Our Whole Systems Design offers a radically transformative social-ecological future vision in the face of collapse: the creation of Islands of Sanity in a sea of destruction.

All our governance levels and most institutions currently still operate within a business-as-usual paradigm. Incremental change and improved efficiencies in the face of negative tipping points and accelerating compounding systemic issues are not enough to enable us to face collapse with dignity.

Each bioregion needs a functional ecosystem of collapse-accepting partners that can operate across disciplines to (re)design communities for greater resilience within bioregional carrying capacities (that will change as our predicament bites).

We need fractal exemplars operating in service of all life, which become the go-to transformational options as existing systems look increasingly deficient and obsolete.

If we see nature everywhere, even in our way of seeing, we can begin to pay attention to the ‘coming into being’ of the whole through mutual reciprocity (interbeing) with its parts. Neither the whole nor the parts are primary. They co-arise. Nothing is outside the wholeness of nature, as it is not a thing, but a process of ‘coming into being’ through relationship. From this perspective everything is ‘natural’ and ‘nature’ manifests through everything.

— Daniel Christian Wahl —

Collapse awareness informs us human survival will rely on cohesive communities, operating within systems boundaries, in service of ALL life, tailored for place. Yet to get there we need collapse-aware groups and alliances that can effectively integrate visionary participatory whole systems design and emergent self-organizing bottom-up initiatives.

From this inclusive and participatory perspective of nature we can re-evaluate all our social and technological achievements in the light of the crucial questions:

How does this innovation affect nature’s life support systems?

Does this innovation increase systemic health and resilience?

Is the proposed ‘solution’ likely to lead to an evolutionary dead-end or does it create conditions conducive to life?

Daniel Christian Wahl

Collapse acceptance compels us to do (far) more than just have a better prepared emergency response team or the most elegant suite of renewable technologies for a region: it urges us to anticipate and design for emerging realities and highly disruptive conditions to all our systems: governance, education, economic, ecological, agricultural… the list goes on.

It requires us to continually question our systems-ethical priorities – personal and collective: What ought we spend our budgets on? How ought we use our land and resources? What is our carrying capacity and how do we preserve or improve it? What ought our economy look like? How ought we govern? How do we support other islands of sanity to create a resilience network, an archipelago?

We might aspire to becoming antifragile, yet that is highly unlikely given the scale of disruptions expected – still, we will try. Whole Systems Design integrates all these issues.

How will we navigate toward Islands of Sanity?

  • We will build shared understanding of the need for inner development and outer, fractal, ethical whole systems design responses that will improve the quality and dignity of life in the common interests of humanity and nature.
  • We will help facilitate the alignment and integration of bottom-up initiatives, social-ecological entrepreneurs, and policy and decision makers; identify and unlock potentials and synergies; and progressively redirect resources from failing old systems towards more climate resilient (collapse-prepared) regions living within their (future) ecological limits.
  • We will catalyze the creation of Systems Design Laboratories to design geographical collapse-prepared intentional communities— an archipelago of Islands of Sanity (collapse-aware, empowered, and better prepared exemplar communities).

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Strategic Partnership Alliances

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times.
But that is not for them to decide.
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

 -- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring --

Whole Systems Design combines our prior offerings with a crow’s nest vision and a whole systems approach. 

This is a scary and audacious calling. We cannot do this alone. We will seek Strategic Alliance Partners that are capable, courageous, conscious, collapse-aware and collapse-accepting, preferably with some legitimate authority and influence. 

From a whole systems perspective (not just our business perspective) our ideal Whole Systems Design partners are transformative individuals who still have links to organizations and networks that might also be influenced to see the need for collapse-awareness and -preparedness. If you can invite us in – to walk with you – we might be able to influence your organization/ institution and facilitate emergence in ways that don’t just move the goalposts but lift the whole playing field.

These collaborations, networks of networks, require sufficiently informed direction to garner critical mass to overcome institutional inertia; and a high-enough center of gravity (of capability, maturity, consciousness etc) to enable them to commit available time, energy and resources to collective sense-making and forward movement on behalf of the whole system.

And Now What will be a catalyst, with multiple potential roles:

  • identifying core group/s with the requisite capability, maturity, collapse-acceptance
  • educating and facilitating for group alignment, coherence and priority setting
  • guiding crow’s nest strategy through systemic meta-frames 
  • assisting transdisciplinary integration by facilitating whole system design charettes
  • assisting alliance partners in community engagement
  • coaching and mentoring partners with the experience and skills to implement the designs, in real, diverse communities tailored for different situations.

And Now What offer to engage, catalyze, educate, and align transdisciplinary ecosystems of collapse-aware partners with the capability, maturity, and influence to conduct and deliver the holistic systems-ethical bioregional design necessary to anticipate and prepare for collapse.

Are you ready to step up to transformational leadership and explore beyond the certainty
of the known, even as it may come at personal risk?

Are you a Shambhala Warrior…?

If so:  we invite you to join us to serve and guide on behalf of engaged (bio)regions

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