The system transformation needed to address our interconnected crises requires a shift at the level of collective worldview. Towards such a shift - and the resilience and flourishing needed to navigate societal breakdowns wisely and create the new - we offer a model of Developmental Spaces (DS):
Projects – discover our non-empty spaces
Fostering spaces for growth is an important part of our trajectory. We seek to harness the combined power of practice, critical inquiry and creativity to address some of the issues of our times - health, environmental awareness, social equality and multilingual, trans-cultural collaborations.
Reimagining Ourselves at the End of Our World: Kinship, Interconnection, and Spirituality in the Metacrisis - The Great Simplification
Over the past decade, the world has become increasingly chaotic and uncertain – and so, too, has our cultural vision for the future. While the events we face now may feel unprecedented, they are rooted in much deeper patterns, which humanity has been playing out for millennia. If we take the time to understand past trends, we can also employ practices and philosophies that might counteract them – such as focusing on kinship, intimacy, and resilience – to help pave the way for a better future. How might we nurture the foundations of a different kind of society, even while the end of our current civilization plays out around us?
Norm Dynamics: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Social Norm Emergence, Persistence, and Change
Social norms are the glue that holds society together, yet our knowledge of them remains heavily intellectually siloed. This article provides an interdisciplinary review of the emerging field of norm dynamics by integrating research across the social sciences through a cultural-evolutionary lens. After reviewing key distinctions in theory and method, we discuss research on norm psychology—the neural and cognitive underpinnings of social norm learning and acquisition. We then overview how norms emerge and spread through intergenerational transmission, social networks, and group-level ecological and historical factors. Next, we discuss multilevel factors that lead norms to persist, change, or erode over time. We also consider cultural mismatches that can arise when a changing environment leads once-beneficial norms to become maladaptive. Finally, we discuss potential future research directions and the implications of norm dynamics for theory and policy.
Children's Acquisition and Application of Norms
All human societies are permeated by collectively shared entities that govern daily social interactions and promote coordination and cooperation: norms. While the study of norm development is not new to developmental psychology, it has only recently been the target of an interdisciplinary wave of research using new methodologies and (often) complementary theoretical accounts to describe and explain the origins and potentially species-unique aspects of human norm psychology. Here we review recent developmental research showing that young children swiftly acquire and infer norms in a variety of social contexts. Moreover, children actively enforce these norms, even as unaffected bystanders, when third parties do things the wrong way. This research suggests that the foundations of human norm psychology can be found in early childhood. Deeper insights into the ontogenetic roots of norm psychology may contribute to understanding the evolutionary emergence of human cooperation and its maintenance in the contemporary world.
Differences Between Tight and Loose Cultures: A 33-Nation Study
The differences across cultures in the enforcement of conformity may reflect their specific histories. , With data from 33 nations, we illustrate the differences between cultures that are tight (have many strong norms and a low tolerance of deviant behavior) versus loose (have weak social norms and a high tolerance of deviant behavior). Tightness-looseness is part of a complex, loosely integrated multilevel system that comprises distal ecological and historical threats (e.g., high population density, resource scarcity, a history of territorial conflict, and disease and environmental threats), broad versus narrow socialization in societal institutions (e.g., autocracy, media regulations), the strength of everyday recurring situations, and micro-level psychological affordances (e.g., prevention self-guides, high regulatory strength, need for structure). This research advances knowledge that can foster cross-cultural understanding in a world of increasing global interdependence and has implications for modeling cultural change.
Denizen
What are the narratives and paradigms that need to shift to facilitate a transition to a just, regenerative future? How do various mediums such as music, art, and film enable such changes to occur?
Grow like Trees: An Organic Approach to Societal Regrowth
2026 is the year that system breakdown became impossible to deny. Democratic norms, societal norms, rule of law, the fabric of the social contract tearing as we watch. Or hide, unwilling or unable to face the unravelling. The hopeful among us see opportunity through the dark. Tentatively or boldly we
We've Lost the Spaces That Foster Friendship
We keep offering individual fixes for loneliness while ignoring the disappearance of the spaces where adults once built real relationships.
Scale deep — The Systems Sanctuary
The world calls us to shift our mindsets and values from outdated ways of being and doing rooted in dominance, hierarchy and harmful systems, towards new ways rooted in relationship, collaboration and innovation.
The loneliest generation: What it is like to grow up in England today | IPPR
A connected society is one in which we care about how others are doing and, in turn, others look out for our wellbeing. It is the state and public services
Emergence: the connected lives of ants, brains, cities and software
In the tradition of Being Digital and The Tipping Point…
Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future - The Center for Partnership Systems
By Riane Eisler and Douglas P. Fry Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future, by Riane Eisler and Douglas P. Fry, holds the key to a clear perspective on our personal and social options in today’s world, showing how to structure our environments – from family and gender relations […]
Brainchildren
Minds are complex artifacts, partly biological and partly social; only a unified, multidisciplinary approach will yield a realistic theory of how they came i...
A City for Children — Oakland Public Library
A City for Children — Gutman, Marta, — American cities are constantly being built and rebuilt, resulting in ever-changing skylines and neighborhoods. While the dynamic urban landscapes of New York, Boston, and Chicago have been widely studied, there is much to be gleaned from West Coast cities, especially in California, where the migration boom at the end of the nineteenth century permanently changed the urban fabric of these newly diverse, plural metropolises. In A City for Children Marta Gutman focuses on the use and reuse of everyday buildings in Oakland, California, to make the city a better place for children. She introduces us to the women who were determined to mitigate the burdens placed on working-class families by an indifferent industrial capitalist economy. Often without the financial means to build from scratch, women did not tend to conceive of urban land as a blank slate to be wiped clean for development. Gutman shows how, over and over, women instead turned private houses and even a saloon in Oakland into orphanages, kindergartens, settlement houses, and day care centers, and in the process built the charitable landscape--a network of places that was critical for the betterment of children, families, and public life. The industrial landscape of Oakland, riddled with the effects of social inequality and racial prejudice, is not a neutral backdrop in Gutman's story but an active player. Spanning one hundred years of history, A City for Children provides a compelling model for building urban institutions, and it demonstrates that children, women, charity, and reform, along with incremental construction, renovations, alterations, additions, and repurposed structures, are central to the understanding of modern cities.
Together Culture CAMBRIDGE
Together Culture makes space to create, and to become more creative. We are gathering a powerful community of people who want to help create a more equitable and ecological creative economy, but need facilities, resources, momentum, structure and purpose to come together and make change happen.
