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.  I found it while reading Kevin Kelly's blog pages.  For me it speaks a world in the becoming and offers many clues and some traps for my next steps. The idea of upcreation hastened  me on to leap my own abyss. I have landed with new understandings.  

Upcreation - self-organization that brings forth an emergent level of complexity that encompasses, without destruction, the previous lower levels of organization.“In the right circumstances self organization can often also be legitimately called self-creation. Without an outside agent, the parts cohere into a new organization that brings forth an "emergent" level or self not present before. Since the new emergent level of complexity encompasses, without destruction, the previous "lower" levels of organization, I call this self-creation of higher levels ‘upcreation.’”

So many interesting words and concepts. Which words and phrases stump you? Like many of the video games today, the secret is in finding meaning and actions for myself in the world, which, of course is me and my assumptions being recreated, or perhaps uncreated.   I toyed with the concept of upcreation for several years. When I suggested we name our Columbia engagement an upCREATION Experience, we all felt the idea settle in our minds. Yes, we said. Then we set about defining it for ourselves.  Four different aspects of upcreation showed up in our minds and stories. Its not a thing, or a process. Rather it is a way, a thread, a search, a partnering with others that  runs through our lives, at least the lives of those who wonder and wander and declare themselves to be lovers of Earth, humanity, and all Universal life.  Simple rules, simple steps, big gains for individuals and universe. 

In 2005, we offered the World Economic Forum the phrase: The Future by Design, not Default.  That was the year "Design" became a phenomena, the word of the month, a salvation, a new market place.  Now it is ubiquitous and rarely understood. What the heck is design thinking or design centered? 

And so the same thing is likely to happen with the word "Upcreation". It is easy to say, fun to say, to put a few words to.  Upcreation is very likely to slip away from its authenticity unless we use it with care ... as a way of exploring ourselves, the way we work together toward finding our way with good information, experimenting, feedback, the shared feelings we have about the past, present, and future.  

As my mind wanders through upcreation and the inspiration it offers me, I find myself sometimes believing myself to be in the midst of Alice's Wonderland, at other times a messy ugly reality for what I see to be our current conditions on Earth. 

I believe that there is no one who can understand upcreation without working their way through it, fiddling with it, asking questions, seeking proof, laughing at the zen way of it.  But, just think if enough of us could experience it as a group and then draw in more groups to find us all creating a world that is now ready, pleading for us for world wide upCREATION.  I think of us as Tomorrow Makers.  

Inquiry.  The dictionary dumbs down the meaning of this word, so I have gone to the Exploratorium for my definition of inquiry.  How often do you go into a white space, a space open and free from your existing assumptions? Your doubts and habits and certainties to inquire about something you know too little about? How many hours a day should be int the state of inquiry?  Inquiry and upcreation  go hand in hand for me. Usually when I spend good time with one or the other, I learn more about both. 

I would love to hear your thoughts, words, characteristics. I need other  views and vantage points, but not either/or thinking.  

Inquiry is the feature for my next journal page.