paradigm – Soul Reflection

Latticed Leadership

I was recently asked what my ideas were for a new government structure as I was so disparaging about our current western setup. And it’s made me think more deeply about my vision and wish to write it down for clarity and expansion.

Twenty years ago, I read The Aquarian Conspiracy by Marilyn Ferguson and she describes the paradigm shift from hierarchical governance to net or latticed leadership. It made sense to me then and even more sense to me now.

Because now I have actual experience of it. Our children’s Steiner school is run in this way, there is no head teacher but instead a college created by a selection of teachers, refreshed yearly by those who wish to step into the circle.

Not one person makes a decision for the school, everything is discussed and looked at alongside the philosophy and foundation of the school’s and Steiner’s teachings. There are plenty of differing opinions and yet somehow a decision is found, by the intention they all share, which is what is best for the school and our children.

Of course I am not privy to these meetings and I have no idea how easy or hard it can be to reach these satisfactory conclusions but I can tell you what it is like from the outside. I can tell you that there is sometimes frustration that we don’t have instant answers but have to wait for the weekly college meeting (but isn’t that just part of our insane instant gratification model of society?) yet equally it gives us the opportunity to approach any college member with our views or issues, rather than just one person who may not resonate with our personality.

I can tell you that during these past years of crazy, it was amazing to feel the college work hard to accommodate the broad range of fears and needs of both teachers and families rather than a dictate from one ego. It meant that our children survived their disrupted schooling with far less disorder than any other school I have witnessed.

And it makes sense. Why is leadership defined by one person? Why do we have health ministers that epitomise ill health in themselves and have no clue about the value of true wellness? Why do we have education ministers that know only the experience of their own schooling and nothing beyond that narrow border? Why do we have transport ministers that only want a foot in the door of government and so accept this tedious position with no thought to the environmental, social and retail impacts of their infrastructure. I could go on and on…. The leaders of our country are leaders because, more often than not, a bullish charm has pushed them ahead of their peers, not a passion for their subject or indeed, the subjects of society.

What if we completely rethought what a government is? Not a small shift, not proportional representation or any such minor shuffle, but a throw it all up in the air and create something utterly new.

Rishi, Liz, Kier, Boris… they are all cut from the same cloth. I want our country to be held by a circle of experts, passionate about their knowledge and their wish to grow the humanity of our society. A lattice, with no overall leader, but held by a movement of wisdom and expertise, intentionally conscious of the needs of our country and our people, wrapping us safely in the strength of their expansive connections and web.

Can you imagine that?

First published on social media on 30th October 2022

Facts

It is so easy to believe that what we know NOW is the absolute truth. Science is all about the miraculous, the knowledge above the masses, the elite few intelligentsia.

But really it is an industry fuelled by ego that preaches dogmatism despite each new discovery. Wisdom shows us that paradigm shifts have created waves and leaps that have blown old ‘facts’ out of the water. Yet we still hang on to the current truth rather than the reality that everything is up for rediscovery and new paradigms.

The science is never settled. I will accept 2+2=4, although even then I’m willing to see it through a different lens and be wrong. But everything else is a mix of culture, ego, timing, perspective and belief and all of that can turn on a dime.

#science #dogmatism #paradigm #ego #wisdom #belief #perspective #openmind #openheart

First Written on Social Media 7 May 2021

Anarchy

‘The one who tells the stories rules the world.’

Hopi Indian Proverb

About twenty years ago, I read the Aquarian Conspiracy by Marilyn Ferguson, a manifesto for personal and social transformation and, within that, I loved her call for a paradigm shift in social governance.

She called for a complete rewrite on the hierarchical structure of government, to be replaced with a lattice network of expertise. Whilst I believe in a natural hierarchy within communities based on skills and wisdom, I don’t believe or support our current model of hierarchy based on power and money.

So if we move from hierarchy where do we go? Anarchy?… If hierarchy is a body of authoritative officials organised in nested ranks, anarchy becomes the state of society without an authoritative governing body. It is popular to associate anarchy with chaos and confusion, but like most mainstream narratives these day, that’s a fear definition rather than a truth.

I think I was born an anarchist… either that or trained quickly before being consciously aware! Whichever way, I have always pushed back against authority for authorities sake. I deeply respect wisdom and experience and I am so happy to sit, listen and learn from those teachers, but following arbitrary rules for the purpose of control and order, under the opinion of someone I might not respect, doesn’t sit well with me.

So I have walked my own path of peaceful anarchy for many moons. I stepped out of the expectation of defined career and indeed also of further education; I healed myself without drugs; I birthed my children at home; I refuse to inject them with toxins; I arm myself with knowledge of health rather than bowing to the authority of medical dictators; I don’t social distance in times of viral epidemics because I believe human connect to be a better protector of health.

I don’t reject or conform to any party line out of principle, but out of instinct, personal education, experience and choice. I am my own person within this global tribe of connection. I don’t believe any of my choices have harmed anyone, I am conscious of my community and loved ones but I will not give my power away.

If change is required, I will endeavour to create it without asking some body of ‘authority’ to do it on my behalf. I will not wait for permission, the only thing I will wait for is clarity, wisdom and the right moment. What I have seen this year, 2020, is a whole world waiting for permission for their lives and all I want to do is teach them the power of anarchy.

‘We have to accept personal responsibility for uplifting our lives.’

Chögyam Trungpa, Tibetan Lama

Me, Myself, The Snob

I was brought up to be a Snob. Not with any real conscious intention, but just because that’s the way my family’s beliefs lay.

I believed that people who said ‘hay’atch’ instead of ‘aitch’ for the letter H were intellectually inferior; I believed that those who called supper ‘tea’ were common, likewise if napkins were called serviettes. I believed there were strata in society between humans and that our family was thankfully nearer the top than bottom.

I believed this because generation after generation of my family had all believed something similar for far too long.

At 18, I left my privileged echo chamber of private school (and I say this not without gratitude for the experiences and opportunities it provided) and fell into the real world. Not the real real world mind you. Public relations could hardly be called that, but a more culturally diverse environment than I was used to for sure.

In this world, the two A levels I had scraped were deemed major qualifications rather than the desperate failures by my family and academic peers. I was mixing with people whose backgrounds afforded me a window into lifestyles and upbringings that contrasted drastically to my own (and I, who thought I came from the broken side of the family, the rough edge of posh).

And then I dived further… over the years I waitressed and travelled and met more and more people who showed me over and over again how ridiculously narrow my familial belief system had been; how I had been raised to judge people by meaningless standards instead of learning to look into their hearts and meet them human to human.

I see that my family had no malice in their own judgements, they were products of their own upbringing, a continuation of the lineage of pomp and snobbery and done with as much kindness and love as those beliefs can afford.

But now I am entering a new era, a time and age where my own children are beginning their natural formation of opinions about the world around them and I am constantly checking in with myself as to the values I am modelling. Am I carrying old, unhelpful, unkind, judgmental beliefs that I am passing on to my kids or am I shifting the familial system to compassion, acceptance, difference and diversity? I know what I wish to model, but I’m sure my parents thought similarly too, I bet they thought they were raising progressive kids through their own shifts of self awareness and yet I feel their burden of unnecessary opinion heavy on my back.

I feel reactive and triggered by any form of superiority, be it qualifications, age or otherwise. I know now that the humblest and wisest of voices can come from any direction, without a cloak of ego announcing their arrival.

I wonder how my children will view me in another 30 years, what they will perceive to be antiquated notions and what they will choose to do differently.

As I say to my clients, as long as we are moving forward, no matter how slowly, we are still moving forward.

On, on I step, smashing my institutionalised snobbery, one day at a time.