We’re prototyping a bright future – now

and you can be part of it

I’ve been quiet here on Substack for a while, and you may wonder what’s going on with Context Institute.

The simple answer is a lot.

I feel we’ve reached a major milestone in my 46 years of working for a humane and sustainable future. I’ll use this post and the ones that follow to share that good news. If you’d like to become part of this process, so much the better.

We’re actively building out this system:

In this post, I’ll focus on the Essential Capacities program. In later posts, I’ll describe:

• CI’s process of becoming a Foundational Keys-based organization

• Our new co-learning program for living the practices

Essential Capacities is the starting point, both for individuals and for developing the system as a whole. It has immediate practical benefits, yet it’s more than a course. It’s also an onboarding into a community that’s actively building new cultural patterns and living into them in a way that goes beyond anything I’ve seen elsewhere. And it provides an experience of stepping into a new culture that is welcoming, empowering, and realistically possible.

Part One is more psychologically oriented and builds towards the practical world of collaboration. Part Two focuses on living systems and culture, and builds towards the practical world of creating groups and organizations that can tap the benefits of both parts. This, in turn, is a powerful strategy for thriving in a time of rapid change and creating meaningful, sustainable cultural change.

Together, the two parts provide the frameworks and skills we need but that the culture didn’t teach us.

Meaningful personal change and sustainable cultural change are deeply interconnected. This mutual dependence is a big reason why 1) individualistic personal growth work and 2) political/policy-oriented social change work are each so often limited and disappointing. They need each other.

Essential Capacities is rare in that it deals with both the personal and the cultural as an integrated whole. Yet doing this well has its own challenge: It’s a big territory.

We make it manageable and practical by:

• encouraging participants to use a personally meaningful project or topic as a focal point for integrating all they are experiencing in the program

• using triads for peer support in working with their project and deepening their understanding

• training a free version of Claude on the material from Bright Future Now and Essential Capacities so that Claude can be an effective thinking partner who knows all of the concepts and practices

This combination of a personal focus, peer support, and AI support makes the richness of the integrated personal/cultural territory empowering rather than overwhelming. It’s proving to be a game-changer for participants and for the overall system described in the first diagram.

If you would like to experience this for yourself, the next Essential Capacities program runs from Sep 10 to Nov 21. The Early-bird discount ends this Friday (8/14). You’ll find all the details at context.org.