A Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose and Leadership in a Time Place of Collapse
With Norma Wong
In this conversation, Norma Wong invites us to reorient towards a longer arc of possibility. One that considers the lives of descendants 140-160 years from now. Opening to an indigenous worldview of time, interconnectedness and responsibility. Tending to what is needed to be tended today and casting towards what descendants may need; An aim that is greater than our day to day existence.
We are at a moment when systems are collapsing and in disarray. This moment feels like an existential crisis that compel us react and to try to fix these systems to support and protect our communities and the environment. However, Norma invites us to not spend too much time trying to fix them. She explains that these systems have grown to be too complex to "solve". The political apparatus of government, civil society and institutions follow the line of modernity and lag behind what people truly need. She reflected on the need for an emergent indigeneity, at term she defined as the fundamental notions of how we can live in a modern world rooted in interdependence and with less reliance on central human rule of big systems. (Emergent indigeneity is not about the appropriation of any particular peoples or ways).
Emergent indigeneity taps into the natural instinct to care and support one another - as seen in times of emergency or natural disasters. Leading to organic and organized ways to support or change the conditions for people. These localized efforts of mutual-aid and care happen at a micro-system level. Norma invites us to consider that micro-system level changes are what can get us to longer haul transformation. They are/can be the beginning of new ways of practicing governance where, as it has been practiced in different parts of the world, communities respond to fill in needs big systems fail to do and support people.
She highlights the importance of being in relationship with people as a primary practice in these times, to cultivate community wherever we are and to honor the cycle of work & renewal. (to avoid - running dry and leave the field of battle or indulging on our care in a consumerist way). To have a disciplined practice of (re)membering to put the parts that once were whole back together individually and collectively.
Resources:
When no thing works : a Zen and Indigenous perspective on resilience, shared purpose & leadership in the time of collapse -book by Norma Wong
Collective Acceleration - a learning community explores what is necessary to proactively move from patterns of conflict and collapse, to practices of interdependence and possibility.
Collective acceleration visual - Visual by Claudia Lopez as narrated by Norma Wong
“Our aspirations as humans are low. We know what we are not in favor of
But we need think about what our descendants lives could be. We must rise people’s aspirations and woo them into the their best possibility. The possibility that every human has to make every other human’s life better.”
“How do we invite ourselves and others into an emergent indigeneity - when modernity is so embedded into our lives?
Reorient towards a longer arc of our responsibility and of possibility.
Find the openings to invite people in. vs trying to make things happen all of a sudden. Live a purpose-filled life vs. a reactionary life. Pay attention to place, the beings of that place and its rythms. What would be the potential aspects of interconnectedness if we more consciously go about noticing this and being with it?”