Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

by Adrienne Maree Brown

I think it is also about something beyond all of our binaries—evolving in relationship with our hierarchical tendency.

“all that you touch you change / all that you change, changes you.”11 We are constantly impacting and changing our civilization—each other, ourselves, intimates, strangers. And we are working to transform a world that is, by its very nature, in a constant state of change.

adaptation and evolution depend more upon critical, deep, and authentic connections, a thread that can be tugged for support and resilience.

Life and death are transitions that want to be held gently.

I like this visual of turning and evolving, as opposed to destroying the systems in place now.

It is time to turn capitalism into a fossil, time to turn the soil, turn to the horizon together.

It was and is devastatingly clear to me that until we have some sense of how to live our solutions locally, we won’t be successful at implementing a just governance system regionally, nationally, or globally.

This doesn’t mean to get lost in the self, but rather to see our own lives and work and relationships as a front line, a first place we can practice justice, liberation, and alignment with each other and the planet.

If we are all trying to win, no one really ever wins.

all change is not systems change or even political change. sometimes positive change upholds the status quo. we are not here to feel good all the time, but to do good.