The Field of the Future

By Susan Jennings

Originally in the Summer 2021 Agraria Journal

“The answers you get depend on the questions you ask.”  --Thomas Kuhn

As we enter a new decade, the ground beneath our feet continues to shift as the natural and human systems that sustain us are increasingly imperiled. Yet our greatest challenge may be the collapse of the narratives that have guided us—narratives about our future, about “progress” and technology, about our relationships with each other and the natural world. Some of the proffered  descriptions of our present—that we are in a time of civilizational and ecological collapse, a great reset, a great turning, and a long emergency — provide helpful framing. But there are longer scientific and historical arcs that illuminate a broader context for our predicament and provide  new mindsets for developing on-the-ground solutions to our systemic crises. 

Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, first published in 1962, is a history of scientific discovery that lays out a thesis that science, rather than progressing from insight to insight in measured steps through experimentation, actually takes its biggest leaps through new theories that arise outside the bounds of the accepted science—think the Copernican Revolution. In this narrative, “normal” science starts to become stressed when anomalies show up in laboratories that cannot be explained by the current understanding of how reality is constructed. When anomalies proliferate, science enters a crisis period that is resolved when a new paradigm arises that shifts understanding and practices. 

It's clear to me that we are in this crisis space between a world organized by materialist science,  conceptualized by Newton and Descartes, and an arising quantum paradigm, as understood by Einstein and Bohm.

The tenets of Scientific Materialism (also known as scientism) include the hypothesis that the natural world is without consciousness. An extreme version of this is seeing all living things as nothing more than machines set loose in a random universe. Rene Descartes famously operated on his wife’s dog when it was awake to show that animals did not have a soul. Materialist science assumes that wholes can be cut into parts without fundamentally altering their nature.

Many  of our most pressing problems have at their root  materialist thinking. Climate change, ecological overshoot, rampant degenerative diseases, hunger, and inequity share a basic premise that we are fundamentally separate from each other and the planet we inhabit. This thinking is evident in agricultural systems that suggest we can kill major parts of the food web, such as insects and soil, without harming ourselves, and confine animals in darkness as if they could be reduced to a piece of a corporate  food “chain.” In other systems, materialist thinking shows up in siloed institutions and professions—like urban planning systems that separate the engineers who design roads from the biologists who deal with the challenges of toxic run off. Also witness energy systems created without a concern for the limits of their component parts, and health systems that ignore nutrition and the need for people to be in community with each other and nature.

The atomized separateness epitomized by a one-size-fits all materialist culture urges us toward an ever-more brittle centralized control of all systems by an ever-more distant other. When drone strikes that kill people on the other side of the planet are done by an “operator” in an air-conditioned office, and AI-enhanced humans are promoted as an evolutionary option, we know that we are on the edge of an historical cliff.  We are on the verge of breaking the delicate threads that bind us to each other and the planet.

Yet fully embracing the arising quantum paradigm gives us reason for hope, and a toolkit for change available to all. The double-slit experiment that forms one basis for quantum physics was first performed in 1801—and has since become the most replicated experiment in scientific history. This experiment shows that light is both wave and particle—and that waves become particles when they are observed. The collapse of the wave function into concrete reality, in other words, happens when we pay attention. 

This linking of consciousness to the creation of concrete reality, coupled with an understanding of the unity that underlies all life, gives us principles and practices for re-mending our relationships with nature and with each other.  Quantum theory is the scientific underpinning of the Gaia hypothesis and deep systems thinking. Our understanding of frequencies as communication helps us to see that trees and plants are talking to one another and whales and bees are navigating by sonar. In fact these are just a few known examples of how the  fundamental underpinnings of life are akin to a field of energy that connects us in magical yet potentially traceable ways.

Practices based on the understanding of this unity, and the need to repair the systems that threaten it, are proliferating across the planet. In natural systems, through rewilding projects and wildlife corridors and bridges, we are helping to restore biotic communities. In our human communities, degrowth and cooperative initiatives; alternative work and currencies;  and doughnut and ecological economics are helping us to mend the divides between us—and pull us back from the ecological edge. Permaculture and regenerative agriculture are showing us ways to feed people healthfully while leaving food for our fellow creatures. And forest bathing, outdoor schools, and an explosion of people starting to grow their own food, are providing opportunities for deep immersion and reconnection between people and planet.

Kuhn stresses that the scientist’s  tools and viewpoint determine the outcome of experiments. If what we pay attention to determines the outcome of our future, we might think of attention as one of the most important resources we have. Do we choose to “pay” our limited attention to our collapsing structures, or to these vigorous new shoots growing through the rubble? Clearly, the future is malleable, and dependent on our dreams as well as our doings. 

We chose to call Agraria a Center for Regenerative Practice because we understand that the healing that needs to happen on the planet goes far beyond the regeneration of soils. Regenerative practices are those that move forward people, institutions, and projects in an evolutionary-spiraling cycle of growth and development.

Our nonprofit’s current work plan assumes that we need to pay attention to multiple levels of healing—the healing of the biosphere and the urban/rural divide; the healing of our agricultural practices and the healing of the systems by which we share food; and the healing of the siloes of education through transdisciplinary hands-on initiatives. We share our work with multiple institutional partners, many of whom are written about in this journal. Together with our funders and volunteers, they are helping to weave a field of the future that is diverse and filled with creativity and hope. We invite you to join us as we develop a new narrative of the possible.

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