of several books that explore the ideas of self-organizing systems, Open Space Technology, and how to utilize these practices.

Order By

Format

Principles and Laws

Harrison Owen shares the five principles and one law of the Open Space system.

Faith and Open Space

Harrison Owen discusses parallels between God and the concept of Open Space.

Self-Organizing Systems

Harrison Owen names the New York City food system as an example of a self-organizing system.

Open Space is not Management

Harrison Owen discusses Open Space and the concept of self-leadership.

Discovering Open Space

Harrison Owen discusses the idea of Open Space and naturalistic sharing and discussion.

Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back into the same box.

Italian Proverb

Though the commons is everywhere, it is nonetheless little noticed. For economists, it is a kind of inchoate mass that awaits the vivifying hand of the market to attain life. Forests are worthless until they become timber, just as quiet is worthless until it becomes advertising.

Jonathan Rowe, Our Common Wealth

Questions are fateful. They determine destinations. They are the chamber through which destiny calls.

Godwin Hlatshwayo

I am of the order whose purpose is not to teach the world a lesson but to explain that school is over.

Henry Miller

Art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage.

Adrienne Rich

The power to call people a problem is the most injurious thing you can do.

John McKnight

All consciousness begins with an act of disobedience.

Carl Jung

Lost luggage is an initiation ritual. It is an invitation to a simpler life.

Madeline Nold

Education is never neutral. It always involves a project…either keep things the same or change them.

Paolo Friere

I fear one day I’ll meet God, he’ll sneeze, and I won’t know what to say.

Ronnie Shakes

Leadership is willingness to have faith in a future we do not understand.

Clint Kemp

Our communities are broken. For the ones that look whole, the price is being born somewhere else.

Jim Keene

Revolution is not capturing institutions, it is discovering free space and enlarging it.

Paul Goodman

When we meet, I am talking to myself and you are spying on me.

Leroy

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

Soren Kierkegaard

If I am ever stuck on a respirator or life support system, I definitely want to be unplugged-but not until I get down to a size eight.

Henriette Mantel

A part of kindness is loving people more than they deserve.

Joseph Joubert

If your time hasn’t come, not even a doctor can kill you.

Meyer A Perlstein

The direction of the mind is more important than its progress.

Joseph Joubert

Most communities can be compared to a football game where 30,000 people who need the exercise turn up to watch 36 people who don’t.

Peter Kenyon

Every time you add a highway lane, you slow down traffic.

Bross’s paradox

I have tried to teach service to my husband and revolution to my son.

unknown