This we know. The Earth does not belong to humans; humans belong to the Earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the daughters and sons of the Earth. Humans do not weave the web of life; they are merely a strand in it. Whatever they do to the web, they do to themselves.
– adaptation of quotation attributed to Ted Perry, and inspired by Chief Seattle (of the Duwamish and Suquamish Peoples)
Path To Change Institute was founded in February 2008 to support "The Great Work,” helping humanity to shift to a life-sustaining civilization in these perilous times of ecological destruction and human rights failures across the globe.
Specifically, we help cultivate humanity’s capacity for deeply honoring "the web of life", the perspective that all of life is deeply interconnected and precious. This viewpoint is central to many ancient wisdom traditions, and to contemporary complexity science.
We support The Great Work by synthesizing the best of ancient and modern traditions into programs, products and services in four key web-of-life areas:
- Creating Organic Organizations/Organizational Dynamics;
- Describing the Mystery/Systems Theory;
- Healing Mind-Body/the Neurosciences;
- Honoring Mother Earth/the Eco-sciences.
Our modern world is filled with myriad wonders – from technology that can fly people to outer space, or connect us by email in a heartbeat, to the capacity to savor foods from around the globe, and markets that can generate unprecedented wealth.
Still, our modern world has a shadow side – the Industrial Growth Dominator Society (IGDS): Industry’s quarterly bottom lines above human rights, human lives, other species and ecosystems; the pervasive ethos of growth-for-the-sake-of-growth (reminiscent of a cancer cell); the privileging of a few in systems of extraction and exploitation that dominate the many…
The results are catastrophic environmental change in the form of global warming, mass species extinction on a scale unknown for millions of years, and other environmental crises that threaten life on Earth as we know it. The prospects for human rights and human lives appear equally grim as we emerge from the bloodiest century in recorded history, as large-scale genocides and ethnic cleansings abound, as we contemplate war-without-end, as the AIDS pandemic ravages millions …
Many theorists attribute much of the root cause of our ills to a prevalent world view – certainly where the environmental crisis is concerned. The mechanistic view of the world that has been the cornerstone of the predominant scientific paradigm for centuries has contributed greatly towards seeing the world from anything but a framework of ecological/web-of-life interconnectedness. This worldview has contributed significantly toward technological wonders. Nonetheless, it has also contributed directly and indirectly toward creating many of the ecological and human rights crises in which we find ourselves.
Can humanity shift from its course with ecological and mass-homicidal destruction to a life-sustaining civilization?
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day I can hear her breathing.
— Arundhati Roy
“The Great Work” refers to the essential calling of our time — turning the planet and humanity from our current collision course with ecological and mass-homicidal destruction.
Renowned eco-philosopher and systems theorist Joanna Macy has called it “The Great Turning”, and frames it nicely as a shift from an Industrial Growth Dominator Society to a Life Sustaining Civilization.
Among Indigenous peoples, there are different ways of describing the shift. In particular, the Prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor from several peoples in South America speaks to many. The two-thousand year old prophecy foretold the ascendancy of the eagle, representing the mental and materialistic, driving the condor, representing the spiritual and heart-centered, almost into extinction. The modern eagle, the prevailing global culture, has almost destroyed the condor, the Indigenous and other ancient cultures. The prophecy speaks of a time when the condor will rise again and will fly together, wing to wing, in the same sky as the eagle.
Others call it "The Great Work.”
The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
– Albert Einstein
Paths To Change Institute supports The Great Work by cultivating humanity's capacity for deeply honoring “the web of life.”
We do this by drawing on select ancient and modern traditions that place a web-of-life worldview as central to their beliefs/theories and practices. Among ancient traditions, we especially – though not exclusively – highlight Indigenous wisdom. Among modern disciplines, we draw on advances in complexity science, which perceives many complex systems in nature, society and science as radically interconnected, non-linear, dynamical, emergent, etc. — a web of life. In particular, we focus on complexity science applications to eco-sciences, neurosciences, organizational dynamics and systems theory.
We support The Great Work by synthesizing the best of ancient and modern traditions into programs, products and services in four key web-of-life areas or “paths to change”:
- Creating Organic Organizations/Organizational Dynamics;
- Describing the Mystery/Systems Theory;
- Healing Mind-Body/the Neurosciences;
- Honoring Mother Earth/the Eco-sciences.
The aim of our programs, products and services in the areas of Creating Organic Organizations/Organizational Dynamics, Describing the Mystery/Systems Theory, Healing Mind-Body/the Neurosciences, Honoring Mother Earth/the Eco-sciences is to make a substantive impact on redressing significant ecological and human rights concerns.
The modes by which we make such impacts include, but are not limited to coaching; consulting; disseminating and diffusing learnings and practices through print media, broadcast media, the internet; retreats; rituals; therapy; trainings/workshops; transformative arts; transformative dialogues.
Healing Mind-Body/the Neurosciences
Meditation master and popular author Jack Kornfield, widely credited as being a seminal figuring in disseminating Buddhist mindfulness meditation practices throughout the West, recently described a 10-day meditation retreat for neuroscientists. He noted that at the end of the retreat, the lead scientist acknowledged that he had learned more about his mind in ten days of meditation than in ten years of study.
Lots of research has been underway in scientific circles for the last few decades to explore the impacts of meditation on our brains and minds. Paths to Change Institute supports efforts to widen this investigation to include other modalities, besides just meditation, for transforming the brain and mind in evidence-based ways. Of note, we hope to privilege Indigenous and intuitive traditions as on a par with — and in many cases more insightful and wise than — contemporary science. Our aim is not merely to expand and deepen exchanges between ancient traditions and modern disciplines, but to contribute significantly towards the diffusion of the most transformative practices throughout the general population.
In February 2008, we hosted a program at a major, international conference to contribute to these goals. We are currently in dialogue with a major nonprofit to create an expanded version of this program.
Honoring Mother Earth/the Eco-sciences
As global warming and other threats move more centrally into the agenda of mainstream life, we can expect more reliance on the eco-sciences and on practices for honoring the Earth, to help us find solutions to some of our worst crises.
Paths to Change Institute partners are passionate about collecting, developing and disseminating practices — drawn from miscellaneous ancient and modern sources — for embodying (not merely thinking cognitively about) a web-of-life worldview. We combine explorations of modern eco-sciences with practices from Indigenous and other traditions that have fostered living in harmony with the “natural world” for eons.
Our focus on systemic change will start with introducing practices to help thought-leaders and change-agents connect with the web of life in deep ways that could significantly transform their worldviews. This will, in turn, influence how they and their organizations, communities & movements approach finding solutions to our environmental crisis.
Currently we are in conversation with a major director at one of the top US governmental climate labs, and with a few major figures in the sustainability field, about possibilities. We will launch a major program in this area in fall-winter 2008.
Creating Organic Organizations/Organizational Dynamics
In the industrialized world, organizations are often been built on linear, mechanistic principles. We “reengineer organizations”, “re-structure” them by moving images of boxes on paper, speak of “control and command”, etc. These approaches can be very effective within a certain range of circumstances, and highly ineffective within another range.
There are other – often dramatically more effective – ways of organizing groups, organizations, communities and societies based on principles of self-organizing systems found in nature. The official website for the business best-seller, The Starfish and the Spider notes, One thing that business, institutions, governments and key individuals will have to realize is spiders and starfish may look alike, but starfish have a miraculous quality to them. Cut off the leg of a spider, and you have a seven-legged creature on your hands; cut off its head and you have a dead spider. But cut off the arm of a starfish and it will grow a new one. Not only that, but the severed arm can grow an entirely new body. Starfish can achieve this feat because, unlike spiders, they are decentralized; every major organ is replicated across each arm. But starfish don't just exist in the animal kingdom. Starfish organizations are taking society and the business world by storm, and are changing the rules of strategy and competition. Like starfish in the sea, starfish organizations are organized on very different principles than we are used to seeing in traditional organizations. Spider organizations are centralized and have clear organs and structure. You know who is in charge. You see them coming. Starfish organizations, on the other hand, are based on completely different principles. They tend to organize around a shared ideology or a simple platform for communication- around ideologies like al Qaeda or Alcoholics Anonymous. They arise rapidly around the simplest ideas or platforms, ideas or platforms that can be easily duplicated. Once they arrive they can be massively disruptive and are here to stay, for good or bad. And the Internet can help them flourish. So in today's world starfish are starting to gain the upper hand. How can Toyota leverage starfish principles to crush their spider-like rivals, GM and Ford? How did tiny Napster cripple the global music industry? Why is free, community based Wikipedia crushing Encyclopedia Britannica overnight? Why is tiny Craigslist crippling the global newspaper industry? Why is Al Quaeda flourishing and even growing stronger? In today's world to answer this it is essential to understand the potential strength of a starfish organization.
Highly successful organizations are applying principles from complexity science beyond just “starfish” leaderless teams – from several large hospital systems dramatically reducing
MRSA infections (a leading cause of death in healthcare settings) by using a self-organizing practice called Positive Deviance to Brazil’s achieving one of the lowest HIV infection rates in the world through practices aligned with complex adaptive systems; from experiments around the globe to build more effective institutions by integrating insights from cycles of creative destruction and renewal in natural systems, to world-class business thinkers applying frameworks from evolutionary biology to develop winning strategies.
However, the critical insights in this emerging field of creating “organic organizations” do not all come from modern science. Several ancient cultures based (and continue to base) their forms of organizing on principles drawn from studying and living in harmony with natural systems for millennia. Our Founder & President’s work with the Dineh/Navajo and other Indigenous peoples in this area can serve as prototypes for applying ancient practices to contemporary issues – with the Indigenous people themselves retaining complete rights and decision-making over use of our/their traditions and practices.
Further, Paths to Change Institute partners have applied principles of “organic organizations” to a range of settings, from the redesign of a multibillion dollar-corporation, and a conference at Princeton University on complexity science organizational approaches to combating HIV/AIDS globally, to reorganizing a prominent disaster-relief agency, to the design of Paths to Change Institute itself.
Paths to Change Institute is moving quickly to bring together several Indigenous and non-Indigenous colleagues specializing in organizational change to launch this program area.
Describing the Mystery/Systems Theory
In systems theory, writers like theoretical physicist, Fritjof Capra, and systems theorist, Joanna Macy, have begun to explore how many Asian religions have deep insights into complex dynamical systems that contemporary science is only beginning to understand. Capra devotes several parts of his books to this; and Macy’s Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory is deeply insightful — a phenomenal contribution to systems theory.
Paths To Change Institute is interested in deepening this exploration, with the addition of including Indigenous traditions where they have not been prominent in the general discourse. We are in conversation with a few prominent systems theorists, scientists and Indigenous wisdom-keepers. In particular, in May 2008 we meet with one of the most distinguished faculty members of the renowned Schumacher College, who has taken a strong interest in this program area. He has promised to network us to several of his colleagues — the visiting scientists, theorists and others who comprise Schumacher’s faculty, and who are among the best in the world in their fields. At the same time, we will be in touch with several Indigenous wisdom-keepers who participated in one of our inaugural events such as Apela Colorado, Yacine Kouyate and Malidoma Somé, about participating in this work.
How You Can Get Involved as a Donor, Client, Collaborator or Learner
A range of voices from ancient cultures and industrialized societies has confirmed that humanity is in the midst of a perilous transition. Ecological, human rights and other crises have challenged our very capacity to survive as a species. We are at a crossroads where we can decline, or we can make a shift to a life-sustaining civilization. We invite you to join us in our efforts to cultivate humanity’s capacities for deeply honoring the web of life – in support of The Great Work.
You can get involved in several important ways: supporting our emerging nonprofit as a founding donor, collaborating with us, becoming a network collaborator, referring potential network collaborators, becoming one of our clients, and joining our mailing list.
Learn more about these and other opportunities to get involved.
Paths to Change Institute was founded in February 2008. Within just a few short months we have:
- Had a significant presence at a major, international conference.
- Worked with a high-quality documentary film crew, that regularly shoots for PBS, to cover our events on Healing Mind-Body/the Neurosciences and Twin-Spirit and Two-Spirit Indigenous peoples at the above-mentioned major, international conference. This generated footage for four films, for which we are pursuing completion funds.
- Been invited by a major nonprofit to collaborate with them on producing an expanded version of our healing modalities panel and intensives for an expanded audience.
- Established connections with major figures from the Indigenous world and contemporary sciences who are interested in being a part of our work.
Over the next few months we will pursue the projects listed above – and others; continue to build our base of donors, collaborative partners and clients; and continue to strengthen our infrastructure. Please bookmark our site and return often for new developments and updates.
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