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Why Pluriverse

regeneration is
always pluriversal

The concept of a Pluriverse originated with the Zapatistas in their decolonial political vision of a world where many worlds coexist harmoniously. It's not just a decolonial vision, but an imaginary of radical hope. Embracing and nurturing the vision of a pluriverse allows us to reimagine a world beyond nation-states, geopolitical power imbalances, and artificial borders.

A pluriversal world invites us to see ourselves as Earthzens—citizens of Earth first. It challenges us to deconstruct the dominant narrative and listen to the overlooked voices offering alternative visions of counter-hegemonic futures.

This vision expands our perspective, moving us beyond isolated and often conflicting worldviews toward a sense of planetary unity. I call this world-sensing. A pluriverse isn't an abstract concept—it's our natural state of existence.

My work focuses on presenting pluriversality as an alternative to the dominant narrative that has shaped civilization for over five centuries. Reimagining and rebuilding a pluriversal world is essential for regeneration.

The Pluriverse

In reclaiming and reconstructing pluriversality, one of the most profound questions we face is: Is it possible to 'decolonize' completely and fully? What does that even mean?

Colonization has been and still is an ongoing process of extraction, expropriation, exploitation, and exclusion. Much like a chemical reaction, the process of colonization has transfigured our planet on tangible and intangible ways.

Gesturing towards decolonial futures is a response to the centuries of onslaught. To truly respond, we have to widen our perspectives and hold space for multiple and paradoxical realities.

Colonization ripped apart communities, fractured societies, uprooted swathes of population. In short, it changed the geopolitical contours of the world in unprecedented ways.

This process crafted fault lines and fissures in the fabric of societies, creating immigrants, migrants, and refugees. This unforeseen impact of colonization thus created cracks and crevices where seeds of pluriversal futures were planted. As cultures, communities, and contexts collided, the intermingling and intersecting of identities, stories, beliefs, and values led to the opening up of unexpected pathways and possibilities.

Fruits of colonization became the seeds of pluriversality. Today, the hegemonic forces are imploding; pluriversal futures are already taking shape. Decades of myriad movements dotting the planet are coalescing. An era of changes is giving way to a Change of Era. In this liminal space between stories, between collapse and creation, between loss and hope lie the opportunities to co-create regenerative worlds that work for all.

Decolonization is, therefore, a transformative process, an ongoing journey, an unshackling of our imaginations from the invisible fetters. It is a reclamation of the unseen, unheard, unacknowledged voices and narratives.

It is an invitation to:

Recognize our place in the vast continuum of Earth's existence
Act in service of Life, finding joy, meaning, and purpose in our brief existence
Experience Life as an indelible web of patterns, relationships, networks, and contexts
Befriend our emerging future selves

A Pluriverse is 'a world where many worlds fit'. The vision of a pluriverse recalls and reinstates the very truth of our existence. It is predicated on Relationality, Decoloniality, Nonduality, and Democratic Participation.

It rejects the imperial-colonial project of a 'universal narrative' as capable of encapsulating this pulsating, vibrating, entwined, and living world. It is a vision of a world beyond anthropocentrism, growthism, resourcification, and mindless consumerism.

It is an invitation to reimagine a world where cultures collide--not in competition but in curiosity, collaboration, and co-creation. It is an entanglement of many epistemologies, ontologies, and cosmologies. This convergence and synergy have the power to lead to the emergence of higher orders of complexity, elegance, resilience, and regeneration.

The emergent futures herald radical transformations of metaphors, values, beliefs, stories, and paradigms. The many movements dotting the planet, the marching bodies, the bridge-builders and storytellers are harbingers of alternative visions. They have already moved us beyond the matrix into the cracks and crevices, into the fissures and fault lines that have always existed on the superficially smooth surface of hegemony.

If you put your ear to the ground, you can hear the rumbles and roiling beneath as the crevices widen. And new ways which are also age-old ways emerge to regain their rightful places. The metropole is shrinking and dissolving into the whole. As it should.

The Hegemony

Our world is on the cusp of monumental change. Despite resistance from established powers, we're witnessing shifts that go far beyond surface-level politics or economic fluctuations. These changes represent a fundamental reimagining of our collective beliefs, stories, and mindsets - the very bedrock of our civilizations and cultures.

Globalization has always been a purely economic movement. Globalism, on the other hand, is an imaginary of universal humanism that is transboundary, transnational, and planetary. It is a vision of a 'federation of nations' predicated on collaboration and cooperation. This is no pipe dream but an imperative if our civilizational trajectory is to move from degeneration towards regeneration.

This transformation isn't just possible; it's inevitable. Life, by its very nature, seeks to create conditions that allow it to thrive. However, our current economic model stands in stark contrast to this principle. Its relentless pursuit of growth comes at the cost of our planet's health. As we reach the limits of this unsustainable system, we find ourselves at a critical juncture, poised between collapse and creation. In the debris of decay lie the seeds of myriad futures.

This Global Shift

Reclaiming Our Humanity: Reconnecting with our core values and shared experiences
Decolonizing Our Imaginations: Breaking free from limiting thought patterns and embracing new possibilities
Reimagining Relationships: Forging new connections with each other and our planet

In this era of seeming contradiction--between polarizing politics and potentials of technology to build networks, we have unprecedented opportunities for collaboration, sharing, and communicating. Reclaiming technology as a force for good is an imperative.

What began as primarily an economic phenomenon is transforming into a deeper understanding of our fundamental interconnectedness. This shift invites us to move beyond simply being "global citizens" to embracing our role as Earthzens - active participants in the wellbeing of our shared planetary home.

Globalization to Globalism

The journey of decolonization is an awakening from and an ability to see the hegemonic constructs and the underlying illusions. It is a process of unlearning and unyoking ourselves from the known paradigms, and sensing beneath the monomyth. It is also a deliberate reclamation of everything that the hegemony has tried to render invisible.

The journey of decolonization begins with eschewing the narrative of separation -- a worldview that is reductionist, mechanistic, supremacist, and individualistic. The imperial-colonial system, rooted in supremacy, separation, colonialism, and patriarchy, has distorted our relationships with Self, Other, and Nature. This distortion has resulted in:

An emerging metacrisis
An Age of Dissonance
A severe Crisis of Meaning

The consequences of this narrative are far-reaching:

Existential crises and a pervasive sense of meaninglessness
An era of 'post-truth' dissonance
Atomized and polarized individuals bereft of purpose

Decolonizing our imagination is an invitation to:

Step out of these invisible fetters
Bear witness to the unfolding of life
Become participants and co-creators in life's regenerative processes
Embrace the myriad ontologies, epistemologies, and cosmologies that constitute our world
Listen to the unheard, unseen, unacknowledged voices where the seeds of pluriversality lie

This is not idealism; it's realism. As we stand at this critical juncture, we have a choice: to align ourselves with life-affirming processes or risk irrelevance and incoherence.

The hegemonic powers are imploding from within. The unleashing of violence, the rising techno-fascism, and uncontrolled repression across continents and countries are signs of dissolution. The narrative has collapsed. And the hegemony is lashing about in its death throes much like a dying dinosaur that recognizes its end is near. In the debris and decay of the collapsing hegemony lie the seeds of pluriversal futures already taking root. The decay has become compost.

The notions of Separation, Supremacy, and Hierarchy were imposed as an imperial-colonial project. This project has morphed and shapeshifted over the past five centuries from direct invasion and conquest to neoliberal capitalism manifesting as globalization and neocolonialism. The underlying narrative has remained unchallenged and unchanged. It has effectively become invisible and thus more insidious. This hegemonic narrative has permeated every facet of our existence from economy to ecology, education to healthcare, politics to spirituality. The hegemony is predicated on power, profit, and privilege for a few at the cost of Life itself.

As the hegemony crumbles, its Eurocentric narrative of self-proclaimed exceptionalism, superiority, and universality stands exposed. The facades of growth and progress have fallen away; our civilizational trajectory defined by an economic monomyth is floundering. The era of changes underscored by the same narrative of supremacy, imperialism, and hierarchy is giving way to a Change of Era. We are at a point of discontinuity. A portal has opened up. And new stories are wafting in. The foundational narratives are being rewritten. We are all witnesses to the reshaping and reframing of history.

Seen through the lens of the Eurocentric, hegemonic worldview and its economic monomyth of infinite growth, the notion of a pluriverse may seem utopian or naive, or both. However, holding a pluriversal vision and nurturing the stories and narratives that are already reconstituting the world is crucial in these times of planetary collapse. As we stand on the brink of polycrisis, rapidly devolving into a metacrisis, a radical vision of pluriversal futures is one way to move out of this hegemonic matrix and cage.

Hence, the need to keep the vision of a pluriverse alive, build the capacities and skills needed to nurture and nourish the nascent and emergent futures, and hold space for the new to be born.

The diagram is a rough illustration of how more than 500 years of imperial-colonial imposition have led to a polycrisis, and a profound crisis of meaning. The antidote to this, I believe, is to seek alternative narrative(s) that have always existed but have been deliberately delegitimized, rendered invisible, and suppressed through various means.