Why We Resonate with Regenerative
Are you in rhythm with the deep roots of regeneration…recognizing that sustaining doesn’t go the distance?
“To distinguish both terms it is necessary to understand that sustainability is very focused on solutions. The regenerative gaze does not see things through problems, but through the potential of the specific place, the specific people, the specific ecology and the spirit of collaborative fabric in the specific bioregion; it is not looking for outcomes such as a new transportation system, sustainable agriculture, or a substitute for plastic. The focus of regeneration is not to deliver products, but rather that people learn from their place, that they are expressions of their place to weave into it.” ~ Daniel Christian Wahl
If we just sustain things, doing less harm, as we roll…it’s not nearly enough.
And yet, many ordinary citizens aren’t plugged into the regenerative perspective, let alone the terminology.
And many of us still use one or both terms…sometimes with clear grounded understanding of their meaning and interconnected relationship…often misconstrued and superficial…
Viable sustainability is dependent on and nested within the bigger regenerative imperative.
What are we sustaining?
Regenerative goes way beyond ticking boxes, superficial compliance metrics or satisfying the bare minimums to survive in the short run.
It means that healthy patterns are nurtured and deeply rooted, setting things up to flourish over the long haul with:
🔹 Attention to connectedness and relationships,
🔹 Understanding how everything is nested within larger environments — places…communities…ecosystems
🔹 Feedback loops to monitor impact
🔹 Ability to adapt proactively and responsively attuned to changing variables and needs
🔹 Learning and continuous improvement built in
🔹 Circularity — living systems with little to zero waste
🔹 Everything — the parts and the whole — in synergy, contributing to healthy life cycles
Nature does this brilliantly. Lots of complexity and yet there is an underlying simplicity.
All living systems are subject to the immutable laws of nature.
“Nature is a totally efficient, self-regulating system. If we discover the laws that govern this system and live synergistically within them, sustainability will follow and humankind will be a success.” ~ R. Buckminster Fuller
Somewhere along the way, humanity lost its way and things got seriously out-of-whack.
Learning how to restore natural balance and flows so that we can not only coexist, but thrive, is the big hairy challenge before us.
Rebalancing society toward regenerative flourishing capacity means we need everyone doing their part.
Incremental tweaks here and there perpetuate a too-little-too-late trajectory. At this critical juncture, we’re all late adopters!
In some ways regenerative defies any description that tries to encapsulate it. Regenerative embodies spiritual and grounded ways of being that are context-based and place-sourced.
However and wherever we show up and function — our life purpose, is inextricably interconnected with regenerative. It means everything to us and its not about us…
At the heart of all living systems…living and working in naturally interdependent and adaptive ways that are conducive to and in harmony with the flows and cycles of life.
Our world is so ecologically, socially and economically destabilized through degeneration on every scale. We are paradoxically challenged to go back and restore what has been lost (Indigenous ways) and collaboratively adapt pathways forward, with the best scientific knowledge and enabling technology— living into regenerative ways — an ongoing deeply humbling learning journey…
Our world is very divided and polarized. Our organizations and institutions are not fit-for-meaningful-purpose.
Building bridges across all the divides and designing regenerative ecosystems includes:
🔹 Shaping and fostering healthy communities, entities and governing processes
🔹 Honouring and enabling multicapital value flows beyond financial
🔹 Enabling technology and work systems that set the context for regenerative ways of being and engender systemic trust
🔹 Reframing many things — leadership, governance, entrepreneurship, citizenship and more…
As we face (stages of) collapse of a spiritually bankrupt Industrial Age monocapital GDP driven civilization, we take on the unimpossible with deep love, humility anguish and joy.
Exceeding the limits of a finite living planet, with escalating destabilizing damaging impacts, challenges us to shift the trajectory. We excavate beneath polarizing labels such as degrowth and green growth in these three articles: Underneath the Labels…Billions of Stories, Holding the Tension of Less is More and Humanity’s Soul: Life or Growth, building on Gaya Herrington’s discussion with Nate Hagens, on the Great Simplification series.
Is the birthing of a life-affirming civilization underway?
There are growing numbers of us germinating seeds and tending the tender shoots that are emerging through the cracks and chasms of societal systems that must be transformed.
The Three Horizons Framework, developed by Bill Sharpe (International Futures Forum) as described by Daniel Christian Wahl in this excerpt from his book Regenerative Cultures sheds light on differing horizons, underlying drivers and ways to understand and navigate 3 future trajectories/pathways — in the present. Many of us reference and build upon this model as a way to reflect on our future literacy mindsets (personal world views) and apply a very practical strategic and operational lens.
“The framework helps us to become more aware of how our individual and collective intentions and behaviours actively shape the future today. By mapping three ways of relating to the future from the perspectives of the three horizons we can bring the value of each of them to the conversation in a generative way that fosters understanding and future consciousness as the basis for collaborative action and transformative innovation.” ~ Daniel Christian Wahl
There are many, many more people in our world who, recognizing and feeling the failure of the old paradigm are seeking, choosing and shaping regenerative ways.
How can we mindfully open up pathways that widen access, enabling individual and collective agency for people to get on with it with gifts differing, in a variety of ways? This is a key question that guides us as we navigate.
Learning from and with Indigenous wisdom keepers as partners — not misappropriating via colonization — is integral to this journey.
We could say much more, but honestly the words alone pale…Lots of folks talk about…regenerative — us too. At best, our words are clumsy tools…How we mindfully activate, living the questions — is what matters.
For a deeper dive, this is an excellent integrative 2023 paper crafted by 25 contributing authors. It stands out as a comprehensive holistic view of regeneration looking through a multi-dimensional lens — The Regenerative Lens: A conceptual framework for regenerative social-ecological systems.
“Our framework emphasizes that to be regenerative, a system — e.g., a person, family, community, or organization — cannot be regenerative on its own but only as part of a regenerative ‘‘ensemble’’ of interdependent social-ecological systems that are mutually supporting each other. To foster these dynamics and therefore the wellbeing and continued evolution of human societies and wider nature, a regenerative system would need the individual and mutually reinforcing contributions of five essential qualities: an embodied ecological worldview, mutualistic interactions, high diversity, agency, and reflexivity.”
When we pause and reflect, it is abundantly evident that most of humanity and our living planet are in a state of degeneration. The shift to regeneration — is in itself an adaptive living systems process.
There is a growing blossoming and burgeoning of regenerative material and initiatives along with glimmers of possibilities and the more superficial layers, including the wannabes that gloss over the deeper recesses of regenerative living that reflect a deeper ongoing journey across all domains and dimensions.
Every new iteration, article, book, case study and story can help inspire, mobilize and move in multiple ways and directions.
A testament and indication of the creative force within us, is the internal drive to find, discern and shape meaning — zooming in…internalizing and zooming out with agency to interconnect and activate in new ways. This often manifests as new terminology, models and graphics that offer additional lenses — fractals of regeneration.
We’re also dancing with inherent paradox as we navigate in overlapping and differentiated ways, labouring and living into a life-affirming livable future.
Somehow, mindfully…hopefully we will make peace with the messiness of this journey, while also making progress, reframing and stretching our perspectives on what progress looks like — the forms it will take and the diverse ways that people will describe it across cultures, lived experience and world views.
And so we look for intersectional points of collaboration and leverage, exercise some caution as we venture forth, and [gingerly] celebrate our progress, always learning and adapting.
In a world of 8 billion we need it all. Part of our learning is layered [un]learning and [re[learning. Letting go of the [illusory] control that got us into this existential soup, is an ongoing tension that often continues to insidiously ensnare. Even those of us who reject the [old] degenerative paradigm — living in this world and impacted by it — can inadvertently/blindly slip into those dysfunctional patterns, whereby righteous regenerative ends justify the means.
Many of us get that this is a journey — that the journey itself embodies a regenerative life-giving process conducive-to-life. We may understand this conceptually — in our heads. The being — internalizing it, navigating and behaving in ways that are congruent — is an ongoing humbling learning adventure for us all.
Being-ness is in the how we show up….moment-by-moment and how we connect and integrate those moments into coherent bigger HOWs…
Being-ness is the alchemy that transforms and activates our intentions and ideas.
Being unstitutional, as we traverse a regenerative path, we aren’t heroes and we aren’t rescuers. We aren’t trying to be gurus nor are we trying to attract them. The challenges we’re all facing to varying degrees, are the biggest commoning forces of all.
We are all ordinary citizens — perhaps better described as denizens — and messy humans.
Any one of us can shine, at any time, without seeking a spotlight. Sometimes we lead; sometimes we follow.
Our unwavering focus is on regenerative-rooted ways…co-discovering, sharing and amplifying positive impact and stories — as we collectively live into an inclusive pluriversal life-affirming future.
Sahana Chattopadhyay’s writings and YouTube channel invite us to envisage and help birth the fullness and inclusivity of a regenerative pluriverse that does more than make room for diverse ways of knowing and being. So many life-affirming ways have been here all along — ignored, obscured, overpowered…
“The Pluriverse is a vision of a world where many worlds fit. We live in a stunningly complex and diverse world. It’s unmitigated hubris to think that one single economic monomyth can meaningfully hold our civilizational trajectory. Our current planetary crises, variously called the pluricrises and metacrises, is proof of the fallacious nature of this monomyth.”
A multitude of pathways across contexts and cultures and a wide range of collaborative commons communities, initiatives and coalition work can go a long way contributing and making meaningful strides.
By bridging divides, catalyzing and bringing people together from business, government and civil society, we can help shift from the current dysfunctional system to new regenerative patterns.
Our unstitutional work aims for regenerative progress and outcomes with ever-widening ripples that collectively support all of us who are advancing these efforts:
🔹 Sound interconnected, adaptable strategy — emergent and strategic
🔹 Enabling governing frameworks — aligned with driving purpose and Game Be operating principles and conduct
🔹 Adaptive Evolutionary Navigation — holistic and guided by recognized and emergent patterns
🔹 Collaborative co-creative capacity and power — galvanized and amplified
🔹 Linkage to synergistic initiatives and coalitions — local, bioregional and worldwide
🔹 Messy humanness and monsters — challenges and barriers anticipated, addressed and/or overcome via sound strategy, relational human/social system evolutionary navigation and relative subject and methodology neutrality
🔹 Learnings about the process and impacts documented and shared via articles and papers — (Trans)contextual Insights and Active Learning
🔹 Multi-modal storymaking and storytelling shared widely
🔹 Capacity to adapt and scale deep and wide anywhere in the world
🔹 Multiple funding sources attracted and accessed as a result of living lab pilots and demonstrated impact — advancing regenerative finance via Shifting Economics
🔹 Personal and collective coherent agency demonstrating how we all can contribute with gifts differing, little and big impacts — wherever we are…
Tom Atlee’s superb new book Co-intelligence: The Applied Wisdom of Wholeness, Interconnectedness, and Co-Creativity synthesizes decades of research and work, building from the wise democracy pattern language.
Co-intelligence illuminates multiple patterns and pathways available to expand our horizons, ways of seeing, understanding, widening and deepening regenerative possibilities. Retrospective and forward-facing, we can enrich our learning and expand our relational and sense making capacity, co-activating as engaged participants in our wiser human evolution — within the contexts of ongoing every day work and life. This is a time for radical humility and collaboration, heart-centredness and all our co-intelligence. Life-centric…
This not about any one of us. It’s about all of us and an interconnected living planet.
We can all be unstitutional…finding the pathways that support what is sometimes described as a life-affirming (r)evolution.
Dancing to the Beat of a (R)evolution, we can be and do this, together, joyfully.
Ordinary can become extraordinary, when we combine our differentiated and overlapping efforts in a variety of ways.
There’s a vast and growing reservoir of publications, resources, pioneers, practitioners, scientists, bioregional projects, land and water regenerative restoration stories that point the way. We celebrate, draw from, support, share and build collaboratively from these. On a planet of 8 billion people, we need it all — widening the pathways for multitudes of initiatives to flourish. A spirit of generosity, reciprocity and enabling value flows will lift us all. ~ Unstitution
*This article was updated again April 2024, reflecting additional perspectives, links and ongoing action research, as we continue to observe, listen and adapt.
Unstitution was birthed as a collective creative commons and nested ecosystem. We (co-)catalyze and support collaborative communities, initiatives and coalitions where people from across sectors, disciplines, cultures, generations and walks-of-life work together on mission critical issues. From readiness through to regenerative progress — moving beyond polarization — is how we roll. The links embedded throughout this article are a warm invitation to go a bit deeper, at any time. For more insights reflecting our ongoing journey, our suite of Unstitution articles are published on Medium. They portray a small sample of the ways we are adapting and contributing among ever-expanding commons-based communities and initiatives inspired and fuelled by citizens — perhaps better described as denizens — anywhere in the world — living into the principles and spirit that govern our collaborative work.
You can follow Unstitution and engage with us on LinkedIn.
Sharing is caring. Please take a moment to tap the 👋🏼 icon if you liked this article. Medium lets you clap up to 50x on any articles you appreciate. Good to know :-)
