Thinking like Gaia is more than the sum of the cards, says planetary coach Tom Mansfield
Tom Mansfield
Very happy to run this piece from Tom Mansfield, who has designed a card deck called Cards for Life that playfully invites people to learn how do “living systems thinking”—crucial to make that shift if we want to act in a planet-friendly way.
Tom Mansfield: Why we need living systems thinking - we are nature
This living planet, Gaia, of which we are all dynamic parts, is a complex and interconnected system, a tapestry of relationships entangling self and world, human and nature.
In this intricate web of existence, traditional approaches of problem solving that tend to be mechanistic and linear often fall short of understanding the interconnected challenges we face.
To meet these challenges we need a perceptual shift to support a fundamental change in how we participate in the complexity of the world. This could lead us to relinquish a naive sense of control and adopt an empowered sense of how we participate in change, creating a new kind of path.
"Systems thinking is “contextual”, which is the opposite of analytical thinking. Analysis means taking something apart in order to understand it; systems thinking means putting it into the context of a larger whole.” — Fritjof Capra
‘Living systems thinking’ helps us perceive our interconnection, our inter-being with the world—a fact that a humbled modernity seems to be relearning.
The living systems approach is based on learning about complexity from biological systems. It helps us rediscover that ‘we are nature’, with our own innate understanding of complexity and that we are participating parts of the system rather than separate observers of it, putting us back into the whole of the world.
This view shows us that complex systems—whether economies or corals, forests or businesses, people or their gut bacteria—have some defining qualities. They can’t be controlled directly but can be influenced and guided; they are more than the sum of their parts; and they are dynamic, constantly changing through feedback with greater and lesser systems.
Systems can be guided not controlled
Relationships are more fundamental than parts
Objects are just snapshots of dynamic processes
Working in environmental consulting, exploring the complex challenges of greenhouse gas removal, made me feel that our language for thinking systemically could be more developed.
We are so often thinking and talking about the world as a machine made of parts that are either fixed or broken rather than considering its health as a living system. Instead of ‘fixing the climate’ we can shift to a more complex idea of ‘participating in planetary health’.
Health, a systemic concept, is a process of constant balancing as we all know from our personal lives, with many influences and inputs from friends to diet. I began wondering, how could I make an offering towards this conceptual shift?
I started to consider the vocabulary that helps us to discuss the complexity of living systems. One that could shift our focus from static objects to dynamic relationships - embracing a living systems approach to change at both the individual and the collective scale.
Aware of many brilliant frameworks, models and courses out there I wanted to create something a little less linear. Something easy to play with, combine and explore with a participatory and practice focused spirit.
“You cannot change how someone thinks, but you can give them a tool to use which will lead them to think differently.”- R. Buckminster Fuller
A tool for systems thinking, systems feeling and systems change
Cards for Life is a deck of 69 cards in three sets; Dynamics, Being and Doing to offer the dynamics of living systems, ways of being that can help us embrace complexity and inspirations for action that support planetary health.
It is for helping two forms of reconnection—inner & outer work, humanity & nature—through a series of four exercises that work for individuals and collectives.
Each card has an invitation to personal inquiry and practice on one side—the inner dimension. And a series of questions on the other side that invite application to teams, communities and larger systems—the outer dimension.
Each features an image of a living system as a metaphor or example of the concept. The cards are poetic and open to interpretation, allowing people the space to define what regeneration means for them in their specific situations.
This personal guidance system and collective sense-making tool has been adopted by coaches, consultants, designers, educators, facilitators and regenerators of all kinds in over 20 countries.
They’re produced using green energy, plant based inks, recycled and compostable materials with donations from sales to One Tree Planted as an expression of their values.
The vision is a post growth model where they can be produced regionally on demand in a regenerative way.
Thinking Like Gaia practitioner course: Applying living systems thinking
The six week journey guides individuals and teams through four exercises; Personal Inquiry, Seeing Systems, Being Circle and Regenerative Vision. It provides space to apply the cards in both personal and professional contexts through peer practice.
The title was inspired by asking the question ‘How would the planet do this?, ‘How would Gaia approach this situation?’.
One person applied the Impermanence card to a work situation where they had inherited outdated interview processes. They found that it deconflicted an otherwise adversarial situation by offering a reframe - every year the process could go through its own renewal where some elements would naturally fall away and make space for the new.
Another realised with the Spiral time card he was pushing his organisation in only a linear way, while that was needed he found he was missing many opportunities for cyclical improvement that could build year on year both at the personal and collective level.
One woman found that the Seasons & cycles card created the opportunity for a conversation about menstrual leave with the team. There are a growing number of examples about attuning our ways of working to the living world, integrating cycles of renewal to create a new form of balance.
Regenerative vision and essence
This exercise is for distilling the regenerative essence of a project. Whether it’s about for example empowerment, rewilding, healing or technology, the Doing cards are used to identify the desired areas of effect and impact, the vision.
It then adds in the dynamics that can support it to happen and the qualities of being for how it wants to feel. This helps people to reimagine the roles of their projects in a larger context and realise the potential of its gift in service to the life of the whole.
Creating combinations and feeling connected
There are 52,394 unique three card combinations so it's not about learning them all! It’s about weaving relationships, combining as a practice for working with complexity.
Sometimes people ask ‘why draw a random card?’, I say, ‘because picking something random always introduces new information’. If we only choose that which we’re drawn to we won’t integrate anything new.
More subtle is an experience of re-enchantment, when a card comes up that feels surprisingly just what you need, it brings a profound sense of being part of a greater system, a larger pattern of intelligence.
Not to be explained away, this feeling of connection to a greater whole is integral to serving living systems at all scales.
“If we want to go somewhere different we must go there differently” - Nora Bateson
An emergent path
In a world characterised by complexity and interdependence, systems literacy and the perceptual shift it enables is a pathway to transformative change and essential to a capacity for adaptation. Thinking like Gaia, with its regenerative vocabulary Cards for Life, offers a unique practice for understanding and navigating the dynamics of living systems.
It helps us to attune to the whole, to Gaia by remembering that we are complex systems too. As we continue to shuffle the cards of life, let's embrace the simplicity of practices that hold the potential for profound shifts in thinking, feeling, and acting so we can build a path, as we walk it, into a flourishing, regenerative future.
Tom Mansfield is founder of Pale Blue where he offers coaching and strategy for Planetary Health. Cards for Life has spread to over 20 countries and continues to evolve in a burgeoning global community of practitioners.