The Flip In Leadership Needed To Save (Ourselves On) The Planet
by Ginny Whitelaw. Originally published on Forbes.com
If we watched the change in biodiversity as closely as we do the stock market, the little ticker running along the bottom of our television screen could, for the next 20 years, tick off over 100 different species every day that have recently gone extinct or are nearly so. There goes the Togo mouse, followed by the Wondiwoi Tree Kangaroo, Himalayan Quail and Pernambuco holly. The UN reports 1 million species are threatened with extinction—that’s one-eighth of the total number of species on earth—and calls this the last decade to bend the curve on biodiversity loss. The ticker would continue: curtains for the Namdapha flying squirrel, the Pondicherry shark, and the Sinu parakeet. Well, maybe we don’t need all those species, the skeptic may argue, we just need enough of the species that humans depend upon. But, there again, the news is not good. Situated in the lower right hand corner of our screen, similar to a stock market report, is a box showing an overall index of wildlife population taken across more than 5000 of the most common species. The box is red: down 70% worldwide over the last 50 years.
The cause of this decline is not hard to find. It is largely the result of the global food system with its unsustainable agricultural practices and the destruction of habitats. Biodiversity loss sits in a vicious cycle with climate change as 25% of greenhouse gas emissions come from land clearing, crop production and fertilization, while warming temperatures further degrade and dry up land. Some of those species suffering 70% decline in their numbers are pollinators, putting at risk more than half a trillion dollars of crops annually. Already 40% of the world’s population is affected by land degradation, with all of the human suffering and social and political turmoil that follows: poverty, food insecurity, migration and violence. We are destroying the conditions that support human life. The proverbial canary in the mine is already dying. This is not something that might happen in the future. It is happening right now.
Solutions to the loss of biodiversity are also not hard to find. But the first challenge we face—which is a leadership challenge—is the unwillingness to look for them. We can be so thoroughly distracted by our own life, the needs of our family, the threats to our business, the performance we have to achieve or politics we have to play to advance in our organizations, that we have no attention left for this larger picture. We can be so advantaged by things as they are that we can’t see how deeply we’ve disadvantaged others to pay for our present. We can so identify with life as we know it that we can’t entertain it being much different and continue to collude in a calamity. Thomas Hübl calls it a kind of collective trauma that keeps us from facing the reality of collapsing biodiversity and the climate crisis. Thinking of ourselves solely as separate individuals already fuels these problems and the characteristic response to trauma is even further separation and disconnection. The essential flip that changes the view and actions of leaders is in how we think of ourselves: not as a tiny dot amidst this whole picture, but also the whole picture having the experience of a particular dot. This inversion—from disconnected to whole—changes everything from our seeing the state of things to our intuition and innovation around solutions, to our resourcefulness and resilience as co-creators of the future.
This flip from disconnected to whole inverts our thinking and doingfrom separate and compartmentalized (e.g., head without heart, self above others, companies with “externalities”) to interwoven as a connected system of relationships. It requires a leap in consciousness that sees through the ego-as-identity to the vast, dynamic relationships that make ego and all things appear. It is seeing our true nature, rather than only the superficial surface. This flip to wholeness is made possible through Zen training and other contemplative practices, though I’ll speak to Zen as that’s what I know best. If one meditates with breath and posture working correctly, a state of consciousness arises, called samadhi, in which one is remerged with One and only one thing is going on. No separation. That is not an opinion, not a belief system, not a psychological fluke, but the experimental result of an oft-repeated practice over many centuries. That samadhi condition comes and goes, but the more one practices, the greater its depth, length and frequency. Increasingly it penetrates through the physical body as breath deepens and posture aligns and may reach such intensity that the bottom falls out and one experiences one’s own nature and all nature as an ephemeral interplay of emptiness and form. The freedom and fearlessness of such samadhi is beyond description. It flips leadership around from trying to use the whole picture to serve a transitory life to using one’s transitory life as a tool in service of the whole picture.
From a physics point of view, what’s also happening through this physical training is a tuning of one’s brain and body as an increasingly sensitive antenna and powerful transmitter. Not only do our standard senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch—pick up more nuanced signals, but our brain vibrates more coherently with the signals it’s fed (as measurable in an electroencephalogram) and filters less out. Moreover the pineal gland in the brain seems to be an antenna and transmitter in its own right, resonating with high-frequency electromagnetic waves and producing various metabolites, all of which is kicked into a higher gear in the samadhi of meditation. There are also centers of consciousness deeper in the body, notably in the heart and lower abdomen, that can come into coherent resonance with the brain. It’s hard to say which of these objective measures translates into the subjective experience of greater intuition or more innovative ideas. But as a metaphor, it is as if we expand from being an AM-only radio to being AM/FM and then some, capable of tapping into a wider variety of signals. And since these signals kick off chain reactions that lead to thoughts and actions, as mind and body increasingly function as one, those signals feed a seamless ability to respond.
Once we are open to seeing and being the whole, rather than remaining apart from it, we’ll discover our own response-ability in being of service as seamlessly as our left and right hands find one another to clap. We’ll become more attuned to cycles and systems, finding ways to bring about healing aligned with our passions and capabilities. If we’re in a position to direct investments, for example, we’ll invest more heavily in nature-based solutions and restoration projects. We may feel moved to join such a project in our area, restoring a piece of land or water that we love, or help fund ecosystem restoration projects underway across the globe. If we’re in a position to change the food system anywhere from farming to distribution to waste, we’ll learn how to make it more circular and resilient. Or perhaps we’ll change our own diet, waste less or grow more. If we’re in government, law or policy positions, we’ll figure out ways to assign rights to nature and value to what nature provides. Or we might build a practice of taking walks in nature and opening to nature-inspired solutions to the business and personal challenges we face. If we’re in healthcare, we might champion a One Health initiative by which people, animals and ecosystems thrive together. If we’re in business, we might learn about roadmaps that business can follow to be more regenerative. If we’re in finance, we might add our might to the UN’s network of financial institutions for accelerating sustainable development. Or we might get outdoors in a part of nature we love, become totally quiet and listen with every pore of our body.
What we won’t do is deny or dissociate ourselves from the reality of our times. We won’t be complacent or complicit in watching that extinction ticker run along the bottom of our television screen: goodbye to Wellington’s Solitary coral…bullneck seahorse…Omiltemi cottontail rabbit. For them it’s too late and who knows the subtle ways in which their demise presages our own. In the flip to wholeness, we save all we can.
