Charting An Emerging Ecosystem
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Charting An Emerging Ecosystem
Introduction
I'm an activist, entrepreneur and long-term zen practitioner. I'm co-founder and chief idealist of Life Itself.
Life Itself is a network committed to practical action for a radically wiser, weller world. We create hubs, do research and engage in advocacy to pioneer a wiser, weller culture.
Credits
The ecosystem mapping is an open, collaborative effort of Life Itself Labs and partners including Anna Schaffner at Emerge, Jamie Bristow at the Mindfulness Initiative, Elke Fein at IFIS and the Hague Centre. We welcome new collaborators and contributors.
We also wish to acknowledge the wider set of activity, inspiration and collaboration including Michael and colleagues here at Commonweal but also many, many others.
Some reading and references
Disclaimers
Names and naming
People have strong feelings and associations for names
Originally just called the ecosystem "X" or the "emerging ecosystem"
For now, we are using the label "Metamodern". No great attachment to it.
Remain mindful of the variety of existing options e.g. the sensemaking web, the meta tribe, the liminal web, mesomodern etc.
Also mindful of point that there may be no "ecosystem" singular but an ecosystem of ecosystems …
Alpha stage 🚧
An alpha, early stage effort.
We share it in a spirit of humility and openness.
Limited by resources and knowledge - work so far is without any external funding!
Partial and incomplete, especially in its directory. There are significant omissions e.g. organizations that should be there that aren't yet.
👋 NB: we welcome suggestions which you can submit online
Based on snowball sampling starting from our contacts. It obviously display clear biases e.g. geographically to Europe versus the rest of the world, thematically in terms and areas chosen etc.
In a nutshell
New social change ecosystem and movement is emerging.
Centered on a radical, alternative approach to social change – one that is simultaneously paradigmatic, integrated and engaged (P.I.E).
Interconnects with and builds on a variety of existing and developing ecosystems across a broad range of sectors.
Paradigmatic: seek change of the entire social paradigm at both a systems and "being" level (worldview and narratives)
Integrated: involves the integration of the inner and the outer – personal and collective growth as well as systemic transformation.
Engaged: actively engaging with wider society for the purposes of social transformation.
Why I: the Bigger Context
lifeitself.us/2022/02/01/cultivating-an-emerging-paradigm
Why I.a: The situation
Polycrisis / metacrisis + need to transition to a new paradigm
Polycrisis/metacrisis: experiencing converging challenges - economic, environmental, cultural and ontological
Humanity and the planet are at a critical point in history similar to major breakdown / breakthrough points of the past.
We risk civilizational collapse. And … we also have the possibility of a breakthrough.
Incremental patching of the old system is insufficient. These issues are foundational and go to the root of the existing paradigm at a socio-economic and, more importantly, inner cultural and ontological level – to the level of worldview and being.
Need to go beyond the old paradigm and transition to a new one.
Why I.b: 5 Key Theses
1. Transition is Needed: there is an urgent need for a transition from where things stand today.
2. Transition is Paradigmatic: The transition involves a paradigmatic shift that includes a profound shift in worldview i.e. views and values.
3. Transition is Inner & Outer: the transition involves the integration of the inner and the outer – personal and collective growth as well as systemic transformation.
4. Transition prioritizes Being: whilst inner and outer are both needed, inner development has primacy, that is it should be prioritized and takes ultimate priority (also known as the “primacy of being” thesis).
5. Transition requires Engagement (of the right kind): transition can be cultivated but not engineered. The challenge is to facilitate transition and cultivate emergence, rather than seeking to engineer it.
Why II: Why Map
lifeitself.us/2021/12/09/mapping-for-emergence
Aren't Maps Problematic?
Why map in the first place? What is so great about mapping, when we are already culturally inclined to mistake our many existing maps for the territory?
Maps help us orient ourselves
Maps catalyze coherence
Maps make visible both internally and externally
👋 and … we can remain mindful that a map is not the terriotory
Mapping helps emergence
Assisting an ecosystem merge: A "Space" to come into existence as a (roughly) coherent entity in relationship with other proximate spaces – 'Make the ecosystem "self-conscious"'.
Delineated: definition permits connection both inter and intra-spaces.
Connected: richer set of mutual connections leading to greater and better collaboration.
Coherent: More coherence and division of labour - people able to reuse and share more, ability to collaborate and play to comparative advantage => Effectiveness and efficiency.
Visible to itself: able to situate themselves and their work in a broader context.
Mapping brings visibility
Mapping brings a more coherent external identity for this ecosystem making it accessible to a broader audience and sharing its approach more widely.
Identifiable: the ecosystem has a coherent identity, allowing a visible whole to emerge from what can otherwise seem like disconnected parts.
Accessible: clearer access point to interested outside parties and early adopters, making it easier for others to discover and engage with this ecosystem and its constituents.
Credibility: a more coherent and united front when engaging with external actors such as funders, academics and policy-makers. This boosts the credibility and effectiveness of the shared efforts.
Impact: much of the coherence of insight or approach is currently hidden by diversity of terms. One example: the convergence of complexity science, evolutionary biology and cognitive science support the insights of ancient wisdom traditions around interbeing and interdependence. However, these convergences are not very visible, especially to those outside the space (in part, due to varying terminology etc)
The Ecosystem Mapping
https://ecosystem.lifeitself.us
Background
Started out in 2019 as "feeling the elephant" based on sense that "a growing number of people, organizations and initiatives are taking alternative approaches to social change, which diverge from and go beyond the more established spaces in civil society and the social economy."
Questions we had were things like:
Who are they? e.g. what people? what organizations?
What's distinctive? What distinguishes this ecosystem?
How does this connect to other ecosystems and developments?
Approach
Collect an initial sample of approx 75-150 organizations
Created an online directory with profile pages for each organization with description, location, focal topics etc
First pass on key characteristics to answer the question - what distinguishes this space?
Outputs and Findings
Directory
Defining Features: P.I.E.
The defining feature of this ecosystem is its novel approach to social change. Specifically, a combination of being paradigmatic, integrated, and engaged.
Emphasize that it is the combination of all three that is important and distinctive.
Paradigmatic: belief that change required is paradigmatic i.e. transition in the entire social paradigm at level of both systems and “ontology” i.e. worldview and narratives.
Integrated: need to incorporate methods and routes to change spanning a variety of fields and “locations” e.g. personal, cultural, institutional etc. One central and basic example common to most (though not all) actors is the belief that inner and outer transformation have to go hand in hand. In Integral terms it is “all-quadrant” and in particular, prioritises the neglected “inner” quadrants.
Engaged: actively engaging with wider society for the purposes of social transformation. This sets it apart from groups which may be doing large amount of inner work but without connecting this directly and explicitly to broader social change, for example certain parts of the spiritual, developmental and psychedelic communities.
Core Characteristics
Post-individualism: Focus on groups rather than just individuals as a primary unit of analysis, and the idea that we must shift our engagement outwards from ourselves and towards a more widely beneficial orientation. Plus Broad commitment across the ecosystem to actually operating in networked and communal ways.
Wholism: widely shared understanding of the world as a gestalt object, be this under the banner of interbeing, complex systems terminology or the ‘holon’ and integral’ labels.
Culture-making: a desire to go beyond the dominant norms and narratives. This includes the norms of the progressive movement more broadly — perhaps its most surprising and interesting aspect. We also emphasize the culture in counterculturalism: for us, it is concerned with shifting the very foundations, worldviews and assumptions of our current order. In this sense it is a form of “culture-making”.
Visualization
What's Next
Things we would like to explore
- Extend the directory of organizations
- Additional visualization and analysis
- Add people and people profiles
- A survey of influences and trends
- A map of the "ecosystem of ecosystems"
CRF
Interconnects with and builds on a variety of existing and developing ecosystems across a broad range of sectors from environmental justice to post-capitalism, from effective altruism to engaged spirituality