How this project came to life?

 How this Project came to life …

2017

In December 2017 the World, Gaia, received a letter. This letter was a poem, written by “Agony”:

Hello World.

I am your Agony.You can see me, when a forest suddenly becomes an accumulation of stubs.
You can hear me, when people in areas of war cry and scream.
You can feel me, when the Earth quakes.
I am here to inform you.
I give you information about the imbalance in yourself.
Yet, I am acute and you can handle me with little impact.
But soon I will be there chronically.
Then the accumulation of stubs will become bigger.
Then the screams coming out of war areas will become louder.
Then you will notice the quakes of the Earth even more.
It is time to take me serious.

… read more on https://medium.com/@princessgaia/the-diary-of-the-earth-a7664bde63af?source=friends_link&sk=aa922674630be256810719a91b020f35

2018

In the beginning of 2018 some of us joined the Think Tank EUSG (https://europeanschoolofgovernance.eu/)

We all shared the same visions for our Future Planet and eventually we founded the EUSG Storytelling Lab, which should later become the Gaia Storytelling Lab.

The Gaia Storytelling Lab

is simply devoted to putting the unfolding of life in all its multiple variations in the center all of all things. Water, air, flora, fauna, soil, mud etc. are not only conditions of life in a physical sense but what makes life beautiful and rich. Being with nature is being with ourselves. To be a true storyteller is to enact Gaia in our words and actions. Gaia storytelling is to craft realities as true, meaningful and answerable to planet Earth and Gaia. Bruno Latour has reminded us that Gaia is not the Globe[i]. Instead, Gaia implies putting our feet in the ground; to look, to feel, to smell, to hear and to touch the world around us. Gaia storytelling implies merging water and soul, stories and soil, landscapes and culture. Gaia storytelling entails that sustainability is not only about sustaining the conditions for human life on earth in the very narrow sense in which sustainability is and has been understood by politicians, managers, corporate subjects and people in general. A significant problem with sustainability is that it understands nature as an environment and context for our actions. Historically the UN has approached sustainability as an integration of environment, society and economy. The triple bottom line and the idea of obtaining a balance between these three elements dominate UN policies and corporate strategizing. The 48 years that have passed since The Club of Rome have shown that economic interests are preferred before problems related to climate. It is well documented that we continuously fail to respond to the overwhelming evidence of how climate change threatens our life conditions. Gaia storytelling implies that climate is our primary responsibility and answerability in the radical sense that the unfolding of life in all its different and rich variations is the secret to a rich, meaningful and happy. Most importantly, Gaia storytelling is also a political move that situates responsibility with ordinary human beings, and not only scientists and politicians.

[i]See Latour, B. (2016, June 2). Bruno Latour: Why Gaia is not the Globe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AGg-oHzPsM

We started to meet the others in person on conferences soon, such as:

• https://www.en.aau.dk/events/event/conference--storytelling-and-the-future-of-organizations.cid385284

• https://www.egosnet.org/

• https://davidboje.com/quantum/

• https://europeanschoolofgovernance.eu/dialogue/

2019

As we listened more and more to the stories of the others we became a group of good friends and merged our interests, our individual missions into a vision of the most beautiful of all futures for every living being, we created a Movement, called it “Storytelling For Gaia” and had dreams of creating a yet inexisting education for students of all ages, genders, cultures and mind-sets.

2020

This innovative education we called the Gaia PhD and by today, thanks to David’s passion, we already have started to teach Gaia online. https://davidboje.com/Gaia/

Future

We are all responsible for our own story, each one of us individually and as collective. Anyone has the ability to live one’s personal story and to own the very actions one takes. (One example of “Owning our Actions” is David and the ephemeral pond story https://princess-gaia.com/2020/05/29/featuring-david-boje/)

Be the story. Be Gaia.