Looking and acting from what develops in order to remain

Not everything calls for a solution.
Some situations first call for room to choose.

This article marks a shift:
from a fixation on the future to the present moment,
from innovation as a goal to evolution as a dynamic —
articulated in what I call Evolutionary Perspective.

From working title to way of thinking

Over the past few years, I used imaginology as a working title.
Not as a method, but as an umbrella term for mental spaces, research, conversations, and experiments around futures thinking, meaning, and direction.

That phase is now complete.

Not because the thinking was incorrect, but because it has become more precise.
What was once exploratory and tentative is now clear enough to be named explicitly.

Imaginology belongs to a research phase.
The thinking that emerged from it, I now call:

Evolutionary Perspective

The earlier texts remain.
Not as a promise or a framework, but as a trace of how this thinking has evolved.

Evolutionary Perspective

Evolutionary Perspective is not a framework, not a method, and not a design approach.
It is a stance. A way of seeing and acting.
It is therefore not a method you follow, but a way of looking that you can learn to work with.

Looking and acting from what develops in order to remain.

This fundamentally shifts attention:

• from solutions to continuity
• from plans to dynamics
• from designing to observing
• from intervening to creating space

Not everything needs to be renewed.
Not everything needs to be accelerated.
Not everything needs to be preserved.

The central question changes:

What wants to remain here — and how is it already developing?

Why this is not an innovation story

“Innovation” has become an empty term.
Too often it stands for faster, newer, more efficient —
as if change must always be designed and accelerated.

But much of what we call innovation is not disruptive at all.
It is rarely a rupture.
More often, it is an evolutionary consequence:
a next step that logically emerges from what already existed.

Evolution is not about speed, but about absorption.
About how changes land in a system, settle into and attach themselves to existing structures, and gain meaning in relation to their environment.

Systemic evolution is the development of entities and their relational conditions.
An ecosystem dynamic.

Innovations may remain.
But they are not goals in themselves — they are moments within a broader development.

Innovation tends to look forward.
Evolution first looks at the now:

• what do we already have
• what works
• what causes friction
• what has become possible as a result

Not everything that is possible is viable.
And not everything that is new is actually absorbed.

That is why an Evolutionary Perspective begins with observation and awareness.
Not with planning, but with seeing.
Not with promises, but with coherence.

Evolution in the present: AI and immersive technology

Take AI.

You can frame it as a sudden breakthrough.
But you can also see it as a logical next step:
from machines → to smart solutions → to intelligent systems.

The pace is high, certainly.
But the core question is not how fast it moves —
the question is how it lands.
How it is absorbed into education, work, creativity, and everyday life.

The same applies to immersive technology.

Long before we spoke of AR, VR, or XR, we were already trying to retain worlds and re-enter them.
We painted scenes to remember moments.
Later, we learned to capture them through photography and film — first static, then moving.

The next step was experience.
Sound, editing, large-scale imagery.
Cinemas became places where you did not just watch, but were there for a moment.

3D cinema amplified this effect.
Not as a rupture, but as a continuation.

AR, VR, and XR are not radical disruptions.
They are the next step in the same evolutionary movement:
from looking → to experiencing → to being present.

What evolves here is not only technology, but relationship.
Between human and image.
Between distance and proximity.
Between representation and experience.

Each step became possible because earlier forms had already been absorbed.

That is evolution in the present.

Shapers

From an Evolutionary Perspective, a specific role becomes visible, which I call: shapers.

Shapers is not a job title nor a movement.
It is a word for behavior you recognize when someone is attentively present in a system that is still in the making.

Shapers:

• see what is, without immediately trying to improve it
• read how something is growing, not just what it is
• sense what may become possible if certain developments continue
• sketch perspectives, not plans

Not by predicting, but by exploring.

They do not work from solutions, but from developmental lines.
Not from goals, but from directional sensitivity.

Shaping, put differently

Shaping is not a technique.
Nor is it an intervention.

Shaping is:

• making possible directions visible
• articulating “if this continues to grow, then…”
• opening thinking space before choices are fixed

A shaper does not force direction.
They hold perspectives alongside one another — precisely as long as the system still benefits from that openness.

Shapers do not only see what is, but also what is emerging within it.
They sketch possible perspectives by following how something develops.

From perspective to applicability

A perspective only becomes valuable when others can work with it.
Not by learning it, but by applying it in their own context.

That is why I am currently working on three interconnected supports:

1. A short paper

Not a manual, but a positioning of the thinking.
To loosen the reflex to solve and create space for a different starting point.

2. An instruction set

Not a step-by-step plan, but observations and reflective prompts.
Questions and intervention brakes that help avoid premature decisions.

3. A canvas

Not a future vision and not a roadmap.
A working format to make room to choose visible:

• what wants to remain
• what is already developing
• what obstructs that development
• where no decision is yet required

This canvas is a snapshot.
Not an end state, but a sharply focused present.

The paper, instruction set, and canvas are not frameworks, but tools that help people internalize this perspective and apply it in concrete situations.

What this is not

It is not a method.
Not a certification.
Not a new framework that replaces existing ones.

Nor is it a break with the past.
The imaginology texts on this site remain as phase material:
research and philosophy that were necessary to arrive at this perspective.

Finally

Evolutionary Perspective is not a promise of control.
It is an invitation to attention.

To what presents itself.
To what wants to remain.
To what develops — with or without our permission.

That calls for a different kind of action.
And sometimes, above all, the courage to do nothing just yet.

To be continued.

Maarten Meijer — working from an Evolutionary Perspective.
A conceptual thinker who helps make sense of what is already unfolding, working at the intersection of systems, education, and technology.
I explore and articulate possible directions without fixing outcomes too early.
I shape space for reflection, orientation, and choice — so what wants to remain can develop further.

In daily life, I work as Program Manager EdTech Ecosystem at NOLAI (the National Education Lab for AI).