Challenge 2 Nature hacks

Context

Humans can be pretty absurd. This is not a necessarily criticism or limitation. Our capacity and desire to seek reason with meaning and suspend belief can be powerful tools for good. If we can leverage the evolutionary drives emergent from absurdity (including legacy and leisure) to promote and enable decisions that connect us with other natural systems, we benefit and those systems can be sustained. This absurdity has been captured in the hypothesis and satirical nomenclature of humans as Homo absurdus. The opportunity and challenge herein is to leverage deep thinking, capacity for the abstract, and drive to create through connections with nature. Build your own new narrative. Include a nature identity, a sense of place, and active connectivity with nature. These new narratives of connectivity conservation resonate with communities provided there is an openness to observe and be mindful of the natural systems that we co-inhabit. Storytelling is a means to make science more accessible to everyone and to combat disinformation. We will tell stories and use narratives, and we thus need to co-opt this cognition heuristic for leadership as individuals that decide our own lives and more widely as facilitators in organizations and teams. The scientific evidence supporting the benefits of nature connectedness through narratives in particular is compelling and extensive. Natural rewards have also been proposed as major driver of life advancement.

Learning outcomes

1. Explore a checklist of tools or hacks from nature for performance.
   
2. Challenge your own absurdity and drives.
   
3. Develop a nature identity that includes active engagement with an outdoor pursuit or place.

Challenge time

1. Review this slide deck and attend discussion.
   
2. Read ‘The Little Prince’ short tale.
   
3. Read ‘The Little Prince is an ecologist’ comment paper.
   
4. Test your creativity using this short test.
   
5. Reflect on your scores and the radial plot and how connectedness can enhance some of the measures.

Reflection questions

1. Interactions are fundamental to all living organisms. To what extent does interaction theory, very broadly speaking, inform the ecology of your life?
   
2. Do you have an outdoor identity? If you could change this view, what would you innovate or augment for this self-vision? Even one mountain climbed makes you a climber. Or one bird spotted and identified a small step to becoming a birder.
   
3. Are there some of the nature hacks proposed (or new alternatives you envision) that can be used to restore, recharge, or rev up your creative performance and cognitive clarity?