Re/Dis Connect

When I look over 2022 I am struck not just with the phenomenon of Transitioning at an epochal level. But the year was phenomenally resonant with new connections, reconnections from year’s past and disconnections as new opportunities drew people apart. (See Table below.)

The activities around re/dis/new connecting has made the year vitally dynamic – breathing energy into patterns that have served long enough. It seems as if Life itself has woken up and is stimulating new creations by disturbing connections.

At the end of 2022, as China emerges from the most stringent covid lockdown conditions of any nation, it is like a traffic light is flickering back and forth around the Yellow signal. For some of us the shift is from traffic light Red to Yellow – suggesting the release from autocratic control to more individual survival is disrupting life conditions in many  world(s) that have been held in suspension at the Red Stoplight of centralized (life) control . This flickering Yellow will signal deaths to the most vulnerable individuals and organizational chaos to health providers and systems. The West, who is further along the trajectory of the pandemic cycle, will watch with interest if China’s zero tolerance followed by few(er) rules will prove a better strategy (in all ways) than the flexible, series of staged responses followed by the West in the last 3 years.

For others of us watching the flickering around Yellow signals , we are observing a shift from traffic light Yellow to Green – as those people and organizations like airlines, tourist industries and retailers experiment with pretending that life can return to pre-pandemic denials of climate change.

But the unexpected return to war in Europe is a shock of disconnection to generations of Europeans who had thought they would not ever again witness conflict at this scale on their landscape. The ripple effects of the invasion by Russia into Ukraine have upended energy markets, food distribution, manufacturing costs, quality and cost of living , climate change strategies, regenerative economies and probably most of all, mutual trust and respect between peoples. It has given licence to other rebels (like North Korea and Iran) to test the strength of moral constraints of a range of human ecosystems from COP27, to NATO, to the EU, to the United Nations.

As time moves us from 2022 to 2023 we feel the dissonance in our disconnections, while at the same time we sense a deep longing for the promise of coherence in new and re-connections.

For all the lessons of incoherence and uncertainty that Covid 19 has taught us – perhaps one of the most valuable lessons is to watch how the biosphere of the virus has transmuted and transformed to evolve new ways of connecting so that it can survive. Contagion itself has been modified so the severity we experience is less, even as the propensity for spreading the virus widens and speeds up. These are hard lessons when viewed as biology through a micro-lens – but may be very fruitful lessons when viewed as metaphors through a macroscopic lens.

Does 2022 mark the year when we quietly admit that “something profound has to change?” Have we become ready enough to disconnect from life-destroying behaviours so that we can connect in new ways for actions that support Life, Aliveness and Evolution?

Table of (Re/Dis) Connecting