The Pluriverse of Regeneration — 1

Any thought, word, deed, or relationship that is life-affirming is regenerative.

I am taking a detour from my series on a tentative manifesto for organizations (I have written three parts so far: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) to write a little about my perceptions on regeneration. It has become something of a buzzword in the last few years — leading to various concepts as well as some on-the-ground work around regenerative businesses, leadership, agriculture, and such.

I have been a wayfarer, wanderer, explorer in the regeneration space for close to a decade. I stumbled on to it by accident, and then stayed with intention. I have been inspired by many writers and thinkers in this area who are carrying forward the work of healing the planet and bringing about a more equitable and life-sustaining civilization.

I recently posted a comment on LinkedIn in response to a post from a fellow LinkedIn acquaintance on the topic of ‘regeneration’. I am copying my comment below, and will expand upon it.

Here’s my take on regeneration as I feel it. I’m using ‘feel’ deliberately because I believe ‘regeneration’ isn’t just a cognitive concept. It’s an integration of heart, hand, head, and soul. To me, it’s an umbrella term. It includes ‘buen vivir’ of the Andean countries of Latin America, ‘life-sustaining civilization’ of Joanna Macy, ‘Ubuntu’, Vasudhaiva Kutumnakam of Indian philosophy, Interbeing of Thay, and many many allied concepts.

Any thought, word, deed, relationship that is life-affirming is regenerative. No one owns the concept. All of us, I believe, are genuinely concerned about planetary well-being. And are committed to contribute towards our collective healing.

I don’t believe regeneration can be turned into a checklist or an etched-in-stone framework. At best, we’ll have “compasses of compassion” guiding us. I prefer to use the word #pluriversal as it denotes, to me, a world of entanglement, indelibly interconnected. It’s a concept defined by the Zapatistas as “a world where many worlds fit.” Isn’t that our collective vision?

Regeneration — the term has gained popularity and have almost entered mainstream businesses in the last few years, thanks to the efforts of writers like Daniel C. Wahl, Laura Storm, Giles Hutchins, Carol Sanford, and many others. Frederic Laloux with his book Reinventing Organizations is also a part of the whole movement towards conscious, regenerative organizations. As is Michelle Holliday and her remarkable book on Thrivability. Her description of Thrivability deeply resonates:

Thrivability is a worldview, a global movement, and an active practice. Guided by what we know about living systems, it is a continual and purposeful drive to create the fertile conditions for life to thrive at the levels of the individual, the organization, the community and the biosphere.

There are many others in this field doing truly excellent and heart-driven work. And have served to make the movements around regeneration more mainstream and acceptable to businesses and organizations.

In the rest of this article, I explore my understanding of regeneration and trace it back to diverse forms and practices in a pluriversal world.

Regeneration is not a homogenous, universal concept that can be adopted and applied using a few theories, models, and frameworks across varying contexts and cultures. Regeneration as beliefs and practices is an entanglement of worldviews, ontologies, and epistemologies. It is unequivocally pluriversal in nature, and spans countries and cultures interweaving and inter-relating across uniquely different contexts and manifesting in local actions of relevance. The movement — if it can be called one — is a web and weave of disparate and discrete local actions taking place across the globe but embodying certain underlying values and beliefs I note later. It is akin to the global movement that Paul Hawken described so eloquently:

“Its origins are in indigenous culture and the environmental and social justice movements. “Intertwining, morphing, enlarging, this movement does not seek power, but seeks to dismantle power.” ~The Other Superpower

Regeneration is a way of being, relating, acting, and speaking in the world that is life-affirming. Saving pilot whales from being slaughtered is an act of regeneration. Standing up to racism is an act of regeneration. Occupy Wall Street is an act of regeneration. The Iranian Women’s protest following the death of Mahsa Amini is a regenerative movement. The Farmers Movement in India against corporate takeover is a regenerative one. They haven’t declared themselves as part of a common regenerative movement nor was the term in popular use when some of these events occurred. Nonetheless, they have a common core running through them — a profound respect for all life and the demand for dignity for all.

Any thought, word, or deed that arises from a place of fearless compassion, seeks the right to life and dignity for all sentient beings, opposes oppression, stands up to the forces of extraction and expropriation, and recognizes the inherent entanglement and inter-relatedness of all beings is regeneration in action.

I see writers like Rachel Carson, Donella Meadows, Margaret Wheatley, Janine Benyus, Joanna Macy, Robin Wall Kimmerer as the elders of this space.

It is an umbrella term encapsulating a range of philosophies and ideologies, and emerge from the margins and edges. The forces of regeneration residing in and emerging from formerly colonized nations and cultures have often escaped the mainstream canon. Or have been mentioned only in passing. I am going to explore a few of these in my article here.

Regeneration decenters Anthropocentrism and steers focus back to a world guided by Biocentrism. It is essentially a multifaceted and pluriversal movement embodied in varied ways across cultures, contexts, and countries. It rests on a few fundamental pillars:

• Interbeing — profound sense of our indelible interconnectedness
• Compassion — deep tenderness for self and all life
• Harmony — yearning for balance and thriving of all life
• Acceptance — radical acceptance of all that is, and working from there
• Solidarity — coming together in mutual support in reimagining a life-affirming civilization
• Fearless Imagination — daring to envision a world different from the current one
• Active Hope — becoming active participants in bringing about what we hope for, desire to happen (Joanna Macy)

As I have mentioned earlier, what immediately strikes one when leafing through the regeneration canon is the lack of representation from other parts of the world (namely, the previously colonized nations) beyond Global North. This makes one wonder if ‘regeneration’ and all that pertains to it is a uniquely European and Eurocentric movement. In this article, I try to dismantle that misconception should it exist.

Many names have been lost in the passage of time, and obliterated by the mainstream hegemonic narrative running the show. Moreover, in many cultures, the work of a community is not attributed to any specific individual, but becomes a way of living integrated within the ethos. It would be difficult in such cases to ascribe authorship or ownership of any concept or idea. For example, there is no owner of the concept of Buen Vivir. It is attributed to Quechua peoples of the Andes.

Almost five centuries of colonization of the Global South have erased, delegitimized, and degenerated their epistemologies leading to what Boaventura de Sousa Santos termed, ‘epistemicide.’

Epistemicide is the killing, silencing, annihilation, or devaluing of a knowledge system. Epistemicide happens when epistemic injustices are persistent, systematic, and collectively work as a structured oppression of particular ways of knowing. ~(Understanding Epistemicide)

Given the centuries of colonization and subsequent erasure of much of the cultural contexts and knowledge systems of the Global South, it is hardly surprising that the movements and practices have either been obliterated or suppressed, remaining restricted to a handful of tribes or indigenous inhabitants but never being allowed to influence mainstream life.

These practices are often seen (by the Global North observer) as exotic curiosities at best and meaningless superstitions and rituals at worst. Or when found useful, such practices have been appropriated after suitable decontextualization and packaged into palatable forms. It is time to interweave the latent and existing wisdom from the unheard, unseen, and unacknowledged corners of our planet if our civilization is to survive.

I have tried to give a glimpse of regenerative work happening in my country and other parts of Global South for decades, if not centuries.

India’s poet Laureate Rabindranath Tagore started/expanded Shantiniketan 22 December 1901, which later became Viswa-Bharati, as an alternative mode of schooling without the confines of a classroom. “Tagore believed that the colonial school were robot-producing factories which made students fit for nothing but cogs in the wheel of colonial administration.” From its very inception, Santiniketan was lovingly modelled by Tagore on the principles of humanism, internationalism, and a sustainable environment.

As one of the earliest educators to think in terms of the global village, he envisioned an education that was deeply rooted in one’s immediate surroundings but connected to the cultures of the wider world.

The guiding principle of this little school is best described in Tagore’s own words, “The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.” […] Tagore’s Santiniketan, “an Abode of Learning Unlike Any in the World” — West Bengal

In the shadows of her trees we meet
in the freedom of her open sky.
Our dreams are rocked in her arms.
Her face is a fresh wonder of love every time we see her,
for she is our own, the darling of our hearts.
~Rabindranath Tagore

Mahatma Gandhi memorably said, “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need but not any man’s greed”. And his motto of simple living, and high thinking is well-known.

Chipko movement, also called Chipko andolan, was a nonviolent social and ecological movement by rural villagers, particularly women, in India in the 1970s, aimed at protecting trees and forests slated for government-backed logging. Their primary tactic was to “hug the trees” and hence the use of the word chipko meaning “to cling.” The Chipko Movement was inspired by earlier protests against tree felling in India. In 1731 in Khejarli, Rajasthan, people sacrificed their lives for the Khejri trees which are considered sacred by the community.

Some have become global names in the space of regeneration and ecological movements like Vandana Shiva and Navadanya International, The Barefoot College founded in 1972 in Rajasthan, Shikshantar started by Manish Jain.

2008 Constitution of Ecuador is the first in the world to recognize legally enforceable Rights of Nature, or ecosystem rights. “Ecuador is building on its indigenous past by incorporating the concept of sumak kawsay into its approach to development. Rooted in the cosmovisión (or worldview) of the Quechua peoples of the Andes, sumak kawsay — or buen vivir, to give it its Spanish name — describes a way of doing things that is community-centric, ecologically-balanced and culturally-sensitive.” ~Buen vivir: the social philosophy inspiring movements in South America

“The concept of Zapatismo emerges from the continuing resistance of the Zapatistas (predominantly Indigenous Ch’ol, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Tojolobal, Mam, and Zoque people), who introduced themselves to the world via an armed insurrection in Chiapas, Mexico on New Year’s Day, 1994 –the day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was operationalized.

The Zapatistas have focused their efforts on living a peaceful life of decolonial, anti-capitalist, collective resistance, concentrated upon recuperating land, mutual aid, and exercising autonomy. The Zapatistas achieve this by centering their Indigenous traditions and the practice of horizontal governance, equitable gender relations, anti-systemic health care, grassroots education, and agro-ecological food sovereignty. The Zapatistas are working towards constructing what they refer to as ‘Un Mundo Donde Quepan Muchos Mundos’ (‘A World Where Many Worlds Fit’) by emphasizing the dignity of ‘others,’ belonging, and common struggle, as well as the importance of laughter, dancing, and nourishing children.” ~Zapatismo

There are many many such practices existing on the margins of the modern/colonial civilization — some like the abovementioned have made it to the awareness of larger populations. Many fly quietly under the radar — disregarded, unheard, unseen, unacknowledged. Often, the bearers of this wisdom are criminalized and brutally oppressed when in conflict with the agenda of mainstream economics with its drive for extraction and expropriation.

What does regeneration mean for each one of us?

I think of it as a call to lead a different life — one that refuses to accept as ‘normal’ the economy of extraction, the indiscriminate destruction of life, and the ever-widening inequality perpetrated by a few. We can collectively offer our gifts in service to a Life-Affirming Civilization.

Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:

Quiet friend who has come so far,

feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

If this isn’t a call to become a force for regeneration, I don’t know what is. Also the lines from Mary Oliver that ask with such poignant eloquence:

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

I believe that there have always been the visionaries and artists, playwrights and poets, painters and imagineers who have nudged the civilizational narrative in a direction different from the one where it is headed.

Conclusion

With these myriad examples, what I am trying to say is that regeneration has always been a force within our civilization. The term perhaps wasn’t used in the current sense of regeneration and healing of the planet. It has a theological root dating back to 15th C to mean “radical spiritual change in an individual accomplished by the action of God.”

Cosmologies and ontologies other than the Western, Eurocentric one have been celebrating and honoring our entangled lives through songs, stories, dance forms, plays, and art for centuries. Many of these, coming from oral cultures, are lost in the passage of time ; most have been rendered invisible and delegitimized under the force of the dominant narrative that swept the world as an aftermath of European colonial expansion. What we get today as canons of regeneration are distilled from mainly Western writers simply because the world doesn’t know about the rest or haven’t been exposed to them.