Our Regenerative Future with Bruce Parry, Rory Spowers, and Daniel Pinchbeck

Pinchbeck introduces Building Our Regenerative Future, a month-long online course launching in June 2020, alongside the writer Rory Spowers and the documentary maker Bruce Parry, known for living among Indigenous communities for the BBC series Tribe. They lay out eight sessions covering food, health, community, economics, culture and consciousness, with archived recordings, reading lists, optional workshops and a certificate. Spowers frames the underlying argument: the extractive economy is linear while living systems are cyclical, so the way back is to build systems that are regenerative by design. Pinchbeck describes three aims, knowledge, action and connection, the last meant to create a network of people pursuing the same shift. Parry discusses what community and solidarity mean under the conditions the pandemic has exposed and the need for a shared narrative.

Guest: Bruce Parry, Rory Spowers

In brief

• Spowers argues that the driver of ecological breakdown is a linear extractive system fundamentally at odds with how nature works, and that regenerative, cyclical systems are the corrective.
• Pinchbeck frames the course around three goals: shared knowledge of what changes are required, practical tools to act on them, and connection into a wider network.
• The organizers hold that resilience and self-reliance at the local community level will determine how well people cope with what is coming.
• Spowers contends the necessary step is from individual lifestyle changes to collective community-level engagement, with small nodal groups acting as catalysts.
• Parry argues that what is needed is a new narrative broad enough that people across the political spectrum can agree to be held accountable to it.
• The course treats food, health, culture, economy and consciousness as a single connected set of macro trends rather than separate issues.

Full text

the fragility of our civilization what do we do now how do you fulfill your greatest potential and thrive in this new fast-changing reality collectively we know we have to make a transition to a regenerative system that is in harmony with the earth local communities must become more resilient and self-reliance building our regenerative future is a month-long intensive course that teaches the new skills and tools we all need to know now to make this shift we examine the crucial macro trends in areas such as food health community economics culture and consciousness building our regenerative future presents a revolutionary new source code for the future of civilization and your own future hey everybody uh welcome to our intro uh i'm here with uh rory spowers and um bruce power will be joining us in a minute uh we're very excited about this uh course uh which launches on june 29th um it's definitely a new venture for us an experiment uh we're doing eight sessions over the course of a month along with some optional extra workshops optional reading material a possibility to gain a kind of certificate um you know that includes a written exam and yeah kind of um the the title of the course sort of sums it up building our regenerative future you know we're really looking at a time of great uncertainty a lot of people don't really know what's ahead there's a lot of confusion and we kind of feel that we can sort through that and sort of say what the goals are you know what would be the best possible goals for us individually how do we thrive in these changing turbulent times what are the tools that we need to flourish and then also how do we contribute to a larger process of social change and um and evolution and um yeah rory anything you want to add to the basic uh gist of it no i i think that's great but i suppose you know what sort of holds all of this these core topics together within this regenerative umbrella is that they by very their very nature bring us back in step with biological systems so that the force that is driving us ever deeper towards off the precipice is a is a linear and extractive system which is fundamentally at odds with the way nature works so the way we can step back inside the system is by creating systems that are by very nature regenerative and cyclical yeah exactly um and uh yeah we're looking at a number of different areas that we're featuring uh we're going to talk about uh food um you know we're seeing that um yeah food is a major area health culture economy consciousness um and um we're going to start with an introduction where are we now where do we go from here in a conclusion which is going to be more on how do we build kind of a unified movement around these ideas uh you know kind of uh well we're going to jump into these uh after bruce talks in more depth uh but essentially the um the three main goals of the course uh we want people to gain knowledge or there to be kind of a coherent uh unified field effect where people really have a shared idea of what's possible now what types of changes have to be made ecologically and socially and personally how they make those changes you know from knowledge into action you know what are some of the practical tools like let's say you want to become more self-sufficient or resilient maybe you want to you know begin to move into community living cooperative ways of being we're going to try to help guide people through some of that and then so it's knowledge action and connection and connection is really you know creating this this this this field of um collaboration where we're aware that there are more people who share these goals of uh you know making the shift towards regenerative society and um yeah that's kind of how we're seeing it you know it's um really meant to be kind of proactive um and what we're offered in the course includes obviously the course itself the sessions will be live we're gonna have special guests special guest hosts um faculty uh and all the sessions will be archived so if you missed the session you'll be able to watch it anytime uh we'll have additional resources a reading watching lists guidelines for future study uh potentially some exercises as i mentioned certification some optional workshops and areas that don't really you know we know are very you know people very passionate about don't really fit into the main categories uh and um yeah kind of a community and engaged hub or network for uh for the future uh rory anything you want to throw in there anything that stands out uh yeah absolutely and i guess just yeah bruce has obviously got some amazing insights from all of his time spent with indigenous people around the world around uh what we can learn from them in terms of of community and and i think there's maybe there's two aspects to this the sort of online digital community which i think is an important aspect but it's also then the analog real-time community and i guess whatever we may make of what's going on in the world right now uh one thing we do know is that community and the solidarity and resilience and strength within the community is going to be really critical dealing with whatever it is that's coming down the pipe um from any different kind of direction so uh i think how we and how we make this sort of step change from these quite well known individual lifestyle actions into these more collective community level engagements and that that's really a way a way we are proposing that deep systemic change can actually happen from the grassroots from the ground up creating these small little nodal uh cells if you like that become the catalyst within their communities great so let's let's bring bruce on and bruce i thought the first you know question maybe for you to explore would be um yeah like what do you think of this whole concept of regenerative society kind of moving you know this is a model for the future of civilization do you think it's feasible do you think it's out of the question and then how you know are you are you seeing that people could you know move in this direction a little one to start with eh um well firstly i just want to say uh how how pleased i am that you're putting this thing together uh i i've been a avid follower of a lot of your posts recently daniel i find that you're um especially on facebook fearless explorations of of these uh wide-ranging subjects have been a great solace for many of us and the same for you rory it's like i've learned so much from you over the years it's really nice to see you come together and i really feel that there uh depending on you know how this all unfolds but there's a real possibility for there to be you know some real deep learning and and interesting new findings that could come out from this so it's uh i'm very grateful for you inviting me in to be part of the you know the the introduction so to answer your question uh is is it possible yeah uh it absolutely is is it is it probable or what's the height what's the likelihood it's well that's in the balance isn't it and it's really curious time for us all you know the whole world for the first time ever has gone into some sort of hibernation and i'm still really curious what's going to happen when we come out you know i still don't know what the state of play is going to be you know most of my friends have have had actually quite a positive time recently but i don't know what it's what it would have been like to have been cooped up in that in a you know a tiny little cubby hole in a city for this period of time whether that's going to accentuated trauma or whether it's going to actually have invited people to enter into a new way of thinking i think the jury's out on that but you know moments like this are going to come again and um there is such a thirst for a change but there's also a thirst for business as usual and it's so scary seeing that just going back you know bailing out all these we're bailing out the airlines and everything and it's like the status quo is still pretty strong and so all of our thoughts and dreams and sort of sideline wishes still feel quite like their their peripheral actually at the moment and so for all of the people who are out there that wanting something different i don't think there's real answers for them yet and so that's why i think what you're offering is really is really vital but the hardest thing is to get the messages out you know so often we're in our own echo chambers and we're just speaking to the converted and it's like how do we get this in the mainstream that's the hardest thing because the narratives that we're all dealing with that have been pumped out of the same old narratives and that's where i think the battleground is you know i was watching steve bannon this morning on his war room pandemic talking about you know this um uh the seattle um alternate zone and uh and just and just highlighting all the negativity that's going on there and how this sort of autonomous society is like really just at each other's throats and it's all negative and of course that's the normal mainstream message that anarchy or any form of decentralization is going to cause us to just turn on each other and then you can to another channel and they'll say quite the opposite and that's where the fight is it's in these narratives yeah it's even very strange i mean it's a seattle apparently the police just kind of abandoned their precinct there almost as if they were inviting this thing to happen as a kind of optic for the right wing bruce i'm curious i mean i mean you and i both share like a huge interest in indigenous cultures and believe that they have kind of seeds of knowledge for us i mean on the other hand here we are in this huge globalized industrialized world with eight billion people on the planet you know what what what can we what can we um kind of take or borrow or or you know share from indigenous ways that could be helpful for people as we go through this you know more and more uncertain um you know kind of time that we're entering well i mean endless uh wisdom and knowledge that we can we can learn from our indigenous cousins uh who are still living today and also our own ancestors from the past um and so much of that is already in the world you know there's like notions of connecting to nature notions of bringing up children in community notions of how to go through healing cracks these notions of of plant medicines all of these sorts of things they're gaining more traction and that's so beautiful and so necessary and you see that um more and more around the world but the thing that i've been really interested in recently and we all know this because obviously we made the film together to why is this idea of um truly decentralized non-competitive egalitarian societies that that was actually our um our default mode for like 90 percent of our time on the planet that we lived in a relative harmony with each other before hierarchy and aggression and competition sort of took hold and and uh and took off and i've i i find that that is an area that i'm super interested in because again it's just another one of these areas that challenges the narrative of today the narrative for today is that we've always been aggressive we've always been competitive we've always been more like it's always been patriarchal it's like this is just the same old and there's nothing we can do about it we're an aggressive species that's just out there to have its way and it's just not my experience you know even i'm just curious because it's become a very like daniel schmacktenberger has become very popular talking about anti-rivalry systems and how rivalry and competition is somehow totally bad but isn't it kind of basic i mean even the hunter gatherer societies don't they you know don't the men compete over who can bring in the biggest wild boar or something i mean isn't there a little of that you know well you know it's so fascinating to say that because of course that is the narrative and it's even what we're taught have been taught for a long time even in anthropology and what have you it's just so many studies that would suggest that's the case but there's a growing understanding that that's actually not the case that that they were very very very powerful and strong and well used tools within a lot of these societies that i've had the privilege of spending time with that with the opposite of that that actually the hunter if he started showing off that he was the better hunter the other guys would refuse to go hunting with them that they just they would every s every step do everything they could to minimize power centralizing to minimize people showing off or hoarding because they knew universally each and every one of them in their own bones in their own body that they that if power got out of hand it would cause problems for the society well we're learning that for ourselves now but they just had a narrative that kept it ticking over but not coming from a centralized body that held them to account but coming from every individual be fully empowered and autonomous to be able to hold each other to account in this unified field of understanding that it just isn't good for us i find that so compelling and i know it's a long long way from where we're at but it's just for me it's like knowing what's possible allows us to take those incremental steps towards that direction and that direction for us here is decentralization and i think we'd all agree with that so you think that things like mutual aid networks as one example might become more significant as we enter this crisis period yeah i think that um absolutely i think there's so many things out there and you know the rise of the internet makes a lot of this possible now the rise you know even some of the the views coming out of silicon valley have at its heart decentralization they they've forgotten about the accumulation of wealth aspect but as far as decentralization there's there's there's all sorts of stuff that's rising now and people are seeing the benefits of it so i think that it's gaining traction but um but it is like i say it's a it's a war of narratives at the moment and and i just want to add that one because i feel that it uh it it offers us so much of an insight that sort of does something i think to us inside it's like ah it's relaxing yeah that's what i feel in my heart is the better way to be and actually wow that that's how it was for the majority of our time on the planet i think that's a powerful message to put back in the world and sorry i'm just getting a message in there but and bruce i was just wanting to go back to what you're saying there but that whole i assume that those sort of self-regulating attributes of the tribal network no doubt have evolved over a long period and but of course what we've what we've got now and if we look at how natural systems at every scale work whether it's the neural network or uh mycelial networks on the ground or coral reefs right now all of these are these nodal distributed network systems and the hierarchical sort of linear systems that a human engineered and we've we've imposed on top of that i'm just never going to be in step with it it's just logically impossible um so i do think you part of the process before we can do anything differently we've got to think differently and we've got to sort of look upstream for all to all of these things so that yeah we're always patching up the symptoms downstream rather than going upstream and looking at trying to prevent those things even arising in the first place and that's why i think you know this this trying to catalyze these things within communities at the grassroots level the way that immunity and resilience develops in an ecosystem is through nature's relentless desire to complexify and diversify and that's what gives it those attributes and what we have is a homogenizing centralized top-down uh techno-driven culture now that is that is essentially just sort of commodifying everything it can right down now to our data and even the human body because it's run out of other things to turn into into commodities and so i think the eight you know i always go back to the buckminster full equations that you can't create change where fighting exists in reality after the new ones to make the existing model obsolete and i would say that you know this is where it all lies is is us starting to show these new models at a community level and that's how people will get drawn in and then maximize their resilience and immunity to what's coming down the pipe no i couldn't agree more rory i mean in fact it's exactly the place that i got to in the last few years having spent many years as a broadcaster and filmmaker and realizing that actually um it's all very well running around talking about it having a high carbon footprint to pretend it would like you know doing the best i could but actually ultimately still being part of the issue and i was like the best thing i can do now is is step back and actually be the change and try and do exactly that it's like shows that show that not only is it the best thing for our kids going forward for the ecology for the environment for just for for every aspect of how we're going to try and get through but also that it can be extraordinarily positive and beautiful and fun and and and there's a whole bunch of things that you you have to you have to make an exchange of some of the things that we found fun before all the consumption all the frills all the excitement all the stuff yeah some of that's going to lose some of its luster you're going to let go of some of that but in its place is something else going to arise it's going to be just as as beneficial and fun and joyful but there is a transition period and it is difficult you know it is hard at slowing down when we're so addicted to stimulation when we're so addicted to these comforts and and all of these excitements of our life and taking a slightly different part is is uh is a journey but i think we just again have to believe that in the long run is something in there that is just as good that's just as beneficial and i think that that it helps so much when people come together for that it's very hard to make these journeys on our own but when we can come together then it's a much much more manageable and enjoyable thing and i think so many people found that when they went to the streets with xr you know here's a decentralized way of doing things and people coming together for a festival but actually with this with with um meaning at its heart you know you get a taste of it there and uh and it's it's it's like lots and lots of people moving to international communities now and stepping away and i think in its own right that is a form of revolution it is a revolutionary act to grow your own food and to really pay a huge amount of attention to how much you're buying into energizing and giving your power away to these corporate mites and corporate entities that are just running the show it's like stepping back and doing things in in localized ways is a is a radical form of revolutionary action in its own right i believe and it also i mean we don't have time to go on to this now but when where if we have a chat later during the course i can elucidate more about that first revolution you've heard me talk about it before you know when we took down the alpha male when the women came together and said no to the alpha male and invited the other guys to come in to live in the egalitarian harmonious societies there are lessons in that about how we can um what we can learn from those early people that first ever revolution about how to deal with power how to tackle power rather than challenging it head-on and trying to fight it because we will always lose if we try and challenge that power base in the same way that it is we it's too powerful we have to find other ways and one of them is stepping to one side and creating these communities but there are other tools as well that we can use for really challenging the power and i think that's that's the interesting thing to explore so bruce i'm really happy that you're here with us i think what we're going to do is we're going to run through the different sections of the course for about 10 15 minutes and then if you're minimal we'll bring you back on we'll have a little bit more of a discussion you've opened up a lot of questions that i would love to you know get into i mean that's the problem i think that you know rory and i are both are all you know very personally fascinated with this exploration and um yeah we just want to share that fascination you know um so that's great i also want to mention that um you know in honor of bruce perry we're having a 20 discount offer people want to jump on the course uh they just have to use uh the code bruce uh which is not for spring team but for bruce parry at the at the checkout of the crowdcast site or they just go to regenerative network uh sorry genderfuture. net and from there they can register for the course with that with that with that with that code so yeah so let's uh let's jump into the six areas that we're focusing on um and um well actually eight areas because we have a beginning and an end uh and the first uh area uh roy and i will discuss together it's just kind of a opening where do we go from here how do we understand this global crisis we're in you know this cascading of impacts of the uh covet 19 on you know health but also on economies and social life uh you know obviously we're seeing these massive changes happening in the us right now this massive protest kind of proto-revolutionary protest movement happening um and um yeah does this open up an opportunity for kind of a profound transition or transformation you know roy do you want to maybe go through some of these topics absolutely i think uh i mean daniel was the one that introduced me first to this notion of the planetary initiation or the the crisis and i think it's so pertinent right now um it really was speaking to me loud and clear in the recent months that having wanted to some kind of sort of transition phase for sort of so long those of us who've been sort of working in this area suddenly we were presented with this extraordinary hiatus time so it's an incredibly potent time right now for us to actually sort of affect some of these changes and i think moving on from that into the how we sort of thrive within that i think what we just touched on earlier know turning this into an adventure it's it's it's not about something sort of hurts of a tiresome and some laborious uh thing to to enter into it should be something that we you know that should be enjoyable and fun and about bringing people together and that that just helps to build these strong um connections in communities uh that is going to be so crucial um i'll just go through those top four of daniel and then know sustainability you know this term has been very co-opted and ultimately it's the sort of gradualist incremental tweaks to things that are already broken it's you know about making business a little bit less bad than it was before and it's not really looking upstream to to where the problems are arising so that's i think a very important distinction to make that these regenerative models uh there's this concept of back casting which we can unpack a bit in the course but i think it really starts with challenging some of these basic assumptions um and recognizing just how much power and control we've lost over our central basic human needs and we've abdicated that control to these centralized uh institutions and corporations um and then again this theory of change and it's a tricky one because of course there are lots of people doing incredible work at the interface on a sort of policy level uh within businesses the circular economy all of those sorts of areas and and also the you know the civil descent move you know the extinction rebellions all of these things i think need to happen but for a lot of us these things are maybe just too abstract from our lives and i think we really want to look at at how we can all come together to start to implement some of these new models in a humble co-creative way within our communities whether it's a community supported agriculture initiative a micro energy grid a wind power cooperative all of these these different models because then we're we're actually showing people that it can be done um daniel do you want to do those four below then uh yeah i mean uh we're um we want to explore it's a you know it'll be a sub theme uh throughout the the course will be the psychedelic renaissance uh both of us have been involved with that my first book breaking open the head uh was kind of um helped kind of shift cultural perceptions around psychedelic shamanism rory was uh has been the director of the tearingham initiative which has been doing psychedelic research um you know and we want to propose in a way the psychedelic renaissance has been maybe not in a way tamed or domesticated it's mostly focused on personal healing and you know creativity for software engineers but we feel that you know the deeper value of the psychedelic experience has to do with really gaining like a new perception like a new social understanding that can be applied in different ways you know and so we're going to you know touch on that throughout the course uh what we're calling the regenerative model which includes as rory mentioned the cyclical economics you know bioremediation community-based values uh relocalization um bioregionalism you know how these might become the new standards for the future kind of replacing you know naturalist not you know nationalism and corporatism and so on uh and you know what we also really want to focus on in the course is um what what people can do practically at this point to improve their lives so we talk about moving competition to collaboration we'll talk about you know local economies and new types of careers that are opening up in the regenerative sector new ways that uh you know people can get involved um in in building this better future you know even if it requires a little bit of a temporary sacrifice right because maybe you're not gonna make as much money in the short term as you would in advertising if you're like a psychedelic psychotherapist or if you're you know doing a farming community but actually it might be much more sustainable for the long term uh and one of our visions is that um you know part of the shift is going beyond the paradigm of the present time which is based on materialism and separatism separation alienation and what it means to develop a kind of new story for the people new mythology for humanity awakening and how we can all play a part in developing that story and sharing that mythology so let's move on to the next area great so we're starting with food when i pulled together these six topics for the regeneration platform a year ago the idea was to try and uh show a sort of systemic journey rather than the linear one that each of these are sort of embedded within each other and that food you know food and water being almost basic essential human need and that if we you know start really upstream with our basic you know autonomy and sovereignty over these immediate needs this is also the area where we have the greatest power to affect change potentially it's of course very difficult to be prescriptive uh in any shape or form because people live in so many different situations so obviously we want to have a really strong look at urban agriculture which may seem like a really daunting prospect but there are so many amazing possibilities out there so relocalizing our food system and this move towards regenerative farming which in the last 20 years has just shown how this is maybe the ultimate systemic solution because not only can we get sorry our food back under our control but we can also sequester you know lots of carbon back into the soil through photosynthesis which is what nature's been doing so successfully for for many millions of years and i think when we get more as much control over our food system as possible we obviously uh are building our sort of our resilience and self-reliance for the future uh beyond meat and looking at a diet and veganism very complex and polarizing issue um and we will definitely want to unpack that a big bit there's no doubt that we should all be eating considerably less meat but there are very complex arguments to look at there that the livestock bengal garden can play a very fundamental role uh within uh these regenerative farming systems um the seven herbs we want to then really also look at the role of nutrition and some of the things that we can all be doing very easily um at home within families within communities uh to optimize our immunity the microbiome we'll look at that in a bit more detail in the in the next section and then this whole area around soil biology and soil carbon which is really very uh you know recent 20 years ago when i wrote my book rising tides people still felt that it took hundreds of years to make topsoil but we now know that's not true and regenerative farmers across the globe have done extraordinary things within 10 years turning one or two inches of denuded topsoil into really eight ten inches of thriving topsoil within ten years and again livestock can play a fundamental role within that but also the re-wilding movement and just this need to to be working with nature and its inherent need to diversify rather than the centralized industrial agribusiness which is resorting to ever greater quantities of of chemicals and pesticides to try and uh you know maintain a system that's fundamentally out of step with what nature is trying to do permaculture really important term i think much misunderstood often only aligned with food systems but it's about an integrate integrated sort of whole systems uh lifestyle design philosophy where the built environment your food system your water your rainwater harvesting your energy it's how you bring all of these things together to maximize your self-reliance and your resilience as a family as a community and these principles can be applied at any scale even if you're living in an apartment or if you've got a tiny back garden or whether you're living in a very rural area uh seaweed farming is a macro issue in a way but it does have this extraordinary possibility for mitigating climate change seaweeds grow something like 30 times faster than any land-based crops and have an extraordinary ability to sequester carbon very very rapidly they can also then rebuild biodiversity in the oceans which can then supply vast populations with fish protein obviously people who live on the coast and involved with with the fishing industry this could be much more personal but there are some amazing models out there like this 3d ocean farming model um which it could be really i think again another hugely interesting entrepreneurial area for us to look at um urban agriculture community composting initiatives community orchards all of these things there are there are so many amazing initiatives within the urban landscape uh which are possible from gorilla gardening through to these big rooftop gardens like luffa farms in montreal which supplies a phenomenal amount of vegetables uh to the local community um and then local farms i mean many of us live in a place where we've got no access to to to decent sort of soil to grow things but we might live close by somewhere uh where we can go and get involved and community supported agriculture i really believe is one of the great ways we have uh to start really sort of building resilience into our community and maximizing our our uh resilience against what might be coming um and then i will just you know go into health for daniel the economic section so i suppose going back to that sort of hierarchy of needs you know food water and sort of personal health obviously being integral then i think within the community area things like energy and communications and mobility and transport to become a sort of secondary thing but i think in light of what's going on we've got to really all uh take responsibility for our own health uh our understanding of the immune system now is much greater than it was until very recently about our understanding of the microbiome something like 80 of our immune system health comes from our gut flora and there are all sorts of things that we can be doing uh there and then there's this direct correlation between the health of the soil the food that comes from the soil of the health of your microbiome and you could say that that sort of system extrapolates all the way up to the biosphere at large um there's even dopamine and serotonin in goods thriving organic topsoil so the two prominent neurotransmitters in our brains are actually then recently discovered are actually in cots oil as well there are more microorganisms in one teaspoon of topsoil than all the humans that ever lived so that gives you some understanding of the complexity that's there um then there's very important sort of split between allopathic pharmaceutical interventionist medicine and biological medicine uh the former obviously being miraculous these days when dealing with with with injuries with acute injuries where you need intervention but pretty inadequate when dealing with with chronic systemic conditions where i think biological medicine has a much greater part to play and i think that's something that we really want to look at and then how that can also just in inform us about building our immune system health uh vaccinations again another v word like veganism that's incredibly polarizing and very politicized and complex and something that we will uh try to unpack because i think you know that's that's a bit of a minefield but it's definitely high on our list the priorities at the moment but we see what's what's coming and the new sciences of epigenetics and neuroplasticity again in the last 10 20 years really redefining our notion of of how much control we do have over these things that we've been sort of educated to believe that it's all down to this sort of genetic deterministic model that's now been shown to be woefully inadequate um addiction a massive topic obviously usually associated with substances but now i think you know very very uh pertinent in relation to our to technology and that the digital space and our devices and i you know i think this is a really really important area and how we need to really sort of develop a level of discernment and discipline with that because it's quite easy for us to expend a lot of the energy that could be going into some of these analog activities just disappearing into this digital space and let's not forget the extraordinary sort of carbon impact uh yeah every google search every movie you've streamed and this is a hugely undiscussed issue and it's massive detoxifying particularly from heavy metals i think is really really critical now especially with this sort of amplification of emfs there's an awful lot of study to show that you know that heavy metals in our bodies uh they're interacting with ems in a very negative fashion and there are very simple things we can all do to detox from heavy metals certain things we can bring into our diets like seaweeds and crack cell corella and these micro up with green algae and stuff um but also pesticide residues and the rest of it and then daniel talked a little bit about psychedelics but i think yeah obviously incredibly exciting what's emerging in that area in terms of dealing with the mental health crisis addiction issues uh it's an ability for us to really kind of reset um and i think you know one of the wider issues there that doesn't get discussed as much is actually this ability for it to provoke this biophiliac response uh by affiliate you know wilson coin which is this innate sense that we belong to the biological world in which so many of us seem to have lost um so hope that helps to um explore that a bit deeper and then daniel if you want to go onto the economic section uh yeah totally i mean yeah i mean uh there's different levels when it comes to the economy i mean on the one hand um i mean as i wrote a book in 2017 how soon is now which was thinking about the ecological crisis and what types of systemic level changes we would have to make to really reckon with it and you know on some level we would have to deal with um you know kind of the capitalist system which um is very debt based and requires constant return on investment and constant growth and development we're kind of seeing that's coming into conflict with the uh finite resources of the physical environment that's on a meta level but um you know on other levels uh we can actually think about our own lives and our capacities to really um you know participate you know from where we are now in this kind of regenerative economy of the future um so some of the topics that we're covering uh there's this whole idea of the fourth industrial revolution um how that could be melded with regenerative design because i mean you know whether you have a positive neutral or negative view of technologies you know when we look at the extent of the changes the geophysical changes that are happening to the planet if we're actually going to address them in a way that allows you know more than a handful you know of communities to survive we're going to have to look at exponentially scalable technologies in areas like energy and um you know forestry and so on i mean these include things like um you know biochar which is a way of burning organic matter so that it creates a soil rich tilth that can uh that can regenerate forests and and you know upland or um you know rain farm you know rainwater harvesting and so on so um you know and then there are going to be real legitimate opportunities for people to have careers in this regenerative economy i mean it's not going to be it's not in doubt that the attention is gonna you know turn in this way and in the same way like um black lives matter was kind of simmering for a number of years and then suddenly has exploded and erupted into this global force there can really be no doubt that the ecological emergency which has been kind of hovering on the periphery of mainstream awareness within the next few years has been going to become the main driver of society there's just we're not going to have a choice i mean europe was 1.4 degrees celsius warmer last winter than ever before you know the changes that are happening are are very fast and they're going to create new opportunities you know as they create chaos and tumults and you know some of that is going to be going to be reflected in new economic models degrowth and so on we'll talk about the economics of happiness you know how we move from a gdp model to a gross happiness index how we really make people's thrivability disconnected from you know purely consumerist models and so on circular and donut economics uh we'll talk about now we're seeing major cities adopt this donut economics model that kate ralworth developed like amsterdam hopefully will speak to her or a representative of that design philosophy uh radical localization bioregional regionalism there's different ways that you can use economic models to reinforce these tom greco somebody who was writing about local exchange trading systems as one as one modality how we can actually finance the distributed renewable energy revolution i mean we know that um yeah the the the uh you know costs for um renewable energy sources have gone way down in relationship to fossil fuels it's just a question of making that really mainstream i do want to mention i know this is a lot of information that we're sort of passing through very quickly all of this is available for on the pdf we have for the course and that you can pick up by going to our website regenerativefuture. net and giving us your email then we'll send you the whole pdf package so look at ethical investment models redistributing capital divestment we'll look at localization compared to globalization how we could kind of globally relocalize uh and we'll look at cryptocurrencies um you know their promise and also you know now we're seeing some of the realities of crypto you know bitcoin for instance you know many people would now say supports kind of a right-wing libertarian ideology unfortunately you know but but in a sense crypto gives us the sense that we can redesign our financial system in really profound ways so you know there could be tools in crypto for the future that would help us to bring about this decentralized uh you know kind of holistic economic model let's go on to the next area here uh community uh yeah once again um you know we're looking at a model where i mean you know we've lived in this industrial civilization where people are alienated separated in cities sort of clinging to their families but community has been something that was really a main bulwark of humanity you know through most of our history until recently we've kind of lost it in in the industrial world and it's something that crisis is necessarily going to bring back there's a beautiful book by rebecca solnit a paradise built in hell where she looks at um kind of communities that were hit by these terrible disasters and how actually strangely enough people often remember them as the best times of their lives afterwards because they were they were brought together around shared mission and shared purpose and this all also goes back to this idea of this seeing this time as a great initiation and a great opportunity where we can actually activate you know what's deepest and most powerful within us let's go over to the topics for community so we only have a few topics here but you know that's decentralized local governance models uh different uh examples that already exist puerto alegre and brazil is one there's different movements that are starting or have started podemos in spain as one grassroots movement symbiosis. net is another interesting one trying to reinstate local direct democracy we're going to look at how you can start your own community um you know how you or join one find one that that appeals to you or start work from scratch we'll look at this idea i mean many people are now thinking about leaving cities or leaving countries you know people are beginning to think about you know leaving the united states if they have the wherewithal places like nicaragua and costa rica you know may provide opportunities for people to really experiment with new social designs new new back to land kind of living systems and we'll look at indigenous design models how they provide templates and what we can take from them uh ritual being a key component and ceremony being a key component of indigenous lives and in their uh approach to the world and we'll look at leadership um you know there's going to be a new need for leadership and we're hoping that the people who take this course will really be seeing themselves as kind of leaders of this emergent new culture this regenerative paradigm and we'll provide some tools and ideas for that so let's go on to the next topic here i know where our time is ticking away here culture is another important area how do we tell the new story what is the new story of the people what's the new mythology how do we use all these incredible tools we have now of media social media youtube and so on how do we spread the great the great ideas uh and let's go to the topics for that uh yeah how do we use the power of mena media how do we harness it how do we use our own network our own outreach how do we become the best uh most useful storytellers for our people uh how we can if we are if we are culture makers how we embrace our role as storytellers and myth makers how we understand that as a crucial role in this time uh how to understand culture as an operating system and how we can then think about the the shift of culture as part of the relaunch of our whole social operating system and how that contributes to building this new planetary culture which is really our focus uh models myths and principles of that shift and yeah different areas uh storytelling for art for music for activism how you can you know show up as a leader in this movement and maximize the power of your own voice and as we mentioned earlier for the next day for those people who are watching this 20 option to join the course uh use the code bruce for bruce parry not bruce springsteen at the checkout uh at the regenerative future. net site let's go on to the next uh topic area here let's quickly move through this yes i just finally we look at the penultimate episode is on consciousness uh dare i say that word spiritual but it's really i guess questioning the biggest assumption of all about who and what we are what we think we are relation to each other and to the wider world so we want to start by you know our understanding what consciousness is is it actually a bizarre emergent property of complex neuronal firing like we'd be taught led to believe or is it something much more fundamental something much more primary um which the mystics have always said and which many scientists now seem to be converging on and this bit concept of the left right brain hemispheres which i really uh got to thank bruce for leading me to the work of ian mcgill chris but i i almost with each passing day i noticed this more and more within myself and i think this this our sort of desperate need at the moment to make sense of what is going on is this very focused left brain aspect whereas our comfort with the uncertainty of what's going on which i think we need to cultivate in a way is a very more right hemisphere thing which is much more present i think it's there's a lot we can learn from that model uh personal and planetary initiation so again how we can use this incredibly potent time with these new understandings to really sort of re-envision uh our sense of human identity and how that connects with those around us we've touched a lot already on psychedelic shamanism but uh nature mysticism pan psychism uh these other sort of more animistic uh belief systems that can reconnect us to to the natural world um neuroscience and the default mode network which is this very fancy scientific term that's uh emerged largely out of the sort of psychedelic renaissance and it's a term that really applies to the sort of egoic structure of the brain and how the psychedelic experience and the meditative experience and the mystical experience represses uh that part of the brain and brings us much more back and into into present into the presence um archetypal astrology an area that that i know daniel is is very keen on but you know some of these uh uh systems have a lot to teach us i think and then ritual pilgrimage and and intention just you know if we actually if if we spend too much of our time absorbed by the notion that everything is going going to hell we've got much very little hope of actually sort of realizing it i think if we can all collectively really start to just build a picture of what this regenerative society might actually look like and what we want to aspire to we have a much greater possibility of bringing it about and i think you know there's a role for ritual within all our lives and even pilgrimage to to to important sites and the rest of it as well and i think actually the basic human activity of walking i think is probably one of the most underestimated anti-dates to the mental health crisis and then finally in the concluding episode uh we want to just look at how we can marry these more localized efforts within a more global unified movement so how do we actually connect these uh analog activities with the digital domain in a way that we can maximize their dissemination and potential sort of replication so coalescing and consolidating all of that i think this whole area around how we organize ourselves again we can learn so much from the way that ecosystems organize themselves uh this notion of autopilosis where as an ecosystem gets more complex and diverse its ability to self-organize also increases so it's all of these things which are in a way sort of antithetical to the top down um hierarchical homogenizing system that's being imposed upon us um and again and embracing your purpose i think finding a sense of meaning and purpose is so crucial right now so many of us have had our lives so disrupted and so uprooted it's very hard to see a way forward and i think many of these initiatives and projects that we wanted to highlight can actually give meaning and purpose back to people and families and communities and bring them together and daniel why didn't you just wrap up on those last three there maybe absolutely um yeah so and as we said you know and you know so first of all um yeah but i'm really hoping this gives people a really good good sense of uh the range of stuff we want to cover and you know um these will be long sessions they'll be live uh with experts and guest hosts different segments they'll also be archived if people you know can't make the live one or if they can watch some of it it's going to start june 29th and it'll run basically for the next month to late july twice a week it'll be monday and thursday sessions so yeah we really hope you can join us uh you know we have a price point for the course which is um you know kind of 200 euros 20 dollars we are totally you know we're offering 20 discount and also you know we we really you know we want the course to be regenerative in its nature which means that we understand that you know there are people who can't really afford uh this type of price right now and uh you know we're amenable to you know more discounted tickets for scholarships if you're in need if you can write to me and kind of let me know what's happening so um um yes so so the um that's that's kind of um where we're at this is uh the course package uh there's the court the cost which i mentioned you get 20 discount if you if you wish with the tech with the name bruce at the checkout uh running uh 29th of june to um 20th of july uh and they're often reduced price tickets and scholarships they'll be um you know building a community at the end of it uh and um just to go back uh to the to finish up the consciousness piece zac if you can take us back to that to that other screen for a sec well if not um there was just a section on the leadership which we and team building which i think we'd already touched on oh yeah grief and transformation interesting uh that that in a way we if we move through the sort of this sense of grief and despair it can sort of take us into this much more sort of mobilized space and it's almost like this sort of five stages of grief uh normally associated with personal grief but i think a lot of us are now stuck in anger and denial and despair and we somehow need to punch through that into this level of acceptance before we can then really sort of mass mobilize exactly so i think we uh we're keeping brewster on the wings so i think this is um you know should we should we stop there or bruce do you want to come in for another minute and give us maybe just a few minutes feedback on on the course which area exactly oh my god that's quite quite a lot you've rattled through there yeah i mean this was our idea was to really kind of systemic overview you know and then and then we can drill down in the future but the feeling is really that you know there's so many people who are really going to benefit from having this sort of comprehensive framing and understanding you know with practical tools for what they can do with this understanding and then maybe we'll do another course just on food or just on health or just on community and take it much deeper you know beautiful well um what can i add i mean it looks like you've pretty much gone everywhere uh and someone's phone yeah i i nothing to say really boys it looks really good i'm interested to see uh who you get along as contributors you know um hopefully a diverse group of people i'm sure there'll be all sorts of voices and it'd be great as well if there's debate in it it's not rather than it just being a talk course it'd be so good if there can be uh some you know some real discussion going deep so with some differences of opinion and views so that you can really go there and flesh it out because of course bruce is gonna have to i think that rory and i even disagree on a bunch of things so that's nothing in the comments yeah because like you know in terms of our contributors just to you know not go full roster but we have sheena rathor who's um amazing skeena amazing co-director at extinction rebellion uh darren springer extraordinary um student of kind of the african roots of psychedelic shamanism uh working with uh jasmine helmsley expert on ayurveda and food uh george lamb a well-known tv host in the uk i'm sure you're friends with two bruce who's doing an incredible program now called grow uh with kids trying to give them a more sustainable rounded education and a number of the other teachers are on the website um at regenerativefuture.

net great yeah well it's the learning is one thing and of course the embodying and the bringing into practice is another and uh well you said earlier about the sort of like these two realms of the digital and the analog and like it's all very well having this online discussion online community but it's actually bringing it into community here but i think there's a sort of third space there as well in the in the what i'm experiencing is like it's all very well having these new waves of being these intentional communities these new gatherings but like how are they also physically on the ground interacting with the the wider community of that which isn't necessarily wanting to change particularly at the same pace or perhaps a little bit um put out or put off by newfangled ways and all the rest of it so i know in a sense that is what the course is all about but it feels to me like the the sort of the enacting and the learning of how for these um new ways of being to be porous and to be transparent and to be open and and to be inclusive so that they're so that we don't have a dem and us it's absolutely critical and if you look at all of the sort of utopian alternative community experiments through history generally the reason why most of them have failed is because they have isolated themselves from the wider world wild wild country to get a taste of that well yeah and and then there's the successful ones like some of these permaculture communities in australia et cetera have actually recognized how important it is to have trade with the wider world and all sorts of things so people come in to learn skills or they sell some of their products and and yeah this is how nature works is all about reciprocal flows and exchanges and relationships so as soon as we we remove ourselves from those wider relationships we we were again stepping outside the system and stepping outside the way biological systems work so i think it's it's really important no one knows the answers it's a kind of co-creative journey this for all of us isn't it and you know we're all just trying to kind of help each other in the right direction totally and it to being it just needs to be as inclusive as possible there's so much separation we've so much divide and conquer that's gone on for so long there's so many slogan throwings and a lot of hatred and anger that's out there at the moment that whatever it is that needs to come up has to encapsulate something that basically no one can argue with you know in a way it's what i'm trying to work out as well just writing the manifesto for this community it's like what's the top line that no one can debate that we can just all get behind you know it's like a future for our children in balance within with an environment that to support them it's something as simple as that that no one can argue with and then everything else can trickle down beneath that it's like radically getting behind that like nothing is sacrosanct everything needs to be seen through the prism of being held accountable to this thing that we all buy into and that as a way forward for coming out of your course is like what is this new narrative that you mentioned what can it be that we all get behind it no one wherever you are on the political spectrum or any of the spectrums that are out there we can all agree that that is the right thing to buy into that's wonderful well listen i think we should we should stop it there for tonight and bruce thank you so much for joining us let's uh let's let's we'll see you we'll see you in one of the live sessions uh hopefully in a few weeks and i really appreciate your uh your wisdom and it was great to share with all you yeah lots of love guys good luck putting it all together i look forward to joining you again and uh i'll i'll tap into one or two of the the lectures if i'm allowed of course thank you bruce and thank you everybody who's watching thank you so much the coronavirus pandemic has shown us the fragility of our civilization what do we do now how do you fulfill your greatest potential and thrive in this new fast-changing reality collectively we know we have to make a transition to a regenerative system that is in harmony with the earth local communities must become more resilient and self-reliant building our regenerative future is a month-long intensive course that teaches the new skills and tools we all need to know now to make this shift we examine the crucial macro trends in areas such as food health community economics culture and consciousness building our regenerative future presents a revolutionary new source code for the future of civilization and your own future

Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.