Creativity for cultural renewal
Unruly storms, wildfires and melting glaciers are converging in alarming ways to unsettle and unseat the once perceived certainty that industrial civilisation had secured a pathway for humanity’s progress. What was previously considered inanimate is asserting itself with force, and awakening the knowledge that life is relational through and through. Late capitalism has secured meaning for many through material extraction and acquisition but emptied time of much reverie, connection to the greater mystery and Earth’s many beings. What cultures might be born in its wake?
As someone born in Australia with European ancestry I feel intimately connected to specific places in the world that are not of my ancestral origin, but have infused in me a love, specifically for Wurundjeri country. I hold deep respect for First Nations cultures that understand the animacy of their world and how to live harmoniously in accordance with lore. I have not inherited this wisdom directly from my ancestors and I do not wish to appropriate ancient cultures. Rather I see my task as a joyful planter of cultural seeds in the ashes of the modernist culture I was born into.
An overwhelmlingly large task? Perhaps! A task fraught with potential failures and errors of recreating the problems of the past? Yes, inevitably! Perhaps a way to begin renewing culture is to look for lost words associated with it. For example, the Ancient Greek word: poeisis.
Poeisis refers to the art of making meaning that emerges through close attention to what is already given in the world around us (Dreyfus and Kelly x). This word was central to how the Ancient Greeks understood the process of crafting culture. Importantly, poeisis requires that one see potential in the world that may not be easily discernable to the modern eye. One needs to develop a situational awareness that invites or brings forth the unfolding of a thing out of itself. If we take the case of a craftsmen working with a piece of wood, the craftsmen’s task is to draw out meaning from the wood itself, rather than to generate meaning by giving form to an idea. The difference here is moving from imposing our ideas onto the world through creative practice, towards responding to the animacy and aliveness that’s already present within the world and working with it.
Poeisis is a nurturing practice (Dreyfus and Kelly x). It is reminiscent of the latin root of the word culture; to cultivate, to cherish (Mathews x). In the absence of nurturing relationships, we see the opposite of poeisis – a dissappearance of the will to carry on, a culture where many relationships have become transactional or streamlined, along with a loss of meaning. An orientation towards poeisis feels necessary in the Western world, where we are witnessing a crisis and break down of meanings that have coherence. The continued separation of humans from the more than human world only serves to perpetuate this crisis. The process of poeisis can occur in our daily lives as we interact, and facilitate the growth of each other, in our different communities of existence.
Creative practice lies at the heart of this process of poeisis or cultural renewal. It’s a threshold of regenerative emergence. Human beings are infinitely creative and connected to the living Earth and her beauty. To play is to be present to possibilities. Perhaps small playful experiments are enough to show her we are listening, to begin a poeitic conversation. We can improvise alternatives by using what is close to hand. Find the grain of an impasse and begin to pry it open through collaborative inquiry. Poetry, song, and image-making. Dance. Stories. Publishing what isn’t being spoken and making marks that pay homage to the atmospheres that are felt but not seen. These modes of making can awaken the intangible forces of the animate world within us, that have long been forgotten.
This is a collective process governed by improvisation and emergence. Richard Rohr writes that we cannot think our way into a new way culture, we must live it. We must gesture ideas into form. Use our bodies to embody what it is that we are longing for. If you long for conversation, create a circle in which to meet. If you long for silence and rest, make it happen in ways that surprise you. If you long for inspiration, reach towards that poetry that you’ve never had the courage to share. Each must find their own offering to add to the communal process of improvisation. Noone person can govern or orchestrate this process. We must trust that our offerings will turn the wheel of reciprocity, and encourage others to do so.
Perhaps these attempts to rediscover how to be a part of a culture making process that is Earth-aligned might also awaken the possibility of a more authentic exchange between cultures – a world where many worlds fit. Here lies an invitation to participate in a kind of creative dance – one that renews culture through creative practice, while remembering and learning from those whose ways of being-knowing-&-doing are still in step the intelligence of the Earth.