Through Caring, Contexting, Capacity Building

“How are our systems supporting us in the fullness of our humanity?”

Answering this research question moved my career from the study of leadership patterns to the connections amongst teams, organizations, communities and now cities – in both face-to-face and digital worlds. I have written three books that explore how to redesign the city as a living system that makes us feel fully alive as individuals and collectives.

Sushma Sharma (ISABS Summit 2019 Program Director) with Dr. Marilyn Hamilto

In the Integral City books, I explore human systems that integrate development in person, people, place and planet. I consider three themes that are critical factors for designing generative relationships for a collective life that works for all life; namely, Caring, Contexting and Capacity Building. This trio is fundamental to the qualities of survival, adaptation and regeneration that define all living systems and can be traced through the expansion of moral influence, spatial influence and evolutionary time horizons. Refocusing human sensitivity in a digital world requires the integration of the inner journey of Care with the outer journey of Contexting through the integration of Capacity Building. The combination of the overview effect and the integration effect enable a holarchy of complexity to emerge in all scales of human life in the city that is made coherent through decisions that are aligned around the Master Code of Care: to care for Self, Others, Place and Planet.  This will enable sensitivity to have a trajectory to the 7th generation in the future, a time span that many indigenous people consider relevant to making wise and caring decisions that support our living planet, Gaia in the fulness of her systems.

This Paper was presented by Marilyn Hamilton, Founder of Integral City Meshworks, at the Indian Society of Applied Behavioural Sciences Summit 2019.

It focused on the theme: Resensitizing Humanness in a Digital World.

Click Here to download the full Paper. Paper on Caring Contexting Revised Sept 6, 2019