Engaging Fridays For Future & XR in the reGeneration Rising

Interview with Daniel Wahl in February, 2020 (by Antoine Bonsorte)

In early February, I was interviewed by Antoine Bonsorte as part of his work on the forthcoming Ecolution documentary which will celebrate the rise of young people around the world and here on Mallorca in response to the climate emergency.

Antoine asked me how we can best engage their parents, and I answered more with view of how to reconsider the focus of what we educate for and how we build the intergenerational capacity and collaboration to create regenerative cultures everywhere.

I speak about the need for re-localisation, re-regionalisation and a process of re-indiginisation of coming home to place and the bio-cultural uniqueness of bioregions.

I highlight some of the many movements that already hold much of the knowledge, skills, and capacities to help in the creation of a new curriculum for the reGeneration rising: permaculture, agro-forestry, theory-U, Non Violent Communication, Sociocracy, ecovillage design education, …

Since the interview was recorded our context has shifted with so many people in lockdown in response to a rapidly spreading pandemic that is still unfolding its horrors and our attention should be on those affected and those supporting them.

For those fortunate enough to be healthy and well at home with more time on their hands than previously, we are also invited to reflect deeply and begin to think about how we might do things differently if we are fortunate enough to live through this species level rite of passage.

With so many young people stuck at home we now also have the opportunity to really reflect on what kind of education would really serve that generation in the world we are now in and the turbulent futures ahead.

Transcript of the video linked below:

Antoine Bonsorte: “How can we engage the adult population — not the ones who are already aware, but the people who are not, who think this is normal, this happened before in history, or this [climate change] is not true, or simply are busy getting on with their lives. What can help those parents to be more aware and to support this movement of the young generation?”

Daniel Wahl: “When I look at the rising impulse — both in Fridays For Future and Extinction Rebellion— then I think the most important work that is now urgently needed is to look at how we connect the story of ‘this is a crisis and we need to do something’ to the story of ‘there are people out there who for 40 or 50 years — and even indigenous wisdom that goes back millennia — that actually have answers to what we need to do.

This invites all of us now — the young and the old — to engage with the question what it means to be indigenous, to re-indigenise, to re-ground to place, to become [a healing expression of place].

Indigenous wisdom has it the other way around to our culture. We seem to think the land belongs to us and we sell “it” and […] all that. Indigenous cultures from around the world have always held central that we belong to the land.

Coming back to that knowledge and enabling the capacity building process of these young people to play a role in this re-indigenisation, I think is more important than engaging their parents. If we create the pathways for the young people — they want to engage and want to see what they can learn to become active agents in the reGeneration rising — the generation that regenerates the Earth and regenerates our communities.

I believe it is vital right now that we take all that energy that is in the demonstrations and in non-violent direct action at the moment and we put it towards ‘so what, how do we do stuff in our community on the ground, who are the players, and how do we inform and train ourselves to build the capacity to do this work?

For me that is about linking the permaculture movement and the agroforestry movement, and the sociocracy movement, and the Non-Violent-Communication movement, and the Theory-U processes … tools and techniques. We need to engage these young people with these movements and offer them a map [for how they can engage with them].

Who wants to go to university, get into debt to then work in a system that they already know is collapsing? The capitalist economy that our universities are structured to train people to play a role in isn’t going to be there anymore in the way it is right now when they come out of university. So they come out ill prepared for the new systems [and situation]. They know that. So what we now need to offer is new pathways. We need to reinvent education.

This is important! How do you find the right balance between empowering, and enabling and asking for the participation of these young people — really involving them, not patronising them, not saying “you sit down and we teach you how to do this because we have thought about it” — but at the same time not oversteering, like so many people now do and say “you solve it, you are our hope, this generation is going to solve it”. That is misunderstanding of human development. They are kids. They do need some growing and experience and they need mentorship. They need companionship from the elders.

We need to heal [the divide between the generations]. That is part of social regeneration! We have broken the covenant, the connection between the different generations. [We have to do this together!] Some of the things we — the older generation — carry are now longer appropriate anymore, some of our thought-forms are completely out of date, and yet some of the experience and insights the older generation holds are still desperately needed.

So how do we really come together across the generations and build true collaboration, but also true honouring of the skills and perspectives we all bring to this. This is vital. … and to come back to your question, the engagement of the parents will come through offering these intelligent, real, concrete, action/hope/transformation-oriented offers to the young people.

Then the parents will see this is not just my daughter going off with a placard to say ‘I don’t want this!’ this is my daughter wanting to step into something that she is for, and actively wanting to be a part of something and build her capacity to be of agency in this transformation.

I think once the parents see that, they want to see their kids passionate, growing in their capabilities to be[come] mature adults in service to themselves, their family, their community and to life. … and that’s how you would create regenerative cultures.”

Here is the video (6 mins):

—

If you like the post, please clap AND remember that you can clap up to 50 times if you like it a lot ;-)!

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