INSIGHTs

Expert analysis and commentary to help you to make sense of what’s emerging.

Society

Christmas, Consumerism and Confusion

Jonathan Rowson

Christmas is the season of shallow critique. We lament the commercialisation around us as if it were a seasonal problem, but lurking inside the wrapped presents, juicy puddings and roasted birds there are deeper questions about ethical drift and the social logic of our entire economic model.

Climate Change

What if We are all We've Got?

Zhiwa Woodbury

We urgently need to move from a blame- and victimhood model towards one of shared responsibility for the climate catastrophe. What might happen if all of us became ‘climate influencers’ by acting every day as if our lives depended on minimizing our carbon footprints?

Emergence

Mapping for Emergence

Theo Cox, Rufus Pollock and Anna Katharina Schaffner

Life Itself and Emerge will join forces to map the emergent metamodern ecosystem. But what is so great about social network mapping? Why does it matter, and how can it help?

Systems Thinking

Systemic wisdom for and beyond Systems Change

Louis Klein

A critical systems perspective allows for exploring the universality of indigenous wisdom traditions and their understanding of the interconnectedness and interdependence of the flow of the world.

Society

Learning to Walk Together: Small Steps towards the We of Us

Joe Ross

What is the calling that pulled us from the sea? Whatever will become of you and me? And how to become WE?

Myth

The Beautiful, Hidden Harmony of Chaos

Kristina Dryza

It is unhelpful to believe that chaos exists only outside of us. And that this external chaos presses in upon our internal lives in an intrusive and disruptive manner. Almost all creative processes happen in a space between order and chaos. Nothing new can emerge unless we learn to dance with the chaos within.

Psychedelics

‘Mama Ayahuasca told me to invest in crypto’

Jules Evans

There is an overlap between crypto and psychedelics: Both operate at the margins of legality, are popular with libertarians who are suspicious of governments, and are symptoms of despair with the State of Things. Both are moonshots for a better way of living, and seem to inspire a similar fervour that a new age of love is dawning.

Psychology

The Art of Self-Improvement: Ten Timeless Truths

Anna Katharina Schaffner

When it comes to self-improvement, we have much to learn from our ancestors and other cultures. What is more, self-improvement practices provide powerful barometers of the values, anxieties, and aspirations that preoccupy us at particular moments in time and expose basic assumptions about our purpose and nature.

Emerge

On Weltschmerz and Weltanschauungen

Jonathan Rowson

Our challenge is to channel world pain into worldviews that clarify who we are, and how we should act, to inspire a shared sense of hope for the future.

Ecopsychology

RECLAIMING OUR INDIGENEITY: A Cure for Climate Trauma?

Zhiwa Woodbury

With only a limited window of time to bend the emissions curve, adapt to changing climate conditions, and halt the rapid decline in biodiversity, the values and wisdom of Indigenous Peoples can help us achieve this transformation.

Inner Development

"We need Inner Development Goals to reach the SDGs"

Jan Artem Henriksson

We may be lacking crucial inner skills to tackle our most urgent global action problems, of which the most pressing is the climate crisis. In this interview, Jan Artem Henriksson, the CEO of the Inner Development Goals Initiative, discusses with Waleria Schüle why inner work is needed to achieve a more sustainable global society.

Society

The Future of Philanthropy

Louis Klein

What kind of philanthropy does our world need right now? Why venture philanthropy doesn't work, and how community and social value philanthropy can contribute to a global civil society realising the love for humanity.

GATHERING 2021

Deliberately Developmental Spaces: A Key to Addressing the MetaCrisis?

Theo Cox, Rufus Pollock and Anna Katharina Schaffner

In this time of pressing global action problems, development in individual and collective “being” is a top priority. One promising approach is the creation of deliberately developmental spaces. We outline the key features of these spaces as well as some principles for their design and operation.

GATHERING 2021

The Impossible We?

Jonathan Rowson

A bigger 'we' is often called upon to take collective action to address our burning global emergencies. But 'we' is the most problematic pronoun of them all: The We that wants to say there is an emergency is not the same We as the We that needs to hear it, and the We that needs to hear it has several different ideas about the nature of the We that should do something about it.

Organisations

"Practical Emergence" - Building a Bridge or Squaring the Circle?

Rike Pätzold

What may good leadership look like in times of great uncertainty, when planning and controlling have lost their effectiveness? How can we facilitate generative emergence in organisations?

GATHERING 2021

Sacrificing the Gods

Elizabeth Debold

We urgently need new myths to ground us in this time between worlds and stories. What may take the place of our current myths - the myths of rationality and science, materialism, capitalism, meritocracy and democracy, justice and equality? May Eros hold the key to our future social imaginaries?

Art

Sylvia Plath's Plight

Josie Glausiusz

The brilliant poet Sylvia Plath's battle against post-war sexism and her attempt to juggle writing and motherhood resonate uncannily with our own age of unresolved structural gender inequalities, brought into sharp relief by the COVID pandemic.

Philosophy

Obedience As Laughter: From the Great Dictator to the Great Spectator

Hanzi Freinacht

The next murderous regime will not be based on fear-mongering but on comedy. In the echoing laughter of the crowd we will find the next genocide. Unwanted populations violently exterminated, and the crowd laughing.

Spirituality

On Environmentalism and Spirituality

Jules Evans

While Romantic worshippers in the cathedral of nature were the first conservation-converts, the reverence for the interconnected whole remains at the heart of modern environmentalism. The shift from egocentric to ecocentric philosophies was driven by spiritual experiences.

SOCIETY

Define or Be Defined: On Labelling Ourselves

Anna Katharina Schaffner

The titles we choose reflect our sense of identity, how we view ourselves, and how we want to be seen by the outside world. Mini-cultural barometers, they are also indicative of dominant social trends.

INSIGHTs

Expert analysis and commentary to help you to make sense of what’s emerging.

Christmas, Consumerism and Confusion

Jonathan Rowson

Christmas is the season of shallow critique. We lament the commercialisation around us as if it were a seasonal problem, but lurking inside the wrapped presents, juicy puddings and roasted birds there are deeper questions about ethical drift and the social logic of our entire economic model.

What if We are all We've Got?

Zhiwa Woodbury

We urgently need to move from a blame- and victimhood model towards one of shared responsibility for the climate catastrophe. What might happen if all of us became ‘climate influencers’ by acting every day as if our lives depended on minimizing our carbon footprints?

Mapping for Emergence

Theo Cox, Rufus Pollock and Anna Katharina Schaffner

Life Itself and Emerge will join forces to map the emergent metamodern ecosystem. But what is so great about social network mapping? Why does it matter, and how can it help?

Systemic wisdom for and beyond Systems Change

Louis Klein

A critical systems perspective allows for exploring the universality of indigenous wisdom traditions and their understanding of the interconnectedness and interdependence of the flow of the world.

Learning to Walk Together: Small Steps towards the We of Us

Joe Ross

What is the calling that pulled us from the sea? Whatever will become of you and me? And how to become WE?

The Beautiful, Hidden Harmony of Chaos

Kristina Dryza

‘Mama Ayahuasca told me to invest in crypto’

Jules Evans

The Art of Self-Improvement: Ten Timeless Truths

Anna Katharina Schaffner

On Weltschmerz and Weltanschauungen

Jonathan Rowson

Our challenge is to channel world pain into worldviews that clarify who we are, and how we should act, to inspire a shared sense of hope for the future.

RECLAIMING OUR INDIGENEITY: A Cure for Climate Trauma?

Zhiwa Woodbury

With only a limited window of time to bend the emissions curve, adapt to changing climate conditions, and halt the rapid decline in biodiversity, the values and wisdom of Indigenous Peoples can help us achieve this transformation.

"We need Inner Development Goals to reach the SDGs"

Jan Artem Henriksson

The Future of Philanthropy

Louis Klein

What kind of philanthropy does our world need right now? Why venture philanthropy doesn't work, and how community and social value philanthropy can contribute to a global civil society realising the love for humanity.

Deliberately Developmental Spaces: A Key to Addressing the MetaCrisis?

Theo Cox, Rufus Pollock and Anna Katharina Schaffner

The Impossible We?

Jonathan Rowson

"Practical Emergence" - Building a Bridge or Squaring the Circle?

Rike Pätzold

What may good leadership look like in times of great uncertainty, when planning and controlling have lost their effectiveness? How can we facilitate generative emergence in organisations?

Sacrificing the Gods

Elizabeth Debold

We urgently need new myths to ground us in this time between worlds and stories. What may take the place of our current myths - the myths of rationality and science, materialism, capitalism, meritocracy and democracy, justice and equality? May Eros hold the key to our future social imaginaries?

Sylvia Plath's Plight

Josie Glausiusz

The brilliant poet Sylvia Plath's battle against post-war sexism and her attempt to juggle writing and motherhood resonate uncannily with our own age of unresolved structural gender inequalities, brought into sharp relief by the COVID pandemic.

Obedience As Laughter: From the Great Dictator to the Great Spectator

Hanzi Freinacht

The next murderous regime will not be based on fear-mongering but on comedy. In the echoing laughter of the crowd we will find the next genocide. Un­wanted popul­a­tions violently exterminated, and the crowd laughing.

On Environmentalism and Spirituality

Jules Evans

While Romantic worshippers in the cathedral of nature were the first conservation-converts, the reverence for the interconnected whole remains at the heart of modern environmentalism. The shift from egocentric to ecocentric philosophies was driven by spiritual experiences.

Define or Be Defined: On Labelling Ourselves

Anna Katharina Schaffner

The titles we choose reflect our sense of identity, how we view ourselves, and how we want to be seen by the outside world. Mini-cultural barometers, they are also indicative of dominant social trends.

The next murderous regime will not be based on fear-mongering but on comedy. In the echoing laughter of the crowd we will find the next genocide. Unwanted populations violently exterminated, and the crowd laughing.