Who gets to design your “new normal?”

This is the monster question coming out of the pandemic. Everyone acknowledges that things won’t, and shouldn’t, go back to the old normal. How many are waiting with baited breath to see what the new normal will be? And how many are helping to form it?

Those who are ready to take action to make the future better will be the ones who decide what it’s going to be. We peace and justice people want to be at the table for those talks.

If you were sitting at that table, trying to formulate a plan for the well-being and rights of all the people and the planet, what would you say? Surely there are a few things you’d like to know going into those negotiations that could help you make the wisest and best contribution to the discussion.

Last week Yes! Magazine held a panel discussion from some thought leaders with deep insight into some of those foundational questions. Here’s a link to the full panel:

The Pandemic Portal: How This Moment Will Change Everything

Yes! editor Zenobia Jeffries led the magazine co-founder David Korten and author Nafeez Ahmed to address the big-picture quandary being faced by the human race as the pandemic spirals through its cycles and carries all toward the effects of climate change.

Don’t hesitate to listen to the entire panel discussion. Amazing insights emerge from the knowledge and wisdom of good thinkers like this. And open up space for the vital conversations communities everywhere need to have to formulate a more just and perfect social order that includes the well-being and rights of all.

Here are a few notes from the discussion to tempt you to indulge in the whole panel.

We’ve learned many things from this virus already. One that hasn’t been talked about is what the virus to brings us. Nafeez Ahmed says that the virus is not our enemy. Viruses have pushed the evolution of life. We depend on the action of many viruses in our bodies and the environment. This virus is “rogue” because we disrupted its environment and forced it out of its natural sphere. Covid 19 isn’t pushing a further biological evolution. It’s challenging our civilizational structures and demanding a shift in paradigm.

Many scientists have said covid 19 is a dry run for future pandemics. Dr. Ahmed reminds us that covid represents a “planetary boundary effect”. There are nine distinct ecosystems that balance and protect earth systems. They’re complex systems that have operated for billions of years and are only beginning to be understood. Here’s a list of the ecosystems:

Covid is a huge signal after many we’ve ignored, warning us that this trajectory is not sustainable. Mother Earth is screaming to us that we’re seeing a system in collapse. Our own life systems.

What is the way forward? Yes this group goes there with brutal honestly. The only way to get through this is to barrel on through to the other side.

Zenobia Jeffries reiterates that we must barrel through TOGETHER by including systems that address our racial inequities, and we have to begin by understanding the systems that allow this racism to be so entrenched.

The problems we have are not separate, isolated issues. All the problems are related going back to our first colonial history. Nafeez has a complex story that ties the Native American genocide, the transatlantic slave trade, and the origin of industrialization to changes in atmospheric CO2. And he emphasizes that those systems never went away. They just recalibrated and grew, becoming more insidious and hard to change. It’s critical that we study those systems and analyse them as we make changes or they’ll recalibrate and come back again.

Which brings us to the question on all our minds. What do we change? And change it to what?

David Korten reminds us that what we call “civilization” is based on exploitation. It’s the system that’s been morphing for 5000 years now, so for 5000 years we’ve been violating the basic principle that life can only exist in self-organizing communities that create and maintain the conditions for their own existance. It’s fundamental to recognize life is not about competition – deciding who’s on top. That’s the source of racism and sexism and all the other isms that bedevil us. Skin color and gender are such easy ways to label people for “othering”.

We must come to terms with what it means to be human. What exactly is “human nature?” Is it to compete? Destroy? The evidence shows that our basic nature is to cooperate and share. In fact that’s the way most people live. Underneath our dark tendencies most people get their deepest satisfaction from what they can do FOR others. We don’t want to be destroyers of life. We want to be healers of ourselves and the planet. What do we do? What can we support that truly heals that?

One of the entrenched systems is the system for measuring progress. Right now we measure with GDP – gross domestic product. It’s a measure that rewards exploitation of people and planet… the destruction of the Earth’s capacity to support life and the consumption of excess. Instead we must have indicators that support the well-being of all the Earth’s people, and the health of the regenerative systems that support life. How would we organize our work if the goal is to be totally equitable? With no excess, because Earth’s systems can’t support excess.

Nafeez and David join many thinkers in claiming that our role as a species is to facilitate the healing of the damage we’ve caused. They agree that we can find a place in the evolution of Earth’s possibility.

The problems we’re facing are not in nature. The problems we face are a product of the human mind. We can change that. We must. In fact there’s no barrier to solving them almost instantly.

The purpose of groups like Yes! Magazine is to facilitate dialogue on the what / how / who of these changes. Also, if we want to avoid re-creating the same catastrophe we already have, the best protection is to include the voices of those most excluded by the current system. Their voices can help ensure that we don’t just become equal opportunity oppressors and exploiters. We must create a system where there is no oppression.

Solutions. Solutions are what Yes! is about. It’s key that we re-imagine what restoration and repair looks like, and address these systems un-apologetically. We won’t go from where we are to paradise overnight. There will be a transition. Probably very complicated transition.

What other elements need to be addressed? Equality is central. Also the issues of ownership. Everyone must have an ownership stake in the means of producing their own living.

It’s not an either/or solution. It’s a both/and solution. It feels overwhelming because it is. What do we do?

Nafeez says to take a systems view: The old paradigm is falling apart. That’s what we’re all feeling as disorientation, uncertainty and fear. It’s creating chaos. You’ve noticed a sense of acceleration because things really are moving faster. Our sense-making systems are falling down. Sit with that. Everyone on the planet is experiencing it.

In the midst of this, space for change opens up. A stable system is hard to change. There’s no room except for big power to make changes. In an unstable system it’s all different. The smallest action can make big change. You can get Donald Trump’s, but you can also get the Green New Deal. The Green New Deal was suggested by a bunch of young people. It got no hearing before. Now it gets big attention. It’s official policy in the European Union. Small actions can become big impacts. The fringe can become mainstream.

What is your personal role is this unfolding? How can you effectively help change the picture of how we create? What’s the way forward?

It’s time for individuals to shift from our personal silos to whole-systems thinking and whole-systems behavior. The “bad systems” are not just “out there” they’re right here in us in a mindset that’s very narrow. The journey is to understand the systems we’re embedded in and align our mindset with the whole-systems one instead.

Then share our new reality with those in our circle of influence, whatever that is. Ask ourselves where can we act? Where can we have impact? Remember that systems don’t change automatically. It has to start with our own lives. There’s an analogy with the virus burrowing into a cell, and then self-replicating out until we’re strong enough to take on the machine and transform it.

I promise you that this is only an outline of the actual panel discussion. Please listen, and comment here if you have thoughts. In the conversation is where our work begins.

Yes! Magazine

Pandemic Portal: How This Moment Will Change Everything

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