Alternative Editorial: Naming The Elephant
As we hurtle towards the end of the 2010s, many have been withdrawing into the most cosy place they can find, to take stock and feel safe. It’s been a tumultuous year at the end of a chaotic decade. From Extinction Rebellion to the UK General Election, from Greta and the School Strikes to the current images of Australia literally, tragically on fire.
In the midst of that, many people (not just in the UK but elsewhere) are celebrating a victory for the politics that cannot, and in some cases will not, do much about the danger we are all in.
In the face of that, A/UK held a small gathering in London, over December 18th-20th. Our intention, together with a collection of systems-oriented actors, was to see if we could name a new social-economic-political system (“a system that makes”, as Buckminster Fuller described, “the old one obsolete”).
A system that might be capable of finding integrations for the hundreds of thousands of solutions to the multiple crises that already exist—in ways that allow everyone to participate. And in the process, giving rise to a more evolved democracy.
Like the parable of the blind men and the elephant, we sensed that many of our participants had an idea of what that whole system might look like, at least from the perspective of their own work. But none of us could really see the whole thing sufficiently to operationalise it as a system.
Instead, we have many loosely connected projects and initiatives – even movements – working in siloes. They’re maybe like parts of a car, not yet assembled. Or like great session musicians in a potentially kick-ass jazz orchestra, whose performances don’t quite yet cohere. Or, more likely, something we had not yet imagined.
In socio-economic terms, the new system we were invoking would imply innovations of all kinds that are not yet able to challenge the dominant system: the one that is presiding over brutal inequalities while destroying the planet.
With a widely acknowledged and scientifically backed deadline of ten years to contain climate change, our gathering felt urgent. Yet we knew that the best that any small group pf people could do was recognise and name a fractal – a pattern of principles between actors that, repeated, gives rise to transformation across a much wider sphere.
A bit like the way that one uprising in Tahrir Square, early in the 2010s, inspired uprisings throughout the decade. Or like that group of independent citizens in Frome who took over the local council, giving rise to 21 councils doing the same a few years later.
For our emerging system to have as far reaching consequences as possible, we invited actors from what we call the three realms of I, We and World (human, social and global/planetary development). Plus tech futurists, new media designers, some artists, BAME and gender activists.
Of the 40 we invited (we’ll give no names at this early stage of the project), all wanted to join in – evidence of the growing demand to coalesce. Each made a short video in advance to share their perspective.
We placed an active metaphor at the heart of this process: Naming The Elephant In The Room. This is a powerful, ambiguous animal – and the naming takes two forms. The Elephant doesn’t just represent the incipient system we could all be part of – but also the things we couldn’t talk about; the obstacles to real cohesion that might pull groups like this apart.
To help us feel the contours of this creature, we invited facilitation that was disinterested, impartial, rigorous: focussed on capturing the greater collective potential for action and vision that often escapes gatherings like this.
To cut a long story short, these days were extraordinary, in a number of ways. It’s not because this was the first time that people like us had gathered, in order to find a better coherence. From within our own network of networks. the work of CtrlShift or Devon Convergence also aims to align elements and initiatives within a more sophisticated system.
Just one week before, we had taken part in an Italian gathering of ‘system actors’, who wanted to expand the role of the fourth sector in delivering on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). And even as we were meeting to find our Elephant, our friends at Art/Earth/Tech had just completed a retreat, also intending to give rise to a vision of a new system.
Yet we felt that our own gathering was unprecedented. We curated it in order to bring together disparate forces and approaches that, we believe, must start working with each other. Seasoned (and novice) practitioners and innovators in the fields of personal and social development sat with those active in local, municipal, global, bioregional, transnational, planetary development.
Advocates of radical tech innovation and “sustainable abundance” conversed with permaculturalists, environmental actors and play advocates. We also had a rich diversity of economic acting and thinking in the room, enabling much more to be regarded as “valuable” and a “resource”. Not a cluster of actors already aligned; not “the usual suspects” for any one of us.
What felt extraordinary, as a result, was the visceral nature of the experience. With almost everyone in the room being a leader of their own piece of the putative system, it could so easily have been a battle of ideas. Or maybe a simple putting together of pieces of a jigsaw puzzle – requiring patience, but doable.
For example, here is just one of the very short calls to action along the way:
Through neighbourhood forums, to town meetings, to city assemblies and networks of these at the national and global level, we are creating the architecture for governance. This allows everyone to participate in the shaping and making of an eco-system that allows people and planet to flourish.
Yet however idealistic, that wasn’t the whole thing we were trying to name. Beyond a good piece of architecture to support a more just socio-economic-political structure, we were looking for the system that made life worth living for everyone – especially, maybe, the people who were outside of the room. Partly expressed through this:
This will be an era in which every person will experience their own power, having impact on the multiple crises we face. By being together actively, we will find the belonging, meaning and purpose we are yearning for. We are passionate for.
In that pursuit, what couldn’t be ignored was that, during our plenaries, so much came up that could only be expressed through tears. It was as if we were constantly present to the trauma of the past. So much demand could be felt from the outside—get on with it!—that it seemed only to be expressible as disbelief, anger and frustration. How could we adequately capture the power of the people we knew had been, until now, enslaved and instrumentalised by industry and consumerism? The blockage here was tangible.
Yet no-one walked out. No matter how hard it became to stay in the process – at times excruciating – everyone hung on till the last minute. The willingness was there to try to land, or ground, the new system. Not just in a way that would make it adequate as a response to the crises arising from our failures until now. But also resting on a pattern of actual human relationships, arising from this meeting itself – what our facilitator called an “emotional field”.
What we learnt was that embedded in every group goal, is a set of relationships that determine how well the true intention of each member of that group can be achieved. When there is no relationship system to help each person’s dream, their emotional needs and capacities, become seen and served in the achievement of that goal, then the group will be continually self-sabotaged.
Appropriately enough, our last piece of process was a collective act of mutual acknowledgement and appreciation, feeling out that part of the Elephant which could be described as a set of “whole-system relationships”.
Whether we’ll achieve what we set out to achieve—which is to bring to light, to name and to activate the system that makes the old one obsolete—now depends upon how well we manage to stay ‘in relationship’. So that all of our actions, whether separately or in some collaborative projects, can hold some trace memory of each other’s actions.
We need enough connection to ensure that we are no longer working in siloes, but in awareness of each other. To that extent, the system we are building is more than regenerative as an outcome, it is relational as a method.
To make that more tangible, we will have to continue to deepen our understanding of how “being relational” transforms what are now disconnected, alienated parts of the system. How to bring every person in our community into relationship with what’s on offer as a whole. Hilary Cottam’s work on relational welfare is a great practical illustration of what “being relational” means. How could methods like this be applied to education, to health, to the economy? What is the tech that makes that possible?
However, we all have a great challenge here. In many ways, these relational methods are in their early stages – their most effective forms are yet to be discovered. We are also strung between old (perhaps perennial) relational structures, and the new ones that our demanding and turbulent century requires.
For example, while family and friend relationships do much to create the security and belonging for many, they are not enough to liberate people from the current system.
We need new relationship architectures that can cut across the disconnects that capitalism has engineered – particularly those that keep us addicted to consumerism, or that benefit (politically or economically) from polarising and dividing communities. We also need new bridges between our external and internal selves: to repair those disconnections can bring healing and new energy.
For that reason, the Elephant will continue as a discrete inquiry on its own terms, hosted by AUK as the system that gives rise to the new politics. Over the next few months we will share our first experiment - the actors, methods, video interviews and findings - and make it a broader public inquiry.
As we enter into the 2020s, what stands between the caterpillar and the butterfly… is the Elephant.