Caveat: Every issue of The Wave should have a big IMHO tag splashed across it. The newsletter helps me digest, understand, and communicate issues I’m learning about that will, I hope, accelerate our passage to a regenerative society. Given that, please read with skepticism and send your improvements, and insights.

This issue is inspired by author and management guru Tom Peters. He wrote the hugely successful business book “In Search of Excellence” in 1982 and has just released a new book. I was struck by his recent tweet:

The notion of societal entropy is a well established paradigm -- a widely accepted metaphor pretending to be physics. It suggests society struggles to slow and can’t prevent decay. It is used to justify extraction and collateral damage as necessary prices to pay in the battle against inevitable decline. 

This framework puts a cap on what is possible. It limits vision and ambition. If you assume decline as a given, than the concept of regeneration - an economy that makes the world better - isn’t possible. In environmentalism, you can see the result of this thinking with interventions that, at their best, help us "lose more slowly.”

The metaphor of inevitable decay and necessary damage is an example of a  narrative we are trying to replace with a new, regenerative, vision. Living systems tend to create more complexity, not less. Think of coral reefs or modern cities as examples of entropy in reverse.

James Lovelock, the ‘discoverer’ of Gaia, explains “Inanimate things tend to end up in equilibrium sooner or later, and that is a state of very high entropy, or low order – whereas something alive, which is infinitely more complex, will have a very low entropy indeed.”

Decline and disorder might be our future, but, we shouldn’t assume them to be! Instead, we can turn our energy <note the little entropy joke there> to creating a regenerative world instead.

We’ve discussed the role of storytelling in accelerating a movement to a regenerative future. Next issue will explore a distinction between storytelling and narrative. I think “entropy” represents a narrative we want to replace with one of “regeneration”.  What say you?

Check-out the new podcast series Designers of Paradise. Each episode is a story intended to demonstrate the reality of regeneration in the world. Listen, subscribe and please tell others.

A group of people interested in promoting regenerative agriculture is convening to explore opportunities for co-creation and cross-promotion of communications and media. 

Interested in joining such an effort?  Let me know.

We are very early in the process of defining what it means to build a regenerative society. While the terminology will continue to evolve, we're convinced the ideas are directionally correct. We are studying, testing, plotting, and building interest, support, and resources.

Thus this newsletter, which will come out every few weeks with information about RASA - narrating our work - along with brief observations and links to related materials exploring innovation and the regenerative economy.

With effort, and a bit of luck, we hope support for these concepts becomes a wave sweeping the world! Check out the archive to see if this newsletter is right for you (or a friend).

If you find this email valuable, please share with a friend. If you don't, please unsubscribe (link at the bottom.) We also much appreciate comments, advice, and suggestions for links to highlight.

Thanks.

      Dave 

PS's:
1. To subscribe to this weekly newsletter please go here > https://the-wave.ongoodbits.com/
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3. This newsletter is a service of RASA, the Regenerative Agriculture Sector Accelerator.
4. Please send questions or suggestions to David Witzel