@bethsawin@spore.social

Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 2mo ago

Your Friday reminder: The world is a complex, interconnected, finite, ecological-social-psychological-economic system. We treat it as if it were not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple, and infinite. Our persistent, intractable global problems arise directly from this mismatch.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

A dead end system is not going to teach you how to spot its successor.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 2mo ago

Lately I've been experiencing side-effects of the widespread use of "ai assistants" that I haven't heard talked about so much, and I'm curious if others have noticed it - maybe even the phenomenon has been studied or named.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

The leaders we need are already leading. They are weaving, connecting, designing, prototyping, proof of concepting, sheltering, nurturing, feeding, peace building, land caring, library protecting, public art-making.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

The infrastructure we need is already being assembled. It lives in conversations, in journals, in prototypes, in pilots, in pop-ups, in retrofits, in necessity, in stubborn commitment, in wacky ideas, in people with shovels, in sea grass beds, in threads from the past.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 2mo ago

CO2 and Covid-19 virus: We tried to show them that the planet is a unitary whole, with no boundaries, connected by ever-moving invisible gases and currents of air and that they thrive together or not at all, but 🤷‍♀️ Wildfire smoke: Allow me.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 1mo ago

What time is it?

It's crab apple jelly time of course.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

Don't look at who is making no mistakes, look at who is trying many things and embracing error as a teacher.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

And for that matter, consider: change also may not look like the dominant empire taught you it looks like. Learn to see change that is meandering. With a multiciiplicity of causes and no one "actor." Change that is branching. That loops.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

So, if the heat, the floods, the endless wars, the precarity is awakening something that might feel like panic the action is less to invent a new solution than it is to soften your gaze, or lengthen it. Shift your image of solution into a way, not a what. Find your way to the way

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

It just doesn't look like the infrastructure of empire. It is green. It is living. It is soft. I may be empheral. It may be humble. It will surely be experimental. But it still, like water over rock, laying new paths.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

"Restoring the sponge function of landscapes protects cities from floods, stabilises water supplies during drought, reduces wildfire risk, supports food production, cools urban areas & helps keep critical infrastructure functioning during climate extremes." https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/07/28/heat-drought-fire-europe-needs-to-restore-wetlands-rivers-and-landscapes

Heat, drought, fire: Europe needs to restore wetlands and rivers

euronews

Heat, drought, fire: Europe needs to restore wetlands and rivers

Experts from environmental organisations, including WWF, are calling in an op-ed for Euronews for urgent action to adapt to a changing climate. By placing the restoration of landscapes and healthy water systems at the heart of climate legislation can help to reducing climate risks at their root. #EuropeNews

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

They just don't look like what the teaching at the heart of empire told you a leader looked like.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

It is not confusing, actually. I mean the doing will take creativity and work and collaboration. The doing, if we do it, will crash empires and erase lines on a map, and shift power, and create new careers, and teach spiritual lessons, and reshape waterways and soil structures.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

Agri-voltaics AND fire prevention. "The grazing helps with fire prevention, as the sheep remove 60 to 75% of the carbon on site.” “They remove the litter, If you mow (vegetation), there’s still stuff remaining that could burn.” https://www.yakimaherald.com/news/local/business/solar-power-from-yakima-county-going-to-grant-county-more-solar-projects-in-the-works/article_983c22a2-183a-4f3f-aace-952b7785d885.html

Yakima Herald-Republic

Solar power from Yakima County going to Grant County; more solar projects in the works

NEAR MOXEE — With the first of five or more solar power facilities in Yakima County now operating, the abundant sunshine of Central Washington has begun to boost the region’s

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 1mo ago

Wondering....if AI is creating so many problems in education as students use AI and professors spend time figuring ways to block students using AI so they can learn themselves, perhaps what is being revealed is as much about assumptions in education as about AI.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

But not one more word needed about timetables or ROIs or national interests. No credits and verification, just reckoning, and sharing and reparations. One interest, survival. One home, earth.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

The vision needs to be whole-system and practical. The skills need to be collaborative. The metrics need to be well-being for all.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

I know to most ears this sounds naive, but tell me, is all that sophistication holding back the floods and the fires, the death, the loss, the homes gone forever, of people and plants and animals?

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

That is quiet for longer than you think you can bear, until on a day yet to come, the world is more mended, more alive, opening into the future, just when it felt the future was closing.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 3mo ago

There's more and more talk of islands of coherence (Prigogene), seeds of self-organizing change, wholes with alternative organizing principles within larger wholes operating under predominant organizing principles. The islands are wonderful. But don't focus on them so much that you miss the water.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 4mo ago

I think it is probably not humanly possible to understand the dynamics of a global system, driven far beyond the limits of its life support system, as it destabilizes, in the liminal space before what comes next has coalesced.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 2mo ago

For a moment I mistook the sickly grey orange of the sky for the color of defeat. But then I dug deep and recommitted. This is the color of motivation and sacred obligation.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 1mo ago

Now I know how "multisolving" looks in Welsh and it is looks very cool, and also possibly difficult 😂

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

I've been hearing people speak about bringing the sacred into science, about making policy as though every community is sacred.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

That's because all my systems teachers say, have said, for a long long time, that our crises stem from treating a whole and deeply deeply interconnected world as though is is separable.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

(Not to say that you shouldn't strive to learn, look for feedback, seek teachers, open yourself to being wrong, just to say, be careful where you look for that feedback.)

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

e. So, signals that seem to say "not good enough" "what the hell" "that doesn't compute" etc MIGHT mean you are on to something, and should at least keep trying.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

c. So we have to respond from something else (wisdom traditions, inner knowing, eco-feminism, decolonial thinking, complexity thinking, there are many names). d. But, the dominant system will not praise, reward, or sometimes even SEE, efforts that are not aligned with its stories and structures.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

Every time I hear something like that a tiny tendril of hope rises up in me, a little catch in the throat. I feel a little inner sigh I might be expressed as "finally." Finally are we getting to the heart of the matter?

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 2mo ago

Lots written about the financial bubble of AI and the data centers that are its physical embodiment. And lots written about the impact of those data centers on water and climate.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 5mo ago

A little rainy day poem came to me.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 4mo ago

"When change emerges from interconnections, the result can be something you wouldn't have expected from the behavior of the parts."

Where in your life or work are new connections creating new potentials?

#MultisolvingMonday

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 1mo ago

Last call - tomorrow at noon Eastern time - join us for a Multisolving Moment (an informal conversation amongst people working towards health and wholeness in complex systems facing converging crises). Theme: Seeds that Germinate in Crisis. https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/2FzpYNaEQjq_WMy1ZzH2Sg

us06web.zoom.us

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

See what emerges from the spaces between people that none might have imagined alone.
Remember that we are stronger together.
Borrow the prompts and format for your own community, if that serves.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 5mo ago

Can these times elicit growth? Can we become more human in the face of inhumanity? More connected in despite attempts to promote disconnection? Join fellow explorers of these topics at the next Multisolving Moment. Bring your learnings and your questions. Apr 30th 12PM ET https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/ENlfWA-EQ6mUFBnCTNzXZg#/registration

us06web.zoom.us

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

Details April 30th 12PM ET Not recorded (to ensure confidentiality and open sharing) Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/ENlfWA-EQ6mUFBnCTNzXZg#/registration

us06web.zoom.us

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

More on this in Chapter 5 Balancing Feedback of Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World. https://bookshop.org/p/books/multisolving-creating-systems-change-in-a-fractured-world-elizabeth-sawin/21374832?ean=9781642833775

Bookshop.org

Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World

For most of Elizabeth Sawin's career, she was not a multisolver. Instead, she worked on a single, albeit immensely important problem: climate change. Despite tremendous effort--long hours of teaching, attending conferences, publicizing analysis--at the end of the day, she felt like she was chasing her tail. Unless people began to recognize the multitude of unexpected benefits from ratcheting down emissions, climate change would remain a losing political issue. That experience, along with the gui

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

Where in your own work or in work that you admire or have learned from do you see this principle at play. Share examples to inspire others!

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 5mo ago

@KrusekopfD@nrw.social thanks!

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

Balancing feedback holds systems steady by reacting to change in one direction by unleashing a counter-acting change in the opposite direction. Think about your own change work - what kind of balancing feedback do you anticipate or struggle with? What are you learning about it?

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ @bethsawin@spore.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

April 30th. 12pm ET Link to register: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/ENlfWA-EQ6mUFBnCTNzXZg#/registration

us06web.zoom.us

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