The following is an excerpt from: The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter (2-3).

Conversations That Matters

Through our conversations the stories and images of our future emerge, and never has this process been more critical. We now have the capacity, through neglect of the planetary commons on which our lives depend, to make the precious earth, our home., uninhabitable. We now have the capacity, through escalating violence and weapons of mass destruction, to make our precious human species, along with many others, extinct. Yet this is also a moment of opportunity. We are connected as never before in webs of communication and information-sharing through the Internet and other media that make our collection predicament visible on a much larger scale than we could have imagined only a few years ago. And for the first time, we have the capacity for engaging in connected global conversations and action about what is happening and how we choose to respond—conversations that are not under the formal aegis of any one institution, government, or corporation. It is time for us to engage in those conversations more intentionally. Our very survival as a human community, both locally and globally, may rest on our creative responses to the following questions:

• How can we enhance our capacity to talk and think more deeply together about the critical issues facing our communities, our organizations our nations, and our planet?
• How can we access the mutual intelligence and wisdom we need to create innovative paths forward?

What say ye?