To Create a Regenerative Future, We Must Find the First Principles of Regeneration
Our mechanistic worldview is the reason for many of the challenges we face in today’s world.
Imagine you have been feeling a bit sluggish and tired lately. You go to the doctor and get your blood tested. Three days later, she gets back to you with the results: you have a phosphorus deficiency.
She prescribes phosphorus supplements and advices you to take them daily.
But you are curious, so you wonder why you have a phosphorus deficiency in the first place. You do some research, and you find out that you either don’t eat sufficient veggies or that your veggies might be deficient in phosphorus.
As you eat your five portions of veggies every day, you know this can’t be it. Doing more research, you find that the reason for phosphorus-deprived veggies is due to industrial, agricultural practices that deplete the soils of nutrients.
A report by the Economics of Land Degradation Initiative from 2015 shows that one-third of the Earth’s soil is at least moderately degraded, and over half of the land used for agriculture has some level of degradation. When the soil is depleted, of course, your veggies are also depleted of nutrients, and eventually, you are depleted of those nutrients. For example, according to a study from Andrea Rosanoff in 2013, the magnesium content of vegetables and wheat has declined by up to 25 percent.
Looking for the cause of these challenges is what it means to look at first principles. You search for the cause of a problem, and while it makes sense that you also take phosphorus supplements, addressing the root causes of these deficiencies is unavoidable.
If you want to change things systematically, you are more effective if you work with first principles. And if we collectively want to change our world towards a regenerative future, we have to start by finding first principles.
The systems scientist who co-published the famous report that kicked of many of the sustainabilty debates today “The Limits to Growth” (1972) calls these first principles leverage points. As she says in one of her articles
This idea is not unique … — it’s embedded in legend. The silver bullet, the trimtab, the miracle cure, the secret passage, the magic password, the single hero who turns the tide of history. The nearly effortless way to cut through or leap over huge obstacles. We not only want to believe that there are leverage points, we want to know where they are and how to get our hands on them. Leverage points are points of power.
First Principles of an Unsustainable World
The first principle — or root cause — of climate change, species extinction, ocean acidification, as well as growing injustices and mental health challenges lies in our worldviews. Worldviews are the window through which we see the world. They determine our ways of knowing, thinking and acting in the world.
The social scientist Annick Dewitt, who researched worldviews and their role in sustainability comes to the following conclusion:
Insight into worldviews is essential for approaches aiming to design and support (more) sustainable pathways for society, both locally and globally. … worldviews can be understood as inescapable, overarching systems of meaning and meaning-making that to a substantial extent inform how humans interpret, enact, and co-create reality.
For example, many of us were raised with the belief that the fittest survive. It became part of our worldview that this is the nature of reality. The result is that we don’t trust others as — so our assumption — they only have their benefits in mind. We, therefore, should also make sure that we fight for ourselves. The idea has become part of our worldview, although science has long shown that survival of the fittest is one — but not the dominating — marker of evolution. Cooperation is equally important.
Worldviews influence all aspects of our daily life. They not only affect us personally, like our motivation, values, attitudes, and psychological make-up, but they also shape our economic, infrastructural and institutional structures, as well as our cultural associations such as narrative frames and cultural norms.
Worldviews are a first principle. Changing our worldview changes how we think about, interact with, and design the world.
What is Our Dominant Worldview?
Many refer to the currently dominant worldview as a mechanistic worldview. As the name gives away, the main idea is that the world functions as a machine. We assume that we can look at one part of the world, like global warming, and isolate the sources of it without looking at the whole. We literally have been approaching global warming — for the most part — like we are reassembling a car in which the combustion engine is broken. We think that’s the best way to find solutions.
Another part of the mechanistic worldview is the idea that humans are separate and above nature. For example, we say things like “going into nature,” or we talk about the natural world and rarely consider ourselves part of it.
In his book “The Systems View of Life”, the physicist Fritjof Capra postulates that our mechanistic worldview is the reason for many of the challenges we face in today’s world.
This mechanistic worldview hinders sustainable development and is one of the leading causes for unsustainable practices.
The mechanistic worldview has three main implications:
- It understands humans as able to control nature. Because we can understand it like a machine, right? So because of that, we come up with ideas like climate engineering or pesticides to grow more foods. These interventions don’t take into consideration any side effects. Moreover, because we think we can control nature, many still believe that we can control climate change and therefore don’t need to worry.
- It understands humans as separate and above nature. It makes us think we can use nature like an object that we can exploit: “nature is there only to fulfill our needs”. Because of this assumption, we have over-exploited resources and hundreds of species go extinct daily.
- It understands the whole as the sum of its parts, making life, like everything else, ultimately no more than mechanical particles in motion. We become meat suits.
The World Isn’t a Machine: Moving Towards a Relational Worldview
The world doesn’t resemble a machine. The world is increasingly recognized as a complex system. The term complexity originally comes from the Latin word »complexio«. It means as much as entanglement, connection, and connection, more rarely also fusion.
A relational worldview understands the world as a complex system.
It is not a new worldview. It’s the dominant worldview in many indigenous knowledge systems, being rediscovered by western sciences. The three main implications of the relational worldview are:
- It understands the planet as self-organized. This means that there is no single authority that orchestrates the system. It also recognizes that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. I am more than just my organs and blood circulating my body. Something new emerges — me — through the interplay of all the parts in my body.
- It understands humans as one part of the whole complex system. Humans are part of nature. They are neither separate from the rest of the world, nor are they at the top of the hierarchy, nor can they control the world.
- It understands that true well-being is always relational. Returning to the phosphorus example: If we understand the world relationally, we will acknowledge that we can’t truly heal if we don’t address the underlying deficiencies, requiring soil health and regenerative agricultural practices.
The economist Jason Hickel summaries this as follows:
It is not about limits but interconnectedness — recovering a radical intimacy with other beings. ... it is not about meagreness but bigness — expanding the boundaries of human community … We need to change the way we see the world, and our place within it.
Takeaway
The change from a mechanistic to a relational worldview has the following implications:
First, society is not independent of the rest of the planet.
Secondly, the quality of our relationships is what define the system. This also includes our relationships to the planet (it’s trees, waters, and rocks). We are not independent of the rest of the planet.
And thirdly, understanding that there is no clear boundary between us as individuals and the system is what makes each action worthwhile. No matter if someone is watching. Because it always affects someone else — human or non-human.
