Sliding into Emerging Realities onthe edges of Higher Education

Imagine spending your summer in Vienna, hanging out at the Danube before going for dinner at one of the many Heurige, eating lots of ice cream, joining open salsa classes & listening to people speaking all the languages you can imagine. Imagine these strangers suddenly turning into your (class) mates as they also signed up for this intriguing summer university that promised to take us on a journey beyond economics as usual.

Sounds like a pretty gorgeous summer in a pretty awesome environment. What we often don't take into account is how this summer wouldn't have been possible without a global economic system that is anything but awesome and gorgeous. A system that is extractivist, patriarchal, unjust - just to mention some of the things I'd associate. And yet, it enabled all of us to be here, at this 3 week immersion about the emerging alternatives for our economic and monetary systems (short: AEMS). So let me start this post with gratitude for these systems and structures, and acknowledge the privilege that allowed me to join, not even as a participant but as a tutor.

And what a journey it was! From basic environmental systems sciences to the history & workings of money in the world and explorations into examples like the Economy for the Common Good, Degrowth, Circular Economy and Doughnut Economics, as well as different approaches to finance, such as Sovereign Money and complementary currencies.

I must confess that I quite some times found myself overwhelmed by sitting in a lecture hall & taking in content as if I was back at school - a reality I believed belonged to my (our?) past of learning, before exploring a different possibility during my masters at MSLS. I found myself surprised by the different receptivity of people: exactly the parts that semed to float by me made the biggest difference for some of my fellow learners, and likewise the other way around. I just love diverse groups and the potential that opens up when we allow ourselves to truly soak in a topic, a group, a context.

And I love the pockets of play, interaction, story sharing, and deep listening that emerged in the cracks of the curriculum. Sometimes planned, sometimes randomly showing up like the wild strawberries in the park next to the university building. 3 weeks of living in the same student housing & sharing the same agenda come with lots of possibilities to weave connections, and so one of the things I certainly take from this space is an expanded web of relations that reaches much deeper & further than I'd have expected, considering my quirky role between participant & team member.

That leads me to another point ofobservationparadigmn and learning. For years I have been noticing how we often miss to align our paradigm of organizing (process, structure) with the paradig of thought & conception we're talking about.Whatt comes to me very intuitively is hard to even recognize for most. But really, how can we be serious about a more democratic democracy when sitting in straight rows, listening to the white man who figured it out, having to cut sessions short because we're running late on our planned agenda? Weaving in the fluidity, interactivity, inter-species, synergetic shape-shifting nature of a more life-affirming perception of life is a really hard job if all the systems surrounding us have been successfully squeezing us into boxes for the past centuries. And yet, so much life happened, squeezing through the cracks of extended lunchbreaks or late evenings in the courtyard. Processing, weaving together. Connecting our own stories to the still abstract ideas we got introduced to in classroom. Much more than critizizing I actually want to uplift and celebrate our hosts who welcomed 50 students and professionals from 26 nations and various academic fields in Vienna. With the resources & histories given, they enabled us to meet each other, and they were so eager to listen & share the space holding with us. There's a lot of gratitude in me for everyone who contributed to bringing this together, and lots of pride for observing how people stepped in to make the program more 'ours', from navigating the complexities of conflict to requesting more time on certain occasions. Our group surely was a learning organism.

When I look again at my experience, and all the resonances of the time at AEMS what shows up is the undeniable truth that 'debunking the myth of homo economicus & homo scientificus' requires us to face that we, for a long while, have been walking in those made-up footsteps as well, and that acknowledging & observing the ways we think and act in insidious ways may help us soften the ties, maybe even open a door to slip through into another realto spot the door. It's upon us to walk through & create those new worlds.

3 weeks of losing old & taking new shapes leave me with more questions than what I started with - and with more people in my web of life-ing & meaning-making. I am immensely grateful for this gift and hope you too will stumble into such great learning opportunities in your life.

Learn more about AEMS here