Welcome,
in this edition of our newsletter you’ll find:
🌱 Understanding our day to day interactions as system building and changing through emergent strategy
💧 Our recent noe story featuring Sarah Cameron and her research on Asharshylyq, the Kazakh famine of the 1930s
🪴 Motivation by Rumi
Enjoy!
Your noe team
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🌱 Planting Seeds
In this section we share thoughts and concepts around empathy that have inspired us and made us think.
Emergent Strategy - How to create change through small interactions
The crisis is everywhere, massive massive massive.
And we are small.
But emergence notices the way small actions and connections create complex systems, patterns that become ecosystems and societies. Emergence is our inheritance as a part of this universe; it is how we change.
A.M. Brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping change, changing worlds (2017)
There is this feeling of desperate frustration that creeps in whenever there’s a reminder that we won’t properly address the climate crisis, close the gender gap - or in fact initiate any actual systemic change. It usually ends in the quiet recognition that no matter your effort, you won’t actually be able to change anything. But what if you actually were?
Adrienne Maree Brown (2017) developed the concept of emergent strategy which highlights the power of small interactions for social change. In developing the concept, Brown linked the work of Black science fiction writer Octavia Butler, who describes an adaptive and relational leadership model, to Nick Obolensky’s (2014) definition of emergence as “the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.” Emergent strategy, thus, proposes that new worlds don’t arise from linear, top-down transformations but from the iterative interactions and relationships that make up more complex ecosystems.
Whereas individualistic linear organizing follows a singular strategy, emergent strategy emphasizes the power of collective-intelligence for justice and liberation. It builds on the believe that responding to injustice and crises through adaptation and evolution requires critical, deep, and authentic connections that can serve as a source of support and resilience. Just like trees whose roots are intertwined and create a system of strength and resilience, it is a system that works as well on a sunny day as it does during a storm. Once these connections are established, between humans and the planet, adapting to a changing world and practicing the future together becomes possible.
But how do we build these authentic connections and step into collaboration? According to Brown, emergent strategy requires being present, listening and responding. Starting with oneself, we need to learn to listen with all the senses of the body and the mind, using our own humanity and the natural world around us as our teachers. Moreover, we need to learn to trust each other and to be vulnerable in order to get to what we collectively long for and that moves us towards action.
In a quickly changing world, community can be our support system that keeps us afloat and helps us navigate through the floods. Brown’s emergent strategy, thus, empowers us to seek out authentic connections which can give rise to shared visions of the future.
How to Emergent Strategy
In her book, Brown illustrates the spells and practices that she uses for emergent strategy. One of them is this authenticity chant. Just imagine yourself as your personal cheerleader, pompoms and all, and chant it to yourself:
Let me not posture
Let me not front
Let me not say yes to
Lives I don’t want
Let me not use words that don’t mean a thing
Let me be fly
as I am, no trying
Let me [be] good
For my heart, not my rep
Let me be still
When I can’t take a step
Don’t let me get too caught
Creating my face
Let me just love me
All over the place
💧 Watering the Mind
In this section we share updates from the noe team and concrete offers that allow you to build emotional intelligence and resilience skills.
Lessons on dealing with communal trauma
Here are Rimma’s thoughts on our latest noe story with Sarah Cameron:
”Asharshylyq - the Kazakh famine of the 1930s was a man-made tragedy driven by Soviet colonization that struck the Steppes of my homeland. As a result, almost 1.5 million people (with an estimated 38 to 42 percent of all Kazakhs) perished. While this could arguably be considered a genocide, outside specialist circles and conversations at home, we never hear about this horrendous historical event that has collective marked us as a people to this day.
Yet, chance is an unpredictable and wonderful thing. Last September, on the plane to Almaty, I met Sarah Cameron - an American historian who's dedicated her career to the study of my region's history and has written a seminal book about Asharshylyq. She generously accepted to share her motivation to study the topic and write the book over an interview.
In an effort to honour the spirts of our ancestors who passed on due to the tyrannic and dehumaizing policies of the Soviets, and support healing in our communities, I would like to raise awareness through this video. It is the most personal piece I've worked on in the last decade.“
Reviving our noe circles
If you’ve been following us for sometime, you might have noticed that we’ve recently paused our monthly noe circles. That is because we are developing a new 45-minute online format that takes place every quarter and aims at building emotional intelligence skills.
Specifically the new noe circles will help you to:
Develop your emotional intelligence
cultivate empathy, understand and manage emotionsSupport your self-development
deal with high levels of stress, identify emotional triggers and motivatorsBuild community
connect with others, share experiences and build a network of support
🪴 Vines of Community
In this space we foster connection and inspiration by sharing stories, poems, and thoughts of community members.
This month Nada picked the following excerpt from the poem:
“The Great Wagon” by Rumi
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.