One of the many lessons that Corona virus has brought in its wake, is our health and well-being is dependent on what others do. Our health is not our own. If others come too close and cough, without realising they are carrying the virus, we will very likely become infected. If they spread the infection to others, there may be a shortage of hospital beds to treat us for a different illness. Their health is similarly dependent, on how we act. Many theatres, orchestras, art galleries, cinemas, hotels, cafes, restaurants, sports clubs and places to visit may permanently close, unless we collectively find ways of supporting them through the period of forced closure and no income.
Coronavirus has also enabled us the opportunity to wake up to how our interdependency is on a global level, not just at our locality or country level. A viral pandemic can start in one town the other side the world and soon be in every country. So can a computer virus, a nuclear wind, or an economic crisis.
Hopefully, we can collectively use this lesson to prepare for the even bigger challenge that we are all in together – that of the Climate emergency, which is already causing the early death of many human beings and radically reducing the diversity of species with whom we share this earth.
Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac in their book: “The Future We Chose: Surviving the Climate Crisis” write:
“We can no longer afford to assume that addressing climate change is the sole responsibility of national or local governments, or corporations, or individuals. This is an everyone-everywhere mission, in which we all must individually and collectively take responsibility.”
We do not lack the information, knowledge, technical ability, or resources to address the climate crisis, which we are already unavoidably within. What we lack is not IQ or EQ but ‘We Q.’– collaborative Intelligence. This cannot be taught for it first requires a fundamental shift in human ways of thinking, being and doing.
Responding before it is ‘here and now’
Human beings are very good at responding to crises they can see and touch. The challenges that are immediate, activate our amygdala, fire up our adrenalin, and require an obvious response. We now have to overcome, the way we only respond to challenges and crises that are on our doorstep and already impacting those with whom we identify. We need to discover how to move beyond only acting when something is proximal, either in space, i.e. happening close to us, or in time, i.e. going to affect or infect us, in the next few weeks. The UK and many western countries ignored the many warnings that a pandemic was going to happen, it was not whether it would happen or not, but only when.
Trump closed the pandemic preparation unit set up by Barack Obama. Mrs. May, when British Prime Minister, cut funding for Pandemic preparation to focus on Brexit. Even when Coronavirus spread through China and the pacific rim countries, western governments saw the problem as the ‘other-side of the world’. Only when Italian hospitals were overrun with cases did it get the attention needed. By then, it was much harder to respond. Hundreds of lives could have been saved by responding quicker, before it became proximal.
The climate emergency is the same pattern, but this time on a much larger and more terrifying scale. Every year we procrastinate will cost, not hundreds of human lives, but millions, and the continued and accelerating loss of many species and of large scale biodiversity, as well as many eco-systems which will become unable to regenerate. The financial costs for addressing the climate crisis will also increase as we delay taking radical action. Delaying lock-down of human movement made the Covid 19 crisis worse. The delaying of lock down of emissions of carbon, methane and nitrous oxide will, be far, far more costly, on every possible level.
Learning to think, be and do systemically
We have to move away from linear cause and effect thinking, breaking everything down into constituent parts and focusing on solving falsely separated problems. Most of the real challenges do not lie in the parts, but in the connections. System thinking is not sufficient. As it is often just incrementally moving from looking at one bounded system, to the next larger bounded system, i.e. moving from looking at individuals to looking at families or teams, to looking at organizations etc. However, no system is bounded. As Gregory Bateson pointed out, we live in a seamless interconnected and interdependent web of relationships, that not only connects all human beings, but all sentient beings and beyond that to every aspect of our life on this earth and in our atmospheric envelope. Then even beyond that, for without the Sun there is no life possible on this distant rock of ours. He told us that to understand things cognitively, we need to apply the analytic scissors and mentally create cuts in the seamless web. However, he goes on to say that it is madness, having made the mental cut for the purpose of understanding, to believe the cut exists out there in nature. Yet this way of thinking is hard wired into our very language and ways we are educated.
Beyond systems thinking lies systemic thinking – where we see the dynamic dance between the many systemic levels we are nested within. Beyond systemic thinking is systemic being and doing. Where we learn, and relearn, to live in a participatory universe, where we not only see, but feel the interconnectivity and interdependency and then respond from a place of deep embodied ‘inter-being’.
Consciousness Change
Elsewhere, I have passionately argued that coaching, consultancy, psychology, psychotherapy, human resources, spiritual and religious ministry, and all forms of education, need fundamentally to move their focus beyond personal learning, development and well-being, often for the already highly privileged, to realising they are all part of a much greater purpose. They all have a great contribution to make to the very survival of our species and of ecological health of our planet. Others are more able to design the production, storage and distribution of renewable energy. Others are more able to develop models that overcome global economic inequality, and new models of ownership, the addressing of which is a very critical component of addressing the climate emergency. Further others can contribute to much better building, transport and city design, effective land use, better farming methods, water management and rewilding and re-forestation.
The wide collaboration of all those who are part of the people and change professions’ great work in the 21st century, is to focus on how we shift human consciousness, to a place where we as a species are ‘future-fit’ to live within this radically different world of the Anthropocene, that we ourselves have created. We need to constantly enable ‘empathic extension’ in ourselves and others, so we increasingly empathise, not only with our ‘nearest and dearest’, but the one whole human family, and the ‘more-than-human’ world. This entails overcoming tribalism, racism, all forms of ‘othering’ and privilege gained at the cost born by the wider world. We need to role-model and enable the spirit of Ubuntu, on a global scale – ‘I am because you are and you are because I am.’ and reach a tipping point in truly waking up to how “We are all in this together.”
Professor Peter Hawkins June 2020
The Renewal Foundation are providing periods of research retreat for those writing about how to address the major challenges of our time, in the beautiful location of Barrow Castle with woodlands, flower meadows and walled garden, on the edge of the City of Bath in the UK. All food and accommodation is free, but in return the writer needs to present a video, podcast interview or written working paper as an output from their stay. To apply write to julie.jeffery@renewalassociates.co.uk who will send you an application form.
References
Bateson, G (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Ballantine Books, New York
Bateson, G. (1979) Mind and Nature: A necessary unity. Dutton, New York.
Bateson, G. (1991) A Sacred Unity: Further Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Harper Collins, New York.
Bateson, G and Bateson, M.C. (1987) Angels Fear: An investigation into the nature and meaning of the sacred. MacMillan, New York.
Berry, W. (2015) Our only World: Ten Essays. Counterpoint, Berkley, San Francisco.
Capra, F (2003) The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living, Flamingo, London
Figueres, C. and Rivett-Carnac, T. (2020) The Future We Chose: Surviving the Climate Crisis. London: Manilla Press.
Hanh Thich Nhat (1987) Interbeing: Fourteen Guidelines for Engaged Buddhism. Parallax Press, London
Hawkins, P. (2011, & 2014 & 2017) Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership. London: Kogan Page.
Hawkins, P. (2014 and 2018). Leadership Team Coaching in Practice; Developing High Performing Teams. Philadelphia: Kogan Page Publishers.
Naess, A. and Rothenberg, D. (2011). Ecology, Community and Lifestyle. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Rifkind, J. (2010) The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
