Emergent Power: Key Challenges and Capacities for Paradigmatic Change Agents
What inner capacities do change agents in the emerging ecosystem need to develop so that the ecosystem becomes more powerful and better able to contribute to life-serving socio-ecological transformation? We identify 3 key ecosystem-level challenges and 6 key "capacities for the future".
Read and download the full report here.
Executive Summary
In response to global crises, a growing number of individuals and organisations are questioning dominant systems, worldviews, and practices – and developing alternative ways of living and working. We refer to this as an “emerging ecosystem”: it still does not have a clear name or identity. Some of the terms with which this ecosystem might be associated include: “Metamodern”, “Polycrisis”, “Metacrisis”, “Regenerative”, “Great Turning”, “Integral”, “Holistic”, and “Second Renaissance”. In previous work, we have begun to identify some of its key characteristics. In particular, there seems to be a novel approach towards social change that is simultaneously “paradigmatic”, “integrated”, and “pragmatic”.
A key question for our research is: what is needed to support this emerging ecosystem to become a system with real power and influence? We take as a starting point that this ecosystem contains and is developing knowledge and practices that can support collective responses to current socio-ecological crises. Specifically, this report seeks to understand: what inner capacities do change agents in the emerging ecosystem need to develop so that the ecosystem becomes more powerful and better able to contribute to life-serving socio-ecological transformation?
We conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 individuals working within the ecosystem. In this report, we synthesise insights from across the interviews.
We begin by asking what are the most important challenges that the ecosystem faces in becoming a system with enough influence to create attractive and viable alternatives to mainstream ways of living and working – in order to identify the ‘gaps’ where it makes sense to focus time and energy at present. The three key ecosystem-level challenges we articulate are:
- Developing healthy relational cultures
- Cultivating emergent ways of working together
- Reckoning with dominant cultural paradigms
With these challenges in mind, we then identify six key “capacities for the future” that individuals and groups within the ecosystem should focus on developing:
- Ease with uncertainty and complexity
- Critical inquiry into existing mental structures
- Addressing reactivity, tension, and conflict
- Agency and capacity to implement vision
- Acting in service of the greater whole
- Collective inner resourcing
Full report
Read and download the full report here.
Disclaimer
This research is part of the Cohere+ project, a collaboration between: Life Itself, The Hague Center for Global Governance, Innovation and Emergence; Institute for Integral Studies, Freiburg; Emerge; and the Ekskäret Foundation. It was co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
