Old master Otto Scharmer has (once again) taken the floor with a review of the state of our world (society) and how we could, aka should, react to it.
State of the world in keywords
1. period of accelerated collapse and collapse.
2. queasy feeling that it might already be too late
3. massive gap between knowledge and action
Possible scope for action
U process of transformation, roughly reminiscent of Kübler-Ross’ stages of dying:
1. denial of knowledge
2. dissociation via debt transfer
3. depression because it might be too late
4. deep sensing & co-creativity leading to new patterns of action.
Necessary transformations
– Our economy from ego to eco
– Our governance from top-down to decentralized and dialogical
– Our education systems are moving from being performance and test-driven to being generators of a better future
Transformation of the education system
The education system plays a key role here as the engine of the transformation process.
– Transitioning from a legacy operating system based on performance and efficiency to a newer one based on outcomes and user experience; and
– Transition to a future operating system based on regeneration and ecosystem awareness.
From Scharmer’s perspective (always sounding a wee bit esoteric to my social science ears), this transformation process only succeeds when we as humans engage in social interaction to transform our interpersonal relationships from a toxic culture to a regenerative infrastructure. It will sound like this:
But these changes will not happen on their own. They will only happen if supported by a new generative learning infrastructure that facilitates and enables consciousness-based systems change.
A new generative learning infrastructure sounds good, and he has been working on it quite successfully with his Theory U network actors* for 15 years. But whether one can really counteract the power-politically unbounded actors of world history in this way is not yet clear to me. Being determines consciousness – unfortunately less the other way round.
But hope dies last. I think we have to disempower the power-political players – there is no other way. Taking new paths along the way via collaborative practices , also in the interest of transforming the old, industrial policy-driven education system into a modern catalyst for the expression of diverse creative talents, also corresponds to my ideas.
We have to build ourselves together as a collective intelligence, develop new structures, so that we can mutually strengthen each other. I had briefly explained this in a video a few days ago – whereupon this article by Otto Scharmer was then recommended to me for reading. And so the circle closes.
Article published on piqd on October 11, 2022 as a reference to the Medium article Protect the Flame.
