How do we deliberately scale transformative change in a world that feels increasingly polarized and fragmented? Let's explore fractal approaches to scaling transformations.
Sobering but I agree the using the metaphor and reality of fractals is useful… but have you read or listened to Adelle marre brown… and emergent strategy. It goes way beyond what you have expressed!
Thank you for the link. I think what I was seeking to express when I mentioned her , is that in emergent strategy she uses fractals and other nature inspired metaphors as a wider package of elements that I have found to be highly useful… best Mike
Do you have exemples of fractal change implemented ? I find the idea deeply appealing, yet at the same time struggle with making it real and, as you said, practical
Thanks Claude! There are many examples of individuals, groups, and organizations who are generating patterns within their own contexts based on values that resonate across scales. We tend to view these as "small scale" rather than as coherent patterns - and the patterns get interrupted when power, politics, and interests fragment the initiatives or curtail the replication. I've been working with the "Three Spheres of Transformation" as a fractal approach based on values that apply to all - I'm still writing up the cases. In the meantime, Indra Adnan's book "The Politics of Waking Up: Power and possibility in the fractal age" provides some nice examples!
Loved to read about your work on fractals. It left me wondering about the relationship between fractals and consciousness. How do fractals occur in the architecture of our personal and collective psyche? Maybe at larger scales of consciousness, too, if we live in a conscious universe, as some suggest?
That is a great question! To answer it, we may have to look more closely at how and why we fall into fragmented and fractured views and actions in the first place. The work you are doing with Resonant World and healing collective trauma has a lot to contribute here. It's exciting that so many now recognize that consciousness matters -- I would love to hear your thoughts.
My hunch is that each time we successfully integrate an aspect of the trauma that appears to live in us at the individual, we exerts a fractal effect that also integrates an aspect of the collective trauma we all share. Put another way, perhaps trauma functions like a hologramme -- we can find the whole contained within each seemingly separate expression, and vice-versa. In this sense, individual trauma healing is a form of fractal agency that contributes to the healing of the whole. (How the metaphysics of this work, exactly, remains a "walking question", to use a Thomas Hubl phrase).
Sobering but I agree the using the metaphor and reality of fractals is useful… but have you read or listened to Adelle marre brown… and emergent strategy. It goes way beyond what you have expressed!
Thanks for your comment! I think adrienne maree brown is a wonderful writer -- I have not yet read "Emergent Strategy" but it is on my list. I found this excerpt, which nicely articulates the relationships between individual and collective change: https://earthlingopinion.wordpress.com/2019/03/01/fractals-the-relationship-between-small-and-large/
Thank you for the link. I think what I was seeking to express when I mentioned her , is that in emergent strategy she uses fractals and other nature inspired metaphors as a wider package of elements that I have found to be highly useful… best Mike
Do you have exemples of fractal change implemented ? I find the idea deeply appealing, yet at the same time struggle with making it real and, as you said, practical
Thanks Claude! There are many examples of individuals, groups, and organizations who are generating patterns within their own contexts based on values that resonate across scales. We tend to view these as "small scale" rather than as coherent patterns - and the patterns get interrupted when power, politics, and interests fragment the initiatives or curtail the replication. I've been working with the "Three Spheres of Transformation" as a fractal approach based on values that apply to all - I'm still writing up the cases. In the meantime, Indra Adnan's book "The Politics of Waking Up: Power and possibility in the fractal age" provides some nice examples!
Loved to read about your work on fractals. It left me wondering about the relationship between fractals and consciousness. How do fractals occur in the architecture of our personal and collective psyche? Maybe at larger scales of consciousness, too, if we live in a conscious universe, as some suggest?
That is a great question! To answer it, we may have to look more closely at how and why we fall into fragmented and fractured views and actions in the first place. The work you are doing with Resonant World and healing collective trauma has a lot to contribute here. It's exciting that so many now recognize that consciousness matters -- I would love to hear your thoughts.
My hunch is that each time we successfully integrate an aspect of the trauma that appears to live in us at the individual, we exerts a fractal effect that also integrates an aspect of the collective trauma we all share. Put another way, perhaps trauma functions like a hologramme -- we can find the whole contained within each seemingly separate expression, and vice-versa. In this sense, individual trauma healing is a form of fractal agency that contributes to the healing of the whole. (How the metaphysics of this work, exactly, remains a "walking question", to use a Thomas Hubl phrase).
That sounds like a great way to describe quantum social change!
I was just musing on the impossibility of being able to scale up within the capitalist models. Fractal scaling. Of course.