I woke up last Sunday morning to a load of messages from folk sending me this clip of NASA astronaut Victor Glover up in space and reflecting on our shared ‘Spaceship Earth’
"You guys are talking to us because we're in a spaceship really far from Earth, but you're on a spaceship called Earth that was created to give us a place to live in the universe, Maybe the distance we are from you makes you think what we're doing is special, but we're the same distance from you. And I'm trying to tell you — just trust me — you are special. You are special, in all this emptiness.
This is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe.
You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together.”Victor Glover
It feels beautiful and timely that these astronauts are reminding us of Spaceship Earth.
We desperately need ideas and stories that can help us to see this moment differently, to connect and bring us together in these times of falling apart and remind us of the great and precious mystery of being alive on this Earth.
I first came across ‘Spaceship Earth’ in 2009 - when I read ‘Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth’ by Buckminster Fuller - there was much in that book that didn’t land, but the metaphor of the Earth as a Spaceship did.
And not because it made me think we humans are controlling the spaceship, that would be utter hubris.
But a life-giving rock hurtling through space and nothingness - like a spaceship, with its own regenerative operating system, creating and sustaining the conditions for all life on board…
That really did capture my imagination.
It gave me a strong visualisation, a sense of connection and unification with something much vaster, beyond religion and nation states which never ever landed for me.
That there is a bigger, entangled whole entity connected to the small part that I experience in my life world.
It helped me to connect the awe, the sacredness, intelligence and mystery of life that I’d intuitively known in my heart and gut since a child but that the modern culture didn’t recognise, celebrate or seem to have any awareness of.
Earth as a spaceship invited me into an apprenticeship with curiosity into the vast, complex, unknowable intelligence of the regenerative operating system of this living planet.
A forever exploration of entanglement, interdependence, relationality, cycles and limits - what appear to be the fundamental principles of the operating system.
And over time I began see myself as part of the Spaceship.
A tiny part-icipant in a complex evolving mystery.
In the following decade working as a strategist, co-designer and creative activist, I would often introduce the Spaceship Earth metaphor when bringing together campaigners, activists and change-makers cross the climate, nature and social justice spaces, to help us consider that all of our work was entangled and unified with something much bigger.
In 2018 I started the Spaceship Earth podcast experiment as an inquiry and exploration with humans working with this deeper consciousness of interdependence, regeneration and human and planetary entanglement.
‘We are all crew’
Bucky Fuller used to say ‘we are all astronauts.’
But it was Marhsall McLuhan who said ‘we are all crew’
Crew fascinates me.
‘Crew’ invites participation, adventure, community and being in service to something bigger and more mysterious.
Crew are active participants.
Crew are tending to the operating system.
Crew are stewarding the Spaceship, together.
Crew are in service.
In service to life
In multiple micro ways.
Just look closely to the more-than-human crew and you will see it.
Every other species is playing a unique crew role, in a unique place while contributing to the health of the whole spaceship in a hyper local way.
That’s what crew work is I think.
Uniquely personal, participatory, local, in service to the health of the whole.
For us humans onboard right now, we are situated in a collapsing story, the dominant story that has been shaping our civilisation for hundreds of years.
It’s a passenger story not a crew story.
A passive story - of extraction, transaction and distraction.
A story that tells us we are separate from our bodies, from land, each other and all other species.
Apart from nature - not a part of nature.
A story of separation from the spaceship.
Superior, entitled, with different laws to the rest of the spaceship.
We are living under a spell, an illusion, where we are taught to perceive, think and behave in ways which destroys the operating system on the spaceship in order to uphold ways of living on the spaceship which cannot be sustained.
It’s a madness.
And we can now see clearly where this story is taking us, to the brink.
We have to un/learn these ways, to break the spell.
I believe we have to learn fast to honour what we understand about the operating system on the spaceship.
To imagine, think, design, organise and live by its principles and limits, if it is to continue to function, support and sustain the crew onboard, human and more-than human.
Because the Spaceship is more-than-human
The most critical thing I think we are being called to grasp right now, as a species, is not just that we are onboard a living spaceship - but that the spaceship is more-than-human.
We are just one species of millions living on this life giving rock hurtling through space.
It’s a more-than-human spaceship.
And we are a species that has for many reasons only come to dominate the spaceship of late.
Because if the Spaceship’s 4.3 billion-year history is compressed into a 24-hour clock, the 300,000 years that the human species have existed is roughly 0.24 seconds.
And within that .24 seconds, the separation story of 500 years or so that has led us to this age of consequence is literally a nano second.
A cosmic wing flap.
In that time our human species has lost its humility (the clue is in the word) - a core quality that is critical in being part of a more-than-human world, a world that cannot be known through rational logic, measurement, markets and reductionism alone.
This is a world that requires ecological, biological and mythological knowing.
Today we exist in a constructed, human-centric, objective reality that is falling apart, expiring, unravelling at speed.
Most of us can feel that we’re in uncharted territory, that something is terribly wrong.
A reality dangerously out of sync with the intelligence, systems and logics that truly govern Spaceship Earth, this more-than-human spaceship.
It takes astronauts in space to see our Spaceship Earth clearly and remind us of this vaster, complex, mysterious and unknowable reality
But for the rest of us who cannot travel into space, how to find the Spaceship in this time of profound change ?
Finding the Spaceship
Onboard a more-than-human spaceship, it stands to reason that we need to spend much more time with the more-than-human.
We are being challenged way beyond our dominant human-centered rational logics.
To find Spaceship Earth and our true place within it we have to learn to see the world around us differently, to un/learn the separation perception, to drop the idea of ‘nature’ as other, to open up our sensory capacities, and feel our way into the entangled wider intelligence of the operating system.
Becoming with the more-than human.
Perhaps only then can we begin to truly discover our unique roles and invitations to participate as crew in these transformative times.
To begin our ongoing evolutionary journey.
Becoming crew on Spaceship Earth as we say around here.
Weaving the regenerative universe
Bucky Fuller said that the regenerative universe is created through local participation.
I have come to believe this means weaving and stitching through the micro actions, relationships and entanglements of every living being.
Tending and stewarding life locally in the places we call home, re-pairing relationships in the moment, creating regenerative futures in the now through present-centered actions.
Navigating change through centering Earth’s intelligence, tuning into the rhythms and patterns of the Spaceship and the ongoing practice of response-ability to life around us.
Focussing on what is around us and trusting that everyone steps into service where-ever they are.
Collectively weaving the regenerative universe, the healthy operating system on Spaceship Earth.
Evolving ourselves together as crew
Time with the more-than-human
Finding our way into Spaceship Earth means spending quality time with the more-than-human operating system.
This also means exploring the whole spectrum, not just the beautiful looking parts, it requires exploration of the darker parts, the mysterious parts, the complex, messy and weird parts.
And through that, discovering and re-membering our deep entanglement with the Spaceship, the inner and outer dance between body, soul and land.
It requires experimentation, practice, commitment and repetition.
It requires humility and not-knowing.
A beautiful way of exploring that is in community, supporting each other - in crews.
This is the foundational practice of our Becoming Crew Action Learning practice and why we created the Community Solo experience - a weekend living on the land in community, exploring our deepest, most alive questions and taking them out on an overnight solo, to connect intimately with the more-than-human crew.
This is an experience that can help us connect again with the quality of humility, to listen deeply, and to see the world around us differently.
A rite of passage for these times.
We are hosting weekends in May, June and September.
Come and join us and let’s find our way back and forwards into Spaceship Earth.
Peace and Out
Dan
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