Is it time for a new pair of glasses?
Before you read this blog, would you mind taking your glasses off?
NB: You’d perhaps forgotten, or maybe didn’t realise, you were wearing them (they are invisible after all) but it may help you read this blogpost better if you just take them off for a few minutes. If you didn’t even realise you were wearing invisible glasses, don’t worry - we all are. We start wearing them from an early age and they help us to see and understand the world around us, make sense of things if you like. They are our lens on the world, shaped from birth through the land we’re born into, the cultures we’re a part of, the family we grow with, the values and mindsets that we’re taught. Many of us don’t ever notice we’ve got glasses on, as they become so familiar and comfortable, but we all have them – and we all see the world through our particular frames.
More on those glasses later….
COP26 begins in just over a week– a gathering many have termed ‘Humanity’s last chance to prevent runaway climate change’. It’s a biggie alright, and is galvanising a lot of energy, attention and momentum, with people from all over the world finding ways to get connected and be part of the event. Yet, whilst a fantastic opportunity to bring people together and face up to the state we’re in, there’s a few significant issues with the process.
Firstly, we’re doing the same thing we’ve done 25 times previously, with the same people and the same mindsets and expecting different results.
Secondly, there’s a noticeable absence in the planning, framing and running of the event from citizens of the majority world. Vaccine hierarchies within UK legislation mean that many participants from across the global south have been excluded from attending the November event (more on that story here).
Most noticeably will be a stark absence of indigenous communities at the table for these vital conversations. Yes, we’ve got some of the ‘big-players’ from the majority world (if Xi Jinping and Bolsonaro make it to the table that is) but we sometimes lose sight of the value of diverse wisdom in our celebration of overt power. Indigenous wisdom in particular is something the world desperately needs more of right now, to offer wider perspectives (a more diverse collection of glasses if you like) to look at some of the challenges and opportunities ahead.
Most significantly, not only do these perspectives offer a different approach, they represent ways of living that have proven to be sustainable for thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of years. In so many ways, the perspectives of many indigenous communities across the world offer different ways of living which are not just inspiring to connect with, but genuinely successful pathways towards a thriving and regenerative future. The sorts of ideas we’re hoping to find at COP26…
Actually, I’d like to talk about those glasses again for a moment.
In our post-industrial age of development, we’ve been sold the idea that there is an optimum pair of glasses for humans to be wearing. Ray-Bans, for want of a helpful analogy. We are frequently told and led believe that Ray-Bans are the best glasses on the market: a brand we should all aspire to wear, with the idea that the world is at its best when seen through the vision of a Ray-Bans perspective. The wearers of these glasses tend to be the ‘powerful’ ones in our societies – the ones who shape the dominant narrative through globalised media, governance and geo-politics.
However we’ve perhaps forgotten, in our blind rush to buy Ray-Bans, that this vision of the world is not the only one (in other words, they are not the only brand of spectacles out there). It is just one perspective – one out of many - and unfortunately a perspective that has created and perpetuated so many of the crises we find ourselves facing. The Ray-Ban vision is, in so many ways, nothing more than an illusion
Albert Einstein’s pertinent maxim: We can’t solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them – is apt here. COP26 is bringing together the same powerhouses who have led humanity into many of the problems we’re currently facing: predominantly Ray-Ban wearers whose dominant models of development (consumption, extraction, pollution) have perpetuated so many areas of the environmental, social and emotional crises that our planet is suffering.
What we need in this moment are diverse perspectives – alternative ways of seeing and being in the world to help to shape alternative pathways for the future, because the way we’ve always done things is clearly not the way any longer. We need lots of people wearing different types of glasses at that table.
Have you ever tried on a different pair of glasses? It may have happened when you read a book or watched a film told from the perspective of someone wearing different glasses to your own. It may have happened when you met someone from a different country. It may have happened when you travelled to a place with a vastly different culture to your own.
What happens when you look at the world through a different lens, perhaps by speaking a different language, exploring a different set of beliefs, exploring other cultures, traditions or practices, even watching a movie, is that you begin to widen your own lens to let other views in. And this changes everything. Because suddenly the world becomes a lot bigger, richer, deeper and wiser than you ever could have imagined!
Language is a powerful part of the glasses design. The language with which we think and communicate channels our awareness into certain shapes and frames. Every time we capture an idea with language, we shave a little piece of of its meaning away and lose a little of its value. It lessons even more when translate it to different language from its origin. There are many things that cannot be captured with words, or which cannot ever be fully translated from one language to another, and whose meaning erodes when trying to capture in English. Words such as Tshinanu or Wíyukčaŋ for example.
Sometimes we need to speak a word in many languages to start to get a bigger understanding of its meaning – or we need to see an idea through many pairs of glasses to start to shift our awareness to alternative understandings of what is possible.
By hosting COP26 in English (the language of Ray-Ban if you will) we are already losing many possibilities to widen our lenses and perspectives. Of course, communicating across thousands of global languages is complex, and so it is understandable that we tend to focus on a shared language, and with this year’s summit hosted in the UK, English will be the dominant voice. However, it serves us well to recognise how much we’re shutting down by limiting our communication in this way.
Whilst many of us may be already wearing Ray-Ban glasses (or saving up for them) in actual fact there are thousands of different types of glasses, frames and lenses out there to see through, as there are so many ways of seeing the world and living within it. We sometimes forget this. We forget that we belong to a hugely diverse species, with a cultural diversity and wisdom as rich and inspiring as the diverse species we celebrate in the rest of the natural world.
This is why, as part of our response to COP26, ThoughtBox has partnered with living-language-land to journey through endangered and minority languages that reveal different ways of relating to the natural world we are all a part of. Ways much wider and deeper than any we can conjure within the confines of the English language. Over the twelve days of the summit, we will be sharing twelve words taken from their wider collection of words gifted from people across the world, with the aim of offering some fresh inspiration for tackling our environmental crisis.
Each word is an invitation to connect more fully with the rest of the natural world - to see through new eyes and find deeper meaning. We see the world through how we feel, but we also see the world through the glasses we’re looking through. Seeing and experiencing the world through different lenses can activate a deeper level of wisdom - and as the world looks to new horizons, we need as much wisdom as we can muster.
So as we journey into COP26, we invite you - together with living-language-land - to take your glasses off for a while and try on a few different pairs. Because it might just change your vision of the world in which we live and the future we can start to shape together.
Rachel Musson | Director of ThoughtBox Education
EXPLORE THE LEARNING RESOURCES HERE: www.thoughtboxeducation.com/living-language-land
ThoughtBox is network of teachers and changemakers helping one million young people become active: Socially, Emotionally and Environmentally. We offer a range of trainings and DIY modules to schools to develop a culture of wellbeing for people and planet. Let’s talk.