mario m. yanez (yanez.earth)

Mario Yanez is dedicated to enabling a transition toward life-affirming, regenerative human cultures. He has an academic background in finance, information systems, ecology and complexity. He has several decades of experience applying systems thinking to unfolding cutting-edge interventions supportive of a much-needed cultural evolution. As a whole-systems designer, he is working at various scales, implementing regenerative landscapes and transformative ecosocial systems. As a scholar-practitioner, he is researching complexity and pathways toward cultivating wholeness and aliveness in human systems. Mario resides in the Mira bioregion (SW Alentejo, Portugal), is native to the Greater Everglades bioregion, and practices in bioregions everywhere.

We live, play, work in places. The places we inhabit are unique microcosms, representative of extraordinary complexity we call Universe. We can’t engage directly with our Universe, nor even our Biosphere, except through places. The attention given to globalization of our world, has caused us to momentarily abandoned our places. However, our places are localized sources of cosmic and biospheric abundance—pf place-sourced potential. Our places are what share in common with each other as Humans and the full range of more-than-human beings that constitutes the living web, our one time endowment from a living Cosmos. If we give our places in their uniqueness the proper significance and care, they can guide us in re-patterning our human social systems.

Our role as Humans could be aimed at activating:

Place-sourced potential can be activated through the practice of ecosocial design.

Everything we do has an effect, whether we are conscious of them or not. When we are not conscious of our actions, we introduce unintended consequences into our world. More often than not, we operate in this manner. And, it doesn't have to be this way. We can intervene purposefully. We can think of our conscious interventions within the context of design.

Design is where theory meets practice. Design is a process of setting and formally declaring our intentions of what kind of transformation we’d like to bring into effect. We could argue endlessly of what the right course of action might be. Or, we can be guided by our places. Places are unique manifestations of the inherent aliveness of our Biosphere. Our Biosphere requires of us only one thing: that with everything we do, we bring a greater degree of aliveness.

The ecosocial is where ecology and society meet—already shared realities that are simultaneously ecological and social. Ecosocial design is directed at how we collectively develop the conditions for greater aliveness to emerge in of our places. We practice this through:

In essence, ecosocial design is a process of re-patterning our cultural operating systems.

Patterns are recognizable sets of relationships that we encounter through lived experience. They enable beings to make sense of and navigate the worlds they inhabit. Patterns from the living world can be applied to reanimate human social systems. Human social systems function by way of cultural operating systems (OS) we call paradigms. These social systems are often a mishmash of accumulated patterns that have made their way to the collective unconscious without much questioning.

However, we can upgrade our operating systems by curating meaningful, Life-affirming patterns. Patterns worth spreading broadly to regenerate bioregions everywhere. For this, communities can harness the power of a technique known as pattern language. Pattern language allows for dissemination of desirable patterns at various nested scales. It allows users to incorporate curated elements and processes into a design. Curated elements are organized context-specific set of related patterns.

The pattern languages I developed over the course of several decades of praxis include:

platform

utilizing pattern language as operating systems to power platforms for generation of life-sustaining patterns

Developing platforms for dissemination of life-regenerating patterns for specific purposes (foodscapes in underutilized spaces) based on pattern language as operating system.