Syntony Conversations

21/06/2026

21/06/2026

Join the conversation. Ministerie van Justitie en Veiligheid Marcel Verwei

(103)
An Introductory Course developed by and | Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap
Think of Waves. In the old Science the water moves around. In the New Science we see Waves Interacting Moving together.

Learning Experiences in a new map with engagement. Natures patterns of being in relations with others. When you are conscious you have conversations on a deeper level. Exploring by listening to learn.

Syntony is a systemic set that is life affirming.
Future creating – humanity is now faced with the challenge of generating value shifts that permits cultural evolution to parallel technological progress.
Education is perhaps the slowest of all sectors of institutionalized human social activity to change (cf. A Systems View of Education: Concepts and Principles for Effective Practice, 1992). It has often been remarked that if one were to take an educator like Benjamin Franklin and drop him into a contemporary classroom, he would feel perfectly at home with what was going on (although certain technological advances in the delivery and support of the teaching process would indubitably seem outlandish).

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Education, in and of itself, is neither irrelevant nor outmoded. However, the current need to educate a planetary citizenry under conditions relevant to the living context of our planet is palpable. A new education paradigm must take its cue from the life sciences — biomimicry, ecosystem studies, permaculture and the like, and from the sciences of complexity — complex adaptive systems theory, second order cybernetics, social systems dynamics and similar fields.
The crumbling educational system of the past disconnects the learner from life through mechanistic worldviews. Factory-style education — where students are grouped according to age, learn at the same pace as determined by the conveyor-belt of course delivery, and have knowledge instilled in them through rote memorization and regular testing — has entirely ceased to serve the needs of our rapidly evolving time. Graduation from this system fails to ensure the lifelong learning competencies necessary for constructive engagement with an ever changing world. Given the technological limitations and cultural constraints of the past, the scaling of education through the mechanization of this process did indeed serve the needs of the time as well as it could. But times have changed, and so have educational technologies and paradigms.
All over the world now, more dynamic, systemic, evolutionary systems of learning have begun to flourish. Both young people and adults crave learning that is fun, engaging, challenging, and that connects them to the pulse of life. As we learn more about how the human brain functions, we begin to feed our need for dwelling in stories (how the mind remembers) and playing to human incentives by engaging in game dynamics. What comes about through the process known as the gamification of education is best termed ludic learning.
Gaming culture infects learning globally. Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) bring people together to collaborate for shared wins. The pleasurable rewards from this activity infect the expectations of young people. Where once we were “cheating” by sharing our knowledge with others, we now recognize such behavior as the sort of desirable collaboration and networked intelligence crucial for real world action. Such interactive frames bring with them a new literacy. Icons representing various system states and dynamic read-outs of environmental conditions provide visual analogues of key indicators of the flux and flow of health in the virtual environment, creating a tapestry of symbolic meaning akin to what fighter pilots learn to process from their jet consoles. It should be no surprise then that students who thrive in these dynamic and complex environments, rewiring their brains for such mental gymnastics, suffer and languish when asked to process the stultifying static information that comes off printed text and linear language.
As a species, we now strive toward human and ecosystem flourishing — not as an educational vocation or pastime, but as an increasingly recognized pre-requisite for all of humanity to continue to co-exist in and contribute to the web of life on Earth. We crave thrivability: the ability to thrive, for ourselves and our children. The need to be adaptive and agile in changing environments is ever more clear. Thrivability gives well-being and conviviality primacy. To thrive is to create more value than you consume; to be generative by expanding, enriching or evolving the systems within which you live. Rather than static, highly specialized knowledge, which we have learned how to develop quite proficiently, we lean toward requisite variety and integration in service of conviviality with all the living beings and life support systems in our milieu.
Thrivability builds on sustainability’s lessons and wisdom. It transcends sustainability partly because it adds a framework for understanding how to navigate complexity in turbulent environments. Drawing on lessons from the life sciences and from quantum field theory and scalar field theory, thrivable education teaches about emergence in complex adaptive systems. It does so by preparing learners for multiple roles in their living ecosystems: roles that naturally involve a panarchy of relationships. Panarchy, as an organizing principle of complex adaptive systems, suggests that all systems embed and are embedded in dynamic contexts involving other systems, and that when effectively — and affectively — aligned, they self-organize for optimal functionality. This intertwingling of systemic relations leads to a manifest conviviality in thriving systems and the ecosystems that embed them.
One of the interesting insights into thrivability from contemporary science has to do with the phenomenon of coherence in thriving systems. It is now understood that liquid water is made up of networks of “coherence domains” — regions in which the molecules act in phase. This is called coherence. What is interesting and particularly significant for the dynamics of thrivability that give rise to conviviality is that when sets of coherence domains come into coherence among themselves, an emergent phenomenon known as “super-coherence” occurs. As it turns out, only dissipative systems — ones capable of exporting to their environment the entropy they produce — are capable of super-coherence. A system composed of super-coherent sub-systems is highly resonant. That is, it carries, sustains, and conveys patterns of health and wellbeing so long as it is not actively destabilized in it’s resonant milieu. When brought to the level of human social and societal systems, this phenomenon is expressed in terms of hyper-connectivity.
Ross Dawson describes the phenomenon of hyper-connectivity as an emergent property of our globalizing sets of relationships (cf. Dawson, Ross. “Autopoiesis and how hyper-connectivity is literally bringing the networks to life,” on Trends in the Living Networks, 11 May 2010 http://rossdawsonblog.com/.../2010/05/autopoiesis_and.html, accessed 25/06/12). As we become ever more intertwingled, the potential for super-coherence among the social systems in which we live, conduct business, and manipulate our environment offers the promise of deep conviviality with such high levels of thrivability as could only be ascribed to the emergence of societal super-organisms. These living networks of convivial communities of practice, of interest, and of place lay the foundation for a global eco-civilization in which humanity takes on the role of curators of planetary thrivability.
But it could just as easily go in the other direction. What emerges as synergetic intertwinglement when thrivability is consciously curated can degrade toward negative synergetic entanglement when myopic and ego-centric perspectives dominate. Without an educational framework that nurtures super-coherence in our societal systems, and coherence at the individual level of our psycho-emotional selves, we run the risk of creating ever larger networks of dysfunctionality.
Key to thrivable education is the focus on the coherence domains of the learner in the context of their living environment. There are four coherence domains for human thrivability:
​At the first coherence domain – conviviality with oneself; personal or internal thrivability – the practices involve centering, quieting the monkey-mind, listening with every cell of our being. These practices cultivate intuition, empathy, compassion, insight that matches outsight, and a willingness to explore and follow our deepest calling.
​At the second coherence domain – conviviality with others; community or interpersonal thrivability – the practice involves deep dialogue and collaboration. Coming together to learn with and from each other and to engage in coordinated action with considerateness, openness, and joy to enable collective wisdom.
​At the third coherence domain – conviviality with nature; ecosystemic or transpersonal sustainability – the practices involve communing; listening to the messages of all beings (whether they be waterfalls, animals, or galaxies) and acknowledging our interdependence and ultimate unity.
​At the fourth coherence domain – conviviality with the flows of being and becoming; evolutionary or integral thrivability – the practices involve learning to read the patterns of change of which we are a part; becoming familiar with the improvisational jam session that nature has been playing since time immemorial. These practices cultivate our ability to sing and dance our own path into existence in harmony with the grand patterns of cosmic creation and to participate in the ongoing flourishing of life.
Super-coherence occurs when all four coherence domains become coherently aligned in daily practice, resulting in an integral engagement with thrivability. As such, thrivability education is keyed to these practices — always promoting a spirit of innovation in the learner. Just as the survival imperative for every business is to have a clear answer to the question, “innovate for what?”, so the thrival imperative for every educational institution is to have a clear answer to the question, “educate for what?” (For more on the thrival imperative, see Paul Radde’s book Thrival! (Path Lighter Press, Austin, Texas, 2002).)
The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) of the early second decade of the 21st century will give way to more direction generating educational models in subsequent decades. (See McAuley, A., Stewart, B., Siemens, G., and Cormier, D., "The MOOC model for digital practice", University of Prince Edward Island, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council's Knowledge synthesis grants on the Digital Economy, 2010.) There have been many efforts to massify and democratize education in the early 2010s, ranging from online academies to prestigious multi-university collaborations that offer free and remarkable online libraries of lessons worth sharing. Additionally, cross-organizational standards will be devised to help learners and those who work with them to understand proficiencies across various programs, online or offline.
One example of this educational orientation that emerged at the beginning of the 2010s was the revolutionary educational offering of the Giordano Bruno University (aka, the Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University; the Giordano Bruno World University). The stated educational purpose of GBU was “to create informed and ethical agents of change who will bring a new consciousness, a fresh voice and up-to-date thinking to the international community, transforming obsolete paradigms and empowering the co-creation of an equitable, responsible and sustainable world.”
Such an education creates futures — specifically, emerging futures. More and more, this will become the pathway for a post-relativistic, visionary and future-creating educational paradigm that reverses the trend toward “feel good” education based on teaching whatever the market demands, as has been well documented in the research article, “Virtual Learning in a Socially Digitized World" [Laszlo, Alexander et al. World Futures: The Journal of Global Education, Vol. 68, No. 8, November 2012, pp. 575-594 – http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/.U5KArhbYlzk, accessed 6/06/14].
As we shift from single solution, positivistic forms of learning to evolutionary biomemetic frames where learners co-evolve solutions in all four coherence domains mentioned above, students learn into the moment with fewer pre-set answers and more open inquiries. Both young students and adult learners learn in peer groups: peer-to-peer discovery facilitated by learning guides and active listeners rather than by traditional subject matter experts. Organizations such as the Peer to Peer Foundation (see http://p2pfoundation.net/, accessed 25/06/12) are leading the way with processes that facilitate the self-knowledge and self-awareness of this movement toward peer learning and practice. Self-organizing initiatives can evolve rapidly and powerfully with such new orientations, with organizations like Escuela Nueva (see http://www.escuelanueva.org/portal/, accessed 23/07/12) enabling child-centered collaborative learning to more than 5 million educationally disenfranchised people living in rural and urban poverty.
Decades from now, we will consider emerging education as that which enables us to curate and nurture the past, present, and future of ecosystem relationships and health. As we develop greater relational intelligence of flows, using pattern recognition and evolutionary systems frameworks, we move away from static and ego-centric knowledge production. We become a manifest form of networked intelligence, avoiding the myopia that resulted from factory-based education and specialization.
Emerging education, while encouraging access to facts and data, focuses on how information is integrated and discerned. Rather than producing many graduates with the same knowledge, new paradigm education nurtures diverse forms of intelligence and the ability to connect these forms in myriad ways to adapt to current and emerging conditions as needed. The shift comes, not from imposed changes from the management sector of education, but rather as demanded and prototyped at the edges of contemporary learning environments. This is exactly what is happening, as we witness exciting innovations emerging the world over.
Will Varey is a professional practitioner from Australia in sustainability and social strategic planning specializing in the psychodynamics of generative organizational change. He has created an area of learning based on “the systemic study of the nature of wellness and its causes, processes, development and consequences in emergent systems,” in contrast to the prevalent study of sick and dying systems and how to prevent them (cf. http://www.apithology.com/, accessed 25/06/12). This shift from a focus on pathology is termed apithology, combining the Latin prefix apic- (indicating apex) with the suffix -logy (meaning ‘the study of’). When applied to the area of educational concerns, apithology becomes apithagogy: “an inquiry into learning to discover the learning needs of a changing humanity as it learns about itself” (as defined by Varey on http://apithagogy.blogspot.com/, accessed 25/06/12).
Another example of emerging innovation in thrivable education comes from the work of systemic thinker and social entrepreneur Violeta Bulc of Slovenia and the InCo Movement she has started (cf. http://www.incomovement.eu/, accessed 25/06/12). As she says, the InCo Movement arose as “a movement for an innovative breakthrough whose aim is to promote active interstructural dialogue and development of tools for sustainable development of an innovative society” (http://www.incomovement.eu/basic-info, accessed 25/06/12). Yet another example comes from management consultant and educator Stefan Blachfellner’s work out of Austria on the Change The Game Initiative. CTG was conceived as an umbrella movement for initiatives of all types that seek to “discover the interdependence between ethics and innovation and its impact on the social, ecological and economic sustainability of business models, organizations and societies at large” (http://www.changethegame.org/, accessed 25/06/12). And the Mycelium School of Asheville, North Carolina, (http://www.myceliumschool.org/, accessed 23/07/12) fosters the skills for learners to address root causes of social and environmental concerns while encouraging a rich, textured awareness of self.
In 2013 an initiative of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) focused on scaffolding a World Evolutionary Learning Tribe (WELTribe) for planetary Emerging. As a fundamentally educational initiative, the 57th annual conference of the ISSS focused on Curating the Conditions for a Thrivable Planet: Systemic Leverage Points for Emerging a Global Eco-Civilization. It sought to “contribute to an evolutionary narrative of the next phase of human civilization in a time of global personal awakening” (from the ISSS website http://isss.org/world/Hai_Phong_City_2013, accessed 06/06/14). Efforts such as these are becoming increasingly prevalent and serve to underscore the need for thrivable education. The International Conferences on Collaboration and Intelligence in Blended Learning (CIBL) provide yet another example of emerging orientations to thrivable systems based on convivial relationships in learning processes (http://ktw.mimos.my/cibl2012/, accessed 25/06/12). And in 2014, the 22nd European Meeting of Cybernetics and Systems Research (EMCSR) was convened in Vienna, Austria, to focus on the topic of Civilisation at the Crossroads: Response and Responsibility of the Systems Sciences�, with special sessions dedicated to “The World Evolutionary Learning Tribe – Project Prospects, Plans and Promise” (cf. http://emcsr.net/progr.../world-evolutionary-learning-tribe/, accessed 06/06/14).
In a world where any documented fact can reach the fingers and minds of anyone with access to the Internet, the memorization of facts ceases to be a differentiator between individuals. Instead, the limited resource has become the creative combination, integration, and useful application of knowledge into networked production and customization. Research into New Paradigm Education addresses the need for attention to this resource, and cultivates it through learning platforms that situate life-long learners in a world that is relevant and meaningful to them — now and into the future.
Research Initiatives currently underway
Current research is being carried out through the establishment of a dedicated vehicle that picks up where the educational development and delivery model of the GBU (mentioned above) left off. Through the establishment of Syntony International (http://www.syntonyinternational.com accessed 06/06/14), a program of study that forwards the research agenda of The Laszlo New Paradigm Leadership Center in the area of New Paradigm Education, an action-research team has come together to curate the emergence of educational models, methods, curricula and delivery platforms that both reflect the emerging cosmovision derived from cutting edge thinking in the sciences, while at the same time meeting the needs of a global generation of learners faced with the challenges of our times.
As the vehicle through which the New Paradigm Education of The Laszlo NPLC will be carried out, more information on Syntony International can be found here – http://www.syntonyinternational.com/about.html, accessed 06/06/14. Current explorations include workshops workshops that help promote transcommunity and salutogenesis (http://www.syntonyinternational.com/evolutionary-world..., accessed 06/06/14); research colloquia on Thrivable Systems – from Vision to Reality: The Synergetic Relation between Evolutionary Learning Labs and the World Evolutionary Learning Tribe (http://www.ifsr.org/.../ifsr-conversation-2014-highly.../, accessed 06/06/14); and the establishment of a forum for the gathering and exploration of “glocal” initiatives in systemic sustainability through new and emerging efforts to create evolutionary learning communities across the globe (http://weltribe.weebly.com, accessed 06/06/14).
DESCRIPTION
Science is making a big movement into another System, we move from Systems Thinking into Systems for feelings, this is making a big change in this time we live in, we are becoming our authentic and collaborating Systems and this state is about "Being".
Being our self and feeling comfortable is the current state so we need the spaces to learn and experience this new learning because it is not a ethic that is grounded yet and based on the new world view.
Behavioral Science and Systems Science is our background.
As a society we have to learn better how to learn and share with each other. Generative dialogues are the ones we need to practice first. We call this change the Social Learning and Social Collaboration.
It is the dynamism for Change that could lead us to a new kind of society.
We must share a vision, a 21th Century Vision for this new society if we want to know how to maintain a good life.
It requires deep dialogues, deep thoughts and sustained effort by all of us.
Reasoning together is the only way we can bring it about: reasoning together, conversing together, searching together.
The challenge is nothing short of the Collective consideration of a radical transformation of the Social Systems which embody our attitudes and dispositions. It is the avant garde that loves to start this as innovators and implementators, the designers and that is why we are offering this to everyone now, there are many creative people who can provide this with us. The "Syntony" Conversations must no longer be considered a side conversation, relegated to conferences and colleges.
Designing a new society that provides a decent quality of life while coexisting in a long run sustainable relationship with the natural environment that nourishes us is our mission.
Our Programs and Courses are not about a side conversation, this is "The Conversation" for being and becoming with our world. At this moment as you are here participating with us we are already into this conversation now through multifaceted reflection on where we stand, where those who surround us stand, and where we would like to be. It is about our ethics and we need to step back and take a look at what is happening at the big picture.
We take you into the world of the Systems Science and you will enjoy the language and the terms. We translated it into a easy way of learning.
Our Identity = Holographic/Fractalic = Cooperation without privileges
Complex Adaptive Systems.
Picking up Quests is about relations emerges with interactions between the parts.
The capacity through empathy within the power of vulnerability is this personal quest.
We are all researchers in this Syntony Quest. It is about a strong assumption of belonging into something bigger. We find them in human relationships building our communities in this world.
The key of consciousness is realizing being in the moment aligning yourself.
Habitual Behaviors are rooted in our Beliefs and Mental Models about ourselves with a Universal Compass in our Conversations.
We go from Individual to Collective Wisdom. On the individual level Beliefs are Visible and the Habitual Behaviors are Invisible.
At the Collective Level the Social Norms are Visible and the Social Structures are Invisible.
With the Compass Guide we come into Tactical Dialogues to Create Actions.
This is how we create the emerging Conditions because our inner voices and self talks need to become more conscious by challenging them, because we are all constantly thinking. The new thinking is about doing.
When we go from Systems Thinking into Systems Feelings to Systems Being, we come into the right environment sorting thoughts. Balancing is growing processes. Communication in a centering way is about cultivating intuition.
In the Syntony Conversation Ladder we structure the five frame issues in healthy engagements.
Syntony Dialogues are structured in 4 different levels. That is why we offer 4 modules.
Holos = Dealing the Complex
How do expand our Consciousness?
The core actions are about the 4 levels = the Sustainablity
Learning objectives
• Intending to make a meaningful contribution to our understanding of the fundamental nature of the world, and through this understanding to contribute to wellbeing in the world. It is dedicated to pursuing this objective through research on the concepts, principles and worldviews currently emerging in the sciences, and developing their applications to fields of human interest.
• Offer an international platform for research and to researchers in education, business and communication.
• Serve as an incubator and nurturer of projects that further the understanding and practical applications of the new paradigm, acting in concert with the programs and activities of the Villagio Globale in Italy and the Club of Budapest Internationally.
Activities
The Centre provides a home to leading-edge thinkers dedicated to research and development of the new paradigm through a variety of live and internet-based programs and activities, including symposia, courses and seminars. It publishes the conclusions flowing from its activities in books, journals, on television and on the Internet. It forges relations with like minded persons and institutions worldwide, creating a network for the elaboration of the scientific and humanistic facets of the new paradigm.
Research Programs, Courses, Seminars and Symposia
The Publication Program
The findings of research and proceedings of the Symposia are published in the peer- reviewed journal WORLD FUTURES: The Journal of New Paradigm Research ( Routledge: Philadelpia and London), and may be re-published in e-books and print books. Selected events may be filmed for Internet distribution, as well as for culturally and intellectual oriented media such as the US – based PBS
( Public Broadcasting System) and the European Art network.
Course Segment I - A Quest to understand where everything comes from
• A journey to the past to understand our origins
• An overview of our Evolutionary Journey
• A quick history of the Major Western worldviews and scientific paradigms
• Appreciating things from the perspective of complex systems and living systems theory
• Discovering Evolutionary patterns in physical and biological systems
• The creative universe call home
• The implications of relativity, a quantum physics and field theory for our understanding of reality
• Understanding the evolutionary principles of life
• Understanding the evolution of the brain, cognition and of consciousness
• Discovering evolutionary patterns in socio- cultural systems
• Identity and Culture as Emergent phenomena mediated by language
• Community consciousness from tribal to global community
• Humans as Co Creators and active participants in the evolutionary process
• Towards an holistic paradigm
Our Center is a humanistic organization, committed to create informed and ethical agents of change, that will bring a new consciousness, a fresh voice and up-to-date thinking to the global community. Transforming absolute paradigm and empowering the co-creation of an equitable, responsible and sustainable world.
Serving young people and people of all ages, regardless of nationality, ethnic background, beliefs and other conditions that have hindered communication among the people and cultures of the human community. Our Institution and Leadership Centre focuses not on traditional methods of education, but on a new pedagogy that preserves cultural heritage serving however as a permanent laboratory to examine and update human thinking.
This program will take you through a deep personal journey, through the origin and evolution of our universe, our human civilization and the mystery of our mind and spirit.
In just three courses we will aim to understand how we came to be what we are today and the possible outcomes of what we can become tomorrow.
à A journey to the past to understand our origins.
Our course is divided into two major perspectives. The holistic, evolutionary one and the bio of systemalogical explanatory hypotheses of civilization. Our courses are:
From the big bang to conscious humans is a journey through the past to understand the origins and evolution of humanity, both in the biological and spiritual dimension.
Here, we will explore the neuro-cognitive processes that gave birth to civilization, such as the awakening of consciousness and how our sense of ‘are’ and also of ‘insecurity’, led to the social, political and economic superstructures of authority and subordination that rule the world today. Understanding our civilization constitutes an essential basis for assessment of our present situation and our prospects for a brighter future.
Course segment II - The evolutionary History of human consciousness – Understanding the individual and his place and roll in the world.
• The impact of personal and collectieve beliefs on individual behavior and psyche
• Criteria for an holistic evaluation of the challenges we face at individual, local and global levels
• Mental models and beliefs that lead to subordination and powerlessness
• Habitual behaviors that block creativity and transformative action
• Assessment of personal health and well- being
• Litmitations of strident individualism
• Widening and Self reinforcing inequalities
• Cultural barriers to collaboration
• Forms of leadership that maintain dominance by few
• Impact of individual and collective beliefs on the living environment and physical health
• Health of planet earth as a complex adaptive living system
• The impact of humans on nature
• The impact of environmental degradation on human health
• The impact of dominant worldviews on global diversity, social structures and systems
The evolutionary history of human consciousness, understanding the individual and his place and roll in the world. We will visit the realities of our present human identity. The paradigmatic processes of religious, political and economic affiliations and the prospect to transcend our present condition, together with our individual potentialities for the future. We will explore the religious, political and economic narratives that have given shape to this world and the main features of modern consciousness, such as linear and logical left brain orientation, materialism, in human being beset by an existential vacuum, the crisis of identity and the lack of purpose. In this course we are encouraged to question our identities and be open to look at our own values and beliefs with a fresh eye.
Course segment III - Envisioning a better future.
Foster the creative vision of a sustainable and humane civilization.
Envisioning a better future will foster the creative vision of a sustainable and humane civilization and the cultural and psychological paths that can help us find a way to make a better world. Here, once we have the better understanding of the evolution of humanity, we will be ready to develop a critical and non subordinate spirit to envisage a new path for an individual constructive transformation. Today, due to the multiple crises that affect our world, we, the young generation in age and spirit, will witness a radical global shift with the dominant civilization. Thanks to the emerging technologies, we have a unique opportunity to enter a new age of conscious humanism; a world of cooperation, tolerance, compassion, embracing solidarity and enhancing social and ecological responsibility.
• Framing the challenge
• Taking stock of what we we have learned and whwat we have yet to do
• Visioning a better world
• Transformative change
• Biomimicry
• The natural step framework
• Integral sustainovation
• Engaging in dialogue
Notes for further study
Evolutionary Development in Service of an Emerging Eco- Civilization
- Alexander Laszlo. Ph.D.
- Key words: Syntony, evolution, consciousness, creativity, relational intelligence
Beyond Sustainable Development
Humanity is now faced with the challenge of generating value-shifts that permit cultural evolution (in terms of orientations to nature, self, and others) to parallel technological progress (in terms of capacities to create or destroy aspects of our socio-biosphere). Contemporary technologies of information and communication (TIC) hold the potential for positively contributing to the increased stability of an emerging glocal eco-civilization by empowering individuals with a greater Earth Ethic.
Glocal is a term that combines the attributes of global and local dimensions. Through the simulation of interactive environments on the dynamics of development, individuals can be encouraged to pursue orientations that promote environmental sustainability and mindful living. Tools and activities are processes that celebrate life, promote systemic wellness, and incorporate and embed values of joy and happiness.
With a new understanding of evolutionary dynamics and effective approaches to the participatory design of social systems, our species can stop drifting upon the current of change and begin to adjust its sails in view of emerging futures. Moving in Syntony.
Evolving our Understanding of Evolutionary Dynamics
For most people, evolution simply means Darwin. Unmistakably, he is important as an historical figure who legitimized a theory of evolution both scientifically and popularly. Scientific understanding has advanced beyond even neo-Darwinian interpretations.. and yet popular conceptions of evolution remain strongly associated with classical Darwinism. This is seriously problematic if we wish to be effective curators in emerging development.
Classical Darwinism is founded on the notion of the complete and entire separation of the germ line (the genetic information handed down from parents to offspring) and the soma (the organism that expresses the genetic information). Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck, did not make this separation, but his theory known as Lamarckian Evolution, was less appealing to the zeitgeist of the Industrial Revolution, and so found broad based appeal only in the former Soviet Union. With the addition of mutation theory proposed by Hugo de Vries, Darwinian evolution came to describe a process of biological change that proceeds by selection of those randomly created genetic variants of the germ line, and the chance that this random mutation will result in an organism that has an increased “goodness of fit” with its environment.
The Darwinian conception of evolution is based on trial and error, and this implies that it is something like the work of a blind watchmaker, as Richard Dawkins called it. In general practice, this view still holds firm, despite the fact that modern science tells us otherwise. Some researchers have maintained already for quite some time that Darwins theory is fundamentally mistaken. The problem, it seems, relates to the improbabilities of double-blind chance processes as the driver of the manifest coherent complexity we observe in life and living ecosystems. It involves learning or re-learning what it means to be part of a natural community that is itself a system of syntony. Fritjof Capra points to this as “the greatest challenge of our time : to create sustainable communities – that is to say, social and cultural environments in which we can satisfy our needs and aspirations without diminishing the chances of future generations” ( Capra 1996:4). In terms of Syntony, it is less a matter of creating nurturance spaces in which Goodwins sacred dance of being and becoming with the other members of the ecosystems with whom we share our Earth can flourish. Of course, this means focusing not only on the social and cultural environments that Capra mentions, but we make which, in turn, creates the rhythms by which we continuously flow into co-existence.
The skeptic may remark that we flow into existence whether we care about syntony or not. This is true, but I would remind him that it is the quality of the flow, and the degree to which it sustains us and the other processes and patterns that emerge with us in the course of evolution, that is at play here.
This matter of quality marks “the difference that makes the difference” as Bateson puts it, and it depends directly on the extent to which Syntony is encouraged or neglected. Therefore, it is imperative that we understand evolution in more than just a theoretical way. It is imperative that we understand evolution in more than just a theoretical way, to dance with evolution.
Becoming masters of our own destiny is not a quest of foolish arrogance – it is the survival imperative for sustainable coexistence of humankind with the life support systems of Earth. And the mastery entailed is not one of Darwinian domination but rather one of holistic harmonization.
In the Life Area (1987), Eric Chaisson puts it in this way: “An appreciation and understanding of evolution…can provide a map for the future of humanity.” With such a map, all that is needed is a reliable compass. Syntony provides such a compass for it involves learning how to sail the currents of evolutionary change. With the response-ability and the sense-abilities that come of a well developed syntony sense, it is possible to take to heart and bringing to life the age old adage, “we can not direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails” ( A. Laszlo:2001).
Mahatma Gandhi: “be the systems you wish to see in the world.”
We have the power to create the glocal eco-civilization that fosters thrivability on Earth right now. We do not need to design some unattainable utopia, nor should we seek to plan scenarios for avoiding undesirable dystopias, and we certainly should not let the expediency of current geo-policy extend the contemporary unsustainable myopia in which we live any longer. What is needed are life affirming, future creating and opportunity increasing policy orientations that curate the conditions for the emergence of a currently attainable protopia. According to authors such as Kevin Kelly, protopias require the linking together of existing projects and initiatives that embody healthy, authentic, holistic relationships with life and Earth. As a species, we already know how to live in harmony with each other and with nature. It’s just that our dominant civilizational patterns of being and becoming do next to nothing to incentivize these ways relating. The constituent elements of a glocal eco-civilization already exist. The challenge of action orriened systems thinkers of today for tomorrow is to cure the conditions that bring these constituent elements into ongoing relationships with each other. In effect, what we need is a global evolutionary learning factory – a world evolutionary learning community – for the exploration of innovations in interdependence and thrivability. Its the type of systemic consciousness and the relational competence described in this paper, such vision is fast becoming reality for a new cadre of curators of life on Earth.
References
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