Why am I here?

Because of a dream I had and a dream I have

May 11, 2023

This substack creates the substance on the tip of Cleaving Archer’s arrow, one which inoculates industry with life.

I am here because I had a dream. And because I have a dream.

I had a dream the other night that I started a substack offering practical, applicable insights on industrial healing.

I have another dream. It’s one that I’ve been carry around for a few years, in which I see an economy that works in service of life. In this dream, we have industrially healed.

Some dreams are easy to live

The first dream is easy to live. It goes something like this:

Wake up, write in my journal, have breakfast, and bike in the pouring rain to an apartment I might rent. While viewing the unit, get an intercostal muscle spasm so bad that breathing is excruciating. Practice balancing inner pain and outer equanimity while meeting with a prospective landlord.

Then bike in the downpour to nearby friend and green building guru Lisa’s to lend her some double-pointed knitting needles. Lie flat on her kids’ play mat while discussing housing, urban ecology, circular knitting, and pain management. Bike home in the still-heavy rain, lie on my heating pad, and map out my substack in my head.

Get up, walk gingerly in the lessening rain to my favourite writing café, and create Matereal World.

Here I am, living the dream.

Some dreams take more time

The other dream is more complicated. An economy that works in service of life, where we have industrially healed… How would that work?

It won’t be an economy where most life serves it, that’s for sure. Humans, animals, plants, winds, waters, mountains, ideas, talents, health, kindness: these won’t be units of capitalist carnage.

Rather, they will be interconnected elements of an economy that serves our needs as living, breathing beings nested in a web of life.

How do I live that dream?

Anyone following my work on Medium (am I allowed to mention them here? In my dream, one ad-free media source’s wellness begets the other’s, so I’ll assume: yes!) will have noticed my focus on the possibilities of industrial healing.

Some may have heard me mention how, having rounded the corner of five Matereality assessments, I was going to shift gears and start the Next Thing.

That’s what this is here. In the Matereal World I will share insights on how to stop fueling the economy that harms life, and instead to recognize the industrial structures that heal. It’s a way of balancing the inner pain of 20 years’ work in corporate sustainability and environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting, with the outer equanimity of my future vision, in the most productive way I know how.

It has come from taking a closer look at what is mine to do. I offer a brief tutorial on a decision-making model to determine this, here—

A 10-minute tutorial to change the world

—and I applied this approach to arrive here, now.

I will continue on the path I’ve been walking for some time, though I will let some elements go (like conducting huge assessments that no one asked for) and lean into others (like serving up little nuggets so they’re more easily absorbed by folks who might use them).

And I will invite feedback and suggestions to help guide and unstick progress.

What do(n’t) I mean?

Here you will not find a focus on the Sustainable Development Goals (which, as I’ve mentioned, are part of the problem). You will not find a rallying cry for more corporate climate action in the race to Net Zero (about which I’ve also mentioned my concerns).

And although I have a penchant for mischief, Matereal World will not always be fun. Seeing and ending ecocide and ethnocide is, after all, not a walk in the park. (And anyway, parks are a somewhat ecocidal, ethnocidal concept, so there’s that.)

Dream on

My substack dream will evolve as my understanding and the conditions around me evolve. But one thing that won’t change is my dream of an economy that works in service of life.

And so, Dear Reader, this is me living my dreams. It is why I am here. I hope you will join me—and dream with me—along the way.

Cleaving Archer has one foot rooted in the earth teeming with life, the other standing in the industrial world, doing what she can to ensure there is a wholesale transformation, and that it is life-affirming.

“Cleaving Archer” is a coloured pencil drawing by me from 2021.