the school of nothing

the school of nothing is investigating the realm of nothing.
As an applied research project it develops and implements artistic and scientific interventions in the public space and open performances | workshops for people being interested into exploring the qualities conntected to nothing, e.g. nothingness, silence, emptiness, darkness, pause, serenity, Lassenskraft, waiting, withdrawing, contemplation, doing nothing, leisure

Lichtenberg, Jonas

Sociologist
Systemic Counselor
Research Fellow of Institut für Sozialpädagogische Forschung Mainz e.V.

Paulo Freire Zentrum

Das Paulo Freire Zentrum bietet Akteur:innen und Institutionen unterschiedlicher Disziplinen an, ihre Arbeit kritisch zu reflektieren und setzt sich für kritische Entwicklungsforschung ein. In dialogischer Bildungsarbeit werden hier Weltprobleme im Zusammenhang mit lokalen Problemen bearbeitet. Das Zentrum bildet einen Knotenpunkt, in dem an Projekten zu entwicklungspolitischer Bildung, globalem Lernen, Friedenspädagogik etc. gearbeitet wird.
Das Lebensziel des Namensgebers Paulo Freire war der Versuch, die Unterdrückten durch Volksbildung zu befreien, indem er in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren für Solidarität und Gerechtigkeit kämpfte. Seiner Ansicht nach ging die Befreiung der Unterdrückten mit einer Befreiung vom Kapitalismus, welcher auf Egoismus und Gewinn beruht, einher.

 

Milton, Mark

Founder and Director of the Swiss-based foundation Education 4 Peace (E4P)

Created in 2002, the Foundation works internationally to promote the incorporation of skills in self-awareness, deep listening, and mastery of emotions into the educational curriculum of youth, including sports education. His earlier experiences first as a volunteer and then as director of an organization that operates hotlines for emotional support and suicide prevention and his successful career as a business consultant specializing in communication, marketing and organizational development have greatly contributed to the work of E4P. From 2001-2010, Mark was chairman of the International Federation of Telephone Emergency Services (IFOTES), with 600 centers in 28 countries. He initiated many activities to promote listening skills, as well as the first international congress on the theme of Emotional Health in 2007, co-sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO). He has led the E4P’s groundbreaking work with international and national football federations to officially introduce self-awareness, teach listening skills and empathetic communication that pave the way for resilience and relational consciousness. He is the co-author of Master of your Emotions and Football, a Path to Self-Awareness.

Andreotti, Vanessa

In her work as Canada Research Chair, Dr. Vanessa Andreotti focuses on analyses of historical and systemic patterns of reproduction of inequalities and how these limit or enable possibilities for collective existence and global change (especially in educational contexts). Dr. Andreotti conceptualizes education as an expansion of frames of reference and fields of signification.

Ki Culture

Cultural organizations are uniquely positioned to become leaders for a sustainable future by decreasing their impact on the environment and increasing their impact on their communities.

Ki Culture is the only non-profit organization in the world dedicated to making this a reality. We provide solutions for cultural institutions and tools to educate the public on all issues connected with sustainability.

We help achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) through tangible actions, effective communication, and education. Our original programs make sustainability easy to implement, while our resource centers make it accessible. We develop and support exhibitions and outreach programs that inform and empower people with solutions.

Ki Culture promotes sustainability through culture, holistically and globally.

Southwick, Caitlin

Caitlin Southwick is the Founder and Executive Director of Ki Culture. She holds a Professional Doctorate in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage from the University of Amsterdam. Caitlin has worked in the conservation field and in museums around the world, including the Vatican Museums, The Getty Conservation Institute, and Easter Island. She was a professional member of the American Institute of Conservations Sustainability Committee and is the Secretary of the Working Group on Sustainability for the International Council of Museums (ICOM).

Hosang, Maik

MAIK HOSANG researches interdisciplinary relationships between people,
Nature and culture. He has a
Professorship for cultural philosophy, social and cultural change at the Zittau / Görlitz University of Applied Sciences. He
is co-creator of the interactive philosophy-experience world »Sophia im
Spiegel «and author of several books.

Voggenreiter, Valerie

Sustainability – Self – Silence
Silence Spaces is a collective of four people, which resulted out of sustainable higher education at the Eberswalde University for sustainable development. During the M.Sc. program we realised, that the inner dimension is under represented when sustainability efforts come into action. Hence, we created a space for the self to empower sustainable behavior in silence and finally helping to transform mindsets and societies. Silence Spaces are physical as well as symbolic spaces. They are free of cyber activities, talking, reading, writing or any kind of input as long as there is not a a conceptualized learning journey taking place. In Silence we learn how to drop into ourselves, observe, reflect, relax – deep learning can take place and this environment can help us to deal more sustainable with ourselves instead of exploiting our own resources. Finally, Silence Spaces want to empower each single individual to invite inner change in order to initiate and shape sustainable outer change – and Silence is the container where this processes can origin from. Silence allows to LISTEN to our inner needs, become more empathic and caring towards oneself as well as the surroundings.

Silence Space

What is sustainability? Often, environmental aspects are in the foreground, while the social dimension is neglected. A transformation towards a more sustainable society, though, needs to consider the social and individual dimension as inner change causes outer change – and vice versa. We see the inner dimension underrepresented in public spheres.
We raise the awareness, that we need more than a technological understanding of sustainability, which cares primarily about the ecological consequences of our actions. We call for a shift in consciousness, too, which influences our thinking and action.
To think critically and acting according to it, is asked from each one of us. We believe that these capacities can be found in Silence. It offers a container for subjective transformation processes – by pausing consciously and taking part at learning journeys on (self)transformation. Deep inner change towards sustainability can’t happen in times of overwhelming stress and acceleration.
Silence Spaces in public places allow a transformation on both levels with the emphasis on internal spaces. The potential to become a part of the solution of grievances lies in every one of us and is able to unfold here. Silence Spaces are physical as well as symbolic spaces. They are free of cyber activities, talking, eating or any kind of input as long as there is not a learning journey taking place. In Silence we can drop into ourselves, observe, relax and reflect. We can gather strength and become observers when we exploit ourselves or witness exploitation of others and the environment. We need an economic and political shift and therefore promote spaces where critical thinking can happen, which is needed to bring along system change. The time for cool headed action is now.

The Bridge

RESEARCH EXCHANGES IN AUROVILLE

Auroville is the largest and longest-standing intentional community in the world, practically researching into the evolutionary potential of humankind, developing award-winning transformational practices across fields of culture, economics, governance, education, environment, and health, recognized by UNESCO, the Indian Government, and major industries such as Tata. Visiting researchers can bridge this future-facing body of experimentation with developments in their fields worldwide, for the benefit of humanity as a whole.

WHO WE ARE

The Bridge promotes exchange between Auroville and visiting researchers similarly dedicated to the progress of human society.
We curate presentations and forums that facilitate exchange and the intiation of collaborative projects between Aurovilian and visiting experts.

WHO ARE YOU?

Are you an Aurovilian or visiting expert – in any field? We invite you to offer a presentation of your work.
Contact: thebridge@auroville.org.in
Are you an Auroville community member, volunteer, or visitor? You are welcome to attend our public events series!

Wasteless

Waste is a serious and growing global problem. The way we use and discard it is quickly destroying the earth and damaging our health faster than most people realise. Our planet can’t handle it, and neither can we.

Presently, when we think of waste we follow a linear model. A product is created, we purchase it and, when we’ve used it, we throw away whatever’s left. However, this approach generates an amazing amount of ‘unseen’ waste long before consumers touch it. Conservative experts claim that each kilo of garbage we dispose of in our bins produces 40 kilos of waste upstream (extraction, production and distribution).

After waste is generated, it is typically transported from our lives without much thought. For us, it’s ‘out of sight, out of mind’. For our public systems, it’s a nuisance to be dealt with cheaply and quickly. For future generations, it’s one of the biggest mistakes we are making.

We urgently need to raise awareness, change behaviour and inspire an estimated 7 billion+ people to generate less waste.

(Source: wastelessindia.org)

Whidbey Institute

Whidbey Institute is a home for transformational learning and a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

Our mission is to nurture the conditions for transformational learning, and our purpose is to grow the human capacity to respond generatively to the challenges of our time in service to a future in which people and planet thrive together.

We partner with a network of program leaders working in the areas of generative leadership, ecosystem vitality, community resilience, and more to offer one-day and multi-day workshops, conferences, and retreats. Our 106-acre conservation forest campus on South Whidbey Island is open to the public and features integrated gardens and a four-mile trail network.

taken from https://whidbeyinstitute.org/about-us/

A Mindset for the Anthropocene

The AMA project is a science-based reflection and empowerment hub for change agents engaging in inner transformation in the context of socio-ecological transformation. Institutionally the AMA project is operating as a transdisciplinary research project at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam. Beyond its research work, the AMA project acts as a network catalyst for an emerging global community that aims at cultivating ethical and virtuous qualities of the human mind as drivers of socio-ecological transformations to sustainability.

Manemo

Ganzheitlicher, weil wir langfristig und umfassend Ergebnisse, Freuden und Sorgen mit unseren ›Kunden teilen wollten. Also haben wir auf Basis unserer Kompetenzen einen ›Blauen Ozean entwickelt, der ›Managementtraining, ›Organisationsentwicklung und ›Unternehmensberatung in einer Nutzeninnovation kombiniert.

Konsequenter, weil die Anfrage eines Kernkraftwerksbetreibers unsere ›Wasserlinie offensichtlich und die Arbeit mit einem Öko-Pionier uns glücklich gemacht hat. Seit dem gönnen wir uns den Luxus, nur mit Kunden zu arbeiten, die uns am Herzen liegen und die an ›nachhaltigen Transformationsprozessen Interesse haben.

Wir wollen nichts weniger als unsere Berufung leben und gemeinsam mit ausgewählten Kunden ein klein wenig die ›Welt retten. Denn die Welt ist unsere Freundin…

MANEMO ist ein kunterbunter Haufen mit ausgeprägten Persönlichkeiten und vielfältigen Kompetenzen: wir treten den Beweis an, dass eine ›ökosoziale Marktwirtschaft jetzt und hier schon gelebt werden kann.

taken from: https://www.manemo.de/wer-wir-sind/

Education is the kindling of a flame: How to reinvent the 21st-century university

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” This quote from Plutarch is as true today as it was two thousand years ago. Still, the misconception of education as a vessel-filling activity remains. In this column, I outline an idea that could reshape our universities while also prototyping new ways of addressing urgent societal challenges. The kindling of the flame that Plutarch talked about has never been more relevant than now.

Let’s start with 2017

Last week my column focused on 2017:

  • The year 2017 mirrored the epochal year 1917 by putting a new challenge in front of us: the challenge of vertical development.
  • By “vertical development” I mean the capacity to deal with disruptive change, which requires us to let go of the past and to let come the future, to shift our awareness from one state to another. In the language of tech: vertical development is about suspending your habit of installing yet another app and instead upgrading your entire operating system.
  • From that perspective we can interpret the current global surge of terrorism, fundamentalism, xenophobia, Trumpism, and autocracy as expressions of the same underlying phenomenon: the missing capacity as a society to respond to challenges in generative ways, by evolving ourselves “vertically,” by upgrading the way we listen and attend, the way we converse and think, and the way we organize and coordinate in the context of larger systems.

Last week I suggested that such an upgrade of our societal operating system (OS) should include advancing and transforming our economies, our democracies, and our education systems. It is the latter that I focus on in this column: how to how to reinvent our institutions of higher education through their transformation from an ivory-towered into a distributed eco-system for societal renewal.

Vertical Literacy: Addressing the Knowing-Doing Gap

The difficulties we have in meeting today’s global challenges, such as implementing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) worldwide, are not caused by a knowledge gap. We have all the knowledge we need. The problem is a knowing-doing gap: a disconnect between our collective consciousness and our collective actions. In most societal systems we collectively create results that (almost) nobody wants. Examples: the ecological divide (the self-nature disconnect), the social divide (the self-other disconnect), and the spiritual divide (the self-self disconnect—that is, the disconnect between my current and my emerging future self).

These gaps and divides are amplified by the silo structure of our key institutions and the mindset of the decision makers that operate inside them. To address these issues at their root requires two things: new platforms for cross-sector co-creation and an upgrade in the operating system that people use to collaborate—practices that facilitate a shift from ego-system to eco-system awareness.

Figure 1 maps the landscape of options for such an operating system. In our research we have identified four different operating systems—in other words, four fields of attention that social systems can operate from: habitual, ego-systemic, empathic, eco-systemic.

Figure 1: Matrix of Vertical Social Evolution (Source: O. Scharmer, <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.amazon.com/Essentials
BY KELVY BIRD
Figure 1: Matrix of Vertical Social Evolution (Source: O. Scharmer, The Essentials of Theory U)

Since I have presented the Matrix of Social Evolution in much more detail elsewhere, allow me here to stick to its essence: the matrix shows that we are stuck with our collective knowing-doing gap because we try to solve level 4 problems with an operating system that runs on OS 1.0, 2.0, or OS 3.0. But, as we learned from Einstein, you cannot solve problems at the same level of thinking and consciousness that created them.

The result of that mismatch is on display every single day: more problems lead to more felt pressure and frustrations, which lead to more destruction and “absencing” (to use the language of last week’s column), which in turn lead to more problems, felt pressure, frustrations, and so forth. That in a nutshell is our vertical development challenge: how to move from the vicious cycle of reacting to disruption powered by OS 1.0, 2.0, or 3.0 to a generative response that is powered by 4.0—that is, by a process of co-creating the future.

The lack of vertical literacy is the main problem in our universities and schools today. Talk to experienced CEOs and CPOs (chief people officers) of major companies and ask them what they need. They commonly say: people, teams, and leaders that can make our organization thrive in a world of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity). By that, I believe they mean people and capacities that can take their organization into the 4.0 world in which they respond to disruption by co-sensing and co-shaping the future. Then go to universities and talk to faculty and deans of management and engineering schools. Many, maybe most, are rather illiterate when it comes to vertical development. They think mostly in terms of horizontal development—for example, about adding another skill here or another app or course there. They do not think in terms of upgrading the entire educational OS—of our students, our learners, and our societal systems.

But if you think about it, if we follow Plutarch, I believe that the only reason universities exist in the first place is to provide vertical developmental literacy. Especially now. If you want the app, you just go to an online learning store like edx.org and get your free knowledge download. Done! You don’t need a physical university for that. The primary reason we have universities and other institutions of higher education today is to support the development of vertical literacy. That means creating a learning environment in which the learner can step into his or her highest future potential in the context of hands-on societal challenges. In our experience, this requires us, as learners, to upgrade the way we pay attention and listen, to upgrade the way we converse, dialogue, and think, to upgrade the way we organize and coordinate in the context of VUCA shaped environments. Everything else is secondary. Vertical literacy gives us the vocabulary and capacities to:

  • become a blackbelt in listening with our minds and hearts wide open
  • turn a conversation from debate to generative dialogue
  • shift organizational fields from competing silos to generative eco-systems
  • invent new coordination mechanisms that operate from shared awareness.

Ten Principles of the New University

How do we build vertical literacy at scale? Well, not by placing learners inside lecture halls. And also not by separating out humanities, social sciences, and STEM into separate universes. That much we know. What it will take is nothing less than a complete reinvention of schooling and higher ed based on a new set of principles. Here is a first cut at a list of core ideas:

(1) Co-initiate: Put the learner into the driver’s seat of profound societal change. The learner is not a consumer. She or he is a partner in making the world a better place.

(2) Co-sense: Move the outer place of learning from the lecture hall to the real world. This isn’t just about action learning but also includes immersion journeys to the global hotspots of societal renewal across cultures.

(3) Embodiment: Move the inner place of learning from the head to the heart, and from the heart to the hand. The essence of learning in this century revolves around activating the intelligence of the heart and then putting it to use in serving the needs of others and the whole.

(4) Science 2.0: Bend the beam of scientific observation back onto the observing self. At the intersection between the old, dying civilization and the one that is being born is the transformation of science. Science 2.0 must integrate first-, second-, and third-person data by bending the beam of observation back onto the observing self.

(5) Systems Thinking: Make the system see itself. Systems thinking is a core capacity of vertical literacy. Students must learn methods to make the system see itself.

(6) Systems Sensing: Make the system sense itself. This is the core capacity to unlock collective creativity. Learners must become literate in “aesthetics” in its original meaning (aistesis means to sense): the cultivation of all our senses.

(7) Systems Inversion: Transform the system through eco-system activation. All societal sectors go through similar institutional changes: from perpetuating systemic silos to cultivating generative social field in the context of their eco-systems. Learners need to be literate in facilitating this shift.

(8) Know Thyself: To create vertical developmental literacy, we need to integrate science, social change, and self. Deepening our self knowledge requires us to access not only the intelligence of the open mind (curiosity), but also the intelligences of the open heart (compassion), and open will (courage).

(9) Tend the Fire: To patiently elicit and draw out the unique qualities and expression of each person with perseverance and in support of his or her highest possible future.

(10) The Fourth Teacher: Use nature and social fields as gateways. The Reggio Emilia approach is known for seeing the environment as the third teacher. Building on that we see the cultivation of profound learning relationships to nature and to social fields as gateways to the deeper sources of knowing (”the fourth teacher”).

Five Building Blocks

How can we build a 21st-century university that embodies these principles of vertical literacy, i.e., of awareness-based systems change? The answer will vary across contexts, cultures, and geographies. But in our experiments we have found the following five building blocks to be critical (Figure 2).

Figure 2: The 21st-Century University: Five Building Blocks
BY KELVY BIRD
Figure 2: The 21st-Century University: Five Building Blocks

(1) Cross-Sector Innovation Labs

Create cross-sector Innovation Labs that bring together key stakeholders and innovators who need each other in order to evolve the system they operate within. With our colleagues and partners, we have refined a lab process that generates remarkable results.

(2) Cross-Intelligence Capacity Building

Create massive online-to-offline mechanisms for complementing the labs and building the deeper capacities at scale (that means at marginal costs close to zero). With the u.lab MOOC we have prototyped a mechanism that combines the democratization of access to knowledge with the activation of the deep learning cycle. Some of the early key learnings from u.lab, which has attracted more than 100,000 registered participants from 185 countries since its launch in 2015, can be found here.

(3) Awareness-Based Action Research: Deep Data Imaging

Although “big data” has been useful in many parts of our daily lives, the algorithms that increasingly shape our reality have also became a liability that undermines some of society’s foundations (as discussed in last week’s column). We need to progress from big data to deep data. By deep data I mean data that advance vertical literacy by making us look at ourselves in a mirror, individually and collectively, by making us aware of our own patterns and blind spots, by making us see ourselves through the eyes of another or of the whole. An example of big data is your Facebook feed: Facebook filters out all news that it thinks does not match your world view (i.e., it keeps us stuck in our own echo chambers). Examples of deep data mirroring are the case clinics and global mindfulness practices described in the u.lab link above.

This New World
The current capitalist system is broken. Get updates on our progress toward building a fairer world.

Another mechanism for generating deep data (i.e., data that help us to see ourselves and to deepen our awareness) that we have developed over the past decade is Social Presencing Theater (SPT). SPT practices help complex stakeholder groups to see themselves and their evolutionary patterns through the mirror of the whole, thereby shifting their individual consciousness from ego-system to eco-system awareness. We are now working to develop SPT as a research methodology that allows people to visualize and understand the deep (and mostly invisible) structures of social change. We see the potential for SPT “scans” to do for social field research over the next decade what MRI scans did for mindfulness and neuroscience over the past decade.

(4) A Community of Eco-System Catalysts

The fourth building block deals with people. The best concept is worth nothing if the faculty do not embody these new forms and the principles of student-centered learning. The requirements of today’s tenure-track system put faculty on pathways that keep them far from the experiences that are most relevant to reinventing the type of education described here. We need a new faculty track for reflective practitioners who are more deeply involved in major projects of societal transformation and who can share their knowledge-in-action with students while also helping learners deepen their own capacities for embodied knowing.

(5) Places, Platforms, and Practices for Making the System Sense Itself

The fifth building block concerns places, platforms, and core practices. The piece most needed here is places: high-quality spaces that are designed and structured to build vertical literacy.

Figure 2 summarizes these five building blocks that, if put into place, could prototype and accelerate the journey of higher ed institutions toward 4.0 worldwide—a journey that in many microcosms of higher ed has already begun to take shape.

Five Bold Initiatives to Actualize the New University

While I have been holding the vision of such a new university for some years, it is only now that I feel it is completely doable. To advance the journey toward realizing it, we—the core team of the u.lab and Presencing Institute community—will launch five major initiatives throughout 2018.

(1) 4.0 Labs: Co-shaping the Future by Activating Generative Fields

We will convene 4.0 Labs at both the country and the regional level. We are currently working with the government of the Netherlands and Scotland on prototyping a country-level lab. We intend to launch the European 4.0 Lab in June 2018. Each of these 4.0 Labs will co-define its own focus at the outset. With the United Nations Development Group (UNDG) we are discussing how to use 4.0 Labs to accelerate the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on a country level.

The key idea of all these labs is very simple: the next wave of innovation in food, farming, finance, health, learning, and leadership will be highly interrelated and sourced from a shared co-creative 4.0 territory (see Figure 3 below). Since no one can do this alone, we need to create cross-sectional infrastructures that support these initiatives on that journey.

Figure 3: Four Evolutionary Stages: From 1.0 to 4.0 (Source: O. Scharmer, <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.amazon.com/Esse
BY KELVY BIRD
Figure 3: Four Evolutionary Stages: From 1.0 to 4.0 (Source: O. Scharmer, The Essentials of Theory U)

(2) u.lab 2x: Transforming Our Economy

Our second initiative will be launched in March 2018. A joint eco-system of sites and platforms among HuffPost and PI will capture and share the new economic narrative that is shifting the economy from ego to eco. Starting in April, each month our online platform will present inspiring, interactive, 60-minute live-broadcasts. Between the monthly live sessions we will hold global community cafés where change makers from across sectors, systems, and cultures can join the conversation. These will incorporate video-based discussions in small breakout groups and help us to move from traditional media and social media to more interactive and engaging forms of conversation, and from there to globally distributed ways of co-generating future media that change the world for the better.

(3) Social Field Research Summer School

The third initiative focuses on launching a research project that blends SPT practices, , and data-driven third-person research to investigate the deep structures of social fields. The focus in 2018 will be on establishing the research group and integrating these methodologies. Starting in 2019 an annual Berlin Summer School for Social Field Research will invite 50 leading awareness-based action researchers from around the world to work with each other and with senior thought leaders and investigators in their fields. The intention is to run the Berlin Summer School for 10 years in order to do for awareness-based field research what the Mind and Life Institute did for mindfulness and neuroscience: establish a new domain of research and replicate it worldwide.

(4) Eco-system Catalyst Masterclass

The fourth initiative, the masterclass for eco-system catalysts, will target the most advanced practitioners and activators of social eco-systems of innovation in order to help them advance their skills, mirror and support each other on their journey of Self, and interweave their respective innovation ecologies across regions, sectors, and cultures. This masterclass will be a year-long journey limited to 50 participants. The first cohort will start its journey in Boston in October 2018. As a group they will activate and cultivate a globally distributed innovation ecology. From that group we expect a new breed of young faculty to emerge who are literate across all of the intelligences discussed above.

(5) u.school

The fifth initiative focuses on upgrading our place- and web-based infrastructures to better serve the evolving needs of our rapidly growing global community. One key focus is on finding physical campus areas for all of the above (which together will constitute the “u.school”). The first conversations for such a campus are happening in Berlin. The longer term intention is to establish campus areas in all major cultures and geographies. These u.school campuses will partner with multiple universities to co-deliver a curriculum in vertical societal literacy across all system levels (Figure 1 matrix) and then create open source resources that allow for the replication of this curriculum in universities worldwide.

Figure 4: Actualizing the New University: Five Initiatives
BY KELVY BIRD
Figure 4: Actualizing the New University: Five Initiatives

Reinventing the Idea of the University

The classical university was based on the unity of research and teaching. The modern university has been based on the unity of research, teaching, and application. The emerging 21st-century university, I believe, will be based on the unity of research, teaching, and civilizational renewal. To transform higher education into its most advanced evolutionary state requires nothing less than a full inversion of its traditional discipline structure toward 4.0 ways of innovating and learning.

The purpose of education is not to fill vessels. It’s also not to spurn people who diligently rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. The purpose of the 21st-century education and university is to help us develop what matters most: vertical literacy—the capacity to sense and actualize our highest future possibility in the face of disruption.

All the elements for making this happen at scale already exist. By connecting them we can activate a vibrant global eco-system of 4.0 Labs, place-based hubs, change maker communities, research initiatives, distributed media producers, and eco-system catalysts—in short, a living ecology that can protect the flame that Plutarch was talking about and that we need to pass on from one generation to the next. For it is this flame—the flame of the creative human spirit—that at no point in the history of our planet has been so at risk, so attainable, and so necessary for addressing our ecological, social, and spiritual divides. We need intentional places to kindle, cultivate and evolve that flame.

At the entrance to the Academy of Athens there was an inscription that said: Let no one enter here who does not know math and geometry. What should the inscription be at the entrance to the new university that we aspire to create today, 2,400 years later? Maybe it could read: Let no one enter here who does not know that the issues outside are a mirror of the issues inside; i.e., let no one enter here who is vertically illiterate. The new university comes into being—the flame is kindling—wherever and whenever we bend the beam of collective attention back onto ourselves, whenever we shift our awareness from ego to eco in order to regenerate our economic, democratic, and educational systems from that awareness and source.

Sophia Institute

Transforming Our Lives, Transforming Our World

The Sophia Institute is a center of learning that provides innovative programs that foster the rise of the Feminine, cultivating wisdom and mindfulness, for a more just, sustainable, and flourishing world. Sophia offers retreats, lectures, classes, and special events, featuring nationally and internationally renowned leaders and teachers.

Measuring Mindset Change in the Systemic Transformation of Education

As the whole society is experiencing a notable shift fr om the industrial age to the information age, an urgent need for a mindset change in education has been frequently discussed during the past decades. This paper will approach the mindset change through three interconnected sections: the first section revi ews the conceptualization of mindset and then gives our definition of mindset concentrating on understanding its unique significance to the educational system. The second section presents, compares, and contrasts the key markers of the informationage mindset and the industrialage mindset. The third section displays an instrument designed and developed by the authors that can be used to measure the status of individual and group mindset.

Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies LUCSUS

The research at LUCSUS focuses on sustainability challenges such as water conflicts, food security, land use changes and urban transformation – and is often conducted in international cooperation. We have a strong international research profile through the centre’s involvement in the Earth System Governance Project and by the appointment as a Right Livelihood College. We also coordinate the Linnaeus program LUCID (Lund University Centre of Excellence for Integration of Social and Natural Dimensions of Sustainability).

Mindfulness in Schools Project (MiSP)

Mindfulness in Schools Project (MiSP) is a charity whose aim is to inform, create, train and support the teaching
of secular mindfulness to young people and those who care for them.

AISCHU – Achtsamkeit im pädagogischen Kontext

AISCHU ist ein erfahrungsorientiertes, wissenschaftlich fundiertes Rahmencurriculum für die Implementierung der Haltung der Achtsamkeit in den schulischen Unterricht (von der 5. Klasse bis zum Abitur)

Stanford Compassionate University Project

We are working to make Stanford a compassionate place. This includes having students, faculty, and staff sign on and reaffirm the Charter for Compassion, and to collaboratively create a Five Year Compassionate Action Plan signed by President Hennessy, VPUE Harry J. Elam, Jr., VPGE Patricia J. Gumport, and the ASSU Undergraduate Senate. 

Center for Compassion And Altruism Research And Education

While science has made great strides in treating pathologies of the human mind, far less research exists to date on positive qualities of the human mind including compassion, altruism and empathy. Yet these prosocial traits are innate to us and lie at the very centerpiece of our common humanity. Our capacity to feel compassion has ensured the survival and thriving of our species over millennia. For this reason, the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University School of Medicine was founded in 2008 with the explicit goal of promoting, supporting, and conducting rigorous scientific studies of compassion and altruistic behavior. Founded and directed by Dr. James Doty, Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery, CCARE is established within the Department of Neurosurgery. To date, CCARE has collaborated with a number of prominent neuroscientists, behavioral scientists, geneticists and biomedical researchers to closely examine the physiological and psychological correlates of compassion and altruism.

Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT

The Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT is dedicated to inquiry, dialogue, and education on the ethical and humane dimensions of life. As a collaborative and nonpartisan think tank, The Center focuses on the development of interdisciplinary research and programs in varied fields of knowledge, from science and technology to education and international relations

The Mindfulness Initiative

WEBSITE: The Mindfulness Initiative is a policy institute that grew out of a programme of mindfulness teaching in the UK Parliament. We now work with politicians around the world who practice mindfulness and help them to make capacities of heart and mind serious considerations of public policy.

The Mindfulness Initiative helped the Mindfulness All Party Parliamentary Group (MAAPG) carry out an inquiry into how mindfulness could be incorporated into UK services and institutions.

Bringing scientists, practitioners, commissioners of services and policymakers together in a series of Parliamentary events, the Mindful Nation inquiry held eight hearings on topics including the workplace, mental health, education, criminal justice and pain management. Working papers from these discussions served as the foundation for the Mindful Nation UK report, which summarises evidence-based recommendations.

Bruhn, Thomas

As the initiator and coordinator of AMA, I feel a deep commitment to the project‘s original intention and ambition. I care particularly about community building and see my conceptual work as a support for community empowerment. I love the diversity of perspectives that we aspire to integrate and the challenges that this aspiration means for my own development. I believe in the intrinsic goodness of all humans and tend to see the unity and connectedness behind apparent cultural or disciplinary differences.

My Background and Expertise:

  • PhD in Physics (self-assembly in nano-structures)
  • Facilitation & Moderation (Art of Hosting, Design Thinking…)
  • Complex systems dynamics (self-organization, emergence)
  • Transdisciplinarity & co-creation
  • Anthropocene, earth-system science
  • Climate change, geoengineering

My responsibilities:

  • Facilitating the team; creating structures, containers and visuals
  • Coordinating the website, database, and board of curators
  • Vision and strategy development
  • Holding space for the formation of trusting relationships & networks
  • Presenting AMA to the public
  • Administrative and strategic coordination within the IASS