What is Regeneration? [#2]

With regeneration becoming a buzzword like sustainability, it is important that we define what "Regeneration" is.

On a surface level we can say that:

Regeneration is rebuilding what we have destroyed and building conditions conducive to life that enhance natures capability to regenerate itself

But this is still limited.

Regeneration means that we heal the "story of separation". But what is that story?

For that we have to look at the history of humankind.

For 99% of time that we have spend on earth, humans have lived in relatively peaceful, egalitarian communities.

Research has found little evidence for aggression, social division or hierarchy, but found that these communities had a lot of time for art, dance and community live (1). In these animistic cultures humans lived with respect for life, connected to nature and to each other.

Humans saw themselves as protector of the earth.

From 10.000 years ago the climate and society changed radically. An average temperature drop from around 10 to 4 degrees started the "Ego-Explosion "(2).

This was the start of the "story of separation".

Humans started to understand themselves as separated from nature and the increased sense of "I" made us more self-confident and self-responsible, which helped us to survive the changing climate.

This started the agricultural revolution when we started to domesticate nature and animals and settled into more permanent communities.

While this was an important part of us adapting to the climate change, the origin of food surplus started deep cultural changes: patriarchy, hierarchy, religious changes (focussing more on the heaven good, less on the earth godess), militarization (to protect stored food surplus), mechanisation of weapons and tools to rule and exploit other humans and nature, money, writing, right to "own" land and much more.

So from being one with nature, we started to separate from it. However there was still a deep respect and connecting with nature and its wisdom until around 500 years ago.

In the 15th and 16th century there was another climate change, the so-called "Small Ice age" lasting 80 years in Europe, causing severe storms, hard long winters, cooler summers. Living conditions changed severely due to the changes in growing food.

Humans became more distrusting towards nature. And the church used the fear and social tensions to grow their influence. They blamed the powers of nature as the work of the devil. People (mostly women) who still had the connection with nature, e.g. through herbal medicine, were called witches and seen as connected to the devil.

The "which hunts" started for the next 300 years and we got rid of these keepers of nature's wisdom. In these times women that lived in connection with nature were tortured, ridiculed and drowned or burned in front of their children, neighbours and friends. This created and example which taught us that living in harmony with nature is the same as working with the devil.

This resulted in a world view that saw god and men as separated from nature. This is one part of the story of separation.

The ongoing scientific revolution at the time started to put more emphasis and importance on the left-brain hemisphere and favoured rational analytical thinking and masculine characteristics such as individualism, competition, goal-focus, rationality, independence.

Rather than feminine characteristics as compassion for others, cooperation, support, relationship-focus, intuitive feeling, interdependence.

Every human has both of these characteristics but in the last centuries the masculine characteristics were deemed as superior to the feminine.

The division of masculine and feminine is the second part of the story of separation.

Reductionism as philosophised by Thomas Hobbes and Isaac Newton reduced nature to a resource to be exploited and and controlled. Humans thought of nature as hostile and competitive. And the "Survival of the fittest" was used to justify power, control, imperialism and war, because it was just "in our nature".

(This is wrong, humans and nature alike have thrived because of cooperation.)

So the 4 parts of the story of separation are:

1. Separation of humans and nature
2. Separation of feminine and masculine
3. Separation of the inner world (soul) and outer world (matter)
4. Separation of the left and right-brain hemisphere (which a focus on the logical left brain)

Regeneration is a journey of overcoming this story and reconnect what has been artificially separated.

Going from extraction of nature to regenerating it.

From focus on masculine characteristics to integrating both the masculine and feminine characteristics.

From seeing nature as an object to understanding the whole that we are part of.

To go from reductionist thinking to whole-systems thinking.

To go from thinking too much to feeling more and using intuition next to the scientific method to inform our decision.

To go from competition to collaboration.

To re-build what we are destroying: our health, spirit, culture, and nature.

To work with nature rather than against it.

To increase the capacity for life in a given context.

To reclaim our attention for recognising beauty and awe in the natural world.

To go from the idea of separation to the idea of inter-being.

Now, reading about this:

What are ways you can incorporate regeneration in your life?

What are ways you can start to work on overcoming artificial separation between yourself and nature?

How can you nurture the feminine characteristics inside yourself?

How can you balance thinking and feeling?

You don't need to have an answer right now. It is good to live the questions. We will explore answers together as we go along on this journey of regeneration

Happy regeneration,
Jonas

(1) (Baring, Anne & Cashford, Juels 1993: The Myth of the Godess, Evolution of an image)
(2) Taylor, Steve (2005): The Fall, The Insanity of the Ego in Human History and The Dawning of a New Era.