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Introduction and Context: The State of the World Read chapter Read first chapter

2019 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

5. The Patterns of Aliveness Theory

Author : Petra Kuenkel

Published in: Stewarding Sustainability Transformations

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This chapter argues that approaches to navigating complex world making and transformative change for sustainability are more effective when they are anchored in a profound understanding of life processes. The chapter takes the concept of systems aliveness as a quality element of a pattern approach one step further. It advances 13 propositions regarding essential features of life enhancement in systems that can also inform a better understanding of enlivening human co-creation. The propositions lay the basis for the Patterns of Aliveness Theory, which shows how six essential organizing principles allow life to emerge, thrive, and re-create itself in natural as well as social systems. The chapter suggests that these principles must be taken into account in the practice of leading collectively and shows how they become the foundation of a conceptual architecture for stewarding sustainability transformations.

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previous chapter A Living Systems Perspective for Stewarding Sustainability Transformations
next chapter Stewarding Sustainability Transformations in Multi-stakeholder Collaboration
Footnotes
2
It is interesting to observe that most populist movements work with a mixture of fear and defense of a certain identity. They spur people’s inherent urge to maintain their aliveness, albeit utilizing this urge to suggest a win-lose arrangement that depends on the exclusion or destruction of other people.
 
3
Rusty Schweickart mentioned in Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline. Rusty Schweickart was one of the astronauts who went to the moon in 1969. According to Peter Senge (Senge, 1990, p. 368) he could not express the depth of his experience for a long time, until he finally decided to simply describe what happened: “Up there you go around every hour and a half, time after time…And just the way the racks of your orbit go, you wake up over the Mid-east, over North Africa. As you eat breakfast you look out the windows as you’re going past and here’s the Mediterranean area, and Greece, and Rome, and North Africa, and the Sinai…And you realize in one glance that what you are seeing is what was the whole history of man for years ….And you think of all the history you can imagine looking at that scene. And you go around down across North Africa and out over the Indian Ocean, and look at that great subcontinent of India pointed down as you go past it. …And you finally come up across the coast of California and look for those friendly things: Los Angeles, Phoenix….and there’s Houston, There’s home…..And you identify with that, you know, it’s attachment. ….And then you identify with Los Angeles and Phoenix and New Orleans. And the next thing you recognize in yourself, is you’re identifying with North Africa. You look forward to that, you anticipate it. The whole process begins to shift what it is you identify with. When you go around in an hour and a half you begin to recognize that your identity is with the whole thing. And that makes a change……You look down there and you cannot imagine how many borders and boundaries you crossed again and again and again. And you don’t see them. At that wake up scene – the Mid-east – you know there are hundreds of people killing each other over some imaginary lines you can’t see. From where you see it, the thing is whole, and it’s so beautiful. And you wish you could take one from each side in hand and say “Look at it from this perspective, look at that. What is important?”…And you realize that that perspective…that you have changed, that there is something new here.” (Rusty Schweickart, quote taken from Senge, 1990, p. 369–270).
 
4
An African proverb says: “It takes three generations to overcome a war.”
 
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Metadata
Title
The Patterns of Aliveness Theory
Author
Petra Kuenkel
Copyright Year
2019
Book
Stewarding Sustainability Transformations

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-03690-4

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-03691-1

Copyright Year: 2019

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03691-1_5