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Life works, finds it's way, expands into every corner ... so look for where it is emerging ... ... and support it — precisely where 'death' hurts persons, communities, & our world |
 Drawing by Cagn Cochrane
The 'Leading Causes of Life' is a way to think and act in relation to ourselves, others, and the world. It flips the language of 'the leading causes of death'. In the face of what harms or hurts us and the world the "leading causes of life" looks for what is generative ... for each of us, for all, and for the whole. |
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We pay a great deal of attention to 'death'—what harms, damages, or kills us. Not just in our daily lives, but also in
what we prioritize in our social institutions. 'Death' drives the thinking of disciplines such as public health
(with its language of 'mortality,' 'morbidity,' 'burden of disease,' or the 'leading causes of death'),
but also much in the social sciences, in philosophy ... and in religious teachings and theologies
(e.g., via a focus on 'guilt,' 'shame,' 'sin,' and 'The Fall,' to name just some framing themes).
What if we turn the spy-glass around?
What if we were to focus at least as much on life as we do on death?
Life is the thing that works. Against the cold, solid running down that we call entropy, life is the energy that runs up, finds a way, expands into every possible crack in the predictable curtain of death, raises up a generation beyond itself. Life is the thing that goes on. And it goes on in any of your or my short, peculiar and particular span of years.
Not a toolbox, the "Leading Causes of Life" is a way of thinking about reality, one that pays attention above all to what is generative for us as human beings, personally and in relation to others and to the world around us. It rests on an innovative, concretely useful set of five interlinked and interacting elements—with deep moral foundations.
Taken together, they help us understand the complexity of human action and interaction, so that we may act
with generative intention no matter where we are or what we are doing..
what we prioritize in our social institutions. 'Death' drives the thinking of disciplines such as public health
(with its language of 'mortality,' 'morbidity,' 'burden of disease,' or the 'leading causes of death'),
but also much in the social sciences, in philosophy ... and in religious teachings and theologies
(e.g., via a focus on 'guilt,' 'shame,' 'sin,' and 'The Fall,' to name just some framing themes).
What if we turn the spy-glass around?
What if we were to focus at least as much on life as we do on death?
Life is the thing that works. Against the cold, solid running down that we call entropy, life is the energy that runs up, finds a way, expands into every possible crack in the predictable curtain of death, raises up a generation beyond itself. Life is the thing that goes on. And it goes on in any of your or my short, peculiar and particular span of years.
Not a toolbox, the "Leading Causes of Life" is a way of thinking about reality, one that pays attention above all to what is generative for us as human beings, personally and in relation to others and to the world around us. It rests on an innovative, concretely useful set of five interlinked and interacting elements—with deep moral foundations.
Taken together, they help us understand the complexity of human action and interaction, so that we may act
with generative intention no matter where we are or what we are doing..
- 'Leading Causes of Life' (some videos) -
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Leading Causes of Life
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Life is what it is about.
I want no truck with death. – Pablo Neruda Life has a way of rolling, not unlike a 'murmuration,' something starlings and other birds do.
A wonderful example of emergent, dynamic complexity unexplained by inorganic or linear logic, only by life.
On El Paso | El Paso docs 
Documents prepared for LCLI meeting
INCLUDING LCL Theory (PDF) On Positive Deviance On Liberating Structures (with videos) About UTEP Social Justice Initiative |
Drumbeat
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| LCLI-related books
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