Facing the news nowadays

From Genius to Scenius

Published in

Wild Women Writers

10 min readAug 21, 2019

In the last few weeks, I find myself having similar dialogues over and over again with many friends and friends of friends. People from various countries and backgrounds, who share at some level a common feeling of despair and paralysis related to the news. So, I felt compelled to write about it.

The dialogue usually evolves with how not lose yourself in despair in the face of the late atrocious news (families being violently separated by governments, high rates of ecocide, femicide, racism, homeless situation, plastic being found in raindrops, high rates of black and indigenous people being murdered all around the world, the huge impacts of the industrial agriculture in the entire society, human trafficking, health care crisis … and so on).

I don’t have the answer, I mean, I don’t believe there is the ONE magical answer for a problem that has many facets, that has been unfoldings in so many levels, and has been snow-bowling for so long. And it is affecting everybody on the globe …. But it is not because of how complex this situation is that nothing can be done.

First, it is normal to fall into despair in this kind of situation, because it hurts to see and feel all of these injustices and violence happening around ourselves.

At least for me, it provokes anger to see so many innocent lives being lost and tortured, so much trauma being created over and over again. I feel fear for the existence of our species and I feel a deep sadness related to ecological and social injustice being created by a very violent and without limit patriarchal society in which we are all connected to at some level... Just for naming some of my feelings, because my list of feelings about this subject is much longer.

When I feel this kind of despair in my body, I either feel completely paralyzed or completely emptied of my essence. The problem feels too big, too complicated, too overwhelming and basically impossible to make any effort to deal with such complexity. At this kind of moment, I take time to compost what feels too much to deal with in that situation, recognizing and validating what I am feeling at the moment. Not ignoring it, but taking the time to self-empathize with myself, and then connect with my community to talk about these difficult topics. Until now, this exercise brought me a lot of learning and grounding.

This is how I learn that I need to slow down, and I learned to remember that I am not alone on this path, and I cannot take all the responsibility of all the problems of the world on my shoulder. We are here together, to learn together.

I remember the choices and the conversations I have in my routine and how in my actions I can affect and create a healthier environment, more regenerative dynamics, and maybe create a ripple effect beyond my system.

I and we, individually, can become every day more aware of the impact of our choices, our acts, and silences. And understand that every act is a political act, every act is going to affect your health and the health of others … and learning to see and to understand how they connect with each other is a process itself.

As in any process, you are going to make mistakes (we all do), you are going to have ups and downs, but you are going to learn and find solutions that today you would never imagine, but like anything, this journey starts from the first step. From where you are.

The curious thing about our current culture, we learn that in order to succeed, we need to become geniuses and super experts in our fields. To show that we are worth it, to show that have the power over others to do more, to create more, to profit more. And lately, we are learning (as a global community) that this is the same logic in which is causing most of the problems that we are facing today. The story of separation, as Charles Eisenstein would say.

This same narrative is the one that isolates us and makes us believe in competition as the only law in society … making many of us lose the perspective of the community that we belong and how we connect as individuals, through our passions, dreams, and have identities beyond our work.

In this context we learn to believe that we can not trust on no one, no one understands what we are going through and everything feels just too hard to bear. How not to fall in despair in a context like this?

We need each other to break this vicious cycle of despair and violence.

This is why I love the concept created by the English musician, Brian Eno, about Scenius. Coming from a music perspective, scenius is the intelligence of a whole. And I think that we need to reconnect to our scenius part in all areas of our lives.

Genius is a representation of a hierarchical society, that values power over others. Scenius is a representation of what is born collectively, from horizontal and shared power, where the scenius is aware of the whole, and being aware of the parts of the system in which they belong.

Scenius, for me, is the one who recognizes that she, he or they are part of a specific scenario, historical context, part of a specific community with a variety of points of view. Because they are part of that specific context, they are able to see and integrate information in a certain way, with particular lenses, recognizing that those lenses are connected to their upbringing, to the social context that they were embedded, to their geographical and political context, and the opportunities that they faced in life. Scenius is aware that she, he, or they are part of a bigger community. And they understand that the solutions for their community are specific for that context. Decentralizing the power, sharing the resources and responsibilities.

Too abstract? Let me give you an example.

If you play music or ever witnessed a live music performance, you know that the musician that catches the attention of the audience is the one who is listening and interacting with what is happening around she, he or they. Present in that particular moment shared by everyone in that room, in that space.

In a music group, the heart, the rhythm and the soul of music are not created by only one person but is shared, celebrated and amplified by each and every musician present, and this is the experience that transcends us all. Even if you are not playing that song and you are just watching the show, you can understand the feeling of it.

And I think this is the kind of skill that we need to develop as a society while we face the news nowadays. We listen to them, we create space to understand what they provoke and eco in us, and we need to choose how to play together in order to create a more regenerative community, how to create regenerative infrastructures, a more regenerative future, amplifying the solutions that are working well, to share ideas and solutions to inspire new projects in other groups, inspiring creating community in other areas.

And like any musician, before any performance, that are many hours of practice, to integrate movement, technique, inspiration, and action. So, we need to learn how to practice regenerative practices, restorative dialogues, learn to transform conflict in our daily lives. We need to practice them, before going to the live concert when the news is playing violently, or terrible news faces your community.

When I talk about community, I talk about a group of people (friends, neighbors, family) that you feel connected to and that their life impacts yours. And I know that this has a very different meaning to many people. But I truly feel this is the key element to find comfort and energy nowadays. To navigate our reality, in a healthier way, no matter the size of your community.

For example, I am part of a food cooperative (Le Nid) since 2017. We are the first food coop in Geneva (Switzerland) that works with horizontal governance. The idea was born from trying to find solutions together in how to support local biodiversity, local producers, how to avoid creating waste, and how to create a horizontal structure to decide together the evolving process of the group. The idea is not new, the model was inspired by the Park Slope food coop in New York, and La Louve food coop in Paris. But this initiative was new in our area.

Since the cooperative started, I see new solutions taking part in our group, more people being part of it, more dialogue and connections have been created between the local producers, local government, private companies and schools around us. More trust has been created within the group, and we are taking the time to look for creative solutions to understand how to reduce our carbon footprint, and also how to restore the local biodiversity around us.

I must say that I am very happy to be part of this cooperative, because in this space we talk about how to find solutions together, engaging various actors in our region (from production, packaging, transport, and way of consuming).

We also create space for creating community and talk about difficult topics, to learn to become more inclusive, and hold the space to each other and give time to find creative solutions for problems that by ourselves, as individuals, feels just too much, or almost impossible to solve.

So, if I can give one piece of advice, go find and/or create your supportive community. How? For starters, choose one or more options below:

Start a shared compost with your neighbors/friends;
Learn how you can support reforestation in your area;
Learn what grows seasonal in your region and try to consume accordingly;
Learn to listen to your own internal cycles (remember we are cyclical beings and nature is not something outside of us — connect with nature internal to you);
Learn to live more aligned with the rhythms of the seasons;
Find out how to support and welcome refugee in your area;
Be part of a food cooperative in your region. If you don’t find one, gather some friends and start one;
Find out how to create support the indigenous and black communities in your area;
Start or be part of a shared garden with other people (learn ways to not use chemicals);
Look for a local permaculture group to be part of;
Be part of women circle/men circle / non-binary circle/ LGBTQIA+ circle to talk about how to better care for your body and mental health, a space to hold the space for emotion, where you feel safe to be vulnerable, to practice deep empathy;
Learn more about politics and how you could support the transformation of it to a more regenerative system;
Be part of a supportive group for families and single parents of small children;
Start or be part of a practice group of how reducing plastic and any kind of waste in your daily routine and sharing the local solutions each person found (you can find many tips in the Zero-Waste associations around the world);
Start planting indigenous trees in your area (look for the indigenous species in your area, look for trees that improve the quality of the soil, that offer protection to birds and insects, that give flowers to the pollinators, that give fruits) and start to care for them;
Be part of a group to learn about wild plants in your area, contact a botanist person, an herbalist, or permaculture person who know about how to use wild plants of your area and start to promote local workshops;
Look at the local seed library in your area, and learn how to support them. If you don’t find one, start one;
Learn how to make your own cleaning products with ingredients that do not create pollution;
Learn how to make your own plant-based hygiene products;
Learn how to occupy public spaces creating shared gardens;
Learn to harvest water and how to keep it clean in natural ways;
Learn to care for the soil and how to support the biodiversity in it;
Start consuming less. Learn how you can fix, re-purpose, donate, borrow, exchange objects;
Learn to slow down;
Look for local banks and companies that support renewable energies, and do not support and invest in wars, armament, and fossil fuels;
Find out if in your region you can find community currency and learn how to use it;
Talk around you and find people who are willing to think together for local, practical and small solutions in your area to care for the earth, for the people and for the future that we are creating.

You will see that starting these actions and being part of groups like these is going to open many doors and windows in your mind and heart. And you are going to find out that each and every action and conversation has a bigger impact than you ever imagined. And you are going to find support in this strange time in history in which we are sharing now.

And don’t be afraid if you feel like moving around and between groups for a moment. Find the one that speaks to your heart. From there, you will see that changing habits and dynamics will feel much easier, and the engagement with these many axes are going to occur, little by little. Take the first step that talks to you the most.

Remember that it is important to understand why you are becoming part of groups like this. Because you are going to face cycles and challenges, and when you feel your energy is low, you know why you are there, and you remember that cycle is going to pass. Learn to listen to your cycles.

If you are starting a new group, create a clear idea of why you are starting this group together. Making the commons goals more clear and caring for the process will allow you and your group to create more chances to tap into the scenius dynamics, and together you can find tools to support this collective intelligence to emerge.

Create strategies, look for your resources, understand your limitations and understand how you are going to implement them. And do it together.

Some references that might help you on that quest:

As I said, in the beginning, there is no one-recipe that fixes it all, and changing hierarchical dynamics to horizontal dynamics takes practice as anything in life, but no better moment than now to start practicing them.

Yes, there is no magical solution. Yet, the common piece for me to not lose myself into despair while facing the news is finding support in my community, and it feels pretty magical many times. It is about sharing, supporting each other, is about learning to listen to each other, is about learning to hold the space, is about regeneration, is about caring for diversity, is about systemic designing, is about taking the first step to a new dynamic.

We are here together, facing various struggles, but we are here together.

Facing the news nowadays

From Genius to Scenius

Written by Luiza Oliveira