More resilience thinking

This is an update blog; telling a brief story of further thought-adventures into resilience, helped along by the continuing conversations which I wrote about last week... please, keep connecting...

Cultivating Mindbody Resilience through becoming present

There is now a solid tradition of ecopsychology research which challenges us to connect with the wild - in ourselves, as well in the more-than-human world. A central theme of some of this work is embodiment; becoming present to the extended ways of knowing available as we learn to tune into ourselves as bodies, through which we, in turn, can learn (or re-learn, taking a perspective that honours the indigenous that dwells in our hearts and bones still), to tune into the cosmos, to the feedback systems that we must hear to adapt and survice.

I am greatful to Helen Jeans, a recent graduate from the Centre for Human Ecology, who sent me the following quotes from her ecopsychology work during the course:

The body subverted
Although the contents of the mind develop from the body’s perception of the world a ‘curious inversion’ has taken place in ‘scientific culture’ so that ideas have become primary and felt experience secondary (Abram 1997, p.34).

Kidner believes this ‘curious inversion’ has enabled a power relationship to transplant the reciprocal relationship of the natural world. Instead of mutuality we now have domination with an associated value system in which, quoting Val Plumwood, the civilised is preferred over wild, modern over primitive, human over animal, conscious over unconscious, rational over irrational, culture over nature, mind over body (Kidner 2001, pp.9-10). The body is now dominated by the mind. For Kidner a kind of vicious circle is set up in which the ‘disembodied intellect’ is unable to find its way out of its own trap (ibid p.9).

This sense of ‘stuckness’ is echoed by Sewall who believes that in being defended against the body and its senses, western society has denied its ‘profound coexistence with the world’ (Sewall 1999, pp.83-84). She suggests this disembodiment results in ennui in which ‘Every place feels more or less the same. The distinctions are lost and wherever we are becomes close to nowhere. We move on.’ (Sewall 1999, p.85). She continues, ‘Divorced (from our bodies) we do not know our whole selves. In our desire for full self-knowledge and in the imbalance and uncertainty that arise in the absence of an embodied sense of being at home in the world, we feel an amorphous need to know something.’ (Sewall 1999, p.90). In this state we grasp at facts and labels that provide a sense of security and control and in so doing alienate ourselves even further (Sewall 1999, p.90-91).

Sewall suggests we even lose our capacity to adapt to the needs of the future. Severed from our senses we ‘easily miss the signals, the signs for adaptation, for co-evolving with the world-earth system as it is now, today. But reading the signs is a matter of survival…’ (Sewall, Laura (1999) ‘Sight and Sensibility: The Ecology of Perception’ (New York: Penguin Putman)).

The depth emerging from this analysis is both gripping and sobering; I am drawn again to questions of the extent to which my mindbody is numbed to the delicate energetic cycles of reciprocity; and then to questions of practices that can help heal this disconnection, day by day. I spent Monday evening with local Falkland friends, reflecting on the potential of transition towns and the spirituality that might help this along. I came away with something to do - of not waking up to the catalysms of the today programme on radio 4, but to a more intentional practice of staying whole in a transition from bed to the day...

Cultivating a politics of resilience through life-projects
As I write this piece, another email arrives, from Justin Kenrick, with the following quote:
Mario Blaser pg. 40

"Given that one cannot have certainty about the results of interacting with others (humans and non-humans), the most sensible way of relating to others is always to try to conserve the ability to respond to change - in other words to follow a politics of resilence"

I search google for Mario Blaser and 'politics of resilience', and feel an upsurge of connection and flow as I begin to read, despite the academese... here is a connection to a wild ontology (way of being in the world) of indigenous 'life projects', building resilience as alternative to the divisions and devisiveness of the late stages of neo-liberal economic globalisation which are tearing our earth to shreds. This is the kind of knowing that ecopsychologists are reaching toward; this time, resilience is framed within an indigenous world-view, from this place reaches deep into the earth to bring alive our voiced-over wild souls:

I see life projects as a politics and epistemology of resilience that assume relations, flows and openendedness as their ontological ground. There is a growing literature that has shown how Indigenous non-dualist ontologies open up an ‘intellectual landscape . . . in which states and substances are replaced by processes and relations’ (Descola and Palsson 1996: 12; also the contributors to Descola and Palsson 1996; Ingold 2000)...

An important body of literature has been devoted to how the lived experience embodied in [stories, prayers and rituals] is conducive, in practice, to the regeneration of ecosystems upon which Indigenous peoples depend (see Grim 2001; Ingold 2000). In his chapter, Peter Harries-Jones discusses how these embodied traditions constitute forms of ‘life-politics’ that are in direct opposition to ‘wild globalization’. These life-politics, which are attuned to the cycles of recursion (regeneration) of the environment, actively try to bring disturbances caused by human action within a range that can be absorbed within those cycles. Harries-Jones sees the concept of resilience as a promising bridge between these life-politics and the science of ecology. I also find the concept very appropriate for describing the politics of life projects.

The concept of resilience is connected to the central characteristics of the epistemologies and politics of life projects. According to Harries-Jones, the concept ‘embodies inherent unpredictability and unknown outcomes of interactions between ecosystems and the human societies’; thus it refers to ‘the conservation of the ability to respond to change’. I argue that, in contrast to modern epistemology and politics, unpredictability and unknown outcomes of interactions are taken as ontological conditions in the epistemologies and politics of life projects....

James Bay Cree cosmology sets human lives and animals in a world of persons bound by relationships of reciprocity and respect, a way of relating that Cree hunters extend even to those who deny respect to others, for to do otherwise because one insists one knows better is to reduce further the fabric of relationships that is the world itself. Knowledge in these ontological conditions cannot even be intended to be absolute. Knowledge is knowledge in context; it is relative. Given that one cannot have certainty about the results of interacting with others (humans and non-humans), the most sensible way of relating to others is always to try to conserve the ability to respond to change–in other words, to follow a politics of resilience.

Cultivating resilience through finding voice

I've been preparing again this week to welcome students from the MSc Human Ecology to Falkland in January for a workshop called Finding Voice. At the heart of our work together is an inquiry into practices of re-connection - with our creativity (when was that 'voiced over'?); with our wild selves; with healing communities from inter-generational trauma. Ultimately we are interested in becoming more fully ourselves; more fully human, able to stay present, strong, resilient with the burden of awareness of how the world is today. This is work at emotional and spiritual depth; what's an appropriate role for the 'head' knowing in relation to this...?

Cultivating Regional Resilience

My final 'resilience' update is the surfacing of a complex and potentially important if overly 'heady' approach, hosted by UCC Berkeley and funded by the MacArthur Foundation, to understanding the systems dynamics of resilient regions.

I started the cyber-journey by googling 'politics of resilience' and found the 'greater democracy' blog, which led me to Mike McDonald's work on Disaster Knowledge Management Systems and a definition of resilience from the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction:

The capacity of a system, community or society potentially exposed to hazards to adapt, by resisting or changing in order to reach and maintain an acceptable level of functioning and structure. This is determined by the degree to which the social system is capable of organizing itself to increase its capacity for learning from past disasters for better future protection and to improve risk reduction measures.

From here, I found links to a solid and well-funded programme called Building Regional Resilience - sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation with Building Resilient Regions Progamme, Berkeley

Resilience: Because regions are subject to economic and demographic shocks over which they have little control, the network focuses on regional resilience. Resilience represents a capacity to address short-term problems in ways that generate long-term success. The network seeks to show how particular features of regional governance—the actors, cultures, policies, and institutions of a region—contribute to resilience. What are the points of intervention, the type of actions, collaborations, policies, or institutions that contribute to regional resilience?

This is collaborative research work focussed on regions on the USA through a resilience lens; a full list of their papers is here. This is powerful, synthesising work applying ecosystems science concepts to regional planning; I sense it is also more than that.

How would it be to bring Mario Blaser into conversation with the folk from MacArthur and the Resilient Regions Network? Could the connected resilience of Blaser's politics connect with the rational models of the UCC researchers? And how about asking Justin and David Abram along, to help lead a journey beyond our heads, possibly out of the city, and to sink our collective teeth into the sensuous more-than-human continuum of life on earth? What would we bring back? More connected head-heart-hand practices for cultivating resilience?

lighting the resilience touchpaper through conversation with friends...

Since I created this blog two weeks ago, I've been bending peoples ears, testing the water. I want to write about some of the conversations I've had... also an experiment to see if a blog entry like this might help these conversations to continue.

My question, most of the time, was 'what's your gut response to my sense that what is needed now, more than anything, is to cultivate resilience'?

I write as I remember, perhaps the most recent conversations first.

David Abram spoke at Scottish Natural Heritage's spectacular 'morethanus' event in Inverness last week. David's deeply focussed message was for stories, and more stories, and not written down, but stories of our local places, told as we walk those local places, grafted onto the taproots of indigenous animism. Told with voices that growl up from within our animal body. His force-of-nature story-telling of the magic of the wild; of written language's divorce from oral connectivity between living beings in living places and the indigenous within us all... resonated at angry-love depth with Jay Griffith's 'Wild', and bounced off Mark Lynas' deep cry for climate sanity.

I hear that his call is about connecting language back to real beings; that depth connection with place and the more-than-human is the essential work for human ecologists, vital for resilience practice. David was able to visit us on his way home, suggested I check out Bill McKibbon's 'Deep Economy'. In our late-evening conversation, I also heard again a call for wild-words, and earthed stories, that can become more of my/our work in the world. As I write, I suddenly become aware of the paradox of writing these words into this blog... writing into cyber-space, hosted on a server thousands of miles away... is this in itself destructive of the consciousness that David was calling forth?

Mark Lynas was in a different place; a place of no time to delay; a place of the immense power of the local even in the face of our knowledge, dimly perceived, that we are living through earth's, fastest and biggest extinction event ever. Ever. His response to resilience was '... and vulnerability...', that the tremendous vulnerability of our ecosystems as they are at the present; the coral reefs and forests on the point of death.

After the SNH event, I talked with Tess Darwin, a friend from Falkland and also a visionary, working away within SNH, about the transformative potential of this work which SNH could support. Could wild-unwritten-place-based-storytelling be a core of a resilience strategy for the hundreds of communities of human and more-than-human communities that SNH has a mission to support?

Justin called by yesterday; we teach together on the 'Finding Voice' workshop I run every year here in Falkland, Fife for the Centre for Human Ecology Masters' programme; he's a trickster, calling himself and by extension me and you... to presence in our lives, with the way the world is. One of Abram's sensitive souls... working and living in two separate cities, with three young children.... responding to resilience by showing just how much the structures of work and family life work to cut away this life-force; and inquiring what it would take to create a far more resilient life...

Tara, my partner, has been unendingly positive; an amplifying and encouraging mirror to say 'you've had some daft ideas in your time, but this one isn't daft, this is for real, and it's needed'...

Tara was making soup for our guest last night when I popped into the village to join about thirty local folk to hear from Ben, from Totness transition towns movement. His gentle, paced way of describing the twin, converging apocalypses of climate change and peak oil... and their implication of re-localisation... left many in the room convinced and shaken. Tara and I have been living here for three years; this is the first time so many over-lapping groups friends and a wider network has come together in the village, organised by my friend and colleague at the Rural Leadership Programme Sibongile Pradhan. It was partly Rob Hopkins' presentation on this 'energy descent' movement that stung me into heightened resilience-awareness two weeks ago; Ben, too, was gently insistent that this one crucial factor at the heart of the movement's blistering global spread over the last year. Ninian, friend and Laird here at Falkland Centre for Stewardship, turned in recognition of our conversation last week (with Helen Lawrenson, the Development Director) where these local friends agreed with me that 'what else is there to do?'. I sense Ben's visit has been profoundly helpful in perhaps catalysing the first 'transition village Falkland' next January. Could we lead the way in Scotland?

Good friend and colleague Verene Nicolas told me that she's been dwelling on resilience for many months; that there is a book by this name in France which has captured the mood of the times and been hugely influential in France for the past couple of years. I sensed from both Alastair McIntosh and her, that evening, an affirmation that this is another doorway into spiritual service; another way of seeing the integrity of the community activism they embody in their home in Govan, Glasgow and way beyond.

I've chewed the ears of many more folk; Roddie, outdoor education specialist as morethanus, picked up that he was left in no doubt by our conversation that resilience in on the burner; Peter Merry, 'spiral dynamics' wizard in the Netherlands and motivator behind the Centre for Human Emergence, Netherlands, wrote a supportive email with multiple references to global-level resilience work - it's going to be a good while before I've digested all this; in the meantime, several of the links are up on the resilienceblog.

I play in a string quintet with Katherine, Sarah, Aby, and Peter; we've a gig coming up in a couple of weeks; I think I heard Katherine say that resilience 'makes sense' to her. Thankyou musical friends...

Finally, Mary-Jayne Rust gave a powerful talk to the London Guild of Psychotherapists two weeks ago, and invited me out to a coffee afterwards with her friends Viola and Zita.

As we talked about the resilience of the martial artist, centred, strong and flowing, not brittle; able to bend with change and stay alive with and embodied in the moment; and as I talked about local resilience as being those powerful webs of connection to a tribe, even if it's not in one place... we all seemed alive, engaged, enthused by life.

These are the kind of conversations I'd love to have more of; what other kinds of conversations are worth having just now?