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Throughout 2021, an extraordinary group of colleagues gathered, spanning diverse cultural identities, geographies, lived experiences, and professional disciplines. As a global community, we hear the call to work in relationships. In doing so, we can mobilize our collective commitment to nourishing the transformative potential of this moment so that we can emerge in ways that enable all life to flourish. We know half measures are not acceptable, nor can truly transformational change unfold within the same paradigm that necessitates its need. Instead, by situating this work within fundamentally different logics, we can begin to inhabit the future to which we aspire, and access new ways of seeing the world, each other, and ourselves. No longer bound by fixed notions, we can develop a shared understanding of how change happens in all living systems and how we are each uniquely positioned to participate.
Many believe a coordinated ecosystem of actions is needed to realize a just society globally. However, most organizations and initiatives tend to work in isolation from one another and, at times, cross-purposes. Well-intentioned as they may be, these measures often stop short of realizing their potential to mobilize transformational change. This fractured landscape is a byproduct of an obsolete worldview that separates systemic elements rather than leveraging the strength of the whole. Severing the world in this fashion contradicts everything we know about how meaningful change happens in all living systems. And, if an outdated paradigm sits at the base of the issues we aim to address, then that's precisely where our work must begin. Fortunately, nature, of which humanity is an intrinsic part, offers another story to guide us.
Nature provides an elegant blueprint to envision, design, and practice the kind of transformational change this moment demands. Vibrant ecosystems demonstrate collective action at scale, including the shared principles, relationships, structures, and processes that enable life to flourish over time. These characteristics map to the levers commonly found in many systems change frameworks, particularly those rooted in a deep understanding of emergence.
Have you ever sat in a forest and marveled at the beauty of its self-sufficiency? No one waters the trees or fertilizes the soil, yet abundance is everywhere. Like all living systems, forests are intrinsically relational; they maintain their vitality through diverse collaboration and great cycles of regeneration. Working in relationship allows living systems to build broad-based power, wealth, and wellbeing. The fertility this generates fuels the process of emergence, which is how all living systems, from forests to the human body, continually adapt in response to shifting conditions in order to maintain conditions in which life can thrive.
Nature teaches us that maintaining conditions in which all life can flourish is not a static goal but a dynamic process that requires tremendous cooperation. In vibrant ecosystems, diverse elements seek out novel relationships in order to share and access the vital benefits they are each able to offer, particularly at the edge of systems where dominant patterns are weakest and opportunities for learning greatest. Nature abhors monocultures, which rob their environments of the fertility generated when diverse entities enjoy shared prosperity. Leveraging diversity in this way empowers these communities to access limitless capabilities, combinations, and possible ways to adapt – rendering the whole far more than the sum of its parts.
A common set of simple rules allows various elements to interact freely while collectively contributing to a common goal. Their exchanges fuel experimentation and enable living systems to continually discover new ways to adapt and care for the whole. The “solutions” found are inherently impermanent and evolve as resource availability changes. This ongoing cycle of renewal prompts regular assessment of past arrangements and creates space to transcend outdated solutions. Insights gained in one locale are broadcast across the interdependent web of relationships that hold ecosystems together.
As we can see in Nature, change never happens due to top-down interventions; instead, it begins as local actions spring up simultaneously. When these pools of activities are connected, they emerge as more powerful systems, able to learn from each other, develop new capabilities and exercise more significant influence. Emergence contradicts many Western assumptions about how change happens, and perhaps, that should be no surprise since it is this same worldview that sits at the base of the systems we aspire to transform.
All systems arise from paradigms that tell stories describing who and what is valued and empowered to thrive. Many trace the origins of myriad injustices back to colonization, not only in terms of the social production of wealth but, more insidiously, as an imposed worldview. A system that privileges a singular worldview fosters a culture of supremacy and normative conditions that enact and extend colonial histories of domination, extraction, exploitation, and accumulation. These patterns of harm contribute to disparities in power, wealth, and wellbeing in all living systems. Interestingly, a deeper look at the root of this term can reveal new healing pathways.
The term colonization comes from the Latin words colere, meaning “to till,” and colonia, “the soil.” The Western imagination tends to associate tilling by mechanical plows as the hallmark of industrial progress and evidence of cultural superiority. However, a growing movement of Indigenous land stewards, natural farming advocates, and environmental justice activists know that tilling soil destroys the very source of its power and regenerative capacity. By tearing soil’s social fabric, tilling disrupts the life-supporting process of emergence described previously, causing vital resources to become concentrated and setting a destructive spiral into motion.
By tilling the soil of communities, colonization has had an equally damaging effect severing sacred relationships between people and Nature, its lessons, and across diverse groups. This separation limits our perceptions of what is possible and restricts access to other imaginaries, knowledge, and world-building – in short, the diversity that empowers transformational change. This phenomenon demonstrates the depths to which colonization, as an imposed worldview, permeates our inner and outer worlds, bending our behaviors and normalizing inequitable arrangements.
If another world is to emerge, it cannot be built on the same logic. Instead, we must remediate the grounds from which unjust systems grow. By learning from and with a more expansive array of worldviews and lived experiences, we can transcend Western 'rationality' and center an intrinsically relational view of humanity's place within the web of life. Celebrating ways of being marginalized by the dominant logic of our times can begin to facilitate the profound social and ecological healing that lies at the very heart of our desire for transformational change.
As we have explored, transformational change begins deep beneath that which we can see. Our beliefs shape our identities, just as soil health shapes plant life, and paradigms shape societal systems and structures. Genuine change involves reparative work and reweaving relationships across each of these nested domains, but what does this entail exactly? Fortunately, living systems and those who draw lessons from them illuminate our path.
A suite of restorative principles is used worldwide to heal lands harmed by colonization's attendant practices and rebuild their regenerative capacity to support emergence. A growing movement of future-facing leaders in fields ranging from racial justice to corporate finance is integrating these lessons to profound effect. In doing so, they are demonstrating how drawing lessons from living systems can help to cultivate fertile conditions, internally and collectively, in which new relationships, ideas, identities, and actions can grow. These practices are rooted in a shared appreciation for the essential role of rest, without which we will lack the energy needed to dream, act with compassion and accountability, and sustain our vision with pleasure over time.
This framing paper proposes that a new paradigm is a prerequisite to realizing transformational change, making some of us feel disoriented. Many of us are not fully conscious of the worldviews we operate within, let alone how to embrace a new one. Fortunately, much is known about how mindfulness and transformational learning experiences can empower individuals to become aware of their deepest held beliefs, challenge these views, and support their reconstruction. Consequently, space must be preserved, both physically and psychologically, for this virtuous cycle to occur.
The transformational learning theory proposes that a mental model can evolve when an individual is presented with a disorienting dilemma that conflicts with their existing frame of reference. This dissonance sparks critical reflection and invites an exploration of new ways of seeing. Working with others moving through similar experiences provides the psychological safety necessary to let go of seemingly fixed notions. From there, individuals can begin to imagine their roles in this alternative future and the competencies needed to move forward confidently and with relational responsibility. This process prepares us for collective work by building inner strength, emotional maturity, personal accountability, and compassion for other truths.
Nature's capacity to continually adapt in ways that support the whole's health relies on diverse relationships and extraordinary collaboration. Fertility, like justice, is a dynamic condition that enables life to thrive. In our work to advance transformational change, we must learn to act like the living systems we are by forging new connections across multiple lines of difference. The resulting networks become the channels through which power, vital resources (ideas, capital, etc.), and wellbeing flow.
Creative interventions support emergence by shifting the atmosphere, creating space for individuals to encounter differences with curiosity and care. Proximity enables meaningful dialogue and the sharing of truths from and with perspectives most impacted by injustices. Deep listening and accountability foster mutual understanding and allow new partners to find a common cause – the foundation of collective action. Now bound in shared purpose, groups can develop imaginative interventions that engage any systems to change lever, ensuring a more expansive range of perspectives and lived experiences inform what emerges in our world. Nourishing those actions and broadcasting insights empowers broader networks to learn from each other and adapt, generating more significant global influence.
This process mimics how living systems forge new relationships to access novel resources, experiment and discover new ways to maintain conditions in which all life can flourish – and isn't that what we are after? Rejoining this dance allows us to move with, rather than against, the life force of all beings.
Humanity is on the cusp of unlearning the harmful logic of separability and recreating how we live in relationship with all life. Our fates are intertwined today and across generations. This liminal space we are moving through invites us to make peace with change. Impermanence illuminates what has been lost but also what wants to be found. Transcending outdated notions invites us to reimagine our relationship with vulnerability, not as a weakness, but as a malleable space where we can reconstruct how we want to show up in the world. As we enter into these conversations together and explore how we can heal, nourish, and regenerate our world, I invite you to consider:
What can You do? What do You need?
What can We do? What do We need?
Kiley Arroyo is the executive director of the Cultural Strategies Council (CSC), a vehicle for interdisciplinary research, strategy, and institutional development. Established in 2007, the CSC promotes the essential role of culture, critical imagination, and futures literacy in equitable development, participatory democracy, and creative systems change.