Alternative Editorial: Changing Our Minds
Over the past six years, we have often suggested that the new socio-economic-political-cultural system that is currently emerging could be described as an ecological civilisation. By this we mean, a new form of self-organisation for the planet which recognises that the human species should be in a regenerative relationship with nature.
That self-organisation would include the multiple forms of agency of plants, animals and even non-sentient entities such as rocks – while also honouring the capabilities of humans to invent new forms of technology that can play a part in our flourishing. Ecological implies systemic wholeness; civilisation implies activity in the interests of the whole.
Over the past two weeks we’ve been in multiple conversations with the independent scholar and writer Jeremy Lent. whose forthcoming book Future Flourishing: Towards an Ecological Civilisation will be seminal in summing up the reasons for and potential of such a development. Jeremy gave the keynote speech at a gathering of the World Human Forum in in the city of Eleusis this week, which has been a European Capital of Culture in 2023.
Within Greek classical mythology, Eleusis is understood to be the home of Demeter, mother of Persephone who was abducted by her uncle, Hades; she was forced to marry him and live in the deathly underworld that was his kingdom. Demeter’s struggle to find and save her daughter resulted in an agreement: Persephone would be allowed to return to the daylight for several months each year – a time that we now recognise as Spring.
Alternative Global’s co-initiator Indra Adnan was invited to join three other women in framing two days of discussion around a coming ecocivilisation, particularly as it depends upon the return of the feminine to public life. Here is Indra’s report:
Arriving in Athens I couldn’t help thinking foremost about the forest fires and floods that have marked Greece out to be one of the most vulnerable frontiers of the climate crisis in Europe this year. Tourists in flight from burning hotels, children trailing behind – indeed, families often being forced to take refuge in the sea: these images are not easily forgotten. Only weeks later, cars were floating through the flooded streets of Athens. Maybe it’s precisely this evocation of Greek tragedy that makes Greece a candidate for transformation.
Three days after my arrival I was standing in the ancient ruins of Eleusis, preparing to listen to a Human Requiem (co-produced with the WHF), sponsored by the Capital of Culture authorities. I couldn’t have anticipated the power of what was performed as we, a general audience of locals and tourists, were immersed in the story of Demeter and Persephone. The balletic dramatization of the abduction and rape of Persephone, the choir moving amongst us singing their grief for all we had lost, the struggle of her mother to reclaim her daughter and the deal that was made with Hades – the darkness.
The parallels with the state we are in—our long-term extractions from Nature and the triumph of industrialisation—could not be ignored. The music and dance, the staging and vision, all held us captive. As the last supermoon of the year rose steadily over it all (as if part of the backdrop) children flooded the scene and took each of us by the hand to watch Persephone return. Literally running circles around us, we were invited to appreciate the four seasons of our existence, and that now might be the time for Spring. Writing about it can never capture how that felt that night: you had to be there.
The World Human Forum certainly referenced Greece’s ancient history as the birthplace of philosophy, with its theme “Change Your Mind (to Change the World)”. Over the course of three days, the event offered a number of different approaches to the 'change', opening with the invitation to take a new perspective of the principle of the Divine Feminine.
Our Chair was 'artivist' Gina Belafonte, actor, producer and Civil Rights entrepreneur, developing new tools for the empowerment of the most vulnerable. She was joined by historian Bettany Hughes, author of books on Venus and Aphrodite, Helen of Troy and others.
Bettany described how the theft and then the return of Persephone ties Ancient Greece, and the subsequent birth of democracy, to the struggle for power between the light and the shadow. Helen Pichon, a civil society expert and author of l 'Eternal au Féminin: manifesto for a new theology of Liberation, asked for female leadership within the three great monotheisms as a trigger for change.
I had been invited to talk about what I call the ‘conscious feminine’ in my book The Politics of Waking Up: Power and Possibility in the Fractal Age. Here I refer to the historical role of women to hold spaces – in the private realm of home and heart –which enable a return to wholeness. This space, whether physical, emotional or spiritual, acts like a container for continuous development, from child through to adult.
Taking its function directly from nature, the space – you could also call it pod, pupa, womb – is not like a machine requiring working parts. It’s an incubator of life, giving rise to complex systems that are dynamic, fluid, unpredictable. While men, historically, left the home daily to take part in hierarchies, build competitive vehicles for progress, act upon the world to extract and capitalise – women held the space of nurturance and care. I call it the distinction between triangular and circular activity.
In the argument between nature and nurture, at Eleusis I was not making a case for women in the home: only to acknowledge our conditioning – or training - over time. With or without our permission, women became skilled in family, community, networks and the mechanisms of relationship – the deep architecture of connectivity.
In modern times, first feminism and (more recently) the move beyond binary genders, has freed more people up to choose how much of a triangle or circle they want to be: we’re all a unique mix of the two. Since the birth of the internet, this private space has become a public space. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Youtube try to offer group activity in which people can develop relationships. Yet once they “become the product” through their interactions, participants are less in a family, more in a shop.
Since that crude division of labour between men and women no longer pertains, the need for this more circular way of being in the world, about holding more than leading, is needed more than ever. For the past thirty years we have seen a revolution in the liberating and enabling of individual self-awareness through technology, but little or no emphasis on how to contain this new energy to give it traction. When everyone is seeking their own North Star, entranced by perpetually playing out and rehearsing for our current realities, we are likely to remain in hock to the power structures that were put in place centuries ago. Rather than organise ourselves to change direction.
As readers of The Daily Alternative and co-creators of the incubators know well, we have been reporting on the phenomenon of real-world community agency networks (CANS) of all kinds and sizes for nearly seven years. As they develop their complex, cosmolocal systems and bring technology to their communications and media, their collective power to incubate will look more and more like the incipient Ecological Civilisation that Jeremy Lent is calling for.
To get there we need new forms of self-governance and a personal learning journey and practice to keep ourselves being the revolution we yearn for. Out of that would come a new political system – already taking shape.
But what about the vast majority of people who have been disconnected from these spaces – except in the few hours of re-creation (TGIF) between working hours? It won’t be easy to move from the current addiction to consumerism – materialising the dream of a better life – to a wholistic system that might take time and effort to cultivate. In the interim, there are many different paths opening up that might wake up our desire – remind us and reconnect us to what we are missing.
Over the three days in Eleusia, The World Human Forum - ingeniously curated by Alexandra Mitsotaki and Jochen Sandig- brought together a number of explorers and practitioners of what might be described as brain interventions, working in the fields of the arts - music, dance, imagery - breathwork and psychedelics. Each was powerful and persuasive: Ivy Ross (artist, VP of hardware design at Google) and Susan Magsamen (Founder International Arts and Mind Lab) shared the neurological evidence of the power of art to generate well-being, as described in their book Your Brain on Art.
Soprano Marlis Petersen and Pianist Kiveli Doerken took us on a dramatic journey of inner transformation, through voice and music. Katia Boustani, breathing therapist and Bonna Wescoat, Director at the American School of Classical Studies introduced us to breathwork as the path to the Samothrace Mysteries. Daphne Economu, Founder of charity Cerebral Palsy in Greece, received a standing ovation for her insights into how diversity itself is the key to 'thinking outside the box'.
Possibly attracting the most attention were the sessions on a renewed interest in psylocybin and psychedelics more broadly, as hugely effective tools for healing trauma and overcoming depression. The mysteries and insights of Eleusis have often been attributed to ancient ritual use of 'medicines' - although till now there is no scientific proof.
Even so, stories from the clinical trials carried out by Fred Barrett, Associate Director of John Hopkins Psychedelic research team, showed clear evidence of the efficacy of these substances to overcome the fear of death and dying. Those who partook were freed into a more expanded and creative life.
Jules Peck, initiator of the Reworlding Fellowship in collaboration with Imperial College, described how their trials deliberately framed the experience around developing the mind-set for flourishing futures .
Throughout all of these sessions (available to share online soon), there was palpable excitement about the number of paths to the liberation of the human mind and spirit. Jeremy Lent's vision for an ecological civilisation presented itself in this context as the future to which we could all look forward, when we have developed these capacities.
At the same time, the vital work of being able to integrate these knowledges, behaviours and insights among wider and wider social groupings, requires new tools and architecture. Without gentle containers for all this activity - whether homes, communities or cosmolocal networks - which cause newly liberated people to turn to each other and build relationship and trust, we may not get the traction we need to transform.
