This episode is hosted by Boundaryless Conversation Podcast host Simone Cicero with co-host, Stina Heikkilä.

The following is a semi-automatically generated transcript which has not been thoroughly revised by the podcast host or by the guest. Please check with us before using any quotations from this transcript. Thank you.

Simone Cicero:
Hello everyone. So today we are here with Stina my co-host, with Daniel Wahl and exploring essentially together, how can weave some threads with regards to how the culture of regeneration and all the transformative movements that we are seeing can interplay an interconnect with the mastery of scalable organising and how we can indeed actually generate a scalable regeneration — I would say — and what does it mean for us in terms of capabilities, skills and capability of organising that our communities need to develop? We are recording this interview on April 6th, so in the midst of the Coronavirus outbreak, and so Daniel, welcome with us today.

Daniel Wahl:
Hello. Looking forward to the conversation.

Simone Cicero:
So, Daniel, from your first encounter with this systemic acceleration that we are all living, do you have already some visions that you have been able to entertain with regards to what type of experiments or what kinds of new ways of organising and what kind of cultures we’re gonna mature to back them, with regards to how these and other crises and transformations will push our organisational models and our stories of organising forward in the coming decades?

Daniel Wahl:
Hmm, big question. Yeah, it’s been three weeks for me now, being in lockdown and observing how quickly the world is changing, and how we’re writing this bizarre paradox now that on the one hand, we need to use this time to have deeper conversations and connect and explore what comes next. And on the other hand, I think just sitting in this mess for a while and listening to it and not jumping into action is also called for, because we’ve really not been in quite such a Kairos moment where suddenly so much changes so quickly that even people who worked for 20 years on systems change are somewhat surprised by it, even if we expected it. So, for me personally, I feel like it’s increasing the contrast, or everything just becomes so much more feelable rather than just intellectually grabbable. So, for example, I thought a lot more about how bizarre our justice system is, that we lock people away. And because being locked into a flat, you suddenly think about what it’s like to be locked away. And at the same time, also pushed extremely onto virtual communication and virtual social connecting in this time of physical distancing — I mean, social distancing — I think is incredibly degenerative. And as we’re doing right now, we need to really socially connect in this type of physical distancing. But yeah, I find it’s just showing how supposedly strong economies, unlike the US economy, that is ultimately a war-based economy that has always needed wars in the world to be as strong as it is because of the military industrial complex is now revealing itself as having a health system that in comparison to Europe is not really existing. And it’s at the same time so tragic to see it because so many people are suffering the effects of that negligence of a system that has focused on the wrong parameters of success. And I feel like on so many levels, that’s what’s happening. And to answer your question a bit more directly: what I feel as the inadequacies of a hyper brittle, globalised system that is all kind of supply and demand with large supply chains that use up enormous amounts of fossil fuels and have huge social and environmental externalities that we’ve just chosen to ignore is just falling apart. And it won’t take that long as the cascades of synchronous failure start kicking interaction that we will have severe supply line disruptions across the world. And for me, that is a chance to really drive what, for other reasons — climate change and ecosystems collapse response and the general rushing towards a cliff kind of awareness — I’ve been promoting for many, many years, which is a re-regionalization of production and consumption, but in a way that is aimed at global solidarity of all bioregions working in place to heal places to heal our relationship with each other, and to heal our relationship to the ecosystems we inhabit and ultimately, restore ecosystems health through through redesigning our economies, in much more regenerative bio regionally focused way. And I see that lots of people are working on this in different languages like Michel Bauwens, and the peer-to-peer network has really kicked into action in the last few weeks driving the conversation about what he calls the cosmo-local transition. And I like that term to a certain extent, because it’s really important that — as we build these structures of community and bioregional resilience — that we don’t do so in a way of closing the bridges and creating these little “island bioregions” and projects that are very inward focused. We need to pay a lot of attention to this process of community building and bioregional resilience building, but at the same time, we need to do so in global solidarity. And that’s why the Cosmos word is so important. We need to somehow coordinate across scales, from the local to the regional to the global collaboration and solidarity: how we now go about creating a regenerative future and taking this accelerator of COVID-19 into not just a response to a viral pandemic, but solving the deepening climate crisis that we were already in. And also admitting that the economic system that now so many people want to bounce back to immediately was actually far more murderous than the virus has been so far, and more so every day for decades. It’s time to redesign that system and not try to reboot it after we come out of lockdown.

Simone Cicero:
That’s resonating with a lot of the conversations that we’re having these days. And especially your suggestion to look into this as something that happens across the scales is really resonant and especially these double scale, you know, this double layer: that layer of global networks of knowledge and global networks of stories that we are creating on top of these technologies, of these networks that connect everybody. And then this lower layer that is more regional and more co-productive, more about organising together productions that are more human scale like, you know, the bioregional scale and regenerative approach. I think these are the two layers that we are all seeing and somebody talks about this as something that can generate more resilience and resistance to shock, somebody else can see and witness and envision a more transformative a more enriching you know, perspective of thinking about how we’re organising in a regenerative way. But these two layers are clearly coming up. And so my question is, sometimes I feel like we — this generation around 40 years old — is somehow in the middle between a generation that is younger, that is more able to interact with these global networks and social networks and the generation that we “left behind” or maybe a couple of generations that we left behind that were maybe more able, culturally prepared to really organise the economy and our social engagements at the local level at the regional level. And also the way they were much more used to the kind of economies than we are, of course. So when we think about ourselves, and we think about starting rethinking the economy at the bioregional generative level, my question for you would be: where do we start in terms of what constituencies are we looking for? What kind of skills do we need and what kind of approaches people from all over the world should put in place to start engaging with this new perspective of regenerating bioregional economies?

Daniel Wahl:
There’s something that I would like to briefly mention before we get to that question, which is somehow in these two layers, I’m sensing — and I’m also very much kind of just observing my own personal reactions to this and then assuming that maybe if I have them, this is actually a dynamic that other people might also experience — and there is an assumption that I see a little bit of a kind of creative tension between whether it’s to decide each and everyone of us how much energy and how much focus, how much creative gift and capacity do I put into truly coming “home to place”, really knowing my land, my region, my community, and really serving at that level, which is actually it’s facilitated by digital connections and technology — but it is an analogue world. It’s an embodied phenomenological flesh world of being in relationships with a region, with a landscape and with people, and then there’s this need to coordinate all our efforts as we have a global regeneration rising, which is across generations, young and old, stepping up to this role of being healers of our communities and ecosystems and ultimately healing the planetary situations and in that, in that process, healing ourselves. But for me there is this paradox of how much energy do we put into the local and into the global networking? I was aware of that for the last two or three years, even before this acceleration through the pandemic happened. And that is a kind of “tightrope” to walk, when you work, what I call working “locally” — globally and locally at the same time — in this scaling way, where the regional scale becomes critically interesting. Of course, there are these networks like the regenerative communities network is taking a bio-regional focus and working with bio-regions all around the world, then there’s a strong bioregional movement in the States that has never gone away since the first impulse in the 1970s — and particularly in the region of Cascadia — and then even on a completely different constituency like the medics that have come around this idea of planetary health, and this understanding that we really need to understand health as an emergent property in complex dynamics systems that are a nested it’s nested complexity from the local to the regional, from the national to the global, or you can even go down from the cellular to the organ health to the individual health and the community health. All of that is, is connected and affecting each other. And there’s a global alliance called the Planetary Health Alliance, which has its own magazine in The Lancet journal on planetary health and has put out all sorts of communications over the last few years building this 270 institutions strong global network of people in the medical professions talking about the link between environmental ecosystems health and human health and population health. And of course, that’s kind of had the contrast turned up on it enormously now in the pandemic, because we’re realising that these kind of cross-species, zoonotic diseases that jump from one species to another, are so much more likely in a heavily degraded ecosystem and on heavily pushed planetary biosphere. And so all of that is super important to work on that scale. But I’m noticing because — this is the bit that the two of us I think have to talk about it — because you work so much on the side of “how do we use technology to enable this movement and enable this process”. And it’s powerful, and it’s so needed for this work. And at the same time, how often do we assume that we need to use all these technologies and how do we get precisely what you were talking about: the disconnection between kind of digital natives and digital “immigrants”, maybe we need to, in order to build a healthy way of working with technology also create ways to not leave behind the people who are doing the vital work in place with the hands in the soil with planting the food forests of the future planting the agroforestry systems that we need to actually have a biomaterials focused regional circular economy that also feeds people in place with renewable energy. All those people are engaging in regeneration in a way that isn’t in front of a screen like you and me spend so much time doing. And I think we need to build the bridge between both of them. And I’ll stop here so you can come.

Simone Cicero:
Now that’s interesting. I think I came back often to Wendell Berry, in the latest months, especially in the latest weeks, I would say, and I do that because Berry offers quite a good framing and understanding and at least a conversation on two things that you mentioned basically in this quick feedback. So one is essentially the topic of specialisation. So, somehow we live into these specialised civilization at the moment, you know, where for example agriculture has been completely disconnected from the rest. So agriculture is something that is being performed by monoculture farmers and most of the time, most of us are completely disconnected from production of, you know, food or even from managing the landscape. So we kind of live these specialised and compartmentalised lives. And on the other hand, another point that Berry makes very, very tangible is that there’s no way that we can just delegate, let’s say, change to how we change our organisational models. So there is an inherently human and an inherently individual transformation in culture and in our expectations from life that needs to be complementary, let’s say, to the new organisational models that we experiment with. So I would say it resonates with your point that it’s not just about how we use our technology, but it’s also about how we choose to expose ourselves to certain aspects of experience that normally we have cancelled, we have completely removed from our life: for example the precious work that you mentioned — the work of regeneration — the work of all these people that are doing, this precious Landscape Conservation and Regeneration work.

Daniel Wahl:
Yeah, I sometimes think that if all of us were in the situation that you and I — like you in Italy, me in Spain — have been in, not being able to connect deeply with nature because we’re literally not even allowed outside to go for a walk or to exercise. If everybody was living that experience around the globe, maybe people would realise how deeply important that nature connection actually also is in their life, even if they previously lived a very techno-focused life that saw a kind of connection with more than human nature, like trees and having them going for a walk in a forest or in a park. And something that they weren’t actually realising is how much they were drawing also, from these deep… like Wendell is a farmer, he spends a lot of time doing the deep connection with our wider context that is life as a planetary process, that is “life creating conditions conducive to life”, and there’s no better way of being in relationship with that than growing some food and taking care of a particular piece of land and stewarding its health or intending to be of positive influence in the landscape. And I think that that’s where we need to somehow find a way to enable people to participate in those healing processes in their community in their bio-region. But at the same time, it is vitally important that because it’s all about participation, it’s also how we organise across scales and collaborate with each other, and help each other in an open peer-to-peer way that enables the kind of rapid innovation that we now see in response to the pandemic, where medical teams all around the world who — previously funded by Big Pharma — were keeping every little bit of research results secret in order to have a lead advantage on being the first to develop the new drug, are now sharing in order to just speed up the process for better innovation. And I think one thing that this current situation has also shown us is that we can unleash so much potential if we collaborate better, both at the local, regional, but also at the international scale. And so it is, for me, it’s so important that we find new ways to collaborate across scales that use technology. And we don’t somehow by default, then set up a system that those people who choose to put their effort more in the analogue part — which is also really important, like real deep connection to land — are disconnected that we have enough ways of building the bridges between the people that that hold the international connections and the collaboration and the people who choose to just want to be working on the ground. I think we need to keep that diversity, we’re keeping people like creating a future where if we’re not all constantly connected through our mobile phones, into this virtual space disconnected from where the world is changing that, which is what the techno focus has done at the moment. I’m not so sure if that’s truly regenerative, and I’d love to see how you see that because it’s like this love-hate relationship that I personally feel with technology: that I see how much it can give us, but I can also see how much by just “running with it” we give up so much else in terms of ways of being and seeing.

Simone Cicero:
Yeah, I would love to let Stina jump in. If she has some questions to add and I will offer a reflection after that.

Stina Heikkila:
Yeah, thank you. So I was listening very attentively to what you say and I grasped also from you know, some of your previous writings about this urge to somehow slow down and understand what’s going on before jumping into designing or using technology, like I was reading your series on Salutogenic Cities. So the city is a very interesting scale also in that, I mean, over half of the world population live in cities. So it’s something that requires a lot of attention. And what struck me from one of your articles was this idea that we need to pay less attention first on the design and the infrastructure, and first pay attention to this emergence of a regenerative cultural expression. And I think linked to what you were just saying now, what I think would be interesting to hear about is a bit of the timescale, I guess, because now we said things are moving very fast. So how “patient” should we be in this kind of dialogue and how do you see that, like, in this tension between having to have some kind of rapid response and taking the opportunity to speed up change, but also not letting go of that dialogue and the bridges that you were talking about?

Daniel Wahl:
One of the key frameworks in the technology that the Regenesis group — and the lineage of regenerative practice that comes from the teaching that Carol Sanford and Pamela Mang have built, and Ben Haggard, and Bill Reid, and so on — they all very often use this idea of a dyad where you have an activating force and a restraining force and the instead of bouncing either or back and forth between these two perspectives, you really look at both of them as creating a polarity that creates a potential that is really what you’re trying to unleash and work with. And for me, that’s, it’s slowing down in order to speed up or to not make the mistake that would actually then slow us down even more. And at the same time responding to this transformative moment is a bit of a paradox, orit is a polarity, it’s the same what I was talking about earlier, like: to what extent we can now imagine we didn’t have all these technologies right now in lockdown? We’d be completely isolated and there’d be no way to organise a network and have the conversation of what would we want to do differently if we’re now given possibly another three months of rearranging our responses to a very different world, when we come out of this situation. Because that’s the other thing, like to assume that that system could actually bounce back is also an assumption that is somehow pretending this isn’t gonna have cascading systemic runaway effects in the system that might even lead to the economic system that we had before, not being able to buffer it anymore. And finally breaking down which, which is a terrifying prospect and at the same time, it’s what’s needed in order to build a new system. So how do we bounce between embracing collapse and breakdown enough to say, yeah, there were structures that really no longer served and they need to break down and now is the opportunity to rebuild and that’s where I keep thinking that the bioregional focus is so important. Cities are just one of the epicentres of a bioregion. So it’s kind of, it would be a mistake to dream bio-regionally without always having cities in each bioregion. This whole relationship of how to provide for an urban population within the context of the ecosystem that urban population sits in, is 120 year old story that’s public, that the founder of town planning was saying “we need to plan our cities within the region”. And to come more specifically to your question between this deep listening process that needs to happen in place — that listens to the place — and the culture and the rapid response to the converging crisis. I think that it’s that deep listening, that actually is the beginning of a response. We don’t need to immediately put your systems and solutions in place, we need to really ask the deeper questions about what needs to change. And in that process, we all learn to think more systemically, to think in more dynamic evolutionary ways to not think of solutions or infrastructures or systems as something that we then cast in stone and that then our tram tracks that we’re in for too long in a world that keeps changing. So that the way to build dynamic responsive capability to constant change is to work with people in place and increase their capacity to share their unique gifts in that collaborative, regional response to being regenerative at the regional scale and at the global scale at the same time, as the only way that we can respond to this current planetary crisis. So I know this is sounds confusing because it is too confusing because it is a paradox. We literally, I think, are wasting more time if we rush into mega solutions too quickly, and by working on solutions at the local and regional scale and experimenting with them, we can learn so much more. But we need to globally change that learning.

Simone Cicero:
One interesting point that you make me think about is that of course, you know, we need to slow down somehow we know there is this sentence from Bayo Akomolafe that “times are urgent so let’s slow down” and I tend to agree. We need to really be thoughtful in the response that we articulate and in the ways that we engage with this crisis. But for sure, what we have seen is that, as the world leaps into a new reality, let’s say, or at least as we grapple with the new reality that we are living as a global civilization, there will be some institutions that are going to articulate a response and those are the institutions that we have now — so nation states essentially — as we have seen with the Coronavirus and all these bureaucratic apparatus that the traditional industrial institutions like corporates that are now lobbying government, and interacting with government and somehow even overcoming governments in some of the policies that they are, you know, they’re using in this COVID outbreak context. This is just to say, something that is quite kind of iconic of what is going to come. So as I said, some of these existing institutions are going to articulate a response. And I tend to agree with you that there gonna be some older responses, let’s say that are “coexistent” and layered on top of this additional response, the responses that we are going to articulate with networks and so on. So if I think about how we articulate the rest of the response, so what kind of new things: what kind of new approaches, what kind of new capabilities, what kind of new constituencies need to wake up and proceed, you know, and to experiment? So my question is, where are these questions that you have just outlined? Where are those questions going to be asked? Who is going to build on top of these questions? So what are the constituencies that we need to ask entrepreneurs that want to regenerate and want to complement the answer of the traditional institutions? So where are the spaces? What are the places that we need to seek to create these new players — these new constituencies — that can really engage with this?

Daniel Wahl:
I think that somehow this stuff is bubbling and let’s see how long we’re in this cocoon phase that we’ve all been pushed into now. For example, in the UK, the Extinction Rebellion has really done a wonderful turn this year from last year’s wake-up call that was much more focused on nonviolent direct action and kind of briefly disrupting business as usual for people to listen a bit more to the message of the issue of climate change is an urgent one to respond to. This year they’ve really changed their focus on this regenerative culture principle and also acknowledged that it has to be diverse regenerative cultures in place: that there isn’t a global kind of way of saying “this is how you have to do it”, but it is actually people in their constituencies, whether it’s local communities, neighbourhoods or collaborating at the bioregional scale, really asking these questions. And for me, that’s re-engaging the schools like every system, every structure is now pushed to the point that they don’t know whether they can hold it. And the education system everywhere, is where people are — the kids are at home — we have a huge potential to also open conversations of how education needs to change right now. And museums are closed, theatres are closed, like all outlets like — even funded outlets of cultural expression — are realising what is our own raison d’être? What do we do in this coming world? And for me catalysing those conversations with them — like reinventing museums and libraries and any type of cultural space as platforms for planetary bioregional learning — for learning more about the global supply lines, the history of what used to be produced in a place, what was the strength and the uniqueness and the craftsmanship that came from different regions, and then also mixing that in a really creative way with the global collaboration and maker spaces. Trying to say: “Well, now we have all this technology at our disposal”. How do we make the things we need in this region for a modern technological civilization, in a way that is drawing mainly from locally generated renewable energy that is drawing mainly from local, the grown bio-material resources? And yes, some of them might be in the form of forests and so on. And others might be lab grown biological resources, so that there is a space for synthetic biology and chemistry and all of this as well, but in a controlled local and regional scale. So, for me, it is engaging the universities and the researchers on that amazing, innovative feat or challenged to say “how do we regionalize production and consumption” and “what would it look like to create a fully circular bio materials economy that runs on renewables, and can we do so in ways that doesn’t compete with feeding the local population?” So if we grow bio-resources, how do we grow food at the same time? And how do we change responsible ecosystems management and restoration in such a way that we do all of that and at the same time, bring back forests, lock down carbon into the soil and into standing forests, but also into biomaterials into new, into the built environment that we work on from now on. It’s massive, like we need to engage every aspect of society to know that it’s not a small feat to redesign the human impact on earth within the lifetime of one of the generations alive today. And I think that’s what we’re now called to do. And the pandemic is just giving us the opportunity to say to those people who say no, you can’t do that. That’s impossible. Well, who would have said that you can reduce global flight volumes within four weeks to maybe 30% of the previous date, and people would have said “that’s impossibl — things will collapse”. Well, so far, they’re not collapsing! And we can do a lot of things differently. But we’re also seeing, as I said earlier that the brittle tear of the global system and the urgency to build scale linking resilience into the system — and that for me is engaging really everyone — education, cultural centres, local community groups. Then I think, politically, we also need to be savvy and not ignore the political process. But that’s getting involved at local and regional scale. I think partially, as regional government actors feel a little bit abandoned by a panicking and not fully with a national response to the crisis, which is happening in so many countries, they are also seeing that they better start thinking of building structures that are more bio-regionally focused and also prepare for the disruptions that we are going to have in the turbulent three, four decades ahead. Like I mean, this is just the first massive turbulence that we’re experiencing, but but there will be probably many.

Simone Cicero:
Well, that’s really interesting. So, as I understand I’m trying to resonate with your thoughts and offer some kind of next step before the conversations. So I see that the point you’re making is that this is a response that the whole society needs to articulate. And for sure, I love the fact that you make it evident that this is going to be a political aspect. So we’re gonna have a political conversation. So I think maybe it’s rather post political meaning that among the many systems of the industrial age that we are seeing collapsing at the moment, I think it’s also the political system, I mean, the governance system, the traditional politics that help us to develop our governance systems, but more than anything else, I see that you are pointing out some kind of poetic process that needs to happen. So when you say, for example, we need to have museums, schools, universities, libraries, every cultural institution to be involved in this process, because essentially, my feeling is that the existing institutions that we have, they are not necessarily able, structured to engage with poetic processes. Like, you know, the industrial complex has lost its capability to make meaning to create new meaning, to create new, really to engage with these places. So that’s the impression that I have and it’s interesting that maybe our organisational challenge is not just about getting ready to do things differently, but it’s also about really creating the spaces where we can, we can make new meaning so that we can make different things?

Daniel Wahl:
Yeah, basically what I come back to a lot lately is how biased our entire culture has become over the last 250 years and fascinated and benefiting hugely from the power of analytical, rational thought science, the scientific method, the inquiry process, that, that sets up this worldview, that there’s a world out there that we are observing, and that was somewhat separate from. And it’s been a really powerful tool. But we’re not really seeing that even many of us who want to create a creative response are still somewhat operating and also believing because we sucked this in with our mother’s milk and by cultural osmosis since the beginning, no matter how old we are, that if we want to affect change, and you have to somehow create a strategy and you create a system and you implement it and you have to get better at it and you have to test it and all of that is true, and it’s really great, but that for me, like what I keep coming back to is the Jung’s four ways of knowing in which thinking and knowing of that type that I just described is only one of the four dimensions and feeling sensing and intuiting are vital ways of also gaining insights about participation and they are the spaces in which meaning making really lands in a kind of embodied true whole being way and therefore then really transforms people and through that transforms cultures and our common story and so yes, I think it’s completely vital. What I’m seeing right now on the internet is so beautiful all these people in physical distancing, making music together and writing new songs now would be the time for cultural creatives in the music industry hands on to really think, how do I do my work in a way that invites everyone that my art my art form, my craft, my gift that I share with the world is inviting everybody I touch to have these deeper conversations about what is our relationship to life and his life. Maybe for most of the planetary process and the way that biomimicry, Janine Benyus says life creates conditions conducive to life. I think that that beautifully sums up, I mean, of course, I’m biased, I’m a biologist, originally from training and I, I’ve been a student of life for 25–30 years trying to understand how it all connects, and what our role is in that evolutionary process of transforming whole and again, that that brought me back to participation in my own responsibility as a co creator of this process, because I am life. And is there a way that when we come out of lockdown, we suddenly find that at the opera, there will be reshaping of old operas that then focus on this human nature relationship and unity and this notion that Thích Nhất Hạnh calls interbeing can we can we see what a dance looks like that tries to bring that into cultural discourse, what would happen in terms of the unleashing of while, of course, we might have economic systems collapse and their money might not be worth anything either, but imagine all the world’s fine art museums really engaging with art that tries to question our responsibility for planetary health and planetary healing and appropriate participation in life’s process of creating conditions conducive to life and to do so through fine art. And that will then end up in the living rooms and in the conversations of the ultra wealthy individuals that can afford to collect art. Not that we want to perpetuate such an unequal global situation, but right now engaging those people that have been cooked by the virus just as much with these deeper question could really unleash philanthropic capital in a new way as well. And so for me, it’s both and it’s like it’s, I think that another notion that I come back to a lot of Joanna Macy’s framing that we’re both midwives and hospice workers, so hospice workers of the dying system and midwives of what wants to be born. And for me, that’s an invitation to be compassionate with all those who’ve built the old system and still trying to uphold the old system, because they thought it somehow served, and to really now also engage, because what you were saying earlier, that big industry and these multinational players that are now more powerful than even governments and kind of interfering with government policy, of course, that’s the world pre-pandemic, but some of these extremes — like maybe the pharmaceutical industry is going to do well out of this, who knows, but maybe not — and certainly the industry which was a big player is the fossil fuel industry. I’m really struggling so, if they’re really hit deeply by this crisis, then some of what these old dinosaurs were drawing their power from in terms of the financial power might just evaporate. And then we have, yet again, a massive opportunity to really culturally shape our human story. And for me,that’s why I keep coming back — like I don’t want to come across as anti technology at all, like I’m really appreciating that we have this way of connecting — and I just want to flag up that we have to be really conscious of how we use technology as we move forward to build a future that is a real hybrid world and doesn’t assume that everything needs to be subsumed into some kind of technologically based system. Like I’m concerned about even all the currencies and all these like multi-capital approaches to regeneration that ultimately, like what we were just going to be real time tracked on every ounce that we produce and consume and all of that will be linked to our electronic wallet. And I mean, it becomes like we’re just as much becoming a cog in some kind of machine that way.

Stina Heikkila:
I just wanted to offer a small weaving from other conversations that I thought was interesting in this context because when we spoke to John Robb he was talking about augmented reality as sort of the next frontier of enterprising and how, you know, sort of video games and creating basically this own poetic expression that, kind of, we were touching upon. Now, there’s also this potential to join the virtual and the analogue worlds. And then I heard that resonate in another radio show from Sweden, where actually now there are teenagers who have sort of been the gamers sitting alone at home — and been seen as sort of a bit of “outsiders” — suddenly step out and offer solutions to institutions, like for example, opening discord channels for students to hang out after class, and so on. So I think it’s a very interesting intergenerational opportunity as well for our generation to be sort of humble and think “what are the youth saying about this, who have sort of, those millennials that are born with technology? So that I think that would be a very interesting evolution, like you mentioned, education, like through this now virtual shifts that we are living somehow — and that the institutions are not really able to find a great solution to — but it’s coming from elsewhere.

Daniel Wahl:
Yeah, on the one hand, it’s so wonderful to see how easily there’s a whole generation that is just not even seeing technology as something that is “other” anymore. But but at the same time, even like in that generation, in order to really truly heal the relationship that is to our larger self, which is beyond the human culture, and is into the wider community of life that we need to find new ways of relating to, so really building a deep bridge to what we left behind that is even indigenous native traditional ecological wisdom of how to live in place, but marry it with the capabilities of modern technological culture that marriage to my mind only happens if we also seriously question what technology when and to what extent and not assume that we just have to like so many people that I know in the Bay Area are convinced that we’re already in an inevitable runaway exponential technology process. And I think as we’re now realising that so much of our systems are breaking down, we might get to a point to also say, well, okay, then like if we need to redesign how we make decisions, how we govern ourselves, how we educate ourselves, and then in all of those areas, of course, technology will play a huge role. But our blind spot, I think, for too many people still is to see that by designing all the solutions around technology if we don’t carefully then also grounded to place in a way that is analogue and embodied and real and doesn’t just speak to the thinking part of our meaning making process, but also to sensing feeling and intuiting in an embodied world. That’s where I think — that I keep coming back to that in this conversation, because I think it’s so vital — to invite people into really critically exploring this. And I’d also like, rather than just being in a space where you ask me questions, I would love to actually hear you reflect on that and push back even if you feel that it’s too much of a like, to just keep coming back on this critical way of how do we organise, how do we use technology and how do we use it wisely?

Simone Cicero:
Well, if I can offer — maybe I find something that leads us to the final points, you know, because it’s good to close after more or less one hour — what I wanted to offer to you as a veteran is the following. So I see you know, for example, yesterday, I was listening to Rebel Wisdom’s one day event on the Coronavirus crises. And also by the opening was made by two very eminent contributors: one was Jamie Wheal that offer a pretty big picture of the Coronavirus crises and also trying to articulate the first, second and third order effects that such a crisis may have on our systems, like shocks that the shockwaves that these crises are gonna produce among the, across the world, especially in developing countries or maybe also in developed ones. And the other one was Diane Maslow Hamilton, that was talking about, you know, at the human level, how do you grapple with that? How do you stay in the context? How do you relate with the other so how do you manage emotionally what you’re leaving through and so to remain sovereign in your actions and your activities and so, I think from our conversation again, I’m seeing that this space, the space where technology and wisdom connect the space where we do two things we acknowledge that we are rewired by technology, but we also know that our cultural heritage and our, you know, embeddedness in the cosmos, let’s say this space is something that we don’t know really how it works yet. And that is this philosopher that we’re gonna we’re hopefully gonna have on the podcast we’re gonna reach out and, and we loved his work, we love his work that is called Yuk Hui, I think we also spoke about this when we met, who is bringing forth this concept of a future made of multiple Cosmotechnics, so multiple ways in the world, so totally, de universalized ways, much more local or much more culturally embedded in the landscape and in the community, ways to integrate technology with the world and with what we need to do in the world, so using and relating with technologies in a way that is much more culturally grounded in what we had and what we are in the context where we live in our landscapes in our regions in our cities, and whatever my feeling is, the future is going to be you said that quite a lot of times in your webinars, for example, the future is going to be bumpy, the next two decades, are going to be quite bumpy. Hopefully we can get through these and the question is the organising that at the moment, we don’t understand yet, so this new space of organising well, technology, wisdom and landscape and community fit all together, that’s going to be what we need in the next two decades, because the institutions are going to stay the global ones, the global institutions are going to stay the nation states may be probably, but they won’t be able to deal with what’s coming up, at least they won’t be able to do it, the same way that they did it in the last hundred years or something like that. So the question is, how do we, and this is the question we are exploring in this podcast, how do we organise in this new space? I don’t know if this offer further reflections on your side?

Daniel Wahl:
Yeah, I mean, to me, it brings up and we had a conversation when you were here in Mallorca, how critical the notion of subsidiarity is, and all that. So if we want to organise today, then what — like, as you was just reflecting, I was also thinking of how everything the entire framing that I’ve used during this conversation is actually perpetuating a technology as “other” again, very quickly also falling into yet again separating technology in nature. And ultimately, I do believe that we will only heal epistemologically, and ontologically this whole dilemma if we understand that it’s all fundamentally connected that neither culture is separate from nature nor technology is separate from nature and therefore that goes both ways. Like it also means that the things we currently don’t see as technological, actually, nature’s ingenious technology, or that the more than human nature’s ingenious technology of really serving the continued evolution of the system we participate in and we somehow assume that we’re so clever. But you and I are fathers. It’s like when you’re witnessing your children grow inside your partner’s belly and then you witness how they turn from these tiny little creatures into running cheeky little individuals that hold up mirrors to you to actually believe that we’re so clever with what we currently call technology and to not really honour and celebrate that, that more than human technology of life and really learn how to rather than to build a new one, to work creatively as students with the way that ecosystems heal themselves and produce abundance for all of us, and that’s what we’ve done as a species for so long and it was actually somewhat simpler but deeper in meaning and, so yeah. But to come back to your organising question that returns into a healing relationship with our wider self doesn’t need us to stay in touch in a subsidiary based both political and organisation structure where people in place can have the sovereignty over their own energy, water and food and education and educated of the interconnectedness of our participation as life as a planetary process that we of course have to do things in our regions in such a way that also heal the planetary situation and thereby serve everybody. So it’s this understanding that there is no way to save yourself in that kind of ideal lifeboat perfectly designed bioregional system If you don’t also understand that this will only truly create health as being one healthy cell in a larger healthy body, and in order to keep supporting all cells being healthy, we need the organisation structure that you’re working on. And that’s why it’s so critically important and lots of other people are also like I’ve just had a wonderful conversation with people at Ecolise, to give just one example of a network here in Europe, of organisations that are communities sustainability focus, and now growing into understanding that needs a bioregional context, and in many ways our deal to offer responses not just to the current disruptions of through the uses of the pandemic, but also to building resilience to future disruptions. And so I am, it’s those kinds of platforms that were, I think if we focus on working with local and regional government In reframing the story towards a, we cannot heal the planet but we can heal places and let us do a good job here locally, and do so in global solidarity and cooperation and core learning, to my mind, that’s the path through the next bumpy decades. But again, I’m just completely embracing my own knowing and my own continuous inquiry in trying to be of service to this whole story. I’m not saying I have the answers.

Simone Cicero:
Yeah, I guess nobody has the answer. And this is a good — I think it’s a good closure for conversation. My impression is that in for example, in Zen terms, it’s like we are confronted with what the Buddhists called a Koan and also this kind of enigma that is there for you to think about, and it’s there for you to provoke doubt and somehow I think this is something we need to familiarise with this idea of, you know, having all the answers in the coming decades even though organising probably, if we can if we can isolate one trait of organising that we’re gonna see in the next decade is organising through unexplored through the doubts and to the open questions that we are going to face. So that’s for sure. The organisation that can grow up over the next decade is going to be an organisation that can “stay within the trouble”, like, you know, somebody more famous than me, let’s say. And yeah, this idea also of subsidiarity is key, I think, you know, that we came up with, I think we need to somehow from this conversation, I draw this insight that the future of organising for the next decade is going to probably come at the edge and but also inside existing institutions, and in a subsidiarity and also in collaboration with the existing structures of, of society that brought us here. And yeah, definitely.

Daniel Wahl:
Just briefly to comment on that is, like what I keep thinking — maybe we can have a conversation, you know, about this — is what we need is a shift towards, of course, we need solutions and answers, but we really need to pay deep attention to what questions to ask. And we need to ask them also in this way of serving place, serving the bioregion, and doing so in a way that also serves the planet and indigenous wisdom from all over the world also has this tripartite structure of making wise decisions that is about: does it serve self? Does it serve community and does it serve life or the planet? And how would we create platforms of local global learning that connect people through questions back to their local and bio-regional community, the opportunities and challenges of their place, the potential of healing those challenges, and to do so always in the contextual awareness? Of how their place is deeply interwoven with the wider bioregion, national and planetary connectedness of this process that we participate in and depend upon, and that’s, that’s what I’d be really interested in, whether some of your work could actually help build such a platform of planetary learning that starts working on place as a fractal. Asking questions about your locality, your region and how they contextualise globally.

Simone Cicero:
Yeah, that’s what we are going through this phase, I think we are exploring so that we cannot just offer the possibility to build one platform but also one of the points that I think we are getting from these conversations that there is emerging as some kind of “meta level” conversation were also thinking about one platform, it’s something that we need to overcome. It’s much more about thinking how we can all participate in some kind of platformized conversation and design process that’s gonna be implemented in many, many ways — many, many different ways and this is more or less piggybacking on the concept of cosmo-technic that we just shared. So how do we create, evolve this technique of platform thinking in a way that can be a tool and can be a generator of conversation about how we implement in this non-universalized way, that transcends and goes beyond the idea of platforms and ecosystems that maybe we had so far? So really going beyond that is, I think, the question that we have on the table.

Daniel Wahl:
Yeah, definitely, we don’t need the one platform to rule them all, to bring them all in in the darkness, bind them, that’s to be avoided, somehow kind of interoperability of platforms — and also not falling into the trap of leaving those behind who don’t want to engage into a hyper techie conversation of how to merge platforms and beta profiles and — all those people who are part of the solution. They might just not have their focus in that world but still need to be enabled by it and connected through it.

Simone Cicero:
Yeah, it’s a nice way to close our conversation, Daniel. It also connects with many, many other conversation that you had in the last weeks and our listeners will find some interesting thoughts in the conversation for example we had with Arthur Brock on using Holochain as a way to see these technologies as much more centred around the agents — and the sovereign agents — that implement new strategies, instead of being centred in universalize ideals of technology. So really, that was a very, I think it was a very good first conversation. I’m sure we’re gonna get back with you in the coming months, as we start to figure out what does it mean to create this new space where wisdom and technology and nature find again, their synthesis, let’s say, and Daniel, do you want to use a few seconds to tell people where to find more of your work and when they can support your work?

Daniel Wahl:
Yeah, basically, my medium blog is not behind the paywall, and that’s 450 articles, book excerpts, PhD excerpts, basically 20 years of research writing and reflecting on how to create human and Planetary health and work regeneratively. There’s plenty of entry points on Facebook through the Facebook group regenerative cultures or ecological consciousness. There’s also a group called regenerative consciousness community which I co edited with Christopher Chasen and a whole group of other people. So it’s quite broad in its take. I’m not 100% aligned with everything but I think we need to create these diverse entry points. And I’m on Twitter at DrDCWahl. And where else can you find me on LinkedIn? And yeah, one thing that I’ve also got a video blog called the regeneration rising conversations about regenerative practice where I’m having conversations with folk that are trying to build this regenerative response to the current converging crisis. So for those who enjoy it, they can find me there.

Simone Cicero:
Thank you very much. So again, thanks for being with us on the show. I’m sure we’re going to speak with you soon in the coming months and let’s engage with these open questions all together in this conversation. So listeners, check out Daniel’s work, his videos, articles, it’s Patreon page and talk to you and talk to you as soon as possible, Daniel, again.

Daniel Wahl:
Yeah, wonderful to speak to them and lovely to meet you.