Why LEAF?

Deborah Dutta

2 hours ago

3 min read

Deborah Dutta

The polycrises besetting us have made it clear that we need a paradigm shift in how we think, act, and co-live with the environment. One of the defining characteristics of human activity has been the ability to adapt the environment to suit our needs, particularly through tools. While most animals have an ecological niche, and adapt themselves to a changing environment, humans have actively shaped the environment according to their needs. That in itself is not a unique feature, though. Beavers change river ecologies by building dams, ants build elaborate weather-controlled mounds, many birds build sophisticated nests and so on. For humans, however, ‘building’ has become a runaway feature. We have gone from building cave shelters to rockets, lighting fires to creating atomic bombs. This is partly because we have been able to create powerful external representations that can do conceptual heavy lifting, and using such representations in turn creates more possibilities to manipulate and change the environment. In ‘Orality to Literacy’, for instance, Walter Ong explains the transformative ways in which our relation to what we perceive, think and act changed through writing. On the one hand, writing allowed for a concept to be disassociated from a person as a source of knowledge, it also made higher-order analytical thinking possible by offloading memory. The development of writing was a fundamental condition for the historical development of many forms of scientific and mathematical thinking. On the other hand, it also separated knowledge from situated, embodied ways of knowing, relationships, and lived experiences. The proliferation of techno-scientific advances rely on the models we have about the world, and the tools at our disposal to change it. The cultural narratives accompanying such tool building have come to see these traits as fundamental values.

This is where we need to take a step back and reevaluate what we are building for. We need to rethink how our technologies of knowing shape our relationships with the world and deliberately cultivate forms of learning that reconnect and reposition ourselves as a part of nature. More technology won't fix this; rather, we have to develop a different imagination and a different way of learning. Political scientist Manjana Milkoreit elegantly explains how our imagination is largely bound to the systems we live in. We draw ideas from what we know and what already exists in our surroundings. So, thinking of radically different futures that are bound to result due to the unfolding climate dynamics presents an unprecedented challenge. Beyond funds, technology, and political will, we desperately need minds skilled at envisioning alternate forms of economy, society, and culture.

From a process-oriented approach, imagination requires actively adapting and reconfiguring familiar perspectives and events into novel situations. The ability to ask the perennial ‘What if’. The malleability of conceptual categories is highest in youth. As adults, many ideas and concepts are internalized to the extent that they are also more resistant to change. In other words, we must nurture youth's literal open-mindedness to explore future possibilities by reconnecting with places, histories, and people. LEAF is a contribution in that direction.

Side Note:

The symbolism and acronym also pay tribute to leaves in general! They may seem too commonplace to notice, but leaf surfaces provide homes for an immense number of organisms and play a huge role in global air, water, soil, and nutrient cycles. Leaves create twice as much surface area as all the land on Earth combined, and 60% of all living tissues are leaves! While volunteering at the urban community garden in Mumbai, I came to appreciate fallen leaves as the main constituent of nutrient-rich compost. The efforts to collect leaf litter from streets for composting rather than being burnt or sent to the landfill took the form of a spontaneous community-driven movement called the ‘Save-A-Leaf’ campaign. Now, as much as I love the vibrant foliage and canopies emerging in summer, I also look forward to the carpet of leaf litter that drives the alchemy of rest and rejuvenation for the soil habitats.

Designing
Learning Environments for Alternative Futures (LEAF) Group

Why LEAF?

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