Category: Sustainability

I’m sitting looking out over the Fijian coral lagoon feeling a depth of responsibility for Australia. We so often seem to be the ‘last to the party’ people on climate politics. It is hard to reconcile especially here as I’m surrounded by crazy beauty, hurricane damage, climate coral bleaching/death and vibrant life.

Despondent? Maybe. And as my good friends Jenni, Alain, John and Terry highlight while embracing a sense of despair we’re called to a paradox of hope too:

Hope can co-exist with other feelings. Grief and hope can co-exist. Fear and hope can co-exist. Disappointment and hope can co-exist. Sadness and hope can co-exist. As Yehuda Amichai writes: “A man doesn’t have time in his life to have time for everything. He doesn’t have seasons enough to have a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes was wrong about that. A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment, to laugh and cry with the same eyes, with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them, to make love in war and war in love.”

Abby Brookman

We reach to this from many places. One that has been challenging for me, and most likely always will be, is climate change civilisation collapse. Jem Bendell is wonderful on this inviting us to consider collapse as inevitable, catastrophe as probable and extinction as possible. He finds considering such spaces: 

has not led to apathy or depression. Instead, in a supportive environment, where we have enjoyed community with each other, celebrating ancestors and enjoying nature before then looking at this information and possible framings for it, something positive happens. I have witnessed a shedding of concern for conforming to the status quo, and a new creativity about what to focus on going forward.

Professor Jem Bendell

For me that new creativity is like finding metaphoric stillness between hope and the present – the likelihood of status quo and exponentially fast change addressing crisis (such change has been something humans consistently collaboratively excel at) – and confoundment and uncertainty. For those looking for such pieces try:

• Alastair Fothergill on nature’s resilience and our attitude shift. Nature was “nice to have”. Now it’s “must have”.
• Tom Crowther on tree planting and it’s “mind-blowing potential” to tackle climate crisis.
• Karen O’Brien on quantum social change. This includes a background on people as the solution to climate change and arguments for looking with new eyes at our approaches. E.g. “a shift from an Enlightenment paradigm to an ‘Enlivenment paradigm,’ or a cultural worldview that emphasizes the importance of ‘lived experience, embodied meaning, material exchange, and subjectivity’ as key to addressing complex problems like climate change”.

All these multiple perspectives have the potential to be bewildering. That’s possibly something of a gift too. Margaret Wheatley wrote on this recently:

We weren’t trained to admit we don’t know. Most of us were taught to sound certain and confident, to state our opinion as if it were true. We haven’t been rewarded for being confused. …

Lately, I’ve been listening for what surprises me. What did I just hear that startled me? … Noticing what surprises and disturbs me has been a very useful way to see invisible beliefs. If what you say surprises me, I must have been assuming something else was true. If what you say disturbs me, I must believe something contrary to you. My shock at your position exposes my own position. When I hear myself saying, “How could anyone believe something like that?” a light comes on for me to see my own beliefs. These moments are great gifts. If I can see my beliefs and assumptions, I can decide whether I still value them.

Margaret Wheatley

These uncomfortable places of uncertainty within me – warm, scary, enticing, illuminating – seem to mirror in many ways our global dilemma. As always, we are where we don’t know and it is rather starker than usual. 

I’m sorry, responsible, bemused and enlivened.

Links

• Abby Brockman, Despair is not a strategy: 15 principles of hope https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/despair-is-not-a-strategy-15-principles-of-hope/
• Prof. Jem Bendell, Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy Video, Bloomberg and/or Paper
• Alastair Fothergill, Our planet Audio: https://www.rnz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018702610
• Prof. Thomas Crowther, https://www.crowtherlab.com and Tree planting ‘has mind-blowing potential’ to tackle climate crisis https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/04/planting-billions-trees-best-tackle-climate-crisis-scientists-canopy-emissions
• Prof. Karen O’Brien, Climate change and social transformations: is it time for a quantum leap? https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303904607_Climate_change_and_social_transformations_is_it_time_for_a_quantum_leap_Is_it_time_for_a_quantum_leap
• Margaret Wheatley, Uncomfortable place of uncertainty http://www.awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=2308

Photos

Please note that all photos are licensed under creative commons – non commercial reuse with attribution. This basically means you are free to use the images by crediting the creators (see CC BY-NC 3.0 US for details).

Please credit the photos to (be) Benevolution.

Anyone and everyone connected with sustainability dives straight into a dizzying array of frameworks.

If you spend even a short time in this space (or for some like me, a career!) you’ll be swimming through terms, measures and concepts such as:

• Corporate social reporting; Global reporting initiative; Ecological footprint
• Triple bottom line: People, Planet, Profit
• Zero impact, net zero; Environmental restoration, re-wilding
• Dematerialisation; Industrial ecology
• Carbon neutral, carbon positive; Decoupling

So how do we cut through? How can we turn all the deep care, passion, effort, insight, work and brilliance, associated with all these concepts, into transformational global fast change?

Will it help to go big – meta –  and what is the minimum set of concepts that will encapsulate sustainability? As simple as possible but not simplistic.

To do this the MetaCapital Framework measures 4 types of impact with 10 types of capital to produce 4 bottom lines.

That’s a lot to grab in a short blog post. However, MetaCapital is resonating strongly within organisations not only around sustainability. In part, what has been occurring with so many diversified views of sustainability is that people are mixing impact measures, the stock of something as well as flows (increases and decreases).

We clearly distinguish such parameters for a company’s finances – e.g. business plan, assets and liabilities, cashflow. In today’s world, we need to do this across multiple bottom lines, environmental, human and psychological capital and across the impact on individuals as well as groups – just to mention a few parameters. The developing MetaCapital framework has the potential to bring clarity to help us in this complexity.

For an introduction, watch Sean Esbjörn-Hargens explaining the framework’s background and its potential to the first MetaCapital masterclass.

For a deeper dive into MetaCapital and the slides referred to in the video see metacapital.net.

For those new to meta-frameworks like this and/or integral theory quadrants see Beyond the boxes for some first steps.

 

One of the compelling beauties of Integral Theory are repeating patterns, the fractal nature of quadrants, repeating patterns are observable at every scale. This is fundamental and creates a wonderful window onto ourselves, our biases and preferences. It is powerful – working with the integral quadrants becomes a way of differentiating our awareness and learning how to identify ourselves and others from these perspectives – through this  differentiating practice, real integration becomes possible.

We’re exploring Integral Theory’s quadrants* as this opens greater potential for impact and agency on difficult, stuck and complex problems that are inherent to fields such as sustainability, health and  business futures – see last week’s post, Beyond the boxes, about this blog series.

A key distinction that assists seeing and working with the quadrants is the concept of looking at and looking as. We can look at ourselves or anything – e.g. a group of people or a collection of objects – or we could adopt a perspective of seeing such quadrants as ourselves or others.

Try a simple example. Imagine you are looking at another person, someone you’re emotionally close to. Obviously, you can see that person, the contexts and surroundings they are in. You may identify what you think are their emotional states (happy, sad, angry etc.) and the cultural influences (e.g. are they in a fun social situation) at play for them – you’re looking at them. Next, think about and imagine their experience. What are they seeing at the moment, experiencing physically from the environment around them? How do you think they would describe their cultural context at the moment or emotional state? In doing this you’re looking as them.

The reflective or contemplative nature of this is important. For example, as Sean Esbjörn Hargens illustrates, a therapist has an emotional dimension of themselves and that enables them to see the emotional dimension of a client – they can look at the client and see the emotional dimension of the client. They can only do this as they have this emotional dimension built  into themselves. They could not see the emotional dimension without this (or if they could it would be much more conceptual).

Encouragingly, as this theory holds, you can’t reduce these four quadrant dimensions – any sentient being has these four dimensions. This opens a window onto the groups, things, objects and problems we seek to have impact with. Sean highlights, the fact that I have these four dimensions in my own embodied selfness enables me to take these four [integral quadrant] perspectives. I can [consequently] look at the world through these for windows … that is similar and slightly different from those four dimension that are part of myself.

This is an important embodied piece. When we’re working with complex situations and many moving variables – such as considering effective and sustainable future business opportunities – there are an exponential number of parts, influences and perspectives. Quadrants are a way of reflecting ourselves back at ourselves that helps to bring around, as an object of awareness, our own preconceptions so that we can then operate in an enhanced way of being. In essence, we are taking what is subjective and becoming more aware of our biases, seeing our tendencies reflected back to us as our unit of analysis, to become more conscious. In doing so, we can shift what we were subject to to be objective.

Working with quadrants in this way helps us start to see the fractal nature of our world – systems within systems. But, before we disappear down the rabbit hole (that’s next week!) is this practical and what comes from such consideration for the things and outcomes we care about?

There are some real advantages. Looking as, for example an object, does stretch our thinking and it helps to design the object better. From the earlier example, try differentiating which of your perspectives are looking at a person and which are looking as that person, how they may consider that same outlook for themselves. No doubt you already do this when thinking about people you are close to but I find this distinction creates subtle (and sometime not so subtle) insight. That’s a very valuable thing.

*  For an Overview to Integral Theory see Sean Esbjörn Hargens pdf here>>>

** Looking at and as perspectives diagram from Sean Esbjörn Hargens, TetraDynamics (2014).

When people first come across integral theory* they are often stunned, enticed, surprised and excited by its simple beauty and explanatory power. I certainly was! Suddenly, through accessibly integrating global knowledge, many tensions in ourselves, families and society come into clear illuminated focus. Sustainability and health are great examples – integral’s mapping power illuminates stuck situations**. It creates hope for changes that are perversely hard to implement.

Excited, we apply it to everything around us. Then we look for greater traction and impact.

If you are like me, you’ll have seen some wonderful shifts. Just working with one prominent piece of integral, its quadrants, can be highly revealing, catalysing transformations. Groups, clients and friends quickly get the quadrants and love the clarity this brings to discussions. This occurs if the structure is being used explicitly – we’re talking integral theory and its application to others – and delightfully it still works if it is simply informing the design of an interaction, project or program.

Yet, our experience with this clear integrating model is uneven. Sometimes it flies powerfully. Sometimes it seems it could do so much more. Seemingly, how to best apply the quadrants is largely uncharted territory.

Enter TetraDynamics. I’m privileged to be observing the latest application of this -approaches like integral seem fundamental to managing and dealing with many of the environmental and social imperatives we face today – the sold out program is a wonderfully exciting thing. But, what is TetraDynamics?

The Four Quadrants are deceptively simple. They are comprised from the intersection of two of our life’s most fundamental polarities: insides and outsides; parts and wholes…

TetraDynamics highlights the many different kinds of relationships (Dynamics) that are possible between each of the four quadrants (Tetra).

Over the next 12 weeks this blog series touches, very lightly, on some program highlights. By its very nature, a short blog is a lot less than a whole course or two hours of discussion and application. However, as a first step, think about how quadrants can be used to understand integral theory itself. We can:

1. Look at ourselves and discover the reflections of integral quadrants in ourselves – the “I” piece, if you like – self understanding.
2. Greatly deepen our understanding in discussion and interaction with others – a “we” piece – impact and action with others.
3. Get busy creating a better methodology for using these integral quadrants  – an “it piece” – as they are so powerful.

One of the astonishing strengths of this model is the reflections, our own embodied understanding. Part one above, if you like, is a key to change.  Sean Esbjörn-Hargens, TetraDynamics creator and program leader says:

When I activate these dimensions in my own being [it becomes] not just a head trip of boxes for interesting insight… I can feel it, I can experience it, for me this is what makes integral analysis so delicious. While, even as a strong mental type I can dissociate from this which is why I work on the embodiment to try and bring it down and stay related.

Before I lose the more cognitive folks, consider how this reflected insight, of understanding felt within your own body, may assist during challenging situations. At the very least, the clearer and more connected we are, the more likely others are to engage.

Or try it for yourself, take Sean’s walking integral meditation on a 25 minute walk:

• Spend the first 5 minutes walking noticing your own subjective awareness, what is arising in your experience, your feelings and emotional states
• The next 5 minutes focus on the intersubjective dimensions – birds, hikers, the dynamics of your relationships with other beings
• For the third 5 minutes pay attention to the objective data coming through your senses – what you see, hear, taste, touch and smell.
• Then look for patterns –  the systems that support you being and walking in this place – for 5 more minutes.
• Finally, spend 5 minutes brining it all together – experiencing  (gets easier over time…) all four of the elements simultaneously

There are a cascade of similar reflections, reaching out into the systems and circumstances and societies you care about, that the next blogs looking at TetraDynamics will touch on.

Series index

Beyond the boxes (this post)

Repeating patterns (post 2)

Feeling with the organism (post 3)

Opposites attract (post 4)

Out of the box elegance (post 5)

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*An integral quadrant introduction is here … “The quadrants represent lenses with which to better understand any occurrence; they reveal dynamics and forces in the interiors and exteriors of individuals and collectives. Together, they offer a map of psychology, behavior, culture, and systems.” (pdf)

** Just a few limited large group applications include Energy shifts in Peru, Integral and climate change, Integral and chaos emerging from the middle east