Collaborator’s note: I started writing this piece in January, just following the first Regenera Villaging call to announce Phase I. Two months, three countries, and two weeks into the actual Phase I of Regenera later, my experience on this topic has expanded kaleidoscopically beyond what is represented here. And I still offer this, an initial research hypothesis into linguistic bridge building from which many experiments continue to grow.
Back in January (also known as a million years ago in community life time), we had our first Regenera Villaging call, with the purpose of sharing more about the project and inviting people to join us for our Phase I in Denmark. In our preparation for the call, we faced what proved to be a sensitive question - what “language” do we use to describe the project?
The Regenera core team (me, Hannah, Jonas, and Karl) have spent varying amounts of time (ranging from three months to three years) working with a transformational framework called Possibility Management (henceforth, “PM”). PM has expanded my capacity to relate with myself, others, and the world in unimaginably empowering ways. Since integrating the principles and practices of PM into my life, I frequently use a PM-specific lexicon, which includes non-standard definitions for English words and newly created words. The following are some examples that we use just in the first couple of pages of our codex (see below):
Codex (noun): a document defining the purpose, rules of engagement, context, structure, and governance of a project.
Context (noun): the level of responsibility that a space, team, or project is operating at, whether consciously or unconsciously.
Feelings (noun): energy and information originating in the present moment that are intended for negotiating and creating.
Emotions (noun): incomplete feelings from the past and/or an external source (an authority figure, an institution) that are intended for healing.
As we prepared to share Regenera, we asked - do we use language from PM in sharing about Regenera, as, at that point, much of the framework for the project came from PM? Or do we “translate” the terms that we use into “standard” English, knowing that some of the people on the call have no background in PM?
This quandary is not unique by a long shot to PM. In my prior career as a private investigator, I learned a new set of terms and definitions on a daily basis in order to be at home with clients from different industries. When I began CrossFit several years back, I similarly learned an entirely new set of terms that allowed me to participate in and discuss the sport.
Across these different codeswitching experiences, I have discovered that I often have (at least) two purposes in using a new lexicon: clarity (conscious), and belonging (unconscious).
Conscious Purpose: Clarity
Especially in the PM framework, words communicate more than their written, intellectual definition—many of the words are distinctions.
As I was sitting here trying to describe what distinctions mean in a PM frame without looping in PM terms, I was reminded of one of my favorite fantasy novel series, The Kingkiller Chronicle. In the second novel, The Wise Man’s Fear, the protagonist’s mentor describes the art of “naming,” a vein of magic taught at the university that the protagonist attends. He shares the near impossibility of the challenge that naming presents:
“He reached into a pocket and pulled out a river stone, smooth and dark. ‘Describe the precise shape of this. Tell me of the weight and pressure that forged it from sand and sediment. Tell me how the light reflects from it. Tell me how the world pulls at the mass of it, how the wind cups it as it moves through the air. Tell me how the traces of its iron will feel the calling of a loden-stone. All of these things and a hundred thousand more make up the name of this stone.” He held it out to us at an arm’s length. ‘This single, simple stone.’”
When I use words to communicate the distinction between feelings and emotions, you as the reader may be able to understand in your mind. However, actually holding a distinction goes beyond the level of mental understanding, and requires that something lands through experiences in your different bodies (intellectual, emotional, physical, energetic, and archetypal—all of which are, of course, also distinctions) in such a way that changes who you are moving forward.
Therefore, a conscious purpose that I have in using PM vocabulary is to be clear and specific, and not lose the potency of a distinction.
Unconscious Purpose: Belonging
“I PR’ed my snatch!”
The Crossfitters in the group applauded and pumped their fists, and the non-Crossfitters looked bemused and moderately disturbed. The joy I felt in that moment had two edges—the joy of belonging, and the unconscious benefit of how some people not understanding re-enforced my belonging.
The concept of belonging, in a setting as specific as sports and as existential as society, requires that there be an in-group and an out-group. Even if I have no (deliberate) malicious purpose to create or reinforce an out-group, believing that I can belong somewhere or to something requires that I also believe that I or other people could or do not belong.
Using language has long been my best strategy for creating belonging, and thus also exclusion and scarcity. I have used, and continue to use, complex and varied vocabulary to ensure that others think that I am “smart,” and by extension valuable and not someone to kick out.
When I look at the language I am using in any situation, I now seek to guard against my own patterns. I check if I am unconsciously excluding people for the sake of my own belonging. I see that, if I am using a term that I know or suspect someone will not understand, that my purpose is then for them to not understand.
Asking Dangerous Questions
On the Regenera Villaging call, every time I used a PM term, I defined it. I told myself that this was a reasonable compromise, taking on the risks of replacing distinctions with near-synonyms (as referenced above in Clarity) in order to guard myself against creating an out-group (Belonging).
In doing this, however, I closed a transformational door to the call attendees. I shut off the possibility that someone on the call could ask the very dangerous question—“what does that mean?”
“What does that mean” reveals that I don’t know. Not knowing is an extremely dangerous “weakness” in modern culture, which is dedicated to hierarchy and scarcity. If I don’t know, I may be judged, ridiculed, cast out, manipulated, influenced, taken advantage of, and so on.
What I have discovered in my new culture, however, is that sharing “I don’t know” opens up new, unexplored, and significant territory. I was at an event in New York in November about post-capitalist economies when my friend raised her hand, and asked what “externalities” were. The moment she asked, I realized—I didn’t know the answer! I just went along pretending that I knew, so I wouldn’t look “stupid,” and in doing so, lost the full information and impact of what the speaker was sharing.
In other spaces where people have bravely declared that they did not know, sometimes someone else gives them an answer. And more often in the spaces that I now frequent, people in the space come together and collaborate to create an experiment or path through which the prior ‘not-knower’ can discover something new for themselves and those around them.
If I had not defined every term in the Regenera Villaging call, some people may have done exactly what I have done so many times, and pretended they knew what I meant. They might even have decided that they were not interested in being involved with this project, on the basis of me using inaccessible or unintelligible language. Or they might have chosen to reveal their discomfort in not knowing, and opened a space where we could discover together how to reach a point of mutual understanding.
Building Bridges
I want to live in a culture where I and those around me are transparent and forthcoming in sharing when we don’t know, with the purpose of discovering together. Closing the gap between this new culture and the one described above (of guarding myself against not knowing and not belonging) requires practice and patience on both sides.
How do I hold space, both on the Regenera calls and in my life at large, for myself and others to practice being clear and generous in our communication?
Bridge building.
This is one of the three core areas I am committed to researching at Regenera, and one that continues to evolve for me even before entering into Phase I. I had been assuming that a bridge started at you and ended at me, which would require linear movement (e.g. I change my language, or you figure it out).
As I discovered in a recent experiment of building somatic bridges (which looked like a group of women climbing on top and underneath each other while screaming, are you touching me?!), is that bridge building is a process of negotiating intimacy. It looks like both of us (whether that is me and participants in a Regenera call, or the Regenera team and a Danish ecovillage that we visit, or me and a lover or partner) making generous offers to each other, whether that is me choosing to use a term you know, or you asking me what you mean when you don’t understand. It looks like me being clear and explicit about my purpose for selecting what language I use, and you revealing your fear of not knowing.
Instead of me coming to you, or you coming to me, we instead build a bridge together towards a place of intimacy we have not been before, so that we travel beyond anywhere either of us has ever been.