One of the benefits of getting older – as humans - is that we can look back and remember how it felt to be younger, without being subject to those youthful feelings. Of course, the memory cannot deliver the same feeling – precisely because of the change of conditions in which you are now observing the past. You are no longer at their mercy.

However, you can articulate the symptoms – the overwhelming nature of the emotion for good or bad - more freely, from an older vantage point, than you could have done at the time.

Human development is naturally in the language of progression, from birth to death, with childhood, adulthood and – if you are lucky – elderhood inbetween. It’s thought of as a linear process. Yet at any given time these markers are laden with power dynamics, making them difficult to leverage as a healthy life narrative. Children are deemed childish; elders are deemed old – both qualities that weigh against either stage of life being welcomed to speak usefully.

On the other hand, both young and old perspectives are enlightening from a wholistic viewpoint: to be child-like can be usefully naïve. Helping us to see the future more freely, less encumbered by the baggage accumulated over years of interactions with other people. Elders meantime, are more than old; they have a lifetime of processing experience. They embody more data – physical, emotional, spiritual – than those younger than them. Imagine a world in which that was truly valued and engaged with.

The Journey of Individuation: Unraveling the Self

It’s not hard to see why parents often skip a generation to feel their own true value. Their own children often see them as the authority standing in the way of their own self-expression; whereas their grandchildren are more grateful for the attention. Growing up is a process of individuation and that often takes the form of rebellion against those in charge. Without direct responsibility for the day-to-day education of the child, grandparents appear less controlling, more supportive. This can also be the case in movements, where the elders are no longer the managers.

Nature – or to be more precise, the language we assign to nature – allows more contrast. We don’t describe complex power games between caterpillars and butterflies, although they must be endemic. Instead, we observe a period of intense breakdown between early and late stages, which we call the pupa (or more specifically for a moth or butterfly, the chrysalis).

Chrysalis is a time between worlds

The transformation from caterpillar is described as brutal: the entire entity breaks down and digests itself, leaving a kind of soup from which to remodel a future butterfly. Elements of the original that were always present but not yet active – the imaginal cells – begin to frame the new entity emerging. Nevertheless, no two butterflies – even after categorisation – are entirely alike.

In a family with all generations present, this might echo some of the experience of adolescence where parents barely recognise their youngster turning teenager. What happened to that cheeky yet compliant child? Yet if there is enough patient holding of space for the adolescent – often with the help of grandparents - he or she will become somewhat recognisable as family again, as they move into adulthood.

The child in question might never understand the process they went through until much older with children of their own. As far as they were concerned, they were fighting for their survival – via their identity, their rights, their uniqueness. Looking back, they might see that as struggling to develop the capacity to hold themselves as sovereign. To become independent.

Perspectives of X, Y, Z and A

Why the long preamble to this week’s editorial? Partly to presence the different perspectives on this moment of socio-economic development: how it looks different to Gen X, Y and Z and RegenA and why that matters.

Gen X, having matured in a patriarchal, colonial, post-industrial public space are largely experiencing the present as a break-down. Having lived through the aftermath of the emotionally liberated 60s without correcting the growth economy they’re vulnerable and distrustful of hope, often turning on themselves and each other.

Like caterpillars with strong memories of limited agency, forced to work hard to eat, in flight from predators, the sudden chaos of a changing environment in Spring – coming to life – is hard to process. It’s a ‘time between worlds' when the old has to give way but there’s nothing new appearing. There’s little energy for creativity and a yearning for stability. Instead, it – we - break down and start to attack ourselves. Yet even as we’re doing that, we begin to see a future in disconnected possibilities. The ‘imaginal cells’ of Gen X seize upon the unpredictable, like utopias (ref), artificial intelligence and in some cases, their grandchildren.

For Gen Y, the times present more as activism and entrepreneurialism. Having lived through the early days of the internet, experienced a steep curve in our personal and collective agency, there’s plenty of protest, righteousness and frustration among them, as they wake up to the wrongs of the past. Polycrisis, permacrisis and metacrisis become words of the year for Gen Y as a million plus projects spring up to experiment, prototype and prefigure our way forward.

Because of the ubiquity of the internet, these experiments are taking shape all over the world, often in direct relationship to each other. These cosmolocal activities become strategic about their agency by joining up and offering each other tools and practices from around the world. This is true not only of green groups reaching for ecocivilisation, but also freedom-seeking groups developing (and escaping) ‘new world order'.

Gen Z echoes the later stages of the pupa as the increasingly recognisable butterfly starts to disaggregate the imaginal cells into groups assigned to different parts of its emergent system. These younger ones are less defined by the problems of the past and more alive to their own needs and desires in the face of multiple crises.

That can mean ditching the work ethic in favour of more fluid and rewarding lifestyles. Or defying what’s understood as best practice in favour of what has energy. Some are very intent on planetary health; others on having their own way in unprecedented fashion. Yet across the board they are wired for more diversity of input than previous generations. Unlike the rest of us, digital natives were schooled by the internet on their phones more than by teachers in classrooms.

So, who is RegenA? That’s a term we nominated for young and old alike who are prepared to think of this time as the beginning of history, not the tail end of it. Those who can accept the developmental journey we’ve all been on in relation to a toxic past (ref) -

one that has nevertheless created the conditions for its own infinite transformation. Who can see the inevitability – and therefor the need to embrace – diversity of input, agency and histories of power.

RegenA are those that have clearly in their mind that ecocivilisation can emerge from chaos in the same way as butterflies can emerge from pupas – even if they sometimes fail to. And they are prepared to give full attention to, invest in and transmit widely that possibility as a way of being fully alive. Knowing that the daily struggle to keep our own vision going and taking shape around us has a direct impact on our communities and planet. The story we are telling ourselves is the story, eventually, we will tell our grandchildren.

One of the early initiations of RegenA is Planet A – a ‘place’ we can call home. It’s not the Earth that Elon Musk considers trashed, or the alternative planet he and others would like to escape to. Planet A is our current world re-imagined, populated by a human race reinventing itself. We can experience it as a virtuality, a future coming into being through the four entry points of self-sovereignty, cosmolocalism, a new media system, and the workings of a parallel polis. But for some people – individuals within communities distributed unpredictably throughout the world – it's already more real than virtual

Independence march

This Saturday, standing in George Square, Glasgow, commemorating ten years since the last referendum for independence in Scotland, we could feel a weaving in and out of the virtual and the real. Certainly the dream of independence, in a crowd determined to celebrate that, conjured up Planet A.

We enjoyed a beautifully diverse line up of speakers, intent on shared ownership of a nation waiting to emerge out of – and be independent of – a Britain that’s lost its way, as it lost an Empire. Each of them had a different personality and form of agency – film maker Jane McAlister documenting the human emotion of giving everything for a cause; trade unionist Gordon Martin and BiS Founder Gordon MacIntyre tantalising us with stories of genuinely co-created societies; Green MSP Ross Greer defying current headlines with long term commitment to political collaboration across division; Iona Soper as a thrilling anti-nuclear activist conjuring up post-war worlds and singer Iona Fyfe showing that songs can seize the day . It was like a Spring garden with different buds and flowers grabbing our attention, yet sharing a stage.

Topping and tailing the event were AG Co-initiator Pat Kane and First Minister Hamza Yusuf. Pat with his feet planted on Planet A, talked about Independence as a Peace Project, an ecocivilisation, a massive technological opportunity and grassroots transformation. “To become independent” said Pat, “we each have to be independent, while seeing where greater interdependences lie”—and this is what it can look like.

While Humza was less prescriptive, he fully brought an energy for independence that is sorely needed. No amount of policy making can substitute for the courage and belief in the Scottish nation that the First Minister displays, in the face of much hostility on the ground. Taking a stand against war, against racism and against the media’s story of the collapse of a movement brings the natality – the birthing energy – any future will rely on.

Yet Scotland needs concrete steps and tangible architecture to show the relationship between what Pat is evoking and the SNP can currently manifest. If the leaders – in Holyrood and in the wider Scottish culture – profess belief in the people of Scotland, then they’ll have to build the architecture to activate their agency.

This does not simply mean opportunities to ‘hear the voice of the people’, as manifested in opinion polls that offer no further action. There’s only limited energy that can come from top-down organising – the agendas set by those already in official power, still deeply defined by, and in reaction to, Westminster. Vital energy comes from the people themselves becoming independent – able to self-organise through assemblies, pol.is, community agency networks, and creative experiments. The government’s part is mostly in releasing resources to them through land, buildings and energy production, as a “partner state” to community power. This would be the Indy movement maturing.

Going back to the images and methods of metamorphosis, Scottish Independence appears to have entered its pupa stage. The old caterpillar form – embodying the Westminster culture of division and powerlessness for the people – is clearly dying out. But the butterfly is not yet visible to all but a few whose lives are radically invested in the better future coming.

For all intents and purposes, it looks like chaos – an interregnum with all its accompanying dangers. At the same time, the imaginal cells are present, doing their work, midwifing the future.

For those like ourselves, who have only recently re-committed to the territory, Scotland is an exciting place to be.

Alternative Editorial: Becoming Independent