Designing an ecology for transformative action

 An ecology can be defined by the following applied to living communities within a global action space:

• Life processes and adaptations
• The abundance and distribution of organisms
• The abundance and distribution of diversity
• The movement of materials, knowledge and energy
• The successional development of ecosystems

The design process gives birth to a handbook that serves as a blueprint for the development of processes, methodologies, tools, courseware to nurture the emergence of a thrivable future

Background

In the past year I have participated in countless discussions on sustainability, change, how to make the world a better place, or to stop engaging in 'suicidal' activities. The most interesting one, with 3800 comments at the start of 2012 has taken place on the Systems Thinking World LinkedIn group: The call for revolutionary thinking and action of the UN secretary General to ensure an economic model for survival…

One of the striking conclusions of these discussions that constituted a research subject in themselves has been that even when animated by similar overall intentions and driven by converging purposes, people seemed to struggle to find common ground and to agree on priorities, goals, outcomes, methodologies…

This led me to reflect on the dynamics of change and transformation and on the conditions under which transformation and evolution could occur more than on the actual resources, models and systems that needed to be put into place. Because when thoroughly researching what was available, one discovers that much of the required solutions are already known and running somewhere. And what is missing is visibility, accessibility, actionability, interoperability, and the power to act.


The current map

The current map is the result of these first findings. With this map, we will be further exploring the various features and characteristics of an Ecology of Transformative Action as living system of empowered people, in view of determining the structures, systems, models, tools, processes, leverage points and triggers that will inspire (reason/emotion loop), empower (formation of intent/mobilization), and enable (how to/what action) change towards a sustainable, thrivable future in a coordinated yet self directed way.

You are most welcome to register an participate directly in the development of this graph. Be advised that the debategraph represents a well structured set of entry types and relationships. Entries not consistent this will be restructured as deemed appropriate. Please refer to the Help tab in the debategraph panel for information on how to interact with debategraph.

And in case of doubt, do not hesitate to use the comment feature and we will add your input to the graph.