Alternative UK feature
LIVING SOIL, LIVING SYSTEMS, LIVING COSMOS:
A COSMO-LOCAL REVOLUTION
By Benjamin Still
Innovations are beginning to form the picture of a cosmo-local revolution. They are moving us towards the arrival of an integral, decentralised, interconnected planetary politics.
These future-oriented initiatives, stemming from soil to psyche, are opening new doors of perception. They are shifting our core human enterprises towards a regenerative paradigm on the horizon. This offers new ways to live and be in the world.
The town of Frome, in the southwest of the UK, is a community moving towards cosmo-localism. There, multiple organisations and ideas in action display new ways of operating. Independent politics, decentralised education, and a soil saving initiative called Loop are a few examples of how this town represents change.
When redesigning our political systems, we need a holistic approach. Change is rooted not just in new social structures, but also new psychic structures. Building regenerative systems is essential--but equally important is growing and cultivating a new and more expansive consciousness.
This challenge is comprehensive: we need to consider all necessary aspects of our community systems. This means acting from the ground up, with soil health and food sovereignty. It also means creating a transformative education, through which regenerative systems and a new political vision might evolve.
LIVING SOIL
“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all”
Growing living soil is deeply alchemical. Through this often-lengthy process, we can witness fungal intelligence; discover the holarchy (meaning the widening growth) of micro-cosmic soil structures; and attune ourselves to the consciousness of the land. As we regard this process, our awareness can shift.
New ways of learning can arise and the multiplicity of intelligences in the world, existing within us and without us, can find communion. With nature as teacher, we find the roots of humanity in the ground under our feet. In soil, we find highly complex, regenerative, symbiotic processes - and we see them arising with spontaneous ease. Could we learn to take the sense-making that soil processes show us, and translate them into the design of a new political vision?
For example, the relational dynamics that we find in soil are the perfect metaphor to begin discussions of a new circular economy. Saprophytic fungi have acted as the recycler of nature for around half a billion years. By breaking down dead matter, they release nutrients back into the soil, which is then absorbed by surrounding plant life. Soil is the Earth’s first circular economy.
The phrase “Wood Wide Web” helps us think about symbiotic relationships that benefit whole ecosystems. Mycelial networks and the roots of trees form deep, mutually beneficial relationships, with these networks reaching levels of complexity akin to the human brain.
Soil mirrors even the nature of our psyche. We know that the evolution of thought takes place in relationship to others; both intra-psychically and inter-personally. The higher order synthesis that results from these relationships is a key dynamic in the development of human consciousness.
But they are also homologous with soil processes. This soil-psyche connection expresses itself explicitly in psychoactive compounds, such as psilocybin, and the profound transformations that can result from their informed use.
This intelligence of soil could potentially be translated into the design of new regenerative systems. Loop:Frome is an organisation working to co-create a regenerative resource network within its town.
The initial project is focused on soil health. Through turning previously wasted food into rich nutrient dense compost, the ‘nutrient loop’ is closed, and local soil can be healed. Healthy soil is deeply connected to issues around food security and quality. Comprehensive system design is fundamental to its success. For example, having access to secure and good quality food is a key pillar that permits other cultural expressions to take place.
The work of Vallis Veg, a small farm situated in Frome, shows people can create abundance from the land. Its co-founder Chris Smaje recently released a book called A Small Farm Future, which has received praise from the globally recognised activist Vandana shiva. That’s an example of the power of cosmo-localism - where putting faith and energy into the land attracts the insight and influence of someone doing similar work on another continent. This resulted in conversations between them, and a cross-pollination of much nuanced knowledge.
Community in the age of complexity requires literacy in many modes of intelligence. Thinking about the living soil is part of this. It may guide us in the creation of other new living systems.
LIVING SYSTEMS
“Consciousness creates the system; the system creates consciousness”
Our systems must be brought back to life, within our collective imagination. These systems are pathways for our energy and resource to flow; they are living forms we grow and cultivate. We would be wrong to assume that the vibrancy of nature just dissolves in the acidic world of human politics. That politics could be a progressive extension of soil, psyche, and soul.
But it depends on how and what we build politically. If we construct our social systems as open, decentralised, fractal networks, we can create pathways that continuously evolve these systems, as well as regenerate the energies these systems carry.
The ideal outcome is that we make social systems rich enough - designed for openness, decentralisation, and regeneration - that new structures emerge from the complex operations of their elements. When resources, such as currency in the form of Universal basic income, are made more freely available to the population, and if we combine that with integral educational opportunity, we could generate a creative flourishing within our communities.
Our perceptions are as open (or constricted) as the systems we entangle ourselves with. Unconscious acceptance of an ideology limits the bandwidth in which we can experience and think creatively. Designing systems that are inherently open, free from limiting dogma, and have a dynamic self-transcendent quality, would help us cultivate similar values in human consciousness.
The symbiosis between politics and perception has been displayed in Frome through the reclamation of its local independence. Peter Macfadyen (Flatpack Democracy), ex-mayor of Frome, led a group of activists in recovering their local political power. This success story has been an inspiration for other movements, including The Alternative UK. Since Frome’s assertion of independence, the subtle vibrancy of the town has continued to flourish.
Its independent business community is an example of Frome’s forward thinking, entrepreneurial spirit. This independence is still nestled within a larger, centralised, local authority structure and thus remains limited. However, the pioneering mentality behind independence is what drives us to build entirely new systems.
SPIRITUAL INTELLIGENCE
When systems are open, energy can find its natural patterns and innate equilibrium. This is the essence of living systems. From a transpersonal perspective we find deep correlations - between the energy of a living social system, and the archetypal energies of Earth and Cosmos.
Spiritually, we strive to integrate living systems and human self-transcendence. Only through our deepening connection to Self can we find the necessary strength and inspiration to put forth a new vision for Humanity.
Through conscious engagement with the transpersonal energies involved in any creative endeavour, we access a greater clarity of vision, developing improved sense-making and decision-making. A new political vision requires a new depth of insight: we can achieve that through the integration of intuitive, imaginal, and spiritual intelligences.
Decision making is inherently imaginal. It requires a creative acting on insight, which itself stems from an intuitive understanding of potential outcomes, as well as grounded knowledge on the topic in question and oneself.
In creating new political systems, most especially with ambitions towards participatory democracy, entrenched ideology hugely inhibits our making decisions from an un-biased perspective (which an integral approach can establish). For effective democracy to emerge we need participants to be initiated, self-aware and knowledgeable.
When we allow the spiritual dimension into our politics, we open ourselves up to creative possibilities. We become cognizant of influencing factors that exist outside the perception of our daily bandwidth.
Returning to Frome, we find an organization called Edventure - a de-centralised educational hub providing free courses for young adults. Their core approach to learning is experiential, inclusive, and transformational. Independent educational spaces such as this begin to return teacherly authority to the community.
Educational centres that are cosmo-local, integral, and spiritually conscious, can create holistic learning experiences that develop consciousness over an entire life span. The aim is to compassionately cultivate a new collective intelligence.
We can strive for a society that is fair, not utopian but integral (all quadrants all levels). A society that treats the most vulnerable as the most urgent call for action. Through this attitude we will continually strive for greater freedom and fairness. We’ll try to reach a level of insight demanded by the complexity of a civilisation in transition.
LIVING COSMOS
“I have learned that all knowledge is available to us. We don’t have to create it; we have only to access it.””
Cosmo-localism requires an abiding meta-theory. The work of Dr Bernardo Kastrup on metaphysical idealism is a philosophy that empirically argues for the mental nature of reality. Approaches such as this allow us to reconnect to the truth of Living Cosmos. Without a psychic re-organization of our relationship to Cosmos, we limit our innate capacity for self-transcendence and insight.
A meta-theory can help guide our ideas in terms of systems design, education, and self-awareness. We have seen how reductionist ideologies, mostly justifying forms of capitalism, have shaped our cultural landscape. But if we instead find a framework that recognises the sacredness of reality, this can aid us in building systems that revere nature and reflect its aliveness. Seeing energy and nature as alive means the systems we inhabit will themselves become enlivened.
Quantum physics is beginning to recognise this living essence of Cosmos. Henry Stapp, quantum physicist and author of the Mindful Universe, discusses the intelligent, responsive, relational nature of the Universe. The way that the observer is integrated with the observed, under the quantum paradigm, speaks of the reality of co-creation.
Co-creation is an energetic symbiosis taking place between the subjective observer and the object. In other words, our act of witnessing an ‘external’ phenomenon gives it the form we perceive. This reveals the dynamic interplay that continually takes place between us and the reality we inhabit. We live within a vast living-energetic-cosmo-system, that creates us and that we create.
METAMORPHOSIS OF MIND
Equally important, when we redesign systems, is the transformation of agents within a system. This transformation takes place within our consciousness. The American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg spoke of 4 key stages of development: these relate to how we see ourselves in relation to the Whole. They are: egocentric, ethnocentric, world-centric, and cosmo-centric.
Kohlberg’s model charts how our morality and compassion develop, as we begin to identify and relate to more and more of creation. Starting with identification only with oneself (ego-centric) and ending with identification with all sentient beings that have been and will ever be (cosmo-centric), Kohlberg’s model shows how human consciousness can expand, developmentally, into a loving connection with the entire Cosmos.
The cosmo-local revolution being described here requires introspection, an expansive insight into the nature of reality. As we move through various levels of development, we reach collectively for a unified cosmo-centric consciousness. Yet we must continue to look at our social organisation, searching for ways to authentically evolve. Intimations of cosmo-local emergence - which the preceding descriptions point towards - are the threads of navigation we can use to find inspiration in such uncertain times.
Metamorphosis of mind requires not just education and self-knowledge, but also a new politics. Taken all together, these affect how our consciousness manifests. Change at their intersection is showing itself in places such as Frome, as well as many others. By acknowledging, honouring, and supporting these transforming initiatives, we can give energy to the emergence of cosmo-localism. We will be birthing a new world for ourselves and future generations.
