The Relational: cooperation, co-evolution and co-creation/co-production

chaos, uncertainty or crisis. At this stage, the system may either break down/ degenerate, or it may break through to a new state of order, which is characterised by novelty and involves an experience of creativity that often feels like magic. Since the process of emergence is thoroughly non-linear, involving multiple feedback loops, it cannot be fully analysed with our conventional, linear ways of reasoning, and hence we tend to experience it with a sense of mystery (Capra and Luisi, 2014). Wahl (2016) has shown how such an adaptive system works and how a system can cycle through different stages and the opportunities that this creates. However, we cannot direct a living system, we can only disturb it. (Scharmer and Kaufer, 2013).

There have been some great examples of this in recent years such as the actions of the Extinction Rebellion and Occupy Movements in co-creating disruptive change. Can you think of others?

Diversity and flexibility

These emergent processes are further sustained by the characteristics of diversity and flexibility that enable ecosystems and communities to survive and adapt to change. As discussed above ecosystems are always in constant flux but there are certain limits to change beyond which the whole system will collapse. The aim is to reduce the long-term stress in the system: maximising a single variable will eventually lead to the destruction of the system as a whole; optimising all variables will create a dynamic balance between order and freedom, stability and change. This means accepting that contradictions within communities are signs of diversity and viability. However, this can exist only where there are strong and complex patterns of interconnections. A healthy community needs members who are aware of the need for interconnectedness, so that information and ideas flow freely through the networks to create a flourishing whole. Rather than a naïve notion of social capital that assumes homogeneity in community, it calls for an understanding that communities are contested spaces that flourish when practical strategies knit them together as part of a diverse, cooperative, interconnected whole.

The Relational: cooperation, co-evolution and co-creation/ co-production

Everything that is in the heavens, on earth, and under the earth is penetrated with connectedness, penetrated with relatedness. (Hildegard of Bingen, 1982: 41)

One of the most pervasive ideas of Darwinism is the notion of competition and ‘survival of the fittest’ or ‘ego-based thinking’. These ideas also reinforce current

notions of patriarchy regarding masculinity and the nature of leadership. However, contrary to this popular narrative, research has demonstrated that the cyclical exchanges of energy and resources in the ecosystem are best sustained though cooperation, partnership and co-evolution all of which involve processes of integration and connection that are necessary for a flourishing world (Capra, 2003). Thus the system co-learns, co-creates and co-produces in what Wahl (2016) calls the processes that underpin interbeing.

In this co-learning there is potential for transformation, reaching across the diversity referred to earlier to create a common vision and collective meaning. This brings us to another core feature of thinking participatively: the role of the relational and the collective. Life is essentially a network of relationships. By becoming aware of new interconnections and relationships, new questions can be asked about things we have hitherto not paid attention to. The participatory mind looks beyond events and superficial fixes to acknowledge the deeper structures and forces at play and does not allow boundaries – institutional, social or cultural – to limit thinking, but works so it can create those self-reinforcing loops or cycles of innovation that create regeneration through acting with others (Senge et al, 2005). This also means that through self-reflective consciousness (see the next section and also Chapter 7) we become conscious of how we are bringing forth a world together through how we experience and what we pay attention to (Wahl, 2016). The Goethean approach to science incorporates experience in this way: ‘The organising idea in cognition comes from the phenomenon itself, instead of from the self-assertive thinking of the scientist themselves. It is not imposed on nature but received from nature’ (Bortoft, 1996: 240; see also Haila and Dyke, 2006; Berkes, 2017). Indeed, some years ago, Bateson (1972) in his book Steps to the Ecology of Mind argued that the false reification of the self – the idea of a separate self rather than one emerging out of and sustained by relationships – is at the root of the current ecological crisis. He encouraged people to understand the world as one entirely made up of relationships, and how we continuously bring forth the world and ourselves through relationships, as we move from seeing the world as a collection of objects to experiencing the coming into being of perspectives and identity through the act of relating itself. Co-learning and the co-creation of knowledge in place through mutual learning and questioning are core to the notion of systems and also system transformation. It is about coming to know, coming to being through the interconnections and reciprocity between everything. Thus, understanding is not a representation of an independently existing world, but a continual bringing forth of the world through the process of living (Maturana and Varela, 1987). ‘Reality’ is only a reflection of how we look at it, and a particular ‘spiral of understanding’.