What kind of world do I want to live in? What kind of world can I help others navigate?

There is lots of talk about changing cultures, but cultures are never top down. Cultures are groups of individuals who establish certain contexts for deriving meaning. One of my main interests is how to equip individuals to be good culture-builders, wherever they are, inside any organization.  To that end, I am working on a thought-for-the-day project called Antifragile by Nature: Life Lessons from Artists.

You see, I want to help living systems thrive.  Systems that are sustainable, creative, connected and diverse.

In a mechanical system, stress is always wearing and deviation is experienced as error.

But, what if we learned to to appreciate deviation as the very texture of lived experience, what Nassim Taleb calls “dimensionality.”  In regard to the differences that make us human and our places unique, instead of accepting an “error response,” the artist practices curiosity, applied through observation and inquiry.

Artists value tacit knowledge, those things we know that may never become spoken or explicit. They count, and in the symbolic world of the arts we can acknowledge their presence and influence.

I invite collaborators (no previous arts experience required!) to spend some time in daily periods of quiet reflection with me to include drawing, journalling, visualization and looking at art while intentionally embracing various traditionally “stressful” situations in order to shift towards greater antifragility

REFERENCE POINTS FOR FURTHER INQUIRY

Nurture by Nature – a guide to understanding and bridging differences in Meyers-Briggs personality types

SWOT the Seams – previous blogpost here about interstitial planning

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

Artful Making by Lee Devin & Robert Austin

Conversation and Artful Making by Si Alhir