When Academia Couldn’t Contain It: The PhD Proposal That Became the Living Systems Framework
Between 2022 and late 2023, I wrote a 101-page PhD proposal at Lincoln University, New Zealand, titled “Applying Living Systems Patterns to Human Systems.” The work was a pivotal part of my journey—through it, the Living Systems Framework came into full form. While the proposal was not approved—likely because the ontology and epistemology of living systems required for existentially relevant research were in conflict with those accepted by academia, the discipline of economics, and the institution itself, and I was unwilling to yield on this requirement in my research—the process of writing the proposal clarified the depth, coherence, and existential grounding of the work.
Unusual for most proposals, this one already contained substantial research. I had developed the entire Living Systems Framework—a comprehensive, veridical, and practical synthesis of the universal patterns that support health and evolution in all living systems. The proposal includes the academic write-up of about two-thirds of the framework. This was necessary because I could not find a framework already available that was sufficiently comprehensive, accessible, and implementable to serve as a foundation for field research.
The framework was developed using inductive pattern recognition—a method of observing many phenomena, often from different sources and perspectives, and instead of collapsing them into a synthesized statement, identifying what is common across all observations to reveal what lies underneath them. It is a way of discerning the generative coherence—the fundamental patterns—through which life consistently brings forth form and function. The essential conditions that make life possible and flourishing were identified—Autonomy, Interdependence, Self-production, Membrane, and more—each nested within the five complex system perspectives of Orientation, Organization, Process, Relationship, and Structure. It’s not theoretical; it’s descriptive of life living.
The purpose of the proposed research was to test the framework through field application—working with people and organizations to help them develop living systems consciousness, build the capabilities that go with it, and take actions coherent with the living world system itself. These actions seed, nurture, and propagate regenerative difference within human contexts where there is space for such, catalyzing a virtuous cycle of flourishing across scales of system.
What emerged was a framework and a practice that stand on their own—because they are fundamentally coherent with the primary living world system, unlike most models and frameworks that have emerged from the secondary human-made system and our abstract consciousness that themselves are incoherent with the living world system, and therefore on a terminal pathway.
For anyone wanting to read more detail about the context and purpose of the research, the existing literature, the methodology that produced the framework, the intended subsequent research proposed, and the academic write-up of the one-page framework thus far, you can read the full proposal here, and explore its practical application at www.collaborativism.org. In later Substack articles, I intend to share more about the methodology behind developing the framework and dive deeper into its specific parts.
—Mark