Praxorium: A vital space for exploring WICKED PROBLEMS

Some wicked challenges

The challenges we face today are complex, interconnected, and deeply embedded in our institutions and the stories we use to make sense of the world.

Environment breakdown

Pollution - atmosphere, oceans
Climate change
Loss of biodiversity / extinction
Soil degradation
Deforestation

Family breakdown
Civic disengagement
Socioeconomic inequality
Fake news and echo chambers
Technological unemployment

Human suffering

Poverty, hunger, homelessness
Mental health, suicide
Loss of meaning and purpose
Violence and war
Obesity and malnutrition

Principles for meeting challenges

There are no silver bullets or best practices for dealing with complex systems. Embrace the liminal.

Healing and regeneration

If you look across the divisions we have made in order to understand the world, you can see that collectively, we have much of the understanding we need to start turning the ship around. Let’s share, creatively reorganise, “jam” together with our unique interests and skills and perspectives. We can learn together how to repair and weave and integrate and heal our world and our relationships with it.

Learn through praxis

One of the widest chasms in our world is found between academic research or theory on the one hand, and practical application or lived experience on the other. Bridging that gap is critical for dealing with complexity. We need to be able to probe a system or situation to see what is there, sense how the system reacts, respond to that change, and then repeat. Praxorium is first and foremost a “place for praxis”.

Step outside the box

When we focus on solving problems, we rarely examine our deepest assumptions. We may value pragmatism, or loyalty to the organisation that pays our salary, to family, country, professional discipline. Such assumptions are all embedded in past experience and old stories about what currently exists, not by deep ethics or possibilities. Thinking outside the box requires continuous curiosity and humility.

Praxorium is for Life

The 21st century is an exciting and challenging time for humanity. We live in a complex, technologically advanced, globalised and yet fragmented world, facing an ever-increasing array of existential risks. On many fronts, we’re in a race against time, and yet doing faster the same things we have always done doesn’t help. Neither can we turn back the clock.

Our current institutions are structurally incapable of solving such “wicked problems”. They operate in nearly-unavoidable silos, competing for the resources needed to tackle problems they’re not in a position to fully understand, let alone exert control over. We all know collaboration is a necessity and talk about it often, but it’s much easier said than done.

This is Praxorium’s reason for being. It’s a place where people like you can come to share information across disciplines, institutions, functions, countries, perspectives and approaches. Praxorium is independent and not-for-profit. We’re focused on the problems themselves, not on achieving financial targets, winning elections, taking sides, or seeking funding or consulting gigs based on achievement of pre-agreed outcomes.

Praxorium’s borders are open. We have no affiliation other than to the future of humanity, our beautiful planet, and life itself.

Welcome.

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