The Crealectic Method: From Creativity to Compossibility

Abstract

Can we fruitfully apply creative ecology practices in the world of industrial production? Enter the crealectic method for innovation and self-innovation, aiming at fostering creative long-term thinking and acting. The crealectic method proposes five steps: Step 1—Resetting (doing tabula rasa); Step 2—Crealing (reconnecting with the “Creal”); Step 3—Profusing (letting ideas pour out without censorship); Step 4—Compossibilizing (connecting compatible ideas); Step 5—Realizing (understanding and making real). I describe a pilot test of the method within the Research and Development unit of Vattenfall, a Swedish power company dedicated to fossil-free energy production.

Introduction: From Antropocene to Regenerocene via the Vattenfall Scene

The two concepts of “creativity” and “ecology”—too long associated with anthropocentric technicity—have been holistically refreshed by the “creative ecologies” perspective. Everything is in creative process and ecological becoming, because, everywhere we look and feel, a collective intersection between beings, entities, and networks of agency is happening (Harris, 2021). Creative ecology is a stance that places creativity within a holistic worldview of interconnectedness and reveals dynamic interdependencies between economic, social, cultural, and environmental systems (Capra, 1994; Howkins, 2010).

The Anthropocene has been defined as an era of human-centered global mass production, such that the Earth’s equilibrium is modified and negatively affected by Anthropocentric colonization, to the extent that several living processes are impeded from regenerating healthily (Waters et al., 2016). We will not fix the anthrobot with another anthrobot. A more immanent, diffuse, and multiple view of creativity is needed to help us curate more sustainable futures and alleviate the severe impact of the Anthropocene (Bonneuil & Fressoz, 2016). Suppose we are to slow down or even—after several decades—stop the critical deterioration of our earthly environment by toxic activities (Fullerton, 2015); we may then embrace a new era favoring the capacity for human and nonhuman life to regenerate in a spirit of compossiblity, harmony, holistic optimization, allowing us to enter a—now fairly utopian—Regenerocene (de Miranda, 2021b). The regenerative mindset (Seligman, 2011) is connected to the ideal of a “healing-growth” activity: a process via which growing is healing. For instance, communities that have faced shared trauma or challenges often find healing in coming together, sharing their experiences, and working collectively toward a brighter future, as seen in 2005 to 2010 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (Osofsky et al., 2022). Moreover, human growth should be able to heal ecosystems rather than destroy them.

Some voices claim that humanity needs to adopt a shared mindedness, a collective consciousness beyond the disparate values and competitive practices of the Anthropocene (Steffen et al., 2011). Others respond that a global change of consciousness would not happen overnight, if it is even possible on that scale (Kegan, 1982). One may regret that a universal psyche, that is, a unified conscience above the particularities of culture, nation, forms of life, communities, or even species, might never be achievable (Nisbett, 2003). Do we know which mindset might facilitate a transition toward a more sustainable world? We can try to answer.

In what follows I will offer one possible answer grounded on the concept of creativity understood holistically. This will be done via a method for innovation and self-innovation that I have begun to test systematically, in real life, at the Research and Development laboratory of Vattenfall, a Swedish power company dedicated to fossil-free energy production.

Vattenfall is one of Europe’s largest producers and retailers of electricity and heat (Fischetti et al., 2020). Its power portfolio encompasses wind, hydropower, solar power, nuclear, and biomass. Headquartered in Sweden, Vattenfall has been a cornerstone of national energy supply since its establishment in 1909, while its operations are now also deployed in countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Finland. Vattenfall’s vision, according to their online site, is to “Power Climate Smarter Living” and enable “fossil-free living within one generation,” something they also call, for lack of a better term, “fossil-freedom.” The company claims to be curating a sustainable energy system, for example via the recent invention of fossil-free produced steel (Pei et al., 2020).

In the summer of 2019, the Vattenfall Human Resources unit contacted me to provide philosophical counseling sessions to one of its leading strategy managers. In the winter of 2020, my role was extended to some of the principal managers of the R&D unit. What started as individual philosophical coaching in the spirit of the “philosophical health” movement (de Miranda, 2021c) became progressively a network intended to help in long-term thinking and acting, to anticipate the R&D laboratory of the future, at a time where the identity of Vattenfall is in transition, due to the former oil giants now becoming actors of the renewable energy market, and due to much higher demand in (clean) electricity from society.

In what follows, we will examine two pilot workshops in which the crealectic-inspired method was tested for the first time, in April and September 2023, with 20 Vattenfall R&D engineers and managers. This project falls into the label of action research in general (Reason & Bradbury, 2008; Stringer, 2013) or “field philosophy” in particular (Frodeman, 2021), what could also be called action philosophy (Arendt, 1958).

A Process-Philosophical Background

The crealectic method presented in this article is grounded in process philosophy. Process-oriented thinkers have rediscovered the importance of seeing the world, not as a compound of inert substances that can be manipulated as cogs in a vast mechanism but as a continuously metamorphic intertwinement of intercreative flows (Barad, 2007; Smolin, 2013; Whitehead, 1978). The sense that creativity is a ubiquitous process ongoing around us, connecting all beings and entities in dynamic systems, comes from various angles: for instance, posthumanism (Braidotti, 2013; Haraway, 2003, 2016; Hayles, 1999), new materialism (Coole & Frost, 2010; Dolphijn & van der Tuin, 2012), or, in our case, crealectics (de Miranda, 2017).

These views are often ecologically minded and critical of anthropocentrism in the sense that “human-first” reasoning seems dangerously flawed (de Miranda, 2021b). Despite the good intentions of human-centric policies, the care for nonhuman beings or more-than-human collective agents is, from the perspective of the Regenerocene, as important as the care for our fellow humans (Latour, 2017; Singer, 1975). The posthuman and new materialist critiques contend that the Anthropocene could be overcome by letting go of our human obsession for our species and instead adopting a more holistic purpose, such as Think Earth First (Callicott, 2013), Think Gaia First (Latour, 2017). Creative ecology results from a shift in thinking, moving away from a view based on reductionism, mechanics, and fixed quantities to a view based on dynamic holistic systems where qualities are constantly changing, contingent on the observer and on each other (Howkins, 2010).

Crealectics advocates to Think Creal First (de Miranda, 2021a). Creal is the Creative Real at work all around us, constantly evolving to combine possibilities into compossibilities, that is compatibilities between entities in a given world. The hypothesis of a Creative Real as creatio continua is typical of process philosophies, both Western and Eastern (Holm-Hadulla, 2013), for example, in Heraclitus, Daoism (Yu, 1981), or Whitehead, for whom “creativity is the ultimate behind all forms,” “the universal of universals” (Whitehead, 1978, 20–21). It is worth noting here that Daoism and other Eastern ontologies of pancreative agency are gently evolutive rather than revolutionary (Harris, 2021). Creal creativity is rarely a disruption and more of a slow dance of union, disunion, or reunion of the possibles.

Compossibility is a concept proposed by 17th-century philosopher and mathematician Leibniz (1989): to make a harmonious world, we need not only to maximize the sense of the possible of its beings, but also maximize their compatibility and noncontradiction within the whole. If everything is possible, not everything is compossible. The Leibnizian idea of the best of possible worlds means a world in which harmony is maximized: a maximum of entities are allowed to fulfill their potential as much as possible but not more than is compossible in connexion with the others. The dynamic and harmonic equilibrium of the whole comes before the full expression of all parts—A compossible world is holistically optimized.

A bit of cosmology: every creation is an intercreation between entities. The essential engine, matter, or energy of the universe is a process of compossible intercreations, a term that bares similarities with what was recently called intra-actions (Barad, 2007). Every world or ecology is constantly being created and harmonized from within in intercreative correspondence: “Every creative ecology is an event, forever changing all of its elements as it co-creates the next moment.” (Harris, 2021, 5). The cosmic creative advance is internal to the Real as an immanent a priori phenomenon: creativity is not something added by humans on top of matter a posteriori. How the Creal generates worlds, experiences, stories, thoughts, and effects of exteriorization or realities, is via a compossible exteriorization, optimization, and realization of a generative flux of possibilities.

Crealectic intelligence is the practice of intercreating diverse and harmonious realities out of an embodied sense of possibility and compossibility. Beyond analytic thinking and dialectic thinking, although acknowledging them as complementary, crealectic consciousness is one for which the abundance of the possible is constantly given to us a priori, via our collective belonging to life defined as an intercreative compossibility of flows (Deleuze & Guattari, 2004). Realities are compossible expressions of worlds or structures emerging from the creative play of intercreating forces (Leibniz, 1996).

While our world encourages managerial pragmaticism and discourages cosmological perspectives, the cultivation of a relationship with our cosmic creativity has ecological consequences: it encourages us to see the world in which we act as a synergic living whole rather than analytically separated parts or cogs in more or less incompatible technological spaces (Naess, 1989), or incompossible techno-tribes (“your technology is no good compared to my technology”).

Applications of process-philosophical intuitions to corporate ecologies and organizational ensembles are still rare (Dibben, 2009; Hjorth et al., 2015; Olsen, 2011). In what follows, I will describe the first steps of the application of the crealectic method within the Vattenfall R&D department.

The Crealectic Method in Five Steps

The crealectic method aims at fostering a form of creative thinking, planning, and acting that encourages cognitive diversity and holistic compossibility. The method proposes five steps, which are only discrete by method, but entangled in practice because of the complexity of creative ecologies: 1—Resetting (doing tabula rasa); 2—Crealing (reconnecting with the Creal); 3—Profusing (letting ideas pour out without censorship); 4—Compossibilizing (connecting and configuring compatible ideas); 5—Realizing (understanding and making real). In what follows, I briefly detail the intention behind each step.

Step 1

The notion of “Resetting” involves approaching a state of “tabula rasa” or “blank slate,” which signifies reinitializing our mental state as much as possible given time constraints. It suggests freeing ourselves from an excessive influence of entrenched patterns of thought, and seeking a fresh availability. Admittedly, when we are faced with a project, problem, or challenge, we are prone to dive into our customary modes of thinking. This “autopilot cognition,” akin to what Kahneman described as “System 1” thinking (Kahneman, 2011), is our brain’s quick way of dealing with routine tasks and decisions.

Cognitive biases hinder our ability to think critically or creatively, and they distort our decision-making processes; by becoming aware of our presuppositions, we can strive to minimize their effects and open our minds to the possible. Csikszentmihalyi’s work on “flow” underscores the importance of stepping back from our routine patterns of thought to nurture innovative solutions (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996). To be effective, this attitude needs to be repeated on a daily basis: it is not enough to engage in just a few annual “out-of-the-box” sessions.

Step 2

The notion of “Crealing” refers to engaging with the Creal as feeling rather than merely intellectually. We can experience an embodied apprehension of life as an intercreative reality, a network of ecologies, where humans are an integral part of the natural world, not separate from it (Spinoza, 1996). Feeling this creative flux reveals our sense of the possible, potentially broadening our understanding and capabilities. Most people have access to crealing via musical joy for example, or artistic activities.

Crealing also involves acknowledging and overturning our disconnection from the natural world and starting to develop a sense of oneness with Earth as a complex, self-regulating and self-healing system (Lovelock, 1979). This process invites us to self-transcend, or rather to inscend within our immanent creative nature (Berry, 2002). It is about awakening to the abundant intercreative powers of life, our grateful sense of the possible and the compossible.

Step 3

“Profusing” designates the process of freely expressing ideas with boundless imagination and without, ideally, any form of censorship or self-imposed restrictions. Profusing shares its spirit, for instance, with the Surrealist movement, where artists attempted to tap into the unconscious mind as a source of inspiration, seeking to release the creative potential of the unconscious in their work (Breton, 1969). The Surrealists aimed to produce unexpected, unusual images that challenged conventional ways of thinking and viewing the world.

Research in creativity and brainstorming suggests that the freer the ideation process, the more innovative and diverse the generated ideas tend to be (Paulus & Nijstad, 2003). Suspending cognitive censorship as much as possible aligns with the principles of divergent or lateral thinking, emphasizing a creative, less-structured approach to problem-solving as compared to traditional analytical or “vertical” thinking (de Bono, 1970).

Step 4

“Compossibility,” as mentioned earlier, is a concept put forward in the 17th century by Leibniz, a polymath who performed significant work as an engineer, philosopher, mathematician, librarian, diplomat and theologian. Leibniz held that a world is constituted by events, objects, or laws that can coexist without fundamental contradiction or incompatibility (Leibniz, 1991). In this vein, “compossibilizing” becomes a process of integrating ideas together, a task requiring a keen sense for potential synergies. The task of compossibilizing involves examining these ideas to determine which ones are or may be compatible, which ones are redundant or possibly contradictory. This step intends to initiate the shaping of a common creative ecology, noting that components of a system can have a synergistic effect—producing more than the sum of their parts—when they work together harmoniously. In compossibilizing, ideas are not considered in isolation, but as potential parts of a larger, interconnected system.

Step 5

“Realizing” concludes the crealectic method. The term realize harbors a dual significance: first, understanding something that was previously unclear or unconscious, and second, actualizing into existence, or making real. The realization step involves a reflection upon, and projected implementation of the structures generated during the previous stages, underpinning the necessity of both cognitive processing and concrete action.

Understanding is about metacognition: it refers to the ability to think about one’s own thinking processes (Flavell, 1979). It involves becoming aware of the sensible and sensitive processes that have led to the generation of new ideas or possibilities. The second aspect of realizing is to be able to manifest these possibilities into the real world, for instance via decision-making. This pragmatic concern stresses the importance of actionable ideas and their impact in the world (Dewey, 1938; James, 1907).

To better understand how the crealectic method can be useful in processes of innovation, I describe in the next section its first real-life pilot testing, conducted in collaboration with Vattenfall R&D.

First Crealectic Workshops at Vattenfall

The Crealectic Method was first tested at Vattenfall R&D in two moments: a 90-minute workshop that I facilitated online April 25, 2023, with seven managers and engineers of Vattenfall R&D, and, second, a 2-hour workshop in Älvkarleby, Sweden, on September 14, 2023, with 13 participants.

Most of the participants had never heard of the word crealectics before and did not know what to expect. The text of the first invitation was succinct, as it is partly reproduced below:

We will imagine that we are in 2030 and that a new form of consciousness has been generated (by mutation, training, or despair) within the human species. We will use the Crealectic Method to describe and reflect on what this consciousness could be and feel like.

The second workshop was about the values behind the idea of regenerative growth. Both sessions unfolded as follows:

Resetting

To produce a sense of mind-rebooting online and with limited time is not an easy task. I wondered what a psychological analogy to resetting might be and decided that amnesia was a good metaphor: in particular, resetting would be, at least metaphorically, like an intentional, momentary, and selective form of amnesia (Kihlstrom, 2006). The second, related idea, was to use a poem. Cognitive poetics investigates how literature and poetry can shift our usual modes of thinking by presenting unexpected and novel language and imagery (Gavins & Steen, 2003). One might agree that poetry can be like a shower for the mind, an excellent way to reset cognitively by suggesting unexpected forms of language and images, like in a lucid dream.

In this part of the first workshop, I read from Meena Kandasamy, a contemporary Indian poet, fiction writer, translator, and activist, a poem titled Amnesia, Selective (Kandasamy, 2006). The poem can be found online in its integrality on multiple sites; it speaks of “unearthing events long past” and of nothingness.

After this reading, still in the spirit of the amnesic metaphor, the participants were asked to write their full name on a piece of paper or screen, and to delete one or two letters of it every time I pronounced one of the following sentences, which they should repeat in their mind:

I do not know my real name . . .

I do not know my real age . . .

I do not know my real country . . .

I do not know my real language . . .

I do not know my real family . . .

I do not know my real planet . . .

I know that I am just born . . .

The participants did not seem unsettled by this phase, although their state of mind or emotional state was hard to sense at a distance. During the resetting stage of the second workshop, I was able to invite the participants into the woods, near the Älvkarleby waterfall. They spontaneously formed a circle, and I read another poem, The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost, which is a meditation of all the bifurcations life takes unceasingly and the fact that we are the product of a million choices which could have been made differently.

After these few minutes of resetting, the participants were invited to move on to the second step of the crealectic process.

Crealing

The challenge of this step, during the online workshop, was to suggest a feeling of connection with the creative flow of life while digitally separated. I started with a few introductory words about the Creal as living creative flow, and to illustrate them with an exercise, decided to show an image of the evolutionary tree according to neo-Darwinism, of which the internet again offers many variations. As is often seen in such representations, humans are problematically shown on top of the tree, and bacteria and eukaryotes are at the bottom.

I asked the participants to imagine that they were performing backward evolution, regressing—or “inscending”—progressively to their monocellular state down the tree of life, via primates, rodents, eutherians, reptiles and birds, tetrapods, fish, deuterostomes, fungi, eubacteria, all the way to the origin of life. As I performed the exercise of progressively and slowly naming out various species, from the supposedly most complex and contemporaneous to the most primitive and monocellular, I asked the participants to focus intuitively on—to “feel”—the idea of continuous creation and of the chain of life. During this retro-evolutionary psalmody, the participants were asked to feel what they had in common with all these beings.

During the physical, second workshop, and its crealing step, I asked the participants, still disposed in a circle in the woods, to listen to the nearby waterfall and focus on its massive sound, closing their eyes and imagining that this was indeed the sound of life itself, the sound of Creal. They all complied gracefully, as far as I can tell.

Profusing

The participants were asked to pour out ideas about the theme of the workshops: “A regenerating consciousness in 2030,” and, in the second workshop, “The Values of Regenerative Growth.” In the first workshop, this could be done orally and/or in the chat section of the online meeting platform. In the second workshop, this was done by asking each of the participants, still with closed eyes, to utter one single word spontaneously.

At this stage, nearly everyone had something to say or write without apparent effort or excessive epistemic shame. In the first workshop, participants spoke for example of “a consciousness that makes us aware of the oneness necessary to heal the world,” and of an awareness “that looks at the world around us with the goal to give back more than we take from the world.”

The profuse ideas of the second workshop were empathy, organic, life, custom-made, prosperity, kindness, sustainable, future, forest, holistic, forces, water, change, mosquitoes, risks, and caring.

Compossibilizing

This moment, in the two workshops, consisted in trying to imagine and discuss how the ideas or intuitions previously formulated in Step 3 could be associated together in a compatible manner. This was perhaps the most challenging part for the participants, but mostly because of the lack of time to explore the networks of meaning and possibilities that were suggested in the previous moment. Compossibilizing is the core moment of the crealectic method, but also the one that, we realized, needs more time than initially planned in these two pilot workshops.

One of the participants in the first workshop did produce this apparently compossible definition, echoing the former utterances of the colleagues:

A regenerating consciousness is a form of consciousness that develops over time like a stream of consciousness based on past experiences, becoming more self-aware, cutting away the bullshit and the artificial stuff, and using insights from different parts of the world.

During the second workshop, participants first walked back from the woods to a conference room in the nearby Vattenfall facilities, and we unfolded the ideas, values, and virtues connected behind the list of words of the previous stage. We spoke, among other ideas, about a “felt understanding for other forms of life,” about “tolerating disturbances for the sake of balance,” about “the vital importance of pausing and resting for natural growth,” “the quiet force of streams and flows,” and of “wild complexity understood.” A compossible grouping of these ideas was initiated, but left unfinished, for lack of time.

Realizing

This step in the workshop consisted in asking the participants what action they could take today to favor some of the insights gained via the previous steps. Here are some of the proposed actions:

“We need a platform for discussion and for sharing experiences.”

“I will focus less on details or the short term.”

“I will reflect more, discuss, and deep listen.”

“I will take a walk every day.”

“I will encourage my team to be curious.”

“I will take more time for reflection.”

“I will try to be humble and open.”

“We need a creative environment.”

Echoing the first and last proposal, which expressed a need or desire for a creative environment and a platform for discussion or experience and knowledge exchange, the pragmatic decision was de facto officialized by Vattenfall R&D to incrementally implement a physical “Crealectic Lab” in Älvkarleby between 2023 and 2026, with regular encounters and crealectic workshops. This is a concrete opportunity to better observe if and how the crealectic method can offer in the longer-term innovative, self-innovative, and organizational fruits.

Reflections on a Crealectic Ecosystem at Vattenfall

Are short exercises like the one reported here effectual in what they are meant to achieve? One may agree that they introduce a seed of intuitive reflection that can produce fruits in the longer term, but mostly if repeated over and over for a significant period. Such is the intention of the Crealectic Lab. Of course, some fine-tuning of the crealectic protocol might be needed in the future, and the method might evolve empirically.

With participants that are often engineers used to privilege analytic thinking, these iterated workshops might bare sustainable fruits by being counter-intuitive with Vattenfall’s (instru)mental routines, and create a new culture based on the kind of compossible thinking that the Regenerocene needs. An excess of analytic intelligence can lead to cyclic retraction from explorative, idealistic, or intercreative thinking in favor of day-to-day forms of metrics-obsessed management. But there is no such thing as a pure analytic mind, and at all moments of these two experimental workshops, the level of goodwill and active participation was high, despite the unorthodox exercises.

Most participants acknowledged the desirability of a holistic form of consciousness that would bring us closer to oneness with Earth and life, promoting healing and unity in diversity. One participant argued against the need to generate a new form of consciousness, suggesting that our existing consciousness is sufficient to engender the needed regenerative changes. Some participants agreed that personal and collective past lessons are crucial to help us create something new, implying that our former experiences (long-term memory) inform our new ideas and ways of thinking (long-term intelligence). Others emphasized the importance of peeling back layers of distraction and artificiality to truly perceive our surroundings and be generous with the world. One participant reminded the others of the idea of the Jamesian “stream of consciousness,” a literary device that may inform our understanding of our own consciousness as a flow that echoes the creative living flow (Zunshine, 2006). This of course resonates with the process-philosophy background of crealectics.

Overall, these pilot workshops revealed the diversity and potential depth of the participants’ perspectives on these complex topics. The group seemed to agree that a “regenerating consciousness” is a form of consciousness that can evolve over time, informed by historical experiences, self-awareness, and worldly experiences. This may involve cutting away distractions and artificiality to perceive what’s truly meaningful. To cultivate this consciousness, and respective values, the group suggested creating a platform for repeated discussion and a continual sharing of experiences, thus anticipating the ongoing project of constructing a real-life Crealectic Lab at the Vattenfall R&D location, a work-in-progress that will be documented in further publications.

This physical Crealectic Lab is planned to be a creative ecosystem composed of five rooms or spaces, each dedicated to one of the phases of the crealectic method. Committed iterations in a dedicated and pleasant space is what may create, progressively, a renewed mindset. It will take a few more years and regular interventions to assert if a crealectic approach can be helpful to regenerate the worldview and habits of a R&D department in a corporation like Vattenfall and foster holistic innovation, self-innovation (philosophical health), and cognitive diversity in a corps of intercreative workers.

If the Crealectic Lab performs the role of an intercreative ecosystem, it will need communicators to articulate and facilitate conversations; connectors to bring people and other members of the ecology together and build relationships among them; creators to produce stimulating content to be shared; disruptors armed with the occasional creative criticism; enablers or angels to give direct support to the creative process by making resources available, removing barriers; and providers to distribute the resources needed.

Again, if these two workshops were isolated as a punctual intervention at Vattenfall, the capacity for the Crealectic Method to induce change would be limited and perhaps still dependent on the “new spirit of capitalism,” incorporating ephemeral “fun” dislocations of capitalism in its own operations and ideology (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005). It is important to ensure that the crealectic method and its implementation are a part of a long-term process of transformation rather than an ephemeral exercise in corporate creativity. Long-term thinking and long-term intelligence demand long-term habits.

Conclusion: Compossible Futures

One may wonder if philosophical practice, whether it is or not inspired by process philosophy, is powerful enough to modify economic mindsets and business habits. I believe that transformational projects must be made possible in the mind before they are made compossible in the world. However, the crealectic approach can only be effectual if it is more than a creativity-inducing framework: rather, it is supposed to be an embodied method, repetitively multiplied in various protocols, organically iterated such that it may become second nature—if not a new collective form of consciousness, at least a new organizational culture or mindset.

Even if it is true that there is little time for humanity to mitigate the existential risks of ultra-capitalism, climate change, and deregulated new technologies like artificial intelligence, it is important not to panic (Wheatley, 1999). It will take decades to get rid of bad habits and embrace a form of Regenerocene—perhaps the best we can do is harmonize the Anthropocene. Despite the fact that perfectionists may become impatient, afraid, or angry, when looking at predictive analytic data about our probable future on Earth, we should still befriend time and trust the variety of futures the Creal is potentially offering us, in resonance with our earthly becoming, in a shared world that matters and makes sense because we are sensegivers (Blumer, 1969; Weick, 1995).

The holistic form of consciousness explored during these workshops refers to an ambitious state of awareness that encompasses the entirety of one’s being, as well as the interconnectedness with others and the universe (Hanh, 1999; Tart, 1975; Wilber, 2000). This complex notion relates to the idea that our existing consciousness can be expanded and refined both through self-awareness and collective dialogue or intellectual empathy. A philosophically healthy individual, group, system, or protocol aims at ensuring that goals and purposes are pragmatically aligned with their highest ideals while respecting the regenerative, plural, harmonious, and compossibilizing futures of different forms of life. This is easier said than done—which is not a reason to give up.