Miracle Dirt — a story inspired by “Tools for The Regenerative Renaissance”
This story is inspired by the class Tools for the Regenerative Renaissance offered by RenaissanceU and sponsored by SEEDS. If you want to read more about the class, I’ve written a bit about it after this story and you can skip right to it if you want. I hope you read the story though, I’ve tried to make it a good one.
Miracle Dirt
It was a cloudless mid-August afternoon and the sun shone brightly onto the roof of the local Eisenstein Life Preparation Center, beaming its precious photons into the photovoltaic cells of the school’s solar panels, violently evicting electrons from their comfortable atom-homes, and creating a narrow shadow on the far side of the building.
Hiding in this shade and out of the way of these unrelenting photons were Jackson and Elina, two members of Ms Friend’s sub-circle, who had begun to regret choosing this session for their outside time. It had seemed a brilliant idea to them at first; no-one went outside at this time; they would have unfettered use of the mutualism-encouragement play area! Unfortunately, while it hadn’t seemed too hot to sit on the seesaw or spin on the merry-go-round when they were both inside gazing through the window, the photons had proved them wrong. And, having excited each other on the genius of coming out now, against the advice of Ms Friend, they were not entirely willing to concede defeat and return inside in shame.
And so, here they were, notebooks out, sitting ramrod straight against the shady side of the building, watching the approaching line of light and doing the same exercises they would have been doing in the cool inside, except on the ground and in the heat.
They would occasionally glance longingly through the window at their comfortable circlemates inside. Jackson, finding themself staring through the same window but from the other side, wondered briefly if perhaps it was the window itself that always seemed so desirable no matter which side they were.
At last, as the light edged its way onto her heels, Elina had had enough. “I propose,” she said, “that we go back inside.”
“No!” came Jackson’s reply. They had always been the more stubborn of the two.
“I propose that we stay here?”, Elina asked cautiously.
“…No.” Jackson had a curious smile on them and Elina waited for them to finish their thought.
“I propose…”, Jackson said eventually, “I propose we go to the soil pit.”
Elina thought about it; technically excursions to the soil pit were for observation and contribution, not for what Jackson had in mind, but it was an open secret what it was used for by all the supercircle members. Besides, she was sure their sub-circle had created some contribution today.
“Yes.”
The two stood up and rapped on the window. Ms Friend looked up from her edutablet and opened the window.
“Ms Friend, do we have any contribution? Jackson and I are going to go down to the soil pit.”
Ms. Friend smiled. “That’s a splendid idea Elina, let me grab your edutablets and you can propose it to the rest of the sub-circle, though I’m sure no one will object.”
Ms Friend relished the opportunity to prepare sub-circles for professional life and imbedding holacratic expectations was a pillar of the Life Preparation Process. Most decisions required proposals for the rest of the sub-circle to approve.
“Has everyone voted?” Ms Friend scanned the list, “Joe, you’ve not voted…”
The process took 30 seconds. They were getting faster. After the rest of the sub-circle had approved the proposal, they returned to their reading as if nothing had happened and Ms Friend continued.
“I’m sure we had some contribution from after lunch…”
She turned around, reached for the open box in the center of the room, took off the cheesecloth covering it, and carried it to the window.
“…and on a warm day like today, it should be a relatively cool place to visit.” She gave them a knowing look and winked.
Elina and Jackson took the box of apple cores, banana skins and other foodstuffs and carried it between them towards the eastern outskirts of the village. It was the largest building in the village, taller even than the church steeple, at least three times as wide and its length took it far outside the village. Unfortunately, despite its height, there was no shade to be had and the two were panting and wet with perspiration as they approached the entrance, a normal sized door that seemed tiny compared to the building’s width and height.
They knocked at the door. “Hulloo! Mr Murrray, open up!”
A man in a boiler suit opened the door. It was dark inside the building and he immediately shaded his eyes from the brightness of the day. “Why, Elina, Jackson, have you come to visit me?
“We have some contribution from our sub-circle, Mr Murray” said Elina.
Mr Murray clapped his hands together and picked up the box. “Well, looky here at what you brought me. Why this’ll be fine.”
They followed him into the building and he glanced at the energy meter at the entrance. “Warm day, but at least the batteries will be well charged.”
Elina and Jackson looked up at the imposing inner wall in front of them, a few dozen meters from the entrance to the building. It was almost as tall as the building itself. Standing between them and this inner wall was a round tower. It had a wide base and a wooden chute which ran anticlockwise up its outside to a narrow top where a platform met the top of the inner wall. A small entrance at the bottom of the tower led to a spiral staircase climbing up to this platform; and in the very center of the tower, a dumbwaiter system.
It would have been too heavy to lift the box all the way to the top, so Mr Murray slotted the box into a space in the dumbwaiter and started climbing the stairs. They followed him up, around the endless stairs, and he sang a familiar ditty as he climbed.
“Dirt! Dirt! Miracle dirt! It goes on the ground, and it helps save the earth!”, it began.
It had been the lyrics to a Public Service Announcement 20 years ago now and yet no one had been able to put it out of their minds. Elina and Jackson joined him in the last lines of the song as they approached the top of the stairs.
The platform was a narrow walkway between the top of the tower and a door at the top of the inner wall. Before they could open this door, however, they would need to pull up the dumbwaiter. They stopped a second to catch their breath before collectively turning a wheel to activate the pulley system, which would pull their box of contribution up to the platform. Finally, they heard the clank of the dumbwaiter slotting into place. Mr Murray took the box out and opened the door to the platform. Elena and Jackson had seen it before, but they could not help but gasp at seeing again what was on the other side of the wall.
It was a vast pit of compost, wall to wall and very deep. Tonnes and tonnes of apple cores, banana peels, coffee grounds, grass clippings, newspapers, potato peels, cardboard; anything that could be composted from the village was here. Pipes jutting out from the walls and ceiling a ran through the room ensuring good airflow and moisture and large rollers along the floor and walls incrementally pushed the mound towards the far end of the building where one could just make out robot diggers grabbing fresh compost for distribution to the regeneration and decarbonisation projects. It was the village’s main purpose and everyone had to contribute.
Mr Murray strapped the box to a secure holder and tipped the contents onto the pile. He then closed the door and placed the box on a burlap sack ready to slide it down the outside chute of the tower. Elina and Jackson looked at him earnestly; no eyes could possibly be wider.
Mr Murray smiled. “Well, go on, get in.”
They got in the box and Mr Murray pushed them down the chute, chuckling to himself and listening to Elina and Jackson whooping, roaring and cheering as the box slid down and round the helter skelter, faster and faster, until it reached the bottom.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
This story was inspired by the Tools for The Regenerative Renaissance course offered by RenaissanceU and sponsored by SEEDS. It is a six-week, better-than-free course focused on tools and techniques that can be used and enjoyed right now for healthier, happier lives, thriving local economies, a fairer distribution of power and resources, and the healing of the planet. Some examples of the course materials that inspired the story are detailed below.
Elina and Jackson’s village has a decentralised microgrid energy system where individual buildings are powered by solar panels (for example) and can share their energy between buildings. A similar model is currently being tested in areas of New York and Bangladesh and was taught as part of session 2 of the course. The idea that soil will save the world is a genuine decarbonisation strategy which was also explored in session 2 and is explained amazingly in this video with Dashon Murray. It’s a must-watch, honestly.
The proposal exercise that Jackson and Elina use to decide what to do next is an exercise designed by Samantha Slade called Making Proposals and was taught in session 4. It is an invaluable exercise to do as a group to practice both expressing and listening to group consent.
The terms ‘subcircle’ and ‘supercircle’ come from holacracy, an alternative method of structuring organisations to the traditional hierarchies. Ms Friend is not a leader so much as the facilitator of Elina and Jackson’s education. She plays a role within the supercircle of the organisation. Holocracy was also explored as part of session 4 of the course. It is an appealing system to consider for running my own communities.
The system by which the class voted was adapted from the proposals systems used in Distributed Autonomous Organisations and some co-operatives, in which a member of a group may make a proposal and others in a group will vote on the proposal. DAOs and cooperatives are explored as part of sessions 3 and 5 respectively.
In the school playground, the merry-go-round and seesaw are both objects that require mutual assistance and cooperation between players. Mutualism as an economic model is explored in session 5 and also appears in the book The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the books recommended by this course, and which I recommend as an introduction to these ideas.
Eisenstein Life Preparation Center is named after Charles Eisenstein, author of Sacred Economics, and Miss Friend is named after Sarah Friend, currently working on UBI cryptocurrency Circles. They were two of many guest speakers who gave talks during the course.
These are just a few of the many topics covered. If you are interested in participating, the next Tools for the Regenerative Renaissance course is already being planned and you can subscribe to hear about it here.
Many thanks to Phoebe Tickell for introducing me to this course, and to Phoebe and Stephen Reid for an excellent 6 weeks.
