Reimagining our World Systemically - From Problematique to Purposeful Action (2026)
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Reimagining our World Systemically - From Problematique to Purposeful Action (2026) is a Dialogue for the second quarter of the 21st Century, organized back-to-back with the 70th (2026) Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, Cyprus.
Building on the legacy of the Club of Rome and its seminal Limits to Growth and Global Problematique, this international symposium convenes political leaders and systems scientists (paired in dialogue) to confront today’s most urgent global challenges. Through Structured Democratic Dialogue (SDD), participants will co-design strategies for a thriving, sustainable, and resilient future grounded in fairness, happiness, and respect for human–nature ethics.
This will not be just a conversation, but a bold step toward global systemic transformation.
Potential Participants
Prominent systems scientists, writers, philosophers, and cyberneticians, who have dedicated their lives to exploring, researching, developing methodologies, and designing reforms using systemic thinking and tools and policy makers from European and other governments, as well as international bodies (i.e., the world’s most influential institutions, including the United Nations, European Union, World Bank, OECD, IMF, African Union, national governments, major universities, and civil society at large) will be invited to participate.
Organizers
- International Society for the Systems Sciences (SIG: Systemic Dialogue; SIG: Action Research; SIG: Students)
- Institute for 21st Century Agoras (Global Agoras)
- Future Worlds Center
- Endorsed by the Club of Rome
- Under the auspices of the Cyprus Office of the Commissioner for the Citizen.
- Under the auspices of the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the European Union (Jan–Jun 2026)
Phase 1: Virtual Sessions (Feb–Apr 2026)
Five to six online sessions, utilizing the structured dialogic design process (SDD), devoted to revisiting and updating the global Problématique. Up to 30 participants will work collectively to:
- Surface the continuous critical problems humanity faces today by responding to the Triggering Question:
What are the most critical obstacles that humanity needs to address in the next few years to ensure a sustainable and just future?
- Clarify their meanings and cluster them into themes, thus developing a shared language and mental model
- Explore the influence relations between the challenges culminating in the construction of a visual map.
This preparatory work ensures that all contributors develop a common framing and a deeper appreciation of the complexity involved, thereby being better prepared to propose essential systemic actions, which is the focus of phase 2.
Phase 2: Face-to-face (Jun 29 – 30, 2026; after the 70th ISSS Conference)
The process culminates in a two-day summit in Cyprus. It will engage ca. 24 participants, including mostly representative participants from Phase 1, as well as a few other leading systems scientists and some senior policymakers from across Europe and beyond. The June dialogue seeks to answer a guiding question:
What essential actions can humanity take in the next decade to build a resilient, fair, peace-capable, and future-fit world system?
Participants will again engage in an SDD to generate and explore actions, cluster and explore their interdependencies, and finally co-design a shared structural map of priorities; a blueprint for action that can inform policy, research agendas, institutional reforms, and broader societal mobilization. The aim is not incremental improvement but a coherent systemic architecture for thriving planetary futures.
Extended Justification for the Urgency of this Symposium
Relevant Quotes from Prominent Scientists
In his book The Chasm Ahead (1974), Aurelio Peccei, Founder of the Club of Rome, argued that humanity stands before a vast and dangerous <italics>chasm</italics> between its rapidly increasing material powers and its insufficient moral, cultural, and intellectual capacities. He feared that unless we bridge this chasm through a profound transformation of consciousness and responsibility, global collapse (social, ecological, and political) is inevitable.
Peccei identifies a Global Problematique of crises (environmental degradation, economic inequality, war, alienation, cultural fragmentation), in his Human Quality (1977) book. Still, he argues these are not external causes, but manifestations of a more profound crisis of being. Peccei diagnoses that humanity has become dangerously powerful without becoming wiser, more ethical, or more self-aware, and its (and the future of civilization) depend not on technological or institutional fixes, but on the development of a new human quality. He talks for the need of a profound transformation in how we think, feel, relate, and act and advocates that we must cultivate a planetary consciousness (a shift from ego and tribe to species and planet: inner capacity for compassion, responsibility, foresight, humility, and solidarity), and concludes that doing so is not utopian idealism, but a survival imperative.
The No Limits to Learning report to the Club of Rome reframes the global crisis not as a shortage of resources, but as a deficit in imagination, foresight, and shared learning. Its central thesis is that to address accelerating global crises (ecological degradation, political instability, economic injustice), societies must shift from reactive to anticipatory learning. The report concludes that it is not just about knowledge acquisition, but about evolving our capacity to understand, adapt, and self-transform.
Meaning of the Mosaic Logo
In Greek mythology, the Horae (GR: Ὧραι), meaning "Hours" or "Seasons," were a group of goddesses who personified the natural order and were often associated with the changing seasons and the passage of time. While the number of Horae varied, the most common grouping was a triad: Eunomia (Order), Dike (Justice), and Eirene (Peace).
