WORKSHOP SERIES #2/7
Perin Ruttonsha
This series of 45-minute workshops examines the balancing act that is implicit in global sustainability transition, organised around the following seven themes: (1) order in chaos; (2) reductionism reconciled; (3) parallel worlds; (4) power and vulnerability; (5) shadows and archetypes; (6) relational well-being; and, (7) fierce and quiet kinds of love.
Modernisation represented a course of significant intellectual and creative advancement, unfolding across Western civilisations, beginning in the sixteenth century. However, this formative era of change also arose in conjunction with the reductionist worldview that matriculated as part of the scientific revolution, and extended from mathematician Rene Décartes’ philosophical separation of mind and matter. Reductionism supports the conventions of positivist science, in that it enables intellectual clarity, accuracy, precision, classification, and boundaries. At the same time, this mentality also catalysed a grand fissure, or process of division and segregation, fused across the roots of scholarship and society. This has since been expressed as multiple, polarised, cultural, social, economic, and political positions—some of which continue to reinforce social inequalities, ecological alienation, along with the growth-oriented drive of industrialism. For example, these polarities include nature/culture, wild/civilised, body/mind, process/form, feminine/masculine, left brain/right brain, creative/analytical, design/science, personal/professional, collaborative/competitive, church/state, etc. Ironically, to position reductionism in stark contrast to holism would only raise another polarity. Rather, transitioning to a regenerative sustainability paradigm necessitates a reintegration of parts within wholes. In this workshop, we will explore regenerative sustainability as a process of reintegration and reconciliation among that which has been divided.