Rupture & Regeneration: Our Current Moment | Otto Scharmer

We live in a time of rupture, not transition. A time of fracture, not fragmentation. Yet on the other side of this civilizational crisis, something profound is emerging. Otto Scharmer opens Presencing Series 2026 by naming both the geopolitical othering and absencing driving senseless wars AND "the emergence of a new awareness and inspiring living examples for radical regeneration that carry the seeds for new ways of working and living together." Drawing on his childhood on a regenerative farm in Germany, Otto introduces the foundational concept of social soil: "The quality of everything that's growing above the ground, including the quality of the harvest, is a function of the quality of the soil." His father converted their 800-year-old farm from conventional to regenerative agriculture 68 years ago. Today, Otto applies the same principle to social transformation: "I'm still doing the same thing. Just that in my case, and perhaps also in your case, the field that we are working with is not only the field of the farmer, but the social field." Social fields have two main components: The visible, observable systems and results (above ground) The less visible social soil—the quality of our relationships and the quality of our awareness (below ground) Our role as "farmers and gardeners of the social field" is to engage in the practices that cultivate this soil, shifting institutional practices from extraction to regeneration and from egocentric to ecosystem awareness. This is the work of our time. From Presencing Series 2026 - Session 1 Soil Health, Human Health, & Planetary Well-Being: Pathways for Regenerative Economies Access the full session archive and register for other upcoming sessions of the series at PresencingSeries.org #OttoScharmer #SocialSoil #TheoryU #Presencing #SystemsChange #RegenerativeEconomy #Transformation #SocialField #AwarenessBasedChange #PresencingInstitute #RegenerativeAgriculture #EcosystemAwareness #CollectiveIntelligence #SocialInnovation #PresencingSeries