6.2 第 2 课：以再生思维进行投资

影响力投资的理念旨在利用金融财富作为改善世界的工具，银行、机构、企业和人们越来越多地采用这一理念。影响力投资者通常投资于他们认为可以对特定需求产生杠杆影响的项目或公司，例如环境恢复、扶贫或大气碳减排。这种策略不同于传统的慈善事业，因为它旨在赚钱。影响力投资者认为这是在确保资金可用于更多投资的同时促进主动性和企业家精神的最佳方法。

影响力投资源于改变世界并为地球上人们的生活方式带来重大转变的真诚愿望。一般来说，它旨在改善社会生态危害（使用逮捕障碍范式）或促进人类和自然系统。

我们希望提出一种基于再生范式的影响力投资的替代策略，旨在超越微小调整以实现整个系统。

A paradigm shift to the regeneration level entails much more than just a simple adjustment to an investor’s approach. It essentially calls for a shift in the way individuals perceive and comprehend their interaction with the outside environment. Because regeneration calls for people to invest themselves as well as their material assets, it also necessitates a change in aspiration and direction toward the activity of investment. Together, this means that it necessitates creating a regenerative mind.

The term “mind” refers to all conscious and unconscious mental activity and processes, such as emotion, habit, reasoning, sensory perception, and so forth. Regeneration is the process of drawing out something’s essence and allowing it to evolve so that it can manifest in a new way and add fresh value to a new environment. Seeing the intrinsic completeness, agency, and potentiality in living phenomena, a regenerative mind actively engages with their innate capacity for regeneration.

Company owners and entrepreneurs who are looking for ways to boost their positive impacts on social and ecological systems. They almost always show a sincere desire to make the world a better place: “We want to make a difference,” they declare. These noble intentions, however, are rarely matched by knowledge and procedures sophisticated enough to bring about lasting change. This is typically the case because the desire to do good is anchored in an outmoded paradigm that has an anthropocentric view of the universe. Those who want to improve the world will naturally define and work toward what they regard as right and good. The same concerns are raised in relation to investment, which has recently seen its definition change. For instance, it is becoming increasingly clear that the phrase need not just refer to traditional financial instruments that offer the promise of a financial return. Moreover, the term “investment” can be used to describe the commitment (or “self-investment”) that involves something besides money, with the hope of receiving positive results.

Impact investing, on the other hand, is concentrated on making it possible for whole-systems actualization to occur. The process through which a system’s innate potential manifests or becomes actual is known as actualization. As a result, it can be inferred that an impact effort is regenerative if it results in systemic changes or evolutionary processes that reveal potential new for a system as a whole. This is very different from assessing consequences in terms of changes in a desired but constrained metric, such the number of homeless individuals who have received housing.

A different investment orientation is necessary to redefine impact in terms of systems actualization. For starters, it necessitates understanding how systems are layered within one another and viewing systems as wholes as opposed to bits and pieces. Additionally, it begins with a system’s nature and questions how it will evolve rather than starting with what we wish to change about it.

从再生的角度来看，投资不再被视为带来改变的东西（行善范式），而是系统调用以促进自身进化的东西（再生生命范式）。超越传统的理解和公认的实践是必要的，以发展真正新颖的思维，以便对地球上的生命进行更高层次的发现。为此，必须有一个 了解潜在的运动和能量，作为创新策略的基础，允许系统改变到更高程度的表达并实现自己的潜力。

The mind of a regenerative investor must also be regenerative. To do this, one must be prepared to go beyond education and experience in to understand and interact with the environment in novel ways. That is a lengthy, difficult procedure. After all, letting go of one’s certainties and the things that have historically worked is never an easy task. But at this pivotal time in history, this kind of course correction is required. The framework that follows provides an overview of the extent of a process for developing fresh perspectives that make it possible to identify and realize the inherent potential of living systems.

• The phrase “essence-to-essence link” describes the mentality one must adopt: one that recognizes and respects the unique qualities and untapped potential of every living system. We must learn to relate to them as autonomous beings if we are to transition from acting on to working with the natural systems, raw resources, local cultures, and people that our investments and enterprises influence.
• The term “systems evolution” refers to the capacity to see a world of process, dynamism, and flow in which life develops to its full potential and becomes richer, more structured, and more complicated. This applies to the evolution of economies, animals, and ecosystems, as well as societies, and it necessitates accepting ambiguity and uncertainty as the building blocks of original ideas.
• 生命系统思考是一个过程，通过这个过程，大脑可以按照生命系统的运作方式对其行为进行建模。例如，生命系统理论更强调整体而不是碎片，更强调潜力而不是现实，更强调本质而不是一般范畴，等等。
• Self-managing and self-determining systems must be capable of managing themselves and making decisions for themselves. This is crucial to shifting relationships with biological systems from extractive or authoritarian to regenerative. At the regenerative level, investing always aims to increase communities’, individuals’, and ecosystems’ capacity to successfully shape their own futures. When this is the case, businesses and investors are appropriately viewed as allies as opposed to predators.
• The ability to keep track of one’s own thoughts and determine which paradigm is influencing it is referred to as discernment levels. Because to ingrained habits and social constraints, working at a regeneration level is impossible without this skill. Instead, one will automatically shift to a lower order of paradigm.