Why Context is [almost] Everything.
When our attention is pulled, stretched and diluted in a zillion directions, how can we figure out what matters?
Where to point the flashlight?
How can we discern wisely where to invest our energies and resources?
Meaning making and sense making are connected.
The meaning we make depends on where we look, what we see, how we perceive and the connections we make between things and over time.
The meaning we make and takeaway isn’t static. It can shift. It can shape our world view and orientation to life. It can also get stuck in grooves.
The meaning we make helps us discern what matters (most) in our lives, our work, our relationships etc.
Things tend to make more sense when we can reasonably understand how they fit together within a bigger picture…or context.
Aha, context: the little big word that deserves more love
The situation within which something exists or happens, and that can help explain it ~ Cambridge Dictionary
Context is vitally important. It sets the stage for what happens, what’s possible and the patterns that are formed.
Living in the industrialized world, scientism, linearity, and (myopic) solutionism — became the idolized modus operandi. Growing up within a conventionally western-influenced culture…our educational systems…our work systems…our society…it’s no wonder that the predilection for silver bullet solutions persists…
Many of us over-lean on reductionist breaking-things-down.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t unpack things in order to understand the elements. There’s a place for (nested) parts…to help us analyze and organize — but we’ve gotten way out of balance.
We rely too heavily on models-dimensions-disciplines-compartments that become decontextualized from meaningful wholes.
The oft cited caveat, “The map is not the territory,” deserves a deeper level of understanding by any and all who fondly lean too heavily on (historical and current) models.
“…a phrase coined by the Polish-American philosopher and engineer Alfred Korzybski. He used it to convey the fact that people often confuse models of reality with reality itself. According to Korzybski, models stand to represent things, but they are not identical to those things.”
While very useful, maps and models have limitations. They don’t take the place of critical and systemic thinking and observation. Historical patterns cannot reliably predict the future when dealing with complex issues. When we become fixated on our models as reality, we potentially close ourselves off from learning, collaborative exchange and healthy adaptation that might lead to better solutions and innovative breakthroughs.
Wonder if some of the limited linear and binary thinking and dysfunctional polarization we observe (and perhaps inadvertently feed) are exacerbated by this tendency to mistake models for reality.
Physiologically we have one brain…and yet much greater potential capacity. We sure need to tap and channel our wider collective creative potential and co-intelligence.
When things are extracted from context, they can become disembodied from the full meaning that they hold.
Relationships are always in flow. Mutual adaptation and learning cannot be understood through the boxes and models that point at things. The thing(s) we’re pointing at — are not the real living, dynamic being-ness.
“The mistakes of reductionism, the mistakes of individualism, and the mistakes of pre-determined linear outcomes of healing all validated a slogan of ‘better, faster, cheaper.’ Other realms of crisis are also currently rubbing against the issue of solutions that are perpetuating the problems. The need now is for more nuanced and contextually responsive ways to describe the issues so that other pathways of inquiry aside from linear solutioning move into play and begin to take form.” ~ Nora Bateson
What becomes possible when we live into naturally interconnected relational ways of being?
In light of overlapping complex systemic always-in-flux-living-reality — we gotta “recontextualize”….looking at and being within full, messy rich contexts.
Imprinted by a culture that studies and explains things by breaking them down keeps us stuck and blind to our own stuck-ness even (especially) as we cognitively try to understand from a left-brain leaning industrial mindset.
We can unwittingly sabotage our own deeply felt need for and efforts toward paradigm shift.
We appreciate Nora Bateson’s work — imprinting transcontextual and warm data into our lexicon. We can recontextualize, bringing the meta-poly-perma crises into relational, navigational and practical perspectives. Think many of us have been carrying this around, sometimes clumsily articulating what Nora has encapsulated. A transcontextualing lens helps us understand our lives and world(s)…rich with the qualitative experience expressed as warm data.
In this video, Nora articulates beautifully the importance of transcontextual wholeness, experience and meaning.
Everywhere we look — deep within and out there — we realize how our interconnectedness and rootedness to life has been distorted and decontextualized by Industrial Age fragmentation.
With each story shared, we’re reminded that every living moment offers a choice to notice and embody the essence of warm data being-ness.
“When we observe and co-discover the natural combinings of life experience, within and across contexts, sense-making and possibilities emerge — even [and especially] in the midst of unknowing-ness and uncertainty. Time to transcend the limiting frigid compartments of cold data. Coming in from the cold takes on new meanings and possibilities.” ~ Unstitution
As we live into relational being-ness, “we can show up, doing what needs to be done,” without requiring folks to learn all the conceptual scaffolding.
It’ll feel right. It’ll become natural for more of us, more of the time.
Isn’t that how evolutionary navigation can liberate us from boxes and labels?
(Trans)contextual Insights
Nora Bateson’s concept of symmathesy, derived from Greek meaning learning together, helps us understand…“how living systems are in constant (trans)contextual mutual learning….ever-learning, ever-combining, ever-forming and in-forming… nature never does one thing at a time.”
Living is learning. The implications of that simple reality are profound.
(Trans)contextual insights are integral to the Unstitution commons, the way we navigate and configure our Living Operating System, all its elements, our collective mission to reboot society’s operating system and our guiding adaptive living systems principles.
Our (trans)contextual insights reflect what can also be described as action research, active learning, storymaking, storytelling, storydwelling and storybeing.
Active Learning demonstrates progress — moving meaningfully towards outcomes.
Learning is powerful and effective when it is nurtured, accessed, understood, applied, adapted, integrated and extrapolated. In other words, meaningful progress happens and is amplified when different kinds of iterative learning can flow naturally and with intention — throughout the (living) system.
(Trans)contextual Insights bring our collective learnings together — within contexts — in integrated ways that help us with sense and meaning making, to understand implications, possibilities and choices.
This helps us discern where meaningful effects are potentially achieved and achievable and where it makes sense to invest more energy and resources — go wider and deeper.
Deep learning doesn’t happen in isolated conceptual vacuums or bubbles.
Action learning cycles offer practical methods to move beyond conceptual models — application through life practice and adaptation.
Learning best happens in iterative cycles or spirals of reflection, observation, action and evaluation. Openness to experimentation, to try new things means stepping out of old familiar comfort zones.
“Those who take a true partnership approach of joint enquiry, learning and action, build (and regularly review) clear mutual agreements (relational contracts beyond transactional) that safeguard healthy transparent relationships toward mutual accountability and the ongoing capacity to apply learnings and continue to learn.” ~Unstitution
Action research, applied and adapted as a true partnership model, is grounded in and guided by a wide reservoir of sound social science knowledge. Action research seeks to understand patterns of human system change, always open to reciprocal learning and exchange, engaging and drawing from multiple sources.
This is a vast field with ongoing research, models and tools geared toward understanding the complex and chaotic (and chaordic) patterns of living systems and organizations.
An action research and learning approach helps us reflect on the limits of our lived experience and the contextual perspectives that shape our world views and influence blindspots and biases. Within an evolutionary navigation process, we continuously update our own knowledge and literacy drawing from and applying adaptive living/complex systems theory and practice through living lab experience — stepping outside our usual contexts, cultures and comfort zones — ways of being and knowing.
There are so many different lenses for observing, seeing, learning and understanding. Perhaps the greatest danger lies in embracing any one approach so rigidly, such that we close off other ways of learning, sense-making, knowing, engaging and navigating forward.
Theoretical constructs are always subject to new research and learning. Science, at its best is always open to new knowledge when it comes to light. At any given time what we know is, at best, incomplete.
Perhaps it’s time for the experts, thought leaders, scientists and practitioners to argue a little less about who is right and who is wrong.
Can we consider and appreciate our work from a variety of sources and diverse contexts, to deepen our understand of the myriad patterns we are observing in society — without condemning different perspectives for not encompassing or explaining all aspects?
What becomes unimpossible when we focus more on how we can all collaborate whereby conceptual constructs become more accessible, understandable, applicable, adaptive and helpful within and across contexts — inspiring people toward meaningful movement?
Uncommon. Commons. Sense.
Through active learning we synthesize [new] knowledge into accessible published articles and case studies. We guage progress against relevant mutually defined criteria or indicators:
1.) Find commonalities across frameworks and outcomes.
2.) Address needs and constraints across participants (multi-stakeholders.)
3.) Document, and feed back to participants, what we learn from activities, enabling further learning and self-reflection.
4.) Build in regular communication practices about activities, impact, needs and constraints across all overlapping functions/initiatives within the Living Operating System.
5.) Create space for impactful collaboration across constituents
6.) Work with people in context-based and place-sourced settings on the ground.
7.) Identify criteria for regenerative impact and build in resilience.
8.) Co-create work plans and allocate resources that deliver required outcomes.
9.) Build in flexibility and adaptability.
10.) Conduct work explicitly within the systemic context of relationships.
Action confidence sums up our attitude to learning:
“Action confidence is the courage and capacity to step into something new and bring it into being, or, in the words of the late cognitive scientist Francisco Varela….‘to lay down a path in walking,’….creating reality as we step into it.” ~ Otto Scharmer & Eva Pomeroy
Oh yeah…we joyfully cheer on action confidence and draw from (trans)contextual insights to help us navigate forward!
Our human system failures have created overlapping accelerating systemic breakdowns. Paradoxically it is our human creativity and potential that can lead us toward a life affirming dawning of a new civilization. That will mean reflecting wisely, drawing from all that we already know and taking action — in ways that foster collaboration, ongoing learning and adaptation in the midst of uncertainty. While there are many different ways of articulating all this…we gain action confidence as more of us take on this work developing and tapping gifts differing as we navigate forward.
*This article was updated April 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 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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