The Holon Institute

Transformation begins in the space between letting go and letting in. The House of Beautiful Business and The Holon Institute are hosting The PolyOpportunity Retreat at The Garrison Institute from April 11–13, 2025—an intimate gathering designed to explore how uncertainty can be a catalyst for creativity, connection, and change. Join Dr. Angel Acosta, Sará King, M.A., Ph.D., Douglas Rushkoff, Agnes Callard, and more at The Garrison Institute as we engage in deep dialogue, reimagine possibility, and co-create new ways of being in a rapidly shifting world. Limited spots remain—secure yours now: https://lnkd.in/eweu9mUX #ThePolyOpportunity #transformation #creativityinuncertainty #GarrisonInstitute #mindfulleadership #systemschange

We just published the program lineup for The PolyOpportunity Retreat at The Garrison Institute, a former monastery in the Hudson Valley, from April 11-13! It will be a wild mix of stimulating intellectual inquiry, sensuous imagination, and outlandish forest adventures… Check it out: https://lnkd.in/emJUu6y5 Some highlights: ??A special stand-up show about our weird human-digital future with media theorist and social critic Douglas Rushkoff ??"It"-philosopher Agnes Callard (“Open Socrates”) in conversation with economist Robin Hanson about the meaning of life (and more....:) ??“Troubadour animist” Sophie Strand exploring “the body as a portal” with consciousness scholar Neil Theise ??Nayeema Raza live-recording an episode of her Smart Girl Dumb Questions podcast with a surprise guest ??Caterina Fake, the investor, serial entrepreneur, and founder of Flickr, discussing the possibility of kindness in business, with venture firm M13’s W. Christine Choi and Matt Hoffman ??Futurist Matt Klein, tech policy expert Alexis Crews, diversity and inclusion leader Jennifer Brown, and planetary identity scholar and Berggruen Institute Fellow Boris Shoshitaishvili, PhD examining what might come after "dark mode" ?? The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities founder and academic director Roger Berkowitz proposing some lessons the humanities might hold for "the new human" ??And many more... ??All of it masterfully hosted and facilitated by Dr. Angel Acosta You can buy a weekend pass including lodging, or a commuter pass without lodging. We’re almost at capacity – buy your pass now! ?? https://lnkd.in/emJUu6y5

The The Holon Institute believes in the transformative power of emergence. This requires us to go beyond assumed conclusions and open ourselves to the journey of illumination. This work is driven by the abundant possibility created through embodied exploration and experimentation – by coming together, The #PolyOpportunity will expand the aperture of possibility in the collective consciousness so that we may realize realities previously unknown. I hope you can join us in this journey, we'd love to have you along. https://lnkd.in/ggSjq5Ja

Is this it? Is this really all there is? A warming climate. Collapsing ecologies. Moral dissolution. Zero-sum politics. Conflict.?A permanent state of polycrisis? Or can polycrisis be an opening for a new reality we create together? We need a new trajectory. There must be an opening for a new reality we imagine and create together. A reality that transcends existing frameworks, where a plurality of stories, paradoxes, and truths strengthen one other, embracing living systems and repositioning business within a new ecology. A new life-centered economy. ? Call it the planetary or interdependence era. Today’s polycrisis reveals our inescapable interconnectedness. Because everything is connected, we have both obligation and opportunity to imagine and negotiate new possibilities and mobilize together. Our practice of leadership itself must transform — we cannot possibly tackle planetary challenges alone. Only a global movement can explore and learn a new way forward. In any case, it must begin. This is why Renoorable is partnering with the House of Beautiful Business, the Acosta Institute, The Holon Institute and a network of some of the world's most beautiful businesses on a new breakthrough initiative to create a new, optimistic reality together: The PolyOpportunity. Throughout 2025, this initiative will bring together leaders from business and other sectors through: ?? 4 in-person gatherings on 4 continents (Berlin, New York, Tangier, Istanbul) ??A series of online public forums ??A 12-week digital learning program The focus will be on five opportunity areas – distinct yet connected – and nine powers that provide us with the skills needed to realize PolyOpportunity for our organizations, our societies, our planet, and ourselves. 5 OPPORTUNITIES: ??Open Curation: A new way of learning ??Regenerative Economics: A new value system ??Collective Healing: A new societal pact ??Extended Consciousness: A new relationship with technology ??Planetary Citizenship: A new form of belonging 9 POWERS: ??Attention ??Resonance ??Awe ??Humility ??Imagination ??Intimacy ??Literacy ??Resilience ??Time As we step into a new era where human and (powerful) artificial intelligence will coexist, these human powers (together with our human values) will be crucial. The PolyOpportunity will facilitate new stories, ideas, and solutions that can become new foundations of a world where all life thrives. Renoorable joins this movement because we believe in a future where human flourishing and planetary health are one. We'll be sharing more soon, including questions we hope to explore and insights from this global conversation. We'll also have news to share about ideas, solutions and - yes - new beautiful businesses that we will explore and build as part of this movement. For now, we invite you to learn more: https://lnkd.in/gM5mJrrb #Sustainability #Innovation #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #AIforGood #VentureStudio #Climatetech #ClimateAction

The The Holon Institute believes in the transformative power of emergence. This requires us to go beyond assumed conclusions and open ourselves to the journey of illumination. This work is driven by the abundant possibility created through embodied exploration and experimentation – by coming together, The #PolyOpportunity will expand the aperture of possibility in the collective consciousness so that we may realize realities previously unknown. I hope you can join us in this journey, we'd love to have you along. https://lnkd.in/dsfAqXGm

At The Holon Institute, we believe stories are at the heart of metasystemic change in the world. This is because our systems are an emergent phenomenon of the stories that we collectively believe, tell, and buy into. Being human is inherently an act of radical narrative creativity. Every day we are creating meaning through stories about who we are, what we are doing, and why we do what we do. Some of these stories are front of mind – these are the stories we are explicitly aware of–actively turning words, feelings, emotions, and experiences around in our hearts and minds until we can make sense of them. Then there are the stories that are not explicit, the stories that hang out in the background. These are the stories that create?rational strongholds.?They inform everything we think, say, and do but inhibit the opportunity to consciously create. If they’re left unexamined,?rational strongholds rob us of the potential to engage in change of any kind. Trace and Tina share more in our latest newsletter – https://lnkd.in/gvfTGME5

At The Holon Institute, we believe stories are at the heart of metasystemic change in the world. This is because our systems are an emergent phenomenon of the stories that we collectively believe, tell, and buy into. Being human is inherently an act of radical narrative creativity. Every day we are creating meaning through stories about who we are, what we are doing, and why we do what we do. Some of these stories are front of mind – these are the stories we are explicitly aware of–actively turning words, feelings, emotions, and experiences around in our hearts and minds until we can make sense of them. Then there are the stories that are not explicit, the stories that hang out in the background. These are the stories that create?rational strongholds.?They inform everything we think, say, and do but inhibit the opportunity to consciously create. If they’re left unexamined,?rational strongholds rob us of the potential to engage in change of any kind. Trace and Tina share more in our latest newsletter – https://lnkd.in/gvfTGME5

The polycrisis is a complex and multifaceted web of systemic failures. The way through this predicament is by actualizing latent human creative potential. The PolyOpportunity series is designed to facilitate new stories, ideas and solutions that become the foundations of a world where all of life thrives. The PolyOpportunity is a holonic response to the polycrisis: proof that new modalities are needed for radical AND achievable long-term change. Learn more: polyopportunity.com

As 2025 begins The Holon Institute team is reflecting on the work ahead of us and our place in the broader ecosystem of transformation. Civilizational-scale transformation is possible, but it will require new approaches. This is why we've partnered with the House of Beautiful Business and the Acosta Institute to craft The PolyOpportunity –??a breakthrough initiative to focus on the opportunities we have and the skills we can hone to create a new, optimistic reality together. We are struck by the fluidity and contours of our respective organizations. Each of us is bound by the shared values of emergence and permeable organizational membranes. Each of us participates in the greater murmuration of global transformation, across sectors and disciplines. Could this be said of institutional philanthropy? As we actualize The PolyOpportunity, critical relationships are more important than critical mass. Flipping the prevailing paradigm of scale that animates institutional philanthropy, we can learn from complex living systems that resilience and adaptation is modulated by a web of relationships. The central nodes of this web are critical to the health of the ecosystem as they direct the traffic and flow of resources across the ecosystem. By investing in critical relationships, resources can be directed to the smaller free agents working at the edge of change that are missed by traditional philanthropy. Institutional philanthropy has inherited both the bureaucracy and risk aversion of their corporate cousins, making them phenomenal levers of transformation using *proven* strategies but incapable of working at the edge of change where environments are dynamic, complex, and emergent. Additionally, the scale of institutional philanthropy, and the systems required for such scale, incentivize “impact” metrics that justify said scale. This creates a funding bias towards organizations that ‘mirror’ the philanthropic foundation in regard to operating structures, financial reporting, and governance, creating a ‘market gap’ where alternative organizational structures are missed or dismissed as non feasible grantees, either because they are too small or cannot easily quantify the impact of their work. This is all predicated on outdated ontological views about how change happens. Traditional philanthropy was designed to fund positive change in a world that looks radically different from the world today. To successfully actualize the world we know is possible, resources must be directed towards as many open-source knowledge systems, experiments, prototypes, and mutual aid networks as possible. While we believe traditional philanthropy is still needed in our world, we also need philanthropic resources channeled to the edge of change where small dynamic networks of change makers are working in real time to build local, relational, and adaptive systems. This is why The PolyOpportunity series is more important than ever. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/dsfAqXGm

We’re very excited to announce The PolyOpportunity, a multi-track experience crafted in partnership with House of Beautiful Business and Acosta Institute, coming to you in 2025! - four in-person gatherings across four continents (a Salon in Berlin, a Retreat in Hudson Valley/NY, a Festival in Tangier, and a Bootcamp in Istanbul); - a 12-week digital learning journey; - and six Open House online public forums. For it is dawning on us: There is no going back to?‘progress.’?We must create a new reality together. One that transcends liberalism, populism,?and techno-optimism alike.?One where a plurality of stories, paradoxes, and truths strengthen one other. The PolyOpportunity is a call to imagine a future beyond the Anthropocene, beyond super-optimized greed, beyond extractive industries, beyond divisive politics. A bid to shape an economy where beauty is imperative, where diverse life thrives, and where technology fuses with biology to serve greater goals. Call it the planetary, more-than-human, or life-centered era. In any case, it has begun. Over the course of four months, we will explore five major Opportunities and how they interrelate: -????Regenerative Economics (a new value system) -????Extended Consciousness (a new relationship with technology) -????Collective Healing (a new societal pact) -????Planetary Citizenship (a new form of belonging) -????Open Curation (a new way of learning) We will also study ten "Powers" to realize them: Humility, Attention, Imagination, Conviction, Courage, Energy, Intimacy, Resilience, Laughter, and Time. And we'll do it with everything we've got: intellect, heart, spirit, body, and most importantly, community. Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/ggSjq5Ja You can pick and choose, or take part in the full journey. In any case, I hope you will join us!