The Re-Greening of our Minds

Have you heard about the analogy of our guts being like gardens? Hundreds of bacteria, both beneficial and not, are growing in our guts. Depending on what we eat, the probiotics we consume, and other factors, some bacteria can take over like invasive weeds... pushing out the good stuff and decreasing the diversity of life growing within us. This can have a domino effect on the rest of our systems.

Last summer I went to a fantastic workshop on social entrepreneurship, where the instructor suggested that our minds are also like gardens. Our minds provide fertile soil, where all kinds of thoughts and ideas can grow. Most everything we grow in our minds are transplants from somewhere else. When we focus on thoughts or ideas, we are watering them and helping to firmly root them within our consciousness  - they become a part of how we perceive our life experience, they define the perception of our very own existence.

After weeds take hold in our minds, how do we metaphorically get on our knees and start pulling them up? How do we regenerate our soil and invite the wildflowers to return? How do we restore ecosystems of the mind? The NEAR sciences (Neuroscience, Epigenetics, Adverse-Child-Events, & Resilience sciences) may have something to teach us here.

An interdisciplinary movement for a more Transformational Resilience is growing, where we acknowledge that we are not simply looking to "bounce back from adversity". We are in search of a deeper kind of cultural learning and healing that starts within each of our own psyches and extends out through our social interactions and collective actions.

What I'm learning through the emerging field of resilience planning is that there's no time to waste. Once we realize the urgency of putting Resilience into Action, we accept a responsibility to lead our lives in a more authentic, responsive, and proactive way. Tending to our minds, and within our circles of influence, we cannot rely on instructions or permissions because the actual conditions are much more dynamic. The mind expands beyond the dimensional realities of our actual backyard gardens and so it's not about planting a certain seed, at a certain time.  The practice is much more about listening to the winds of change, reaching to the skies with gratitude, and opening to the new seeds that blow in.

"Adapting is about being open – to your own potential and to signals from the complex, changing environment around you. It requires dismantling fixed orientations and unconscious biases, and being willing to leave your comfort zone to explore the unknown."

Our "comfort zone" is often to blend in with the dominant culture and walk the way we're told is the "right way". It's hard to stick out like a sore thumb. The wonderful thing about becoming a green thumb in mindfulness is that the more courage we have to step into the unknown, the more "right" it feels... and that right path is mysteriously acknowledged by the very forces we imagine to be holding us back.

We may still stick out, but the global movement Toward a Regenerative Society is growing and the network of those working on The Next System is not so underground.

The wildflowers are returning.

Depaving the Highway Paradigm

Do the environments we live within shape the ways in which we operate and interact?  Or is it the ways we operate and interact that shape the environments we live within?

I think we now realize that both are true, they reinforce each other in the same vortex pattern that natural systems evolve. It can be an upward or a downward spiral, and unfortunately considering the state of our current environments and current behavioral health conditions... it's not feeling too upward, yet current systems and structures continue onward with increasing momentum.

How do we steer the titanic? How do we re-code our default operating system and collectively adopt a new worldview before the icebergs... melt?

In our left-brain focused culture, we have a fairly calcified shell of systems that narrowly define and reinforce our definitions of "progress" and "success" - all of the ways in which we humans measure our own worth and potential. In this little shell within which we operate, we focus on what we know. We place certain expectations on how things will unfold, we tell and re-tell the same stories that define our "human nature". We act as if we know almost everything, yet over 95% of our universe is made up of dark energy and dark matter that we still haven't figured out. We travel down information highways, magnified through monopolized media, and we "make our living" in the same kind of constrained way. This all seems to be upheld in the name of "efficiency", yet nature has proven to be the most efficient system and does not organize and operate in this way.

It's as if our humanity, as a species, is traveling a vortex highway of collective psychic information. Everyone is moving so fast that it seems impossible to exit without a crash. How do we break through without breaking down? In my work to study and plan for resilience, I have noticed a division in approaches. The oldschool approach is like a highway paradigm, the noo-school approach is one of many paths:

The Highway Paradigm	Many Paths Paradigm
Protecting ourselves	Promoting planetary resilience
Linear processes, one-size fits all	Dynamic interactions, adaptive, complex
Single actors, silos, sectors	Networks, patterns, interactions, processes
Risks, vulnerabilities, needs	Assets, strengths, collaborations
What do I know? What can I do about what I know?	How do we collectively navigate our uncertain future?
Evidence-based practice, "hard" science	Practice-based evidence, traditional and cultural knowledge
Command-and-control	Engage-and-change; multi-level interaction
Mitigate risks to soften the blows	Harness challenges to catalyze transformation
Crises management	High performance management
Scarcity, limited resources	Alignment, leveraging, capacity building
Homogenous and dominant-culture decision-making,  reliant on historical patterns	Diverse leadership, invitations to diverge and experiment, risk-taking
Resistance to change	Listening and lifting up what is already working
Interventions;  a patchwork of strategies w/ single outcome objectives	Innovations;  investment in emerging community initiatives with co-benefits
Sustain; capacity for systems to remain unchanged	Adapt; Capacity to evolve and change in response to new conditions
Institutional rigidity, hierarchies, low morale	Feedback loops, participatory democracy, public-private partnerships, engagement, empowerment
Quantifying and predicting specific risks and exposures	Characterizing and clarifying community concerns and solutions
highlighting victims of tragedy and increasing warnings	Inviting stories of strength and survival, capturing and scaling up lessons learned

If our actions reinforce the highway paradigm mode, we can say that we are just a product of the system, we are "making our living". What are we willing to risk? How will we each start to change lanes, start to slow down, and shift the traffic patterns? And will this kind of incremental shift happen soon enough? Are we willing, as a human species, to get behind a 10-point plan for getting off the global highway paradigm? How are we honoring the trail-blazers, the traditional ecological knowledge, the natural systems that support and nurture us? How are we honoring those who are different from us? How are we honoring the "different" within ourselves? 

Resilience requires us to listen to each other and listen to ourselves. It is a call to follow our own personal truths, however far off the beaten path they may take us. Perhaps the most surprising thing I am realizing, is that we should not waste our time de-constructing the current mess we find ourselves in,  instead the solutions may be to simply broaden our perspectives and mindfully model something new and better. Exit the highway, it's time to go 'take a hike'.

Road to Resilience

What is the way to resilience? As climate change and economic projections become more clear, our future seems to become more uncertain.  What do we prioritize among the endless number of turns we could take to ensure a livable future?

This blog will skim the latest science and theory on building resilience within conventional planning disciplines, but will focus more on the emerging and experimental developments in social sustainability and behavior change.

The infographic below does a great job of defining disaster resilience and differentiating the practice of resilience planning from the more traditional emergency preparedness planning. It also maps out the kinds of strategies that we could prioritize and measure to track our progress.  I'm excited by the work of the RAND Corporation and their innovative approach to building stronger, more sustainable communities.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/infographics/IG114.html

As we continue to develop communications and tools for building more resilient communities, it will be important to expand the frame beyond natural disasters to encompass all of the stressors that communities face in their struggle to leave the world a better place. Recognizing that almost every thinkable discipline is in someway researching and uncovering the mechanisms of adaptation, evolution, and transformation, we must continue to humble ourselves within the greater patterns of nature.  Could there ever really be a "road" to where we want to go?

The more I contemplate community resilience, the more I see it as a de-paving of a highway paradigm, the re-greening of our minds, and the honoring of a collective compass that has always existed. It's genetic. It's galactic. It's spiritual. It's life in all it's brilliance. It's integrative resilience.