Weaving Ourselves Back Together Through Co-Creation

At this time in our history,

we are in great need of processes that can help us weave ourselves back together.

We've lost confidence in our great human capabilities,

partly because we've been using organizational processes

that have treated us as machines.

"We've ended up separated and divided,

fearful and distrusting of one another.

We need processes to help us reweave connections,

to discover shared interests, to listen to one another's stories and dreams.

We need processes that take advantage of our natural ability to network,

to communicate when something is meaningful to us.

We need processes that invite us to participate, that honor our creativity and commitment to the organization. ”

*[From finding our way. Margaret J. Wheatley]

Let us dream,

Let us be real,

Let us be humble and re-learn from people who

have co-created for their home town.

And ask ourselves what should be the process that will weave us back together?

Which picture do you think represents ‘self-organization’ and which do you think represents 'resilience organization'?

There's nothing wrong with either one, but we are trying to learn from how life organizes itself; how it adapts, and evolves with the changes that come.

The diagram on the right shows the life structure of a living being.

What do we see from this diagram and what messages is it trying to show?

.........

You will see it does not only consist of one center in the living diagram.

Life creates itself through many nodes and all the nodes have its own function and every node is linked. Both the nodes and small units co-create to work as a whole.

The key is to "co-create"!

One of the most interesting definitions of life in modern biology is that it is “considered alive if it has the capacity to create itself”*. Life begins from the desire to create something original; to bring a new being into form.

*[from finding our way, Margaret J. Wheatley]

The question here is will we choose to create the organization, community, city like a living being or a machine?

If your answer is that we want to create a living, self-organizing, lively city...

Then we have to understand that organization is a process, not a structure!

“In the new story, we discover a world where life gives birth to itself using two powerful forces: the need to be free to create one’s self and the need to reach out for relationships with others. These forces never disappear from life. Even if we deny them.”

*[from finding our way, Margaret J. Wheatley]

This is not just positive writing or philosophy.

We live amongst self-organized communities everywhere,

We may call it informal meetings, informal projects, informal settlements,

a concentration of local businesses, informal markets.

People come together with a shared objective and create their “identity”

Share “information” and build their “relationship"

Then, the emergence of new leadership and the self-organization process takes place to find its way to new forms, new regulations and new solutions.

The question here is how can we learn and understand how each city and each community co-creates itself. We ourselves can start to observe, talk and listen to local people, and look for signs of a living community to understand what are the elements and processes that bring life to communities and cities. The process is like the spirit of place that weaves things together. If we can understand the process then we can start to see how can we nurture and strengthen it.

We have to learn how to create a process in which people can co-create their own place. The process should include a space where people can be themselves and through learning from each other new possibilities and solutions will emerge.. This is the way to uncover the capacity that lies within all of us."