Emergent Britain
Britain can be perceived as broken or it can be seen as stuck and it can also be seen as emergent. For Britain to be seen as broken it is being viewed from a perspective that a better Britain has passed and one can convincingly construct an argument for both the truth and for the falsehood of that statement. One can view Britain as stuck and that view is easier from a position of desperation, fear and depression. The view that Britain is emergent needs us to adopt a perspective of openness, free dialogue and hope. The one thing we can currently be sure of is that Britain is as it is, and we need to find the strength that allows us to sit with that and work with what we have, now.
For a new Britain to emerge from the imaginal cells that Jon Freeman refers to we need to have solutions which are systemic, emergent and participatory in place. We need to create the conditions for the perfect storm. Emergence comes from the ground up when the life conditions are exactly right. They are not only not from the top down, but in an emergent process, top down becomes irrelevant and impotent.
The perceived vacuum at Government level has arisen because it has stopped listening to the true messages of how Britain is and has failed to communicate and deliver solutions which are driven by what the country needs. It has taken a route driven by personal survival offering only what it thinks the country wants to hear. We should not try and fix this vacuum of leadership but recognise it as one of the key ingredients for the perfect storm. The vacuum leaves the space for the communication of others and for those who wish to participate in generating the climate of hope, which is required for change to emerge.
Emergence is from the ground up. It is fuelled by the recognition that if we have open dialogue with individuals who are prepared to participate and find solutions to smaller problems which mesh, without looking outside for others to “fix, large scale systemic change starts to generate momentum.
The components of emergent Britain start to come together as we have the open conversations about not only what we see as “broken” but what we can contribute to the “fix” The process will start when individuals, team leaders, head teachers, Health Care Trust managers and CEOs each empower themselves by saying this is what I recognise as a problem that I can help solve. The fuel and missing ingredient to the perfect storm is the recognition and switch from depression to hope. That happens when individuals recognise that they have always had the power and that they can implement changes in their own life conditions and surroundings. It may start with a conscious decision as to which bank you choose to be with, a choice which can empower instead of being a source of outrage, or communicating with our neighbours about what the neighbourhood could be like if we became active in being part of the solution and then taking the vital step of implementing that change. As we progress we will become bolder and exceed our own limits, achieving more than we could have imagined when we believed that Britain was broken.
CHE-UK has a role to play in both transmitting that message of hope but also in providing the meshwork to connect like minds and to provide insightful tools and support that actually help make the incremental shifts that jump start the emergent process.
Modern communications such as this Blog, the internet, social networks, tele-seminars and other media provide the means to rapidly disseminate information and provide the forum for it to take place without fear and repression. The requirement is now for the message of hope and empowerment to trigger the process that will fill the vacuum left by a lack of integral leadership and replace despondency and anger as the perception changes from Broken Britain to Emergent Britain.
