Fragmentation

and pieces of the puzzle.

Puzzles by StumpCraft

A recent Note on Substack captured my attention.

Nadim, I think this essay names something profoundly important that many in the regenerative movement are beginning to feel but have struggled to articulate clearly.

In my opinion, this also applies to the larger SPACE that the regenerative movement is a part of.

What is the SPACE?

The SPACE is my shorthand for the Metamodern, Game B, Liminal, Sensemaking, Integral, Regenerative, Intentional Communities, WeSpace, Wisdom Age, and Web 3.0 spaces. The SPACE is vast and growing, exciting to explore. And the SPACE is where the hope for a much better world may lie, perhaps beginning with a MOVEMENT.

I discovered the SPACE in 2019 and, in hindsight, I projected on to it my hopes and dreams. Not only is there no MOVEMENT, imo that dream is further away today than it was six years ago. The essay by Nadim nails one of the factors.

From Cohesion to Coherence & The Parasite in the Room by Nadim Hamdan

In this sense, we have achieved cohesion. We are the regenerative movement. We know each other’s language. We share a story about what is broken and what healing might look like.

There is a cohesion in the metamodern SPACE. We know the language. We follow the work of the Galaxy Brains. We share a story about why our civilization is unsustainable. We know what needs to change, everything. We know when change is needed, now and everything all at once. Consequently, we see a metacrisis without a solution emerging, not yet, but we have radical hope.

What We Are Still Missing

Despite shared intentions, the movement often remains fragmented across networks, narratives, and geographies.

Yes, that is what I see in the SPACE, fragmentation.

What We Are Still Missing

Despite shared intentions, the movement often remains fragmented across networks, narratives, and geographies. Many leaders carry this work in relative isolation, and few spaces exist where the movement can sense itself as a whole. Many collaboration attempts exist, yet they remain conversations (one strategy talk after another) while true coherence never quite takes root beneath them.

Nadim Hamdan focuses on coherence and I do not disagree. But I do want to add more pieces to the puzzle. In the metamodern SPACE, we understand complexity and the need for many perspectives. No one has, or can have, the whole picture. And we are all holding on to our own piece too tightly.

What the Movement Actually Needs

The movement already has enough frameworks and enough shared language. What it needs now are spaces where the field of the movement can be sensed together, where leaders who carry this work in relative isolation can discover that they are expressions of a coherent living system already trying to emerge.

And I love the frameworks of Galaxy Brains, but enough already!

AND, I am no longer looking to the leaders in the SPACE.

The pattern is recognisable at every scale. A team that lacks inner coherence produces meetings that spawn task forces that spawn sub-committees. An organisation that lacks coherence produces strategies that spawn initiatives that spawn working groups. A movement that lacks coherence produces networks that spawn networks that spawn networks of networks. The activity is real. The coordination is not.

For over six years I have been reading about networks of networks. I have seen several promising attempts that failed and that failure unacknowledged. And I am not optimistic that current attempts will succeed.

The best that I have seen are several small islands of coherence and, gratefully, I am a member of one of them.

At this point I want to say thank you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to…

Jonathan Rowson, Peter Limberger, Gregg Henriques, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Hanzi Freinacht, John Vervaeke, Jim Rutt, Jordan Hall, Jamie Wheal, Zak Stein, Bobby Azarian, Nate Hagens, Layman Pascal, Alexander Beiner and others.

I have learned a lot from you. I will never be the same. I am truly deeply grateful.

BUT,

But something should be obvious in my list of names. Something has been talked about, acknowledged and discussed with little change. Where are the women?

Could it be, I wonder, that there is a connection between the lack of coherence at scale in the SPACE, and the absence of women?

Personally, I am now more drawn to the voices of women than the voices of men, but not all men. I have convened a new substack, Final Waive Feminism. I do not think women are the solution to the metacrisis but, imo, they continue to be undervalued in the world and in the SPACE.

I began Metamodern Wannabes on October 29, 2023. That was an individual effort, and I would now like to work as part of a collective. And my focus has now shifted to elevating the voices of women. I see a role for men, and I would like to develop a Queen and her Knights approach. Together, hopefully, we will be a force for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.