In times of turmoil, "imaginal cells" can be activated to co-create positive alternatives. If now is the time for transformation, can we imagine and create a quantum society? I'm willing to bet on it!
"The attitudes that we adopt in any situation partially determine how that situation will unfold" -- this echoes one of my key takeaways from your book: that our very conception of social change shapes what we believe is possible, and therefore what we’re able to bring about. There’s something quietly radical about this, a renewed sense of agency even in the face of overwhelming crisis!
Love this—especially with attitude playing a role like measurement! Although the reactionary forces in the US have been trying to drag us back into the past for a while, I feel like today there is a groundswell of people talking about new ways to move forward, even as we struggle to stay grounded individually. The mass demonstrations feel catalytic—so much energy! They give our fire souls a chance to set the rest of us alight.
I wish we had a chrysalis to nurture the early stages of our evolution and protect our imaginal cells. For now, both gathering in person with fellow travelers and communing in virtual spaces like this one seem to be helping create a sense of shared purpose and interconnection. I hope we are setting the stage to incubate the critical new structures and attitudes we’ll need to support our re-formation and our eventual re-emergence from this chaos.
Absolutely love this post- feel like its dripping in gold with all of the possibilities and orientation of attitude it evokes in me. I want to add that i've been deep diving into my roots, my culture-hinduism- for the last year or so, and detachment is the central teaching of Bhagvat Gita. Continuing to align to our dharma (duty), continuing to carry out our karma (action) without worrying about the fruits( detachment) will lead us to moksha (liberation). A lot of what you mention in this post also points to the same wisdom.
Thank you for this post, which echoes similar gut feelings and hunches of mine – messages I'm picking up from imaginal cells? – which surface every time I hear of new actions of the current U.S. administration. These actions, put into a wider context, remind me very much of what Johann Wolfgang von Goethe lets his variant of the devil, Mephistopheles, say at the beginning of his magnum theatre opus "Faust": "I am part of that power which constantly wills evil and constantly achieves good." Not in the short-term, for sure!, and not in a straightforward way, but within a deep irony: the administration is tearing down so much scaffolding of our (by now rather petrified and really sclerotic) globalised society that this might be really helpful for effecting the huge changes desperately needed for getting our act together as humanity and change our current trajectory headed for catastrophe for both ourselves and the planet.
I totally agree with the magnitude of effect quantum social science attributes to attitude in everything we do, as individuals and as a society: it can be an absolute game changer driving transformation. I also absolutely agree as regards attitudes' roots in beliefs. In a society run up to now on bedrock certainties of largely unquestioned beliefs, of outlooks and outcomes and an overarching results orientation (one could even speak of a "results culture") in everything we do (we want to get from A to B, so we begin by plotting the whole way, without ever taking a single step before we have finishing plotting, staying stuck at A), the openendedness stemming from relying on attitude instead of on results can be scary to unthinkable and impossible to introduce into discussions and political processes. But in a situation like now, when certainties are melting down and dissolving and brushed brusquely and painfully aside, what will help us get out of all this mess and chaos might very likely be something we do not even fully know as yet what it will be. We will have to take steps from A – crumbling, dissolving, being-destroyed A – before knowing (probably r e a l l y long before knowing) where exactly B will be and what it will even look like. We will have to set out into the unknown.
Attitude seems to me a brilliant compass for doing that. It does not need any past certainties, it does not need any large data sets (like AI, which can only ever extrapolate from the past and its congealed data, never including the emergent present, tip and cusp of the moment in which something qualitatively new and decisive might happen), it does not need anything except a feeling human heart and mind and soul, something we all have (if sometimes buried beneath pain and hurts and trauma). In this quantum world we live in, it will get us anywhere.
Tusen tack. I have been trying to think through this very opportunity to create a new shared path forward out of this bewildering chaos. I think it is so very vital to do so and not just work towards regaining what has been lost…we cannot rebuild a home in a flood or fire zone.
Karen, this metamorphosis you describe is a metaphor (or not!) for the transition I have been going through for the last couple of years. I'm an "amorphous mess." And it's okay because I am becoming a butterfly. I like to think yes, we are living in this mess, and I remain hopeful that we will emerge a new species... full of love and no longer killing our own and our planet.
"The attitudes that we adopt in any situation partially determine how that situation will unfold" -- this echoes one of my key takeaways from your book: that our very conception of social change shapes what we believe is possible, and therefore what we’re able to bring about. There’s something quietly radical about this, a renewed sense of agency even in the face of overwhelming crisis!
Love this—especially with attitude playing a role like measurement! Although the reactionary forces in the US have been trying to drag us back into the past for a while, I feel like today there is a groundswell of people talking about new ways to move forward, even as we struggle to stay grounded individually. The mass demonstrations feel catalytic—so much energy! They give our fire souls a chance to set the rest of us alight.
I wish we had a chrysalis to nurture the early stages of our evolution and protect our imaginal cells. For now, both gathering in person with fellow travelers and communing in virtual spaces like this one seem to be helping create a sense of shared purpose and interconnection. I hope we are setting the stage to incubate the critical new structures and attitudes we’ll need to support our re-formation and our eventual re-emergence from this chaos.
Absolutely love this post- feel like its dripping in gold with all of the possibilities and orientation of attitude it evokes in me. I want to add that i've been deep diving into my roots, my culture-hinduism- for the last year or so, and detachment is the central teaching of Bhagvat Gita. Continuing to align to our dharma (duty), continuing to carry out our karma (action) without worrying about the fruits( detachment) will lead us to moksha (liberation). A lot of what you mention in this post also points to the same wisdom.
Thank you for this post, which echoes similar gut feelings and hunches of mine – messages I'm picking up from imaginal cells? – which surface every time I hear of new actions of the current U.S. administration. These actions, put into a wider context, remind me very much of what Johann Wolfgang von Goethe lets his variant of the devil, Mephistopheles, say at the beginning of his magnum theatre opus "Faust": "I am part of that power which constantly wills evil and constantly achieves good." Not in the short-term, for sure!, and not in a straightforward way, but within a deep irony: the administration is tearing down so much scaffolding of our (by now rather petrified and really sclerotic) globalised society that this might be really helpful for effecting the huge changes desperately needed for getting our act together as humanity and change our current trajectory headed for catastrophe for both ourselves and the planet.
I totally agree with the magnitude of effect quantum social science attributes to attitude in everything we do, as individuals and as a society: it can be an absolute game changer driving transformation. I also absolutely agree as regards attitudes' roots in beliefs. In a society run up to now on bedrock certainties of largely unquestioned beliefs, of outlooks and outcomes and an overarching results orientation (one could even speak of a "results culture") in everything we do (we want to get from A to B, so we begin by plotting the whole way, without ever taking a single step before we have finishing plotting, staying stuck at A), the openendedness stemming from relying on attitude instead of on results can be scary to unthinkable and impossible to introduce into discussions and political processes. But in a situation like now, when certainties are melting down and dissolving and brushed brusquely and painfully aside, what will help us get out of all this mess and chaos might very likely be something we do not even fully know as yet what it will be. We will have to take steps from A – crumbling, dissolving, being-destroyed A – before knowing (probably r e a l l y long before knowing) where exactly B will be and what it will even look like. We will have to set out into the unknown.
Attitude seems to me a brilliant compass for doing that. It does not need any past certainties, it does not need any large data sets (like AI, which can only ever extrapolate from the past and its congealed data, never including the emergent present, tip and cusp of the moment in which something qualitatively new and decisive might happen), it does not need anything except a feeling human heart and mind and soul, something we all have (if sometimes buried beneath pain and hurts and trauma). In this quantum world we live in, it will get us anywhere.
Tusen tack. I have been trying to think through this very opportunity to create a new shared path forward out of this bewildering chaos. I think it is so very vital to do so and not just work towards regaining what has been lost…we cannot rebuild a home in a flood or fire zone.
Karen, this metamorphosis you describe is a metaphor (or not!) for the transition I have been going through for the last couple of years. I'm an "amorphous mess." And it's okay because I am becoming a butterfly. I like to think yes, we are living in this mess, and I remain hopeful that we will emerge a new species... full of love and no longer killing our own and our planet.