In the Bio-Leadership Fellowship “Shifting Cultures” session, we explored ‘composting’ as a process for systems change, inspired by the Berkana Two Loops and the transition between the dominant and emerging systems. In nature nothing is waste, everything is compost and nutrients to feed something else. Like a form of cultural biomimicry, how can we learn from nature to start composting as a culture, at individual, organisational or societal level.
The exercise imagines removing* an aspect that blocks you or your values (within your life, organisation or society), reflecting on what might emerge in its absence and which of its elements could be composted as beneficial nutrients. Scroll down for the full exercise.
(* The original verb here was to ‘weed’ – but the concept of ‘weeds’ is not universally agreed.)
My first idea was to remove ‘hierarchy’ which pervades the personal, organisational and societal (the ‘pedestal’ that Vanessa Andreotti spoke of). It is an implement of power, wielded over others, keeping people in place. Without it people might be free to offer unique solutions, contribute and have their voice heard. The ‘nutrients’ of hierarchy are the organising elements that prevent inertia. I realised that these nutrients are already being composted in holacracy and teal principles.
I next imagined removing anthropocentrism/separateness from nature.
Anthropocentrism/separateness from nature (Lego man standing atop a globe) is a fallacy that pervades personal, organisational and cultural levels. It prevents us from living fully in harmony with the web of life and in service to life. It is key to the worldview that drives extractivism.
Without anthropocentrism/separateness people would be free to be more mindful of their everyday activities in relation to nature and would begin to act in service to nature. New legal and economic structures would need to be created. (Buddhist Green Tara bracelet denoting people coming together to create new more equal relationships with nature).
The useful element of anthropocentrism/separateness is recognition that we are sufficiently different from the rest of life to be able to have done what we have done – we have physical attributes that give us agency and ‘power’ in relation to other species (Burning candle representing our power and agency). Can we compost this from a ‘power over’ and transform it to ‘power with’ and ‘power to’ – i.e. responsibility to nature rather than rights over it?
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The Composting Exercise (By Sharmishtha Dattagupta)
Step 1: Seeing
What is coming in the way of living your values or expressing your potential (personal life/organisation/dominant culture)? What can you remove?
Identify one aspect of personal life, organisation or dominant culture that seems to be ready to be removed. It might be in the way of living full potential or full value system or be ready to die and compose.
- Look around you and find something that symbolises this aspect.
Step 2: Sensing
What do you sense would emerge if you made space through removing?
Allow yourself to sense and imagine what it is that offers to emerge in its place. What new elements could emerge?
- Look around you and find an object that would symbolise the emergent future.
Step 3:
As the old aspects decompose, how can they become compost for what is emerging? What elements of the old can become nutrients for the new?
Whatever you would have removed was playing a certain role in your life, organisation or culture. There was some reason for it to exist although you may want that particular form to be dissolved. Are there any useful elements of it that can be used as compost and nutrition for an emergent future.
- Look around you and find an object that would symbolise the composted elements/nutrients.
Final – make a sculpture of the symbols
Make a sculpture that denotes this entire process. Do it very intuitively – the process of dying, decomposition, emergence and nutrition from the old to the new.
Rooted Divergent 