Key Shared Insights & Perspectives
What Are Regenerative Practices?
Before we dived into the topic, host Virginie Glaenzer kicked off our unscripted discussion with her own understanding of regenerative practices and what they mean for our society.
A Threshold Is Required
Across all cultures, the ancient ones remind us of the importance of slowing down to embrace life’s lessons.
When we rush through the thresholds of rites of passage in life we risk having to repeat them because we fail to learn valuable lessons as we move from one stage of development in our human journey to the next.
It is also during this threshold time that we need to question the frameworks emerging in our new context. As May explains, “Discourses create frameworks that structure social life to which power is exercised. So, in this threshold time, it is important that we spend time to develop a critical analysis on the current frameworks that can either structure or hinder the systemic capabilities for us to come to the next phase.”
Building Relationships That Build Relationships
The trends and contextual changes taking place are making us reevaluate our relationships. When we pause, we are able to recognize that our old scripts are no longer serving us well.
The way in which we have engaged in business caused cascading system failures that devitalized relationships with KPI nonsense and holding back from the relationships. It appears that building a new way of living, sourced through generosity and integrity, leads to a human-to-human loyalty and commitment.
When we give ourselves permission to make choices based on a new script, it is clear that the relationships we want to create now are based on a commitment to people and not to impersonal systems anymore
“What I want to build right now are relationships with other complex living systems. I want to build relationships that build relationships.” says Nora.
Life Is Fundamentally Collaborative
Daniel is witnessing the dramatic effects of unemployment due to COVID-19 on his home island, Majorca, Spain, that depended entirely on the tourism industry. When the old script is changed, a collective effort creates a world with less competition by putting people above the economy.
In any crisis, there are fertile opportunities for transformation because life is fundamentally collaborative.Social innovation happens when we connect unmet needs with spare capacity.
Individual Take-aways
As we came to the end of the hour, our group concluded the discussion in the same way we started, with a tour de table. Each participant had the opportunity to reflect on what they heard and share their take-aways from the conversation.
Final Thoughts to Consider
Over a century of progress, we’ve designed systems and structures with efficiency in mind and a constant focus on the economic growth imperative. Blind progress and technology achievements have led us to believe it is our right to profit and use unlimited natural resources.
However, today we are living in perilous times. The climate is changing, the gap between the rich and poor is widening, the world is becoming increasingly complex, and our demands on the environment are outstripping planetary carrying capacity.
Our current social systems have been influenced by the past and their structures and purposes no longer apply the way they were intended.
But, how do we replace our systems without removing the positive that previous generations achieved through ordered society?
Some thought leaders consider regenerative cultures the foundation of our society’s adaptation and survival. They recognize that there are seeds of regeneration within disruption, like new life sprouting up. Grassroots change is coming to regional systems, led by grasstops influencers and supported by larger frameworks with shared values and purpose.
As individuals, we can activate society’s regenerative potential by finding our own voices and awakening our desire to step off the treadmill of our current economic system and redesign it to incentivize collaborative advantage rather than competitive advantage.
As designers of regenerative systems, we must resist the temptation to jump to “solutioning.” Our challenge is to trust that we are part of life’s immune response to the crisis.
By allowing ourselves to sit in the mess long enough and hold that tension, new approaches, like paths in the forest, will be revealed.
Finally, by recognizing creativity, adaptive capacity, and a readiness to transform in response to change and disruption, we can co-create collaborative networks of relationships that nurture the conditions needed to meet uncertainty.