Can you remember yourself as a child? How would you characterise the developments that have taken place within yourself since then? While most of us would still recognise our 'inner child' operating within this adult - the frustrations, the desires - we would also acknowledge change. Physically older, more experienced, hopefully wiser (or at least more opinionated).

But what about the formation of one's character - the thing that makes you you, today? It can be baffling to watch videos or films of one's childhood - before we became responsible - and compare them to the fully responsible adult. We try to figure out why our siblings turned out so differently from us, or our classmates chose such entirely different paths in life.

Could we easily describe how this change has come about, apart from the passage of time? No doubt we could attribute elements to our education system, the circumstances of our families, life events that changed us forever. But to what extent can we point at our self-crafting of our own personality - as if we set out to become someone? The person we now are?

Was there anything we could have done, proactively, to become someone else? Or, looking back at the child, were we always destined to turn out this way?

Let’s extend that inquiry into asking how we became this society. Of course, sociology can offer many theories or explanations, but would they explain our own experience of what it means to be alive today? How it feels to be creatures of modernity – rational, organised, bureaucratised, individual - able to make decisions about life. Yet at the same time, completely trapped in this polycrisis with so few tools to save ourselves?

How did we become slavish workers, avid consumers, subject to political representation which restricts us to voting between binary opposites, once every five years? How has our attention become trapped in debates that have no consequence, in entertainment that only passes time, with food that momentarily pleases - often at a huge cost to the lives of others? Why do we not have effective agency? Worse, why do we rarely question the lack of it?

And how, given the polycrisis - of the environment, poverty, suffering at the hands of violence, loss of wellbeing globally, and so many other factors - could we do anything to improve the situation? Are we doomed to remain so baffled about why we have become such a society that the agency for change will forever remain with those with accumulations of capital (whether cultural, financial or both) - who have the chutzpah and resources to seize the reins?

Material resources are not enough

The internet is suffused with offerings to help us become more effective on our own behalf – through self-development, coaching, beautifying, earning more, finding a partner. But there is still little that might help us become collectively more effective outside of the current system of power. Given that the current system - a very limited democracy within a slow-moving global culture - is failing us, does that leave us without options?

Some would say not: they can imagine a world in which our problems have been solved in some way. Climate, hunger, war, mental illness - all our solvable with enough resources. And they might rightly say that history will prove that progress is not only achievable but constantly improving its rate.

Stephen Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature demonstrates a faith in humanity that it is always pulling in the right direction, away from mass violence and towards flourishing. Hindsight might well be the best tool for positive storytelling as it hides the external costs of measurable gains. Our economies may be growing, but they overstep planetary boundaries. Our states may assert a monopoly of violence, thereby establishing social order—but this also contributes to our dependency on the military-industrial complex.

Looking back, Pinker does not consider the very heightened possibility that human ingenuity is out of control. We have an internet that gives disproportionate power to non-state actors intent on emotional manipulation. Artificial intelligence can replace human intuition and reflection with survival logic. Not forgetting the impact that fear of such possibilities has on the confidence of humans acting at scale.

It may be true that we 'could' solve our material problems if those with most power simply cared for those with the least. But our freedom to act is severely restricted by our inability to build relationship and trust between the major actors.

How many of us recognise this bind from our school days? That feeling that nothing can help us overcome what's lacking in our lives - we'll never be more clever, popular, funnier? And yet, later in life, we can get that in perspective. Not by fixing the problem: we can't all be the outstanding at the same time. What happens is more like maturing. It’s understanding more about what others feel and experience - and why - that shifts the balance of power between you and your classmates.

You care less about survival in a sea of sharks and more about achievement as a challenge to the self (see this week’s blog on the power of shifting deep metaphors about what “argument” means). If you're lucky, you begin to see those around you as comrades engaged in the same task. You share knowledge about the challenge and support each other on the journey. Luckier still if you begin to enjoy individuation - becoming recognisably yourself in a sea of others doing the same.

Of course many reading won't have had this early experience at all: classes may have been too large, teachers underpaid and over stressed with their workload. Life at home might have been lacking care and attention, with parents and guardians barely present due to demanding jobs, and overcrowded spaces leading to loss of concentration. All these factors and more can stop what we might describe as the potential development of a child, becoming healthily socialised and capable of developing agency for their own lives.

Without this development curve, it's more difficult to negotiate the wider society we enter into after formal education. The opportunities to work in close community with others are replaced by strict hierarches of authority, pay bands and performance reviews. We lack time and space to air our views and begin to take on received judgements of 'others' via news and social media - rarely understanding that it's in the interests of business to trigger and divide us.

The point of gathering

So when community agency networkers create spaces specifically for the coming together of people to listen to each other and share views, it's not in order to fix a problem or settle an argument. The problems arising from this dysfunctional system are already too difficult to solve by us who are deeply entangled in their constant re-creation (see Anthea Lawson's Entangled Activist). To rail at the outcomes is to rail at the self: we are, ourselves, actively activating and perpetuating the causes.

Instead, the goal of bringing people into a space of reflection and consideration is to cause a hiatus - a stop. A moment of getting off the hamster wheel to question who are we, what are we doing and how are we being together in this moment? The invitation is to 'wake up' to our entanglement and take a pause for thought.

There are many variations on this theme across a wide landscape of community gatherings: the U-Lab Process, World Cafe, Peoples Assemblies and more. In CAN prototyping, originally described as Collaboratories there are three distinct phases, all of which take place in an identifiable community (town, village, settlement etc):

1. Deep hanging out: spending time on the territory to understand three loosely defined groups. First, the people who are already actively attempting to 'make change happen' here (generally us, the 'usual suspects'). Second, those who could and would take part in community development but are routinely excluded for time, money or cultural reasons. Three, those who are unlikely to participate, either for practical reasons or because actively opposed. Groups one and two are the target participants for the events to come, group three is the space of possibility. Not only do we keep them in mind as the potential audience/recipients of the benefits of our activity, but we constantly seek 'intelligence' from that unknown group to change our perspectives. Being open to their insights is what keeps those gathering in a stretch to be more.

2. Friendly: We need convivial gatherings of people from the community (as much arts-led as talk-driven), bringing them back into relationship with each other as individuals who each have their own perspective - yet are keen to meet and consider what they can do together. A great example would be Perspectiva's Antidebate. Here the object is not to agree who is right and who wrong on a given topic, nor who wins or loses. Instead, it is to discover who is there, how rich and complex is the tapestry of histories and dreams present in the room. How does each participant feel when coming into contact with this gathering?

3. Futuring: Staying with the same group, the participants reconvene to reimagine the future of the place they live. There are four aspects to this, reflected in four incubator practices launched in 2023 - education, social enterprise, media and governance. While people’s dreams are encouraged, they are also invited to give them form by placing them on a map of the place they live. In so doing, they begin to see the future in terms of the networks need building and resources need finding.

Some might say that such a proposal would only further frustrate communities. How will they be able to find the resources to initiate the projects they imagine, need and want? In our experience, deploying an intended balance of 'usual suspects' and others, finding resources are a creative challenge more than a brick wall. In our practice, we've seen the emergence of new currencies, 4th sector platforms and microsolidarity mutual support economies. Avoiding the temptation to turn to the local council - already on its knees, due to long-term underfunding from central government - these collaboratory visions for the future are owned by the group, giving them a future to live into irrespective of the mainstream narrative.

I-We-World

Meantime, the new pattern of relationships arising connects previously disconnected communities to others on the same path. Check this conference in Plymouth connecting the CAN work globally to municipalities, theatre networks, FabLabs and more. That's cosmolocalism in action (and again, see this week’s blog on Plymouthian inventive vitality).

While CANs prototypes are still in the early days of development, their goal is clear: to provide a space that anyone can walk into, carrying the question 'how can I respond effectively to the world today'? By walking in they should be able to find a community of people on the same quest. These people will share a praxis that connects their collective inquiry to others on the same path, locally and globally. That group of groups, those networks of networks, are developing systemic solutions to the polycrisis as we speak (finally, and again, see this week’s blog on Jose Ramos’ solutions here).

Alternative Editorial: A Socio-Politics For Our Times