A response to Heather A. Swanson's "The Banality of the Anthropocene"

This article really reminds me of the a Sustainability Theory and Practice commodity lifecycle assignment, as well as the way that just sustainabilities suggests an inclusive turn to both understand the roots, in the way of environmental racism, the grandmother of just sustainabilities, via environmental justice, as well as inviting us into the future. Just sustainabilities directs our attention and hones our skill at touching in both ways - in the Macyian language, to see both the historical and futurity, the ancestors and the future beings. Agyeman, Bullard, and Evans (2003) argued for this important dimension, noting that “sustainable development requires that we give consideration to our own developmental needs, as well as those of generations still to come" (p. 188).

So when the author Swanson (2017) suggested:

"Donna Haraway has called for curiosity as both scholarly method and political practice, as an antidote to these learned blindnesses. In her book When Species Meet (Haraway 2008), she becomes curious about who and what she touches when she reaches out to pet her dog. That curiosity becomes a radical practice of tracing and inheriting histories, such as the dog-herding practices of livestock-based Australian colonization efforts and the making of purebred dogs. But in a world of structural blindness, such kinds of curiosity do not come naturally. They must be cultivated. But how? How, in the words of Joseph Dumit (2014), do we wake up to connections?

"Can we imagine corollaries to Bible study meetings or consciousness-raising groups in which people would be encouraged to trace the histories of the landscapes they inhabit, a process that might draw them into new ways of seeing themselves and their worlds? I imagine such practices as a multispecies analogue to Foucauldian genealogy (see Foucault 1970). Might exploring the genealogies of Iowa cornfields, for example, denaturalize them and counter the power of their banality? Might they enable Iowans and all of us to become more curious about the conditions of our own subjectivities and, in turn, how we might transform the landscapes with which they are entangled? This is the important work of making curiosity more common, of troubling the Anthropocene." (para. 15-16)

I imagine something extra, too. Thinking of the active hope practices (Macy & Johnstone, 2012), I imagine we can cultivate a way of touching the dog and turn both ways, virtually, in the way the present contains the past AND the future. I can conduct the kind of "multispecies ...Foucauldian geneology" that Swanson suggested (para. 16) as well as touch out and sweep forward, into a potentially regenerative future, how this being, this moment of connection, contact, and conscious shift, how my gaze can become a dedicated glance (in the spirit of Casey, 2007), including a prophetic touching out towards the future beings. Macy and Johnstone described "learning to reinhabit time" (2012, p. 117). Deep time is expansive and invitational.

"Could future generations, for example, discover a way to communicate with us? And if so, what might they say? Perhaps they could only do this if we play our part too by extending ourselves forward in time to meet them. We can do this through our imagination. We don't know whether the communications we would receive this way would be real or imagined -- and we don't really need to know. They still offer useful guidance....By giving future beings a voice, we bring them closer in a way that helps us be guided by their perspective. Hearing ourselves reply to them also helps us to step into a larger view of time" (pp. 158-159).

In this way, I would suggest sustainability and regenerative education invite us to to both/and geneological and futurecasting, future-sensing connectivity and relationality. This sensitization can be sustaining and opening. As Macy and Johnstone suggested,

"We can bring deep time to mind as we go about our daily lives. Even as we wash the dishes, pay the bills, go to meetings, and so on, we can school ourselves to be aware, now and then, of the hosts of ancestral and future beings  surrounding us like a cloud of witnesses. We can remember the vaster story of our planet and let it imbue the most ordinary acts with meaning and purpose. Each of us is an intrinsic part of that story, like a cell in a larger organism. And in this story, each of us has a role to play." (p. 160)

I wish for us each this recombinant and life-giving inclusion of the future beings as well, to sustain us for the work we are called to do, "a cloud of witnesses" (p. 160) and encouragers as we become re-imbricated, re-woven into awareness of the flourishing of the universe in and through us.

This might well help us embody Swanson's invitation, to "become more curious about the conditions of our own subjectivities and, in turn, how we might transform the landscapes with which they are entangled" (2017, para. 16). We might sense that part of this invitation is not only how we might transform these landscapes; it might also be a matter of how these landscapes themselves are transforming us. In a futurecasting of the disintegration of theme parks and the resurging Earth, I imagined a terrapsychological resurgence, "Gaia Taking Back Disneyland" (Hauk, 2016). This involves a collaborative, co-creative re-animation of the living Earth as a co-imaginer of the regenerative possibilities also rippling out from touching the dog. With the land in and through us, with our polychrest capacity to touch out and connect in temporally with what has been wrought and what the future beings are summoning us to, I ask: What stories of the regenerative future are you touching into, carrying, and birthing?

References

Agyeman, Julian, Bullard, Robert D., & Evans, Bob. (Eds.). (2003). Just sustainabilities: Development in an unequal world. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Casey, Ed. (2007). The world at a glance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hauk, Marna. (2016). Gaia taking back Disneyland. In Julie C. Garlen & Jennifer A. Sandlin (Eds.), Teaching with Disney (pp. 149-160). Counterpoints, 477. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Macy, Joanna, & Johnstone, Chris. (2012). Active hope: How to face the mess we're in without going crazy. Novato, CA: New World Library.
Swanson, Heather A. (2017, February 22). The banality of the Anthropocene. Dispatches. Cultural Anthropology. Retrieved from https://culanth.org/fieldsights/1074-the-banality-of-the-anthropocene

Image Reference 
Morrison, Geoffrey. (2014, February 11). Hobbiton, New Zealand. CNET. Retrieved from https://www.cnet.com/pictures/take-a-tour-of-hobbiton-pictures/37/

Joanna Macy and Active Hope

          Recently I heard Joanna Macy at the Unitarian Church in downtown Portland. This was my third time hearing Joanna in Portland, and I also had the good fortune to attend a weekend intensive with her while I was studying down in the Bay Area. Her 2012 talk was an introduction to her new book, Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re In Without Going Crazy (Macy and Johnstone, 2012).

Joanna talks about “the great turning.” We were in the great hall of the downtown Unitarian church, and before the lecture we were blessed to hear some really brilliant, integrative live folk music by a young man who’s studied with her. Songs such as “The Uni-Verse/The One Song” and an invocation for a time of global prayer tied to the Olympics, the organizer sharing “Each of us carries an essential thread of this rebirth of the tapestry for this holy Earth.”

Macy, the Clear View, and Redefining Active Hope

Joanna did speak of getting a clear view, seeing what is, even if painful. Macy’s work emphasizes how, in a culture of domination and power-over, even if it’s painful, even in the midst of highly developed brainwash, to choose to see. Then identify the values we’d like to see, and takes steps to move in that direction. She spoke of how our perception is affected by the stories surrounding us, whether it’s the story of business as usual, the great unraveling (in which the industrial growth society is shredding system connections in a way that is unreweave-able), or the great turning. She spoke of how she didn’t want to call the book “hope” – she doesn’t believe in it, has railed against hope for years [to which I was eternally grateful, I agree and was surprised when I saw the title. I’ve been meaning to change the earth empathy site from the beginning from "despair and hope" to "despair and justice," perhaps her words will spark me to make it so]. She described how, even though she did not prefer the language of "hope," her views did not come to fruition; the subtitle is her original desired title. So what she does in one chapter, with the co-author, is redefine active hope so it doesn’t really have to do with hope at all. Instead, it’s about seeing things as they are, being willing to, doing it, having the heart break open from it, and holding the clear intention and taking the action anyway. “The guiding impetus is our intention, not weighing our chances.” Joanna Macy clarifies: “This work does not require our optimism.” That resonated deeply with me. “It’s about stepping into a state of aliveness that makes our life meaningful.”

Dori Midnight, from Joannamacy.net

“Seeing with New Eyes”

She named four stations in the truth mandala that The Work That Reconnects uses: She suggests we ground in gratitude, then bring our awareness to our great sorrow and outrage, and then see with new eyes so that fourthly we can go forth, bringing full presence to the work. The third station was “seeing with new eyes.” Macy suggests a perceptual move of seeing with new eyes, meaning that as we learn/believe/experience (a la the work of deep ecology and the ecological self) “that we are a living part of the living earth, a shift happens.” A wider view of time emerges. The synergy with the natural world also widens and strengthens us. We are closely related to all the other beings through space and time. Other life forms have so much to give and share. We shift toward a different kind of power, from power-over to power-with, from one-way causality to collaborative approaches, power as synergistic, our interactions working with others. Like grace, there is no limit when we work together. 

 Here's Joanna on the possibilities:

The truth of our inter-existence, made real to us by our pain for the world, helps us see with new eyes. It brings fresh understandings of who we are and how we are related to each other and the universe. We begin to comprehend our own power to change
and heal. We strengthen by growing living connections with past and future generations, and our brother and sister species.

Then, ever again, we go forth into the action that calls us. With others whenever and wherever possible, we set a target, lay a plan, step out. We don’t wait for a blueprint or fail-proof scheme; for each step will be our teacher, bringing new perspectives and opportunities. Even when we don’t succeed in a given venture, we can be grateful for the chance we took and the lessons we learned. And the spiral begins again.  - Joanna Macy

Earth Creativity and Regenerativity

One thing is that I do not actually think creativity (or intelligence) is a uniquely human activity. In fact I suspect that creativity and engaging in our natural/native/inbuilt capacity for creativity brings us into more alignment with the larger earth-being and other cells/organelles/organs of the earthbodysystementityaliveness. I believe creativity activates earth-wisdom capacity inside of us, and also allows us to become more connected with other earth-beings, both those in human bodies and in other bodies (rock embodiments, peregrine falcon bodies, etc.) if you will [but somehow, while saying this, acknowledging and weighting that we are all part of one thing instead of thinking of ourselves as separate beings--more feats yet to develop with the English language to express this]. Another way I might explore thinking about this, a la John Seed/Joanna Macy in Thinking Like a Mountain and more, in their evolution walk and Council of All Beings (has anyone done these?), is to discover how creativity activates our genetic and epigenetic knowledge of all Earth beings, our deeper wisdom, which we already carry within us, in the very fiber of our beings.

Moving from this place of connection/kin-action, deeply sourced across the entire wisdom of earth's profuse creativity-creation, my consciousness moves from an entirely different place. I am able to hyperdeepenleap into deeptime, creationthought, deepresence, generativeunfoldment, ____(words yet to come)_____.

I would locate the sense of source point or "pinnacle" (hierarchical construct) for knowledge not in some futurity or even current state of prime evolutionary edge (which metacognitively represents a manifest destiny of knowledge if you will), but rather that knowledge and wisdom, sourced at the very epicenter of creation (a la the new cosmologists' great unfurling/big bang or the sense of timelessness in Macy's deep time) is embodied in everything that has matter and energy unfurling. This is very different than the we-know-more-as-we-go sense of progress of the condition of human cultures (for the past 5,000 years) and more greatly resembles earlier 35,000+ years of amicable human-group-nature matrixed living. So there is a deep sense of mystery, depth, sourcing, kinship/activation as part of larger weaves of earthlife, creativity-as-aliveness, regenerativity as a native capacity of all living things that I'd like to explore and energize/catalyze/awaken.