Alternative Editorial: Incubating Ecocivilisation
Suddenly it's September and we are officially post-Summer, having barely got to Spring in the UK. Tempus fugit - time flies! - we might lament. But this has been no ordinary break from work rituals.
Whether or not we directly experienced the wildfires and floods across Europe, many will be coming back from summer holidays feeling that the annual escape to a warmer climate has lost its allure for ever. The dial has shifted on climate change - we know because our own front pages, which often held back the bad news, have reported frankly for the first time.
Time, meanwhile, is a fluid construct: one month can deliver the progress of a year, when given proper attention and appreciation. In many ways, the 'waking up' of the public sphere is the cause of acceleration in counter-activities everywhere: the shock generating much needed urgency. Less hurrying up and moving faster: more getting real, facing up.
For us, August held a shift in possibilities for the future that changed the way we look at all the hard work we have put in over the past six, almost seven years. As we integrate the four incubators, we’ve had some insight. Namely, that innovation in the current political sphere can create a tipping point in the wider world of transformation we need, to meet the multiple crises. Not so much through a singular bit of policy or economic commitment, but through a group of actions occurring simultaneously.
For example, a shift to proportional representation in UK General Elections would dramatically alter the distribution of seats in the UK Parliament. It would also make way for a lot of new parties. However, that needs to be backed up by a genuine shift in the broader understanding of what politics is in the wider society. Otherwise, it may not change the overall relationship between people and power: the field would simply get crowded with more candidates from the 2% who already count themselves into the political classes, but think they can do it better.
A new understanding of what we call socio-politics - arising from society with mechanisms for participation and creative deliberation - is required to hold any genuine shift in the establishment. Politicians have to know what 'the people' yearn for and are capable of. All of us need space and time to come to a new kind of self-knowledge, both as individuals and collectively. We need spaces to gather, to build trust, to deliberate, to future – everything you would recognise here as the activities of cosmolocal, community agency networks (CANs). Linking CANs together globally generates an unprecedented global commons, a resource to serve regenerative initiatives.
At the same time, such a shift in citizens action cannot be taken for granted as 'for the good'. Some will point at populism (sic) as evidence that people cannot be trusted to act in the interests of the whole: that there is no wider capacity amongst the majority of the population to think about the fate of the whole planet, as something impacting directly on the fate of their own community.
Others will respond by pointing at the actions of elites, proving that money and education does not guarantee wisdom on any of these fronts. When it comes to looking at a future unfolding that includes AI and rapidly deteriorating access to resources, any strategy must include an education in how to become capable of the such futures. This is the focus of our I, Planetarian and Future Being strands.
For any of these new ways of thinking and being to be a choice for people right now, we need a robust media system designed to gather information from the frontlines of development in all these spheres. In addition, we’ll need an editorial ability to join up the dots between what will otherwise look like fragmented spheres and disconnected initiatives.
Standard news outlets can easily represent what's occurring throughout society as chaotic and dangerous: it's a business model for selling subscriptions. But they could also be systems convenors, seeing the relationship between behaviours, events and places; able to generate helpful narratives about development that give people a better context for their own actions.
At the same time, there has to be a competence within that system to reach out to multiple audiences. Good news can sound unreal to those who are not already engaged in positive action: those disillusioned with politics would need to hear about such developments in a non-political language. As mentioned above, 98% of people are not invested in policy or what the parties are up to: a powerful vision for the future has to come in the language and logic of the socio-cultural sphere - this is the task of News from Planet A.
These four aspects of interdependency within any socio-economic-political system - individual activity and capacity, within collective structure and culture - are why we created four interconnected incubators for delivering a regenerative future. For those who are hearing that term incubator for the first time - and those that are unsure about the mechanism the incubators offer – this refers to four spheres of action, each with multiple, fundable projects: real things happening in real time.
Imagine that you are planning a wedding: you have a clear idea of what it means to each of the two getting married, what it took to get to this decision, how it brings their families together and what it means for their individual and collective futures. Yet the event takes place in real time, requiring long lists of small things to be achieved in order to pull off 'the big day'. Location, invites, menus, seating plans, clothes, music, speeches - each a subtle challenge with a budget attached.
This is the same for an incubator. It holds a complex vision, achievable through identifiable, fundable projects, each operating in a small way but coherent with the big picture.
Since we named and created regular space for actors in the field of each incubator to gather, discuss and plot, we have been noticing how much easier it is to integrate the four in one perspective. Partly because taking four quite distinct perspectives on the same unfolding reality deepens and strengthens each one in the light of the others. Thinking about our own personal development playing its part in the developing community agency networks, the wider story carried by a new media and new power structures, evolving to deliver on the shared vision… This is potent!
In this past month, what may have occurred as stand-alone events occurring in one of the incubator fields, had the effect of triggering development in the others. From the Future Being perspective Minna Salami's Advaya course on “sensuous knowledge” opened up a world of new agency for individual human beings in community. Her personal journey helped us to experience international relations as kaleidoscopic intelligence rather than as a zero-sum game between superpowers. The evocation of nature as an architecture of society recalled the work of CANs. Core to everything was the direct experience - through Minna's use of poetry and song - of a new political ontology: the idea that power can come through interconnectedness and wholeness, rather than through domination.
Secondly: taking part in several festivals this month - We Out Here, Vegan Campout, Lost Village and previously Realisation Festival - and hearing in detail about others (Buddhafield, Noisily, Campfire Convention) - gave us a strong sense of how, why and where people invest time and money to 'recreate'. Festivals in this sense are, themselves, incubators - both of new forms of community behaviour and of future social narratives. For many they are rites of passage, learning spaces for self-care as well as social being.
Within each festival there was a conversation taking place - partly within the talk tents opened up, but also in any convivial space, queuing for food or loos. Always 'small p' political, exchanging why we find ourselves connecting here. At We Out Here - a mix of different music tents in the hinterland of Jazz and Hip-Hop – they featured many artists sharing their musical journey. It was something to witness such emotional exchange - there were tears - between a predominantly white audience and stories of black struggles to be seen and heard.
Vegan Campout meantime, saw a majority RegenA audience luxuriate in the company of others who hold all forms of life inviolate: a rare space allowing them to develop their agency and strategy. On the last day a gloom settled over the crowd as they prepared to leave 'their people' behind and face a hostile world. Festivals - the gathering of tribes - can be oases for so many fully awake to the turpitude of our current socio-ecomomic-political world.
Thirdly, several new media outlets, capable of holding the complex story of system change moved into relationship with us this month. In our Daily Alternative news blog, we have reported on Manchester's The Mill, more recently on Desmog's blog on climate change and Perspectiva's substack - all bringing the integration of I-We-World into a future narrative. The News from Planet A incubator is steadily bringing them into a new media system capable of reporting the new arising, in ways that are attractive to those who care less.
Fourthly and maybe most energetically, several meetings held with tech designers and innovators gave us hope - that what has been happening fractally over the past six years may be on the cusp of getting connected globally. More on this as it unfolds next month. But working closely with TruLuv on their new apps for a more emotionally generative experience of the internet; with RealVentures on their quest to develop integral learning for the 4th sector; and with Seeds India to use AI to help generate resilience in communities struggling to thrive all over the globe…Innovators are moving up a gear. Will this be a techno-ecocivilisation?
As ever, please join or send us your support. Acceleration required.
