For the Sake of Justice, Support Love’s Flow

In a recent conversation with a group of people about my passion for and interest in “energy systems science,” I briefly mentioned Richard Barrett, who has done a lot of work on organizational values over the years. In a recent Substack post, he talked about a vital “flow” that is lacking from many organizations – love.

This is something we bring up a lot in our work with partners. Love is one facet of our collaborative change lens (see image below), and vital for collaborative efforts to ensure long-term human and socio-ecological thriving.

The late Chilean systems biologist Humberto Maturana has written how critical love is to human systems. In fact, he has gone so far as to say that it is the only emotion that significantly increases human intelligence. Clinical psychologist Barbara Frederickson at the University of North Carolina has also looked at how love can do everything from increase our peripheral vision to reduce our biases when it comes to people who appear different from us on the surface of things.

But back to Barrett’s post – at one point he states:

“Most systems were not designed for the level of complexity they now face. Love, as capacity, was never built explicitly into their architecture. This work begins not with slogans, but with attention. With noticing where presence withdraws under pressure. With asking what becomes unsayable — and why.”

Here he is alluding to the second of four pillars of energy systems science – “resilient structures” – which supports the first pillar – “regenerative flows.” These structures can be tangible and intangible, including structures of agreements and cultural norms, policies and procedures, physical design and layout of a space, and institutional structures for distributing resources.

Clearly, what we are seeing and feeling in this country and around the globe is evidence of structures that have not let love, in all of its forms (see image above from Roman Krznaric’s book, The Wonderbox: Curious Histories of How to Live) getting to certain people and places. And because everything is connected, this impacts other people and places (there really is no “other,” or outside).

As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in 1963:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

This was recently conveyed to me in a different way by partners we support in Oklahoma around cultural renewal in the state. One person said, “People need to understand that what happens here in Oklahoma is not just about Oklahoma.” I have heard similar sentiments expressed by those with whom we work in the Mississippi Delta and in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

Looking at the state of our world, I am moved to ask this:

If love truly does make us more intelligent (and we at IISC think and feel that it does), not to mention more safe, secure and satisfied, what will it take to make the work of creating structures that support its flow that much more important?