Guest Article

The Story of the Clouds and the Forest by Ben Roberts of the NOWWHAT?! Collective

There’s a story one often hears in conversations about systemic transformation that goes like this…

There’s very little time.  The scale of the change required is huge.  Hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of small groups working towards change can’t possibly get us where we need to go.  They are too fragmented.  They compete with each other and duplicate efforts.  They can’t leverage enough resources or influence to challenge the entrenched power of the status quo.  To fix this problem, we must concentrate our support on a smaller number of much larger groups.  And those groups must also do a lot more collaborating and coordinating than is currently taking place. 

What if that story is the equivalent of missing the forest for trees?! 

That is of course what scientists were doing before they understood just how collaborative, intelligent, and symbiotic forests truly are.  As the old industrial growth paradigm dies back, the new collaborative and regenerative one is emerging all arou…