Matt Birkhold
A few Sundays ago, my partner and I were recently at the Baltimore Farmers Market. We picked up some collards, some cabbage, and other vegetables. While there we ran into my friend Shawn who I’ve known for almost twenty years when we both lived in Brooklyn. He now lives down the street from us in Baltimore but had just returned from working in New York for a week. “I’m done with big cities, man,” Shawn said after I bought my cabbage. “I don’t need the hype anymore. I’m middle aged now. I’m in my 50s. When I was younger, I loved the people, the masses. I loved the hype. But my soul doesn’t require that anymore. I can buy whatever I need or want in New York but I don't get community from New York anymore. I get community here.”
What souls need has not been a concern of the modern age, a period of human existence that began in 1492 and has created tremendous technological and economic growth while also causing great damage to nature and life. The modern age caused this damage because it has assumed that human beings and nature are separate, and because it believed that human beings have only three basic needs: food, water and shelter. This assumption is wrong, and while it has led us to enormous economic and technological advancements, it has also led our souls to suffer. In addition to food, water, and shelter, humans also have basic needs for community, recognition, dignity, and love.
Whether we like it or not, the modern age is coming to an end. Its end means that something will take its place. The next age of human history could be any number of things. If we practice Visionary Organizing, the next age of human existence could become an Age of Repair; a potential period of human existence that aims to repair the damage done to nature and life during the modern age.
An age of repair needs systems that satisfy what human souls require. An Age of repair can be founded on the idea that our spiritual, or nonmaterial needs, are as significant as our material, or economic needs for survival. If we think of the modern age as an age of economic growth, technological development, individualism, racism, sexism, and cheap nature, an age of repair is one that repairs the damage that the modern age has done to us, to earth, and to our relationships. The modern age prioritized economic growth above all else. An age of repair will prioritize collective wellbeing above all else. The modern age sacrificed wellbeing and life for economic growth. An age of repair will accept planetary limits to growth to maintain collective wellbeing. The modern age was committed to advancing technology for its own sake. An age of repair will ask, “Should we do something just because we can?”
This need for systems that satisfies what souls need can be accomplished by practicing Visionary Organizing, a framework and approach to community and organizational change that equally emphasizes material and nonmaterial needs. Visionary Organizing does not create change by marshaling resources and people to force what already exists to change. Visionary Organizing transforms reality by recognizing and nurturing interdependence, transforming relationships, and creating new patterns and systems that — once taken to scale — become capable of replacing what already exists.
Visionary Organizing consists of six components:
Locating Ourselves in Systems and History
Connecting to and Trusting our Inner Wisdom
Recognizing and Nurturing Interdependence
Imagining New Possibilities
Affirming Dignity
Experimenting with Transformation
An age of repair can only be built from an assumption that humans' basic nonmaterial needs for healthy social development and our material needs for survival are equally important. By practicing these six components together, we can equally emphasize these needs and transform the crisis of the modern era into an opportunity to repair and heal the damage it’s done.
