At the UnConference this week (24th May), our hosts Canay, Rudy and Yuri were joined as usual by the CLT Team: Primavera and Michael. We were all lucky to host three incredible panellists to discuss Regenerative Cultures:
- Daniel Christian Wahl – Author of Designing Regenerative Cultures.
- Douglas Rushkoff – Media Theorist, Author & Host of Team Human.
- Ruth Andrade – Regenerative Impact, Earth Care & Giving @ LUSH.
Our lineup of great minds delved deep into defining what Regenerative Cultures are, diagnosing the issues with our current paradigm and how we can take steps to integrate.
Read on for a few snippets from this week’s two-hour discussion.
A few insights from our panellists
Daniel defined Regenerative Cultures as those that try to leave the world healthier, more abundant and more able to evolve than we’ve received from our ancestors:
“We’ve gone through centuries of degrading the biodiversity, resilience and productive capacity of this planet. We’ve also degraded our diversity in human languages, human cultures, and ways of seeing the world. Each of those was a huge amount of collective inheritance that we just squandered because fell a little bit in love with the power of technology and one particular way of seeing things.”
– Daniel Christian Wahl
Douglas spoke about the difficult job we face in moving toward Regenerative Cultures: persuading people who are conditioned into our individualistic, consumption-led paradigm:
“We’ve gotten stuck in the terrible twos of individuality and linearity, consumption and taking. So many people – particularly Americans – are going to see this as a loss and we have to help them through that more. Warnings through that, that that that fear and help them see no, no, no, this isn’t a loss. This is the big win that you’ve been looking for in all the wrong places.”
– Douglas Rushkoff
Ruth defined integration as a core principle of regeneration and stressed the importance of involving everyone in our cultures, not just those in privileged positions.
“At the moment, we’re still in our trade-off thinking: how can we have health or the economy? Or how can we protect nature and keep growing? We are speaking from a privileged position, but there are also people delivering food and working at hospitals, people that do not have the same privilege. So how can we design a way to integrate those people into a more regenerative culture, to hear their voices and create space?”
– Ruth Andrade
Daniel also tackled the issue of integration and how we changing our individual mindsets can make it possible:
“People speak about the move from ego to eco. But the real integration to living regeneratively is moving into a space where you serve yourself, your community and life as a whole in equal measures. When you understand that serving oneself and serving one’s family is enabling you to be better able to serve the rest of life, in the long term and the short term.”
– Daniel Christian Wahl
Do you want to get involved in the next UnConference? To ask questions, tell your own stories or simply watch amazing minds discuss the most important subjects of our time?
Visit theunconference.com to see the upcoming program, read more about our events and register for the next UnConference.
See you next Sunday!
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