Designing Regenerative Cultures
Chapter contribution to A Transformative Edge: Knowledge, Inspiration and Experience for Educators of Adults, edited by Ursel Biester & Marilyn Mehlmann, designed & illustrated by Boris Goldammer & Suiko Betsy McCall
The text below is reprinted with permission from a book of the same name. The author, Daniel Christian Wahl, is a global teacher of cultural design associated with Gaia Education as well as with the Schumacher College and others.
- Editors
We all have the power to change the world. As a matter of fact we all do, every day, with everything we do, a little bit!
All our actions and inactions contribute to what kind of world we bring forth together. Our actions and inactions are guided by our dominant worldview and value systems. They affect our real and perceived needs and through that define the why, what and how we design solutions or consider dilemma resolution pathways.
When focussing on culture change and the transition towards a regenerative human impact on Earth at the upstream end, i.e. with the intention to unfold the potential of people and places rather than solve problems, I believe we need to change our culture’s guiding story. It is time to divest the gift of our attention away from the narrative of separation and competitive advantage.
Regenerative practice is activated by a narrative of interbeing and co-evolving mutuality with the place and wholeness we participate in. Regeneration and its healing of relationships between people and between people and place is about optimizing collaborative advantage. Together, we can co-create a world that works for all and for the wider community of life.
Engaging with the people at your work place or in your local community and bioregion in a process of exploring the more than 250 questions in my book ‘Designing Regenerative Cultures’ would certainly be a pathway towards having a positive impact. I initially thought about calling the book ‘living the questions together’ as I did not feel I had definitive answers and solutions to share. I actually don’t think they exist. Life’s one constant is change.
To practice regeneration is to work on our individual and collective capacity to keep reinventing and transforming ourselves and our communities in response to the inevitable change and transformation of the systems we are embedded in. To do so more effectively we should pay more attention to what questions we ask and hold answers and solutions more lightly.
The way towards a future of diverse regenerative cultures everywhere is for people in place to live the questions together.
To keep exploring how they can place-source more appropriate solutions that serve people and place, solutions that heal the planet, community by community, bioregion by bioregion.
Be wary of anyone offering you the gospel of regeneration. Regenerative pathways will emerge through your own participation in your community and your own contribution to helping to heal the Earth and her people in the bioregion you inhabit.
At the heart of it all, we need to ask ourselves:
1. How can I love myself, my community, and life as a planetary process more deeply and fully?
2. How can I best serve this interconnected miracle of life and my immediate community?
3. How can I contribute to healing the Earth and her people, and in the process heal myself and all my relationships?
References
Wahl, D. C., Designing Regenerative Cultures, Triarchy Press, 2016
More about this amazing resource A Transformative Edge: Knowledge, Inspiration and Experience for Educators of Adults, edited by Ursel Biester & Marilyn Mehlmann:
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You can download the pdf for free here
Other articles of interest to educators:
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Daniel Christian Wahl — Catalyzing transformative innovation in the face of converging crises, advising on regenerative whole systems design, regenerative leadership, and education for regenerative development and bioregional regeneration.
Author of the internationally acclaimed book Designing Regenerative Cultures
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