This article speaks to the wider context in which we have developed the plan for the Piʌot Project; a plan you can learn more about by signing up for emails about the project here.
One of the greatest revelations on my journey from sustainable to regenerative practice was realising how the things we do are driven by the way we are.
By our mindset.
By the culture and philosophy we swim in without realising it.
Although I thought I understood systems thinking, it was only once I had become aware of our individual role, our agency in creating and sustaining the overall system that things really clicked.
When I refer to a 'we', I must acknowledge that I am talking about the global north and our post-Enlightenment reductive approach - our way of doing - that breaks complex issues down into simple problems that we can set about 'solving'.
“The climate is heating!”
Ok, let's get to Net Zero by inventing some carbon-reducing technologies...
Instead of wondering why we consume so much and create so much waste in the process.
“We’re running out of resources!”
Ok, let’s mine asteroids for rare earth minerals…
Instead of reflecting on how life has managed 3.8 billion years of beautiful progress on a finite planet.
This tension between intention and reflection is at the heart of the Piʌot Project; it's something I've wrestled with from Day 1.
And I hear this tension in our community conversations, here’s a direct quote from our March gathering:
"We can't spend a year doing nothing; this is an emergency!"
Yet we must be the change we wish to see, so it is pointless trying to cultivate a regenerative transformation if we perpetuate the old ways of being.
Which is why we have commenced with a Year of Listening.
A year of being together and relating through Listening Circles and Sensemaking Sessions. A year of reflecting on the wisdom of leading thinkers and cultural figures.
But, I do understand with the frustration shared by Kaspar when he vents about how this retreat into reflection can become a form of spiritual bypass and tips over into introspection and inaction.
I get that for many of us the immensity of this moment can overwhelm.
Or we fear perpetuating the same old hierarchies and mindsets that brought us to the brink. I know I certainly do.
And yet act we must because irrefutably the world around is us heading in the wrong direction, pushing us dangerously over the edge of planetary boundaries and ecological tipping points.
This really is a piʌotal moment for humanity.
As Jonathan Rowson puts it:
The fundamentally hopeful point is this: the future hasn’t happened yet. It is our ethical responsibility not to give up on it.
Hope isn't something you have; it is something we must cultivate.
It's verb, a doing word; we must be Joanna Macy’s active hope in action.
Striking this balance of the inner and outer response to the moment was the theme of a recent Post Carbon Institute event on The Great Unraveling with Dr Lyla June Johnston and Dr Kumi Naidoo.
Kumi too re-iterated the theme of intention and action:
Pessimism is a luxury we cannot afford.
And, as an activist at the forefront of the successful struggle against Apartheid, he certainly has a profound perspective to bring to bear.
So, whilst this tension is absolutely real and we must be wary of falling back into the old ways of thinking and being, it is incumbent on us to keep moving in the right direction.
Which is what we are doing through Piʌot; slowly but surely charting a path towards a more beautiful future, by discerning together the opportunities for triggering social tipping points to counter the ecological tipping points we have set in train.
Its a process which requires just as much un-learning as it does learning.
But, somewhat paradoxically, the Great Unraveling is part of the Great Turning.
Without times of crises and collapse such as this one, and the many that societies before ours have faced, we would not learn the vital lessons we need to survive in perpetuity.
We believe it was through collapse and destruction that we became egalitarian… Love is what works on planet Earth, everything else is temporary.
So we can still do, providing our way of being is in service of this love of life.
Which is what I keep reminding myself whenever I fear we are merely perpetuating the old ways.