Telling Stories of Aliveness: A Call for Regenerative Culture

From extracting to cultivating: shifting culture from commodity to ecology

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
— George Orwell, 1984

It’s the year 2025.
And culture still runs on stories.
But not all stories carry life.

Some stories sell certainty in shiny packages.
Some carve borders between “us” and “them”.
Some keep us scrolling, numbing, forgetting — while others awaken something ancient and tender: the memory that things can be otherwise.

We’ve seen this before. In Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of Truth doesn’t just lie — it engineers reality itself. Erasing nuance. Rewriting memory. Weaponising words until even imagination feels dangerous.

But this isn’t only fiction. We too live inside manufactured narratives — shaped by algorithms, compressed into content, sold back to us in seamless loops. Meaning becomes monetized. Story becomes noise. Complexity becomes unbearable.

Yet even here, beneath the noise, a quiet shift is taking root.

We are learning to tell different stories.

Stories that compost the exhausted soil of extraction.
Stories that tend to the messy aliveness of interdependence.
Stories that don’t just entertain, but regenerate.

This is regenerative culture.

A culture that feeds what feeds us. That designs for reciprocity, not endless growth. That understands resilience as a collective art — woven by educators, artists, facilitators, farmers, technologists, elders. A culture where flourishing doesn’t come at the expense of others, but through mutual thriving.

Consider this a small offering — a seed, a compass, for those already rehearsing new ways of being:

For those imagining more-than-human futures.
For the weavers of new worlds.
For the educators, facilitators, and organizers tending to the edges of culture.
For anyone who senses that story is not just entertainment — but a living ecology we are all part of.

The question is no longer whether culture will be shaped.
The question is: what will we choose to grow?

Culture as Commodity

We live in a culture factory — a system that prioritises speed, visibility, and profitability over depth, care, and context. Creativity is monetised, stories are reduced to trends, and “virality” becomes the measure of value. It is a culture of disconnection, where imagination is outsourced and complexity is flattened.

This is what I call culture-as-commodity. It thrives on:

• Extraction — from people, ideas, and traditions without reciprocity

• Spectacle — attention-grabbing without meaning-making

• Erasure — of marginalised stories, ecologies, and ancestral wisdom

• Burnout — of the very creatives and changemakers it claims to uplift

And here’s the more difficult truth:
While it's easy to locate these dynamics in large corporations, tech platforms, or political powers, these patterns don’t only live “out there”. They live in us, in our conditioned habits of measuring worth by productivity, consuming more than we need, or seeking quick certainty over sustained inquiry. Many of us participate in extractive logics unconsciously, simply because we've inherited them.

Like in 1984, this system operates not only by overt force, but through subtle saturation — shaping what we think is possible before we even begin.

But as Ursula K. Le Guin once said,

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings.”

Culture can be composted. It can be reclaimed.

Culture as Ecology: An Invitation to Regenerate

In contrast, regenerative culture is not produced — it is cultivated.
It is not extracted — it is stewarded.
It is not consumed — it is participated in.

To move from culture as commodity to culture as ecology is to shift from dominance to reciprocity, from individualism to interdependence, from linearity to living systems.

Where commodity culture runs like a machine, regenerative culture grows like a living network — interconnected, adaptive and always evolving.

From Hustle & Scarcity → to Rhythm & Reciprocity

Extractive stories tell us we must constantly strive, accumulate, and compete. Time becomes a resource to exploit.

Regenerative stories honour cycles. They follow the rhythms of nature — of rest, emergence and renewal. We move at the pace of relationship, not urgency.

As Octavia Butler writes in Parable of the Sower:

“All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you.”
Culture is not a race; it’s a living, responsive dialogue.

From Hero’s Journey → to Collective Weaving

Extractive culture glorifies the lone hero — the saviour who overcomes adversity alone.

Regenerative culture knows no one heals or creates in isolation. It centres collective weaving — multiple voices, perspectives and knowledges coming together.

In The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin offers a vision of a society where shared meaning emerges through communal labour, ritual and dialogue. No single voice claims ownership of the future — it is stitched together through participation.

From Control → to Co-creation

Extractive culture seeks to dominate — to script, predict and control outcomes.

Regenerative culture embraces emergence. Like a forest ecosystem, it thrives through cooperation, feedback, and surprise. The role of the storyteller shifts from authoritarian to facilitator — holding space for many truths to unfold.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future invites us to imagine planetary-scale regeneration not through top-down power, but through moral courage, cooperation and shared stewardship of life itself.

This is the movement:
From extractive stories that separate
To regenerative stories that reconnect.

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Orwell showed us what happens when language is narrowed, history is manipulated, and imagination is crushed: when stories serve control, culture dies.

In 1984, The Ministry of Truth wasn’t simply concerned with facts — it sought to make alternative futures unthinkable. When people cannot imagine otherwise, they cannot act otherwise.

But if stories can limit us, they can also liberate us.

Today, we are at a threshold.
We can continue to replicate extractive, mechanised narratives — or we can become gardeners of new cultural ecologies.

This isn’t about grand revolutions.
It starts, as all regeneration does, with small, consistent acts of tending:

1. Notice the stories you’ve inherited.
Which cultural myths shape how you see worth, success, belonging? Which voices have you internalised? What have you been taught to believe is “normal” or inevitable?

2. Practice narrative composting.
What stories feel brittle, tired or life-draining? Let them decompose. Make space for new growth by releasing what no longer serves your life, your work, or your communities.

3. Weave with others.
Regenerative culture is co-created. Invite collaboration. Listen to what others have to say. Make space for collective meaning-making.

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The First Seeds Will Be Planted in Circle

I’m gathering an intimate circle of story-weavers to gently compost old narratives and nurture new ones together.
If this feels like your kind of soil, write a comment below to let me know and and I’ll send you the details.
The garden grows one story at a time — and your voice belongs here.