Beyond the Megamachine: What’s next for the Climate Narrative Circle?
Premise
Since we ran our inaugural Climate Narrative Circle, we’ve had some time to take stock and think about what’s next.
In mid-August, Denise and I met up in Paris, outdoors at a cafe in the elegant gardens of the Palais Royal. We spent the first hour or so pondering on where we are at: emotionally, mentally, and physically. Nothing seemed to be quite the same, nor have the same meaning or significance, compared to when we started our initial journey with the Climate Narrative Circles. Then, we had then observed climate narratives seemed to be “stuck”. Now, we were definitely struggling to find coherence in our own thoughts.
Everything seemed quite overwhelming, with personal and professional lives mixing together in a — to be quite honest — sometimes nerve-racking place of uncertainty.
But slowly, as we circled around the maze of things — short and long-term, high and low, personal and professional — a familiar sense started to kick in. The slightest hint of a collective “yes” when a new alignment started to fall into place.
This work definitely felt harder than in the pre-COVID world. Indeed it recalled the words of Peter Koenig:
“The new systems come as a result of the inner work, not the other way around.”
At the end of our mutual sharing session, Denise remarked: “when you were speaking, you didn’t mention the word climate even once!”
I was left quite perplexed by the thought since emotionally felt like I was living the effects of accelerating social and environmental crises more intensely than ever. What had happened to my perception? Where had my focus shifted to?
After giving it some thought, I realized what it was: not at all had climate emergency taken the back seat, but I had started to increasingly frame it through a systems perspective, rather than “climate” for “sustainability” lens.
In our conversations with Denise, we indeed tend to hold many different views and aspects of climate change and societal change, which is what led us to experiment with new climate narratives in the first place. I think we share the sense of urgency behind having a “super wicked problem” to solve, looking at it from various angles.
That’s why I thought that this publication would be a good place to share the book review I had committed to do, following my friend Thomas Dönnebrink’s great book suggestion: The End of the Megamachine by Fabian Scheidler.
The Megamachine is a useful lens in this critical moment where we need urgently to shift to a systems perspective and set aside our obsession with extraction, control, and ownership.
It begs the question: is the era of meta-narratives that dominate the media, politics and business and our Megamachine power structures coming to an end? Are we headed back to the age of bottom-up narratives, woven in small groups around the campfire?
Stay tuned for our upcoming announcement of what’s next for the circles!
The End of the Megamachine — A Brief History of a Failing Civilization by Fabian Scheidler
The English version of this book was just released on 25 September, and seemed perfectly timed to inform that intense inner work that was ongoing, By provoking reflection on how we ended up in this moment, and inspiring questions about whether this will be a turning point.
I found myself thinking about the stories that we tell ourselves about the past, about how we got here, and allowing the book to suggest new perspectives that could be helpful in signposting the future.
The history of power through four “tyrannies”
Scheidler takes readers back 5000 years in time, illustrating how power structures that we know today (the Megamachine) have arisen through four “tyrannies”: military power, economic power, ideological power and finally technocratic power; the idea of man’s domination over nature. We often think about these “bads” as part of society. Sometimes we forget about their historical roots and how different things may have looked if some ideas had never been invented or fully explored, or if ideas different from those that“won”. So many times when reading this book, I thought: “what if we never went down that path? What if there were — and still are — different paths to choose from?”
The first part of the book revealed how power over people has been gradually shaped, including by military means and other forms of ownership. Scheidler then explains how, even in our seemingly “free” societies, there is latent violence lurking behind social structures. One sentence that stayed with me was that (p. 21):
“ While everyone knows about this lurking threat, the chain is long enough that most remain unaware of the violence behind it.”
And I guess there is truth in that. Imagine: you get sacked from work and refuse to leave. What would happen? Eventually, someone is likely to drag you out, call security guards or even the police. The same is true if you don’t pay rent or if you default too long on a debt repayment. We take for granted that we ought to be “punished” if we fail to adhere to the power behind these invented contractual relationships. At the same time, we find it natural that some people can own hundreds of homes, while others sleep rough. It’s by bluntly and unapologetically outlining such paradoxes of modern (Western) civilisation that Scheidler leaves the reader with a mixed feeling of guilt and apprehension throughout the reading experience.
Nature and its exploitation in order to serve the Megamachine are of course also central to the storyline of Scheidler’s work. Remarkably, he points out that the negative impacts of mining were known long before the Industrial revolution. Already in 1556 (!), Georgius Agricola had noted — in De Re Metallica — the devastating effects of mining on both people and habitats — a picture that could be used to describe any such extractive activities today (cited on p. 108):
“Forests and groves are cut down to provide the huge amount of wood needed for buildings, equipment and melting ore. Eradicating forests also means the extermination of birds and other animals. Washing the ore poisons streams and rivers, which either kills the fish or drives them away. People living on these lands are caught in a dilemma. It is in exactly these devastated fields, forests, streams and rivers that they must find the things they need to live on.”
Reading such historic observations unveils the depth of trouble we face. We may have reached an opportune moment for transformation, but the ills are built into our systems and worldviews over long time scales which will be difficult to unravel and reverse. As the Megamachine takes shape, the book also covers the suffering caused by imperialism and the “missionary zeal” of Western civilisation, and scrutinises the invention of joint stock companies, leading to “the most powerful institutions on Earth, even financially stronger than many states” that are “genetically coded for infinite expansion” and which “radically enforced the process of disembedding the economy from the household”(pp. 124–127). While defenders of the shareholder model would point to its ability to generate economic surplus that can be invested in social welfare, its infinite growth imperative and disentangled nature is increasingly put in the limelight, as “negative externalities” start to create feedback loops on unprecedented scales. Scheidler makes no secret of his disdain for the model.
Overall, the long list of dark stories in the first part of the book almost leads to a sense of powerlessness. It looks like we have the “evidence”, and that we’ve had it for a long time. I think of Greta Thunberg heralding science-based climate action and cannot help but feel saddened by the idea that many facts have been obvious way before any climate agreements were signed.
How do we stop the Megamachine from spinning?
While the book is surely not a comforting Sunday couch read, one curiosity that kept me reading with a glimpse of hope and cautious optimism was trying to grasp at which point in time we would need to go back to find the “missing key” to fix what went wrong. As the title of the book indicates, part of the big picture may be found in the technocratic worldview around which the Megamachine is shaped, breaking the illusion that we can — and even less should — control nature. And indeed, there are alternative stories throughout history too, they just haven’t come to be the dominating ones.
If there is one thing we have learned from living with the pandemic, is that the only way to adapt is to let go of our desire to control and plan everything. This is easier said than done, but the book reminds us that here is the key to reshape our contract with Nature and each other. Because history unequivocally shows that the Megamachine mindset is the one thing we must overturn to regenerate our societies and economies.
As the pages unfold towards the closing chapter on “Possibilities”, I started to think about the work that we did with the Climate Narrative Circles. I especially recalled how Denise used Bruno Latour’s take on “Cahiers de doléances” — where people documented their lists of grievances and hopes — to help frame our first circle. Then, reading about the counter-currents listed in the last chapter — such as Zapatistas, indigenous and landless movements in Latin America, to Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, Transition Towns, and Commons movements — I felt a renewed energy to continue growing alternative stories, to harness the wisdom of young people and to take time to listen deeply.
While it is quite clear that the story of the 2020s will not be about a “bright future”, one of the key takeaways from the Megamachine was that by understanding how structures of power and domination have been created over time, we can be more deliberate in our efforts to:
- Counteract that harm by consciously creating space for new structures to emerge;
- Constantly be on the look-out for our own blind spots, and methodically seek to create new behaviours by starting to observe and notice more.
It surely won’t be a quick fix, but the paths we consciously choose may lay the grounds for the next 5,000 years.
On balance, I really enjoyed reading The End of the Megamachine. It feels like a necessary book and there were many threads of history about which I needed to be reminded. Scheidler provides a well-referenced summary of key events and inventions that have played a significant role in shaping modern society. While sometimes I felt like listening to a radical relative, I know that a lot of the blunt statements are needed to create a lasting impression with the reader. And from an educational perspective, I think it’s a good read for any high school or higher education curriculum to add to the list.
Many thanks to Denise Young 楊 玲 玲 for the suggestions and edits and Thomas Dönnebrink for the chance to read the book and his final look at the review.
Let’s build a healing bridge to the recovery with narrative together!
If this review resonates with you and got you interested to know more, please let us know. We’ll be happy to talk about our future plans with the Narrative Circle and explores ways for you or your institution to be involved — please follow us on Twitter and send us a message! @ylld @heikkilastina
Finally, if you want to read another piece digging deeper into a system perspective on global risks and new value creation narratives, please check out this post that I co-authored with Simone Cicero at Boundaryless, for the upcoming 2020 Whitepaper on New Foundations of Platform-Ecosystem Thinking:
- Stina Heikkila and Simone Cicero. “Notes on global risks and value creation narratives: setting the scene for organizational evolutions”. Stories of Platform Design. 29 September 2020:
If you’re interested in how finance is trying to get beyond the Megamachine, do check out Denise’s podcast New Climate Capitalism which tracks the latest trends in green & sustainable finance.
- Listen here: https://climatenarratives.co/new-climate-capitalism/
- Sign up for the newsletter here: https://climatenarrativesannotated.substack.com/
