Studies in Radical Biocracy

Work to improve the health of a system should look at decision-making because decisions propagate throughout a system, shaping system dynamics. This is especially true for decisions by those with more power, resources, and relationships in a system. Usually, human collective or group decision-making is conducted from an individualist, objectivist perspective. What happens when we allow the system to sense itself and make group decisions instead of deliberating, negotiating, and voting between individualist positions? What happens when we use an approach based on the radical relationality of Radical Participatory Design and Relational Design? Is it possible to experience a type of relational political ecology in group decision-making? The term political ecology carries multiple meanings. Here, we use the term political ecology to denote the power dynamics within any ecological system—a geographical population, a community, an ecosystem, etc. We describe three special ingredients or nutrients for a relational political ecology—relationality, emergence-conducive principles, and relational autonomy. On a team of people working for system health, these three ecological nutrients support a relational way of being which then transforms the team’s way of knowing, decision-making, and thus, political ecology. The fourth-person being that emerges from these three ecological nutrients leads to a fourth-person knowing in which individuals do not deliberate and vote on various decisions. Instead the system senses itself and the social field makes the decisions resulting in emergent and symbiotic design. Emergent design refers to design that emerges from consistently following a few basic principles. Symbiotic design occurs over time when deeply, relationally embedded entities or groups retain autonomy and indirectly or directly co-evolve, creating a design that would not have occurred through an individualist, consciously explicit design process. Using two situations from social and service design, we describe three examples of relational, autonomous decision-making or political ecologies. The three examples illustrate participatory futures, service, and systems work that lead to emergent and symbiotic designs.