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Getting Existential IS the creative path to life. Hilary Bradbury on developmentalist conversation

We’d convened for months. And then came our final Constructivist Adult Development coLAB session AKA From Chopsticks to Tchaikovsky: Developing repertoire for personal and systems resilience at a time of planetary crisis. What had we learned, what were the gifts, what’s next?

For me it continued the inquiry into how to live in the midst of climate change onslaught. I see this more as an existential inquiry of how to live in the face of death. It requires maturity within and between us to tackle such a question. This may explain why such conversations need special conditions.  But let me back up a little.

Our check in question for the final session asked each participant how have you practiced with developmentalist ideas from this coLAB? We looked especially for updates on how developmental theory helps us in a group context at this time of eco-system crisis. The closing ritual included a set of prompts used for all participants in all coLABs and intended to allow us notice anew what’s important for us individually.

 “Because of my journey through this coLAB I… I’ve encountered/ chosen/ gained…

Andrea, a participant who action researches within the super-hierarchical settings of Southeast Asia, spoke to a new community potential she felt: “Because of my journey into and through this coLAB I am more aware in the world about my range of choices in how I participate and intervene, and I feel much more like a co-traveler with others. Not with everyone but certainly with people like those here who have an openness to being on their journeying together. And that’s a gift thank you.” 

Dana, who co-facilitated, remarked on his own growth also as a teacher of this work: “I’m a little more patient and I also have more appreciation of the complexity of these ideas and maybe how to teach them a little better. And because I’ve encountered my lack of patience and been able to turn towards it, I’m grateful to have been with this group.”

Skip, a participant who spends much time facilitating others in action research processes of the Global South reflected on the quality of facilitation he experienced, saying: “we spend a lot of time in in online spaces together but this is consistently one of the more emotive and deeper spaces that is in one hand cerebral but also very personal and very exploratory and I appreciate the opportunity to be in those spaces and to be vulnerable and to be able to connect with people who are also exploring similar questions that pose a challenge for all of us. It’s really a great honor to be able to be in the company of those folks and to have facilitated and curated so well so I appreciate that and I’ve learned so much along the way so thank you.”

Julian, our youngest participant experienced becoming more self-affirming and constructivist in outlook; he says: “the gift that I receive is an affirmation and strengthening of my courage and love within my “capital S self” to step up, to speak up, to speak out and get comfortable with myself. Another gift is of being more aware and cautious in noticing what is going on and accepting that is just perfectly fine. By shifting my perspective and viewing life in a particular situation, it changes the situation for me. Thank you to all.”

Hilary, the lead co-facilitator, shared: “What’s landed for me is that we had difficulty grappling explicitly with developmental ideas at a personal level. We’re uncomfortable with defining ways of speaking as inhabiting certain stages of development.  It may be more helpful to see developmental ideas as simply part of our cultural-cognitive environment.  For example, post-Trump election we hear the evolutionary-developmental idea that thesis (“woke culture”) moved to antithesis (“right-wing culture”) from which a new synthesis is possible (yet to be seen!) This formulation originates with Hegel who saw world history progressing because the seeds of a next stage are always contained in the previous stage.  That’s an example of developmental perspectives not being overly personal. The connection to the personal is that we are also personally shaped by an historical context – as we live with particular social – historical moments. This coLAB had me look at the interaction. It suggested that, if we keep our wits about us, we can in turn help shape the moment we find ourselves in. The moment is not all there is; we shape that moment.  But first we must, more deeply, see the reality of the moment we meet. Can I/ we make space to give and receive feedback, can we be in inquiry together?  It’s often difficult and we feel frozen.  As I feel the despair about environmental issues post Trump, I can create a space within myself and look to a variety of microworlds – say in local politics or work I do – to encourage more conscious evolution toward feedback sharing and being in inquiry together.”

We turned to the question of how the AR+ context itself may be developing…

AR+ participants have been having conversations on this topic as the year concludes where we’ve already acknowledged a desire both for meeting in person in 2025 and to have a regular zoom “coffee-space” for unstructured “emergence. In this closing a participant wondered whether the rich microworld of the coLAB can be enlarged? What is a useful way to think about scale?

What about scale & replication?

Hilary, ever tickled by this question of scale (a big one among action researchers), shared that in other parts of AR+ (e.g., among the ARJ associate editors) we’re beginning to think through what “scale and scope” may mean for action researchers. It’s not straightforward. “Typically, when we think of scale we’re thinking in industrial era ideas of big & machine like. Meg Wheatley’s three stages of organization development are helpful in my own thinking into a different vein.  Wheatley imagines development not in terms of a (modernist) growth model. At the same time she’s concerned with how systems of influence get established and sees influence as a development, an evolving from network through community. If network is more transactional and transitional, community is more relational, entangled. So applying the thinking, the question becomes “How does AR+ have influence (on processes and practices of knowledge creation)? We look and see where already we ripple effects. I see, e.g., the evolution of ARJ over twenty years as expressed in its quality choicepoints. These have grown to include a focus on reflexivity and concern for sustaining the work.  This is a more constructivist and useful approach to scholarship. Maybe it’s time ask what is our shared contribution  – as a system of influence – at this time? We acknowledge what we bring to the global teeming eco sphere of evolutionary learning. This feels like a worthy inquiry to take with us into 2025.

Hilary’s concluding reflection on the gaps between coLAB and life.

As the one who called this coLAB together and took responsibility for “keeping the show on the road” over the months, I reflect on the gap between being in a coLAB (with its conscious concern for process and conversational patterns) and being in everyday life, as a time of mounting eco-social crisis for which there is too little political leadership. Critical elections in the USA and Europe were a focus on the journey in and through this coLAB, for me. In the endless debate, the one taboo was to talk of climate calamity. Never mind people can smell fire, feel flood, see images everyday of systems collapse. In contrast to the types of conversation in coLABS I see…

• The gap between what we know we ought to do and what we actually accomplish can feel daunting; many just give up and or change the subject, feeling self-damned in the process.
• Yet closing the gap – and find skillful relational repertoire to do so – feels like the primary path of liberation;  In this gap failure is to learn; experiments are to teach ourselves. That’s creative not damning.
• How difficult it is to have meaningful conversation given default culture, by which I mean e.g., unconscious conversational routines that defend against learning.
• We dismiss/minimize the “small” obstacles to good group process (e.g., sharing honestly and encouraging the other to do likewise) which turn out to be the big ones (cause yes honesty can frighten and hurt…especially if ill timed, unwanted)!
• We are trained deeply to be distracted from our own actual experience, even floods and gale force winds seem to do little to motivate us to stop reading social media and live differently.         

As I complete this my old neighborhood in Southern California is being evacuated because of a raging wildfire. At the same time my rematriation home in Ireland is struggling with a severe cold snap for which we have little snow removal equipment. In the absence of political leadership and better preparedness (much less conscious and well financed resilience efforts and open grappling with the implications of climate collapse!!) – we must do what we can. We need not face collapse unprepared in our microworlds.  We must also talk more and better in confronting the obvious of what climate collapse may mean in our specific environment. After this coLAB I understand better that such conversations  need maturity and spaces that tune down – rather than up – the anxiety we feel. 

A developmentalist approach allows us to live consciously with preparation for collapse in mind. This is close to the ever present existential inquiry of how to live in the face of death.  It is an inquiry we ignore to our detriment. And it requires our maturity and fortitude together. For we must see our demise and live, as best we can, anyway.

All of us are evolving self and other in contexts that are multiplying and disappearing simultaneously… and thus (in action research terms) we create the path by walking a deeply flawed, nonlinear path. We get to do this everyday; we get to choose to be conscious about how we interact.

Whew!”

Thanks to Tobias Fehr-Bosshard for sharing links for further readings:

Margaret Wheatley’s work: https://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/emergence.html, and 

O’Brien, K., Carmona, R., Gram-Hanssen, I., Hochachka, G., Sygna, L., & Rosenberg, M. (2023) on fractal approaches to scaling transformations to sustainability. Ambio, 52(9), 1448–1461. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-023-01873-w    and https://www.youmattermorethanyouthink.com