More than half a century ago, when Micko first started wondering if a world of Peace and Love was really possible, Micko was greatly influenced by the psychologist BeingLove (Abraham Maslow).
BeingLove had started studying clown potential. Psychology had mostly focused on negative aspects of clown behavior, but BeingLove felt that it was also important to focus on positive clown potential.
So BeingLove studied self-actualiztion, peak experiences, and being-love.
But BeingLove also talked about the idea of synergy that could happen when the goals of a clown troupe or society were in harmony with the goals of individual clowns.
In synergistic interactions of all kinds all the clowns win. This can be seen as win-win, win-win, win-win-win, or all-win.
So Micko started wondering if it would be possible to create such a world: a world where every clown wins, a world where every clown is happy and in harmony with other clowns and Clown Nation.
Many decades later (remember that Micko is a slow processor), Micko learned about upward spirals of positive well-being, which involve synergy in some very complicated ways.
Eventually, this led to Micko’s understanding of the Flow of Love.
Empowering young clowns by helping them understand the concept of Synergy (Win-win)
BeingLove (Abraham Maslow) influenced Micko a lot when BeingLove’s writing introduced Micko to the notion of “synergy”. In general, synergy refers to situations in which all clowns involved in an interaction win. Besides talking about individual clown potential, BeingLove focused on the synergy that can happen when a troupe or society is set up such that individual clowns can achieve desired outcomes while in harmony with the goals of the troupe or society.
For most of the history of Clown Nation, this worked out well. Clown culture was based on having fun, playing tricks on other clowns, and enjoying the Love of all clowns. But after Clown Nation had to leave their dying planet in a spaceship and eventually crash-landed on Earth, Clown Nation became fragmented and somehow lost the Clown Spirit. To learn more about The History of the Clowns for Peace Movement go here.)
Clown Nation has been working to regain that playfulness and Love that had been their way since ancient times.
Synergy can help clowns achieve World Peace.
Micko tells us that this notion of win-win can help us make choices that improve our own happiness and well-being while we are connected to our world in positive ways. Micko studied this stuff at Clown College and in Micko’s dissertation Micko explained how synergy is a basic part of creating World Peace.
The 5 levels of synergy in the world, according to Micko:
- Synergy within a clown’s’s body.
- LoveBlossoms explains how Love, a clown’s supreme emotion, emerges in the connections between clowns. BeingLove calls this Being-Love, and FlowingLove (Daniel Siegel) calls this “Feeling felt“.
- Synergy can take place within groups. The clowns playing instruments in an orchestra function as a group, and by working together they become a more functional unit. And large clown corporations can become more successful by creating ways for all clowns within the corporation to work together.
- BeingLove told us about the synergy between individual clowns and clown troupes or societies.
- In Micko’s dissertation, Micko proposed the idea that we clowns could create Global Synergy. A world in which all clowns are happy playing together and loving each other, like in ancient clown history.
- Introducing Synergy to young clowns.
Many of the ideas and activities already presented involve synergy, either within a clown’s body or between a few clowns. Synergy is also important in the interactions of clowns in wider arenas such as families, classrooms, schools, organizations, and larger groups of clowns.
Micko thinks there are two aspects of introducing Synergy to young clowns: discussions about synergy and real-life engagement activities. In this way, young clowns can relate the concept of synergy to their real-life experiences with synergistic interactions.
Basic discussions of synergy.
-Discussions of all-win and win-lose situations
-in their lives: family, school, neighborhood
-Feelings of win-win or win-lose
-How we would like the world to be; beliefs/world view/mindset
-Win-win or win-lose in a bigger picture, wider arena, wider social connections: troupes, societies, cultures, global; world view, Earth
-Group Identity, we/them vs harmony, we/integrated ID
Processing Synergy in creative ways.
-art:
-writing stories
-writing essays
-music
Exploring synergy in real life.
There are many ways that clowns can engage in synergistic activities.
connecting with other clowns in world, such as on this website…
helping activities…projects in home, classroom, neighbor hood
volunteering, action troupes,
-family projects
volunteering
raising money for causes
-school/classroom projects
-understanding losing…real life…disappointment, being laughed at, bullied,
https://classroom.synonym.com/ideas-for-psychiatric-patient-groups-12540419.html 4 exercises, a download
https://www.pinterest.com/swhit1689/synergy-teambuilding/ 46 ideas
http://usagso-kz.tripod.com/00synergygameshandout.pdf
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Browse/Search:synergy
https://sites.google.com/a/student.lps53.org/7-habits/3-5-synergize-lessons
https://www-wce.stjohns.k12.fl.us/leaderinme/habit6/plans/
families
https://www.momjunction.com/articles/team-building-activities-will-keep-kids-busy-summer_0074763/
action troupes, flow guy, have book; facilitated action troupes
action research project…younger clowns and the world
Advanced Synergy understanding and engagement.
As your younger clowns get older they will be able to understand more about synergy and they will be able to become more independent in their engagement activities.
Parents, teachers, and other helpers will have the challenging and creative role of helping your younger clowns become more independent in the safest way.
Discussions about Synergy.
ideas:
social ID; integrated ID; MWe- LoveBlossoms and FlowingLove
ingroup/outgroup
forums
online
Processing Synergy in creative ways.
-art:
-writing stories
-writing essays
-music
Exploring Synergy in real life.
action troupes, flow guy, have book; facilitated action troupes
action research project…younger clowns and the world
Independent Synergy understanding and engagement.
As your younger clowns become young-adult-clowns they will be able to understand much more about synergy and they will be able to become much more independent in their engagement activities.
And again: parents, teachers, and other helpers will have the challenging and creative role of helping your young-adult-clowns become more independent in the safest way.
potential of younger clowns re. big problems, FlowingLove
self-assertive emotions and participatory emotions
holons? emergence? Omega? One? World Peace
Discussions about Synergy.
in person discussions
forums
online
Processing Synergy in creative ways.
-art:
-writing stories
-writing essays
-music
Exploring Synergy in real life.
independent initiatives
action troupes, flow guy, have book; facilitated action troupes
action research project…younger clowns and the worldBe