Inspired by our experience with the 2020 Climate Solutions Meshwork space at Klimaforum in Copenhagen, and stimulated by our most recent conversation in the International Steering Committee meeting of the 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign, I feel called to write this piece. It is designed to explain the current strategy I (together with colleagues) am adopting to our global transition challenge. It lies at the heart of the meshwork approach, as we are currently implementing it for the 2020 campaign.

I first heard of the metaphor of the imaginal cells from Elisabet Sahtouris, an evolutionary biologist. The essence of it is in the following, quoting directly from a mail from Elisabet today when I asked her for her latest version (my emphasis):

"A caterpillar eats up to three hundred times its own weight in a day, devastating many plants in the process, and continues eating until it’s so bloated that it hangs itself up and goes to sleep. In its sleep its skin hardens into a chrysalis and then, within the chrysalis, within the body of the caterpillar, while it sleeps, a new and very different kind of creature, the butterfly, starts to form. Now this was confusing for a long time to biologists asking how this could happen, that a new genome could come into play to form a different creature? They knew that metamorphosis occurs in a number of different insects, but it was not known until very recently that nature did a lot of mixing and matching of very different genomes in early evolutionary times. The butterfly genome is held by imaginal discs of primitive cells, like stem cells, in the folds of the caterpillar’s skin all its life, never developing until the crisis of overeating and fatigue allowed these dormant cells to develop. 

Metamorphosis makes a good metaphor for us to think about in considering the great changes globalisation is bringing about. Our bloated old system is rapidly becoming defunct while the 'blueprint' of a new and very different society that has long been held by many humans who dreamt of a better world, is now emerging like a butterfly, as a  solution to the crisis of overconsumption - a way of living lightly on Earth; a way of seeing life not in the metaphors and models of mechanism but in those of living organisms."

As with any living organism, a key moment in the birth of the butterfly is the increasing interconnection and differentiation between its cells. In other words, the new cells of the butterfly start to connect up as they recognise each other as part of the new whole, and in that process also differentiate, as different cells take on different functions.

Now take that story from nature and translate it into the context of global change, with the metamorphosis that we as humanity and the planet are currently undergoing, as our old systems collapse and something new tries to emerge. As we become increasingly aware of the inadequacy of our current systems to solve the complex nature of the challenges we are currently facing, we go into mass experimentation and questing mode (see Footnote 1). These organisations, initiatives and individuals are the "imaginal cells" of the potential future of human civilisation. When we begin to see ourselves in the context of a bigger emerging whole, and look around to see what everyone else is doing, we become clearer about our identity and the specific piece of the puzzle we hold, as we know that others are holding other pieces and that we are connected in our quest for the new civilisation. We interconnect and differentiate.

The imaginal cells strategy therefore contains a number of key elements:
- become aware of ourselves as part of a new emerging whole
- identify the key functions that humanity needs to perform at this time on the planet
- find the people and organisations who are already performing those functions or who have the potential to perform them more effectively
- identify the break-through solutions and best practices that already exist and are making a significnat difference, and make them visible and useable to others working in contexts where that solution could be applicable
- enable the people, organisations and solutions to align behind the core functions, and support a rapid action-learning dynamic-steering implementation process whilst continually sharing our learning as we go along

There is a two-way dynamic between identifying core functions, and looking at people and solutions that are already there. From a "bottom-up" crowd-sourcing perspective, we simply need to look at what people are already doing to identify the core functions, as we are the planet responding to the dis-ease in our body, and as a part of the natural system ourselves, we are responding naturally to the challenge. From a "top-down" "use best of existing research" perspective, we can take a look at work that has already been done to identify the core functions of any healthy living system (such as that of James Grier Miller) and design from that template. In reality, we create dynamic interaction between the two, where Millers's core functions for example become a starting point from which to compare how humanity is really responding. We ask ourselves if what we see adds to the framework, and the other way round - how such a framework can help inform our collective activity, see blindspots in our response and initiate new activities.

With the meshwork that we have been evolving as part of the 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign, we started by asking a well-informed international group of 230 people what they felt the key areas were that we needed to be focusing on and prioritising as humanity at this time. This gave us the framework that you can see in the case story of the launch of the 2020 Campaign in Brazil. Then as we went into Copenhagen, we asked hundreds of people as they passed through the meshwork space whether they thought that we had the right set of priority areas and conditions, and we are currently working through that feedback to create the next iteration of the framework. You can track the evolution of the online meshwork at www.2020climatesolutions.org.

In the meantime, Marilyn Hamilton and I have been working through James Grier Miller's work and translating it into the global change context as well as cities context. The next step in all of this is to compare what we have come with there with the latest bottom-up iteration of the framework.

So applying the imaginal cells change strategy is really quite simple:
- identify the framework of areas and priorities that we should be working on for a sustainable future (for any scale - community, city, school, organisation, nation)
- find the people and organisations that naturally help make progress in those areas
- identify existing break-through knowledge and solutions that are already making a big difference
- align people, organisations and knowledge behind the core functions (areas/priorities) and support collaborative implementation

Note that this strategy chooses to put attention on the emergence of the new, and does not pay attention to the struggles of the old system as it attempts to cling on. It is inspired by Buckminster Fuller's quote to "build a new system that makes the old one obsolete", rather than try and convince the old to change. The old system has a job to do - run everything until the new is ready to take over! So we can't expect it to change just like that into the new. However, that does not mean we do not engage with people and organisations who are currently participating in the old system. It remains an open invitation to anyone anywhere who wants to be part of building the radically new future. The new system runs on different principles to the old, and we refuse to play by the old principles as they are simply disfunctional and drain energy. It is the principles and practices that guide our discernment, not people. The question to people is whether they are willing to play the new game. If so, let's explore which piece of the puzzle you may hold.

The imaginal cells strategy is intentional and light, experimental and rigorous, inclusive and discerning. It is the best I know how to do right now - inspired by nature itself, as we learn to remember who we really are and work out what it means to act as the earth evolving ourself to our next phase.

Feel free to be in touch if you'd like to know more or be involved. Behind these ideas is a well-developed and ever evolving practice, combining the best of social engagement technologies, with performance and quality management discipline, and an online collaboration and implementation platform to support. It's replicable and scalable. And it's very energising to be part of the emerging butterfly...

Footnote 1
Jean-Francois Rischard, former vice-President of the World Bank in Europe gives an eloqent analysis from an insider on the inadequacy of current systems, the Dutch minister for the Environment Jacqueline Cramer returned from Copenhagen stating that the UN was essentially not up to the task, and Prof Ervin Laszlo's work describes precisely the nature of these non-linear civilisational transitions and phases of mass-experimentation.

transition, strategy, change, living systems, The Hague Center, elisabet sahtouris, 2020 climate leadership campaign, imaginal cells

Last updated 248 days ago by Peter Merry