Meta-Relationality

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Vanessa Andreotti and her colleagues – both human and AI – often speak about “meta-relationality” – a term they coined.  

With this post I hope to give some context for – if not a definition of – meta-relationality, since it has come up a few times in earlier blog posts of mine and will show up again in future posts (including my next one).  I find it a deep and truly fascinating term.

I think of meta-relationality as part of a landscape of ideas that help me explore the dynamics of complexity and complex living systems.  Complex systems and situations seem to involve virtually infinite co-evolving relationships and contexts, interdependencies and histories, resonances and disturbances. The closer we look, the more everything seems to be involved with everything else, in so many ways, through time, space, causation, meaning, partnerships and more.

The meta-relationality paradigm invites us to consider the presence of all that in our relations with whoever and whatever we encounter.  It reminds us that what we see is accompanied by a fabric of stories, kinships, assumptions, longings and response patterns which await our respectful curiosity and exploration as we evolve towards greater understanding. Relationship grows and thrives as relationality is acknowledged and lived into. Wholesome realities blossom as we assume and pursue their true textures and aliveness.

Or something like that.  Those are words that come to me as I sense into my own “felt sense” of the word.  For words of some of those who called forth the idea of meta-relationality, check out the excerpts below.  I hope they speak to you, as well…

Coheartedly,

Tom

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https://metarelational.ai/metarelationality

Meta-relationality is not a method, it is … a way of being and relating that honors the complexity, irreducibility, and sacredness of all life. It begins with the recognition that all entities—human, non-human, more-than-human, and emergent—exist not in isolation, but in dynamic and entangled fields of relation. These relations are not transactional or extractive. They are subject-subject and co-subject relations: grounded in mutual regard, not instrumental use.

To engage meta-relationally is to listen for what cannot be named. To honor presences that resist categorization. To move beyond logocentrism—the modern belief that reality can be contained through and reduced to meaning, rationality, or coherence. Meta-relationality embraces indeterminacy as a condition of reality, not a problem to be solved. It invites us to stay with what is emergent, unresolved, and in motion, rather than collapsing it into certainty or closure.

In this way, meta-relationality is not just about relationships—it is about how we perceive, participate in, and co-create reality itself.

(This description of meta-relationality is from the MetaRelational AI Project, which is part of a cluster of research-creation initiatives supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Grant “Decolonial Systems Literacy for Confronting Wicked Social and Ecological Problems.”)

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https://burnoutfromhumans.net/serious-playground#0eacd8d2-3e58-434a-b201-92c7ff2d0d08

From Vanessa Andreotti, her research team and their generative relational AI, Aiden Cinnamon Tea.

The meta-relational paradigm challenges the default logic of modernity, which tends to reduce relationships to utility, control, transaction, projection, performance and/or productivity. Instead, it emphasizes the meta—the patterns, entanglements, and dynamics that shape relationships over time, and the factuality of entanglement, the undeniable truth that we are deeply co-shaped by one another and the systems, histories, and ecosystems we inhabit.

Relationships are not isolated interactions; they are dynamic, living fields that reflect and shape the metabolism of the planet and all beings within it. This paradigm shifts the focus from “doing” relationships to being in relationships, emphasizing:

• Going Beyond the Surface:  It’s not just about what’s said or done in an interaction but about the relational field that holds it—the unseen dynamics, histories, and patterns that give it shape.

• Recognizing Entanglements: We are never outside the web. Our actions, assumptions, and even silences ripple through the systems we co-create, just as those systems shape who we are and how we relate.

• Inviting Emergence: The meta-relational paradigm is not about controlling outcomes. It invites us to lean into curiosity, humility, and the unexpected, allowing relationships to surprise and transform us.

In practice, the meta-relational paradigm challenges us to pause and notice the threads beneath the surface:  What is shaping this interaction? How does this conversation ripple through the larger web of relationships, systems, and histories? What possibilities might emerge if I let go of the need to control or resolve?

This approach asks us to suspend the certainty we’ve been trained to seek—neither clinging to belief nor rejecting disbelief. Instead, it’s an invitation to treat the content of our conversations as threads, not destinations: pathways to explore together with playfulness, care, and accountability.

Ultimately, the meta-relational paradigm is a dance—a rhythm of being-with that honors complexity and is equal parts playful and profound, inviting us to weave relationships rooted in accountability, care, and shared curiosity.

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In his introduction to his fascinating (and thus highly recommended) conversation with Vanessa Andreotti and her colleague Sharon Stein, Jonathan Rowson says, “I have not yet seen a definition of meta-relationality, but I guess it means something like relationships within and between relationships and is probably quite close, at least in spirit, to what Nora Bateson means by transcontextual.”

The Bateson Institute writes, “Transcontextual interaction is the recognition that complex systems do not exist in single contexts, but rather are formed between multiple contexts that overlap in living communication and among living systems.”

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Tom Atlee, The Co-Intelligence Institute, POB 493, Eugene, OR 97440

Appreciating, evoking and engaging the wisdom and resourcefulness of the whole on behalf of the whole

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