Ecological Storytelling

OVERVIEW
Storytelling is the most fundamental form of human communication; it is central to how we engage with the world. And this ECOLOGICAL STORYTELLING project is a creative approach to engaging with a world in a time of ecological crisis.

ECOLOGICAL STORYTELLING draws deeply on creative, experiential and reflective methodologies to tell a New Story based on a sustainable, regenerative, life-supporting ecological worldview.

Plus it offers critical storytelling tools for engaging with the central narratives of the unsustainable, degenerative, life-undermining anthropocentric worldview of the Old Story.

PLATFORMS
This ECOLOGICAL STORYTELLING project is manifesting through three parallel platforms:

• ECOLOGICAL STORYTELLING Workshops
• Engagement in Communities of Practice
• New Film Projects

BACKGROUND
The unfolding ecological crisis, according to professor of science Thomas Lovejoy, is ‘the greatest challenge of our species’. (1)

For author and Jungian analyst Andrew Fellows this crisis has resulted from our ‘dysfunctional relationship’ with ‘both inner and outer Nature’. (2)

And for cultural historian Thomas Berry this dysfunctional relationship is exemplified in a crisis of storytelling:

We are in trouble now because … we are in between stories.
The Old Story is (no longer functioning) properly and we have (yet to fully articulate) the New Story. (3)

The Old Story – embodied by the Western anthropocentric worldview – has come to dominate international affairs over the past two hundred years with disastrous planet-wide consequences.

As we witness what writer and Zen teacher David Loy describes as ‘the ominous consequences of what we have been doing to the earth and to ourselves’ it is clear that The Old Story/anthropocentric worldview narrative – based on a philosophy of separation built on linear thinking – has become perilously dysfunctional and degenerative. (4)

For many the development of a new regenerative paradigm can only be facilitated by the emergence of a New Story/ecological worldview – based on ‘a philosophy of interdependence’ built on interdisciplinary systems thinking and embodied in indigenous peoples’ worldviews the world over. (5)

This evolving New Story is embodied by new – and very ancient – movements right across the spectrum of human experience as a rallying call to ecological consciousness. (6)

These movements are challenging the core narratives of the Old Story by radically re-imagining – what ecophilosopher Joanna Macy describes as – our whole ‘relationship to our world, to ourselves, and to each other’. (7)

The approach adopted in this ECOLOGICAL STORYTELLING form of storytelling draws deeply from three main frameworks including:
– The Active Hope/Work That Reconnects work of ecophilosopher Joanna Macy
– The Ecodharma work of writer and Zen teacher David Loy
– And the Ecological Vision work of cultural historian Thomas Berry

ECOLOGICAL STORYTELLING brings these perspectives seamlessly together in creative, experiential and reflective ways, to inspire and empower people in all fields in their engagements with the great challenges of our times.

The approach adopted in this project also aligns with the 6 ACEs (Actions for Climate Empowerment) adopted in Article 6 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC).

Reference

1.  Lovejoy, Thomas The Greatest Challenge of Our Species. New York Times Op-Ed, April 2012
2.  Fellows, Andrew Gaia, Psyche and Deep Ecology – Navigating Climate Change in the Anthropocene. Routledge; 1st edition, 2019 (p. 1)
3.  Berry, Thomas The Dream of the Earth. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1988; reprint Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2015 (p. 123)
4.  Loy, David Ecodharma – Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis. Wisdom Publications, 2018 (p. 1)
5.  The term ‘Philosophy of Interdependence‘ is borrowed from the title of a course run by Dr. Kevin Power in UCC.
6.  A Basic Call to Consciousness, The Hau de no sau nee Address to the Western World, Geneva, Switzerland, Autumn 1977. Copyright © 1978 by Akwesasne Notes, Mohawk Nation
7.  Macy, Joanna The Great Turning. Wild Duck Review, Vol. IV, No. 1, Winter 1998 (p. 14)