Alternative Editorial: Mother Of All Crises

As I write, it’s just the beginning of Mother’s Day in the UK: a global tradition that will have so many new depths of meaning this year. How many people will feel as much anxiety as joy about their Mum, as the government ‘urged the UK not to visit loved ones’ . 

At the same time, how many Mothers are experiencing the challenges of having their children trapped at home at this time, in a climate of fear? See how New Zealand PM Jacinda Ahern started a new practice of holding a special press conference for children to help answer the science questions.

But suddenly all the big questions Mums might have hoped would present themselves at a good time and place during childhood are bunched up, demanding to be answered right now. Questions about death, age, vulnerability, care, responsibility. 

Or maybe the conversation around the table is about truth. What can we believe out of all the information we get on social media? Or fairness – why are some people being protected more than others? 

And as children question, parents suddenly come upon the limitations of their own understanding about how and why we are in this situation. It’s as if we are in a sudden learning incubator – an accelerated bildung – where we are all being forced to become systems thinkers for the first time.

As a mother myself I’m not going to pretend that thinking about motherhood or mothering evokes simple emotions. The mother archetype is powerful – life-defining for every one of us. 

But alongside all the familiar good things we yearn for when we think of Mum, there are always shadows to be contended with too, as Jungian psychologist Brian Collinson begins to explore here. Even so, it seems—right across the globe—that we are ready for a move towards a more Mothering, feminine-informed public space.

In the simplest of terms, this would mean prioritising relational ways of working. These would stress the importance of community and psychosocial well-being, over more materialistic, disconnected mechanisms that compel growth for its own sake. It implies an acknowledgement of emotional needs alongside physical needs. But also a social-political-economic connection with planetary health and boundaries. 

Instead of the familiar straight lines still dominating governance – either vertical (top to bottom) or horizontal (across networks) – feminine structures are more circular. Meetings are held without a head table, but in circles of participants who listen carefully to each other and deliberate rather than debate. Like the principles of a circular economy, nothing is wasted.

For men, coming out of an era of patriarchy, this accelerating influence of the feminine can feel both threatening and liberating. For women, themselves encultured by the masculine public space, the feminine principle can feel as confusing as empowering. For the growing tribes of gay and trans people, both feminine and masculine are difficult to talk about as a duality at all. Although these polarities play out in their private and public lives through culture and politics.

A Mother’s eye on the public sphere would call for patience between them. And maybe some time quietly considering the implications of this moment of change. 

And so we stumble into the many-faceted metaphor of Mother Earth, and how that plays out in this moment in time. If you are so inclined, there is no shortage of explorations into the idea that Mother Earth – also Gaia – is beginning to take back control of Her own fate. 

But that can look both terrifying as well as reassuring. For every essay you might read about a loving, caring transition into a more connected, flourishing world, there is another that describes a vengeful Gaia, dispensing with humanity.

Elephanteers, Assemble!

At The Alternative UK, we try to hold these tensions lightly. While we cannot build a new politics on old binaries, we acknowledge that with more women in the public space we also have more inclusion, diversity and whole system thinking. At the same time, we cannot help but notice that, in more womanly environments, there is an emphasis on patient and more developmental responses to problems. Less quick fixes and trophy projects. More relational ways of acting, less competition.

For that reason, on Mother’s Day, we are committing to two responses to the Coronavirus moment, both of them honouring these more feminine values. Firstly, we are establishing an open document that captures four aspects of change occurring during this crisis. In a classic “from/to” format, we are asking you to notice:

• PERSONAL / INDIVIDUAL CHANGES: How am I changing? Feelings, behaviour? (I)

• COLLECTIVE CHANGES: How are we socialising, acting, organising together? (WE)

• GLOBAL / VIRTUAL CHANGES: How is the planet connecting differently? What is the new story about us? (WORLD)

• OPEN SPACE: What’s changing that you couldn’t have imagined?

We figure that if we can name these changes as developments, rather than just experience them as fleeting responses to a crisis, they have a better chance of becoming the new normal. We’ll roll this out with co-creators first (sign up here), iterate and then open to the wider public.

Secondly, even if we can’t see clearly yet what is breaking down in our socio-economic-political system during this extreme time, we do know what it is that we stand for, and what we hope to materialise as we emerge. 

We’ve been talking about it for three years! For more on this, see this Editorial for The Elephant event we held last year (December 2019), when 30 champions of a new system that makes the old one obsolete came together. 

From next week The Daily Alternative will be featuring one or more of the short videos that were made in preparation for the December event, each introducing one aspect of the new system emerging. 

That will be followed by a Zoom event during which you can meet the Elephanteer in question, hear how their perspective is evolving during the Coronavirus, ask questions and get into group discussions to explore your own response. In preparation for joining in, sign up to be a co-creator of The Alternative UK today so you can get all the information directly into your inbox.

We hope that by running these regular events for at least the next twelve weeks, we can create lasting value and deeper connections between us all, even as we are so strangely isolated. At the same time, we will have a stronger sense of what we are holding out for, as our countries move through the crisis.