| Dear friends, I pay attention when I start hearing about the same thing from disparate corners. Across the last few years, I started hearing the intriguing word “biomimicry” invoked by people doing all kinds of things I would not have immediately connected with modeling from the natural world: sustainable investment; human-centric social media strategy; innovative philanthropy. And they were all also, notably, humans I experienced to be especially creative, expansive, wise — and kind. My On Being conversation partner this week is a teacher to all of them: the humble, creative, expansive, and wise founder of what I’m now seeing as a parallel universe unfolding in our midst. Biomimicry is “the conscious emulation of life’s genius.” Janine Benyus wrote the book on it — literally — in 1999, and it’s made its way quietly through the world ever since, in ever wider, radical ripples. I invoke that word “radical” in its root sense — of driving back to the core. Consider basic life/design principles around which biomimicry orients — all of them at work in every moment beneath our feet, in the air we breathe, in the sky above: |
| Nature runs on sunlight,
uses only the energy it needs,
fits form to function,
recycles everything,
rewards cooperation,
banks on diversity,
demands local expertise,
curbs excesses from within,
and taps the power of limits. |
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| This one takes my breath away: nature relentlessly “creates conditions conducive to life.” When Janine Benyus started exploring and putting a name and form to this as a field, she only found it happening in places like space agencies and military labs. Today, it’s about bringing biologists and ecologists alongside designers and engineers and architects and construction workers all over the place, including in some major corporations. It is beyond heartening to hear about this. There is something in this story that illuminates the strangeness of the human condition which we are called in this generation to reckon with and to grow up, for our own good as much as the good of the planet. How could we have organized for the last few hundred years in such ignorance and defiance of the “radical” realities that yield the vitality of this earth — so functionally miraculous, with so much to teach us, and so elementally at hand. There is an absolutely stunning revelation in this conversation, too, about what Darwin really said about what it means to be “fit,” before the phrase “survival of the fittest” became part of the design brief of the modern western world. There was at least one leading city planner in the audience when I interviewed Janine Benyus, who walked away understanding that what he’d just heard would take him and his colleagues back to scratch — with the understanding that “scratch” means the life-giving genius we came from. Perhaps there will be something like this here for you, too. |
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| | | | | | | | We're paying attention as arts of living — practices — emerge in this season's conversations. This week, with the founder of the field of biomimicry, questions for taking nature as mentor — because "we are surrounded by geniuses." Accompanying notes in the video description. Watch here. |
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| | What is the role of intergenerational relationship — or what might be called “cogenerational collaboration” — in the work of social healing? We’ve held this question alongside many deep thinkers and innovators over the years, and we are excited to present, in collaboration with CoGenerate (formerly Encore.org), a new, interactive digital media collection of creative work — essays, poetry, video, visual arts, audio contributions, and more — through which eight healers, creatives, and changemakers bring their voices and efforts, as well as those of their communities, to different facets of this question. We are delighted to share it with you and hope you will find it to be a companion for reflection — one that offers resourcing and tools you can work with, return to, and expand upon with your own experience. |
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