NENA’s Mission

NENA promotes itself as a network of organisations and individuals working to create an ecologically healthy and socially just society by transforming Australia’s economic system. It seeks to do this by providing a platform for knowledge sharing, peer to peer support, cross-pollination of ideas and collaboration.

Systems Challenge

As a sociologist of technological innovation and long-term Buddhist student-practitioner, the idea of identifying our current economic logic as an ego-system makes sense. It puts its finger on the deep system challenge that the ‘success’ of the western techno-industrial transformation of human cultures across Planet Earth has exposed.

When I read an article in The Guardian, which suggested we needed to identify leverage points, the places within a complex system where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything, I remembered the point made by Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers in their book, Order out of Chaos (1984), that when complex systems become unstable, they can either collapse/implode or escape into a higher order of complexity.

It seems to me that we are at that point now—in the relationship between we humans with one another, and with the rest of the planetary ecosystem. Under the intoxicating dream of individual ‘ego’ freedom, we lost track of our relational embeddedness, extending from our mind-body system to our human communities and the wider ecosystems of life on Planet Earth.

So what is this transition from ego-system awareness to eco-system awareness when we think about economics and economies?

The author of the Guardian article, referencing Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer’s book, Leading from the Emerging Future: from Ego-System to Eco-System Economies, suggests the most significant leverage points are:

• Economics—reframe the paradigm of thought from ego to eco-system awareness
• Governance—upgrade the economic operating system from an ego to an eco-system logic
• Big Tech—shift from reducing costs (profit/efficiency) to enhancing human flourishing and creativity
• Politics—make democracy more dialogic, distributed, direct and data-informed
• Societal learning infrastructures—democratise access to transformational literacy (noting there is a whole lot to unpack in this idea).

So, what do Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer suggest are the essential points of the transition/transformation that we alpha predators, the human species, are being called to make? What do we see when we look into the mirror of our species narcissism—enacted by intensifying consumerism, the destruction of the planetary bioregional ecosystems that sustain us all, including the more-than-human world, and our human ‘sanity’ itself?

Because the discipline and discourse of economics has become the ‘intellectual priesthood’ of policy and media commentary, I am interested in this focus on economics and economies, and how we must urgently engage with ways of re-framing its core premises. As the authors note:

Economic thought systems matter because they are at the heart of an intellectual battle over the future directions of our society (and planet) p.71. Today’s economy works as a set of locally embedded and globally interlinked ecosystems—a set of highly interdependent eco-systems but the consciousness of the players within them is fragmented into a set of ego-systems, p.67-68.

Modern economics conceive of the economy as an autonomous system in the larger societal whole. The challenges we are dealing with as a society force us to rethink this mental model and to include the impact of our actions on the environmental, social and cultural context in which we are operating, p.70 

This requires a shift in our paradigm of thought and a shift in consciousness from an ego-system to an eco-system awareness.

The Book’s Framework

The authors set out an historical framework to help us understand how we got to where we are, which, at the time of publishing this book in 2013, meant grappling with the aftermath of the GFC and climate change denialism.

Things have only got a whole lot more unstable and disconnected since 2013. The convulsions of the 2008 GFC have been overtaken by the global COVID 19 pandemic, the increasing toxicity of social media platforms in amplifying violence, greed and anxiety, and the rise and rise of authoritarian populism and tech-bro libertarianism in the face of the uncertainties and disruptions of our times. Enter Trump 2.0.

Disconnects

To help us understand the journey we must make from the ego-economics of foundational thinkers like Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations) and later neo-liberal free marketers like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, the authors take us through a description of surface systems and the structural disconnects that plagued our current system in 2013, and continue to do so even more intensely in 2025, more than a decade later:

• Between the largely speculative financial system and the real economy
• Between the infinite growth imperative and the finite resources of Planet Earth
• Between the minority Haves and the majority Have-nots creating an extreme inequity bubble
• Between institutional leadership goals and people’s needs and goals
• Between GDP and wellbeing as a measure of economic success
• Between governance mechanisms, organised vested interests and the voiceless in our systems
• Between actual ownership forms and best societal use of property, allowing the overuse and mismanagement of the ecological and social commons in epic proportion.
• Between technology investment driven by profit/warmongering and real societal needs

The Matrix of Economic Evolution

The authors explain the evolution of these disconnections through a matrix of economic evolution, which takes us from (1) central planning, hierarchy and control, to (2) free market competition, to (3) mixed market-state stakeholder systems. They note that stakeholder economies have created the problem of powerful organised vested interest groups in shaping both the political system and the economic system. The financial system has turned companies into machines that are designed to generate financial profit (for shareholders and executive renumeration) and negative externalities (on society as a whole) at an unprecedented level, compromising the longer-term health, resilience and survival capacity of the system as a whole p.95.

Cartesian Anxiety at the Heart of Modernity

Varela and Roach (The Embodied Mind, 1993) identified the problem of ‘cartesian anxiety’ lying at the heart of modernity, which underlines the existential angst of modern life, no matter how successful or wealthy one might become.

By treating mind and world as opposed subjective and objective poles, the Cartesian anxiety oscillates endlessly between the two in search of a [firm] ground. Feelings of anxiety arise from this craving for an absolute ground that cannot be satisfied,

The authors sum this conundrum up as: inner void leads to consumerism, leads to ecological divide (human versus nature), leads to social divide (wealth gap, us versus them). Of course, none of this is ‘accidental’. It is intrinsic to how capitalism has functioned within the post Enlightenment Western individualist cultural framework: the strong dualistic separation between mind and matter (body/nature); human and the rest of the natural world; self and other, and the use of consumerism to drive economic growth with a ‘use and throwaway’ mentality, creating the waste-pollution catastrophe in our waterways, oceans, air and soils.

To overcome this resultant ‘cartesian anxiety’, we are urged to recover our sense of relational embeddedness by cultivating inner awareness through mindfulness contemplation and ‘presencing’. The authors propose that this allows us to recognise that we are embedded in a collective whole—personally, socially, economically, politically and ecologically; which constitutes eco-awareness. This not only allows us to be present in the ‘now’, but to have the inner stillness to allow a wider awareness/sensing of emergent possibilities, the Emerging Future. And in this way we can transition to (4) a co-created eco-system economy.

For this they place great emphasis on the faculty of ‘sensing’ versus analytical ‘thinking’.

For ideas and practices to tap into this ‘the true source of our inner awareness and intention’, they draw on insights from Buddhist scientists like Francisco Varela, quoted above, on the nature of embodied awareness, and from doctors like Jon Kabat-Zinn on mindfulness practices, which have been adapted and mainstreamed into western psychology, notably cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT).

Presencing

They call this the practice of PRESENCING, which is combining sensing/intuition (a feeling of future possibilities) and presence (a state of being in the present moment, aware). This constitutes an ability to listen outside of the world of our preconceived notions, and to tune into the wider sphere, which we can experience as our habitual ‘self’ morphs from the single point of me (ego) into a heightened presence and stronger connection to the surrounding sphere, we (eco), including the more-than-human world and the Planet itself. What others have called Gaia consciousness.

The authors call this opening the mind, heart and will/intention—experienced as open mindedness and the curiosity of ‘not knowing’— releasing the warm, insightful (illuminated) heart of empathic relationship to others and self; and the courage and confidence of our ability to act with intention.

And that with this faculty of developed eco-awareness we can become leaders of eco-system economies that organically respond through whole-systems thinking to emergent possibilities, captured and tested in local prototypes.

Absencing

The opposite of presencing is ABSENCING, which is currently our dominant mode of operation,. This is experienced as thinking there is only one truth/way; an us versus them competitive mentality; and a susceptibility to a frozen inside rigid identity (fundamentalism) about how thing should be.

This is experienced as closing down to new ideas, depending on old ideas and proven structures and freezing our mind, heart and will—versus opening, warming and illuminating.

The Theory of U Process

The Theory of U, advocated previously by Scharmer, somewhat reflects the Jungian idea of individuation through undertaking a descent journey from ego maturation into facing our fears buried in our subconscious, to let go and embrace not knowing, in order to achieve the ascent journey to transpersonal consciousness, which is another way of talking about eco-awareness.

Scharmer’s Theory of U, published in 2007:

The descent journey of U involves moving from merely downloading old thinking and patterns, to learning how to suspend this to allow ‘seeing’ with fresh eyes, sensing new fields of possibility, and letting go into the state of presencing. From here they propose we can ‘pass through the eye of the needle’, a form of rebirth, to discover our inner, Higher Self, from which we can begin to crystalise a new vision and intention. We can enact this vision of possibiity with intention, linking heart, head and capability to embody this in new prototypes that operate from a whole-systems perspective.

However, despite drawing on Buddhist ideas, and giving examples of local work in Africa, the authors, who are ethnically German but working at MIT in Boston in the US, fall into the trap of failing to use their supposedly developed capacity of eco-awareness to truly ‘let go’ and think outside the assumed hegemonic western framework for investigating the matrix.

Again and again we see this problem—this inability to ‘see’ outside the western/modernity knowledge system and instead, subsume new ideas within it.

Blind Spot 1 – Coloniality

The authors fail to address the post-colonial debate on the modernity/coloniality matrix, which has fundamentally shaped the matrix of economic evolution in both so-called advanced economies of ‘the west’ (global North) and the developing economies of the global South, as well as the hybrids of China and India, now being nudged by Brazil and Indonesia. They do not acknowledge how their economic matrix has rested on the extractive ‘rape’ of the resources and destruction of the knowledge systems of the global south via direct colonial conquest or indirect economic-political conquest, which continues to this day, both between nation states and within nation states. Extractivist logic and ego-logic go hand in hand.

Blind Spot 2—Idea of Linear Progress

Because of this blind spot, they fall into the false idea that the evolution from centralised control (1.0) to market competition (2.0), to stakeholder capitalism (3.0), will evolve into (4.0), co-creative eco-economies—without recognising that this so-called linear evolution includes a cycle back to pre-modern economies that were/are already based on co-creative eco-awareness systems of thinking, leading and acting within bioregional sustainability.

This is the new learning we are being called to, but one which we must treat with respectful humility, rather than thinking we can simply fold it into modern ways of thinking and relating.

It is a mode of thinking, being and doing, where a capacity for intuitive sensing and awareness was/is highly developed. Where relational thinking and systems of governance were fundamental to their bioregional sustainability. Where their focus was/is not only on the narrow idea of survival (food, shelter, reproduction) but on cultural enrichment and spiritual insights through the arts as natural expressions of inherent creativity and intergenerational knowledge transmission. And where leadership (being an Elder) required/requires not only an ability to sense emergent challenges and possibilities, but the wisdom to discern what was/is helpful and what was/is dangerous to collective wellbeing—physically and spiritually.

The harsh reality is that this idea of linear progress and compartmentalised thinking that pervades western/modern behaviour and systems has led us inexorably down a dead-end of mounting unintended effects (negative externalities) that are threatening the very viability of life on Planet Earth.

Therefore, we need to abandon the idea of linear progress, which is deeply embedded in Western cultural thinking, and recover/discover a more cyclical view: birth – maturation—death—rebirth, which we find in the way in which life on Earth is organised across multiple ecosystem complexes, and which informs most pre-modern so-called ‘primitive’ cultures that depended symbiotically on local bioregional sustainability. The challenge now is to link local with planetary—across the ego boundaries of human tribalism, whether defined by place, gender, ethnicity, and or religion.

Blind Sport 3—Ego-consciousness

Although the authors have drawn on Buddhist thinking about ego-lessness, which is called the non-self, they have posited the possibility of a ‘Higher Self’. This is known as ‘atman’ in Indian philosophy, but was explicitly rejected in Buddhist thinking because it signifies a continued form of reification – freezing experience into ‘things’, such as a Self, with a capital S.

Mindfulness meditation enables us to become aware that we are not our thoughts or arising emotions, which come and ago across the ‘screen’ of the mind, moment by moment. In this way we discover a capacity of just pure awareness, free of thought and after-thought, and we can develop the capacity to rest in that space as a way of being. When thoughts come or emotions arise, we simply watch them and let them go without judgement, and without any ambition to achieve any perfect state of awareness or peace (which is just a thought).

This process is counter-intuitive and takes sustained practice. It is a form of ‘letting go’ of any sense of achievement, an experience of egolessness, yet not nothingness—a sense of vibrant agency without any identity clinging. Although the quality of this is peaceful, it is not a sleepy state, but one of heightened awareness. That’s the trick. The test of one’s capacity to rest in this space is found in what is known as the post-meditation state—in the way we respond to situations in the hurly burly of everyday life.

The ego-danger in the idea of a Higher Self is that given Western/modern culture’s strong emphasis on linking the idea of will/intention with ambition, it is easily captured by ego inflation. The very idea of capitalising the S points to this danger. We see many examples of this across the whole contemporary wellness/wellbeing industry and some forms of ‘new spirituality’, which offer peak experiences (spiritual pleasure) as ‘self-actualisation’, and which are often based on a combination of ideas taken from several different traditions and reworked to make easy and palatable for a western/modern audience of consumers in search of self-improvement, self-healing and escape from unpleasant feelings. The Buddhist teacher, Chogyam Trungpa notably labelled this ‘spiritual materialism’.

Opening the Heart

Because modern western culture places a high value on objectivity and rationality, it has resulted in a deadening of empathy and sensing; a separation of the mind (thinking) from the heart (feeling); yet the two are intrinsically linked—each influences and shapes the other.

Buddhism provides several methods for ‘opening the heart’ to extend our empathy from only those we care about, to an increasingly wider circle of connection. These are known as teachings on compassion, which flow from this space of having become free of an ego-centred holding/fixating onto our thoughts and emotions. Instead, we ‘see’ them with compassion, which is a form of inner acceptance, rather than ‘self-love’. It is only when we can truly accept ourselves as we are, that we can extend this to others. This is especially the case in extending compassion to our ‘enemies’, rather than indulging in rejection and vengeance.

The Western Buddhist teacher and scientist, Allan Wallace calls this the practice of contemplative science, further developed in CEB (cultivating emotional balance). Both are attempts to provide modern secular interpretation of the Buddhist wisdom teachings, aligned with insights from western psychology.

The authors of Leading from the Emerging Future attempt to develop their own practices in the  ‘self-improvement’ space of ‘leadership’. They state: “two of the most effective mechanisms to strengthen your capacity to access your emerging Self are cultivation practices (mindfulness meditation) and deep listening based circle work, which usually involves a group of up to seven participants who meet a few times a year to support one another through deep listening by attending to the calling and journey of each of their personal lives and work” p.171. However none of this advice addresses the traps of various forms of ego-consciousness at its most stubborn and habitual level.

Conclusions

The authors optimistically conclude that whenever an economic paradigm is unable to provide useful answers to a period’s biggest challenges, society will enter a transitional period in which, sooner or later, it replaces the existing logic and operating system with an updated and better one (p.73).

However they fail to acknowledge that history is replete with examples where the failing system is not updated for the better, but plunged further into chaos and implosion. They are still captive to the idea of linear progress.

Many of the major private sector economic actors in the world today command wealth that is larger than many nation states, and are divorced from their relationship with any particular set of national or community interests and concerns. Instead we see them intent on using their financial muscle to escape their responsibility, via taxation and regulation, to relate their profit-making to funding the public sphere, on which their profit-making activities depend—living, as if in a virtual reality bubble’, untethered to the world of the wider human community and the even wider community of the more-than-human world.

The grip of ego-consciousness on display in current business leaders such as Elon Musk and the other tech-bro community, along with many political leaders such as President Donald Trump, demonstrate that the transition of the economic system to co-creative eco-systems awareness will not be easy.  However, as Prigogine and Stengers’ thesis suggests, at the point of high instability/disequilibrium, birfurcation to a higher order of complexity is possible, as is collapse into entropy.

In this way there is the possibility that we human species may somehow find a way to move beyond the stranglehold of ego-consciousness, celebrated in the libertarian values of the new ‘masculinity’ of the tech-bro community, which is gaining such a following. As if patriarchy is roaring back to assert its domination over women, in the face of the equality pursuit of feminism. This patriarchal backlash does not bode well for any transition to eco-awareness economics.

However, even if possible, this birfurcation will not be a linear movement of promethean progress, but a circular movement, re-learning ancient wisdom about how to live in our embedded relationship with the fractal diversity of life on Planet Earth at a local and planetary scale. It involves humility and unlearning, rather than aspiring to the heights of our higher Self.

This transition will come from regenerative movements in the cracks and crevices of the continued unravelling of modernity. It is likely that these are the leverage points for the quantum shift required, rather than any significant shift in corporate leadership values and behaviour among the elite of the corporate and political spheres, where vested interests and a disconnect from the lived experience of the many is rife.

Continuing to work on the articulation of a new economics, drawing from these regenerative developments, is more important than ever. After all, when we track the growth of neo-liberal market economics to become the dominant orthodoxy of our times, it came about through a deliberative strategy undertaken by influential think tanks linked to academia and corporate and financial elites.