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=== Activity: Mapping Culture ===

==== Why Map Culture? ====

===== To See as Collectives =====

Despite the grand promise of maps ability to reveal the whole, these culture mapping activities are not global in scale. This is not so much an attempt to “see everything” as a set of tools that allow people to see more completely the communities and movements that they are a part of; the premise being that we need to hone our collective ability to see before we can coordinate harmoniously at greater scales.

===== To See Spectrums =====

Culture exists on a spectrum.

There are the definite artifacts of culture—the objects, the recipes, the ritual practices—but within society these manifest to varying degrees, with some placing great meaning and others merely gesturing towards past meaning. Other parts of culture are implicit, our way of describing how things get done. Within and between both there are countless nuanced variations that

Maps help us place our varied relationships on spectrums so that we can develop more nuanced language for coordinating across beliefs.

===== To Navigate Change =====

We witness the every-day feelings, desires and decisions of those in our life but when it comes to societal change we often only note official events: a new law is passed, a new technology hits the market, war, IPO, launch, collapse. If we want to scale a culture of collaborative innovation we need more nuanced feedback loops for the ways that we are all gradually changing.

==== What do we map? ====

===== We map our relationship to ideas =====

This platform is not directed as answering any particular questions. Instead it is a tool that allows groups to answer their own questions as collectives. Purpose, prosperity, truth, leadership, wealth—our ability to create thriving systems depends on our ability to see, together, a clear vision of what we hold important.

===== We map “wholes” =====

What does completeness look like in individuals, in relationships, family, community? How do they combine to build whole society? More about this below in Studying Collective Identity. In summary, much of how we view the world is through the language of separation. Country, religion, race. We have a rich taxonomy of difference. This platform is intended to visualize and develop a language around the experience of social completeness.

==== How do we map? ====

===== Social Maps =====

[[File:Relationship_map_01.png|thumb|]]

The basic interactive element is a group sharing activity that allows a group to quickly visualize their relationship with a thing or idea. These are created by and for community members as a form of group conversations. The steps:

* Pick a topic: Purpose, prosperity, religion, whatever is important.
* Identify a cultural intersection: this is the landscape where participants ‘map’ their experiences. Examples is popular culture:
** Attachment Theory: relationships map connection styles on spectrums of anxiety V avoidance
** SWOT Analysis: project teams map priorities on spectrums of internal/external V helpful/harmful

** Thinking Ladder: political conversants map discourse on scales of liberal/conservative V scientific/tribal (Tim Urban).
* Select Elements: These can be things, beliefs, behavior patterns, intentions, plans. In response to a core question, each participant places a piece of their personal context on the collective graph and leave a comment describing its significance.

* Vote and discuss: Participants vote on collected elements and comments that best illustrate this cultural landscape for them.
* Repeat: participants can repeat social maps in new crowds or propose new intersections for observing collecting seeing.

===== Learning Sequences =====

Where social maps could be seen as a simple feedback system similar to social media or community surveys, their true value is revealed by connecting them in series as part of a collective learning. These are discussed next.