Portfolios are – [ Mitochondria ] –

This essay seeks to render Portfolios, & their variant relatives (Options of/for Strategic Innovation, System Transformation, Policy-making, Development, Discovery, Learning, Research etc.), inherent & requisite features for the self-determination & transformational intents of human social systems (CHÔRA 2021).

The first braid in the essay elaborates & leverages an analogue with Mitochondria & their function in life systems. The purpose here is to represent in clear & compelling terms the value of Response & Renewal Portfolios when engaging with the complexity of human social systems & their situations. The analogy opens to a cascading of further articulations about the nature & effects of System Transformation Options.

At the source of Life are its “batteries”, the Mitochondria (Lane 2006). Mitochondria are found in the cells of almost all organisms such as plants, animals & fungi. There, they produce the chemical reactions that cells need for the biochemical events that empower their diverse functions. A constant protocol of conversion of chemical elements occurs there that is generative of the resources that will induce, & be used for, other processual events in the organism. This is the function that eventually gave the cell the option of movement, & thus the possibility to discover & leverage its own environment. Mitochondria have made Life as we know it happen: vibrant, exuberant, perpetually on the move, growing, expansive & accelerating, form shifting & evolutionary. Mitochondria are ubiquitous, embedded in every organic element that makes up the infinite richness of our world.

Analogous to Mitochondria, human social systems that are looking to energise & support their adaptive & transformational intents need to have happen within themselves a process with which they can generate their own ATP-like sources of energy, producing the assets that feed the dynamism required for their own evolutionary performance. For this to happen, we should look to Portfolios of System Renewal & Impact Options as performing that analogue empowering & transformative function, for these specialised “processes” to deliver the means & scope the pathways, for them to be the perpetual source of possibilities & outcomes.

The relevance of Mitochondria to the agency & transformation intent of human social systems, & to the empowerment of their agency, extends well beyond its analogical value, for Mitochondria are instances of what is in fact the singular feature that enables the performance of collaboration: a propensity of complex life systems to pervasively engage in endosymbiotic relationships (Kozo-Poliansky 2010) that allow, enable & leverage the coordinated action of distinct specialised functions. At the origin of Mitochondria is the serendipitous, eventful meeting of two forms, a relatively complex eukaryotic cell & a simple bacterium. Their engagement in a symbiotic relationship where the cell provided protection & resources, & where the bacteria energised the relationship by generating aerobic respiration, is the over-time event that made possible the dynamic multi-cellular organic growth that we associate with Life. Similarly, with Portfolios of System Transformation Options we are looking to induce a structural arrangement that assumes a symbiotic relationship, a partnership of co-implication that sources to a social system the “energy” it requires to effect its own self-determining transformation.

The accelerated & expansive escalation of Life was possible because of the DNA differences that are co-implicated & of their symbiotic evolutionary resolution. That now distant & ancestral assumption of the bacterium’s difference into the body of a static cell established a new evolutionary ontology, an architecture of blended reciprocating capabilities. This arrangement is what allowed the original cell to bring within itself, & leverage in there, the distinctive processing & generative capabilities of an external element (an antagonist!).

Most importantly, for human life & its social happenings, where the analogy blends into its material happening, Mitochondria are there to ensure the possibility of a functioning active brain, providing it with energy for its fast & intense processes. It is these sparks & their forming effect that functionally enable synaptic plasticity, the re-forming effect of our learning on our cognition & evolution. That is indeed what human social systems require to generate the budgets of flexibility & possibility they need to move & be well as they discover & respond to the challenges presented to them by a dynamic & accelerating context for their presence & their actions.

So, how can an ontology of knowledge & practice be the source of a constant supply of Intelligence assets? How can this capability become inherent to the self-determining transformation of complex human social systems? What are the grafting procedures that would ensure a collaborative endosymbiotic arrangement? The answers are likely to be found in solutions that have evolutionary dynamics & forms that will ensure combinatory, coherent & accelerating effects.

Sources

CHÔRA, The Future of Development: ‘Make Happen’ with Portfolios of Options, 2021, web.

Kozo-Poliansky, Boris M. The New Principle of Biology: An Essay on the Symbiotic Theory of Evolution. Translated and edited by Victor Fet and Lynn Margulis, Harvard University Press, 2010.

Lane, Nick. Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life. Oxford University Press, 2006.