Can regenerative reconciling practice take us beyond poisonous polarisation?

When the results of the Netherlands general election were announced last week, I had a momentary feeling of being in Groundhog Day.? Here we go again. The pattern of polarisation in politics raising its ugly head as the Netherlands took a lurch towards the alt-right with Wilder’s party becoming the largest in the parliament. ?It has a feeling of becoming a Dutch Brexit.

The Netherlands is one of my favourite countries to work in across Europe. Usually ?pragmatic, bold and often blunt in communications, genial and welcoming, I always find myself at home in this minority majority landscape. Only a few weeks ago I was in Amsterdam exploring the success story of Amsterdam Noord where diverse creative communities are regenerating what was once an uncelebrated and unloved district of the capital city. And yet here we are once more shining a blinding light on difference rather than common futures, with divisive discontent bubbling up through the cracks in the way a lava flow will do once it finds its way through the earth’s crust.

Polarisation is sometimes thought to be a political issue, but if we look around us, we can see, and experience it, in many other fields and in a variety of ways.? We find it in all the ‘isms’ we can think of in human relations: racism, everyday sexism, genderism.? We find in in quick, sharp staccato cancel culture where ‘sides’ leap to judgement long before nuance has even woken up. We find it in decision-making where too often the choices seem to be between either ‘this’ or ‘that’. We find it in community where ‘for’ and ‘against’ sometimes seem to be the only option.

I have experienced it between NGOs, charities, action groups who campaign resolutely against or for a policy or action with little vision of any alternative to their chosen positions. I have experienced it in the built environment between those who want to protect landscape for nature and biodiversity and construction companies or local councils who want to build. I have experienced it when local communities campaign against and stop any kind of development on their doorstep. I have experienced it in the boardroom with for and against majority vote winning. We might call that democracy but it always leaves some people behind.

Disruption and uncertainty drive division

As increasing disruption occurs in the life support systems of the planet – from climate change to the resultant increase in extreme weather activities – and the human systems we have designed such as our global economic system our social support systems and our health systems – begin to creak under the strain of providing services in an untenable framework – we all subsconsciously feel that gradual breakdown. Even those people who remain unaware or determinedly unwilling to look the potential for systems breakdown in the eye - are still all able to subconsciously sense the potential for dramatic change.?

To deal well with increasing uncertainty about the future, we need to learn to dance with that uncertainty and become more confident with decision-making and designing for turbulent transformative change.?Unfortunately the opposite often happens. When we intentionally avoid, or deeply want to avoid, such existential challenges, any pathway which looks like it might convey certainty and security become very much more attractive. One of those pathways is polarisation. Another is narrow focused problem-solving.

Regenerative reconciling practice offers a different way to approach polarisation through a reconciling practice that seeks to move entrenched positions towards future potential rather than problem-solving or conflict resolution.

Among the approaches we can take include:-

De-veiling Patterns & Processes

Sometimes we just can’t see the wood for the trees. Life is complex, fast-paced and you have to be very determined to carve out the time to develop a discernment practice that brings thoughtful, considered reflection to our actions. As a regenerative practitioner, being able to peel back the tangle of the foliage through narratives and storytelling is a way to take the sting out of the other less engaging options like ‘are you blind?’ ‘any chance you could just take your head out of the sandbucket for 5 seconds?’ or ‘I just can’t believe you can’t see that’ which regretfully I’ve often heard when frustration gets the better of our ability to relate with compassion and understanding!

One that has been enormously helpful, and with which we start most of our learning journeys, is the story of separation, which I first heard years ago from master storyteller, C harles Eisenstein. Understanding the patterns that have led to separation between humans and nature, humans and humans, and the ways in which we have been encouraged to value analytics over intuition, or external prompts over inner development, can be life changing. Once you’ve seen it, you just can’t unsee it.

It can be shared and worked with in any number of ways. Sometimes it can be shared through a deep time walk – looking at those dualisms arising throughout culture in history. Sometimes it can be shared through a science-based approach, as Iain McGilchrist does so well in his work on the divided brain. Or by condensing earth’s biological developmental journey from 3.8 billion years of life to just 365 days as Dayna Baumeister at the Biomimicry 3.8 does.

The story of the living universe as a conscious unfolding over 14 billion years is arguably the most powerful of all, because it speaks to the entanglement of spiritual belief and quantum physics into a new understanding of life’s journey from big bang (or breath as Jude Currivan describes it in the Story of Gaia) through the intentional, precise, expansion of the universe.

It's equally important to be able to de-veil behaviour that is wholly natural for human beings. Humans naturally make sense of the world through a process of differentiation. Through a method of self-differentiation and group identification, we humans tend to find polar opposites and then attempt to define things by examining them in that frame of opposites. Difference is our default sensemaking process. It is when our sensemaking turns to certainty of preference for difference that we risk spilling into conflict and polarisation.

Upstream Thinking and Downstream Designing

Upstream Thinking is how I describe Really Regenerative 's practice of learning to look for the source or root cause of a pattern or process that we see playing out. If we can identify the true source of any particular tension or challenge, we have a much better opportunity to design an intervention that works in the long-term.? We work on questions like these:-

• Is the source of carbon emissions the fossil fuel industry or poor technology and innovation programmes or the model of global economic thought that drives constant growth and consumption which uses fossil fuels as blood in its veins?
• Is the source of our ecological destruction of soils farming, the agrochemical industry, or is it that we have believed we are separate and better than 'nature' and that it is there for human use rather than having an intrinsic role to play in creating the lasting conditions conducive to life?
• Is the source of chronic loneliness in the elderly poor housing design, failing social services, collapsing community, or the pursuit of individualism driven by our mechanistic mindset that values parts over wholes?

Frequently we opt for the most obvious presenting source of tension – the individual or group – rather than seeking to understand the systems in which the tension arises and the context in which it exists.

Many people have a natural inclination towards Upstream Thinking.? They have an inbuilt ability to join-the-dots and see beyond the obvious to the implicit and hidden connections and relationships across culture, place, economy and ecology that have an impact on any situation we face.? These people are the systems thinkers among us; the people who understand and see the invisible mycellium that surrounds us.? They are like trackers and explorers of a bygone age: hunting down the spores, indicators and patterns that offer vital information about where an animal might be moving to next, whether the squall on the horizon might be a small buffet or a full blown storm. But even if it doesn’t come ‘naturally’ - all of us have an innate capability to become trackers of thought and seers of systems. It just takes a little practice.

There are many value adding properties of engaging in Upstream Thinking.?

• It offers an opportunity to engage with the complexity we are all working with
• It slows down our decision-making processes, allowing us to take account of that complexity and not rush to decision that contain hidden consequences we haven’t taken the time to understand
• It disables the rush to judgement; of others with whom we have not had, or not taken, the time to build relationship and mutual understanding
• It enables us to design informed interventions in the systems and processes around us based on more nuanced data that have a much greater chance of long-term impact; in other words it enables Downstream Designing to be effective

Engaging Through Frameworks

Often when we encounter polarised positions or ideas or simply situations where all stakeholder groups are stuck and unable to move forwards, it’s helpful to be able to share a perspective through a process that seems independent of personalities, issues or agendas.? Adopting a mindset of ‘living the questions’ is useful; hosting independent enquiries is a brilliant way to bring diverse stakeholders together around a question over time. But sometimes we want something a little more immediate.? Which is where frameworks can be your best friend.

Some people love frameworks; others not so much.? I am someone who loves them. Working with frameworks has been a revelation to me. ?They are marvellous vehicles to slow down the think-and-act muscle. For those of us whose brains go faster than is good for them towards conclusions - which is often perceived as ‘going faster than the speed of trust’ - it’s a way of bringing in more nuanced perspectives to balance out the rapid-fire processing we are able to do.

They are also wonderful for de-veiling what is really going on in any given situation – without falling victim to conspiracy theory. That can be frameworks that can be used to explore patterns of change that span centuries or decades such as Bill Sharpe’s Three Horizons of Innovation or Berkana Institute’s Two Loops . Or it can be frameworks that capture universal truths, revealing hidden dynamics that are always present across many different situations, like J G Bennett’s Law of Three.? One of my personal favourites, and a powerful foundation for regenerative reconciling.? There are frameworks that dance with ever increasing levels of complexity, right up to the Enneagram, which, when viewed in its original form as designed by George Gurdjieff rather than its popularised use as a personal profiling tool , captures huge depth of life’s complexity across the universe, documented long ago by mathematicians such as Pythagoras.

As polarisation has become an increasing handbreak on convening fields of energy – aka multistakeholder and trans-disciplinary groups – in pursuit of transformational change, we need to weave developmental practice into the projects we design and the groups we convene as a matter of urgency so that we are prepared to cope when it arises – rather than having to resort to compromise or conflict resolution when the proverbial hits the fan.

There are also many personal qualities we can work on to help us become aware of when we ourselves are sliding into polarisation - which is nature, we are human and fallible. Self-awareness, self-observation, reflective practice, practice at seeing wholes rather than parts, all help to develop the mental muscle to go beyond polarisation's toxic effects in the world.

Beyond Polarisation is a new experimental short learning journey Really Regenerative designed to offer an introduction to regenerative reconciling techniques. It covers the root causes of polarisation in the human system, and regenerative practices and frameworks to use in thje situations you encounter. It’s a great way to experience how to approach ‘stuckness’ from an informed and different perspective that might just help to unlock something perceived as intractable. We hope it is a good introduction to regenerative practice in general - without diving into our 9 month intensive journeys!

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