It’s time to “compost” our current culture so it nourishes us with LIFE!
Welcome to the end of our world as we've known it, and that’s the good news! The end is showing up in all our interlocking polycrises with every aspect of our lives being involved—environment, energy, business, finance and economics, health, agriculture, food and water, education, justice, politics, cultural, community, relationships with other people and groups, and on and on. I believe we’re all well aware of the immense pain and problems our current culture has created in our world.
Trying to solve all these interrelated whole-system problems with the same scientific, mechanistic, reductionist consciousness from which we created them is clearly not working and is not going to work, no matter how hard we try. The more we keep trying to do that, the more we get into “insanity” territory of “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
In order to allow our new life-aligned culture to really emerge and support us, from my perspective we must (among other things) “compost” our current culture so that it can actually nourish and serve us as part of its transition, just as nature does.
In nature, when a plant or animal comes to the end of its life cycle, its Spirit/Life Force leaves the physical body. The body then transitions back into its elements, becoming compost that nourishes new life forms as part of the natural cycle of physical creation.
The same process applies to our less-physical creations, such as our cultural customs, attitudes, beliefs, habits, processes, and systems. These are based on thoughts and ideas, which then manifest in our physical world as various activities, behaviors and structures.
Composting our current Western scientific, mechanistic, reductionist, capitalist culture so it can serve us would include discerning, acknowledging, and appreciating what the life-aligned characteristics and benefits of this culture have been and are, and consciously bringing those beneficial aspects forward into the emerging culture.
This process will release our “hold” on our current culture and allow it to make its transition with honor, appreciation, and in service to us. Then this opens a space of transformation for our new life-aligned culture to really emerge and nourish us.
As Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller said, “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.”
Previously I have published blog posts with many specific examples of how our new life-aligned culture is beginning to show up, like sprouts of new green growth through cracks in concrete:
Bucky Fuller also famously said, ““You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Along these lines, John Fullerton continues to do breakthrough work in Regenerative Economics. As I see it, he and the growing community of people who have taken his courses are working on building a new model. Check out his White Paper “Finance for a Regenerative World” as well as his Webinar “Finance for a Regenerative World.” I found both of these very accessible for people like myself with no technical finance background. John demonstrates very clearly that economics and finance in the service of Life isn’t, and doesn’t have to be, as complicated as it has been made and is currently practiced.
So instead of resisting the end of our world as we’ve known it, I advocate for “composting” it, honoring it, and appreciating it, and allowing it to transform so that it truly nourishes us and our new emerging culture . . . for good . . . for real . . . for LIFE!