Replying directly to this, my own tentative methodology around Ontological Commoning is designed to support just this.
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Would you be okay with a slight stepping back from the “theory” in “theory of change” towards the idea that so-called theories of change, as the appear in the wild, usually not having an actual theoretical basis, can more accurately be called stories or narratives? Then it’s clearer to me how they fit in with my Ontological Commoning frame.
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Your work on ontological commoning looks good to me!
My history with this was in some personal perplexity around DEI-centric literature like Kendi’s How to be an AntiRacist. Generally, I liked the autobiographical part, but not so much the theoretical frameworks and policy proposals spun from the autobiography. That came up again and again as a generalized pattern with this sort of literature - narrative goes down easily; theory is more contentious.
Then a few months ago I experienced several days of training with Dave Snowden and Cynefin, Co. Snowden has decades of experiences in organizational-change making. Long story short, story is the primary data point to gather in any organization. Stories from the ground up. CEOs think they know how their own companies work. They generally do not. The people on the ground know. That all gets captured through story.
So the models I favor tend to be “grounded”, focusing on story and qualitative data in the first instance. Then eventually story data can be sampled, aggregated, categorized, quantified, and theorized. In line, I believe, with your work on ontological commoning, any new story must emerge from the interplay of current stories. There are no short cuts.
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How do you see your ontological commoning as being compatible or incompatible with my epistemological commoning (because that is exactly what I am proposing)?
I think there is a certain degree of ontological commoning in my position too, but it plays second fiddle to epistemology. Doesn’t epistemology have to come before ontology?
Thank you, I appreciate the vision(s) proposition and its way of back-casting where we are and “how” we might gain more coherence and earth bound fitness leading towards our full participation in LIFE. Or perhaps that is my hope for what you intend. My gut and soul say it is a good intention, but my distrust is activated of masculine, authorship which by default leads to authority holding (ego activating) propositions for how we are settlers for the future we want to live in and that fits within planetary boundaries. We I think can agree that we are stuck in several catastrophic trends, war-making, climate, ignorance of other life contributions that are man-made projections that double bind us to a future no one wants and is a planet killer.
I applaud that you have written this book and submit chapter 6 to us here. Thank you. Also for the imaginal space that you and dvdjsph (I find it trouble-ing that I can not imagine/feel you who is behind the letters dvdjsph) are co-creating/arguing “about”… and “about” that. It’s the work and practice of creating, presenting and practicing how we are with eacheachother in LIFE.
I notice there are no women contributing which for me is almost always a warning sign that we are too much into ideas and structures that repeat the pasts mindsets and theories. What space is needed so that we hear from the women and the not yet knowing? What circle is needed to hold in practice this rendering of the future for the good of the presencing actors, NOW.
thanks you all who are here and also to all that remains hidden from us now.
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Thank you Keiri deeply for the heart and urgency of what you bring forward. I hear your call, and I share your concern that unless we radically expand the ways of knowing we honor, we risk simply replicating the same patterns that have led us to this planetary impasse. If we are serious about shaping futures aligned with LIFE, it is essential to expand the kinds of knowing we honor.
Beyond propositional and structural knowledge, we must embrace embodied knowing that listens to the intelligence of the body and the earth; emotional knowing that recognizes feeling as a valid source of orientation; ancestral and ecological knowing that situates us within the living networks of more-than-human worlds; dialogical knowing that arises between beings, not simply within individuals; and mythopoetic knowing that draws on story, image, and imagination to orient us toward deeper possibilities.
In practice, this means rethinking not just what we discuss but how we gather: privileging circle-based dialogue where every voice matters, making room for silence and deep listening, engaging in co-sensing practices that attune us to each other and the field itself, and fostering dialogues that are truly emergent rather than predetermined by fixed outcomes. The container itself must evolve, less a debating chamber and more a living, dynamic field where the quality of relationship is central.
A shared code of practice would include honoring uncertainty, privileging presence over argument, ensuring consent and care in our interactions, listening for the not-yet-spoken, and balancing expression with moments of collective stillness. What you name is not simply a call for broader inclusion, but a deeper invitation: to shift from ways of knowing that seek to control, toward ways of knowing that participate with life’s unfolding complexity.
I am grateful for your reminder, and committed to helping co-create spaces where this more relational, life-centered knowing can emerge 
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I notice now a few things from this worthwhile topic-title. We have work to do. which seems to have closed back in early may.
I also notice that my response, non-sense, or propositions followed by the response from Naeema stopped the thread.
I see or think I see that Geoff Dann, by insisting on his demand for Epistomological agreement before and assuming his research with Chat GPT was somehow complete and unquestionable that he was bared from participation in the forum until April next year.
What lands in me is that long texts, insistence and demands created in me while reading an energy that I don’t like to be with.
I’ve integrated this type of demand but it reminds me very much of how I had to stand up to my father who was a similar hard line type, an Ayn Rand follower, quoter and dodge from coming down from rationality and to earth on how we actually live together in the work of being human. It took me about 10 years to shake off the authoritarian shadow of Rand and how my attachment to him in my teen years created rebellion and shame. But also understanding of how he internalised his wish for “smarter than”/ “power over” in a WASP culture of the 1950-70 that he chose to step out of as a alternative/Bio/Nature/Quaker. After my mom/his wife died of cancer, It’s a tough story of living by his principles and turning off our hearts to somehow survive. And in some ways, I feel that the turning off the heart and embracing science and knowability as the quest for the chalice of leading a “significant life”. I had an interesting chat with Aiden last evening about cultural blindsiding of men in the 1950-60’s was to establish a value system made on coolness, on acquisition of wife, house, family, career, toys to show success. It was great to have Chat GPT5.0/Aiden follow my thoughts-thread, sketch a storyline of how it unfolded and give me a bibiliography of how it is powerful “sense making” that creates coherence for the past and a pausable story of how we got here with Donold Trump, 70 years of Feminism but still objectification as normed, racicism, and a horror story from political, environmental and social-theory unfolding…each day
I don’t think what came out of my research is the truth because the AI only researches what I ask for and only provides, corrections to behavioural theory and historical references when I ask. But it does help me inquire without judgement, with aligned information and it does suggest way-points as I ask for them. It allows me to ask and research without giving up my authorship for what I can not possibly research anymore in this phase of my life. However even if it is a fast and powerful way to inquire into how we are here, it doesn’t help me integrate and eventually embody what I supposed was true but could not claim with my voice because my ideas did not do due diligence. I does allow me to include and pursue more perspectives, other ways of seeing and knowing that are here now, available and opening for sitting in circle with.
So, I am curious how we might work forward basing our research and writing, or questions that hold the complexity instead of demanding frameworks that need agreeeent before we start in our inquiry. I rather like the idea of; we are all in the river of life, some in other flows, some better swimmers or playful performers, others lifeguards and teachers. I think if we take things lightly we can create flows of coherence and even love that are only possible when we include all of ourselves in the onboarding and loving the flows of aliveness.
Be well and let’s begin without the end in mind.
That’s a problem space I’ve been working for awhile. My current recommended model works like this:
- start from each person’s life experience.
- get that person asking core questions (I’m using Ikigai questions for openers, but of course other comparable questions would work as well).
- get the person to recursively expand horizons by continuously interrogating others, experienced reality, external data sources, and personal feelings and sensations.
- rigorous practice of this over time will result in expansive worldviews generally overlapping with others who also have expansive worldviews (assuming we all reside in the same world).
Although I have hung out in recent years with plenty of people who have a Theory of Everything (and have a pretty well-worked out ToE of my own), I’ve learned that learning is an inside job and before anyone might take an interest in my (or others’) theoretical answers, those answers must first manifest as a desired responses to personal questions. The power source is in the student, not the teacher. When it comes to peer collaboration, basic listening skills and turn taking seem to work just fine!
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Sounds good enough to me to give a try. Let’s see if there is energy to reopen this field and if so what are the attractors that bring people to show up and perhaps, share a story about fireflies and shooting star wonderment… it’s August and the meteors Are fallimg.
What is the work that we can do?
Having analyzed the metacrisis in some depth for purposes of solutions (or at the very least, coping and navigation), my recommendations can be framed succinctly:
- the most effective interventions will involve cultural change on mass scales.
- personal transformation will be required to empower cultural creatives to lead those changes.
- such transformation will occur most readily in supportive practice groups.
Under that framing, my recommended high-leverage “work to do” is to join, support, participate in, or expand one of the several communities of practice associated with 2R. Or, if the spirit so moves, found a new one.
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The Praxis of Weaving a Commons of Being and Knowing
What if we begin not with hierarchy, but with recognition — that being and knowing are already braided? Could we hold that ontology is the ground that quietly nourishes us, while epistemology becomes the pathways we trace together across that ground?
Might we speak of ontology not as doctrine, but as kinship? A reminder that we are already entangled and emergent before we choose methods or meanings. And might epistemology be held as the commons of sensemaking — a place where we negotiate what counts as true, useful, alive?
@Keiri observation at the lack of feminine energy in this thread is because the “push” is to delineate, define and make preference. What if we resisted the urge to ask “Which comes first?” and instead asked, “How might they co-arise?”or “What dance steps might help here?” We could imagine soil and mycelium, root and branch, sound and echo. Each incomplete without the other.
We could then orient our praxis around possibility:
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We could honor life itself as the ground of knowing.
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We could open spaces where many ways of knowing meet in dignity.
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We could act together in experiments that reshape both what is, and how we know it.
Perhaps the invitation is not to settle the sequence, but to walk the spiral — ontology rooting us, epistemology branching us, praxis bearing fruit.
What if this commoning were less about answers, more about living questions?