“Regeneration is the essence of life’s self-organisation” Fritjof Capra & Daniel Wahl in dialogue
Daniel’s LinkedIn post about this (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/daniel-christian-wahl-51a54616_regeneration-is-the-essence-of-lifes-self-organisation-activity-7066290435144523776-4T2B/):
In case you missed this conversation:
Well, this was another one of those ‘special moments’ when I get to have a chat with someone who is in good part responsible for me embarking on a different path than marine mammal biology and behavioural neuroscience some 30 years ago and who’s writing led me to do a Masters in Holistic Science because I knew Fritjof taught there in person. Fritjof Capra and I met at Schumacher in 2002, and many times since. This is the latest in a series of conversation with him that I recorded for the Voices of the ReGeneration series. This is my favourite one. We had such fun on March 16th, 2023. We speak about: Regeneration as the essence of life’s self organisation Regeneration at the cellular, organ, individual, and ecosystems scale Regeneration as life’s inherent impulse of “the exploration of novelty” How health and resilience is not ‘maintain level work’ in all cases (ie bounce back) and how a salutogenic understanding of health and transformative resilience as the third dimension of resilience (after persistence and adaptive capacity). … and how this relates to phase-shift or changing attractor in complexity theory We talked about Ilya Prigogine’s important work and his famous ‘islands of coherence’ – how the second law of thermal dynamics hold while life generates increases in ‘order/complexity’ as a neg-entropic or syntropic process The work about Brian Goodwin on complexity science as a mathematician and biologists … the shift from prediction and control to appropriate participation … how complex dynamic systems are unpredictable but that does not mean they are not intelligible … The ’emergence of life’, the ’emergence of cognition’, the ’emergence of consciousness’ … the spiritual view of many wisdom traditions and the ‘systems view of life’ A Science of Quality and the role of ‘sensing, feeling and intuiting’ in science and as reliable pathway to insight and wise action CG Jung’s ‘Four Ways of Knowing’, Maturana & Varela’s ‘Santiago Theory of Cognition’, Leonardo Da Vinci ‘s dynamic biology, Goethe’s Zarte Empirie, Gregory Bateson, Poincare, Mandelbrot, Darcy Thompson ‘On Growth and Form’, Goethe’s metamorphosis … living in an through relationship and life as networks within networks … and even got to Fritjof’s work with the late Hazel Henderson on the shift from quantitative to qualitative growth in economic and natural systems – the shift from the exponential to the logistic curve (as a litmus test for the survivability of the human story). I told you we had fun. Enjoy! … and don’t forget that the Capra Course is a gift worth giving to yourself and others. I have done it twice.
How can collective healing pave the way for systems change?
What is collective trauma? How does it hinder systems change work? How can we convene collective healing to overcome collective trauma and, in doing so, pave a way to real and enduring change?
These are the type of questions John Kania and Laura Calderon de la Barca from the Collective Change Lab set out to explore when they embarked on their work on healing systems. Their research has taken them across the globe and deep within themselves, engaging with a range of disciplines and wisdoms to understand collective trauma and how we can resolve and heal from it at a systemic level.
Join our 90-minute webinar co-hosted by the Centre for Public Impact ANZ and Collective Change Lab to learn more about their work and explore how we can understand the presence of trauma in systems and convene collective healing to unlock deep and enduring, transformational change within systems.
This webinar will preview a framework for identifying systemic-level trauma that will be published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review and other outlets in August 2023.
Key details
12pm – 1.30pm (AEST), Thursday 15 June
Online (Zoom link provided upon registration)
Speakers
John Kania, Founder/Executive Director/Board Chair, Collective Change Lab
This workshop will be held at 15:30-17:30 CET (Central European Time)
Why a workshop on Systems Change?
Citizens’ assemblies (CAs) are chief among a range of participatory democratic tools considered to have potential for addressing the numerous technically and morally complex problems at the root of the polycrisis. As the crisis most advanced in public consciousness, climate citizens’ assemblies have gained particular traction in the past few years. However, many processes in this deliberative wave have struggled to address system-level aspects of the climate crisis, its connections to other crises, and the trade-offs inherent in a transformed, low-carbon future.
Guidance on how to design and evaluate deliberative processes on the climate crisis has become available in a short space of time, thanks to networks such as KNOCA. But few resources are currently available on how to design deliberative processes, climate or otherwise, to open discussion for the broader systemic transformations that are increasingly recognised as necessary.
Purpose of the workshop
In this workshop we will discuss how citizens’ assemblies can address underlying systemic issues at the heart of a genuinely transformative response to the environmental and social crises facing the planet today. The discussion will build on a presentation of a draft of new guidance on this very issue that will be published by the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformation authored by Claire Mellier (Iswe Foundation) and Stuart Capstick (CAST).
Who is the workshop for?
This workshop is for policymakers, practitioners, researchers and other civil society actors who are interested in exploring whether citizens’ assemblies can be designed to grapple with systemic aspects of the polycrisis.
If you register before Wednesday May 17th you will recieve a draft of the new guideline.https://xwirx.mjt.lu/wgt/xwirx/u2l/form?c=2c7eecce
About the new guideline
In their presentation, Claire and Stuart will introduce a guideline that is intended to help policymakers, practitioners, researchers and other civil society actors consider how citizens’ assemblies can address underlying systemic issues at the heart of a genuinely transformative response to the environmental and social crises facing the planet today.
It focuses on power literacy as the key element that allows practitioners to understand how citizens’ assemblies can grapple with systemic aspects of present crises. It will illuminate the relationship between citizens’ assemblies, power, and systemic transformations through tangible examples, focusing on three previous climate assemblies that the authors had direct involvement in: the United Kingdom’s Climate Assembly (CAUK), France’s Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat (CCC), and the first transnational citizens’ assembly on the climate and ecological crisis, the Global Assembly (GA).
About the speakers
Claire Mellier, Facilitator and Researcher – Co-initiator and organiser of the Global Citizens’ Assembly – Iswe Foundation
What does it take to change a system? With 25 years of learning and experience we still don’t believe there’s a magic formula for systemic change. If there was, we’d all be doing it!So, we’re launching an enquiry:http://ow.ly/Aq9m50Oc55z#SystemsChange 1/3
The digital revolution changed everything. Everything, except management.
Managers of the digital age need operating models that are collaborative, ethical, and effective. Models that reveal opportunities for managers to deploy Agile and Lean methods, as well as complex situations where leadership means carefully creating the conditions for success. In other words, models that support managers’ transition from providing all the answers, to leaders who help clarify objectives and discover how to achieve them.
In this short book, I introduce The Chalice as an upgrade on the pyramid metaphor. The chalice represents an operating model that both puts customers on top and engages with the beliefs and diversity of the staff who create value for an entire ecosystem. Unique features of the chalice include:
Connecting prioritization and customer value delivery processes using feedback mechanisms as controls.
Structuring prioritization as a process, whose performance must be measured and improved.
Achieving predictable and agile delivery to customers by selecting only appropriate agile, or plan-driven, controls.
Revealing the tension sources that create conflicting priorities and confusion if not addressed directly.
Creating a pluralistic ecosystem that relies on collaboration and diversity to develop shared understanding and profit from innovation.
I provide just enough information in this book to share the big picture. I trust that more adventurous amongst you will try some of the ideas it generates in your imagination. Subsequent books will explore the sections of the chalice in more detail, building on this foundation.
Would you like to learn more about how to deal with complexity in policy analysis and evaluation?
We’re running the second iteration of the Handling Complexity training course in partnership with CECAN Centre for Evaluating Complexity Across the Nexus. The course is made up of 3-modules and is based on the Supplementary Guide to the Government’s Magenta book on evaluation:
Module 1 – Complexity and its Challenges for Policy and Evaluation Module 2 – Selecting an Appropriate Evaluation Approach Module 3 – Commissioning and Managing a Complex Evaluation
What does it mean to go back to the ground and learn the fading skills necessary to work the forest with our hands? To read the land assisted by tools we sight with our own eyes? To create new visions of old roles, such as a land steward or cottager?
I explore those thoughts and more with my guest today, Hazel, who some of you may know as Tom Ward.
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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