Islands of Coherence

I have been exploring the u-Lab: Leading from the Emerging Future course, offered in partnership with MIT. You can read a summary of the concept here via the Garrison Institute. 

“When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order.” -Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Prize-winning chemist

This has me thinking about what it would mean to think of ourselves as islands of coherence akin to adrienne maree brown's "small is all." The size and complexity of the challenges we face are massive "hyperobjects," too big for our brains to process let alone do anything about. And yet, to survive we need to work toward some purpose, and small shifts will disrupt the system. If we do small things in loving community, and a bunch of us are doing those small things, that adds up. We can send messages in bottles perhaps between our islands, sharing our small coherences, borrowing and building upon each other's ideas. It is not nothing. 

I cannot help but write this to the sounds of "Islands in the Stream" playing in my head. Dolly and Kenny. I trust in Dolly. Was Kenny a good or bad man? I am tired of google men's names with "and controversy" to find out.