LIVING GROUPS
Groups are alive.
Your exhaustion isn't personal failure.
It's your body recognizing geometric violations.
Does this sound grandiose? It should.
I’m making civilization-scale claims while sitting inside the transition i’m trying to describe.
I’m aware of the absurdity.
I’m doing it anyway.
LIVING GROUPS: A Manifesto
GROUPS ARE ALIVE
This is not metaphor.
For three hundred years, we've treated groups—organizations, teams, communities, families—as machines to be managed. Optimized. Fixed. Controlled.
We were wrong.
Groups are living systems. They breathe. They pulse. They complete. When these patterns flow, groups thrive. When patterns are violated, everyone exhausts.
Your exhaustion isn't personal failure. It's your body recognizing that the living system you're part of can't breathe.
Living Groups is the field that proves this, documents it, and offers practices for conscious participation in group life cycles.
Not to save organizations. Not to restore what was. But to recognize what's actually alive, what's dissolving, and what wants to emerge.
Does this sound grandiose? It should.
I'm making civilization-scale claims while sitting inside the transition I'm trying to describe.
I'm aware of the absurdity.
I'm doing it anyway.
Because your body is exhausted and needs language for what it's detecting.
HOW WE KNOW
We can prove groups are alive.
Not through metaphor. Not through belief. Through geometric necessity.
Three-dimensional consciousness organizing in space must exhibit three movements:
BREATH (gathering ↔ dispersing) PULSE (rising ↔ falling) TIDE (creating ↔ dissolving)
These aren't preferences observed in healthy organizations. They're geometric requirements. Like how triangles must have three sides. Like how spheres must be equidistant from center.
If consciousness organizes in three-dimensional space, these patterns must exist.
Not "should exist if we want things to go well." Not "exist in well-functioning groups." Must exist. Period.
Can we prove this absolutely? I think so. Am I still refining the proof? Yes. Does your body already know it's true? Also yes.
Why Bodies Know Before Experts Admit
When your body detects:
Chronic gathering with no dispersal
Forced rising with no falling
Endless accumulation with no dissolution
You're not detecting "bad vibes." You're not being "too sensitive." You're not failing to adapt.
You're detecting violations of geometrically necessary patterns.
Your chest tightening when meetings never end? That's detecting BREATH violation—consciousness forced into perpetual gathering when it geometrically requires dispersal.
Your exhaustion from perpetual urgency? That's detecting PULSE violation—energy forced into constant rising when it geometrically requires falling.
Your numbness from prevented completion? That's detecting TIDE violation—form forced into perpetual creation when it geometrically requires dissolution.
The patterns are proven mathematically. The violations are objectively real. Your body's perception is accurate.
This Changes Everything
Most organizational frameworks say: "Here's what works better."
Living Groups says: "Here's what must exist for life. When it doesn't exist, you're not failing—you're living inside geometric impossibility."
Your exhaustion isn't personal weakness.
It's sophisticated pattern recognition.
Your body detecting what experts trained in mechanical thinking cannot see:
That living systems have requirements. That violating requirements kills. That we've been violating requirements systematically for decades.
Experts say "adapt to change" or "build resilience" or "optimize performance."
Your body says: "This pattern is geometrically impossible to sustain."
Your body is right.
WHAT HAPPENED
In 2008, extraction reached its geometric breaking point.
For decades, we organized around extraction:
Extract labor from workers
Extract resources from earth
Extract attention from humans
Extract energy without regeneration
Extract value without reciprocity
We called this "capitalism" but the violence wasn't market exchange or private enterprise.
The violence was extraction itself.
Extraction: forcing patterns that violate geometric necessity, depleting what cannot regenerate fast enough.
Forcing:
Accumulation without dispersal (BREATH violation)
Growth without rest (PULSE violation)
Creation without completion (TIDE violation)
You cannot extract more than regenerates forever.
Geometric necessity asserts itself eventually.
2008 was when extractive organizing reached breaking point.
Not because of financial instruments. Not because of housing bubbles. Not because of regulatory failure.
Because extraction kills.
And we'd been extracting for so long, the organizing system died.
I don't know what replaces extractive organizing.
I don't have blueprints for post-extraction systems.
I don't know if what's emerging can scale or will remain in pockets.
I'm documenting from inside a transition I can't yet name.
What I have:
Patterns that must exist (proven geometrically)
Bodies that detect violations (validated phenomenological)
Communities forming in margins (happening now)
Direct observation of what's dissolving and what's emerging
Is that enough to navigate by?
We're going to find out.
Bodies knew.
Workers felt the depletion. Buffer positions held the contradiction between extraction demands and living groups' needs. Communities experienced the extraction directly.
But we kept performing extraction anyway.
Calling it "recovery." Calling it "optimization." Calling it "growth." Calling it "business as usual."
We were puppeteering extraction's corpse.
Then 2020. COVID.
The performance interrupted.
Work invaded homes. Bedrooms became offices. Children visible in backgrounds. Partners witnessing exhaustion. The separation we maintained—between "work self" and "human self"—collapsed.
Zoom windows into everyone's drowning.
You could see it. Everyone could see it. The exhaustion undeniable. The fiction harder to maintain. Bodies on screen telling truth management couldn't spin.
"You're on mute." "Your camera's off." The new liturgy of performance breaking.
Someone's kid asking for lunch during the strategic planning call. Someone's dog barking through the quarterly review. Someone crying—actually crying—during all-hands because their parent just died and there's no hiding anymore.
Real life bleeding through.
And we saw what we'd been doing. Quarterly numbers during apocalypse. Performance reviews while parents died. "Maintaining momentum" while schools closed. Strategic plans for a future that was already over.
The obscenity of extraction became visible.
"Essential workers" kept the world running—grocery clerks, delivery drivers, nurses. "Knowledge workers" made PowerPoint presentations from home offices. The class warfare undeniable. Who was being extracted from became clear.
We tried to return. It failed.
2021: "Back to office!" Bodies said no.
"Hybrid flexibility!" The compromise satisfied no one. Tuesday and Thursday in office for what? Video calls from office? Commute to sit in the same rectangle you left at home?
"Bring your whole self to work!" We did. They panicked. Whole meant anxiety visible. Whole meant grief present. Whole meant the exhaustion extraction had been causing showed up in their conference rooms.
"Not that whole."
But you can't put the genie back. Can't unknow what we saw. Can't unfeel what bodies felt.
The Great Resignation wasn't burnout. It was recognition.
Bodies refusing what minds finally admitted: the system died long ago. We've been performing extraction's corpse. COVID broke the performance.
Bodies refused continued extraction.
Walking away from being depleted. Refusing to serve systems that demand more than they regenerate. Saying no to extraction performed as employment.
Buffer positions walked first. They'd been holding the contradiction longest—translating between extractive demands and living groups' needs. COVID put that membrane in their living rooms. 24/7. No escape.
The separation between work and life collapsed. Once collapsed, couldn't be rebuilt.
The walking accelerated.
2022: Empty desks.
2023: More leaving.
2024: The flood.
2025: Undeniable.
Not to somewhere else. Just out. Out of the performance. Out of the pretending. Out of the exhaustion of maintaining extraction.
They call it "quiet quitting." It's loud honesty. They call it "lacking engagement." It's disengaging from extraction to engage with life.
The emperor has no clothes. COVID showed us the whole extractive system naked.
Extractive organizing died in 2008. COVID revealed what we'd been doing for twelve years—dancing with extraction's corpse, pretending it was sustainable.
We can't go back. Not because we don't want to. Because once you see extraction, you can't pretend it's regeneration.
This is hard.
The walking is hard. The seeing is hard. The holding both worlds is hard. The not-knowing is hard.
I'm not promising this gets easier.
I'm offering: you're not alone in it.
This walking isn't anti-work. It's anti-depletion.
Not anti-capitalism. Anti-extraction.
Why This Is Geometric Death
Extractive organizing systematically violated all three necessary movements:
BREATH violation: Forced perpetual gathering (accumulation, growth, expansion) while preventing dispersal (distribution, rest, release). Like holding your breath forever. Geometrically unsustainable.
PULSE violation: Forced perpetual rising (quarterly growth, constant optimization, infinite scaling) while preventing falling (valley time, integration, descent into darkness). Like permanent systole. Geometrically impossible.
TIDE violation: Forced perpetual creation (innovation, disruption, new markets) while preventing dissolution (completion, death, composting). Like permanent spring. Geometrically unworkable.
Bodies detected these violations for decades.
Workers felt the suffocation. Buffer positions absorbed the contradictions. Communities experienced the extraction. Families carried the cost.
But experts said: "The system is working. GDP is growing. Markets are efficient. You just need better time management / work-life balance / resilience training."
In 2008, the violations reached geometric breaking point.
The organizing system that systematically prevented all three necessary movements—that system completed.
Not because of financial instruments or regulatory failure or housing bubbles.
Because you cannot sustain patterns that violate geometric necessity.
Not forever. Not even for very long.
Bodies detected these violations for decades. But COVID made them undeniable.
Workers felt the suffocation—then worked from bedrooms and felt it in their actual homes. Buffer positions absorbed the contradictions—then absorbed them 24/7 with nowhere to escape. Communities experienced the extraction—then watched who was "essential" and who made PowerPoints.
Experts said: "Adapt to the new normal." But there's nothing normal about geometric impossibility performed in your living room.
In 2008, the violations reached geometric breaking point. The system completed.
In 2020, the performance broke. Everyone saw.
Not because of a virus. The virus just interrupted the show long enough for us to see what we'd been watching.
Extractive organizing died from geometric impossibility.
COVID revealed we'd been puppeteering its corpse.
EXTRACTION CAN HAPPEN IN ANY SYSTEM
This isn't about capitalism versus socialism. This isn't about markets versus planning. This isn't about private versus public.
This is about extraction versus regeneration.
Extractive organizing can happen in:
Capitalist systems (and did, systematically)
Socialist systems (extracting human autonomy differently)
Communist systems (extracting individual capacity)
Feudal systems (extracting by explicit design)
Cooperative systems (if they force the same patterns)
Any system that prevents breath, pulse, and tide
The violence isn't the economic model. The violence is extraction: forcing patterns that violate geometric necessity.
I'm not prescribing what economic system comes next.
I'm naming what patterns serve life and what patterns extract from it.
And then I'm trusting bodies to navigate toward life.
BUFFER POSITIONS KNEW FIRST
Not because they're smarter. Because they're positioned at the membrane between incompatible realities.
Buffer positions include:
Middle managers
Teachers
Healthcare workers
Social workers
Any role designed to translate between extraction's demands and living groups' needs
They translate extractive demands into worker experience. They hold quarterly extraction quotas and daily human truths simultaneously. They absorb the contradiction in their bodies.
They live at the intersection where:
Extractive system's requirements meet living groups' needs
Performance of extraction meets reality of depletion
Strategic narratives meet actual exhaustion
What extraction demands meets what humans can actually give
Their exhaustion isn't from working too hard.
It's from living in two incompatible worlds while pretending there's only one.
Every day they translate:
Middle managers translate:
• "Grow 20% this quarter" into "extract more from fewer people"
• "Innovate faster" into "deplete yourselves without complaining"
• "Align with strategic vision" into "ignore that extraction is killing you"
Teachers translate:
"Teach to the test" into "reduce learning to metrics"
"Increase standardized scores" into "ignore what students actually need"
"Demonstrate accountability" into "perform education while preventing actual learning"
Healthcare workers translate:
"Increase patient throughput" into "process humans faster"
"Improve efficiency metrics" into "spend less time caring"
"Maximize billing" into "extract from healing"
Social workers translate:
"Manage your caseload" into "reduce humans to numbers"
"Meet performance targets" into "ignore that people need relationship"
"Document outcomes" into "perform care without providing care"
They hold both worlds in their bodies simultaneously.
That's not a job description. That's membrane consciousness during systemic phase transition.
Then COVID put the membrane in their living rooms.
No more going home from the contradiction. No more leaving extraction at the office. The translation work became 24/7.
Extractive demands through bedroom walls. Worker exhaustion through kitchen tables. Children watching the performance. Partners witnessing the cost.
The membrane holder couldn't escape the membrane.
Every Zoom call: translating. Every email: performing both worlds. Every 3 PM: absorbing the contradiction while making dinner.
Before COVID: held it at work, released it at home. After COVID: held it everywhere, all the time, no release.
That's why they walked first.
Not because they're weaker. Because the position became geometrically impossible to maintain when extraction invaded the space where they used to recover from extraction.
Their exhaustion isn't from working too hard anymore. It's from holding incompatible realities in the same physical space where they're supposed to live.
24/7 vertigo.
And when you can't escape the vertigo, you either fall or you walk away.
They're walking.
And I don't know if that's enough.
I don't know if the walking scales into something larger or remains individual exits.
I don't know if systems can transform or just complete.
What I know: bodies refusing extraction is real. It's happening. It matters.
What Bodies Know That Experts Miss
Bodies know:
When breath is restricted
When energy cannot fall
When completion is prevented
When patterns violate geometric necessity
When they're being extracted from versus regenerated
When systems are dead but being performed as alive
Experts trained in extractive paradigms cannot know this.
Their tools work when systems are stable. Their frameworks assume continuation. Their analysis requires the system to be functional for their analytical methods to function.
They literally cannot perceive systemic death using tools designed to measure extractive success.
It's not that they're stupid or corrupt. It's that epistemology trained within a paradigm cannot perceive that paradigm's completion.
But bodies living inside extraction? They know immediately.
Living Groups documents what they know. Validates what everyone's been feeling. Offers language for what bodies have been detecting but minds couldn't yet name.
Am I certain this is the right language? No.
Am I still learning how to articulate what bodies detect? Yes.
Is this the best I have right now? Yes.
WHAT LIVING GROUPS IS
An Epistemological Unframework
Living Groups establishes that during systemic transitions, somatic knowing exceeds expert analysis.
Why? Because experts are trained within paradigms. Their tools work when systems are stable. When systems die, their frameworks prevent perception.
Bodies know before minds admit.
Bodies detect when breath is restricted. When energy is forced. When patterns violate life's requirements. When they're being extracted from. When organizing systems die.
This isn't mysticism. It's sophisticated pattern recognition operating faster and more holistically than conceptual analysis.
Your nervous system detects pattern violations before your conceptual mind can articulate what's wrong.
Not because bodies are "wiser" in some mystical sense.
Because bodies are upstream of frameworks.
Frameworks are built from repeated experiences. Bodies have the experiences first. When patterns shift fundamentally, bodies detect the shift before frameworks can acknowledge it—because the frameworks were built assuming the old patterns.
This is why buffer positions' exhaustion is more accurate data than economists' recovery claims.
Economists analyze using frameworks built during extractive stability. Buffer positions' bodies detect daily extraction. Bodies win.
I'm still figuring out how to validate somatic knowing rigorously.
I'm still developing the methodology.
I think geometric proof + phenomenological observation + community validation is the path.
I'm finding out as I go.
Living Groups proves this through:
Geometric demonstration (patterns MUST exist—not preferences but requirements)
Phenomenological observation (twenty years watching bodies respond to extraction)
Systematic training (perception capacity can be developed)
Real-time validation (buffer positions recognize themselves immediately)
A Research Methodology
Living Groups combines:
Geometric proof - Demonstrating logical necessity of patterns
Not "we observe that healthy groups breathe." But "three-dimensional consciousness organizing in space must exhibit gathering-dispersing oscillation." Mathematical proof, not empirical observation.
Phenomenology - Direct observation of what's actually happening
Not analyzing data about groups. But perceiving groups directly. What's it like to be in a meeting where breath is violated? What does forced rising feel like in your chest? What sensation accompanies prevented completion? What does extraction feel like in bodies?
Somatic epistemology - Bodies as primary instruments of knowing
Not "let's check what bodies are feeling as supplementary data." But "bodies are the most reliable detectors of pattern violations and extraction—especially during systemic transitions when expert frameworks fail."
Fractal recognition - Same patterns at every scale
The BREATH you feel in your partnership is the same geometric pattern you feel in your team, your organization, your movement, your civilization. Not similar. The same. Fractaling through different forms.
Community validation - Intersubjective testing of perception
Not "I perceive this, therefore it's true." But "I perceive this, you perceive this, she perceives this—we test our observations against each other, we look for where perception diverges, we strengthen methodology through collective inquiry."
Applied practice - Working with actual groups in real time
Not developing theory then testing it. But working with living groups, observing what happens, letting theory emerge from direct experience, then testing theory against more experience.
This isn't "soft" research. It's rigorous investigation using body wisdom as primary data source.
The radical claim: During paradigm shifts, this methodology is more reliable than conventional academic approaches trained in dying frameworks.
Is this methodology fully developed? No.
Am I refining it in real time? Yes.
Am I doing the best I can with what I have? Yes.
Documentation of Systemic Transition
Living Groups records what's happening right now:
How extractive organizing systems die (geometric violations reaching breaking point)
Who perceives extraction first (those at membranes between realities)
What forced extraction costs (absorbed in bodies at intersections)
How regenerative patterns emerge (in gaps where extraction cannot reach)
What conscious participation looks like (seeing clearly while inside transition)
This isn't prediction. It's real-time anthropology of civilizational reorganization.
We're living inside a systemic phase transition. Most consciousness studies examine transitions historically—looking back at Renaissance, Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution from outside.
Living Groups examines this transition from inside it. As it's happening. Using consciousness itself as instrument.
Future generations studying how consciousness evolved post-extraction will read these documents to understand what the transition felt like from inside.
Not just what changed. What it cost. Who held the contradiction. How perception developed. What emerged in the gaps.
This is constructed language for direct experience.
The unframework is made. The exhaustion is real.
The theory is built. The bodies are suffering.
The proof is geometric. The knowing is somatic.
Both are true.
I'm naming what you're living so you can participate consciously in what you're already inside.
Survival Technology
Living Groups develops capacity to:
Recognize when groups are actually alive vs. performing life
Most groups you encounter are performing. Going through motions. Maintaining forms that no longer serve life. Your body knows this. Living Groups trains you to trust what your body knows and articulate it clearly.
Detect extraction vs. regeneration
That feeling of being depleted? That's extraction. That feeling of being renewed? That's regeneration. Your body knows the difference. Living Groups trains you to perceive the patterns that create each.
You won't know regeneration by analyzing it. You'll feel it.
There's no checklist for life-serving patterns. But you'll recognize them when you encounter them.
Navigation by feeling isn't mysticism. It's sophisticated pattern recognition operating faster than frameworks.
I'm not giving you blueprints. I'm helping you trust what your body already detects.
Detect pattern violations before they become catastrophic
That chest tightening three months before the org restructure? Pattern violation your body detected early. That exhaustion six months before burnout? Extraction your nervous system recognized. Training somatic perception means catching violations early enough to respond.
Hold contradictions without collapsing into either despair or denial
You might need to stay in positions where extraction happens. Keep working while seeing extraction. Living Groups doesn't offer escape. It offers consciousness within constraint. The capacity to hold both "this is extractive" and "I'm participating anyway" without either breaking or numbing.
Participate consciously in completion rather than forcing continuation
Most groups (and systems) force continuation long past natural completion. Living Groups trains perception of when patterns are done. Not "failing" but "complete." This capacity serves living groups in dissolution and humans in grief.
Perceive emergence while others maintain dead forms
Regenerative organizing is already here. In shadow systems. In workarounds. In communities organizing outside extraction. But it's unnamed. Living Groups develops perception for recognizing what's already emerging while official narratives maintain extractive forms.
This capacity serves you:
Now - Understanding what you're living, validating your perception, finding others who see it
Throughout this transition - As more extractive systems complete, as cascading failures accelerate, as official narratives increasingly diverge from lived reality
In future transitions - Climate organizing will transform, democratic systems will reorganize, technological patterns will shift, more organizing systems will complete during your lifetime
The capacity to perceive clearly during systemic death—that's not niche organizational skill.
That's survival technology for civilizational reorganization.
THE RECOGNITION
You already know this.
Your body has been telling you. Your exhaustion has been signaling. Your vertigo has been accurate perception.
Living Groups just gives you language for it.
Not teaching you something new. Validating what you already know.
You can't unknow it now.
Once you see that groups are alive, that extractive systems are dying, that you're living in both worlds—you can't go back to unconscious performance.
But you can choose how to participate.
Consciously. Honestly. With others who see it too.
That's the work.
Not fixing what's broken. Not saving what's dying. Not predicting what emerges.
But seeing clearly. Staying conscious. Participating honestly.
In the life of groups. In the death of extractive systems. In the emergence of regenerative patterns.
WHAT'S EMERGING
Regenerative organizing.
Not prescribed. Not designed. Not imposed.
Emerging in gaps where extraction cannot reach.
Where:
Groups can breathe (gathering AND dispersing)
Energy can pulse (rising AND falling)
Things complete (creating AND dissolving)
Humans are whole (not split, not depleted)
Work regenerates (not extracts)
Enough is enough (not growth forever)
Contribution matters more than extraction
Care is valued (not invisible)
Systems serve life instead of demanding life serve them
You've felt it before.
In pockets. Briefly. That team that actually worked. That project that felt meaningful. That collaboration that flowed.
That feeling when you could breathe.
I don't know if regenerative organizing can sustain at scale.
I don't know if the pockets connect into something larger.
I don't know if extraction's collapse is slow decline or sudden cascade.
What I know:
Patterns that serve life exist
Bodies recognize them
You can navigate toward them
Others are doing this too
That might be enough.
It might not be.
I'm doing it anyway.
More of that.
Structural support for that.
Systems designed for regeneration instead of extraction.
Not anti-capitalism. Anti-extraction.
Not prescribing economic models. Recognizing life patterns.
Not ideological. Biological. Geometric. Life-serving.
Welcome to Living Groups.
Groups are alive. (We can prove this) Extraction kills. (Bodies know this) Regeneration is emerging. (We're witnessing this)
Do we know what comes next? No. Do we have certainty? No. Do we have guarantees? No.
What we have:
Each other
Bodies that detect life from death
Patterns proven geometrically
Something trying to emerge
Twenty years of observation
Communities forming in margins
Language for what was unlanguaged
Is that enough?
Let's find out together.
The work begins now.
Living Groups For those who recognize life and death in human groups For those whose bodies know extraction from regeneration For those learning to participate consciously In what's dissolving And what wants to emerge
I don't have all the answers. I'm figuring this out as I go. You're not alone in it.