This is my first journal entry that features another project. I find Michaels project so compelling and aligned with my beliefs. It models our axiom "You can't get there from HERE but you can get HERE from there. In other words, today is too full of baggage, fear, frustration, and talk of what we don't want. Leaping out and having the courate to create a "new world" is the only way to go. While I have every person, every client I work with learn to do backcasting and gain an ability to play with the future, to design possibilities and potential, to explore the natural emergence that will erupt and disurpt our thoughts, making room for viable fresh ideas that can create a better future.
Another one of the MG Taylor axioms is "The future is only rational in hindsight" rings true. This is why any robust project like 2030 needs to attract people to come together and model preferred future. Together we have tremendous energy and know how to work with ideas, to mix and match, to integrate, and explore how to procede with the least negative unanticipated consequences.
I'm looking forward to how Tomorrow Makers can play a role as an organization and as a tomorrow maker. Together, we can help 2030 be rich and vital for all species. This is going to be quite an adventure!
In assembling complexity the bounty of increasing returns is won by multiple tries over time. As various parts reorganize to a new whole, the system escapes into a higher order. Ilya Prigogine
Quotes are like photons, discrete packets of energy that circulate at the speed of light. I love to stumble onto them in my reading. There I am reading along when suddenly I read
‘In assembling complexity the bounty of increasing returns is won by multiple tries over time. As various parts reorganize to a new whole, the system escapes into a higher order.” — Ilya Prigogine
Its like I’ve fallen into the white rabbit’s hole and the entire universe changes shape. I first read these words in the late 90s and to this day, it still speaks to me as fresh and wondrous as the first time I read it. These 30 words speak from the heart of the universe and can teach me more than some of my university semester-long
The list below was one of the first set of assumptions that Matt and I created together when we first met in 1976. We have used and evolved it over time. It defined many of the first principles we used in creating our way of working. It is form these shared beliefes that we proceeded to created our process and method. While it seems painfully simple today within the midst of a dying, fighting paradigm, and our radical either/or mentality, to me it still holds true. I've shared this list before along with the URL about "We the people" being the second super power. Both, along with my recent posting for what is a Tomorrow Maker, I think I have the bare begining of a form for engaging others in the creation of a healthier world. We can't afford to merely tweak the existing infrastructures and cultures and expect to transform ourselves or others. While we are building on ten thousand- or more - years of history, ours is a new story, one just being born. Our history will be reframed from within the anthroposcene era. We won't throw it away, nor do we let it control how we design, decide, and create....
Matt and I had such high hopes in the late 70's when we began designing a way forward for a new way of working. But we have been practicing, event after event, and waiting somewhat patiently for Earthlings to wake up and realize what we the people are actually capable of doing for the good of all species on Earth. We have had fabulous mutual learning experiences with each engagement taking us further into our coming to knowing process.
It is only now that we are beginning to see signs that there are others, many others working to make a difference. We are all pretty invisible now but ready to spring forth.
Enjoy our Creed and find yourself within it.
"Funktionslust means the pleasure of doing, of producing an effect, as distinct from the pleasure of attaining the effect or having something. Creativity exists in the searching even more than in the finding or being found. The word enthusiasm is Greek for filled with theos – “filled with God”." Quote from the book Free Play: Improvitazation in Life and Art by Stephen Nachmanovitch.
"What do ideas become? Big things, brave things, smart things, silly things. Things like stories, artwork, journeys, inventions, communities, products, and cures. Every thing we see around us was once an idea." From What Do You Do With an Idea? by Kobi Yamanda and Mae Besom. (find more in our bookshelf.)
Screenshot from Todd's TEDx Livermore Talk via LivestreamNote: The following is the written version of my talk at TEDxLivermore: Uncorking Creativity on September 20, 2014. When the talk is available online, a link will be posted here.
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Good morning.
I want to begin with a simple assertion:
To be human is to be creative..
It is in our nature. Unlike batteries, creativity is included in the package.
Now, we may each have our own means of expressing this creativity, and our own perception of our creativity relative to other people may vary.
And, certainly, good arguments have been made that as we grow up and are socialized into the world, our abilities to tap into and express our creativity may diminish if they are not developed and practiced.
But at a fundamental level, whether it is expressed by baking cakes or writing code, painting portraits or snapping selfies, architecting buildings or building businesses, we are all innately and unavoidably creative.
And it is this creativity which lies within each of us that has largely brought about and enabled the world we live in, with all of it’s incredible in its beauty, sophistication and capability.
And, we have no reason not to think that immeasurable good things will continue to be brought into the world with this creative force.
And yet...
The sum of our creativity is not enough.
It is not enough to solve for the kind of complex problems that we, as a species have and will continue to create as a natural course of our lives.
It is not going to be enough to solve the challenges that matter most in our organizations, institutions, communities, ecosystems and so forth..
People ask me "What is up creation?" For me it is a word that says a lot. It has hundreds of stories hidden within it. It teases, appeals, speaks a rhythm and a pattern. It speaks to infrastructure, frameworks, culture, and sets me toward a long view, a big hope, and an audacious task.