Module 1.3
Extract from
Designing Regenerative Cultures
by Daniel Christian Wahl
—
Chapter 6:
How can we learn to better design as nature?
P. 159-160
Individually and collectively we have lost our way. The poem ‘Lost’ by David Wagoner gives the kind of advice that a native elder would offer a young member of the tribe to find their way through the dark, tall forests of the Pacific North West. Stop and listen more deeply when you are lost. This is pertinent advice for humanity as a whole. Confronted with the sensory and information overload of modern life we have lost our ability to really listen to our own intuition, to consider the wisdom of others and to appreciate the insights we can gather by paying attention to life’s 3.8 billion years of experience in not just surviving, but thriving, transforming and evolving. Humanity has lost its path!
Lost
Stand still.
The trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost.
Wherever you are is called Here,
and you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. – Listen. – It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
you are surely lost.
Stand still. – The forest knows where you are.
You must let it find you.
— David Wagoner
I deeply believe that if we really want to create regenerative cultures of fairness and inclusion based on nurturing relationships with the community of life, one of the first things we have to learn to do is listen more deeply. We have to learn to listen from our heart and our mind and trust our own inner wisdom, the wisdom of the community, the wisdom of indigenous cultures and the wisdom of the rest of nature.
Reflections from Emily:
Questions that I am responding to:
1.3 How can we design with the Planet in mind?
2.1 What are conversational dimensions?
The relationship between this text and Emily:
This is a book that I have returned to many times. When I first read it I remember feeling quite frustrated by the slow pace and expansive style (a reflection on my state of mind at the time rather than the text) and yet I was also captivated. This wasn’t my usual type of book. It was also 2020 and the year when nothing felt usual. I read this passage sitting in the back of a small campervan, feeling uncomfortable and scratchy, both physically and psychologically. The irony is that the campervan was stationary, parked outside my house on the west coast of Scotland. We were mid renovations and Covid meant that we were all grounded, so for a while it was our non-mobile home. I read the poem once and felt the hairs on my arm tingle. I read it again and something shifted inside me, like a small piece of the puzzle edging its way to connect with the whole.
Why is this relevant?
We are all overwhelmed with information and noise. The times are urgent yet it has never been more important to find ways of listening and really hearing with all our senses. Working with designers has been an unexpected pleasure and gift for me in this respect. I feel deeply about so many things that I don’t have words (or numbers) to express. In the past I have rushed past those intuitions, pushed them aside in name of efficiency and professional credibility. This is sad, but more than that it is also part of the wider problem. If we can’t make time to listen, to ourselves, to others and to the universe more generally, then what is the point of anything we are doing? My experience has been that good design can help to slow things down, to surface the less visible and unexpected perspectives. It helps me to do my work from a different worldview, with more curiosity, integrity and richer sense of purpose.
Questions to the students:
- What feels really important to you right now?
- What feels confusing or difficult?
- If you wanted to express those feelings to a room full of people you had never met, what would you do? What might you ask or show them?
- If you knew those people worked in Finance, would this change your answer to question 3?