A PEDAGOGY OF DEATH, DECAY & DESTRUCTION
How can we hospice a dying way of knowing/being and assist with the birth of something new, still fragile, undefined and potentially (but not necessarily) wiser with radical tenderness?
– Vanessa Andreotti
I am interested in death, decay and destruction as generative forces and in collapse as a precursor to creativity. This is an essential part of
re-learning ecological and cyclical thinking and an important thread in decolonising and un-learning a growth based, hyper clean, youth focused, death and dirt-phobic mindset.
These themes have been with me for a long time and I’m currently in a more active research phase, including solo and collaborative explorations, kindly funded by Lankelly Chase. I want to see how these themes might further inform practices of transitioning organisations, activism and group processes to something more rooted in ecological praxis, in the process of decoloniality and in climate justice. The context (as ever) is the social, ecological, cultural and climate breakdown at all levels of scale, including how it is distributed unevenly across the world. It’s situated in these questions
About the project
In most approaches to transformation, even in conversations of systems change or regenerative culture, something of the whole is often missing. Traces of modernity’s story of growth, innovation, youth and perfection remain and we can miss the essential and generative nature of death, decay and destruction. And so we miss developing the important skills, values and qualities of being that arise from loss, discomfort, disturbance and even healthy aggression!
What if collapse could be a precursor to creativity? Mould a message of new cultures yet to come? Ashes the laying of fertile ground for whole system change?
What if we recognised ‘dirt’ - and all who die on it - for the life giving community it is? Teaming with detritivores (yes! those who feast on detritus!) and microorganisms, or ‘the smalls’ as Siv Watkins calls them.
‘a Pedagogy of Death, Decay and Destruction’ or ‘PODDD’ explores learning and inspiration from other species, ecological phenomena, cultures and practices, alongside somatic and ontological invitations to explore these themes from the inside.
From here, the landscape our collective imagination can explore, the questions we might ask and the stories we might tell are rooted in wholeness and possibility that doesn't shy away from ‘the grungier aspects of change’.
An offering of multiple perspectives, provocations and possibilities. An invitation to stretch our imagination and narratives around change and generativity.
interested in death, decay and destruction as generative forces and in collapse as a precursor to creativity. In our organisations, leadership, creativity, education, activism, communities and everyday lives:
Death, decay and destruction, are all part of natural systems. At the same time, we are facing unprecedented social, psychological and ecological breakdown in the early 21st Century. Many are also still bearing the past and ongoing traumatic effects of the intentional breaking down of ecological, cultural and racial health and dignity through generations of Empire and Capitalism. While we do what we can to counter these harms, to transform human culture and to find new shapes of justice, there will be more degenerative and heart breaking collapse of ecological, social, economic, political and cultural systems in our lifetimes. Attending to the grief and anger we have is an important part of collective resilience.
Here we suggest that, having an awareness of natural systems and cycles can help us be open to what might emerge from the cracks of decay, what might grow from the rubble after destruction and what can be tended to and nourished after death. Many earlier cultures have practices that engage with healthy violence, with decay and decline as generative forces (past and present)
Certain kinds of violence, death, destruction are central to how modernity functions. The past and current enslavement of people, species and ecosystems to produce goods for consumption, to look good, to keep economies going and that excrete byproducts of pollution and sickness.
Pedagogy: The art, occupation, or practice of teaching. Also: the theory or principles of education; a method of teaching based on such a theory (Oxford English Dictionary)
What does a study of death, decay and destruction offer us? Who holds the knowledge? And what theories, practices and principles might arise from this?
How might we explore impermanence and transformation as educational values? How might we normalise asking what needs to be let go of or destroyed (ideas, systems, identities) as much as what needs to be nurtured, grown or made more resilient?
“...In system terms, expectations are the programs or codes around which a system self-organises. In order to change, and let new responses or new life emerge, systems reorganise—the old codes break down. I like the term positive disintegration. We’ve done this countless times in our five billion years here. We have reorganised all the way along, by receiving and responding to feedback about what’s going on. Sometimes it can be pretty uncomfortable. Imagine when oxygen first came in, or when we were pushing around on our fins trying to find some water. We have to absolutely be open to feedback…”
— Joanna Macy
Frame
Who, what and why?
Who am I to be writing this? If it helps, see this footnote to know something of why I’m writing this and how that will be particular, possible, limited (as we all always are) and contextual. And if you’d like to know a little of the history…
Who is this for? Anyone interested in systemic change, in transformation, creativity, healing cultures, imagination, ecological thinking, decolonisation,philosophy, postactivism. In particular practitioners working with these threads. In particular anyone wanting to stretch frames of reference, orientations, narratives, possibilities for creativity, collective and ecological imagination. People with the space to explore.
See ‘acknowledgements 1’
(setting the scene)
The 21st Century sees the world in polycrisis - multiple intersecting and complex crises are intensifying. From ecological and climate, to societal and economic. From mental health and global politics to water health and indigenous, ethnic and racial justice. Death, decay and destruction of thriving life are rife as byproducts of the extractive, unethical, ecocidal and racial injustices of modernity. The collapse of social and ecological systems is already happening in the background of business as usual.
Stepping back, we see how behind it all, the west (and therefore anywhere that globalisation and modern economics prevail) is in metacrisis. A crisis of meaning, perception and understanding of the systemic and intra-dependence nature of life. A crisis of paradigmatic stuckness, of narrative and of collective imagination.
I’m often curious therefore about what is being marginalized in any conversation about ‘changemaking’. Whose voice isn’t here? Whose culture (and here I include all species, including human!) is being occluded, what aspects of our inner and outer worlds are taboo?
Come in close, anywhere there is thriving life, and you will meet those involved in the sacred and mundane work of decay, dismembering, death. This, for these creatures or ecological phenomena involved, is life giving work, nourishment, shelter and home. Without their daily prayers of consuming and digesting, rolling and pooping out that which others have surrendered (shit, urine, old skin, bark or fur, flesh, blood, carapace), how would the world be? There would be fields and pavements piled high with untouched endings. Nothing rotting, dissolving or being transformed again into that which supports life. Layer upon layer of carcass, tree branch and excrement. How many metres high after one month? One year? Nothing would grow, or breathe or emerge anew.
If we think of industrialised human societies, economies and organisations in the 21st century, who does this essential work and what’s missing without it? What might we do with the detritus, the old bones and the excreta of our redundant ideas, our collective challenges and the societal shit show we find ourselves in?
How might we explore these gestures and threads for our own orientations to the challenges we face and to enrich our collective capacities to navigate troubled times?
I advocate that… My hunch is that…
This comes from observing… those already ongoingly knowing…
and personal experience of breakdown and breakthrough (depression - in the right conditions - can be a painful but extraordinary teacher about collapse as creativity, bereavement, creative process
and sensing in recent years an emerging research and practice in certain quarters
To Illustrate a personal one, organisational (decelerator and others?), g/r, encounters,
On the actions and patterns of death, decay and destruction we are living within that are
A caveat: it’s easy here to slip into a binary sense of ‘the right and wrong kinds of destruction’. Who am I, who are you to choose? Where is the line? Is it a line, a spectrum or another shape much less definable? And ‘what is ‘natural’? Surely if it exists, it is natural as it’s happening! To talk of ‘natural’ versus ‘manmade’ perpetuates the illusion of separation and that we are not also part of nature - simply a two legged mammal with a very particular brain and opposable thumbs.
Again, who decides what counts?
And so here I am pointing to what I might frame as a spectrum and that at one end there are the habits and patterns of capitalism, colonialism, extractivism, human exceptionalism and cultures of separation that rely on causing harm to others in order to create the experience (or illusion) of success within a modern paradigm of consumption and power.
What shit show? you say
In a paradigm of infinite growth, and denial of planetary and ecological limits
In a paradigm where bigger is better
In a paradigm of hidden violence necessary to keep it going In a paradigm of mind over matter
In a paradigm of reductionism, linear thinking…
In a paradigm where young, fit and perky are top of the hierarchy
In a paradigm of squeaky clean, bacteria free domestic aspirations
In a paradigm of ”it’s good to be busy”
In a death phobic, grief phobic, individualist paradigm
In a paradigm of denial of past and ongoing collective trauma
PODDD teachers & curriculum
Ecological
See the whole, take another’s perspective, explore systems in relationship
Life happens at the scale of continents and cells, in geological, seasonal, cyclical and many tinier timeframes.
For any life to exist, death is necessary for nourishment, shelter, to liberate space and more. Many species, patterns and ecological phenomena are key to the essential and generative nature of the dying process, of decay and of destruction as vital interventions for new life to emerge.
Versions of the examples offered exist within healthy ecosystems all around the world, specific to bioregions and seasons, weather and terrain
Vulture
One of the most well known and vilified scavengers, vultures exist as a keystone species in many landscapes around the world. They play an essential role in the transformation of carcasses back into the living web. With strong beaks and talons, and varied microbiomes, different species play different roles. Some best at opening think skinned bellies, some at consuming bones. They all have extremely corrosive stomach acid that allows them to consume rotting animal corpses, often infected with anthrax, botulinum toxins, rabies, and hog cholera that would kill other scavengers. By ridding the ground of dead animals, vultures prevent diseases from spreading to humans and animals.
Large carcasses need large birds. Andean Condors (a ‘New World Vulture’) have wingspans of up to 3.2M, Cinereous Vultures (Old World) up to 3.1M.
Many vulture species are now endangered due to cultural and ecological risk. https://www.wildlifeact.com/blog/why-are-vultures-so-endangered and https://4vultures.org/
Around 2019 I heard tell of over 300 vultures found roosting and nesting on a US Customs and Border Protection radio tower in Kingsville, Texas. A tower essential to monitoring the border along 245 miles of the Rio Grande River and Lake Amistad that forms the barrier between the U.S. and Mexico. “They will often defecate and vomit from their roost onto buildings below that house employees and equipment,” a spokesperson for CBP said. “There are anecdotes about birds dropping prey from a height of three-hundred feet, creating a terrifying and dangerous situation for those concerned.”
A memo from the Department of Homeland Security spoke of droppings, mixed with urine on railings, catwalks, supports and rails throughout the tower, where workers can come in contact with it. The corrosive vomit regurgitated to kill bacteria on their bodies can slowly eat away at metal. Under the weight of the birds and their bodily fluids, the radio tower has become increasingly dangerous for workers to climb and maintain.
As protected species they cannot be shot and last I heard, they were still working on deterrents.
Cinereous
Griffon
White-rumped
Rüppell's
Indian
Slender-billed
Himalayan
White-backed
Cape
Hooded
Red-headed
Lappet-faced
White-headed
Bearded (Lammergeier)
Egyptian
Palm-nut
Black
Turkey
Lesser yellow-headed
Greater yellow-headed
California condor
Andean condor
King
What is the collective noun for a group of Vultures? In flight it’s ‘a kettle’, on ground ‘a committee’, feeding it’s ‘a wake’.
Vultures kettle*, soaring above the landscape, riding thermals, looking for a carcass to feed on. Coming to ground by a carcass they gather as a committee,
land on nearby trees or soil to survey more closely and wait for all to arrive.
The’ wake’ is where the pulling apart, devouring, becoming intimate with the carcass happens. The transformation. The coming together of life and death.
Post-wake there is the emptiness of the space left behind.
Post-wake there is digestion,
and eventually excretion which feeds the soil for new things to grow…
How might we follow this process in how we approach a collective issue, a project, the transformation of an organisation?
(From ‘Vulture: an un/consultancy’, T. Spencer, The Emergence Network)
Cultural
Challenge societal norms & unconscious bias, learn new skills, revive values
List those on the cards, and below and others plus: gardeners, municipal compost makers, martial artists, mycologists, death doulas, bin men, Zapatistas and EDL, suffragettes, scrap yards
Around the world cultures old and new have developed practices and rituals that engage directly with principles and realities of death, decay and destruction in different forms. When life is lived more intimately and tangibly with place, people participate as part of their ecosystem. Here people learn from other species, cycles and seasons, and know themselves as one species amongst many, embedded and integral.
Over time and industrialisation, the layers of separation from this xxxxx
Communities and cultures lose these ecological understandings, relational awareness, and an awareness of the power and mystery of something beyond human cognition and control. Surrounded by stories of growth, youth and notions of longevity or even immortality, we lose the benefits and boundaries of knowing that death, decay and destruction are inevitable parts of the cycle of life, and therefore lose the ability to integrate this understanding in our societal structures and orientations.
Add to this the ways our species evolves and enacts rituals and designs This includes …… direct action, regenerative farming, death doulaing, and composting, endings…
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rites of passage
Rituals to destruction
In the Rudra Tandava (Dance of Destruction) celebrating Shiva’s role as the destroyer, who ends the universe’s current cycle to make way for a new one. This sits within the Shiva Tandava, the cosmic dance of Shiva in Hindu mythology, representing the cyclic nature of the universe and the relationship between . It includes dances for creation, destruction, preservation, salvation, and illusion.
The Dance of Destruction itself acknowledges the destructive and regenerative energies inherent in the universe.
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Wabi Sabi
aebaeb
Kintsugi and mending cultures
ehahaetheat
Creative Destruction
Artists of all kinds know that sometimes we need to create mess and chaos to allow creativity to find its way. And often we need to ‘kill’ our beloved creations on the journey to a final piece. Amongst others, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argued that breaking down outdated beliefs and values was essential for new, life-affirming philosophies to emerge.
Ego death
Many spiritual and philosophical traditions, from Buddhism to Jungian psychology, see the dissolution of the ego as a necessary step toward enlightenment, transformation, or creative self-discovery.
shadow work
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Humanure and Night Soil collectors
Cultural Burn
Compost and Biochar
Marvellous moulds and farreaching fermentation
Urban agriculture and farming in the ruins.
In Detroit (and other areas around the world), where economic collapse has led to the abandonment of buildings and neighborhoods, there has been a rise in urban farming. Here the decay of one aspect of social structure has created space for community-driven, grassroots renewal, revealing some of the societal strengths that are often hidden by modernity: solidarity, mutuality, place-based innovation and experimentation.
https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2019/11/05/food-community-detroit-garden-agriculture
Psyche and soma: exploring from the inside
Personal, Existential, Somatic, Relational
If we turn inwards to the ontological, sensory, somatic and biological we find fertile ground for inquiry. Here we explore our own orientations, often culturally informed but also built upon family context and personal history, the ways our psyche has adapted to life growing up. Here we find the universal in the individual and vice versa.
Referring to philosopher Gregory Bateson’s work ‘towards an Ecology of Mind’, poet David Whyte says (From Poetry and The Preservation of the Soul at Work):
“The abiding image of a diverse and rich ecology is the Amazon rainforest. As human beings we look at the rainforest and see an ecology made up of thousands of species that fit together exquisitely. The image is so satisfying to us, because when we see the forest and all the disparate forms, odours and cries that make it up, we intuit a life where all our own strange and eccentrically exotic parts can fit too. A place where the cross-grain of experience makes not a disconnect, but a mysterious, embracing pattern. A balanced, intricate ecology in effect asks us to stop choosing between parts of ourselves according to what we think belongs and what does not. A mature ecology needs its microscopic leaf-moulds as much as its panthers. It does not make a choice between them, saying “I’ll take three dozen of those gorgeous panthers and forget the tacky leaf-moulds.” If it did, the rainforest would soon, as the metaphor goes, be out of business. No leaf-moulds, no compost; no compost, no life.
In a sense, we put our sense of self out of business because much of our education has been bent towards raising us not as an intricate ecology of qualities but as a monoculture, where our own internal leaf-moulds are eradicated from our self-identity in the name of drying us out tidying us up, and making us presentable for the great economic system that awaits us.”
Ways ways to play and places to forage
Take care
Lean in to the creative edges and take care with the emotional and relational ones. We all have very different histories, legacies and direct experience with touching grief (ours and others’) and with shapes of collapse or aggression. Go slowly, go gently where needed.
See ‘acknowledgements 1’.
Practices:
Solo or Group
Scan the examples from the Ecological thread
These can be adapted to explorations in
Take each theme and explore
pair inquiries
whole group
sharing images or stories of some of these, invite people in trios to do some research and bring back stories for the group / project. They might take on perspectives and personify ….
Destruction Meditation
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This is a creative and somatic inquiry into destruction as a generative force. We explore themes of death, decay, collapse and transformation through hands-on destruction of natural materials. Participants are invited to work without a fixed agenda, allowing the materials and the act of breaking things down to reveal insights, emotions, and new ways of knowing.
We’re tapping into the work of compost, termites and hurricanes, of elephant feet, beavers and fallen trees. We’re exploring the multiple forms of agency that live in ecosystems to see what we might have to unlearn or learn to allow new strategies and practices for collective transformation and justice.
This can be challenging for some people, for very different reasons so it’s good to frame the invitation in ways that people feel free to meet their learning edges in kind ways.
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Begin with a simple 5-minute warm-up: stretching, rotating joints, light movement, ending with 30 seconds of running on the spot.
Then say: “Let’s push this building down, with all our hearts and might — destroy the oppressors!” (Adapt language to suit the group.)
Demonstrate pushing positions against a wall (palms, back, feet, etc.) and invite people to experiment.
Offer sound options: loud exhale, roaring, growling, soft humming, raspberries.
Encourage deep breathing, mindful muscle engagement, and curiosity about resistance.
Push for 5 minutes, including pauses. Then rest for 3 minutes, leaning against the wall or lying down. Invite shared silence and eye contact in the spirit of collective effort.
Allow for 5 minutes of reflection. Then take a short break (tea/bio break) while setting up the next phase.
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Materials:
Black A3 sugar paper (1 per person)
Items to destroy: twigs, dried grasses, eggshells, cardboard, pinecones, bark, seed heads — all compostable
Instructions:
Invite participants to choose materials and sit in a circle.
Place materials on paper, close eyes, and rest.
Frame it simply: We are going to do a meditation on destruction. When the bell sounds, we will destroy what is in front of us mindfully. There is no right way to do this, follow your body, your senses, your imagination and your heart. Be present with it all. No talking please but sound is OK if it comes.
Ring a bell or chime to begin. After ~20 minutes, ring three times to close.
Invite quiet sitting, noticing sensations and thoughts. Then open eyes and look around in silence.
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Begin with open sharing — what did people notice or feel?
Possible prompts:
What did you notice about your own relationship with destroying things?
Did you imagine anything you would like to destroy - with care?
In conversations and spaces where Non Violence is the holy grail, what might we miss if destruction is taboo?
Can you imagine how you might translate this experience to a specific scenario, context or aspect of the world?
Be wary of trying to know what will come out of this. Let the destruction sit there, digest itself. Notice how death, destruction, decay, collapse, breakdown and disintegration take multiple shapes, qualities and cycles, and are embedded in multiple relationships.
Further reflection prompts:
Sometimes there is a sense of artistry and beauty-making in this process of destruction. Do not invite or frame it as this, let the group comment on it if it arises, and affirm this in your reflections later.
Sometimes there are emotional responses as people are touched by something. Again, do not invite or frame it as this, but let the group comment on it if it arises, and affirm it in your reflections later.
What are we propping up, colluding with, tolerating or inadvertently perpetuating that we could instead allow to die? This might be internally, collectively, practically or philosophically. What would it take to let go?
What is there to un-learn in our responses to Climate Justice when we hold on too tight to identities as kind, peaceful humans?
What wisdom, healing or ordinary magic inherent in natural cycles of destruction and collapse could be hiding behind the shadows cast by the violence of war, abuse and colonialism?
Origin Story
Resources
Acknowledgements
With care:
In cultural and ecological appreciation:
With thanks:
In solidarity:
MORE ABOUT
THE PROJECT
Arising from the industrial growth paradigm we are facing unprecedented social, psychological, ecological and climate breakdown, unevenly distributed across human populations and across species. Many are also bearing the past and ongoing traumatic effects of the intentional breaking down of ecological, cultural and racial health and dignity through generations of Empire and capitalism. While we do what we can to counter these harms, to transform human culture and to find new shapes of justice, it’s also clear that there will be more and worse degenerative and heart breaking collapse – on multiple levels – to come.
Attending to the grief, anger and other feelings we have about what is happening is an important part of collective resilience. Finding ways to act in solidarity with others bearing more of the burdens is an essential expression of reciprocity and healing justice.
At the same time, I’m interested in how our relationship – within modernity – to the natural cycles of death within life has got us into this mess in the first place and how the unlearning of this might help.
Within modernity, the idealised life hides away any signs of death, decay and destruction.
The falling apart of things: breakdown, collapse and disintegration are seen primarily as negative experiences. This might be at levels of personal, communal, societal, ecological, cultural. From the breakdown of a fixed idea of identity to the disintegration of a building, from the collapse of a dam to that of a power structure in an organisation (on any scale).
It shows up in things like: toilet and waste systems where all evidence of ‘the end product’ is hidden from the average citizen; in advertisements for cleaning and personal hygiene products (many of which kill off essential healthy bacteria too); in youthfulness as a constant aspiration (“oh, but you look so much younger than your age!” – suggesting that we must never get old). As a death-phobic culture, money is poured into ways to keep us alive as long as possible, regardless of quality of life. Elderly people are hidden from view and at the point of death, relatives rarely see and tend to their loved ones’ dead bodies.
If things fall apart or collapse in our relationships, work, health, creative projects it’s seen as failure, shameful. We are rarely supported to grieve, nor given healthy tools to relate with any kind of breakdown as an opportunity for new opportunities and learning – for breakthrough.
Once these aspects of life can be revealed and integrated, I’m interested in how breakdown, collapse, falling apart can all act as generative forces. How seeing the essential role of these within natural systems and cycles can help us be open to what might we find in the cracks of decay in modernity, what might grow from the rubble after destruction of what has been known, and what can be tended to and nourished after death creates space for emergence.
This work is tapping into the work of compost, termites and hurricanes, of elephant feet, beavers and fallen trees. It’s exploring the multiple forms of agency that live in ecosystems to see what we might have to unlearn or learn to allow new strategies and practices for collective transformation and justice.
Further questions in the inquiry include:
Where could a different relationship with death, decay, destruction, disintegration be needed?
What needs to collapse? Or where is their generative potential in the collapse that’s already happening / happened?
What if we had a healthy relationship with grief and loss? What might be healed, enabled, possible?
What if we had a healthy relationship with natural aggression? What might be healed, enabled, possible?
How might the problem (living in a time of breakdown) also be the doorway to the solution?
HOW TO ENGAGE
RECENT EVENTS
I’ve recently run the two events below and some online “conversations at my kitchen table”.
INTERVIEWS
I am interviewing people about this work from maggot and vulture experts to cultural burn practitioners and post-activist thinkers.