Presencing: Blending sensing and presence

Being Unflinching

As it says on the introduction to this website, the concept of being unflinching refers to having the resolve, determination, and courage to remain steady and unchanged, especially in the face of adversity or challenge. This quality is about inner strength and steadfastness, it speaks to an individual’s ability to stand firm, unwavering, particularly in situations that may be daunting or challenging.

Presencing

Five months ago, I began to write about the concepts of presencing, sensing, presence, and Theory U. (see: https://unflinching.blog/?s=presencing)

Much of Theory U was developed by Otto Scharmer in the time since he joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) twenty years ago. (see: https://unflinching.blog/?s=scharmer)

We are being increasingly confronted with the consequences of environmental, economic, and social collapse. It is increasingly difficult to hide from these systematic failures.

An Emerging Third Option

Otto Scharmer recently wrote, “An Emerging Third Option: Reclaiming Democracy from Dark Money & Dark Tech. Seven Observations On 2024 and What’s Next” by Otto Scharmer, medium, November 17, 2024. I really don’t like quoting anyone extensively, but Scharmer distills a lot of what he has learned about systems-based change in his article about an emerging third option. He is one of an increasing number of thinkers that are recognizing all of the systems we once depended upon, are failing.

Great upheavals are opportunities to bring different, and hopefully improved systems into being.

In the seven observations & reflections below I offer some of my own initial sensemaking as part of a broader conversation happening now. These points reflect my own experiences from a viewpoint of awareness-based systems change: the idea that for deep change to happen, we need to focus not only on the social systems “above the ground”, but also on the deeper conditions of social soil (figure 1).

When people talk about ‘social systems’ they usually refer to the observable and tangible (processes, procedures, structures, behavior patterns). But what I mean by social soil are the less visible inner conditions, what is beneath the surface, the quality of awareness (attention and intentions), and the quality of relationships that affect how we operate. The social field, the sum total of our relationships, is a combination of these two elements: social systems and social soil.

An Emerging Third Option: Reclaiming Democracy from Dark Money & Dark Tech

Seven Observations and Reflections

1. DINO (Democracy in Name Only): The Unholy Alliance of Dark Money and Dark Tech

What we are seeing is a democracy whose soil is being degraded. You could call such a system DINO, democracy in name only, because a democracy without a grounding in facts and quality public conversation is not a democracy. In the language of the figure 1 above, its soil and root systems are being degraded.

2. It’s difficult to listen when your funding depends on not listening

The Democratic Party, and with it the Harris candidacy, are a stunning embodiment of not listening.

Thus, my second observation is simply this: the campaign of the Democratic Party (not just Harris) lost touch with the majority of the country that lives outside its political bubble. In other words, it didn’t listen.

3. It’s the Economy

Business as a force for good will be one of the most important go-to places in the coming years. Business is the only place in society where the whole production function comes together. All other sectors — including NGOs and governments — just talk about it. But in business it actually happens.

So what’s the late 2024 message for systems change? In the US, many of these systems will be at least partially dismantled from within. Environmental regulation. Financial regulation. Labor regulation. Basic human rights. You name it. It will turn the clock back at least to some degree, and as a consequence, we will see completely unnecessary suffering.

What, then, is ours to do? What can we do to continue working for the change that we all want to see?

Two things. One is to not only to defend the functioning of our core institutions, but to actually improve how they work.

The other thing we can do is to shift the primary focus from top-down — regulating the change we want to see — toward bottom-up: co-generating and embodying the change we want to see. Instead of government being the primary instigator of societal change, businesses, civil society, and leaders across institutions must learn how to work together, how to organize around shared awareness and intentions across many institution and sector boundaries

4. There Is a Third Option

What’s missing obviously is a viable third option that would disrupt and transform the status quo by leaning into and operating from an awareness of the emerging future.

Figures 2 illustrates this by depicting two different ways of operating: with minds, hearts, and wills that are either open or closed.

5. Islands of coherence can combat the illusion of insignificance

So what’s next? Where do you find the seeds and shoots of the new? Just like in nature, they emerge and grow within the context of the old system, and they are visible in the form of living examples around the world. There are three main barriers that prevent them from growing and being replicated: the illusion of insignificance; lack of connection; and lack of courage.

6. Islands of coherence can link up to ecosystems of coherence

In order to generate change, islands of coherence need to be connected — with each other and with those that are not yet fully formed. Those connections can be made with the help of generative holding spaces that weave the islands into an ecosystem of coherence and that realign attention, intention, and agency at the scale of the whole.

7. Islands of coherence can catalyze individual and collective agency

The third barrier that for example our participants in u-lab tell us is holding them back, is fear. How can we stengthen the capacity to tap into our unconditional courage, into our true sources of “action confidence”? Fighting the power of fear by confronting it head-on usually doesn’t quite work. What does work is a) creating safe containers that allow people to open up to each other and connect, and b) tapping into a deeper sense of purpose and passion that simply makes the fear factors fading away. The more we tap into what we believe matters most, the more the disabling fear-based environment begins to fade away.

To advance these profound societal shifts we need to cultivate the social soil. And just as the farmer needs a plow and other tools to cultivate the soil of the land, the social change maker and leaders need social leadership tools that cultivate the social soil. They entail:

Becoming aware: bending the beam of attention back onto ourselves
Generative listening: listening with your mind and heart wide open
Generative dialogue: making systems sense, see, and change themselves
Presencing: deep sensing by meeting the highest future in the moment, in the now
Co-imagining: clarifying the future that we want to create
Co-creating: exploring the future by doing
Ecosystem governance: organizing around common intention and shared attention