This week my master thesis titled How to Design a System of Togetherness? Understanding inner and outer transformation processes is exhibited at the Dutch Design Week 2023 in Eindhoven.

In the thesis, I traced collective perceptions of reality throughout time, in order to understand what has led to great mindshifts and transformations in our long human history. Among others, I explored the animist’s, dualist’s, monotheist’s, the materialist’s, and the reductionist’s reality.

During my research I came across an emerging worldview – the integrative worldview. According to Annick de Witt and her team, this understanding of the world as a complex, living organism, where humans flourish in tandem with everything else, is shared by an increasing number of individuals. In this understanding of reality, the individual’s purpose and transcendence in life are closely linked to the collective’s well-being and purpose.

A new kind of responsibility can arise out of that understanding – shared care of ‚myself and everything around me’. This is what a living System of Togetherness means to me: the shared care that arises out of feeling interconnected and dependent. The deep knowing of ‚I am part of the web of life and I care for it as much as I care for me.‘