Our Capacity for Change
The World As It Is and The World As It Could Be…
I love this concept.
I first came across it at a community organising training, when I was just beginning my work. I wasn't sure how I would use it, or why these words would stick so closely, but they planted this seed in me that’s grown over the years - a seed that has now evolved into Scintilla.
I’ve come to understand these words – the world as it is and the world as it could be – as articulating a gap I was trying to stand in, a space between worlds; between reality and possibility, between what we can see and what we can feel, between crisis and possibility.
A gap in which I believe we must stand as changemakers – holding the messy reality of a world that is transforming - if we’re to bring forth genuine social healing and change.
Our Capacities for Change
I've known from my own journey that we have a deep capacity for change as human beings. The chapters and lessons of my life have been rich and diverse: from a troubled, rage-filled adolescent, to a young conservative voter, to a nomadic 20-something on a years long healing journey, to a climate activist and trainer of nonviolent direct action.
I have not always thought the same as I do now, or approached life or changemaking the same way as I currently do – and I would imagine the same is true of you.
After all, if we are to live whole human lives, we will be in evolution throughout them.
While I hope to remain humble enough to know that my thinking and approaches to life & change will evolve in future, I have learned a few things along the way.
The first is that for change to be authentic and lasting - for it to be a form of healing, liberation or transformation - it must be accompanied by the right container, the right skills and the right conditions.
These three components - container, skills and conditions - shape our capacity, willingness and ability for deeper change.
Read another way: Not all efforts will lead to lasting, or meaningful change!
Sometimes in changemaking we try to create change from a place of shaming, blaming or otherising. It’s not uncommon we try this with ourselves too – the inner critic can be strong!
However, shame generally is a very poor driver of change. When we first encounter it most of us will try to run 100 miles from it – it’s deeply uncomfortable, and unless accompanied by a safe environment in which to process and share it, or a mindset or community that believes in redemption – it’s more likely to result in a doubling down, an insistence on being right, or a nervous system too dysregulated to unpack anything with intention.
Transformative change also can’t come from violence, overwork or attack. It’s not uncommon that we try to apply the same energy or method of the systems we’re changing, to changing the system.
We push through our limits, work till exhaustion (or burnout), ignoring the needs of our body – mimicking the energy of capitalism.
We use the language of violence in the pursuit of liberation - the fight, the struggle, the resistance!
But we cannot create change by mirroring the same energy we want to disrupt.
Audre Lorde, in all her wisdom, put it this way:
“For the master’s tool will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.”
Instead the capacity for transformative change comes with certain requirements - including safety, time, and intentionality.
What do I mean by this?
Well, safety is one of those core conditions we need: it’s not about comfort - it’s about allowing space for others (and ourselves!) to unpack beliefs and values, including how and why they exist, with a knowing that self-worth is inherent regardless of any change.
It’s ensuring there is enough holding to allow someone to remain intact while letting go of what no longer serves them. (When ideology becomes identity, our very sense of self can become threatened with change - and let’s just say, if letting go of an identity feels like death, or who even am I beyond this, the survival instinct can be strong).
Don’t get me wrong - the desire to otherise can be strong! And I get it - there are certain people doing really awful, abhorrent things in the world right now, and those people and structures need to be stopped and held accountable. And we are not creating the conditions for genuine change by refusing conversation, understanding, empathy or worthiness with those who disagree with us. Without safety, we will stay in survival mode, and survival mode has little capacity for adaptation.
This work isn’t about tolerating or condoning, it’s about developing the capacity to hold our own certainty lightly; to hold the both/and of a situation, to sit in the messy nuance and grey. It’s about a willingness to be with that which is different, and with that we don’t necessarily agree with.
Secondly, intentionality is formed in the containers we’re creating change in - our movements, our relationships, our teams, our communities. It’s being strategic in our choices - where we apply leverage and seek impact. It’s being mindful of the energy with which we’re approaching change (and indeed, whether we’re ‘embodying the change’).
This intentionality is also honed by increasing our sense of agency and power; the reminder that we get to choose who we are – it's not written in destiny or foregone at the time of our birth. We get to choose, and every day we get to choose again.
And this choice extends beyond our individual identities – we are also choosing and creating our collective world. Our societies, systems, and institutions aren't inevitable or natural laws; they are human constructions that we have collectively agreed upon and continually recreate through our participation.
Different choices can lead to entirely different worlds - we must be embracing of our capacity to choose again.
Of course, the conditions for change are also structural – that we have the time, the resources, the environment, the safety in which to evolve – personally and collectively.
The work of remaking the world will not happen overnight, because true transformation doesn’t just require a shift in policy or government – it requires a fundamental shift in the beliefs, mindsets, values and stories that underpin our culture and systems, that shape our shared world.
This work has a gestational time that we cannot rush. The natural world operates at a variety of speeds - from the force of a hurricane, to the speed of a cheetah, to the pace of a snail. But when our culture is obsessed with speed and scale, we assume that slowness is indicative of failure, rather than an organic re-emergence that requires its own timescale.
Just as in our personal lives we cannot rush ourselves out of the liminal, that the in-between goo is where we are re-formed, the same is true of our wider social world. That we are in an in-between goo right now; and there’s no promise that we will make it out of this liminal space intact (in fact, if we consider the caterpillar, we likely won’t), but there’s also no rushing the process that we must individually and collectively move through.
And yet, while the in-between can’t be rushed, it still calls for our participation. Liminality is not a waiting room - it’s a practice ground. We’re not passive passengers but co-creators of what comes next. This means attending not only to what is falling apart - the world as it is - but also to what is ready to be born - the world as it could be.
And for our work to have its greatest impact, we must attend to the roots of the crises we face, not just the symptoms.
Our outer crises are deeply entangled with our inner wounds, and transformation at the systemic level requires transformation at the personal, relational, and cultural levels too.
This is the work Scintilla Centre was created for - a space to equip changemakers with the skills, wisdom and community to do this deeper work; to address the systemic, spiritual, and somatic layers of change.
