Dancing to the Beat of a (R)evolution
Remember the Beatles Revolution 1? The famous White Album…
🎶 You say you want a revolution. Well, you know, we all want to change the world. You tell me that it’s evolution. Well, you know, we all want to change the world. But when you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out (in) 🎶
Wanna (R)evolution?
Ongoing debate persists among scientists, change makers, activists and thought leaders, most notably in the sustainability/regenerative space, regarding the pace and pathways that will lead to real life-affirming systemic change.
Some advocate sweeping revolutionary change to address urgent climate challenges and other systemic social issues that are all interconnected to the mounting meta-poly-perma crises that we — humanity, our civilization and the planet — face.
This might suggest that the best science, rational thinking, sound strategy and plans can and must produce needed transformation, swiftly and at scale.
This might suggest citizens awakening and uprising in wide scale organized or spontaneous peaceful protests.
For some, revolutionary change demands whatever activist measures are needed to shine a spotlight: confronting those who are blocking the way, gathering and using evidence-based hard quantifiable data, and advocating strongly or trying to force changes in policies and practices that are antiquated, unethical, immoral, dehumanizing and/or destructive.
Some advocate an evolutionary path aligned with nature’s biodiverse ways. How often are you hearing and perhaps using nature-based and biological metaphors like mycelium or rhizomatic networks, cellular processes, permeability, connective tissue and cross-pollination? These natural dynamic properties include emergent learning, neural communication processes and energy flows. They cannot be mechanically hastened, methodically mapped, controlled, isolated, reduced or meaningfully understood out of their living contexts.
We are all living systems. Trust the deep wisdom of nature and natural evolutionary processes that pre-existed human civilization. The laws of nature prevail. Let’s honour, (re)learn and restore our inherent interconnectedness, coming home to our Indigeneity…our rootedness to place.
🎶 Let it be? 🎶
A hybrid with variations has surfaced in recent years. Described as (r)evolution, it’s kinda been here all along, pointing to the validity, reality and need for both — at a minimum, acceptance and increasingly showing up in combinations that reflect a multi-pronged approach.
This suggests another paradoxical balancing act…organic AND by design…emergent AND strategic.
And it’s natural to experience ongoing tension as we observe, hold and sometimes move along a continuum, shuttling and oscillating between varied orientations that reflect contexts, circumstances, felt needs, lived experience, capabilities and preferences.
[R]evolution embodies the unstitutional spirit that moves us, the metaphorical dance we are choreographing and the music we are hearing. These are challenging dance moves — often not easy to flow with or orchestrate. Fluid, while embracing natural laws and enabling minimum critical structure, as required…
Being unstitutional embraces a wide variety of adaptive ways to unstitutionalize the institutions and conventions that aren’t working. This is about opening portals and possibilities, inviting us to reimagine, enable and restore life-affirming pathways. This means reinventing and reconfiguring institutions and companies so that they might become fit-for-meaningful-purpose in society. This sometimes calls for important hospicing work, to help deal with and accept necessary endings that might make space for new beginnings.
In the midst of all this, relating, relationships and interrelationships matter! Need to be raw and real, cutting through to the things that matter. Understanding the nuances, priorities and differences in the ways we discern what matters, also finds us often choosing our words with care. We recognize the difficulty any of us experience, communicating so that we can be heard — in ways that build bridges across the chasms. Getting underneath the surface veneer of language — that can be clumsy or become weaponized — is important.
Often damned hard!
We are discerning and learning as we proceed and we are not alone.
In light of the escalating systemic crises we collectively observe and experience — we are navigating forward, facing these challenges with the view that they are unimpossible…
🎶 Don’t you know it’s gonna be…all right? 🎶
Hmm. Absolutely. Err. Not so sure. Maybe…
Yup. Paradox finds us necessarily…metaphorically…singing out of both sides of our mouth.
Intentionally holding the inherent tensions reflected in these polarities.
And-and…
Given the complexity of wicked overlapping issues, we cannot possibly definitively know or map out precise pre-ordained pathways that will yield the best regenerative progress.
We’re staying open to possibilities, guided by emergent patterns and an adaptable Evolutionary Navigation System whereby the pathways are defined and shaped as we proceed.
“Traveler, There Is No Path…The path is made by walking.” ~ Antonio Machado
Deep collaborative co-creation and learning are necessarily emergent.
We also realize that incremental too-little-too-late change is not enough.
And the answers aren’t just 🎶 blowing in the wind 🎶
Strategy well-navigated, usually defines a directional Star, a driving purpose heading in the roughly right direction guiding in ways that are dynamic and adaptable — based on what is known and incorporating emergent learning.
Some viable pathways are clear and are pointing the way. We aren’t starting from scratch…
Sound strategy does not control, predict or guarantee. Sound strategy is adaptive, helping us develop futures literacy — the ability to imagine desirable futures and navigate through complexity and uncertainty.
In the midst of this existentially messy journey, having personal agency, the right to choose our paths, cultivating relationships and building collective coherence along the way — are all important.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. ~Jiddu Krishnamurti
Honouring the space to address trauma and grief and nurture healing are integral to working through the past and forging healthy pathways forward. When we overlook, push down or fail to attend to these critical factors, we invariably encounter messier problems, setbacks and barriers. The human stuff bites us in the ass again and again when we push it aside as a secondary consideration. Time and again we observe that the soft stuff is the real hard stuff.
[R]evolutionary work necessarily takes us all out of our comfort zones to varying degrees at varying stages. We are facing challenging dilemmas and double binds.
Mission critical coalition work, pilot project living labs and ventures proceed with some fluidity and adaptability. All living systems also need some enabling structure and functions, freedom within some defined limits to survive inevitable bumps and uncertainty, protect the parts and the whole, become resilient or anti-fragile.
We also need new forms of work systems incubating and implementing from the commons space between business, government and civil society sectors. Sometimes described as the 4th sector, activating the commons through pilot living lab initiatives brings people together from across sectors and divides, creating relatively neutral spaces to experiment with new patterns.
These can help form and root alternative workable interdependent ecosystems with [minimum critical] governance frameworks, structures, multicapital economic models and adaptive practices designed WITH nature’s principles towards multigenerational regenerative flourishing.
We sometimes describe this as “wisdom with teeth.”
While there are patterns, first principles and alternative governance and work systems that can help with shape and design, this kind of life-affirming work is not conducive to conventional mechanistic cookie-cutter scaling up.
The need for ongoing integrative thinking, sense making and (trans)contextualizing, to gain insights and continue to develop adaptively — cannot be underestimated.
When we navigate organically and by design — we can gain more traction, go wider and deeper and potentially spawn transformative shifts. Some of those shifts can be helped along with foresight. Many become more apparent in hindsight, especially as we accept that our efforts combine with those of many others…
Being unstitutional feels more like de-construction and reformation, rather than destruction.
🎶 You say you got a real solution…well, you know…we’d all love to see the plan. You ask me for a contribution…well, you know…we’re all doing what we can 🎶
We understand that some folks are leaning more towards evolutionary, organic, emergent, nature-based ways.
And some folks are leaning more towards dramatic, revolutionary, confrontative advocacy and overhaul — seeking levers and action that push harder for needed change.
Some are more grass roots focused.
Some are more big system focused.
Some are more focused on making connective linkages between and across…
Whatever our frames of reference, preferences or capabilities…(r)evolution is underway, manifesting in many forms, places and spaces.
At some level, we need all of us…even when we don’t resonate with some of the pathways that we aren’t personally choosing to lead or travel…
Perhaps it’s best to accept this…it’s gonna happen anyway…taking many forms. The rich healthy diversity of a pluriverse can potentially, naturally make space for differentiation and variety. A reframed perspective on North Star might somehow nest and nurture many North Stars, naturally allowing for the multitudes of ways that people express and navigate toward their guiding visions for a better world.
Everything. Everywhere. All at once.
Doing our best to discern…dancing with systems…
We seek viable ways to build upon, leverage and amplify our collective efforts. We value, access and welcome a wide range of methodologies, approaches, experimentation and living lab pilots.
Our compelling common ground:
There are so many of us in increasing numbers who share an overarching conviction about the need for significant deep-rooted change. While we pursue different ways and use different words, underneath it all, paradigm shifting is underway — painfully with ebbs and flows. And with every passing day, month and year we share deep concern about the escalating entangled problems across all domains of society.
As we navigate, present-centred while looking back and forward with hindsight, insights and humility — together, we might uncover…(co-)discover…what’s possible, figureoutable and doable. We can develop futures literacy capabilities, bringing our whole left and right brain capacities into more balance.
Staying fixated on the right way to advance systemic change, expending energy arguing in ping-pong debates…often just exacerbates stuckness and limits creative living system synergies. We might be contributing to the inertia of those who are disengaged, paralyzed by fear and uncertainty and/or inadvertently enabling the [predatory] delay of those committed to maintaining the status quo.
In his article, Evaluating disruptive innovation in the age of transition, Daniel Christian Wahl illustrates a mindful Three Horizons approach, discerning the value and need for multiple pathways, to balance challenging dilemmas and imperatives as we live into an unknowable future. Many of us are using the Three Horizons as a practical and strategic framework to guide our navigation options and decisions.
“Widespread, culturally creative behavioural changes and worldview shifts only come about if we involve everybody — those who are invested in maintaining the status quo, those who see the entrepreneurial potential of doing things in a different way, and those who can envision fundamental worldview and value changes that would create a more regenerative culture. All three perspectives need to inform an ongoing conversation about our collective future.” ~ Daniel Christian Wahl
Also see Daniel Christian Wahl’s article, Why Working Regeneratively Is (R)evolutionary:
“Working regeneratively is working in an evolutionary way. In a problem-solving and solution-scaling-oriented culture, it is revolutionary to invite a more humble approach by catalysing and revealing the potential of people as regenerative expressions of place…
Working regeneratively fore-grounds our collaborative journey of learning and capacity building. Our projects, products, solutions and answers are stage posts of a continuous apprenticeship, as we are practicing to manifest the inherent potential in ourselves and in teams, businesses, communities and places. Working regeneratively is about revealing potential, rather than disappearing down the rabbit holes of solving problems in isolation.”
When we adopt an and-and approach making space for a variety of nonlinear pathways, we might transcend some of the dysfunctional polarization that impedes progress.
We can build bridges across the chasms, enabling new roots and tender shoots to emerge from the cracks and broken-ness.
However we navigate, there are so many indicators that beckon us to shift away from degenerative colonizing domination-oppression patterns and to choose partnership ways of living, working, being and interbecoming.
We see this opening the way for a reframed sense of belonging — combinings of qualities, capabilities and lived experience that don’t dilute, reduce, diminish or misappropriate. Transcending separate tribal homogeneity, our combinings are additive. And-and. Generative. More inter-learning. Authentic mutual respect and gratitude. More collaborative co-creative possibilities…
[R]evolution can [re]birth abundance that is rooted in enough-ness and healthy reciprocity. A celebration of our rich diversity…
That’s why we value — all kinds of dance partners. We welcome most everyone on this dancefloor, with gifts differing, engaging and contributing in many differentiated and overlapping ways.
Unstitutionists, Coalitionists and Activationists — provisionally and playfully describe and unpack some potential mix-and-match additive roles we can experimentally adopt and the ways we can collaborate from the commons space between.
More than ever, and whatever descriptors and words we choose, we gotta transcend the labels that box us into dysfunctional divisive othering patterns.
It’s not easy, living between worlds. In the midst of our hard work we face conflicting double binds that test and try us daily, sometimes grinding us down and shaking our resolve. All the more reason to work collaboratively in ways that enable us to reality and sanity test the situations we encounter and pressure test the strategies and the ideas that we are adopting.
However…we can also find joy along the way, and we do need to experience some joy to sustain our efforts — (re)energize and replenish our individual and collective spirits and souls.
🎶 (R)evolution makes space for us all — doing what we can and finding our collective rhythm. 🎶
*This article was updated again March 2024, reflecting additional perspectives and ongoing action research, as we continue to observe, listen, assimilate, curate and adapt — a humbling learning journey for us all.
Unstitution was birthed as a collective creative commons and nested ecosystem. We (co-)catalyze 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.
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