For the full set of source references go here, where we explore the new age of relationality.

* The Constellation Method of Social Change

In spite of current ads and slogans, the world doesn’t change one person at a time. It changes as networks of relationships form among people who discover they share a common cause and vision of what’s possible.

– Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Freize

* Transcending the individual human mind through collaboration

“The power of the unaided, individual mind is highly overrated: the Renaissance scholar no longer exists. Although creative individuals are often thought of as working in isolation, the role of interaction and collaboration with other individuals is critical. Creative activity grows out of the relationship between an individual and the world of his or her work, and from the ties between an individual and other human beings. The predominant activity in designing complex systems is that participants teach and instruct each other. Because complex problems require more knowledge than any single person possesses, it is necessary that all involved stakeholders participate, communicate, and collaborate with each other.”

* The Strength of Weak Ties

“the organisation of exchanges doesn’t require the strong involvement of the whole community, but a cluster of very active participants can lead the community in producing a lot of external effects. In massive communities, the diversity of involvements and goals of users can easily be overcome: collective activities result from the opportunities created by personal publication.”

– Christophe Aguiton and Dominique Cardon

* Towards a science of relationships

“It is impossible to deny that science has made great progress by taking things apart. However, what is left out of this approach is the problem of understanding relationships between the parts.

Indeed, the importance of this understanding should be self-apparent. If all systems around us were made of the same elementary particles, and their relationships were irrelevant, then all systems would be identical. Obviously, this is not the case. Our quest to understand the parts becomes so detailed that we forget what we were trying to understand at the start. Moreover the strategy of looking at parts may blind us to the way properties of a system arise from the relationships between the components. This reflects itself in what we think about in general. More specifically, it affects how we approach problem solving when we try to solve problems in society. Indeed one of the main difficulties in solving problems is that we think the problem resides in the parts themselves, when, in actuality, it is to be found in the interactions between the parts. As a result, many crucial questions can only be addressed by thinking carefully about connections in a system as a whole.”

– Yaneer Bar-Yam

* The New Relationality

“What is emerging in the work of sociologists is a framework that sees the networked society or the networked individual as entailing an abundance of social connections and more effectively deployed attention. The concern with the decline of community conceives of a scarcity of forms of stable, nurturing, embedding relations, which are mostly fixed over the life of an individual and depend on long-standing and interdependent relations in stable groups, often with hierarchical relations. What we now see emerging is a diversity of forms of attachment and an abundance of connections that enable individuals to attain discrete components of the package of desiderata that ?community? has come to stand for in sociology.”

– Yochai Benkler

* Alone = All in One

“The English word “alone” comes from “all one” and if you understand the significance of this, there will be no “dissociety.” You are connected to others only to the degree to which you are connected to yourself. Therefore, “dissociety” indicates not only the dissociation from others but also the dissociation from oneself and thus the inability to be oneself.”

– Yasuhiko Genku Kimura

* The metaphysics of co-evolution

“The positive value of interactive relations is expressed and measured not in “oppositional” or “hierarchical,” but in “cooperative” terms. It is expressed and measured not through zero-sum hierarchies and power-relations, such as losing and winning, controlling and being controlled, manipulating or being manipulated, etc. The positive value of interactions is shown in terms of proper functioning and fitting, balance and harmony, authenticity and growth.”

– Predrag Cicovacki

* An Adaptable Self, always in relation to the world

“The reference to “northward arm” and “southward arm” is typically Wintu, and its usage suggests a cultural wisdom so deep and unconscious that it was embedded in the very structure of language. In English we refer to the right arm and left arm, and we might describe a certain mountain as being to our right or left, in front or in back of us depending on which way we are facing at the moment. We use the body — the self — as the point of reference against which we describe the world. The Wintu would never do this, and indeed the Wintu language would not permit it. If a certain mountain was to the north, say, the arm nearest that mountain would be called the northward arm. If the Wintu turned around, the arm that had previously been referred to as the northward arm would now be called the southward arm. In other words, the features of the world remained the constant reference, the sense of self was what changed — a self that continually accommodated and adjusted to a world in which the individual was not the center of all creation.”

– From the Book: The Way We Lived: California Indian Stories, Songs and Reminiscences