Preparing for an Emergent World

The movements are the imaginal cells of a regenerative future

Nature Series, Wolf Pride: https://www.behance.net/gallery/30648609/Surreal-Nature-Series-Wolf-Pride

A threshold is not a simple boundary;

it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms and atmospheres.

Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience

or a stage of life that it intensifies towards the end into a real frontier

that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up.

At this threshold a great complexity of emotion comes alive:

confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope.

~ Thresholds by John O’Donohue

We are at a ‘hinge of history’ writes Stuart Kauffman in his book Humanity in a Creative Universe quoting Thomas Cahill. “Our thirty or more civilizations across the globe are weaving together, in part driven by globalization of commerce and of communication,” continues Kauffman.

However, this globalization of commerce and of communication has gone terribly awry catapulting us into a degenerating and disintegrating world. We are faced with the imminent prospects of the sixth mass extinction; of insurmountable and snowballing inequality; of growing polarization and extremism; and of a fragmenting and fractured world. Humanity's bid to make the unfathomable mysteries of this planet knowable and solvable have failed spectacularly. And the tyranny of scientism and technology has overwhelmed us. Trying to win at this system which is obsoleting the capability of life on earth is psychopathic. The time has come to reimagine a new ‘mythic framework.’ “What might a new ‘mythic structure’ be that can further guide us as we co-create what we cannot prestate?” asks Kauffman in the book mentioned above.

The simultaneous crises across the spectrum—from political to economic, social and ecological to spiritual—foretell a dying civilizational and cultural narrative. A narrative whose underpinnings are not only outdated but also harmful. As we stand on the threshold of this dying narrative, it is time to take a deep breath, lift our heads, look around, and look within. This is a moment of collective reckoning. On this side of the threshold lie the worn out, broken systems perpetuating extraction, exploitation, expropriation, and exclusion. Across the threshold lies the future—an opportunity to reimagine ourselves and our world—an inherently emergent future that is waiting to be co-created. A future whose whispers can be heard. “On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing,” wrote Arundhati Roy.

It is evident that a return to ‘normal’ isn’t an option. What was deemed ‘normal’ was the normalization of an intensely pathological world order. The churn and upheaval we are experiencing around the globe are literally the death throes of the old order—much like the thrashing of the dinosaur that knows it’s fated to die. And from the debris and decay of the old, the new is already arising. A spiritual rebirth is taking place whether we can sense it or not. It is a confused mess of being and becoming, collaboration and co-creation, hopeful and creative uprisings. It is becoming apparent in multiple ways—through the movements dotting the globe, from the fearless voices rising from the unseen edges and margins.

They know firsthand the futility and the hollowness of the current narrative. They have experienced displacement and have seen their lands expropriated by large corporations with support from their government. They have been excluded from the fruits of progress and suffered only the fallouts. They have been forced to labor for a pittance in the mines and forests that were once their homes. They have witnessed their forests defiled, waters desecrated, children ill from the toxicity.

They know firsthand the insidious and treacherous lies behind the stories of progress and development. As the world grapples with unmitigated and unchecked climate crises, ravages of a pandemic, alienation and polarization within societies and nation-states, rising authoritarianism and demagoguery, and a failed neo-liberal capitalism, it is time for deep introspection. Is this the world we signed up for?

The movements are a harbinger and symbol of globalization of a different kind. They are not driven by the interests of trade and commerce or of global political and corporate power. The bedrock of the movements are values of life denied for centuries—our ineradicable interconnectedness, the wellbeing of all, and the right to sovereignty and dignity. The movements are akin to nodes in a network that carry the ‘imaginal cells’ of the future. These nodes harbor the seeds of the future narratives—heterogenous, diverse, varied narratives which are being woven together into a pluriversal world. They harbor dreams within them when the very act of dreaming is subversive. They symbolize a boundaryless and boundless world that the globalization of commerce and communication failed to bring about. The hegemony of the old narrative is fading away.

The new narratives are the voices of many—connected across countries and nations, forests and islands, villages and cities—by values, beliefs, and wisdom sourced from the deepest of humanity. A wisdom that arises from living an entangled life with the living planet that is their home and provider of livelihood. They have long been stewards of their ecosystems—long before colonization, imperialism, industrialization, and then globalization displaced them. They are once again becoming the harbingers of a new civilizational order—unencumbered by the one-size-fits-all Eurocentric narrative of development and progress. A world that operates beyond the narrowness of ‘isms’ and dogmas.

So new narratives are being woven. Strand by strand. Diverse contexts, cultures, communities are being woven together. Yet not striving for homogeneity. Heterogeneity is the foundational value—a pluriversal world where many worlds fit. This is no longer about ‘scaling up’ but ‘scaling sideways’, and when needed, ‘scaling down’. It is about entanglement, learning from each other, modifying, trying, failing, and then trying again.

This ethos is fundamentally opposed to the current world order of homogenous narratives, centralized power, global North controlling global South, and ‘aid’ as a means of whitewashing. Enough of aid – let’s talk reparations, wrote Jason Hickel. The narratives rising from the margins today are not seeking aid but freedom from the grip of corporate power and plutocracy. They are striving for sovereignty, agency, dignity, and democracy. They are asking for a truly egalitarian world where power and wealth are not concentrated in the hands of 1%. The movements are seeking to dismantle and destabilize the power centers so that common people have a better shot at living a life of dignity, so that all of life has a chance to thrive. So that the planetary apocalypse can be averted.

Hence, the powers that be are terrified of such movements, of any display of hope, of any signs of revolutionary or evolutionary visions. The movements are in a way a sensemaking apparatus of the Earth—they are spontaneously arising in response to local context and disturbances, but their combined power is much greater than the sum of their parts. They are embodying emergence at a planetary level. They are not only the planet’s immune system but also the containers for evolutionary emergence.

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What is emerging?

The idea of a world that is equitable; the vision of a world that is decentralized; the dream of a planet where all sentient beings have unequivocal right to life; the sense of a living planet inhabited and created by intersecting, intermingling, and interweaving of myriad life forms. In this universe, the center dissolves. It becomes a network of networks.

The universe always selects for diversity and differences because it’s these—deep synergistic relationships with differences that lead to fundamentally new emergent properties. ~Daniel Schmactenberger on Emergence. Hence, the very premise that a hegemonic narrative can rule the universe is as paradigmatically false as the idea of the universe as a machine and nature as a storehouse of resources. The universe is unequivocally showing us the failure of the old narrative.

The spontaneously occurring movements are a manifestation of agency as well as synergy across the differences. This symbiosis is giving rise to emergence—fundamentally new ways of being, collaborating, and co-creating. The local movements now have global impacts leading to wholly new ways of envisioning being and thriving on this planet—not as fragmented and warring nation-states but as all of humanity. They are creating an awareness of all of us as facets of one integrated reality where the well-being of all is deeply interconnected.

 “If everything is connected, then the consequences of every choice and act and word have to be examined,” wrote Rebecca Solnit. We are at a collective moment of transformation, where a shift in consciousness and conscience will determine whether the planet and all lives on it will thrive or implode. As we hover on this threshold of transformation, it is time to take pause, take a deep breath, slow down, and make our choices. Choices that arise from our deepest truths, that honor the humanity of all, and that protect the most vulnerable—human and beyond human. Choices that openly denounce the anti-human and anti-life forces that seek to profit, polarize, segregate, and antagonize societies and communities against imaginary enemies. Each choice we make is a vote for the kind of world we want to inhabit, and we want our children to inherit.