About ReStory
Part I: The Power of Stories
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.- Percy Shelley
ReStory is rooted in one core principle: that stories shape the world. Every human action is driven by stories that we have in our minds about the world– stories that are created and spread through art, literature, science, media, politics, education, and economics using different symbols and methods. ‘These larger, collective stories’, as Damon Gameau says in his brilliant TED Talk, ‘shape our behaviour as a species’ and influence our collective mindset and actions. The key to understanding significant human-driven events and actions, thus, is an exploration of the collective stories we have been telling each other and ourselves.
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Part II: The "Nature" Story
‘The climate crisis is a crisis of culture, and thus of the imagination.’- Amitav Ghosh
For the past century or so, we’ve been acting in accordance with a collective story that views humans as separate from and superior to nature. This story, which portrays nature as a lifeless set of resources that humans have mastery over, has been driving many human actions– from large-scale deforestation to endless fossil fuel consumption – that have confronted us with a massive climate and ecological crisis.
There are several factors that contributed to the emergence and spread of this story. The following events and examples are intended to provide a brief history of how this story began to dominate the popular imagination.
The rise of this story can be traced to the period of Renaissance in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, an intellectual period that was rooted in the idea of humanism, which, according to David Ehrenfeld, was “based on the irrational faith in the limitless power of humans to dominate the world, the belief that the environment and other species can and should be manipulated and controlled to meet human needs.” During the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, nature came to be looked at as a machine to be exploited and decoded and not as a living organism. This period led to the development of this story of human centrality and dominance over nature, which was now considered to be separate from human beings. For example, Francis Bacon, the father of the modern scientific method, asserted that ‘the most wholesome and noble [human ambition] was to endeavour to establish and extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe’. In the early 17th century, Rene Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, framed the world as split between rational humans who can think and reason, and nature, which was viewed
as inert, mindless matter. All these ideas left a lasting impact on the way the human-nature relationship was perceived.
Scholars have written about how the east had a “kincentric” conception of the non-human world: they considered elements of the non-human world as their ‘kin’ or relatives and recognised the interconnectedness between all living systems. However, with time, capitalist ideals have spread through colonialism and the “Western” capitalist economic system has come to dominate the global economy. The most advanced economies in the world today have capitalist leanings. These countries, by giving loans and setting conditions that reflect their anthropocentric worldview, have caused their beliefs to seep into Eastern developing nations as well. The result of this is the general rise of a collective mindset that is rooted in an instrumentalist view of the environment, that believes that humans are separate from “nature”, that considers humans as entitled to “conquer” and “harness nature”.
To be sure, there exist groups and communities today that still consider humans to be a mere strand in the web of the living world. Many 0f these communities are those of Indigenous Peoples, whose culture and lives are increasingly being threatened by widespread cultural assimilation, displacement, and land loss.
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Part III: A Story for the Future
Many thinkers, scholars, activists, and artists have come up with terms and concepts that capture the essence of how the new story we need to create. For instance, author Charles Eisenstein advocates for a “Living Earth” narrative that views the earth not as a lifeless object with expendable resources, but as a living system whose overall health depends on the health of its parts: the soil, air, water, and the countless organisms that inhabit the earth. Similar to this narrative is the philosophy of “Deep Ecology”, which is rooted in the work of the environmental philosopher Arne Næss. In the early 1970s, Næss argued that one cause of ecological degradation was the conception of the human self as being independent of other people and the outside world. What was needed was a “self-realisation” that would allow us to see our “selves”as being deeply intertwined with “nature”. Deep ecologists refer to this understanding of the self as the “ecological self”.
Many communities in today’s world still hold beliefs that emphasise humans’ kinship with the non-human world. For example, the Tarahumara of Mexico have no word or concept meaning “wilderness” *The Tarahumara of Mexico also have no word or concept meaning wilderness. The Merriam-Webster defines “wilderness” as a tract or region uncultivated and uninhabited by human beings. Underlying the idea of “wilderness” is the belief that land and nature can be separated from humans. The Tarahumara, however, believe that humans are immersed in the rest of the world and treat land with the same respect with which they treat other humans. According to ethnobiologist Enrique Salmon, the Tarahumara believe that “They are all kindred relations— the trees and rocks and bugs and everything is in equal standing with the rest.”
These ideas are consistent with the findings of modern science and empirical research, such as the idea of the interconnected food web and British scientist James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, which posits that the entire planet, of which humans are a mere part, is one super-organism and that “humans and nature are fundamentally one and the same.”Thus, all these perspectives tell a different story about our relationship with the world: according to this story, the earth is a living being, a web of life of which humans are a mere part. The so-called “natural world”-- rocks and soil and plants and animals– all exist at an equal (or even superior) footing to humans. Actions that threaten the existence or health of any element of the earth will ultimately have a detrimental impact on humans.
How do we shift the course of the collective story we’ve been telling ourselves? How do we incorporate these principles– philosophical and scientific– into the narrative shaping the unfolding of the climate crisis? Through stories. And art. And creativity.
Art and storytelling can help communicate ideas in a way that touches hearts and brings about a change in mindsets. As Kesebir and Kesebir put it, “cultural products such as songs and films not only reflect the prevailing culture — they also shape it.” Art can estrange us from the anthropocentric story we had been inhabiting so far, and thus push us to craft a new story for society. Furthermore, stories can break down barriers and foster human connection at a time when we need it the most.
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The following are some of the principles that ReStory is rooted in:
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Storytelling and art (writing, music, painting, film, photography– you name it!) can change the world.
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Hope is powerful: Hope can counter paralysis caused by climate doomism and can inspire climate action. As Rebecca Solnit writes in her book Hope in the Dark, hope is “an axe you break down doors with in an emergency.”
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The language we use is important: The language we use in our everyday lives shapes our relationship with the world. Using ‘it’ for an animal and using terms such as ‘natural capital’ and ‘fish stocks’ (instead of fish populations) renders the nonhuman world as inanimate and lifeless. In writing, too, artists can use fresh, surprising images and turns of phrases to estrange us from the current way the world works and open up fresh ways of seeing the world.
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Culture and nature are not separate: We aim to bridge the “nature-culture” divide that has been created by modernity by recognising how human norms, institutions, and social formulations are intimately connected with natural patterns and elements.
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Matter and the mind: More and more research studies are showing how emotion is inseparable from landscape. We want to write in a way that blurs the boundaries between place and the mind, recognising that the supposedly interior, ‘human’ world of emotions is actually rooted in the so-called external natural world. blurring of the supposedly interior ‘human’ world of emotions and the so-called external natural world
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Go out into the world and write: Humans need sunlight. The rustle of leaves. Birdsong. The feel of cool water on skin. As the climate crisis escalates, humans are becoming more and more estranged from the so-called natural world. Our disconnection from ‘nature’ is regarded as one of the causes of ecological degradation. Through our events and projects, we want to use art to inspire people to connect with the outside world and to get out into the world to create. Gary Synder once said that in this time of environmental crisis, what we “ultimately need most are human beings who love the world.” By deepening people’s connection with the outside world, we hope to create humans who love the world and are determined to make it a better place for everyone.
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Working with science: The climate crisis is an interdisciplinary problem and requires interdisciplinary thinking. We aim to use this project to create art that works with and effectively communicates scientific research and thinking.
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We are willing to deviate from and modify traditional conceptions of nature writing if need be.
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Representation of "nature": Through our writing, we want to show the planet as living and sentient and to draw on the rapidly advancing field of systems thinking to show it as a complex, dynamic, living system. We will write as if we are part of ‘nature’ and not as external beings looking ‘at’ it.
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Community: We believe in the power of community. Wonders happen when people come together for a shared cause. Through this project, we want to bring together people from all over the world and ignite a spirit of community.