Encounters with the Other

Barry Oshry is a pioneer in the field of human systems thinking. His life's work has been to empower individuals and organizations by transforming system-blindness into system-sight. The educational programs he has developed include The Power Lab, the Organization Workshop on Creating Partnership, and the When Cultures Meet Workshop. In 2013 he launched The Worldwide Week of Partnership, during which Power+Systems trainers across the globe conduct pro bono partnership events for educational, charitable, advocacy, and service organizations in their local communities. In 2015 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Organization Development Network.Barry is the author of The Systems Letter, Seeing Systems, Leading Systems, In the Middle, and The Possibilities of Organization. He is also a playwright whose stage productions include "What a Way to Make a Living," "Hierarchy," "Power Play," and "Peace."¿In 1975 he and his wife and partner, Karen Ellis Oshry, founded Power+Systems, Inc. whose worldwide network of trainers continues the work of empowering individuals and organizations by transforming system-blindness into system-sight.

Barry Oshry has a lifetime's experience of working with social and organizational systems.Here he explains how we can understand - and avoid - the "catastrophes" that continue to occur when one culture meets another - when demagogues sell us messages of superiority or purity in the face of cultural difference.Algeria ~ Armenia ~ Bosnia ~ Cambodia ~ Congo ~ Darfur ~ East Timor ~ The Holdomor ~ TheHolocaust ~ Myanmar ~ Palestine ~ Rwanda...He explains how the two conventional solutions to encountering the "other" - Purity and Tolerance - both exact a terrible cost on the oppressed while diminishing the humanity of the oppressors.And he offers us a third possibility, one that requires a fundamental transformation in how we see and experience one another. This transformation requires us to understand that the interaction patterns we fall into shape the way we see and experience one another. Change the pattern of interaction and our experiences of one another will change...The possibility of "Power and Love", working together and tempering one another, will emerge.