Imagine slaying the hydra

I’ve just listened to the audiobook version of ‘How to Fight a Hydra’ by Josh Kaufman, and while his analogy is towards projects and project management, I feel that the battle to mitigate or eliminate the threat of climate change is similar. So many ‘heads’, so much of a ‘wicked problem’.

Somewhere in the depths of your mind, a monster of a project is lurking.

How to Fight a Hydra?is a story about summoning the courage to face the beast, fight the good fight, & persist long enough in your efforts to secure a lasting victory.

(from the website https://howtofightahydra.com/ )

I always have more than one ‘reading material’ on the go depending on context, headspace, interest, or necessity. In the last week I have been reading the following …

How to Fight a Hydra: Josh Kaufmann

Harnessing Social Imagination in the Era of the Climate Crisis (report): https://centreforpublicimpact.org/resource-hub/harnessing-social-imagination-in-the-era-of-the-climate-crisis/

The Sociological Imagination in a Time of Climate Change (paper): Kari Marie Norgaard https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818116303265

The Little House on the Prairie: Laura Ingalls Wilder

What You Are Looking For is in the Library: Michiko Aoyama

I find that by reading various things from different spheres and genres it sparks a cross-pollination of ideas and connections. I’m also enjoying reading stories written by authors from other cultures.

So, circling back to the Hydra - climate change as a wicked problem means, to me at least, that while trying to solve one part of the problem several others pop up to demand your attention. That you have to be strategic in order to slay the beast, attempt different tactics, understand (as much as you can) your enemy.

But who is the enemy in climate change?

In discovering sociological imagination, in reading the report and the paper, I learned that one ‘enemy’ is perhaps ourselves. Not in the sense that we don’t want to change our habits which are harming our beautiful planet. No, I don’t believe for the majority that this is true. I feel it is more in the ways we are unconsciously constrained in our ways of thinking which we (often) do not realise are imposed on us by “relationships within society that make up this environmentally damaging social structure” (Norgaard, 2018). We are not fully aware of the machinations going on to reinforce these relationships in our daily lives, we cannot conceive how we can change these structures, topple the man behind the curtain.

Side note: I think more of us are becoming aware, we simply haven’t reached a critical mass to give us the ability to make changes.

Our imaginations are awesome, we have to imagine it before we can create it. Think of all the amazing things humanity has created over the centuries. Think of those who imagined the technology of Star Trek back in the late 60s, technology which is nowadays has gone beyond in some cases, though thankfully transporter beam technology isn’t here yet as I’m with ‘Bones’, I am not sure I’d want my molecules taken apart and reconstituted anyway, no matter how convenient.

Beyond ‘things’ though, can we imagine also how we can change the structures and relationships within society? Understand what they are ‘now’ and imagine what needs to be done to change them. Discover what we have to ‘unlearn’ in order to uncover new ways of being.

Is this a job for storytelling?

Within the Green Futures Storytelling group we have been looking at anecdotes of hope and achievement, discussing and discovering what makes a story memorable and shareable. These have always been in the past though. What if we shifted the story and used our imaginations to look forward? To imagine a green future so we can create it. To imagine what our lives will be if those “relationships within society that make up this environmentally damaging social structure” were changed or even gone.

Perhaps this is something to explore in our next session. Now we have discussed writing from the past, maybe it is time to imagine our writings from the future.

I will be facilitating a dedicated writing session on Wednesday 15th January 2025 10am - 12:30pm so we can explore further the concept of what makes a story memorable and shareable, plus have the time and space to write our own stories - perhaps our imaginings from the future...

Our third Green Futures Storytelling session will also be online and will be held on Wednesday 12th February from 11:30am - 1pm. Please let me know if you have suggestions for activities or discussion for this event too.

Book for the dedicated writing session here: https://www.trybooking.com/uk/EEFB

Book for the third session here: https://www.trybooking.com/uk/EEFH