Emergence, Integrity, and Improvisation

It's only the 16th day of January and it's unbelievable what's happened already. The title of this post is emergence, integrity, and improvisation. Specifically how I have come to see them already this year, and why I see them as some of the great patterns coming forth locally and globally in 2012.

Emergence

Not only is emergence one of those words that shows up just about in every place where there's edgy thinking going on, but edgy thinking seems to be emerging in full force this year. Those who have been hiding away, slaving over a workable human future, are either feeling comfortable, or willing to take the 'risk' of coming out into the open with their work. We are seeing new levels of revealing and leadership, balanced with exponential appetites growing for real solutions, not band-aid ones, to tackle our complex challenges. Tom Atlee, a leading thinker on co-intelligence, is blogging like crazy and has made available the first chapters of his upcoming book Empowering Public Wisdom. 

That's one quick example of someone who seems to be putting themselves entirely out there, with the sense that by doing so, the right people will catch word, and he'll connect to those people and they can start to make things happen. I'm noting emergence as a particularly positive force in 2012 because it seems like this is happening all over, if you're tuned into the right sources. The semi-underground global community of culture-builders that I witnessed from the sidelines in 2011 (see my links & resources list) is seizing 2012 as the opportunity to unleash their positive forces on the world. I know that for me, I get the sense that this is urgent. We need widespread cultural change and we need it now. So if you have something to offer, now's not the time to be shy! 

This holds true for me too. I'm taking into consideration how I can best offer who I am to the world, to create the change that we need. I'm finding it helpful to keep considering this question => 'What if everything I did, the world needed me to do?' It's important to note that this also includes self-care, which you would think would be self-evident, but burnout is a common finding among culture-builders!

Update: Last night around the same time as I posted it, I caught word of Venessa Miemis' latest blog post too, which is the largest call to action on shared intent that I've seen yet this year. She calls it intentcasting, I think this is going to be a big thing in 2012. A way for people with shared visions to connect. Someone's got to intentcast. I see Venessa as one of the leading thinkers/actors in the world  on building our thrivable future.
http://emergentbydesign.com/2012/01/16/intentcasting-an-epic-vision-how-to-bootstrap-creative-economy-3-0/

Integrity

One thing that integrity means to me is that my values inform my actions. The trick has always been, why the heck are my values so different than everybody else's around here!? The challenge that it poses is that growing up and ongoing, I often felt that my actions couldn't reflect my values because I would stand out in my school, in a crowd, in this culture! 

Sidenote: When I say 'this culture' I am referring to a culture which I have largely come to understand as a 'coercive culture' and so I'll call it this from now on in my blogging. I predict that you are all too familiar with the coercive culture and grasp what I am meaning intuitively, and not nearly as familiar as you would like to be with the emerging collaborative/generative culture. 

How is this for irony? The coercive culture would tell you that it values integrity, but its actions wouldn't reveal that at all! In 2012, I am trying on integrity. And it requires a new level of discipline than even I am used to, because with integrity, every little thing counts. I can't remember who said this, but I learned that
a good way to gauge how a person will make big decisions in their life, is by noticing how they make the little decisions. Small is big. It's important to practice integrity on the small level because it helps build it right into our thinking so that one day, we won't even have to think about it. Our lives will be exploding with integrity!

In late 2011, I followed the Occupy movement really closely. Participating only in small ways, but feeling immensely inspired by the infinite acts of integrity, I also bore witness to the widespread misunderstanding of Occupy. And by associating myself with it as I did sometimes, I opened myself up to that misinterpretation. Looking back, and thinking about integrity this year, I realize that it doesn't make sense to care. With integrity, you have to be open to misinterpretation! The thing about integrity is that it's viral. Occupy only opened up the flood gates in 2011 so that in 2012, people can stand up with integrity, and others will stand up with them on unprecedented scales. Because the world is ready for integrity. 

Improvisation

I barely have to write this section because Michelle Holliday recently did it for me. I quote:

"the overarching problems humanity faces are so complex and require such a high degree of creativity, collaboration and inspiration that improv may be the only effective means of solving them. Rational, linear, individually-generated solutions are simply not up to the task. The challenge will be to find ways to play together even in the face of unthinkable disaster."

We are going to have to improvise the smallest, and the biggest things. We are going to have to improvise who does the dishes, and we are going to have to improvise with climate change. The old principles of top-down control are quickly falling by the way-side and improvised follow-through of intent is quickly rushing in to fill its place. Because the world moves too quickly for your start-to-finish, 'all bases covered', fail-safe plan to work out! We've got to restore our creativity and thankfully, it's happening! The fact that I'm in a University program called Knowledge Integration, studying systems, design, critical & creative thinking, and watching it gain recognition demonstrates the cultural shift towards new values. On a side note, I wish that they would bring improvisation in its theatre form as an explicit aspect of it, so that people can nurture embodying the theoretical improvisation that we implicitly study. (I intend to implement a group shortly to do so, with a focus on cultural shift!)

One thing about this year already is that I don't even have a clue what's going to happen tomorrow let alone trying to plan months in advance. Having recently had a fair bit of insight into the tech industry and business in general, it's clear that business feels the same way. Business decisions and predictions are as hard to make as personal ones. It's time for not only the improvisational individual, but the improvisational organization to thrive.

It feels like an appropriate time to properly introduce my recently revised blog title: Improv.Ed

We need to educate ourselves to improvise.

We can improve ourselves through improvisation.

We can improvise our own education. 

We can improve our own improvisation. 

We can devise an improved education. 

Improv.Ed

 Welcome to 2012.