From Systems Change to Systems Evolution
If you’ve never visited Greensboro, North Carolina, I suggest that on your first morning there, you visit the Civil Rights Museum, like I did. If possible, you should ask for Mr. Darren McGill to be your tour guide. And if you can arrange to arrive on February 1st, for the anniversary of the first “sit in” at their famous lunch counter, definitely do.
As you stand at that shiny counter and look at the bold color signs advertising “Cherry Pie, 25 cents”– as you listen to Mr. McGill say that there is a man memorialized on that wall of heroes whose grandson is a tour guide at the museum today, and his name is Darren McGill– as you learn of civil rights leaders making pilgrimage to the Highlander Folk School to learn songs, to practice how to sit in a state of unshakable devotion and kinship with their oppressors as they were beaten, scorned, spat on, and mocked– as you see pictures of the American Flag laying over KKK posters and “Whites Only” signs– as you hear voices of Black preachers echoing forward through the years, calling for people of all colors to stand together as family in this aching world– as you look at images of children blown up by the anger and fear of the violent resistors of that call– as you stand in your own two feet and gaze at the wall of photos of all types of people who stood for equality then– as you smile at Mr. McGill, tears in your eyes, and feel your longing to stand for equality now, something might shift in your mind.
A small brown creek ran past the back of the beautiful Proximity Hotel where I was staying with the group of food business leaders I was working with that week, and I visited the water every day, to think and be still and remember where we were and who I was. I needed this time.
I needed it because we were tackling big questions there in Greensboro: How to bring about meaningful systems change? The Civil Rights Movement did it. Our premise was that we needed to shift our thinking in order to bring about real changes in systems. We were playing with the understanding that if we start working only from a structural level, we then design new structures from the same thinking that created the very ones we want to shift. Like Einstein said, “You can’t solve problems with the same thinking that created them.” And, radical though we may be, we are still deeply socialized in the mechanical systems thinking of our modern world.
So, we chewed on this challenge of: “How do we support systems evolution instead of just systems change?” Systems evolution comes from the idea that living systems have an internal ability to evolve. Mechanical systems require external management or impetus in order to evolve or heal– and we can talk about AI and complex systems and their capacities– but ultimately there is a way that mechanical or cybernetic systems can break, and then require external input to fix and grow. Whereas living systems have an internal organization and ability to evolve and develop themselves to increasingly high levels of complexity and wellness. So, truly effective systems evolution requires that the system itself is organizing around something and developing– as opposed to relying on external command and control. That means that the system needs to have a higher level process or source of will directing it. What does that mean?
Every whole system has structures in it. Our bodies, for example: Some structures are our heart, our veins, our cells. Some systems are the flows of energy through the living whole, such as the circulatory system as a cyclical flow of blood through all these structures. A process is the underlying reason WHY this is all happening and what is being transformed. So, a process might be “supplying oxygen to the brain”. In living systems that are not human bodies, we see the same: structures, systems, and processes. So, what ends up happening in living systems such as social systems is that if the process level is not upgraded, we try to change the system, but build a new structure that enacts the same original process. Like trying to change the way we do business to do less harm, but continuing to perpetuate the primary process of producing financial capital, and seeing that all the structures we are trying to tweak are not getting at the fundamental “why” of the business, and therefore not having the whole effect we desire.
So, we went to the Civil Rights Museum, and held this curiosity in our minds: “What were the underlying processes that were being upgraded in this movement, that everyone could tap into? What was the call from the field? And how did upgrading those processes allow for the potential of the individuals creating new systems to express in coherent alignment? How did THAT ultimately generate new structures, such as the Voting Rights Act and desegregation of institutions?” Remembering that the Civil Rights Movement was intentionally dismantled and would have continued further than it did had it not been deliberately shut down through assassinations and an undermining of its process through various forms of social control. But, what we noticed was that the movement was and is being tended by an upgraded underlying powerful process, and that that process is still at work in the world, despite everything.
The process being: Fiercely holding the belief that we are family. And that the extraction mentality we have towards others has to change into one of communion and mutual uplifting of rights. This sparked a process of inhabiting that mentality in action– holding the person who was beating or insulting you to be your kin and never relinquishing your sense of equality and community. In order to grow and manifest that process (or reason for how Civil Rights leaders were acting) there was SO much intentional development of being, which we see throughout the nonviolent resistance movement in the way that we were training one another to BE in that thinking and that “why” in the face of great violence and attempts to undermine it.
And so, by being that process– that deeper Why– in that conviction of communion, that we are family, that we are all here with equal rights, it evokes that in others and the field, and it sends a call that anyone can tap into. From that, you get people with their own ideas advancing the whole. Greensboro is the node where the lunch counter “sit in” movement started, when students individually tapped into their own essences and that of the field, and worked to pull themselves into a higher order of capacity in order to invoke that process of “we are family”.
They were doing this with great support of teachers and mentors and community, and weren’t in isolation. But they were all internally motivated: No one was telling them they had to do it. And so by following that internal drive, it spread that new process of thinking which created the ability for new systems to begin to flow. “Let’s overwhelm the jails by not bailing anyone out. Let’s set up a meal system so that people’s children are being fed. Let’s set up rides so that people’s kids can get to school or family to work so that we can have effective boycotts and strikes.” And all these systems got created from that mind, and led eventually to long term structural changes.
Once you have this lens to perceive through, it is clear that what is missing from most of our movements today is a coherent and evocative call at a thinking and process level that we can circle around together. There are a lot of calls for action and for structural change that are not backed up by that deep web of developing a shared being state and capacity to embody and enact what we are living out and why we are doing it, and therefore generate the organic development of all those life-giving systems around it. So, you can call for a general strike all you want to, but if there isn’t that infrastructure at a shared process level and a mutual support systems level, then it’s not going to work, and improved infrastructure will not be built unless there is a clear call that everyone can tap into that generates the new order we are co-creating.
So, that was the backdrop of the weekend. And of course, more than 60 years after the sit ins, we are asking: “What does this mean now?” We are asking: “What do I really care about? What is true and calls me from this field? Why am I doing this action? What does that mean about how I need to be? About how I am going to show up in my community, relationships, and work in order to contribute to transformation from a core level of these systems, instead of just making tweaks around the edges? What are we responding to that is not a reaction but an evolution? That we are rallying around and can bring to life right now?” That is what we must call forth for the sake of the future.
Big questions. And it was the little brown creek behind the hotel who gave me an answer.
There were highways on every side, big high-rise hotel buildings, and hidden down a gully was this little creek sneaking through. It was obvious that there had been a flood of some kind since there was a lot of exposed mud and sand, the grass was all laid flat, and there was trash hooked in every one of the bushes and trees. I wanted to explore a bit, so I stashed my purse in a bush and slowly moved down, listening and looking towards the river. And saw that in that exposed mud, there was a criss-cross of tracks. Soon, I was kneeling down and looking at the little scratches and pawprints and thinking I saw bird and raccoon tracks, and I was crouching on the very edge of the slippery bank where the raccoon had gone when I got this whiff of a bad, bad smell. I sniffed the wind and thought, “It’s such a shame, this river is so polluted, there’s probably sewage being dumped in it…” and in that moment– do you know this feeling where you kind of move your body without thinking? It just moves on its own accord? In that moment, I found my body turning of its own accord, and I walked four steps up the embankment, past a fox den on the left, and encountered this shocking sight:
Under a brown cape of dried grasses, a red splash of color drew my eyes to a torn-apart deer carcass. Her head and face and much of her body were still covered in fur, but her whole stomach had been opened up. There was visible meat on her ribs, and my first thought was, “Oh, wow, you’re so beautiful. You’re so beautiful, and what a feast. What a feast!” In that tiny strip of wildness where these creatures are trying to live, I started to see fox scat and coyote scat and places where animals had lain down in the grass, and my mind knew, “This deer is going to go back to the land, and is already feeding this place and becoming this place”. And it occurred to me that the deer had probably been hit by a car, and I felt a deep apology for the way we have left so little habitat for them, but how magnificent they are, our beloved wild kin.
And this Harry Belafonte song that has been in the back of my mind starts humming in me, so I just start singing. And I’m singing fully from my heart, “Turn the World Around”.
“We come from the water, living in the water, go back to the water, turn the world around.
Oh, oh, such is life. Oh, oh, turn the world around.”
And I’m going through all these improvised verses– “We come from the mountain, We come from the fire, We come from the rain clouds, turn the world around.”– and I get to “We come from the Spirit”, and in that verse I shift to “me”. “I come from the Spirit. I come from the soil.” And then the last verse came out of me without thought,
“I come from the deer, living in the deer, go back to the deer, turn the world around.”
As I sang that, this rush of energy came up from the land and through the deer and through me and out of my hands like a blessing, and I breathed it out, and the song was complete. I paused for a moment to listen, and in that moment my body again turned of its own accord, and I was looking at the creek. And as I was staring at the water, just 10 feet away from me, this little muskrat head pops up out of the middle of the river! Looking right at me, swimming right towards me, and then disappearing under the bank.
I was so excited wondering, “What?? Did you go into a bank den? What’s going on?” And I asked in my heart, “Can I come sit with you?” Because obviously the muskrat knew I was there– I had been loudly singing and dancing for quite a while! It seemed okay to approach, so I perched quietly on a rock on the bank, and watched with my Owl Eyes and was with the place and felt like I was the place, and eventually the muskrat came back. And they were swimming all around doing their muskrat business, going up the stream and down the stream, into the bank and hopping on rocks, back underwater. I have never been that close to a muskrat, nor for so long– it must have been at least 45 minutes– but eventually, I realized it was getting dark and I had to go meet my colleagues. So, I stood up slowly, and just praised. At first silently and then quietly, but with the most beautiful words I could think of to thank them and bless them and their children and their place. And eventually I asked them, “Is there anything you want me to hear?”
Immediately this overwhelming sensation came over me, in waves.
The first part was a ringing sense that the muskrat was just perfectly adapted to that place. And all the things the muskrat was doing were benefiting the muskrat and helping them thrive, and were also benefiting the place. There was no difference between the muskrat’s thriving and the place’s thriving.
And then I felt the muskrat saying, “You, human. You, too, are perfectly adapted to this place. To this world. And as you are going through your process of human-ing, if you are doing it the way you are meant to, there is no difference between you taking actions for your own thriving and the thriving of the world. You, too, can do that.”
And of course my brain immediately went to what it always goes to, which is, “Well, that must mean we all have to become hunter gatherers and go back to the land…”, and the muskrat interrupted and said, “No. That’s not what I’m talking about. Maybe that is part of it, but what I’m talking about is…” Pause. And there was this welling of appreciation from the muskrat for humans, like he was saying, “Humans are so adorable. You’re so interesting. You are so smart and funny to us. You do these things that no other species does… you have these hands and you make all these things. You take animals into your house! You adopt them and make them part of your family. And seeds! You spend all this time hanging out with other species.”
“Huh”, I thought, and then heard his thought: “If you were to devote the full force of your ingenuity and your creativity and your drive and your curiosity and your generosity and your connectivity and cleverness to the celebration and regeneration of Life– yours and the worlds– you could transform everything into beauty. That is the human process that you need to be doing. And if you were to do that, it would be so rapid. You would turn this world around.”
I felt my body respond, “I need to do that right now.” I started to cry and thought, “I am going to leave this space and I am going to be that person who is in love with the world and who is devoting my time and energy and creativity to the mutual thriving of life, to the reciprocal and sacred nourishment that we all can give and receive.”
And there it was. The whole point of the weekend and the process we need to rally around. People often ask: “Is there a binary between my well being and the wellbeing of the collective? Is there a choice I need to make between my wellness and this relationship’s wellness? This movement’s? This place?” And the muskrat would say, “No. You get to live as a human within this intently beautiful growth of connection and relationship that helps everyone thrive. And you just need to remember to do it.”
I am here to support us in this process and in our explorations of what larger “Whys” we can consider that pull our conversations and thinking to higher orders and help us root in agency, figuring out who and how we can be to support all thriving. May we continue to feed and be fed as we come together around what we love and who we can be as humans, sparked to joy by a muskrat reminding us that we can contain a most beautiful core process: that of nourishing Life.
Let’s see what we can transform from that place, together.
Thank you, small brown creek. Thank you, deer. Thank you, Mr. McGill. Thank you, muskrat.
Experienced February 1, 2023. Written down February 15, 2025
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