The Regenerative Narrative — Our Stories of Hope and Action for the future — part 1
The story thus far:
“Once upon a time, in a galaxy far-far away lived a species of bipeds. They grew from small tribes of hunter-gatherers into villages and then massive civilizations that expanded to all continents on their pale blue dot planet. The creatures didn’t mature enough to understand how to take care and steward the special rock they called home, extracting all the rich resources, dumping garbage into their seas and polluting the air until the planet couldn’t sustain them any longer until they…”
So how does this story end? Where do we want the narrative to take us: The human race.
What comes next? Is this a tragedy, a comedy or a love story?
Well, we have to choose fast, and it may be a combination of all three:
So here is the thing, no matter what the garden variety climate denier says, our planet is warming, and we are in the midst of a planetary crisis the likes of which we have no way of controlling, containing or entirely avoiding any longer.
Like it or not, Climate Change is real, and we have a short window to do something about it.
But this information is tough to internalize. Not comforting is the massive nationalistic wave that is heating globally that doesn’t support an alliance of humanity that can come together and work on this most pressing subject of our very survival. Not supportive is the continuous stream of movies and shows coming out of Hollywood and other media streams depicting on dystopian future after another, where humanity is battling both technology running amok and massive climate catastrophes.
When do we wake up and realize we have the power to tell a different story? A hopeful one. And then act upon it.
From the Hero’s Journey to the Collective Journey
One of the issues that we are facing is a big old Narrative Gap. It seems there is a chasm between the knowledge we already have about our challenges of Climate Change, Income Inequality, Human Rights and how to solve it versus how this information is told globally.
We do not celebrate our victories enough. Praise our solutionaries, the big breakthroughs that could help us fight climate change and bring forward a more just and equal society. Instead we rant on social media about the woes of our political circus, glorifies celebrities whose only claim to fame is that they photograph nicely and consume fast food and fast media.
The dominant narrative that is being consumed is that of a zero-sum game where there is always a winner and loser. The glorification of the lone-wolf, beating his foes, against all odds.
America is still enamored with the Hero’s Journey which perpetually throws us with the Savior protagonist into a drama triangle where someone always needs to play the victim and someone is always the bully: Humanity needs to Break Away from the Hero’s myth. We each need to do our own internal jounrey and find out how to get out of the triangle into our own circle of empowerment.
There is no one coming to save us. It’s up to us to pull together and change things. To do so, we need to reframe how we engage with each other. Our stories need to come of age. The concept of the “other” needs to be omitted from our mindset and replaced with the understanding that we are one species. That our planet is one living system in which we are all connected. Not only to other humans, but to the whole ecosystem.
But for now we are still grappling with a narrative of isolation that wants to keep us from understanding our interdependence.
To bridge the Narrative Gap between the isolation to connection, we have a lot of work on our hands. For starters, it is an actual global catastrophe that is threatening our very survival. Humanity is still treating 51% of society as second class citizen from the gender perspective. This reduces our chances of creating not only a more just and equal society, but, as scientist have found, it’s also one of our best chances to drawdown carbon from the atmosphere.
Project Drawdown is the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming. In its research, scientists found that the The best climate solution? Family planning and well-educated girls:
The number one solution, in terms of potential impact? A combination of educating girls and family planning, which together could reduce 120 gigatons of CO2-equivalent by 2050 — more than on- and offshore wind power combined (99 GT).
These findings attest to how equality, justice and support of women globally can have a massive impact on climate change as well as on more thriving and just communities. But that story is not told beyond the confines of the regenerative communities echo chambers.
The Gendered Journey and Intersectionality
The past few years brought forward female centric narratives; the Gendered Journey has arrived and it’s here to tell the different narratives of women, people of color, trans people, non-binary people and all the narratives that have been pushed aside for way too long.
And with the popularity world wide of films like Wonder Woman and Black Panther, the women’s march, #meToo, #BlackLivesMatter, #times Up, the Feminist women strike, and so much more movement we are seeing a different narrative emerging.
This emergence has pushed the need of a more complex framing of narratives from gender to intersectional:
Intersectionality looks at the broader perspective of a person’s experience. Beyond markers of Gender and demographics, they take into account other sections such as: Social Strata, ethnicity, belief systems, gender and orientation.
We need all hands on deck to face the predicament we are in — if we want a future that really works for everyone, thus we also need everyone’s voices to be acknowledged and be invited to the table where there is a seat waiting for them.
But, well, not everybody sees eye to eye on this. There is no consensus and there is no culture, nay actual narrative to frame this conversation. So where do we go from here?
Humanity Adulting
Not everyone is ready to grow up. Some people like the status quo and will fight any attempt for change. They wax poetically about the “Good Old Days”. The truth is that that life for a lot of humans things is getting better.
We also do not have the correct information and are led to believe that the world is in much worse condition than it really is.
“Most people in the richest countries are absolutely wrong about the state of the world. “
Says Ola Rosling of the terrible results of the from the knowledge surveys Gapminder conducted in 14 rich countries in 2017. People think the world is much worse than it is:
The other frame is that giving more rights and justice for “others” does not correlate removing those from the group of people who had it in the first place.
“Equal rights for others does not mean less rights for you. It’s not pie.”
The paradox is that we are in a midst of a climate crisis and the biggest wealth disparity since the Gilded Age but people have more access to opportunity, food and information than any other time in humanity’s history.
To hold such a paradox plus combat the climate predicament we are in we need to grow up!
To be able to hold complexity in one’s’ mind is the sign of intelligence and maturity.
“Facing complexity means befriending uncertainty and ambiguity” Daniel Christian Wahl
Complexity is hard. Being mature is hard. We don’t have the stories, yet, of a mature humanity. Or more truthfully we don’t have enough stories in the mainstream of what it looks like when we have a mature society. Even the latest Star-Trek Discovery TV show needed to show a human race in a parallel universe that is immature and authoritarian to juxtapose the complex and evolved humanity that Gene Roddenberry had imagined.
We need a coming of age story for humanity:
“The Hero’s Journey has been used for millennia as a coming of age story, but the Collective Journey is the coming of age metaphor for humanity’s rise from adolescence to adulthood. As such, it cannot be a singular narrative, but a convergence of many voices of different genders, ethnicities, ages, and opinions coming together in a non-linear fashion.” (The Collective Journey — Maya Zuckerman).
I speak more broadly about these topics in the articles about The Collective Journey and the Narrative Gap — as with any concept — there is a light and dark dualistic framing and utilization of the model.
Giving space to grief:
Parts of becoming mature is facing our own mortality in a healthy manner.
In my article Grieving for the earth I discussed the framing of responsibility; that we are accountable for our planetary predicament. Being responsible doesn’t mean we created it wholly by ourselves or set out with an intention to create these issues. We also need to acknowledge that a lot of the issues we have were caused by solutions to other issues we are were trying to solve: Gas in cars for transportation, feeding a growing population by shipping food around the world. Eating more meat which was once considered a luxury for most of the famine ridden humanity — to the food industry is responsible for emitting a third of the greenhouse gases on the planet . We do have a responsibility to ourselves, the planet and future generations to do better.
Once of the concepts I brought forward was sitting with the grief. Allowing ourselves a moment in these crazy times to cry and feel for species loss, ecosystems destroyed and a whole lot of suffering on the planet. Not everyone would resonate with this. It’s not a comfortable task sitting with the ocean of grief. But it may help with the pain that these times carry.
Coming to terms with the reality of our ailing planet, especially to individuals with strong empathetic feelings may create a sense of hopelessness — but there is always hope — and we need to remember this:
“Hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. I say it because hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency; because hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth’s treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal. Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope.”
Excerpt From: Rebecca Solnit. “Hope in the Dark.”
Taking our place in the planetary narrative:
“Reframing climate change requires us to not talk about climate change. And instead we need to talk about what it means to be human” Joe Brewer
That is a deep question that brings us back to what connects us as a species, rather than what separates us. What does it mean to be human in these times?
How do we tell a story that lets us stay apart of the planetary story. What tales do we need to tell for our species to wake up and not annihilate itself?
Self-Awareness is a step in maturing. So are Open mindedness, self-control, Being Other-Centered, accountability, compassion and resilience are all the building blocks of a woke, mature human being.
We are facing the biggest question:
Who are we as a species?
Are we kids or do we want to grow up?
What is our story?
What does it mean to be human?
And a bigger framework:
Who do we want to be in earth’s story:
Are we her destroyers or
her Stewards?
Stay Tuned to the next article — the Regenerative Narrative is coming.
