How Emergent Properties Can Heal and Transform Communities

by Marca McCallie

The world doesn’t change one person at a time. It changes as networks of relationships form among people who discover they share a common cause and vision of what’s possible.”

Margaret Wheatley & Deborah Frieze 

Have you ever seen geese fly in formation to create a perfect V? Or watched bees and ants move as if they were one organism with one consciousness? It’s mind-boggling to notice how from a group of individuals, something emerges that is more than the sum of its parts.

Emergent Properties are Everywhere

You can find emergent properties throughout nature and within social systems. As a therapist, I remember noticing emergent properties when I led groups. Each group I led had its own personality that would move and shift with the individuals participating in the group. Organizations and communities also have emergent properties that form out of connections and relationships. Shared experiences and shared consciousness create self-organizing systems that can hold space for the emergence of ideas that challenge the status quo.

Emergent Properties in Our Community

Flagstaff and Coconino County have a unique way of doing things. With a personality of its own, the area can do things that are greater than the individuals that make up our community. Exciting things are happening in our community that are paving the way for new emergent properties. Together, we are imagining and practicing better ways to care for groups of people struggling within our systems.

I think of the Coconino Coalition of Children and Youth, CCC&Y, and the work they’re doing to provide space for organizations to connect and dream together. Their organization intentionally connects our community. As such, we’re beginning to share common visions and align together in ways that better support compassionate and sustainable care. At CCC&Y, they are fostering critical connections between individual organizations. Through these connections, we can make a more significant impact on our communities. No organization alone has the power to create the level of change our community needs. But together we can because we become more than the sum of our parts when we work together.

Coming Together

There’s a great benefit to being in connection with other organizations. We can support common goals and visions and be intentional about how we want to move forward together - with fewer people left behind. Also, we can notice together what’s not working and where the gaps of care are in our community. We, as an interdependent system, can start changing our collective mind.

When I was a kid, seat belts were optional. Then, through an interconnected dialogue, America’s collective mind was changed, and seat belts are now common sense. To not buckle your child up would bring concern and disapproval.

How We’re Changing

At Sage Home, we believe we can support a collective community change of mind on child removal. Right now, it makes sense why child removal is necessary. There are few alternatives, and kids need to be in safe environments. But what if there were more alternatives?

- What if our community banded together and collectively said, “enough.”

- What if the Department of Child Safety felt deep community support and worked alongside organizations providing better alternatives?

- What if, five to ten years from now, child removal while parents get addiction treatment felt as concerning as not buckling up your child?

When we connect and join forces, things that once seemed like a stretch start to become the norm and accepted as the standard. Our collective mind changes, and once changed, it’s difficult to go back. Margaret Wheatley & Deborah Frieze, in their article Using Emergence to Take Social Innovation to Scale, discuss three components to hope.

1. Imagining a better future

2. Recognizing there could be a path to this better future

3. Recognizing that each of us could be on the path to making that future a reality.

Making Hope a Reality

Families can stay together during addiction treatment. Other communities have experienced this to be true. Together, we have a path to making this imagined future a reality. Here at Sage Home, we need like-minded organizations and individuals to join us on this path to bring it to fruition. This is a central tenant of self-healing communities that was discussed in our interview with Virginia Watahomigie. We have what it takes to start changing our collective mind.

May we courageously join together and collectively choose to change our minds about how pregnant and parenting women experience addiction recovery. Families belong together, and we have what it takes as a community to make it happen. Reach out to us to learn more.