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Executive Summary
This manuscript proposes that coherence — the capacity of a system to maintain integrated, adaptive functioning — is the foundational principle governing biological regulation, emotional development, relational dynamics, and social organization. Modern attachment theory shows that early relational experiences shape the nervous system’s regulatory capacities, influencing stress response, perception of safety, and patterns of intimacy and conflict throughout life. Integrative physiology demonstrates that these attachment patterns correspond to distinct metabolic and autonomic profiles, with secure attachment supporting regenerative growth processes and insecure attachment activating chronic defensive states.
At the societal level, John McMurtry’s Life-Value Onto-Axiology provides a rigorous evaluative framework: social systems are coherent when they support the conditions necessary for life to flourish, and incoherent when they degrade those conditions. Chronic attachment insecurity scales into political polarization, extractive economics, and ecological depletion; secure relational environments scale into participatory governance, restorative institutions, and regenerative ecological practices.
The manuscript outlines applied pathways for implementation in five domains:
(1) clinical practice focused on co-regulation and somatic integration;
(2) education systems that cultivate interoception, relational presence, and repair capacity;
(3) governance models grounded in restorative and participatory structures;
(4) economic redesign based on regenerative circulation rather than extraction;
(5) community practices that restore shared rhythm and collective nervous system regulation.
The central conclusion is that healing, resilience, and flourishing require restoring the relational and structural conditions under which coherence can regenerate across scales. This constitutes an ethical, medical, economic, and civilizational imperative.
