LBW #3.8 — Polycrisis—and poly-opportunities?

Welcome Everybody to the 22nd installment of Living Between Worlds. It's a conversation that I started in the early days of COVID really struck by the parallels in so many ways of the COVID crisis and the climate crisis and how we orient and deal with big change and with the phenomenon what what I call living between worlds, between an old order that is clearly ending and a new world that has yet to be born. As Antonio Gramsci, the Italian revolutionary, reminded us 100 years ago, this is the time of monsters and we feel it in our guts. What I'd like to do today is a little bit different. I'm going to read an introduction rather than extempore it. Some of you have seen this posted yesterday, others not. And then, in contrast to our usual process of then having open discussion, following my opening remarks and then breakout rooms, we're going to go right into breakouts to give you all a chance to have a much deeper discussion and come back together for more extended open discussion among all of us. Ken Homer, my co host, wave your hand. Ken, who, if you were here last month you met Ken, will be facilitating that process. And I look forward to a rich and as always, provocative conversation with all of you. Ground rules. As always, please keep your mic off unless you're called on. If you do want to speak, raise your hand. Use the zoom button for that under the reactions icon at the bottom. If you can, wave your hand in the air. If you can't, can and I can or I should be able to see you in the course of that. So with that, let's begin and welcome. The term polycrisis keeps showing up on my radar these days. Polycrisis? What is a polycrisis? Adam Tooze says it's when the whole is worse than the sum of its parts. Sound familiar?

Yeah.

I don't know where the I didn't know the term when I launched this series, but my spidey senses were twitching over the cascading and intertwingled messes of climate and Covid, war and peace, economic growth and ecological collapse, democracy and fascism and more. This mess of messes, to use Chauncey Bell's terminology, challenges us at personal and institutional levels. And our tools, our tools of perception, our tools of interpretation, our tools of action, all fall short. Just one case in point, among many that we could choose from the US Fed cranking up interest rates to restrain inflation. That's arguably driven not by low interest rates, but by the poly crisis itself. From supply chain disruption to political instability, from historic demographic shifts to the still unpriced impact of global climatic disruption. On the other hand, Peter Layden, in the Great Breakthrough just published this week, sees huge transformative breakthroughs ahead in energy, biotech and infotech and AI. That puts him in a mood of great optimism and not as just a wild eye dreamer. Peter is the guy who wrote the long boom 1980-2020 that predicted a lot of what we have seen and taken for granted in these last 40 years. So how do we respond to? How do we lead? How do we live in the face of all this? For some, it's with overwhelm and despair and denial and avoidance. For some it's with determination and ambition. Ambition for good or ill.

Both.

Both of these with a focus on what martial artists call soft eyes, a form of attention that doesn't exclude the peripheral and the contextual and which has literally saved my life more than once. But I wonder, can soft eyes and a systems thinking approach or orientation prevail against determined and laser focused adversaries? Can it prevail in a US political environment where some 70% of Democrats and 70% of Republicans each think the other side is beyond the pale and beyond redemption? And as I think into this, into what people often call problems, I note that a problem is always a declaration. It's a boundary. It's setting a boundary around a fragment in time of the flow of everything. It's an expression of context and care. And to me part of our challenge is how do we navigate that flow? Fundamental questions in the midst of that, what do we care about for the sake of what are we acting? What might be possible? Lovely expression. I learned from Pam Anton, outgoing city assistant city manager in Palo Alto when I came on board there. It's a great question in a stuck situation, what might be possible here? Not what's your opinion, not what's the position you want to defend, but what might be possible? How do we just really open our imaginations in this moment? So the question I want to hang in the air in this conversation. Conversation is what might be possible and where might we look and listen for the poly opportunities in the poly crisis? So with that, Ken, let me turn it over to you as co host. We're a little ahead of schedule, which is going to give us more room for conversation, one of our goals here and can guide us into the breakouts.

Hello everybody. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Ken Homer. I live right across the bay from Gill in San Rafael and I've been coming to these Calls for a while. Now last time if you were here, we did something very similar where we went into breakout rooms. There'll be roughly four to five people per breakout room. And the idea here is you have a self facilitated conversation. You'll have about 20 to 25 minutes per round. So make sure everybody has a chance to talk. If you notice somebody is speaking a little, if you notice yourself speaking a lot, maybe you want to dial that back. And if you see someone who's not speaking up, encourage them to do so. This is, you're basically having a conversation around a cafe table just as you've done it. Family gatherings and with friends. You're just some friends talking about a question. We have a couple of questions we're going to actually see the conversations with. If that question speaks to you, by all means go ahead and dive into it. If you have a better one, don't hesitate to suggest it. I'm going to open the breakout rooms in a second. Let me put the question into the chat. The chat here for the round for round one.

And Ken, while you're doing that, let me just add one suggestion for you. I'd invite you to try for a different kind of kind of conversation than perhaps is common. I invite you not to stake out a position and not to debate a position and not to try to prove yourself right or anybody wrong or convince people to over to your side but have something that's a more open and exploratory and learning together conversation. You may find that this is a little strange and not habitual, but try it on and see what happens.

I also spent a decade of my life with the founders of the World Cafe developing that process. And one of the things we talked about was listening into the middle. If there's one voice, as you listen to your fellows speaking, if there was one voice here that everybody is blending together into, what would that voice be? What are you hearing that's emerging from the center of your conversation? So that's another way to kind of approach this. Okay, any questions before we go to the breakout rooms? All right, so I'm going to open the breakout rooms. The question for round one is now in the chat. It's what aspects of the poly crisis affect you personal most? Affect you personally? I'm sorry, David, are you able to hear me better now? Somebody's telling me my audio is breaking up.

I hear you. Okay.

Okay, so I'm going to give us. Since we're a little ahead of schedule, we've got 25 minutes for this round. So we'll see you back here in 25 minutes. Gil, I did not assign you a breakout room. You're free to join whichever one you want.

Good deal.

We go, folks. We'll see you soon. All right, I hope everybody had a good conversation. Sorry about. There was a few people coming in at the end there that showed up after we did the breakout room, so they were a little more packed than usual. I'm going to just take a minute here and reset. We have 25 people, so I'm going to create a one more breakout room so we don't have quite as many folks. Gil, you want to riff while I do some stage patter while I'm setting the breakout rooms here? You're muted. Rookie mistake, pal.

You'd think I'd know that by now. Ken, right?

Yeah.

I popped into a couple of groups and I was really struck by something that George Mocrae said in his group in George, I hope you'll permit me to quote you inaccurately. But there was some discussion about the polarization and finding the middle. And George offered that as a martial artist, what he's always attuned to is not the middle, but the center. And so there was, you know, I heard a palpable quieting in the breakout room as you said that, because it was a striking notion. And somebody else offered that the center is always moving. If you think about somebody on, you know, on a martial arts mat or on a dance floor, the center is important and the center's always moving. So that struck me. There's a lot more, but I'll leave it to other people to report on that. George, thank you for that. Ken, you got your buttons ready to push?

Sorry. When I hit the button, I accidentally did recreate. So now we're in the same room. So I'm just trying to, okay, move some people around a little bit. Give me just a second here. The technical challenges.

Well, then, let me. Let me. Let me quote George one more time just to. I'm sorry, Peter, I. I can't quite read your chat while I'm trying to do this. I'm. I'm limited today in my capacities. The other thing that George followed that with is that in. In his perception, where all these things cross is in a daily discipline is in a. Taking care of self and right here as kind of the anchor from which we orient to the rest of the church. I'm not using the words that you would use necessarily, but I thought there was something very important there. I remember as. As a young radical kid, I Always. I was always frustrated by the people who would say, oh, you got to, you know, take care of yourself first before dealing with the global issues. And it frustrated me. And I think it's a bit of an overstatement, but I hear the truth in that, that unless we are each of us centered, it's challenging to contribute to others.

Okay, I got them ready. You may have one or two people that you were in the last round with, but I've, I've mixed people a bit. So let me put the question for the second round here in the chat and this time we.

While you're doing that, I was just going to say, Gil, that's why they tell you on the airplane, put your.

Mask on first before assisting others. Yeah.

Okay, so our question for the second round is where might we look and listen for opportunities in the polycrisis?

Where might be for poly opportunities?

Poly opportunities. Sorry, I missed that. Okay, poly opportunities in the poly crisis. Where might we look and list listen for poly opportunities in the poly crisis. Once again, we'll have this one to about 23 minutes. We'll come back at 1:05 and we'll spend the rest of the time in punnery exploring what people have heard in the breakout rooms. Everybody ready?

How would you even recognize a poly opportunity if you stumbled on one? Off we go.

Okay, here we.

Go.

Welcome back, everybody. Just quick show of hands. How many people enjoyed this? Thumbs up or hands up? Yes. Okay. Anybody have trouble with it? Anybody have like, oh, this really didn't work for me. Okay, so I'm going to do what we call a little harvest here of let's hear from some folks what they learned on these calls who heard something that surprised or delighted them and just go ahead and start speaking. Don't need to raise your hand.

Well, we had a fascinating discussion around the kind of the information age art and kind of art and the role that that has to play in inspiring action and allowing people to kind of begin to challenge some of the mental models that we've internalized from social conditioning and kind of particularly the idea around like whether that many people hold that neocoliberal capitalism is the only way things can be, and particularly what it means to look to indigenous thinking and other systems that have existed before capitalism and to learn from them and to begin to. And the kind of the knock on impacts that that can have as far as beginning to break down some of those notions of what can be. Yeah, Mitch, please jump in.

Well, and the other thing that we.

Were talking about in that conversation Was.

The fact that those are not binary choices. You don't have to say neoliberalism is.

All bad or whatever. It's that what do you take that's good from one and merge it and meld it with another through an experiential.

Event like an art installation.

Yeah.

And the idea of bringing together diverse groups from diverse backgrounds who maybe are deeply tuned to certain facets of the system and then have bring those different facets together and to cross pollinate and to begin to inspire each other and to think differently. And we started a bit talking about how we've got some of these hyper focused journal academic journals and things that are kind of very focused. But if we start to cross pollinate and bring those different thinking and focuses together, all of a sudden then we get poly solutions to the polycrisis because then we're thinking about things that oh well, I know this and I know it's going to impact this and I'm talking to you and then you see how it's going to have a knock on effect here and then someone else sees a knock on effect there and all of a sudden we've got a possibility, particularly if we can implement it at the local level and not have to wait for government to get on board.

Thank you. I really love that. I've been having a lot of conversations really about the role of imagination. When we're up against all the doomism, it's really hard to think your way out of doomism. And when we start to engage imagination and art is one of the ways to stimulate human imagination. So I really appreciate your contributing that. Brad, please.

Yeah. I was surprised and delighted by the overwhelming number of people who spoke about personal initiative, local versus global. You know, like maybe you haven't given up on but like there's no big giant grand solution that's going to come along and fix it all. It's going to be hundreds of thousands, maybe tens of millions of us each making personal decisions on a day to day basis. Do I drive my car or do I walk? Do I buy something in a recyclable container? Do I bring my own bag when I go shop? I mean, just down to that level, there seem to be a surprising number of us that we're talking about things that we're doing locally and personally to make a difference. And that's always been my philosophy. I always thought I was kind of a loner. I thought oh yeah, somebody's going to come along and find the magic. I was going to say magic bullet. But I don't want to use violent words. The magic pill, maybe that's a better word. That's going to fix it all. And there isn't one, as far as I can tell. It's just. It's all of us doing little things every day.

Yeah. A poly crisis and poly opportunities call for polycentric solutions. It's got to be, you know, working where you are with what you have and the people around you to do what you can. And that'll be different according to region and geography and education, but doesn't mean that we can't all. Can't all pitch in and contribute. Thank you. Who else heard something that's been. Yeah, skill. You're muted. All right, Brad, I need that somebody.

Should fire me and hire someone knows what they're doing here. You know, sometimes the polycentric actions like Brad is talking about somehow aggregate into big system changes. You know, the climate bill that we just established in this country is a result of lots and lots and lots of grassroots over many years that resulted in policy development and people in government and think tanks thinking things through and companies innovating and folks voting and folks lobbying and folks lobbying and voting and lobbying and Hiroshima here from that Peter Layden article that I mentioned at the top. Peter said, here's the thing about tipping points. When they happen, they happen fast. One day the world works one way like it always has, and then the next day it works in a very different way. You can't predict when that's going to happen. You can barely see it coming. But we know that happens. And so the, you know, the. What each of us do, wherever we are, with what we have, with what we care about is part. Is part of what contributes to that.

That.

Thanks for that, Brad.

Thanks, Gil. Who else would like to share with us what they heard that surprised or delighted them or caught their attention?

We had a question come up. It's about the group and.

The question.

Was, why a group like this, the average age. Where are the young people and why are they not younger people? Younger people and, you know, aren't. Why don't groups like this. I've been a couple other groups like this and it's very similar. Where are the younger people in terms of being involved in forums like this to address the issues? Any thoughts?

I do have a thought about that. I worked for many years with a woman who was a wonderful open space trainer and she said, if you want, for example, Latinos to show up in your session, you need to put the invitation in Spanish and distribute it. Where the Latinos live and where they work and where they recreate. So this has been an issue. I'm in a number of calls like this and the average age is what you see here. A lot of white haired people, a lot of folks who are older and seasoned as us like to call it. So I think it's incumbent upon us to do the outreach. And then I look at my life and go, you know, I've allowed myself to age with my cohort and I haven't done enough work on bringing younger people into my life. So I am guilty of not being able to actually invite very many young people. And I don't know if that's the case with other people here. But one way to address that is if you know somebody who's in their 20s or 30s or 40s who you think would be a great addition to this call, please invite them, let them know what's going on. We would welcome to have them here. Are there other thoughts on this? Olga, did you want to talk about this or something else? Either way, it's fine.

Yes. I wanted to add, and I'm coming from perspective of volunteering with the Sierra Club for many years, those of you who know what Sierra Club is, is one of the oldest and some of the most effective organizations in the nation in terms of climate change and environmental protection. And we struggle with the same things. Although I have to say that I think in the United States, just in general, I'm coming also from sort of old land of Russia and Ukraine and Belarus. In United States, mingling between generations is just not something that is absolutely is common. You know, I see pockets of youth organizing. Like we just honored wonderful activists from Richmond. You know, we awarded award last year to Youth Against Apocalypse. We have youth, young Sierrans. So I feel like youth is aggregating, aggregating communicating with youth and other generations sort of with other generations. That that's my experience. I think we also need to learn how to speak each other's language. Something that I brought up in one of the breakout rooms that youth a lot of times uses different language than, you know, older generation. Even when we speak about the same exact things, they just do. And I think we need to learn each other's language. And I'm not talking about English or Spanish, I'm talking about different terminology. So I think that's important. And also just last point that youth a lot of times feels uncomfortable and patronized in circles like this where they coming and they feel like they've been told what to do, how to do and how to think. And I think it's uncomfortable sort of position to be for anybody, quite frankly. So. So it's. It's in. You know, I also have to say I'm a woman, and I don't see a lot of women in this community. You know, it seems like I'm one of the two women on this call, so there's also another three. I'm so sorry. Three.

We had four, but one had to leave.

Okay. The point remains. Four out of 25, 26 people. So, you know, it's. It again. How. How do we make people feel comfortable stepping up, stepping in certain circles? And I have to say, one of the things that I've been pleasantly surprised and pleasantly. What makes me want to come back as a woman, that I felt hurt. I'm speaking a lot. I'm sorry, I'm gonna stop fairly soon, but. But it's been a very collaborative, very inclusive community. So thank you, Gil, for. For creating that atmosphere, you know, so thank you.

Well, thank you for being here and speaking up. I'll note that we've. Over the last couple years, we've had calls that were half women and calls that were very few. We've had calls with a couple of people of color, mostly not, as Ken pointed out. It's been definitely skews to the gray hairs. I've, you know, I've invited each of you to invite people, you know, who are different than you, that. I don't think we've seen a lot of that happen. I know for me, my outreach is in the communities that I hang out in. It's, you know, largely social media. And so I'm reaching out to people who follow me, some of whom skew older and some of whom don't. So it's a. It's a bit of a mystery. And the question I would raise is what if it wasn't a problem that this group is who it is? Because I assume that younger people are having meetings of their own around this, and people of various sub communities are having meetings of their own. Does every meeting have to be fully mixed, or is there something valuable in having deep conversations with people who share more? And I'm raising that not as an argument, but it's a question for us to consider.

Thanks, Gil. Before we move on to Bob, is there anybody else who wants to comment on this particular aspect, what we're talking about? Sam.

Oh, Alina, please go first.

Well, I just wanted to recollect that.

You know, four or five decades ago.

I couldn't have joined a meeting at.

9:00 clock in the morning or 12:00.

Clock or 3:00 clock because I would.

Have been working and in the evening when I got home I would have been doing laundry, fixing dinner, washing dishes. I would have had no time.

Yeah, great points. Thank you.

Yeah.

And what I was going to say is to go's question about it's a both and I think we, we need to have spaces where people can come together with like my own similar groups and ones that are much more diverse. I mean I think it's been apparently a theme for me today. But think back to my work with United Religions Initiative which is a global grassroots peace building organization. And one of the key aspects of that project is that before you bring groups together to try and get them to hash out problems, you bring them both sides, the various sides together individually so that they can internally hash out problems and internally connect and come to consensus and build that trust that's so critical when those types of conversations get difficult. So I think there's real importance for both of them.

Thank you. Okay, anybody else on this topic or should we move on to Bob? Bob, please, you have the floor.

Okay. Well I was going to say what Alina just said, it's that most of the youth are probably employed somewhere at this time, maybe in the, and in the evenings they have other things, maybe a Saturday or Sunday event for them but I don't see anything wrong. I see a lot right. With what's happening right now, you know. So if you wanted to expand it to include the youth, get their perspective certainly, but advertise it amongst the groups we are all familiar with that have younger base and put, put it at a time when a lot of them can do it during work hours if it's scheduled, but many of them on a privately could probably do it better on Saturday afternoon or Sunday.

Thanks Bob. Doc.

Well, really the same topic to add to it.

I have two young guys in particular. Now these are not real youth, are not college age.

These are young guys with families and.

Lots of debt and they can't disengage from it. Well, they got to think about their next gig.

Their life is filled without having these kinds of conversations and they may be frustrated, they may be concerned, but it.

Brings up the other issue.

How do you get people to disengage from this monster that we're hooked to and particularly that they're hooked to different kind of thinking. It may take some of that kind of collapse for him to disengage.

Thanks Doc. Heather, nice to See you, Heather.

Nice to see you, Ken. So I'm going to go to Gil's reflection day that is surprising and delightful is to be in the room with people that one person I've been with on and off rover, I don't know, close to 50 years, another person I've been in the same room with from time to time for over 20 years, and then to be in a breakout room with Dwight Collins and to realize that we were in a room together 20 some years ago. It, this particular group provides a context of lifelong continuity for me around what matters to me and what I put my energy into. And that way it's very restorative. When I'm feeling burnt out and overwhelmed, it's like, okay, I've been in this a long time and here are some of the people I've been in it with all these years. So that really works for me. The other reflection I have about bringing people here is that I've tried without success. So the other way I approach this is to go to where those meetings are, to go to where the youth are meeting and to show up in their meetings. And lately I really immersed myself in my local Hispanic community and boy, I've learned a lot there as an old white woman trying to be an ally, doing my own work and letting the people of color lead, trying to find, you know, seeing the opportunities in the conflicts within that community is just, well, it's, it's really. My mind explodes rather regularly.

Well, I'm glad your head is maintaining its integrity. So you know. Thanks Heather. David?

Yeah, out of some of the comments I just come up with a few words. One is the language that Olga talked about. I've been working for the last couple years on ocean related things, sustainability subjects and I'm finding that when I discuss ocean stuff I really get good response just up and down the line. Where in the past I might have talked about solar or wind power, some of the other things that the majority of people, no matter how, you know, some think they understand it or know about it and their friends got, have solar panels, that sort of thing. But when you talk about something that everybody thinks about in a good, in a good way, I think the ocean has been that way and seafood and, and just the whole concept because there again over the years I've talked to people about lots of sustainability kinds of subjects and I come up with the ocean that everybody seems to understand. So there again kind of finding some language that, that everybody kind of sees. I don't know, it's easier to Communicate with, I guess.

Thank you, David. Gil, We've got about five minutes left, so I'll turn it back to you for any points you want to make. Wrapping up. And I just want to thank everybody for your participation today. It's really a pleasure to see folks diving in so deep.

It has been, and it's been a pleasure to be in a couple of the breakout rooms. I intentionally mostly listened there because I have this platform to take up a lot of time and I wanted to hear from you and give room for you. And I've really appreciated what I've heard from you, both the words and the depth that you've conveyed. Let me start with this discussion we've just been having about the diversity in this group. I suspect that a lot of us spend most of our lives with people very much like us, like ourselves, whatever that is. You know, we're, we're broad brushing this whole group, but there's a different mix of ages and experience and work focuses here. But I suspect also that a lot of us spend a lot of time with people who are different than ourselves, younger, older, different politics, different work processes, different jobs. Some of those are in depth and some of those are not. Some of us, you know, chat with cashiers at grocery stores when there are cashiers in grocery stores. And some of the, some of us don't do that. Some of us are in civic organizations or faith organizations or community organizations and interact with a lot of different people of different sorts. And some of us don't. Hopefully all of us bring all of ourselves to whatever those interactions are. So, you know, even if there's a narrow spectrum of diversity in this conversation, I know that each of you is affected by every other conversation you've been in. You're bringing that to this one and hopefully you're bringing this one to the other ones that you're involved in. And so it's another way that we interact across our narrower identities. And I think it's a good thing. More diverse in individual meetings is another great thing. I've been, you know, when it happens, I'm deeply enriched by it. But again, I don't know if that has to happen in every meeting we participate in. I would welcome more here. And again, I invite you. This is the best way that I know for this to happen is for you each to invite other people who you think would enrich the conversation and be enriched by it and bring a variety to, to what we're doing here. You know, if I were trying to build an organization or build a movement. I would approach this very differently. But my goal here has been to have a conversation and an interesting and, you know, an enriching conversation with good people who then do what they do in the world. So I don't know if any of you found ways of looking or listening for poly opportunities in the poly crisis. We'll let that, that stone just cast its ripples in the pond going out from here. But let me finish with an observation that I came across this morning from Pemat Chaudhren. Some of you know, her Buddhist teacher of some note and eloquence and Pemachodron said the trick is to keep exploring and not bail out. Even when we find that something is not what we thought, that's what we're going to discover again and again and again. Nothing is what we thought. Things are always in transition if we could only realize it. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic. This is the spiritual path. So I found that very fitting guidance for how do we live with dignity and grace and power between worlds. So thank you all for being here. We'll see you next time. Same, you know, third Wednesday of every month at noon Pacific time. Bring your friends. I welcome your comments. As always, feel free to write to me and or reach out to me in other ways. We also welcome your suggestions of where to focus or how to focus in future conversations to make this a richer experience for all of us. So thank you all for coming. Thank you all for what you're doing in the world and for being you. We'll see you next time. Take good care.