We live in a world of binaries, granted. As explored in a recent editorial you can't get away from the material world of distinctions. Left from right, night from day. On the other hand, unless polarised, such distinctions are not competing with each other. Close up, one simply gives way to the other - go far enough left and you will meet the right, both geographically and politically. Night always turns into day and so on.

Could we say the same about the relationship between negative and positive? Twice in the past week we've been invited to look more closely at this. At a recent panel discussion about the future of Western Civilisation it was stark that three out of four on a panel described the times as crisis ridden, and trauma induced. Only one as r-evolutionary, meaning exciting and evolving. Part of that explanation was more feminine perspectives, finding their way into the public realm.

Interestingly, it was the last one that got a cheer, albeit mostly from the women in the room. Not simply, it was later revealed, because people will always cheer the more hopeful vision. But because too often, the 'negative view' obliterates the 'more positive' resources available.

In follow-up conversations, the women celebrated the notion that a feminine mind-set was inherently regenerative. That, like Nature, a feminine psyche thinks in more circular and cyclical ways. And that the way this manifests as networks, community infrastructure and care culture was creating more space for individuals, to experiment and develop through difficult times.

While none of the panellists would subscribe fully to a simple men v women split in the room, neither would they go along with the idea that what the men were bringing was negative. After all, the information these men were offering on the deconstruction of Western Civilisation was deepening our understanding of our current reality. At the same time, there was a strong call for a positive revelation. Meaning, not simply a view of what needs to happen--but clear signs that something new is emerging.

Writing on Medium, Swiss-American-UK ecological economist Julia Steinberger - who describes herself as an immigrant, working at the University of Lausanne – recalled a recent visit to her old high-school in Geneva, giving a climate talk. She entered with a memory of her pre-Covid experiences—young people fired up by Fridays for the Future. She left feeling the stark contrast of these students’ post-Covid mood: misery and frustration.

Steinberger writes:

One girl took the mic and held on to it. Her questions came fast and clear and were widely applauded by her peers. She was clearly channelling the zeitgeist of the room. This is my recollection of some of her questions.

· “Why are you here talking to us? We can’t do anything. Only politicians, only business leaders, can make the big changes you are talking about. Why aren’t you talking to them?”

· “Why do you talk to us about optimism [Note: I had not, actually, but perhaps my presentation had been announced as such. Who knows.], about possible actions, when we all know that none of that will happen?”

· “All these people in power have known about this problem for so long. Yet the IPCC comes out with report after report explaining we have to act within just a few years — and nothing happens, nothing changes. Why do you think this talk of yours to us can do anything?

Long story short (though we recommend you read her piece), Julia works through this accusation of betrayal by turning to her University students, asking them to help in re-writing the course she was teaching. Today, instead of teaching the facts about climate breakdown, she shares the tools and methods of effective response:

I threw away the powerpoint presentations I had prepared. Instead (drum roll), I went through the IPCC AR6 WG3 slides on sectoral solutions, and we discussed each in turn, to the extent of my competence. We also discussed state capture, industrial lobby groups, vested interests and barriers to change, new technologies and colonialism, and seeing one’s work as striving to achieve systemic change. It was one of the best teaching experiences I’ve ever had. There were smiles and enthusiasm and incredulity and frustrated groans, laughter and the whole gamut of human effort. Whatever it was, it didn’t feel like betrayal anymore.

This is clearly not the kind of positive that suggests 'don't worry, everything will be alright in the end', like technological solutionism. Putting the power into the hands of knights in shining armour who will come to our collective rescue. This is a positive that invests in our collective ability to make change happen through applying ourselves: arising out of our growing up and showing up - as Gabor Mate describes it and the 'kids' demand it.

For some this positive engagement appears to come naturally. Take the perspective of writer Mahek Kapoor, also spotted this week. Following a bold statement "Social Media Is Dying" she continues with "Paving A Way for Something Bigger and Better" Again, do read the full article, but the stand outs are practical and logical, rather than simply wishful:

Content creation was hardly rewarded, and it still isn’t. YouTube was one of the first platforms to have monetized posting videos online, and Medium was the first one to pay its writers a fair share for their contributions.

After Medium, a lot of other social media platforms (like Pinterest and even Facebook) are trying and testing models to introduce creator programs, where people will ‘finally’ be paid for their hard work and time.

This is where the major difference lies in the social media of the past and future. Traditional social media is dying, but it is also creating a way for a much bigger and stronger ecosystem where people will finally be paid for every second they spend online.

This brings us to a wide and open discussion: what will happen if all social media starts to pay the content creators?

If content creation starts being a rewarding job, people will leave their traditional jobs in high numbers and become content creators.

Work will become more hybrid and flexible. The traditional nine to five will cease to exist as people will work in their own times and in their own time zones.

Many companies across the globe have started to follow that pattern, where they are hiring people across various countries and allowing them to work from anywhere, thereby getting the job done within record time! It is only a matter of time before we will see more platforms on Web-3 and more blockchain-based social media.

Many will say this is barely a solution to the climate crisis - it's not - but it is a way forward from the evidence that our global growth economy is broken. For young people again, it offers an alternative to the idea that 'we have robbed them entirely of their future'. Instead, it's an investment in the way they have applied themselves over the past few decades that will in turn, resource them better for the climate challenges ahead.

Containing the energy of debate for transformation

So where does this leave those whose focus is mostly on the problems we face, without any serious recognition of the alternatives arising? Of course, even within that group of commentators, there are different responses to our current reality. At one end of a broad continuum is Jem Bendell saying it is already too late to make the changes necessary for the human species to survive, we must quickly adapt to a rapidly worsening reality. At the other end are those who are waking up to the personal, social and planetary failures of modernity itself. Describing this as a 'time between worlds' they are cautious about doing anything definitive too soon.

To these latter “sense-makers” anyone coming with solutions can appear to lack depth. Positive becomes a superficial response, lacking the capacity to grasp the size of the crisis brought on by colonialism, patriarchy and poor internal development.

To those committed to moving into building the future on the other hand, such critics might look stuck in a negative perspective, sometimes narcissistic, even irresponsible.

Yet, a closer look at the boundary between one and the other can also cause it to dissolve. After all, those fixed on the pain of the present moment do so because of their certainty that something is wrong and needs fixing. They are not yearning for a vacuum, an absence of agency to arise, but a giving way of the forces that block human potential.

Karl Marx could only describe this shift of perspective as a linear event, dependent upon a revolution to clear the way. But he never had the luxury of being able to witness the full spectrum of global activity: the wave of innovation that has always been preparing to succeed from the old. The human agency he was fighting to liberate - human creativity, caring and regenerative community, post-capitalist value creation - is already in action, long before the old authorities can acknowledge it or seek to lead it.

On the other hand, those who are busy building the future will not succeed unless there are others dismantling the past, thoughtfully. Designing the tools and methods of awakening and letting go. All the time that the butterfly is emerging from the imaginal cells step by step, the caterpillar and later the pupa are marking the stages. Ensuring its emergence through first resourcing its energy and later breaking that structure down slowly until, becoming redundant, it is sloughed off. Without them there will never be a butterfly.

For the sake of the future, both 'negative' and 'positive' should look at each other with gratitude, because they are interdependent: without the other, they could not find clarity in their own function.

Meantime, long live the energy of disagreement and debate, increasingly within worldviews and containers that can hold that energy as the source of transformation.

Alternative Editorial: Where the Dark Meets the Light