The worldview we need

None other than Fritjof Capra said of the book “Designing Regenerative Cultures” discussed below: “This book is a valuable contribution to the discussion about the worldview that we need to shape our entire culture in such a way that it regenerates and does not destroyed."

Review by Bobby Langer

With which Fritjof Capra summed up the task at hand: "to shape our entire culture in such a way that it regenerates and does not destroy itself." The emphasis is on "entire culture". No human, no organization could accomplish this mammoth task. And yet it has to be if we don't want to end up in the greatest imaginable misfortune that will one day overtake mankind.

Right questions instead of right answers

Daniel Christian Wahl (DCW) has examined this enormous task in his book. Not because he knows how to do it, but because he at least knows very well how it doesn't work: with business as usual. Ultimately, his achievement consists of intellectual duplication: on the one hand to analyze the well-worn paths of errors and reliable destruction and on the other hand to describe means and methods with which the former can be avoided. The most important method can be summarized with Rilke's famous sentence: "If you live the questions, you may gradually, without realizing it, live into the answers of a strange day." So it's not about giving the right answers, but to ask the right questions. Only when we succeed in changing the direction in which we are moving into the future can useful successes be achieved. A Chinese proverb describes what happens if we don't do this: "If we don't change our direction, we're likely to end up exactly where we're going."

But is it even worth changing direction in order to preserve mankind's cultural achievements? This question, which is probably driving the entire transformation movement worldwide, comes up again and again. DCW has a clear answer:

"We don't know that any other species writes poetry or composes music to reflect the bonding emotion we call love, nor do we know how the passing of the seasons feels to a sequoia tree, or how an emperor penguin subjectively senses the first rays of the sun experienced the Antarctic winter. But isn't there something worth protecting about a species that can ask such questions?"

Four insights for a future worth living

One of the author's core insights runs like a red thread through all chapters: namely, that we cannot know what is to come. We only have a real chance if we are willing to co-creatively deal with this uncertainty and constantly readjust our behavior. A second insight joins the first. It is copied from nature: what needs to be created is a living, regenerative process that promotes life down to the last detail. Because nature is life that promotes life. And nature is also to be taken as a model with a third principle: namely, that – as large as it is and as universal as its laws are – it does not function in monopolies, but in small, local and regional networks, networks within networks within networks. What we need, writes DCW, is a "sensitivity to scale, uniqueness of place and local culture." And: “We must value traditional place-based knowledge and culture without falling into the traps of a resurgent radical regionalism and parochial narrow-mindedness... Systemic health as an emergent feature of regenerative cultures emerges as locally and regionally adapted communities learn, within the by 'conducive constraints' and opportunities set by the ecological, social and cultural conditions of their local bioregion to thrive in a globally collaborative context.”

A fourth principle is inseparable from these three: the precautionary principle, which begins with having prepared for the changing circumstances that may occur at any time. However, DCW also understands precautionary measures as the attitude with which we deal with the world in a creative way. “We urgently need a Hippocratic oath for design, technology and planning: Do no harm! To translate this ethical imperative into action, we need a salutogenic (health-promoting) intent behind all design, technology, and planning: we must design for people, ecosystems, and the health of the planet.” Such design “recognizes the inseparable connection between human, ecosystemic and planetary health”. To get there, the meta-design, the “narrative of separation”, has to be changed to a “narrative of interbeing”; Design is the place where theory and practice meet.

Act with humility and future awareness

On the basis of these considerations and analyses, a kind of toolbox for the conversion of western industrial culture emerges over the course of the approximately 380 pages. To this end, DCW has evaluated all intellectual and practical approaches of the past decades and included them in its considerations. So much is already happening worldwide on all continents. It is now a matter of bringing all these efforts together in a joint process in order to set in motion “the great turning”, as Joana Macy called it.

Consequently, DCW has developed a set of questions for each chapter, which is intended to provide support in giving up the static current state of the respective topic and converting it into a sustainable process: the chemical-pharmaceutical industry, architecture, urban and regional planning, industrial ecology , community planning, agriculture, corporate and product design. For “systemic thinking and systemic interventions are potential antidotes to the unintended and dangerous side effects of centuries of focus on reductionist and quantitative analysis informed by the narrative of separation.” A key question in order to achieve the indispensable "transformative resilience" is: "In the face of the unpredictability and uncontrollability of complex dynamic systems, how can we act with humility and future awareness and apply forward-looking and transformative innovations?"

In fact, there is something relieving in knowing that we don't have to give definitive answers to the pressing questions of our time, or shouldn't give them at all. "By living the questions together," writes DCW, "rather than dwelling on definitive answers and lasting solutions, we can give up trying to know our way forward." Ultimately, his book has several effects on the reader : It is relieving, inspiring, informative, hopeful and practice-oriented at the same time - quite a lot for a book.

Daniel Christian Wahl, Shaping Regenerative Cultures, 384 pages, 29,95 euros, Phenomen Verlag, ISBN 978-84-125877-7-7

Daniel Christian Wahl (DCW) has examined this enormous task in his book. Not because he knows how to do it, but because he at least knows very well how it doesn't work: with business as usual. Ultimately, his achievement consists of intellectual duplication: on the one hand to analyze the well-worn paths of errors and reliable destruction and on the other hand to describe means and methods with which the former can be avoided. The most important method can be summarized with Rilke's famous sentence: "If you live the questions, you may gradually, without realizing it, live into the answers of a strange day." So it's not about giving the right answers, but to ask the right questions. Only when we succeed in changing the direction in which we are moving into the future can useful successes be achieved. A Chinese proverb describes what happens if we don't do this: "If we don't change our direction, we're likely to end up exactly where we're going."

But is it even worth changing direction in order to preserve mankind's cultural achievements? This question, which is probably driving the entire transformation movement worldwide, comes up again and again. DCW has a clear answer:

"We don't know that any other species writes poetry or composes music to reflect the bonding emotion we call love, nor do we know how the passing of the seasons feels to a sequoia tree, or how an emperor penguin subjectively senses the first rays of the sun experienced the Antarctic winter. But isn't there something worth protecting about a species that can ask such questions?"

Four insights for a future worth living

One of the author's core insights runs like a red thread through all chapters: namely, that we cannot know what is to come. We only have a real chance if we are willing to co-creatively deal with this uncertainty and constantly readjust our behavior. A second insight joins the first. It is copied from nature: what needs to be created is a living, regenerative process that promotes life down to the last detail. Because nature is life that promotes life. And nature is also to be taken as a model with a third principle: namely, that – as large as it is and as universal as its laws are – it does not function in monopolies, but in small, local and regional networks, networks within networks within networks. What we need, writes DCW, is a "sensitivity to scale, uniqueness of place and local culture." And: “We must value traditional place-based knowledge and culture without falling into the traps of a resurgent radical regionalism and parochial narrow-mindedness... Systemic health as an emergent feature of regenerative cultures emerges as locally and regionally adapted communities learn, within the by 'conducive constraints' and opportunities set by the ecological, social and cultural conditions of their local bioregion to thrive in a globally collaborative context.”

A fourth principle is inseparable from these three: the precautionary principle, which begins with having prepared for the changing circumstances that may occur at any time. However, DCW also understands precautionary measures as the attitude with which we deal with the world in a creative way. “We urgently need a Hippocratic oath for design, technology and planning: Do no harm! To translate this ethical imperative into action, we need a salutogenic (health-promoting) intent behind all design, technology, and planning: we must design for people, ecosystems, and the health of the planet.” Such design “recognizes the inseparable connection between human, ecosystemic and planetary health”. To get there, the meta-design, the “narrative of separation”, has to be changed to a “narrative of interbeing”; Design is the place where theory and practice meet.

Act with humility and future awareness

On the basis of these considerations and analyses, a kind of toolbox for the conversion of western industrial culture emerges over the course of the approximately 380 pages. To this end, DCW has evaluated all intellectual and practical approaches of the past decades and included them in its considerations. So much is already happening worldwide on all continents. It is now a matter of bringing all these efforts together in a joint process in order to set in motion “the great turning”, as Joana Macy called it.

Consequently, DCW has developed a set of questions for each chapter, which is intended to provide support in giving up the static current state of the respective topic and converting it into a sustainable process: the chemical-pharmaceutical industry, architecture, urban and regional planning, industrial ecology , community planning, agriculture, corporate and product design. For “systemic thinking and systemic interventions are potential antidotes to the unintended and dangerous side effects of centuries of focus on reductionist and quantitative analysis informed by the narrative of separation.” A key question in order to achieve the indispensable "transformative resilience" is: "In the face of the unpredictability and uncontrollability of complex dynamic systems, how can we act with humility and future awareness and apply forward-looking and transformative innovations?"

In fact, there is something relieving in knowing that we don't have to give definitive answers to the pressing questions of our time, or shouldn't give them at all. "By living the questions together," writes DCW, "rather than dwelling on definitive answers and lasting solutions, we can give up trying to know our way forward." Ultimately, his book has several effects on the reader : It is relieving, inspiring, informative, hopeful and practice-oriented at the same time - quite a lot for a book.

Daniel Christian Wahl, Shaping Regenerative Cultures, 384 pages, 29,95 euros, Phenomen Verlag, ISBN 978-84-125877-7-7