The Social Field: Divides & Cycles
What is the Social Field?
In his book Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges, Otto Scharmer shared that his father, a pioneer of German biodynamic farming, always stressed the importance of soil in agriculture. Crop yields, he told young Otto, are only as good as the quality of the soil they are grown in. In service of this principle, they would go on weekly field walks around the farm, stopping every so often to examine and assess the soil in particular places to diagnose issues evident in the plants. This is the metaphor that Otto extends into the social realm.
The idea is that whatever symptoms we observe above the surface have their roots, and consequently their solutions, in the complex and invisible world that lies beneath. The social field is the totality of relationships among individuals, groups, organizations and systems that gives rise to collective behaviours and outcomes. If on the surface, people are collectively producing results that they do not truly want, then something must be amiss in the social soil or field. Behaviour on every scale, from an individual to an entire society are largely determined by the full context in which they are embedded. The social field is a crucial piece of this context.
Three Divides
In some circles I run in, the chaos of the present moment in history is called the meta-crisis. In more traditional social problem-solving and NGO spaces (where I’ve spent much of my professional life), the phenomenon is generally perceived as separate, sometimes overlapping issues: the three divides pictured beow. The Ecological divide speaks to the separation between human civilization and the earth/nature. The Social divide takes in the separations between groups of people: war, terrorism, socio-economic inequality, political polarization, etc. The Spiritual divide refers to our separation from what makes life meaningful. It shows up as nihilism, compulsive consumption, a pandemic of mental health issues and a cluster of other symptoms which John Vervaeke calls the meaning crisis.
These divides naturally have their roots in the social field, and this field has three layers as shown in the bottom half of the image above. The first layer, analogous to topsoil, is structures. Structures are the social infrastructure that we inhabit. Think bureaucracies, corporations, churches, states — any type of organization where there is a level of diffusion of responsibility, command and control or hierarchy.
The second layer is Thought which refers to the abstract forms, beliefs systems and operating logic that underlie the way organizations are structured. Ideologies, economic and political theories, religions and mythic narratives are all in this category.
The final layer of the social field is Source. This term is used to refer to the place from which our thoughts and actions originate. It is also called the Blindspot in Theory U because it is outside of our normal range of examination. Source has positive and negative aspects, which is why it becomes a core objective to examine this inner place, note its essence and shift as needed. At this layer, questions are more useful than statements. What wants to come into being? How am I being used by it? Is this the role I truly wish to play? Who is my Self and what is my work?
Creative & Destructive Cycles
In my post describing Theory U in a nutshell, I outlined the basic prototyping cycle which follows the cycle of presencing. Presencing is sometimes described as sensing into the present moment for what wants to be born and midwifing it into existence. Otto and team have many ways of referring to this idea: leading from the emerging future, connecting to the highest future possibility, prototyping the new, and creating pockets of the future.
The cycle of presencing is a positive cycle. It takes you down through the levels of listening, opens up your perceptive capacities and thereby allows you can transcend your current self in service of something greater. See the yellow arrow in the image below.
On the flip side is the cycle of absencing. It is the negative mirror of presencing which occurs when the mind, heart and will remain closed (permanent state of downloading). Because the perceptive capacities are closed, there is no way to align behaviour with the needs of the present moment. Old ways of thinking and being continue to be applied in contexts that they no longer suit.
As depicted by the blue arrow in the image above, the closed mind leads to denial of information that conflicts with the status quo. The closed heart means that the self is cut off the feelings within and without, defences are high and the result is desensitization or numbing to the felt reality of being stuck doing things that simply aren’t working. At the highest point, there is a complete absence (or abstraction) from reality, the way that GDP, for example is a complete abstraction of real economic activity. What follows from these steps is blaming — because the idea that one could be playing a role in bringing about such negative results is inconceivable to this mindset. Once there is an object of blame or scapegoat, the next step, naturally, is to destroy that object to alleviate the symptoms or fix the problem. This obviously does not remedy the unwanted results so the cycle starts up again.
The destruction at the end of the cycle of absencing can take many forms depending on the context. In a business, it may be high-turnover, constant restructuring, or incomprehensible bankruptcy. In a community or social group, it might be ostracism/cancelling, psychological abuse, or in extreme cult-type cases: mass suicides. When we get to the level of nation states, politics and racial groups, we enter the arena of war, internal repression and even genocide.
At the global scale, Otto sometimes refers to presencing and absencing as two social fields on one planet. I find that confusing given the definition of social field discussed previously. I think of them instead as cycles that individuals, groups and systems can occupy and shift in and out of.
History emerges from the interplay between both these [cycles]. It’s a process that plays out in every country, culture, and community. It’s a clash of forces that we see not only on the level of exterior systems, but also on the level of the self. Systems change is personal. It is, as my colleague Peter Senge puts it, an “inside job.”
There is something ancient and archetypal in this idea and it reminds me of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s well-known quote:
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
― The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956
Who indeed is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? Certainly not many. And while there is truth in the statement about the personal nature of the good/evil divide, I disagree that destruction is the cure. I favour the Jungian approach: integrate the evil. And I find echoes of that in Theory U. It takes will and effort to consciously decide, minute by minute, every day, how and to what we pay attention. And that makes all the difference.
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Great piece!