Permaculture principle #11: Use edges and value the marginal
Edges are the richest, most productive spaces in the natural world
In Nature, edges tend to be places of trade, where elements of both ecosystems exchange their goods and create new, unprecedented wealth.
The edge of a forest is a place where light is more accessible, thus enabling species that could not otherwise develop to capture the sun’s energy whilst still relying on the mycelium from the forest ecosystem to regulate their nutrients and water intake.
The estuary of a river combines fresh and saline water environments, and benefits from the back and forth of the tide and of the river flowing downstream to mix elements that would not otherwise do so. In that way, it creates conditions for many algae, plants, fish, insects, birds and other animals to meet and eat each other, thus growing the diversity, productivity, and resilience of the overall ecosystem.
In many ways, topsoil is an edge, perhaps the most valuable of all. It enables plants to bring into it energy from the sun (converted into carbohydrate through photosynthesis) and gases from the air (nitrogen), to trade with bacteria and small insects in exchange for minerals that they’ve broken down from the rocks further below. The result can be as spectacular as the Amazon forest …
But there’s no need to go that far to see the wonders of edges: our microbiome, i.e. the billions of bacteria that have colonised the lining of our gut, spend their lives breaking down the food we eat so that the nutrients can move across the gut’s lining, into our bloodstream – leaving out viruses, harmful bacteria and other toxins. Who would have thought that our lives could depend on such tiny, marginal beings? Yet without them, no food could reach our cells.
As hinted in Principle #10, edges are rich because they are diverse – or diverse because they are rich. Or actually, diverse and rich just go hand in hand!
How permaculture designers use edges and value the marginal
Compost bins are great for composting your garden plants and kitchen waste. We usually place them on a spot where we’ve decided we wouldn’t plant anything, and so they go about their composting quietly, building dark, rich compost over time. But with the rain, some of the rich nutrients they produce leak away into the surrounding areas.
So what permaculture designers might do is plant comfrey all around the compost, so that it can draw all those nutrients into its leaves. The idea is then to cut it back every so often, and to use those leaves as mulch on your vegetable beds.
Or, another design option: place your compost right in the middle of an area used for growing, so that the ‘leaking’ is directly taken up by the plants around.
Hedges are another great way of building on the power of edges, by creating a mini-zone 5 and bringing wildlife (and all its benefits) directly to zone 2 or 3. You can do that on a big scale, through agroforestry, i.e. planting rows of trees in between you fields: the trees will stabilise the soil, regulate the water cycle with their roots, grow mycelium that will connect across the rows, and therefore travel through the fields and bring it fertility; hosts animals, birds and insects that will gradually fertilise the whole ecosystem, etc. – plus they can also be a food crop of some kind (apples, walnuts, etc.) that increases the overall profitability of your system. Or you can plant hedges on a small scale, with rosemary, or even thyme, planted between vegetable beds, stabilising the soil and keeping moisture, whilst sheltering lizards, slowworms or even hedgehogs if you’re lucky – your natural slug-killers. Working on design forms – eg. moving from rectangle beds to curved ones is one way to actually increase the edge effect and maximising its potential, including harnessing light or/and creating shade.
Permaculture designers also tend to create wet-zones, typically with a pond, and leverage on the edge between the pond and the rest of the garden, in order to attract all the biodiversity that thrives best there, but contributes to the fertility of both (frogs, ducks, dragonflies, reeds, etc.).
In all these examples, designers see the edges, the margins as opportunities, and the marginal – that which lives at the margins, and, by extent, that which we tend to lose sight of – as a crucial, untapped leverage for system growth and fertility.
So, how might we use edges and value the marginal in our organisations?
For a long time, the boundary between customers and product designers had always been considered as sacrosanct; only sales functions might have access to customers, and vice versa. Recently, new approaches have pushed forward the idea of customer-designed products, i.e. involving the customer from the very beginning in creating the products they want to buy. Lego has developed a platform where people can custom-design their own Lego products – which then become available for sale to mainstream customers. Favi, a gear-box manufacturer, has redesigned its organisational model into mini-factories (see Principle #8), so that the workers who build the gearboxes are also the ones who interact with the customer to understand their needs from the start.
Another classic example is how some of the most creative conversations happen in informal settings rather than in formal meetings: in the corridors, around the coffee machine, etc. We’re less guarded, more relax, more direct. That’s how the “World Café” methodology was created, to reproduce those “conversations at the edges”, and harness, and even generate, collective intelligence that would otherwise not have been tapped into.
“Edge thinking” can help organisations challenge their own mental models and escape “silo mentalities”. In the French company Decathlon, for example, there is no longer an R&D department; rather, R&D and innovation more generally permeates most business units: by placing R&D, product designers, marketing people in the same team, and linking them with production factories, Decathlon provides the conditions for “multiple edges”, and is able to respond very innovatively to key issues in their business.
In health, education, and social care, this is highly necessary. For example, an interesting innovation was launched in Geneva to transform their current Child and Adolescent psychiatric services into a “House for Children and Adolescents”, and to locate it in the heart of the city, blended with an art and cultural centre. The “house” hosts a wide-range of multi-disciplinary teams, accessible to children and families according to needs. By locating it in the city-centre, and blending it with a cultural centre, it enables families to access help that they would otherwise not feel they could access; and makes “returning to normal life” a much easier process, because the “house” already feels “normal”.
Finally, in another context altogether, the synodal process launched by Pope Francis can also be seen as creating generative edges between the clergy and the rest of the faithful, to help imagine new ways of “being Church” that has the potential to truly regenerate this very old institution.
Permaculture Principle #10: Use and Value Diversity
Nature is diverse by nature
Imagine a non-diverse natural ecosystem: you can’t? Well, precisely. Or if you can, it probably conjures up images of death, of desolation – the opposite of a typically thriving ecosystem, full of vitality.
The natural world is, by essence, diverse; it is made up of lots of different elements having lots of diverse relationships with one another, some of which are symbiotic (they help each other, collaborate for the benefit of both), some of which may be predatory – though predation is a natural function of healthy ecosystem, it is a negative feedback loop (see Principle #4).
In the systemic paradigm underpinning our understanding of natural ecosystems, any element needs diverse elements to thrive – they can’t thrive if they relate only to themselves, or to sameness. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his book “The Dignity of Difference”, even argues that God created us incomplete, so that what we cannot do by ourselves we will need to rely on others to help us do it.
Regardless of whether we subscribe to his spiritual explanation or not, we cannot but witness that in the natural world, otherness and diversity enable the development of a complex and extremely rich web of relationships (what Fritjof Kapra calls “The Web of Life”), that not only helps ecosystems thrive, but also increases their resilience. In fact, the more elements in an ecosystem, the ‘thicker’ the web of relationships, and therefore the less likely it is to be destroyed by shocks to its usual living conditions.
For example, whilst it is true that honey-bees are key pollinators for fruiting trees, they are not the only ones – thank God! There are also bumble bees, wasps, hoverflies, solitary bees, moths, butterflies, beetles and many others – so that if one pollinator fails to manifest one year, others can fill in and do the job. The key permacultural concept of “one function, several elements” is directly inspired from observing Nature – just as its counterpart “one element, several functions” (hoverflies eat aphids, honey-bees make honey, etc.).
This keeps the system fairly stable over time, whilst at the same time allows for adaptation to temporary changes. In a particularly wet year, certain bacteria, algae, insects, mushrooms, rodents, fish and other animals might expand their presence due to those favourable conditions for them, where each element is able to feed on the growth of the smaller element is relies on. And then the next year is dry, and it’s a totally different flora and fauna that flourishes. But through time, the system has remained highly productive.
So diversity in Nature is a marker of health, vitality, resilience in a given system. What’s even more interesting, is that diversification is a fundamental driver of natural system’s growth. Life on earth started with bacteria, that grew and diversified into unicellular beings, etc until we got to the ancestor of all primates, who then diversified into primates, then homo erectus, then homo sapiens, etc. Natural then cultural laws encouraged homo sapiens to reproduce with partners who are not part of their direct family, thus increasing the chances of strengthening the species, and at the same time its diversification.
Along the same lines, for a grassland to become a primary forest, it has to host an ever growing diverse variety of plants, shrubs, trees, insects, animals, whose presence attracts and ever growing variety of elements who will thrive on their relationships with them, thus feeding a virtuous cycle of growth, vitality, and resilience.
Using and valuing diversity in Permaculture
Unsurprisingly, since it seeks to mimic natural processes, Permaculture relies heavily on this Principle #10.
In its approach to design, first of all. As we saw with Principle #7, permaculture designers start with principles, with patterns, before zooming in on details. And they start with observing and interacting with the reality they will design with (Principle #1). Therefore one designer will never copy and paste a design from one project to apply it to another, but rather customise each design to the reality s/he is working on.
Diversity is also at the heart of his/her choices for particular solutions: for heating, for example, they might choose passive heating coupled with good insulation, or solar panels, or woodstove if there is an important supply of freely available wood – or a mix of several of those, to compensate when one of them is suddenly unavailable.
For food production too, diversity is essential. Plant several different kinds of salads, some of them perennial, so that slugs might concentrate on a few and leave you with a decent supply still. Choose different variety of tomatoes, not only because some of them might resist better to mildew, but also so that they can fruit at different times, and provide you with continuous supply over 3-4 months, rather than overload you with kilos and kilos of them over 2 weeks in July!
And so it goes with other vegetables, fruits, poultry; with water collecting solutions, composting, etc. Diversity will always be a central principle, because of the stability and the resilience it brings to the system.
Harnessing diversity in organisations
The business case for diversity and inclusion in organisations is quite well known now: gather a socially and cognitively diverse team and make sure everyone is included, and you’ll increase your team’s potential for creativity (not everyone thinking the same things, in the same way, means more chances to enable new ideas to emerge); for resilience (when some might get stuck in one situation, others might be more at ease with it); for knowledge sharing and knowledge management (in particular with a generationally diverse team, where everyone might hold a bit of the story, so that none of it gets lost or forgotten); and for customer and market understanding, as the team will be more representative of the overall society.
However, the reality of it remains a struggle, partly because mental models are difficult to shift, and some people with power have a vested interest in keeping a non-diverse status quo; but also partly because organisations have tended to evolve into monoculture fields, where processes are highly refined to produce similar results year after year at ever decreasing costs, leaving little room for experimenting with different approaches.
Having said that, there are various ways of harnessing the potential of diversity in the workplace (some of which are developed in Principle #3). You could, for example:
- Take it in turns in the team to prepare and chair the team meeting: in this way, you will have different chairing styles, which might yield different results; and you will also increase staff engagement and responsibility taking. Those who might not speak or contribute much with a particular style might blossom with another, so the team will produce ideas it would never have been able to access within a single style approach
- Work on identifying and removing biases in your team/organisation: this could be done in a very fun way, using the Insidiae game for example; and help you remove some of the blocks internal to the team/organisation that is preventing it from accessing all its potential
- Set up a Diversity and Inclusion challenge: to reward best practices and business impact, and make the prize an interesting one for your own company culture. It could be funding to recruit extra staff, or to launch a project that was not in the current funding stream; or tickets to the opera for the whole team, or to a football game; or a couple of days glamping at the Knepp Estate, in Sussex, UK, one of the pioneers of rewilding …
- Create a mentorship network, including reverse mentoring: across generations, cultures or gender, ensuring that what comes up during the mentoring sessions about organisational obstacles to Inclusion can be (confidentially) brought to the exectutive team’s attention, so that it can also be worked on
- Audit and challenge all your HR processes: not as you’ve always done, but inviting those whom the organisational culture does not include to be the ones doing the audit and offering recommandations
Permaculture principle #6: Produce no waste
This is so simple in Nature!
One of the many wonders of natural ecosystems is that they produce no waste. Only human systems do.
In Nature, any output from one element is an input for another element. Ecosystems have grown through a principle quite central to the systemic paradigm of which they are such an outspoken example: co-evolution. Something cannot grow if other things don’t grow alongside that will feed on its output. In other words, it is only interconnected elements that blossom, which for our Cartesian minds is quite difficult to fathom.
Elements in an ecosystem will not produce more output than their surroundings are capable of feeding on either, therefore we won’t see, in a balanced ecosystem, any accumulation of outputs that could then, to us, look like waste.
And it is so difficult in human systems!
In a way, principle #6 really highlights how much we are NOT operating from the same patterns and principles that natural ecosystems and the biosphere are, because we seem to produce waste wherever we set foot; and in whatever activities we are engaged in.
One could argue that the Earth had longer than we’ve had to get into the right patterns (3,5 billion years), whereas we’re only just getting started (‘only’ a few hundreds of thousands of years), yet it is our patterns that are worrying, with the waste we produce growing exponentially.
So it’s time to get serious and operate a U turn, led by this powerful principle #6. The added complexity, for us humans, is that, whilst we are part of Nature, we operate at both material and immaterial levels, therefore applying principle #6 will require us to address both these dimensions.
Producing no material waste
In some way that is quite simple – I mean it is quite simple to see what we’re talking about! Applying it has eluded us so far, since, as mentioned earlier, we are producing material waste at an exponential rate.
How can we tackle this and operate a U turn? Well, just like in Nature, we can:
- Produce outputs that our surroundings are capable of using as inputs
- Produce no more outputs than our surroundings are capable of absorbing
In a way, n°2 is what we are trying to do when we launch ‘waste-reduction’ programmes. These programmes are centred around improving the efficiency of our production processes, so that we use as little inputs as possible for a given production target, but we make sure that we use as much of the elements of these inputs as possible, so that hardly anything comes out of the production process that is not a component of the desired product. Clothes-making companies for example will try to use as much of the sheet of fabric as possible; car-making companies will do the same with the sheets of iron out of which they cut their car body-parts; industrial ovens will try to increase the efficiency of the fuel they use so that most of it is turned into heat; etc.
Now these efforts must be praised, for they are reducing waste. But sadly they are not enough, primarily for 2 reasons:
- The economic paradigm within which our activities are taking place structurally encourages us to produce evermore of the stuff that we started producing. So even if we reduce waste in our production process, we will, most likely, end up producing more waste altogether
- What most of our production processes release as outputs do not end up as inputs for other components of our human systems
So that brings us back to solution #1: let’s produce outputs that our surroundings are capable of using as inputs. There are examples of that already, with industrial sites set up ‘ecologically’, meaning that the heat produces by one factory from company A will heat up another factory, belonging to company B; where material waste from company B will be used a raw material for company C, etc. Another example comes from San Francisco, where the city, through its waste-management scheme, is turning garbage into rich compost, and selling it to the wine-growers of the Napa Valley.
These are wonderful pioneering examples. So let’s scale them up, so that they become the norm and not the exception! And let’s apply our creative, human minds to other areas of our economies, mapping out all the outputs that are not becoming inputs and solving those equations one at a time.
Let’s take plastic for example: much of the food sold in supermarkets comes in plastic boxes (eg. ice-cream) that then get thrown away, when much of the take-away we order via various apps also arrive in plastic container that then become waste. How could we link them so that the output from one value chain becomes an input in the other? What reward system could urge us to engage freely and enthusiastically in that virtuous pattern?
Immaterial waste in human systems
How can we define immaterial waste in human systems in a non-derogatory way? My suggestion is to seek inspiration from natural ecosystems: waste is energy that is left accumulating without the possibility of feeding a new cycle.
So when we have ideas for new products, markets or ways of functioning as an organisation, which we feel would be life-giving and/or better aligned with our purpose, and the structure/culture of the organisation stops us from testing them – then the organisation creates waste.
When the way we operate creates anger and resentment, and there is no way for us to turn that energy into something productive and life-giving – thus leaving us to take it out on ourselves or on others – then the organisation creates toxic waste similar to what we find in some of our landfills.
When an organisation downsizes or stops some of its operations and fires staff without finding an appropriate alternative for them to take up, it produces outputs that cannot become inputs elsewhere.
The ways to address these issues are the same as described above for material waste:
- Produce outputs that our surroundings are capable of using as inputs
- Produce no more outputs than our surroundings are capable of absorbing
The difference here will be more about focussing on developing other elements capable of using the produced outputs as inputs for themselves: creating, for example, pathways that truly enable people to rapidly test innovative ideas; revisiting outplacement models so that there is always something staff feel they can engage in if/when they are made redundant (a universal basic income, coupled with training for new careers, or/and with NGOs/charity work, etc.); or build into the functioning of teams some regular debrief sessions that enable staff to vent their anger and use it creatively in order to find other ways of dealing with a similar situation next time.
Permaculture principle #2: Capture and store energy
Increasing the potency of biological fields
Permaculture suggests that reliance on cheap oil has shifted our systems’ capacity for resilience and self-reliance. We need to reclaim and implement our capacity to harness, store and circulate energy, and use it with a much higher degree of efficiency than we have accepted so far, under the illusion that it would be harmless, cheap and last forever.
Sources of energy in the biological fields include:
- Sun, wind and runoff water flows
- Wasted resources from agricultural, industrial and commercial activities
Different ways can be used to store that energy:
- Fertile soil with high humus content
- Perennial vegetation systems, especially trees, yield food and other useful resources
- Seeds
- Water bodies and tanks
- Passive solar buildings
Potency in social fields
Of course one key source of energy in human systems is money; just like a human body needs oxygen to function, but doesn’t exist in order to breathe, a social body generally needs money (or a similar resource exchange system) in order to function properly. I will not get into this much deeper, as I am neither an economist nor an expert in alternative currency systems, but I think it is important to log in the fact that financial resource management needs to be dealt with adequately, if the system is to survive and thrive. I think we can also add that in terms of Permaculture, money needs to be grounded in reality if systems are to be resilient and perennial, and that highly complex financial systems, where money is generated through speculation, bets on future value, derivatives, etc. , cannot be considered viable in the long term, at least as human systems. Indeed, it would be like eating a crop that has not yet been grown, or watering our fields with the rain we know will fall in the autumn…
What other sources of energy then fuel human systems? Well, I guess we can imagine at least 4 types of energy that circulate in human systems:
- Psychological energy: such as ideas, knowledge, know-how, job experience, etc.
- Emotional energy: passion, enthusiasm, joy, but also anger and rage, huge sources of energy that can be productive when adequately contained…
- Action-based energy: skills, problem-solving drive,
- Spiritual energy: meaning, purpose, sense of connecting to something larger than oneself…
Capturing and storing energy, in that context, will be about managing a dynamic equilibrium so as to navigate between energy depletion (leading to exhaustion and death) and energy overload (leading to toxicity); it will be about ensuring that we sense where the energy is, and how it is circulating, along the four types described above, so that we can better harness and distribute it.
Capturing and storing energy in social fields: analogies with the biological world
Sun: primary source of energy in ecosystems, this could be about people’s passion, their enthusiasm, their internal drive, which could also be channelled anger. It seems to me that the equivalent of the sun in human systems is primarily emotional. The sun is only around half of the day, and sets at night; too much sun can burn plants, in particular those who prefer shade. So whilst I am making an argument to access the emotional parts of the human resources that we are, I think we need also to think about containment, and ensure that we don’t fall into overly emotional human fields.
Water: I imagine this to be something that flows in and between people, that connects them in some way. So I think water could be about common purpose; an ownership of that purpose, rather than attachment to a role or a position. As water needs to be captured and stored so that it can later irrigate the land in case of draught, purpose will also need to be ‘captured and stored’, i.e. through material or immaterial things that we can refer to and reconnect to when meaning feels depleted.
Seeds: how about considering job / project opportunities as seeds? After all, they are something through which people, teams, and ‘production’ will grow. As seeds, job and project opportunities will first need plenty of water and good soil to germinate, as well as warmth from the sun… In terms of energy storage, seeds are in fact the fruit, the result of the growth of a plant. The Permaculture manager must therefore ensure that plants (see below) produce seeds, and that these are collected for future use.
Perennials: we are talking here about recurrent activities that yield ‘food’ (i.e. return on investment, whether financial or not), fix ‘nitrogen’ (i.e. transform gaseous fertiliser into one that the plant can use: turning ideas, perspectives, innovative thinking into the core business production process) and/or bring structure to the soil (structure the activities, bring some degree of predictability, expresses consistency in the values of the institution…). In each of these three activities, energy is captured, stored, and redistributed according to need. But perennials bring another level of energy efficiency: most of the energy they require from us is at the beginning, in the planting phase; after that, they take care of themselves and tend to self-regulate in the ecosystemic web of energy flows.
Fast-growing wood (fixes excess CO2 and can be burnt to release energy) or food plants (can be eaten to give the farmer energy!): I am thinking here of quick and fast yielding commercial projects; those with fairly low production-to-shelf time.
Slow-growing wood or food plants: perhaps here we could include medium to long-term R&D projects, prototyping of innovation, niche products that don’t make up a critical part of the activity and revenue generation, but create new and interesting ways for the system to connect with its environment, and for the system to also channel its members passion, enthusiasm and creative capacities. The energy captured and stored during the ‘growing’ process gets released at maturation, when the ‘wood’ or the ‘food plants’ can finally be used, i.e. integrated into the core activity processes to fuel and nourish them.
Manure: this is usually ‘imported’ energy: brought in actively by the gardener, or passively by ensuring the system is open to visiting animals (birds, rabbits…). So I think we can put into that category external ideas, inputs, or even consultancy. As a resilient system will need to be self-sufficient in producing or capturing that type of energy, emphasis must be placed on enabling the system (i.e. individuals and teams) to develop its own fertility through sensing energising data from its environment. Short, time-limited import of manure (consultancy) can help, but the system mustn’t become dependent on it.
Fast-growing plants for compost: one of many great ways of fixing energy in your garden is to grow plants specifically for composting. You can plan them in places where nutrients may otherwise run off (i.e. comfrey near compost or manure piles), or on vacant land (nettles, “green” fertilisers, etc.), or in reed beds. They fix both sun and soil energy at the same time, and grow back after several cutting back, and add richness to compost. So in that area of human/social fields, I am thinking that we could include things like self-assigned projects, free time for creative thinking and testing prototypes, and other types of detoxifying activities. Dan Pink, an expert on the science of motivation, tells examples of companies that allow their staff to use 20% of their paid time to work on exactly what they want, providing it has some links with the business. Many successful Google products for example were thought up and designed in that “free” time. You could imagine giving free time to read a book, go to a movie or an exhibition, massage or meditation sessions, etc.
Composting materials: I would argue that many ills and crises in our social fields happen because we don’t “compost” our individual and collective actions, interactions and creations. As a result, they linger on and become toxic, rather than transformed into matter and energy for future experience. This goes for processing failures, disappointments, clashes, but also successes and deep meaningful encounters: in the living world, everything stays in motion and is constantly (re)cycled. So in this section I would include debrief & learning sessions as a way of capturing and storing energy; lively knowledge management systems; action-learning evaluation processes, and any other type of meaning-making reviewing activities that can access psychological, emotional, action-based and spiritual energies.
Freedom and unconscious dynamics
How free can we be at work?
Anabelle holds a very promising job in the online products department of a prestigious investment company in Paris. She’s been coming for monthly coaching sessions for the last few months because she’s struggling with some management issues within her team, and would like to explore how to handle them differently. In parallel, she’s not getting on with her boss, who she feels is micro-managing her, and thus stifling her abilities.
One day she comes in, looking much chirpier, all smiles and lightness. As she sits down, she launches straight into telling me her great news: “I’m quitting my job!”. With that she goes on telling me how much better she feels since she’s taken that decision, how lighter she feels, how suffocating the last few months had been at work, what with her boss always breathing down her neck, leaving her zero freedom, how important freedom is for her, and how by taking that decision to quit she feels she has recovered her freedom…
Rather than congratulate her, my response came in the form of a question: “Are you sure that it is in freedom that you have taken that decision?”. It must have felt like a bit of a cold shower, I guess …
“Well yes of course, why are you saying that? I wasn’t feeling well in the team, Fred [her boss] is treating me like an 8-year old, I worked so hard to get where I am, so I want to choose what’s good for me and what isn’t. That’s why I made that choice, and it’s freed me up – both the result (I can choose where to move on to now), and the process (finally, I could exercise freedom, no more of this stifling environment!). So why are you trying to spoil my fun? Are you worried that our coaching will end prematurely and you’ll lose your client ?”.
Yes, good questions. Why indeed did I question whether she’d acted in freedom, rather than rejoice with her about something that clearly had generated joy for her? Was I annoyed that she’d taken that decision without bringing it to our coaching sessions first? Was I – as she suggested – worried about losing a client, or at least fearing premature ending of our work-relationship? As a coach, I feel it is my duty to question my own inner dynamics, lest they come and derail me off my role.
But none of that resonated with me. Paradoxically, I felt some sense of non-attachement, of “inner-freedom” as Jesuits might call it, in relation to the decision being taken outside of our sessions, or at the prospect of the coaching ending.
Rather, what had struck me when she announced her news is a powerful sense of déjà-vu. History repeating itself, patterns weaving their web and catching their prey unaware. No freedom there, as far as I could see, but instead the sense that she was a puppet held-up in her own inner drama – so that’s what generated for me such a direct – and rather challenging – response.
A bit of history might be helpful here.
Anabelle is the eldest of 4 siblings, with probably loving, but certainly anxious (1st time) parents, who grew up with a sense of constant restrictions: she couldn’t go out to play when she was a kid, or with her friends to parties when she was a teenager; her school subjects were chosen for her by her parents, and so was her university path later on – until her first act of self-affirmation, when she dropped out of engineering to sign up for one of France’s top business schools.
Her career was then off to a promising start, when she was recruited by Total, after a 6-month internship there. But soon she grew restless, feeling that her creativity was being restricted, that the management culture was infantilising, so she sought a way out and quitted.
Her time with Danone was more promising; she liked the culture there, and held several roles until she found herself (again) with a boss that, she felt, clipped her wings, but seemed to let the others in the team off the hook (“just like at home when I was a kid”, she commented once in a coaching session, “when I kept being told I couldn’t do this or that but later on my siblings were allowed much more than me”). So Anabelle quitted her job – again.
Then came a spell with a retail bank – which ended in the same way, and for the same perceived reasons.
And now this new decision; in other words, 4 times in about 12 years. I can’t help it: my job is to try to identify my clients’ patterns, and to help them discover them. And what Annabelle’s pattern was revealing, is that, far from acting out of an inner freedom, she was in fact helplessly repeating a pattern that had been governing her life hitherto – deceiving her into believing that she was making free choices, when in fact she was unconsciously projecting her unprocessed childhood experiences onto her current work situation, and rebelling against it in a way that she had not been able to do as a child.
If it was freedom she wanted, it would need to be about freeing herself from the very pattern that controlled her behaviour. It would require her acknowledging and owning the feelings that growing up with such parents had triggered in her; claiming back those parts of herself that she had not been allowed to express; and learn to discern and decide from “the whole of herself”, rather than only from that wounded part of her that kept seeking reparation.
Thank God our working relationship was very good, so Annabelle – despite raising her own challenging questions to me – was able to hear me out, trusting that somehow I was speaking from a place that might hold an interesting perspective, one that she might be blind to.
And indeed the rest of the session was very constructive. She was able to recognise how she was repeating an old and long-buried pattern, and work through her own initial feelings of guilt and shame for having done so.
However, her decision to quit her job had been taken, and our joint task now was to help her manage as best as possible this period of transition, and of letting go: of her job, and of these coaching sessions, paid for by her current employer, which would end when her job with them ended.
In the couple of sessions that followed – and were the last of our work together – it became clearer and clearer to her how this particular session had been pivotal for her, because it enabled her to finally see the elephant (her patterns) in the room (her life at work), to name it, to recognise it, so that next time she will face it, she will – at last ! – have a real choice: to follow the elephant once again, or to ask him to leave the room.
"Why?” The ecological transition in search of meaning
"God is dead, Marx is dead, and I don't feel very well myself," said Woody Allen. Today, it is what we commonly call "the planet" that is not doing very well: climate disruption, rising temperatures and water levels, collapse of biodiversity, increase in zoonotic diseases, of which Covid-19 is the devastating incarnation.
By 2050, planet Earth could be unliveable for a large part of the world's population, which would then be forced to migrate to countries whose economies, if they continued on their current trajectory, would have little chance of being able to absorb such a migratory shock.
All the more so since the very capacity of the Earth to continue to feed us is being called into question, not only by enlightened collapsologists with apocalyptic visions, but by renowned scientists, including Dennis Meadows, author of the famous 'Club of Rome report' which, in the early 1970s, had already modelled the biospheric disruption that we are experiencing today.
This future is not written. It will only happen if we do not act; if we continue with 'business as usual'. The solutions to bring about a different future are known: they can be summed up in what most people call the 'ecological transition', or in what some pioneers have already initiated: the regenerative economy, i.e. economic activities that produce value while regenerating the ecosystems on which life on Earth - our life - depends.
And yet, we are forced to admit that we are not able, collectively, to take this step, which is nevertheless beneficial. Why is this so?
The first level of explanation lies in our economic model itself. It would be too hard to transform it, or even to get out of it, because we have become so 'addicted' to growth that an ecological transition would threaten to plunge us into a major economic depression.
These arguments are now outdated, not only because of the scientific studies and financial modelling of the last ten years, but above all because of the revolution in dogma that the Covid crisis has triggered: if the stakes were really worth it, we could do it, "whatever it takes".
Hence the importance of exploring a second level of explanation: our relationship with Nature, or more precisely our disconnection, our disunification with it. Over the centuries, Man has extracted himself from Nature, has repressed the inalienable links that inscribe him in this 'web of Life'. He has turned it into an object, external to him; an object to be controlled, dominated and exploited for his own development. What is the point of 'saving the planet' if it is a commodity like any other?
Today, most political discourses remain anchored in this utilitarian vision of nature. At one extreme end, there are the bellicose discourses, which see climate change and its consequences as phenomena foreign to us; as enemies to our good life that we should fight by waging "war on climate".
But even in the more measured, and equally voluntarist, discourses, it is the utilitarian vision that predominates: we are urged to commit ourselves to this ecological transition in order to preserve the conditions for the viability of the human species on the planet for centuries to come; to leave our children a viable, liveable and sustainable world; to revive the economy thanks to a green growth that respects the ecosystems on which we depend.
Even if all this is undoubtedly true, and commendable, let us note a great absence in these speeches: the meaning of our life on Earth, and our place in the great narrative of creation. Well, not completely absent, because on 8th November 2020, for his inaugural speech, the new vice-president of Bolivia, Mr David Choquehuanca, did not go for half measures. His speech, which went largely unnoticed by the Western media, set out a political project that explicitly draws its source and legitimacy from Bolivia's indigenous stories of the creation of life on Earth, and the unbreakable bonds that unite us with Nature.
After a long opening in which he anchors his authority by asking permission from 'the gods, the elders, the Pachamama (Mother Earth), the Achachilas (protective spirits)', Choquehuanca presents his vision of a Bolivia that finds its unity and vitality by reconnecting to the principles of life, and in so doing, ensures that all Bolivians are included in this prosperity, and that no one is left behind.
This is a speech by a head of state that is different from those we usually hear, full of figures, indicators and complicated acronyms. A speech that challenges us at another level of our humanity: that of the meaning of life, of its sacred dimension, and of our belonging to the heart of this web of life. It reminds us why Man, on Earth, is invited to leave it in a better state than the one in which he found it - not because of some moral imperative, but, on the contrary, to live fully his ontological nature as a human Being.
David Choquehuanca is not the first head of state to make such a speech. Pope Francis (yes, the Vatican is a state!) did it before him, in his encyclical Laudato Si in 2015. There too we heard very strong economic and social proposals, anchored in a spirit of justice, solidarity and, of course, respect for the Earth; and all of them stemmed from a grand narrative of creation, and of the place of Man in this narrative. While there are of course differences in theological perspectives between these two statesmen, their convergences are far greater than these differences.
Is this what our secularised Western societies are lacking in order to make the transition to ecology with both body and soul? Has the time for grand narratives come again? No doubt. And stories that unite us more than they separate us, the other great thirst that our societies are experiencing at the moment.
Mental models, subtle racism and chocolate: a breakthrough
The context is an international and multi-ethnic meeting with some 20 participants, with the aim of reconnecting with the organisational purpose, in order to then be able to set the activities for the coming months and to appoint suitable leadership to accompany the emerging future.
The official language of the meeting is French: it was estimated that all members of the group speak it well enough to be able to follow without problems. Sporadic and spontaneous translation 'as needed' from Portuguese to French is offered, but not vice versa, organised voluntarily among the participants.
The method of animation includes that, at the end of each day of collective work, one-hour evening debriefing sessions are held, with a small group being part of the large one, called the "Coordination Committee". The group's objective is to review the contents and topics that have emerged, but above all to be a place for analysing the large group dynamics that have occurred during the day in order to link them with the dynamics of the broader system, and to draw up coherent work proposals for the following days.
The 'Coordination Committee' is composed of four fixed and two variable components, members of the large group who offer to participate, on a voluntary basis, at the beginning of each day.
One 'fixed' member of the committee, joking about the fact that a lot of chocolate had been consumed the night before during the 'Coordination Committee', and with the intention of encouraging the two volunteers from the large group, jokes "And then there will be a compensating factor, we will eat a lot of chocolate".
One of the members of the large group, a young African girl, Louisa, appears evidently perturbed after this joke and remains silent. The two volunteers are finally found and the day continues by exploring the topic "What leadership is needed to lead in the coming years?". Suddenly Louisa blurts out, in Portuguese "I didn't offer to be on the committee this morning because I realised that the volunteer members would be treated like chocolate and eaten by the group members as a reward".
Several years ago, during a then pioneering work on the emergence of alternative leadership models (at the time it was called "Emergence of Women's Leadership" a title I would no longer use today) that we were carrying out in a large bank, we used the term "alterphagia" to describe one of the collective resistances to change, manifested during the project.
Alterphagia describes the attempt to transform the other by manipulating them, turning them into an object, assimilating them to oneself through "eating" them, thus denying their difference. For the bank we worked for, alterphagia manifested itself in various attempts to assimilate women into the male stereotype-based leadership model that was dominant at the time.
In the case of the 'chocolate' a staff member makes a joke, having no intention to excluding or insulting. This joke, however, is misunderstood in a particular way, among the many possible misunderstandings, which touches on an organisational dynamic that has been present in the organisation for years, concerning leadership and the feeling, on the part of the people in Africa in particular, that there is a European (and white) thinking head and an operating arm in the South (black) undergoing a process of colonisation. This dynamic means that people in Africa are never considered in the shortlist of candidates to lead the group.
The 'chocolate misunderstanding' allowed the group to make explicit something very difficult to say, in particular the feeling of inferiority felt by some of its members, the perception of exclusion from certain roles, and this not on the basis of skills more or less possessed but on the basis of personal characteristics such as skin colour and geographical origin.
It also allowed the European side, identified as the group's 'coloniser', to reflect on what they had (unconsciously) done, a reflection that, due to a creeping feeling of shame that emerged during the exchanges generated by the analysis of the metaphor, had not yet been done in full.
The space that opened up when we offered the opportunity to stop and explore more fully what had happened allowed for a deep, authentic, moving dialogue about what one part of the group had experienced for years.
After an initial almost violent, minimising reaction, the group opened up to the possibility of enriching the metaphor of 'chocolate', of making other associations than those that had been offered by the staff to go further.
It opened up a moment of deep exploration of mental models, their function, their limits and the consequences they can have on people and performance that allowed for a healthy regeneration, in view of the appointments of the new leadership team.
Owning our part: from denial-based business to a regenerative economy
Article published on “Organizational and Social Dynamics”
Abstract
In this article, we explore a core set of organisational and social dynamics at work in the business world: the denial and disowning of the part we play in co-creating the world we live in; and the splitting needed to protect us from the guilt and shame that owning our part would unleash. We begin with exploring the Winnicottian splitting between the “false self” and the “true self”.
We then venture into new territories, by exploring the denial, disowning, and splitting that is needed in the “business as usual” economy to keep business going and avoid acknowledging its degrading impacts on social and ecosystems, creating, to paraphrase Winnicott, a split between a “false world” and a “true world”.
Mainstream organisations have tended to structure this splitting formally through organisational defences, but are now at risk of being flooded with their split off parts. We then ask ourselves what can be done to start addressing our impact truthfully, and contribute to a shift from a degrading economy to a regenerative economy. The importance of containing and working through the guilt and shame that this might generate is explored, as well as the notions of purpose and purposeful leadership.
Keywords: systems psychodynamics, social systems, organisational change, leadership, defences.
On a recent radio programme, a leading French environmentalist summed it all up: “I think it’s better to drive your old diesel car to work if you work on an organic farm than to feel proud of cycling to work when actually you work for Monsanto.” In saying that, he shone light on one of our long-held collective blind-spots: we co-create the world that we live in, not only by our actions as citizens and consumers, but also (and perhaps primarily) by our own contributions to the impacts that the organisation we work for has, directly or indirectly, on the world.
In other words, we may have spent too many decades focusing on professional competencies and career trajectories (outputs), when perhaps a more fundamental question was left off the radar: what world are we helping our organisation to co-create (outcomes) thanks to these professional competencies and career that we invest in it?
In this article we will explore the conscious and unconscious dynamics at work when, through the roles we take up in organisations, we contribute to shaping the world we live in, and what leverage we have to align these actions with our intention.
Bursting the bubble
Michael is a man in his forties, who read at one of France’s best business schools, and was moving towards a promising career. Throughout his childhood he was told, as most of us were, how important successful studies were—the key to a fulfilling career, to achieving one’s full potential.
As he graduated from his prestigious business school, Michael got offered several tempting jobs. He opted for one of the big three pharmaceuticals companies, and did so for several reasons: first of all, the overall mission of the company caught his altruistic self; contributing to the world population’s health, and solving some of the greatest health challenges was a quest worth embarking on. The company’s huge resources also meant that much would be possible, and that boldness and creativity would not only be encouraged, but also met with the appropriate means for action. Finally, joining such a big, international company meant entering a field in which his own career could grow and blossom.
As the years went on, Michael became, quite naturally, identified as a “high potential” by the company’s talent management department, and was offered several career opportunities, including leadership posts abroad, where he was able, each time, to confirm his potential for becoming, one day, one of the top fifty executives in the company.
Twelve years after joining, however, Michael decided to quit. Not for a competitor, with higher salary and even greater career prospects. Not because he had enough of the health sector and wanted to explore another industry. No; Michael resigned and decided to launch a business that, despite being in the same field as his previous job, was the antithesis of what he had been doing: he left one of the Big 3 to launch a natural health products business.
Michael’s story illustrates many others at the beginning of this twenty-first century. At the heart of it, we find a recurrent pattern, in which brilliant graduates, full of potential, choose to resign from a promising career not for a better paid job or one that holds greater perspective, but for something altogether different. In other words, they quit not only their job, but the very paradigm in which career has been “sold” to them, in order to find something that could not be found in this current paradigm, and could only exist in a new one.
Career development and splitting
Most of us—and most certainly Michael—were asked throughout our childhood the eternal question: “what do you want to be/do when you’re older?”. Undoubtedly, this question was meant to be helpful, to enable us to draw from within us a vision of what our adult life might look like—thus helping us identify the type of studies that we might need to undertake in order to fulfil this vision.
Of course, this envisioning question also served as a container for our parents’ anxiety, providing reassurance that their offspring would indeed “do something with their life”, but also giving them the opportunity to reframe the vision in order to help their child “aim higher”.
In that context, children over the last few decades have been thinking in terms of professions and in terms of industries: being a doctor, a nurse, a teacher, working in a bank, in finance, being a consultant …. In their own unconscious, and that of their parents (and of society more broadly), those professions and those industries carried certain values, and served as markers of success, both in the eyes of those around them (external sources of gratification) but also in terms of financial achievement.
In her article “Les ‘hauts potentiels’ et le ‘faux-self’”, Maryse Dubouloy (2006) explains the impact that such a construction of one’s possible future has on the individual once (s)he is confronted with the reality of the work environment. Anchoring her argument in the work of Winnicott, she suggests that very early on, in order to secure their parents’ love and positive regard, children will over develop those capacities, attitudes, and behaviours that they sense are more highly valued by their parents, at the risk of leaving other parts of themselves dormant, or at least under developed. In the process, they thus develop a “false self” that they present to the world, and hide in their own unconscious (through a splitting process) who they really are, their “true self”.
Having worked with dozens of those high potentials managers, Dubouloy started identifying a pattern, where after brilliant studies and excellent beginnings in their careers, those high potentials often go through a deep inner crisis when confronted with an event hitherto unusual for them: a big failure, such as a lost contract, a missed promotion, or being fired. For the first time, their over-adapted self can no longer “save” them; it can no longer provide the gratification they have constantly sought, leaving them with a huge sense of emptiness and of worthlessness. Unaware, they stumble across the chasm between their false and true self, between the false promises of narcissistic security on the one hand, and the unbounded possibilities of being who they truly are, which at this precise moment does not feel at all liberating but rather oppressive and persecutory.
Michael’s story finds many echoes in Dubouloy’s work, yet it offers a new dimension to, and a new perspective on, the chasm. The false promises and the development of a false self are indeed present here too. Undoubtedly, Michael did well at school, fought hard to enter one of the best and most prestigious business schools in France, and chose a big, internationally renowned multinational corporation to work in, because it matched the expectations his family had on him, and embodied what success looks like in society.
At an unconscious level, Michael most probably operated a splitting of his self into a true and a false self, unconsciously ensuring that his public persona matched external expectations (thus providing him with external gratification) whilst suppressing his true self from his conscious experience. Michael’s resignation, therefore, may well be linked to a desire to let his true self come forth, although data do not entirely match what Dubouloy has indicated as the usual triggers for such an internal shake-up: Michael’s decision did not follow a failure-induced crisis; he didn’t lose out on a promotion, nor lost a contract, or anything of the sort. Could there be something else at work here?
Looking at the data again, we can see that Michael’s decision came about when he began to realise the impact the pharmaceuticals industry had on the world, and therefore his own contributions to that impact. As a marketing director, his job was to ensure that an increasing amount of customers would buy the company’s drugs. Increase in sales was therefore a key indicator of success. However, at the same time, research began to show that increasing use of antibiotics were actually one of the root causes of antibiotic resistant microbes.
In some ways, the more antibiotics he helped sell, the more antibiotic resistant microbes he would help develop. Another insight came when, at a conference for the pharmaceutical industry, he discovered that of all the drugs produced by all pharmaceuticals companies, probably about 15% were more effective than placebos—whilst the remaining 85%, of course, produced a lot more side effects than placebos.
Slowly but surely, Michael also came to realise that the business model of the pharmaceutical industry requires people to be ill in order to work; the mission statement that originally attracted him to the company (contributing to the world population’s health) actually relied on its shadow side: requiring people to be ill. Promoting health was therefore not expected, because it ran the risk of putting the company out of business.
So much so that, as a marketing director, he was once asked to contribute to finding a way of selling a molecule that the R&D department had discovered, but for which there was no known disease. They ended up finding broadly-linked non pathological behaviours that they could then package as a syndrome, in order, later on, to frame it as an illness. As he puts it, “we entered the meeting with a molecule, and we left with an illness.”
In other words, what really came through for Michael after twelve years in his job, was not just the splitting he had to operate in order to “be successful” in the eyes of others and of his false self, but, perhaps even deeper, the splitting he had to do of the impact he himself was having on the world through mobilising his skills and competencies at the service of his company. I use the expression “even deeper” because, in many ways, the splitting of the impact that our professional actions have on the world is not just an intra-psychic dynamic; it is also, and perhaps first of all, a societal dynamic.
It is induced by the very paradigm in which most of us are invited to imagine ourselves professionally, when asked “what do you want to do/be when you’re older?”, rather than “what do you want to contribute to when you’re older?”. A paradigm that values career progression intrinsically without inquiring into (and even less evaluating) the impact those increasing professional responsibilities end up having on the world. Perhaps shifting the frame in that way could yield huge transformations.
About Overview Effect, Bateson levels and learning for the future
As a child, one of my dreams was to go into space. I imagined myself inside a space capsule watching the Earth slowly recede through the porthole and the Moon and planets gradually become more visible. Reading 'Lucky Star and the Moons of Jupiter' helped to make this dream even more detailed. My dream has now become more and more realisable, the first 'tourist' trips into space are beginning (the appropriateness and popularity of these trips with respect to CO2 production could be debated) and for some time now, articles on the so-called 'Overview Effect' have been increasingly coming to my attention. What does Overview Effect mean? The name was invented by Frank White, who first used it in 1987, in his book entitled 'The Overview Effect'.
It is a collection of experiences described by astronauts who went into space, and who described themselves, not so much about the engineering part of their journey, but about the emotions they went through. The astronauts who have travelled after the release of the book were thus able to benefit from a concept to describe the strong and confusing emotions they felt during their journey, particularly when looking at planet Earth from a unique perspective.
A very special point of view, which provokes an experience that we can define as transcendent (a very tangible 'going beyond'), a deep and lasting inner movement as described by the astronauts who experienced it: a mixture of compassion, tenderness, vulnerability, awareness of belonging to a whole.
An unconditional and universal love felt for the Earth, seeing it so distant and fragile, which makes it possible to interpret oneself and the world through this lens after this type of experience. Embedded in the Overview Effect is the profound feeling of belonging, the end of separation from the Earth, the awareness of being producers of the contexts in which we live that Bateson talks about in 'Steps to an Ecology of Mind'.
If I mention it in this post, it is because the photographs that accompany the description of the Overview Effect are a first "madeleine" that reminds me of my childhood dreams; the second "madeleine" for me is the connection I made between the Overview Effect and my dissertation on creativity and learning, and it is this I would like to talk about in the blogpost after this somewhat lengthy introduction.
An important part of my thesis was in fact dedicated to defining what 'learning' means, a topic that fascinated me then and now, to the extent that I have made it the focus of my work. One of the milestones on the subject is undoubtedly Gregory Bateson's theory of 'levels of learning'. Basically, Bateson, building on Whitehead and Russel's Logical Types theories and cybernetic models, formulated a theory of learning that allows learning to be defined on 4 logical levels (very interesting in relation to learning in Bateson, the whole subject of paradoxes but not the subject of our blogpost).
Below are Bateson's levels of learning described in extreme synthesis, with an example that will serve to clarify the link between Bateson's theory and the Overview Effect.
- Level 0 - involves only a simple response to a stimulus (automatic learning, no reflexivity). This is, for example, the case when very strong stereotypes operate that generate rigid thinking routines that only allow obligatory responses to stimuli, with no possibility of alternatives. For example, take the case of a company that has produced waste and always throws it in the same spot in the sea. There is no other type of response available to them, throwing it in that spot is automatic, the routine of thought (or the mental scheme of the absolute priority of profit) does not allow them to see any alternatives.
- Level 1 - involves choosing our response to the stimulus from among several alternatives in the same set. In this type of learning, it is therefore possible to change, in the specificity of the response, by correction of choice errors, within a given set of alternatives: the learned response remains appropriate only in that particular context, which must therefore occur the same again. Classical Pavlovian conditioning is an example of this type of learning. In our example of waste, one can decide to throw it in one place in the sea but also throw it in another place, because one realises, for example, that it is cheaper than the first. The different landings on the sea constitute the different alternatives in the set of choices.
- Level 2 - In learning at this level, we are aware that alternatives may also be found in other sets: learning is thus about the change in learning process 1, a correction of the set of alternatives within which the choice is made. One is thus aware that choices occur within a given system of alternatives and is able to see and change sets of alternatives. So, to return to our production of waste, one can decide to throw it in the sea, but knows that there are other sets of alternatives, such as burning it, burying it, etc. Still it is only the profit principle that guides us.
- Level 3 - This learning is very rare. It is the learning that occurs through the perception of the system of subsets of alternatives and in which the possibility of changing it is perceived. It occurs by being able to see sets of different contexts in which alternatives exist. In this type of learning 'the self becomes almost irrelevant and is no longer essential to the description of experience'. Insight occurs when we have an experience that puts us in deep contact with our interconnectedness with context, with the Cosmos, with Nature, with the realisation that we are not separate from it but integrated with it and that our choices change our future possibilities.
Learning 3 is rare because it occurs when the cognitive system is profoundly shaken (e.g. in a therapeutic situation or a mystical experience) and, Bateson says, almost bordering on pathological. One possible pathological pathway of learning 3 is precisely psychosis. If we return instead to the 'physiology of learning', and to our case of waste, type 3 learning could occur in a moment of profound awareness of the fact that by producing waste and dumping it in Nature we are actually intervening in our context and modifying it, thus threatening our chances of future survival.
The goal of personal profit is no longer a priority. This kind of learning starts from an important premise, which is to be able to perceive ourselves no longer as detached but in connection and communion with Nature. We can choose, for example, to stop producing waste by rethinking our production process in a circular form, for example, so that waste becomes an input for another production process.
Two scientists, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, are the authors of a fascinating (but also controversial) theory, the famous 'Gaia hypothesis', according to which the Earth is a single living, breathing being composed of different living beings. According to this hypothesis, interconnectedness is not just a way of perceiving, of learning our contexts, but something more. Reducing complexity and feeling separated from it makes us impervious to empathy and suffering for how we treat Gaia, our planet-living being.
The Overview Effect is an interesting perspective to ask ourselves: how can we regenerate our view of the world? How can we generate the same personal movement that allows astronauts to never be the same again, once they have experienced this Effect? How do we access learning 3 about our human condition on this planet? How, collectively, to gain insight that leads us to radically rethink our production systems and our relationship with the Earth?
Learning 3 has a very strong spiritual component. The astronauts who were interviewed by Frank White spoke of spiritual alignment, of the transcendence of experience. Perhaps one way to feel this wave of love and tenderness towards our common home is to collectively and truly open ourselves to this dimension.
Let your intention be simple
These days I have the enormous privilege of co-facilitating a group with a formidable Jesuit priest. We jokingly tell each other that I am in charge of the psychosocial part and he is in charge of spirituality, but we actually form an integrated pair!
The word intention comes from the Latin in tendere, to tend towards, to turn towards. Among the various meanings of the word 'intention' that you can find in any dictionary, there is one that is particularly interesting: in medicine, intention is in fact the act of bringing the edges of a wound closer together to allow healing to take place. This meaning refers to the regeneration of the skin, to the possibility of healing by bringing together what was separated because it had been wounded.
During our work together with the Jesuit father, at a certain point it became necessary for the group to have difficult conversations between some of the members in order to truly act as a collective around a common purpose. And this is where we came to the topic of intention and its clarification.
When I decide, for example, to start a difficult conversation, what is my intention? Is it an intention that really wants to regenerate? And it is this point that the Jesuit father's (and Ignatius of Loyola's) contribution was illuminating. Before we face these difficult conversations, in fact, a question that can help us explore intention deeply is "Is my intention in having this conversation straight?" and straight means simple, not mixed with others.
Sometimes intentions can be confused, folded (just the opposite of simple, simplex, sem-plectere, folded once). If our intention is really to heal, to mend a wound, it is therefore important to remove what is mixed up with it (narcissistic, manipulative, unfriendly desires towards the other...) and to remain with the 'straight', healthy, pure intention, to which other intentions are not mixed up, which make it strategic, Machiavellian and which feed mistrust and suspicion, making us obtain, instead of the result of healing, mending the wound, exactly the opposite result: wounds that no longer regenerate.