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Sparks + Embers Episode No. 016: Apprenticeship from Natural Wisdom, On Forgetting and Remembering
79 Plays1 month ago
Different cultures have developed sophisticated approaches to leadership, mentorship, and wisdom transmission that may conflict with Western apprenticeship models. The challenge is learning from diverse traditions without imposing our frameworks or appropriating sacred practices. The bridge-builders themselves face this as they share knowledge with global researchers while maintaining the cultural integrity of their practices, in collaboration with the natural world and the wisdom it offers.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Sparks and Embers' by Tiffany and Tyler
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There's something about a campfire. We gather around it, stare into the flames, and find ourselves in conversations we never planned to have. I'm Tiffany. And I'm Tyler. And this is Sparks and Embers, 10 minutes of what sticks when we step back from the fire.
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Each week, we distill insights from our Kindling newsletter, sharing the questions that won't let go and the connections that surprised us. We hope this creates space for whatever wants to emerge around your own fires. the
Exploring Leadership and Nature's Lessons
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pen ultimate article within our apprenticeship model for leadership series and in this one we turn from what we discussed last week in public office and governance and leadership of society what we called social stewardship and now we're talking about the broadest view which is our relationship as stewards
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of each other and the natural world that we exist in and that there's much to be learned from that natural world. We've been talking about the metaphor of the bridges of Megaliah and the patience and apprenticeship that's required for those.
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But we go a little bit further to really drive home what that relationship is that we need to cultivate. If we fail to cultivate that relationship and instead we turn towards extracting everything that we can from the natural world and ignoring what it has to instruct us, to apprentice us itself, then we miss out on the fullest expression of what it means to be alive.
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And that's one of the hypotheses and one of the arguments that we make in this article is is that there is a difference between leadership and cultural and organization systems of living and what it means to be human and those that are systems of death that lead us towards a constriction of our expression as humanity.
Forgotten Principles for Meaningful Leadership
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At the end of the article, we summarize this with the six things that we forget. And we have forgotten these things throughout history. And things have to come along.
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Events, circumstances, leaders, experiences, that cause us to remember when those who were tasked with remembering on all of our behalf have either disappeared or been ignored.
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So for today, we are going to address the six things that we forget and the six things we need to remember. And what we're going to argue is that the act of forgetting is going to push us further and further into those systems of death.
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Why? Because sometimes paradigms need to die. And in those paradigms dying, we find that we are also being called back to
Elaboration on Forgotten Principles
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remember. So what are the six things that we forget?
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I'm going to list off the six things. The first one is the capacity for self-repair. And that's the fact that we are capable of wrestling with things even we don't know. We are capable of wrestling with the anxiety of not knowing Rather than outsourcing to some expert or consultant to tell us what we should do, part of the apprenticeship model is is that we remember that we have the ability for rolling up our sleeves and getting our hands dirty rather than waiting to be rescued.
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What we also forget is is that we prefer to be generative rather than extractive. Generative meaning that what we produce together is greater than than what was left behind.
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It reminds me of the classic saying, when you're camping, leave it better than you found it. And when we forget that, we start trying to extract everything we possibly can without deference to the fact that it is important to us to leave legacies and that leads to number three which is long-term thinking spanning generations is also something that's important to us and when we forget that and we get co-opted in just short-term thinking we start investing in immediate returns at the cost of that future by doing that we forget number four which is is that reciprocal relationships exist between stewards and resources
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including future generations, those who will take care of us in old age and those who will continue building in a way that allows us to thrive if we fail to think long-term.
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What also compounds in number four is is that we forget that the reciprocal nature of the relationships that we want, that giving from two sides and something greater emerging from that.
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We reduce ourselves to a transactionalism that ignores that as stewards, we have a relationship to the resources, whether that is future generations, whether that is the natural world.
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And we begin to sow the seeds of our own demise, or at the very least, the systems that we are so desperate to prop up we begin to undermine those.
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And that leads to number five, which is is that there is an ecological embeddedness that we must remember.
Essential Remembrances for Future Actions
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And if we forget so that we're a part of larger systems, we will do harm to those systems because we think we have to be the first ones there, we have to live through scarcity, we have to take as much as we can, not only to the detriment of others, but to the detriment of ourselves,
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And finally, why do we do this? Why do we oftentimes forget? It's because of our relationship to uncertainty and unforeseen circumstances. And we believe that because we want to avoid things that are unpalatable to us, that we must control, that we must develop formulas, we must pursue as fast as we can to escape our own mortality, and we forget the very truth that we have the ability to adapt to those unforeseen circumstances.
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With those in mind, I'll go a little bit faster through the other sixes that we need to remember we are capable of accepting the loss of absolute control. We are capable of becoming a co-designer with natural processes.
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We are capable of accommodating development timelines that exceed the single tenure of a single leader. We are capable of maintaining underground networks and relationships that don't have 100% visible utility and economic value. We are capable of providing technical frameworks while allowing emergent development. We are capable of using our intellect to develop predictive models without holding ourselves to the standard that it must predict perfection.
Overcoming Instincts for Collaborative Living
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And finally, we are capable of being forward-looking in our actions and and addressing problems that affect future generations. And that that may come with some form of sacrifice in the present.
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We are capable of all these things because it defines what we are also able to transcend. The things that make us forget anxiety, fear, trepidation, small-mindedness,
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Centering ourselves, egocentrism, narcissism, all of those things are our baser instincts. They are living at a survival level that we know we don't need to live there.
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There's actually enough abundance available. for all of us to live full lives together, even with competition involved.
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But all of these things remind us that we can transcend our base animal instincts. Only as long as we remember that we can do that, can we make the choice to in fact do that.
Episode Summary and Listener Engagement
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These are the things that we discuss this week in the article. And next week will be a culmination of all six sessions that we have spent in talking about the apprenticeship model. And we will be summing up the major themes.
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Hopefully you know what we're going to talk about because the themes have been clear throughout each of the installments. We look forward to discussing and hearing your comments on today's episode and feature article, and then look ahead to next week's.
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for sitting around the fire with us. If these conversations sparked something, subscribe to Sparks Numbers and all our shows on Apple and Spotify. And if you're moved to, please leave us a review or share this episode with your friends.
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Both help us build this community. For the longer material that feeds these episodes, subscribe to the Kindling newsletter at goodpainco.com backslash kindling. That's goodpainco.com backslash kindling.
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We release it weekly with the kind of content that keeps these unexpected conversations going. We provide the kindling, you bring the fire. Until next time, keep the questions burning.