Transcending the paradigm.

The measure of the value of a particular worldview must surely be the effects of behaviour, thoughts and feelings in the whole functional eco-systemic context.

On 19th March in an on-line co-creative session we launch our Holos.Earth Project 'Pilgrimage to a Holistic Future'. On this journey we will celebrate the significant marker of 100 years of the publication of Jan Smuts' seminal book 'Holism and Evolution' (1926) in a festival to take place in summer of 2026.

Holistic Systems Practice

The following two days, 20 and 21 March, we launch on-line an experimental training program, 'Holistic Systems Practice' that will be translated into Chinese live.

Pilgrimage

The intention of the pilgrimage is to learn together how to walk into an unknown and unpredictable future guided by the vision of human becoming. See: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/walk-us-holistic-future-the-holos-earth-project-zev7f/

The deep question is how to escape the prevailing paradigm. How does one escape one's own worldview? How does one transcend deep culture?

Transcending culture

Holism's author, Jan Smuts, already suggested in an article he wrote as a student at Cambridge University in 1893, 'Law - a Liberal Study':

“That person has the greatest culture who, through association with nature and the individual and collective life of humankind, past and present, has learned to think deepest, feel most, and see farthest." ? ?

Things fall apart

The Poet, William Butler Yeats penned these prophetic words:

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere?the ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst?are full of passionate intensity."

Program of action?

This pilgrimage will thus be about deep self-reflection - but characterised by compassionate engagement with humanity's evolutionary journey. Already in 1936 in the Preface to the third edition of 'Holism and Evolution' Smuts warned:

"Our race and our civilisation are today confronted with the alternatives of integration or disintegration … Holism points the way to the former as against the latter ... It therefore supplies a clue not only for philosophy but also for a programme of action. My practical business in life has been concerned more with the action than with the philosophy of Holism. But such is the ultimate influence of thought on action that the philosophy may yet prove no less important than the programme of action which the dire necessities of our time so urgently call for.”?

So ultimately, whilst this is about a program of action, it is also about understanding the 'frame', the prevailing worldview, by which that action is being guided. As Michael Hall suggests:

"Where there's a frame, there's a game."

Evaluating worldview

The measure of the value of a particular worldview must surely be the effects of behaviour, thoughts and feelings in the whole functional eco-systemic context.

• Is the response competitive or collaborative?
• Is it exploitative or regenerative?
• Does it impede natural evolution or enable it? ?

In the training program, 'Holistic Systems Practice', we explore both the deep 'frame' and the 'practice'. The essential 'frame' is described in this paper: https://www.academia.edu/107626924/The_Challenge_of_Transitioning_to_a_Sustainable_World_Evolving_Systems_Thinking_to_Holistic_Systems_Practice