Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

by Adrienne Maree Brown

Many of us have been and are becoming students of these systems of life, wondering if in fact we can unlock some crucial understanding about our own humanity if we pay closer attention to this place we are from, the bodies we are in.

My style is more “Ooh ah wow how??” than “Empirical data proves that…” I am writing this book primarily for other people like myself, who crinkle our brows and lean away when someone starts speaking math, who fall asleep almost immediately when attempting to read nonfiction, but who get spun into wonder about the natural world and want to know things, who feel and know more than we can say or explain, and want to know how knowing those things can transform the ways we approach changing the world.

We are socialized to see what is wrong, missing, off, to tear down the ideas of others and uplift our own. To a certain degree, our entire future may depend on learning to listen, listen without assumptions or defenses. So I am open to hearing what doesn’t work about this book, as long as you promise to stay open to what does work.

A beautiful sentiment — if I expect others not to be defensive about what I propose, I should start with myself. Listen first and expect from others second. The primary ingredient for this mutually beneficial engagement is openness on both sides.

I see this offering as a noticing that can shape our next steps, as more water joining the river. And as a way to get aware of what we have learned so far, so that we can move forward from there, instead of repeating lessons we have already learned.

My favorite life forms right now are dandelions and mushrooms—the resilience in these structures, which we think of as weeds and fungi, the incomprehensible scale, the clarity of identity, excites me. I love to see the way mushrooms can take substances we think of as toxic, and process them as food, or that dandelions spread not only themselves but their community structure, manifesting their essential qualities (which include healing and detoxifying the human body) to proliferate and thrive in a new environment. The resilience of these life forms is that they evolve while maintaining core practices that ensure their survival.

A mushroom is a toxin-transformer, a dandelion is a community of healers waiting to spread… What are we as humans, what is our function in the universe? One thing I have observed: When we are engaged in acts of love, we humans are at our best and most resilient. The love in romance that makes us want to be better people, the love of children that makes us change our whole lives to meet their needs, the love of family that makes us drop everything to take care of them, the love of community that makes us work tirelessly with broken hearts. Perhaps humans’ core function is love. Love leads us to observe in a much deeper way than any other emotion.

If love were the central practice of a new generation of organizers and spiritual leaders, it would have a massive impact on what was considered organizing. If the goal was to increase the love, rather than winning or dominating a constant opponent, I think we could actually imagine liberation from constant oppression. We would suddenly be seeing everything we do, everyone we meet, not through the tactical eyes of war, but through eyes of love. We would see that there’s no such thing as a blank canvas, an empty land or a new idea—but everywhere there is complex, ancient, fertile ground full of potential.

We would organize with the perspective that there is wisdom and experience and amazing story in the communities we love, and instead of starting up new ideas/organizations all the time, we would want to listen, support, collaborate, merge, and grow through fusion, not competition. We would understand that the strength of our movement is in the strength of our relationships, which could only be measured by their depth. Scaling up would mean going deeper, being more vulnerable and more empathetic.

The Sufi poet Hafiz said, “How do I listen to others? As if everyone were my Teacher, speaking to me (Her) cherished last words.”8 I am listening now with all of my senses, as if the whole universe might exist just to teach me more about love. I listen to strangers, I listen to random invitations, I listen to criticisms, I listen to my body, I listen to my creativity and to the artists who inspire me, I listen to elders, I listen to my dreams and the books I am reading. I notice that the more I pay attention, the more I see order, clear messages, patterns, and invitations in the small or seemingly random things that happen in my life. In all these ways, I meditate on love.

When these truths come to me, it reminds me of how so many past leaders have humbled themselves, or been forced—through prison sentences, exile, or other punitive measures—to live simple lives, spending time in prayer and meditation and reflection. It reminds me that they all seem to have this solid core of truth within themselves that cannot be shaken by external pressures. Those truths resonate with me when I read or hear about them, even without the context of their whole spiritual journey. But I know that to truly understand, to truly be able to transform myself and develop that own unflappable core, I cannot vicariously live their spiritual lessons: I must walk my own path.

Emergence is beyond what the sum of its parts could even imagine. A group of caterpillars or nymphs might not see flight in their future, but it’s inevitable. It’s destiny.

Cells may not know civilization is possible. They don’t amass as many units as they can sign up to be the same. No—they grow until they split, complexify. Then they interact and intersect and discover their purpose—I am a lung cell! I am a tongue cell!—and they serve it. And they die. And what emerges from these cycles are complex organisms, systems, movements, societies. Nothing is wasted, or a failure. Emergence is a system that makes use of everything in the iterative process. It’s all data.

Imagination has people thinking they can go from being poor to a millionaire as part of a shared American dream. Imagination turns Brown bombers into terrorists and white bombers into mentally ill victims. Imagination gives us borders, gives us superiority, gives us race as an indicator of capability. I often feel I am trapped inside someone else’s imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free. All

Emergent strategies are ways for humans to practice complexity and grow the future through relatively simple interactions. This juxtaposition of emergence and strategy was what made the most sense to me when I was trying to explain the kind of leadership I see in Octavia’s books. It isn’t just that her protagonists are Black, female, or young leaders… Or maybe it is because of all of those things: who leads matters. But what I noticed is that her leaders are adaptive—riding change like dolphins ride the ocean. Adaptive but also intentional, like migrating birds who know how to get where they’re going even when a storm pushes them a hundred miles off course.

Octavia was concerned with scale—understanding that what happens at the interpersonal level is a way to understand the whole of society. In many of her books, she shows us how radical ideas spread through conversation, questions, one to one interactions. Social movements right now are also fractal, practicing at a small scale what we most want to see at the universal level. No more growth or scaling up before actually learning through experience.

everything is about relationships, critical connections; chaos is an essential process that we need to engage; the sharing of information is fundamental for organizational success; and vision is an invisible field that binds us together, emerging from relationships and chaos and information.

I suspect that to really transform our society, we will need to make justice one of the most pleasurable experiences we can have.

Beyond birth, I have found doula to be a role that applies to many aspects of life. Birthwork teaches us to engage tension, but not to indulge drama. It is another form of facilitation, making the miraculous experience of birth as easy as possible, intervening with any systems that make the process harder, helping the family attend to each other and listen to what the body is saying, staying focused on the possibility and wisdom of the body. Standing or sitting with someone as they realize, remember their own wholeness—that is the work of the healer and the doula.

Small is good, small is all. (The large is a reflection of the small.) Change is constant. (Be like water).34 There is always enough time for the right work. There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have.35 Find it. Never a failure, always a lesson.36 Trust the People. (If you trust the people, they become trustworthy).37 Move at the speed of trust.38 Focus on critical connections more than critical mass—build the resilience by building the relationships. Less prep, more presence. What you pay attention to grows.

Perhaps the most egregious thing we are taught is that we should just be really good at what’s already possible, to leave the impossible alone.

My life is a miracle that cannot be recreated. I can never get these hours, weeks, years back. In a fractal conception, I am a cell-sized unit of the human organism, and I have to use my life to leverage a shift in the system by how I am, as much as with the things I do. This means actually being in my life, and it means bringing my values into my daily decision making. Each day should be lived on purpose.

I am beginning to revel in the increased capacity that comes from working with and trusting others. I sleep, I center, I travel, I share. I have offered more room in my life to love, family, creating. Each day I feel more authentic, and more capable. I don’t experience failure much these days; I experience growth.

Notes from “Intersecting Worlds: The One We’ve Got, The One We’re Building, The Ones We Imagine”42 My vision is changing our how, more than seeing clearly our what. I see a how where we are all much more comfortable with change, and with our personal power to change conditions.