The “Climate Crisis” we face is a drag. It is now more than ever apparent that the permaculture/ regenerative agriculture/ carbon farming community has the more efficient solutions to sequestering carbon and reversing the negative effects of sea level rise, rising temperatures, and ecosystem exploitation. It also appears that these ecologically-based solutions may or may not take place at proper scale soon enough. What I’ve personally discovered in researching this topic is the shadow of climate solution culture: being the lack of skills and practice needed to overcome old world conditioning. Fear-based scarcity has been the strongest opponent to shifting to eco-harmonious lifestyles. The patriarchal oppression continually pins people of the same worldview against each other on issues such as sources of harmful emissions, energy politics, and climate legislation. But this lack of coherence needed for a climate revolution is only one of very many symptoms caused by a culture of fear. I’ve seen scarcity and fear disrupt the progress in regenerative businesses, intentional communities, and in the midst of direct action and civil disobedience.
Group Photo at the Global Climate March in Norfolk, VA. This was the regions largest march to date. Photo Credit: Michael Link
As many of us already know, once we collectively break these barriers of fear and scarcity, we can interface with the rest of the world with more efficacy, moving regenerative solutions closer to their tipping point, when solutions can be made accessible to the masses. In breaking these barriers, philosophical hermeneutics can be a helpful guide.
Greenpeace activists hold a banner reading “Mister Hollande, renew energy” at the top of the Arc de Triomphe during a protest on the Champs Elysees avenue in Paris, France, December 11, 2015 as part of the World Climate Change Conference 2015 (COP21). Photo Credit: REUTERS/Charles Platiau
Our contexts determine our outcomes. If we work to develop a worldview that is authentically ours, our outcomes and our embodiment of our worldviews will so be. Just as inter-subjectivity has a role in philosophy, it has a place in ecosocial justice dialogue, a conversation within which I’ve seen little of this crucial intersubjectivity. The main problem (and potential solution) within this dialogue is accessibility: People who are just trying to make $ and enjoy life don’t make time to take to the streets and spend their energy and resources on solutions like direct action, teaching community development, or community gardens . If the largest problem we face as a community is the inaccessible nature of our work, how is some complex philosophical approach to what we already do anything but decrease accessibility?
Protester at the Global Climate March, Norfolk, VA Photo Credit: Michael Link
The nature of hermeneutics can begin to explain. “Concepts such as; inter-subjectivity, Being, authenticity, fore-structure, pre-suppositions, prejudice, temporality and history all help to enhance health and social science researchers’ understanding of his [Gadamer’s] theory [of philosophical hermeneutics] and its application.” If accessibility is the problem, a new approach to language, rhetoric, and the rebranding of climate crisis (the fear of which often results in escapist reactions rendering many apathetic) might be a solution.
Greenpeace activists climb on 7 crane at the coal power plant building site of Vattenfall in Boxberg. They hang a huge Banner from the crane reading: Vattenfall: Stop building! Climate protection instead of brown coal! Smaller banners at the other cranes read:Stopp CO2! Photo Credit: GreenPeace International
That hermeneutics can offer more accessibility in climate dialogue and regenerative solutions is an idea which sparked my interest after I took a survey earlier this year, sent out by the Next Big Steps in Permaculture program of the International Permaculture Convergence. The survey was a great step in the right direction in the global discussion in determining priorities to establish as the permaculture and active climate conservation movements grow. As I took the survey, I felt that by providing an area for people to describe their projects, there was an element of allowing contextual opinions to reveal themselves. For example, for someone involved in culturally appropriate farming, accessibility to permaculture educational resources may be “most important”, more so than number of permaculture convergences held.
Complete The Next Big Steps of Permaculture Survey here https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/?sm=3UAtnvsgbfK8tPbBjgzyqWf3pXaHflvCDdPmWO6cQYk%3d
This acknowledgement of inter-subjectivity in the health of organizing a growing movement is a practice that itself is slowly and necessarily expanding. What I’ve noticed in discussions throughout the internet and in the 3D realm is that the largest disagreements between people who have generally the same views on solving earth’s most pressing issues have loads to do with context, bias, and prejudice. This outer zone of permaculture which connects us to the rest of the population, where we interface with the general public through day to day interactions and even between ourselves and other humans is the buffer zone between our familiar system and the external. It is the cultivated wild zone in a cultivated ecological system. In my search for learning more efficient tactics in developing my personal ability to interface with more accessible language and overall efficiency, I’ve turned to a Gaia University Bachelor’s Program. This program is educating 20 earth actionists at a time who are spreading the tools they’ve gained in the program to their own circle of friends and family.
“The wheel of climate action turns slowly, but in Paris it has turned. This deal puts the fossil fuel industry on the wrong side of history.” -GreenPeace International (Photo credit: Yann Arthus-Bertrand / Spectral Q)
Gaia University has taught me that in caring for myself, others, and the planet, it’s important to do what we call a Life and Career Review, before going to do the on-the-ground work. We talk about the metaphor of the inner landscape in permaculture, and before interacting with the inner landscape, we must first observe it thoroughly, as we must in designing any ecological landscape. This process of observing our conditioning, intersubjectivity, and behavior patterning thoroughly is essential in developing ecosocial literacy and life design. It’s essentially a hermeneutical breakdown of foundational elements which Jungian practitioners call “individuation”. Some would say that these reflections of our own biases, prejudices, and histories from a non-biased, truthful, and honest viewpoint is the most important work there is to do in this lifetime. It’s compassionate self observation, and an essential aspect of inner landscape work. By encouraging the climate action and ecosystem defense communites to make this effort to decondition patriarchal prejudices and and behavior patterning, we can make a more efficient impact in our day to day life, and in representing ecosocial justice to the rest of the world.
Climate Protester in Paris at the COP21 UN Climate Summit Photo Courtesy of: 350.org
Not all of our patterns of our inter-subjectivities and histories necessarily need deconditioning, which is why it is so valuable to first observe them all and sit with them before interacting with these symptoms of our cultural conditioning. For starters, observing our subtle actions throughout the day, even down to how we look at people when walking down the street, where we sit in a cafe, which plants we love most, and why what makes us happy makes us so. This is where the most important skill set we can develop exists: the worldview gap between ourselves and potential allies in the general public. Our daily patterns speak volumes to our conditioning, and after noticing these patterns, we can begin to do the inner work to transform ourselves into healthier, more efficient evangelists of effective ecosocial restoration. By doing an effective Life and Career review and using intersubjectivity effectively, we can prevent overzealous restoring of the inner landscape without first observing and identifying what needs tending, causing more interpersonal waste than yield.
Image courtesy of 350.org
In Gaia University, students take a look back at where they’ve been, what has happened, and where they’re going. Then they work on deconditioning some of the harmful symptoms of cultural programming they’ve endured. So perhaps, in self administering a perspective review in daily practice, ecosocial restorers can come closer to the basics of where they need to go and how. This perspective review is when we follow our unconscious belief systems to their roots, and identify whether they are authentically ours, or whether they are a product of our cultural conditioning and other oppressive world views. Only after embarking on this personal journey can we speak clearly and authentically. Only in speaking clearly and authentically, can we have constructive dialogue and action in spreading the skillsets to climate restoration to more of the public. Since it’s estimated by various groups that that we only need between about 1% and 12% of the global population to perform a globally effective resistance, we don’t have to engage everyone. We don’t even have to engage most people, or even one quarter of the global population. In America alone, 58% of people say they recycle. What if half the people who recycle in America could be engaged in a dialogue that assumes ecological and human exploitation must change? It seems that as permaculture and sustainable living popularity expands, it won’t be impossible to encourage enough people to help turn the tide.
The frontlines of the Global Climate March, Norfolk, VA. Photo Credit: Kimberly Spiegel
Hans-Georg Gadamer says that “One must bear in mind the way that our language can presage our philosophizing, insofar as one seeks to make clear the implication of the words used by philosophy”. In our discussions of ecosocial restoration, for example, it is important to understand the context of our language and belief systems, whether they are authentically ours or conditioned, where we are in the process of learning and teaching them, and where it’s all moving on an interpersonal and collective scale. Some say that our climate is a reflection of our collective unconscious and that scarcity and colonization has effectively dominated conservation and justice efforts. Our collective dialogue in reference to eco-activism, as well as conversations among anti-war protesters, civil rights disobedients, and conservationists like Edward Abbey and Henry Thoreau have been oppressed, but we can transform this situation. The future of our species has everything to do with decolonizing ourselves and our dialogue. Once we achieve interpersonal and intrapersonal worldview healing, the regeneration of our ecosystems will quickly follow. We have all the techniques and strategies to restore our ecosystems and they are relatively easy to put into practice, but until we do take the work of collective individuation into the climate conversations and climate actions, we will continue to hit massive barriers in implementing our ecosocial restoration work.
Image courtesy of Climate Games. Check out their inspiring and creative actions at www.climategames.net
The good news is that it appears we’re on the brink of figuring out how to empower and encourage this global dialogue. Through the local food movement, ecological conservation, anarchism, climate politics, eco-business, eco-tourism and (increasingly) permaculture, we’re becoming slowly more conscientious in our consumerism and more familiar with our resistance. The next pragmatic step is the trending of collective transformation toward a more compassionate culture whose conditioning is healing. It must start with the ecological community and ripple outward. Sometimes our excitement to move forward obscures our ability to be patient, which in itself perpetuates scarcity. I’ve found that in this gargantuan task of transforming climate perspectives into intrapersonal perspectives, Ethan Hughes and the Possibility Alliance are true north. These role models are utilizing hermeneutics in combating patriarchy and climate change by cheering on small victories, small transformations that happen everyday, and, you guessed it, doing the inner work as an integral aspect to on the ground climate restoration and direct action.
Local Musician Kelsie Mcnair performing at the Global Climate March in Norfolk, VA. Photo Credit: Hen Cho
In hermeneutics, cultural conditioning is not directly described, so far as I can tell. It’s implied, however, through the study of history and prejudice. Had Gadamer and Heidegger been political revolutionaries, or even ecological conservationists, I suspect they’d have some points to make about why ecological resistance is not at its tipping point, and why it isn’t accessible to the masses. Permanent Culture, they might say, makes the assumption that a species can maintain relative permanence. If resilience is a “measure of how much disturbance an ecosystem [or species in our case] can handle without shifting into a qualitatively different state“ then who is to say our species is resilient, without the context of our species history? Perhaps hermeneutics says that the history of our species has informed us that we will remain at the top of the food chain, or evolve higher up on it, but that we have unintentionally designed a species disturbance which is beyond our ability to handle without shifting into a qualitatively different state? Just the opposite, we might say that we’re equipped to be resilient in the disturbance of imminent climate change because of the very fact that we are moving toward a shift in cultural and ecological restoration.
Get Mark Shepard’s essential guide to restoring Landscapes with Permaculture Design here: http://www.amazon.com/Restoration-Agriculture-Mark-Shepard/dp/1601730357 Photo Courtesy of JustAFarm.org
No matter the outcome, the present moment requires more compassion, more active listening, and more intrapersonal reflection, whether or not we are to handle the disturbance of climate change or prevent our nearly “successful species” from shifting into extinction. There is hope in the work we do, and if we are able to come together in dialogue with more awareness of our own contextual subjectivity, less can be said and more can be done. It’s important to remember that each day, we evolve into a more resilient species, more able to transform from the inside out.
