Holding the Tension of Less is More
Can we hold the inherent tension of paradox, without being paralyzed by it? How can we hold the tension without being overwhelmed or swallowed by it?
Can we learn how to hold the tension of paradox…knowing that much [potential] wisdom and abundance resides within the [unease of] ambiguity?
Sounds like a tall order…but hang in…
Might apply to any of us…in the places and spaces where we’re working diligently to influence, be heard, listen…make progress.
Understandable…
🌏 Need for clarity
🌍 Perceived dangers of nuance ↘ the slippery slope of delay and more incrementalism
🌎 The difficult challenge of sense and meaning making in a dysfunctional competitive world
🌏 Many invested in the rightness of advocated/proposed pathways or solutions
🌍 Continuously bombarded by information that feeds or reinforces positions and agendas…
Peeling back more layers on recurring themes: rightness, wrongness, righteousness…how we might hold the tension, navigate and activate wisely and well?
This is no [mind] game. The stakes are real and mounting.
What becomes unimpossible when we intuitively open ourselves to the combinings of knowledge, ways of knowing and being that include and are beyond our own direct, limited lived experience and expertise?
Combining, a simple everyday word, invites us to seek and see the nested connectedness and the meanings and possibilities that exist when we embrace the living nature of our lives and worlds — in ever-changing transcontextualizing relationships.
Nora Bateson shines a light on ecologies of living …embodied in this question that she carries forward across contexts, “Who can I be when I’m with you?” In her recent book, Combining she:
…invites us into an ecology of communication where nothing stands alone, and every action sets off a chain of incalculable consequences. She challenges conventional fixes for our problems, highlighting the need to tackle issues at multiple levels, understand interdependence, and embrace ambiguity.
Insisting on our collective responsibility to confront the looming threats to humanity‘s survival, she advocates change through interconnectedness and challenges us to rethink our perspectives on relationships, community, and the very essence of being human.
Nate Hagens’ interview with Nora Bateson: “Complexity Between the Lines” | The Great Simplification, unpacks the meaning of living systems, the relationships between parts and interconnectedness to wholes, exploring how and why we must “discontinue in order to continue.”
We need it all — sense and meaning-making derived through many combinings and the full[er] attunement of our [collective] relational experiences and intelligences.
As we bridge and combine, we can recognize some perceptual traps, the compartmentalization that slips back in when we name things, often becoming too attached to the labels.
Our labels function like pointing sticks. They represent the maps, models and hard data pointing to important issues.
However, none of these are the living terrain…
When [re]imagining a livable life-affirming future, we can focus on our overarching concerns and common[s]ground. We can mindfully and humbly activate — supporting needed shifts, following through in ways that are congruent…walking-the-talk-and-listening-and-learning-while-we-walk…
It’s about living into and being that future. Beyond labels, slogans, brands and memes…what lies beneath the surface? Rolling up-sleeves and working side-by-side in many ways and places, help us understand and address the issues, challenges, dilemmas, possibilities and alternatives…within and across contexts.
Degrowth represents a case in point.
There’s a wealth of knowledge and relevant evidence-based research underneath the term, degrowth, which was coined to draw attention to serious problems that affect us all. There are many combinings that underlie the degrowth moniker — that continue to shape its meanings and possibilities.
We’re living in a noisy world competing for our attention, where media algorithms feed us the things we already believe and the things that the mainstream want us to believe and consume.
We are constantly barraged with issues that are marketed, packaged and decontextualized from the full, rich interrelated messiness where they manifest, live, pulsate and shape-shift…
The labels, brands, sound-bites, symbols and memes that snag our attention are also symptomatic of fragmented, polarizing consumptive patterns that characterized and perpetuate the mechanistic Industrial Age.
[How] can we excavate beneath and beyond labelling and branding, in order to support and shift life-affirming patterns?
In a world that still pushes us to brand most everything is it naive and misguided to reject the labels or work around them?
🌎 When we embrace labels like degrowth, are we [potentially…unconsciously] playing into these patterns? Maybe? Can we recognize if and when that is happening?
🌏 Can we appreciate the dilemma here, without pronouncing judgement and lining up on for-or-against sides?
🌍 Can we excavate beneath the surface of labels to understand the deeper aspects and some of the nuanced ways of looking at layered complex issues?
🌎 Can we base our discernments, guided by wider interconnected and deeper, richer contexts?
🌏 Can we suspend some of our sweeping, broad brush conclusions, staying open to possibilities that are not yet formed or clear?
🌍 Can we do all this in a spirit of openness and transparency, calling out the issues as we see them?
Underneath the degrowth label, many and growing numbers of us agree that infinite growth, bankrupt of meaningful life-affirming value, wastefully squandering the precious carrying capacity of a finite interconnected living planet, which is our home — is anti-life.
We also observe the gaping cognitive dissonance of people and organizations who green wash, blatantly or subtly fail to walk-their-talk and the serious dilemmas and consequences that perpetuate degenerative patterns.
Multiple shades and brands of x-washing are insidiously and cleverly morphing and mutating…
There are many people side-stepping the ever-growing incidents of double binds and dilemmas they experience — the painful reality of navigating between worlds through the extended, uncertain throes of messy paradigm shift. Ideological, philosophical and political views, positions and assumptions about capitalism, socialism and democracy etc. easily become conflated and intertwined — making it increasing difficult to navigate wisely and well.
The reality of our inherent messy humanness and dancing with monsters strikes again — a recurring existential theme and undercurrent that we all experience and encounter in the course of our daily and ongoing lives.
Our human developmental journey is also a vitally relevant factor when considering the subject of growth.
While infinite growth akin to life-threatening degenerative cancer is not a good thing, we can also appreciate healthy conducive-to-life growth as a law-of-nature that pre-existed human civilization.
And so — the terms, degrowth and post growth cannot arbitrarily be construed or conflated to mean that all growth is wrong or bad. With a society dangerously careening out-of-balance, we seek viable strategies to seriously shift emphasis…
At times, [not always,] it seems some of the debates and counter-arguments among those advocating degrowth and those advocating green growth— are not really engaged in the same conversation…
Similarly, some of the debates and counter-arguments among those advocating degrowth and those advocating healthy growth and abundance — may be approaching the issues from differing contexts, lived experience and realities…focusing on different aspects…or maybe climbing different sides of the same mountain?
Sometimes the catch-all labels trigger, distract…miss the deeper and deeply relevant points…
🌏 What innovations — perhaps referenced as green growth — might truly represent life-affirming breakthroughs? Especially those that are nature-based, designed with biomimicry principles and enabling technology and science that aligns?
🌍 What innovations and solutions will hasten our consumptive degenerative decline, especially those disregarding [compounding] externalities?
🌏 Are there contexts whereby temporary stop gap solutions are warranted and justified?
🌍 Can we anticipate the downstream consequences of the solutions, models and policies we are advocating?
🌎 When we bump up against different world views, how can we deal with and learn from those fundamental differences without walling them off and shutting down?
🌎 [How] can we reasonably acknowledge and balance the differentiated social, environmental and economic issues across varied historical and present contexts and circumstances? Especially in light of the damaging impact of colonization and pervasive/ongoing injustice in many parts of the world?
🌏 How does the pervasive [reductionist] old paradigm continue to sink it’s claws into the ways we communicate and operate [dominate-oppress] — often denying the validity of important questions?
🌏 Can we definitively know the right answers to [many of] these questions? How can we navigate wisely and well when clear-cut answers really aren’t clear?
Beneath the labels…there might be much more [potential] agreement about the complexity, range and variability of underlying issues and needs.
Beneath the labels…there might be deeper layers of disagreement that must be excavated, heard, understood and validated.
Consciously or unconsciously [by default], people are always making choices — whether, where, when and how to invest, activate and direct their energies. This is often based on context, place, lived experience and how one’s particular capabilities [and driving business models] are [or are not] poised to address the needs.
🌏 Context matters.
🌎 Place matters.
🌍 History matters.
🌏 Local conditions and circumstances matter.
🌎 Global consequences matter.
🌍 The underlying drivers of growth — matter.
🌏 The nature-of-the-growth — matters.
🌎 Sense making and digging down sufficiently to understand what matters — matters.
🌍 Finding a variety of ways whereby more people can understand what matters and mindfully choose what to do and not do and how to live into those choices — matters.
Carte blanche anything goes status-quo-growth-for-the-sake-of-growth driven by a runaway economic model that fails to serve people and planet — is not okay.
As individuals or as [corporate] entities, our rights as humans cannot mean financial gain at the expense of living beings and the interconnected living systems that are essential for life and the ability to regenerate the conditions that support the ongoing and future flourishing of life.
So we cannot continue along the same trajectory that created the problems we face.
As we face the real limits of a finite planet, does that mean we must adopt or double down on a scarcity mindset?
Scarcity…another term that is often misconstrued. Let’s unpack that…
And more paradox…
🌏 What happens when we ignore or deny the tension, as if it doesn’t exist?
🌍 What happens when double binds find us repeatedly caught-between-no-win-rocks-and-hard-places?
🌎 Are we driven and seduced by the same old western-influenced economic model that feeds addiction and idolizes consumerism, commoditization and accumulation of stuff — where more-ness breeds a degenerative downward spiral? A crisis of meaning created and exacerbated by disconnectedness, deepens an ever-growing hole in the collective soul of society. Plugging this gaping hole with more stuff just feeds the addictive dysfunctional cycle.
Do we recognize the underlying scarcity mindset that keeps [many of] us on a hamster wheel competing to win and gain as much as we can for fear that we will otherwise lose [ground] in a world that doesn’t have enough available to keep on feeding and supplying [all of] us with all the stuff we [many of us] have been programmed to think we need, deserve and want?
Who’s running this sh*t show?
The paradoxical dance of emergence and strategy is very real.
A scarcity mindset can [inadvertently] feed the story of separation, which Charles Eisenstein articulates so well in this video. This story between worlds continues to breed fear, perpetuating dysfunctional competition. It can choke off many life-affirming possibilities yet to be birthed, restored and nurtured…
Is it perhaps time to retire the term mindSET, which might suggest that our minds necessarily and unavoidably become fixed? MindSET can reinforce false binaries and disconnectedness — failing to tap into our cognitive adaptability— our natural curiosity, ability to [co-]learn and sense-make across contexts.
Surely we are and can be more versatile and agile? We hold multiple roles in our every day lives and over the course of our lifetimes. How we show up and the choices we make within and across contexts vary.
What becomes possible when our perceptions of who we are and who we can be are liberated from artificially compartmentalized roles and fixed mindsets?
When more of us accept a naturally fluid way of being and relating, our [co-]creative possibilities can potentially flourish.
Looping back to Nora Bateson,
“Hope lies in the very fact that as living beings we are wired for relationships. It is only possible to express our humanity in relationship to other human beings.”
🌏 Can truly regenerative ways of [inter]being and relating, as expressions of place within and across contexts — help us shift the patterns?
🌍 Can we break through dysfunctional patterns that insidiously recycle and recirculate over and over, obscured by new blind spots that are, in essence, the same old defensive and clever blind spots?
Shifting toward life-affirming patterns cannot happen through the same old mechanistic machine age cookie-cutter silver-bullet scale-up solutionism that contributed to the overlapping crises we face.
Fully coming to terms with this is deeply layered — not a flip-of-a-switch. It is part of the humbling ongoing journey that connects, often bewilders and propels us forward iteratively learning and adapting.
“We are going to have to want different things, seek different pleasures, pursue different goals than those that have been driving us and our global economy.” ~ Joanna Macy
Different lenses help us see and understand…
Ambiguity and uncertainty born from complexity can’t be explained away. Holding the tension of paradox doesn’t have to paralyze us either — though we do need to allow some mindful reflective pause time to process, to sit with stuff…
Intrapersonally…interpersonally…transcontextually — we can discern patterns, learn, experiment and choose healthier ways to make progress.
As we zoom in and zoom out…we can sense-make and find meaning that makes sense and feels meaning-full.
🌏 Can we navigate forward, building [more] bridges across some of the artificially separating divides?
🌍 Can we understand the concerns and endorse many of the suggested shifts and actions of the degrowth movement, without necessarily advocating, adopting and promoting the use of the degrowth label?
🌎 Can we accept and respect those who steadfastly choose to use and emphasize the degrowth term?
🌏 Can we accept and respect those who steadfastly choose not to use or emphasize the degrowth term?
It’s all gonna happen anyway, regardless of our own preferences, strategic choices and the words we choose.
With [co-]creativity, collaboration and experimentation guided by what is known and what can become known and learned — we can [co]discover, uncover, live into and test contextually grounded and place-sourced nature-based solutions, that can be right-scaled and applied more widely, addressing problems and leveraging opportunities…
With this kind of abundance, learning from nature and drawing from the best of our own nature — balancing left and right brain human capacity and learning potential — we can discern how to use less, waste less and become more resourceful, efficient and effective.
Perhaps when guided by an innate love of life — more possibilities and emergent pathways to realize them, will open up. Perhaps we’ll gain the needed wisdom to see the guiding patterns beneath the surface…hiding in plain sight. Perhaps the wisdom that many of us carry around, can be meaningfully carried forward, expanding in ever-widening ripples and deepening pools of co-intelligence.
Not driven by fear of loss and/or greed to amass financial wealth as an endpoint destination, that invariably perpetuates an endless hole in our collective souls! Abundance…and-and.
Being ‘unstitutional’ is simply another way of expressing the unlearning of patterns that don’t serve and embracing and embodying anything truly life-enhancing — any creative life-force that naturally embraces enoughness.
Abundance aligned with conditions that support healthy meaningful growth does not mean we are against degrowth or its proponents who are advocating against blind runaway consumerism. We wholeheartedly share the underlying concerns.
Taking a giant step back, a key question that still looms large:
How can we create and reinforce a pull strategy that might attract, welcome and invite many more people to exercise their personal and collective agency to do what they can to support the kinds of regenerative life-affirming shifts that we so desperately need? What might help pick up the pace and gain momentum?
Some folks believe that well-grounded fear is necessary and justified, to jolt people awake to the serious, urgent reality we all face — to become collapse aware and rise above dominating consumer-driven mainstream influence. Some speak to the need to squarely face the trauma, undertaking rather than avoid the necessary grieving process — preparing and adapting accordingly.They point to the real dangers of underestimating the issues. They highlight unrealistic claims of green growth that will feed the Jevons paradox — whereby the illusion of solutions and escalating patterns will create a lull, greasing the way to ever-higher consumption. They understandably caution against blind hope and too-little-too-late-incrementalism. Furthermore, strong degrowth advocacy is intended to influence the political will to shift the tide, stop predatory delay and follow through with needed policy change.
Some folks advocate compellingly that fear is not a motivator. Messaging to induce or reinforce fear and heighten alarm, will [likely] drive more people toward helplessness, hopelessness and/or denial. They point to the boomarang risks of fear strategies that may drive greater polarization, and cause some/many people to double down on their current opposing entrenched positions or become (more) apathetic. When people give up, they often fail to recognize and exercise their agency to do what they can to make tangible changes that matter under all scenarios. On a planet of 8 billion, the vast majority don’t access the books, conferences, training programs or thought leadership circles where degrowth might be effectively unpacked. There’s also a concern that fear will just prompt some people, taking a fatalist view and retracting into deeper individualist separation, to make hay, cash in, gain whatever they can, and hunker down becoming even more self-protectionist in the short run.
Since humans are also diverse, intrinsically motivated and extrinsically influenced by a wide range of inner, social and environmental contexts and factors…perhaps we are wise to accept that a one-size-fits-all approach will not and cannot work.
Our human systems, rife with inherent messy humanness, paradoxically pose our greatest challenges and potential opportunities for creative breakthroughs.
While the degrowth label shines a spotlight of stark realism towards stopping and significantly slowing runaway economic growth as defined and manifested, one of the critiques of the degrowth label, is that— it is perceived as a negative.
Beneath the label, when we look a little deeper, we see that most proponents of degrowth, endorse a wellbeing economy that transcends the deeply flawed neoclassical economic model that continues to define GDP-driven measures and policies. Some call for grounded hope based on real shifts people can choose to make. There are a range of alternative models, strategies and examples referencing parts of the world and our Indigenous civilization history — being shaped, discussed, documented and explored. These challenge the dehumanizing and degenerative patterns of modernity driven by our colonizing western influenced society.
The powerfully illustrative, engaged work and writings of Vanessa Andreotti, Hospicing Modernity, deepen our understanding of these dysfunctional patterns, the deep letting go hospicing work needed and the choices we might make to shift toward a decolonized future.
In The Great Simplification episode #125, May 2024: Hospicing Modernity and Rehabilitating Humanity, Vanessa explores ways of knowing and being. Stretching beyond western industrial packaged, patterned ways — beautiful, rich, layered, compassionate bridge building…embracing an embodied learning journey for all..holding more spaces open…flowing with natural cycles…widening and deepening our capacity to hold complexity…
Imagine a world where this kind of learning was widely accessible, encouraged and funded — interwoven as part of the living fabric of communities and societies dedicated to the flourishing of people and planet.
As the problems become increasingly evident, landing closer to home for more of us…the things that people need and choose to let go of and move away from, may become glaringly clear[er]. Perhaps less clear and less unified, are the potentially magnetizing vision[s] and choices that will draw people toward a life-affirming, livable future.
If degrowth steers some people away from degenerative growth patterns, what will attract and draw more people toward regenerative life-affirming wellbeing patterns — life worth living and work worth doing — across any and all of the contextual and cultural divides?
In his article Indigenous to Life — Coming Home to Place, Daniel Christian Wahl also holds open the inherent tensions and the possibilities,
“What if we focused on being differently now? What if we re-perceived who we are and identified more with life as a planetary process of interbeing? What if we aimed for being in right relationship to self, community and life? What if we focused on our individual and collective potential of being and becoming healing and nurturing expressions of place? What if we dropped the dysfunctional habit of trying to solve abstract global problems and scaling-up solutions? What if we focused instead on our potential to create conditions conducive to life in co-evolving mutuality with the places and communities that are the ground of our being?”
Can we amplify the stories that demonstrate how less is more…can be more… how a radical shift from the same old degenerative sh*t will shape a reframed sense of more?
Letting go and rejecting domination-oppression patterns and choosing regenerative partnership ways of living are foundational. Reframing our perspectives, relationships, how we approach growth and abundance — fundamentally redefines progress, in service to life.
Sometimes as the names, memes or labels used gather energy and passion, they evolve into aspirations — hopes that the associated, advocated direction, ideas and actions will gain serious momentum and become a real movement.
Kinda hard to create a movement that can follow and map a definable strategic trajectory.
🌏 Can we effectively, intentionally create movements that will move and inspire people to keep moving forward as intended? Maybe?
🌍 Do movements primarily occur as an emergent confluence of many nonlinear and serendipitous factors…best recognized and declared as movements in retrospect?
🌎 What defines a movement? Can we support [the flow of] movement without objectifying, commoditizing, labelling and branding?
🌏 Can we definitively know the answers to these questions?
We can set out, doing all we can to the best of our individual and collective abilities…looking back periodically to see if our footprints are leaving enduring impressions, gathering other footprints along the journey.
Perhaps movements are not ours to declare. Perhaps, when a movement manifests, it’s a much larger gathering life force. Perhaps, as we hold on and let go…our influence flows…ever-widening combining our collective ripples…
Reminded yet again — we [usually] cannot [en]force the shifts and changes that we advocate, no matter how fervent and well-grounded our positions. When we try to [en])force change we invariably hit barriers and/or unleash other unintended or troubling consequences. Even on the side of right, when most certain, people [and that includes us] will potentially resist what might be interpreted as another form or brand of dogma. Benevolence, too, often manifests within a familiar domination-oppression pattern. When we have very compelling reasons, we gotta find better ways to communicate, influence and earn commitment and trust.
This is a recurring theme revisited in these articles:
🌍 Being ‘Roughly Right’ is ‘Always’ and is ‘Never’… ‘Good Enough’
Can we honour and hold the tension of this [r]evolution, accepting messiness and uncertainty as we live the questions — navigating between wor[l]ds, working at being-the-change, continuously learning and walking-the-talk-and-listening-while-we-walk?
Sahana Chattopadhyay’s writings and work also invite us to widen the possibilities. In her article, Demystifying the ‘Pluriverse’ as the Hegemony Unravels: Differentiating between multipolarity and pluriversality, she explores an open-ended inclusive wayfinding journey that stretches our moral imaginations.
This well-researched fall 2023 paper, Levers of Change — Tackling Racial and Economic Inequality in America, unpacks the deep-rooted colonial injustice of a deeply flawed driving neoclassical economic system, designed to benefit the minority, marginalizing and disadvantaging black and brown people and women. As we peel back more layers, we understand that deep systemic shifts must be holistically rooted in decolonization. Degrowth, as an overarching driver, taken out of context, can still insidiously be used as a colonizing force.
This 2024 research paper: Tracing the Sustainability Industry’s Ecocidal Lineage from the Doctrine of Discovery, traces the dominating colonization patterns of a western industrially influenced sustainability industry. Ignoring the Indigenous knowledge and wisdom that safeguards culturally rooted regenerative practices, has perpetuated degenerative cancerous growth under the guise of evolutionary progress.
Can we find the common[s] ground and cultivate a deep [reframed] sense of belonging in more places and spaces? Can we restore and co-discover pathways that might help to birth and nurture a pluriverse — uncovering what is natural, inclusive, diverse, sacred and whole?
Decolonizing potentially liberates us ALL from myths that dehumanize, degenerate and denigrate what is sacred about life.
This article was first inspired by an exchange with Desiree Driesenaar, and her unwavering Abundanism and Abundance4All spirit. We often cross paths as we endeavour to uplift a multitude of can-do and-and regenerative ways. Desiree is an indomitable life-force. Her work and writing span multiple disciplines, contexts, places, cultures and pilots — with an emphasis on nature-based innovation, drawing from science, math, technology and biomimicry design.
The case for upholding the degrowth name is well-articulated here in this article by Erin Remblance, an avid activist among those who’ve amassed a wealth of research on the subject: Degrowth: No, Let’s Not Call It Something Else. Her June 2024 updated Introduction to Degrowth, provides an excellent view under the hood, with many illustrative slides and references. We appreciate the tireless work that Erin and many colleagues are doing. We recognize the dilemmas we face when choosing whether or not to assign labels or brand identities. We all value gaining deeper understanding, to guide us as we mindfully navigate.
While our article here focuses on degrowth…the underlying issues generally apply to many other labels commonly referenced and used. Some labels are often clustered in close association. This also leads to assumptions, conflation and misunderstandings that can feed entrenched polarization. Sometimes those well-intended labels inadvertently draw people into labyrinths of abstract ideological theorizing.
At the ChangeNOW 2024 conference, Timothée Parrique’s presentation is compelling. Rethinking Economic Systems Inside the Planetary and Social Boundaries. Here he holds the tension, speaking to the challenges we face as well as the debilitating effects of polarization. He invites us to transcend the labels, dig down into the issues and collaboratively roll up-our-sleeves through conceptual alliances.
As we navigate through this existential soup seeking common ground that connects us — our humanness and innate drive to cling-to-life — perhaps it will increasingly dawn on more of us that love, not fear, holds our greatest potential. It can be kinda hard to feel love when driven and gripped by fear. And so, perhaps we gotta ask…what will potentially be the most conducive to life and love within and across the contexts we find ourselves? Perhaps holding the question, “What might be most trust-enhancing in this situation?” — is an important step towards holding the tension.
Words are important. At times they are clumsy and very limited tools. Our words — the ways we string them together and carry them forward — are never quite complete or all-encompassing. There is always so much left unsaid…unexplained…open to interpretation.
There’s always more…
After a while, many of our words can ring hollow…we can become immune or desensitized. And so we endeavour to find new words, new [re]combinations, new metaphors and symbols that might reach out wider and deeper — reigniting the imagination of our spirit and souls.
Any of our words can become labels, sometimes intentionally…sometimes accidentally…sometimes serendipitously. Words often become weaponized — used to [dis]prove a position, used to critique and divide.
Too often our own most fondly held words get in the way of deep listening hearing and learning. When we are truly present in the moment-to-moment realness of what is happening, deeper understanding and greater possibilities might open up…
Upon reflection, this article is also about holding and accepting the inherently difficult tension of communicating well, our unrealistic expectations of the words we use…as well as their fertile potential to open and widen possibilities — as we work together in relationship.
Living between worlds, we are also living between words. Our words can captivate or widen gaps. Too often they also trap and ensnare. We need our words to build bridges…to invite ways of seeing with fresh eyes.
Perhaps more than ever, we need our words to shape new stories while honouring time-honoured old stories, tapping our capacity for love-of-life and the livingness that matters above all else — where meaning resides.
There’s a vast and growing reservoir of publications, resources, pioneers, practitioners, scientists and bioregional projects and stories that point the way. We celebrate, draw from, support, share and build collaboratively from all of these. On a planet of 8 billion people, collectively we can widen the pathways for multitudes of people to engage and initiatives to flourish. A spirit of generosity, reciprocity and enabling value flows will lift us all.
*This article was updated again June 2024, reflecting additional perspectives and ongoing action research, as we continue to observe, listen, assimilate, curate and adapt — a learning journey for us all.
Unstitution was birthed as a collective creative commons and nested ecosystem. We (co-)catalyze and support collaborative communities, initiatives and coalitions where people from across sectors, disciplines, cultures, generations and walks-of-life work together on mission critical issues. From readiness through to regenerative progress — moving beyond polarization — is how we roll. The links embedded throughout this article are a warm invitation to go a bit deeper, at any time. For more insights reflecting our ongoing journey, our suite of Unstitution articles are published on Medium. They portray a small sample of the ways we are adapting and contributing among ever-expanding commons-based communities and initiatives inspired and fuelled by citizens — perhaps better described as denizens — anywhere in the world — living into the principles and spirit that govern our collaborative work.
You can follow Unstitution and engage with us on LinkedIn. Many of our posts and perspectives also pop up under hashtags #messyhumanness and #wisdomwithteeth.
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