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Resilience in lost-ness
In 2020 we have all experienced how many global stressors are deeply interconnected, and how small events can cascade into multiple larger crises that literally affect everyone in the world. This year, pandemics, climate change, food insecurity, income inequality, Big Data, autocracy, and racism have all been linked in a web of cause and effect.
Some scholars have been studying this web of connections for years, and they have many ways of describing it: the global challenge, the human predicament, the polycrisis, existential risk, and systemic breakdown, among others. These are descriptive terms, nouns that describe a set of conditions.
Other terms focus more on methods of addressing these intersecting crises, such as sustainability studies, regenerative design, deep adaptation, systems change, and community resilience. These are all processes, with actions being implied by each.
Both description and action have their advantages and disadvantages. We need to both understand the problem and take action to improve these conditions. What role do any of these or related terms play in guiding your work, and can you please highlight an example for the audience?
Secondly, description and action live in different places in our minds, bodies, and spirits: in our heads, hearts, and hands. How do we navigate between the intellectual and…
