Andrew Gaines
Monday, December 20, 2004
Today the air was so full of perfume that by the very act of breathing I turned into a blossom myself.
Sunday, December 12, 2004
We are in the business of creating a world that works – a fantastically wonderful society. We are not in the business of fighting corporate oppression – our purpose is vastly larger and more wonderful. We may succeed, or we may fail, but magnificent well-being is what we are about.
Monday, October 18, 2004
Orientation for Our Time
Bob Nadeau, an advanced Aikido teacher in San Francisco, would come onto the mat for his class and ask, "What's needed now?" Tuning in, he would say, “We need to work on centring…” or turning, or extending ki, and he would create the class based on what he saw was appropriate for the moment.
Now that the Australian-US free trade agreement has been passed, and a government has been re-elected in Australia that represents transnational corporate interests, and is manifestly antagonistic to labour unions, human rights and the environment, those of us who care need to orient ourselves constructively towards the future. Like Bob Nadeau, we need to ask at this point in human evolution what's needed now?
One of the hopeful trends of our era is that there are increasing numbers of people who care for community well-being. We also have design strategies that can make us ecologically sustainable surprisingly quickly – while simultaneously eliminating the need to go to war for oil. In addition we have well proven personal growth strategies that help people become more centred, creative and happier themselves – thus becoming the kind of people who can create and enjoy a positive future.
The two major negative trends are time are our increasing rate of ecological destruction, and the increasing global grip of transnational corporations, who now subvert not only local economies but the democratic process itself.
These two sets of trends are mutually incompatible. Corporate greed can never lead to community well-being. The aggressive dominator mentality that drives the leadership of the transnational corporations directly drives our environmental deterioration. Put simply, relentlessly producing, marketing and consuming goods which are not actually needed – the apparent basis of modern prosperity – destroys forests, poisons rivers and estuaries with acid runoff from the mines, introduces toxic chemicals in the environment which affect every life form on earth including ourselves, and is driving global warming.
We are at a conscious tipping point where either positive values or the current destructive values will shape the future. Either we will create an extraordinarily wonderful humane civilization, or by extending the present negative trends we will destroy the basis of our wellbeing. The future for our granddaughters will be magnificent or miserable. Utopia or oblivion, as Buckminster Fuller put it. Let's go for utopia!
While many people hope to have their cake and eat it by the making small environmental changes without taking into account how the whole economic system works, there is no plausible scenario for becoming ecologically sustainable through only small changes. No longer can economic increase be a prime social goal. We need to commit ourselves to a whole system change towards health and wellbeing that will affect every aspect of our lives including personal relationships, industrial design, advertising and economics, education and governance. The nature of these changes needs be thought through in detail, imaginatively drawing on resources we already have.
Futurist Riane Eisler discusses at length the difference between partnership/respect relating and domination/control relating (The Chalice and the Blade, 1987). Put simply, people who work for community well-being are manifesting a partnership value set. People who willingly create large-scale environmental degradation for the sake of profit, and who resist making the necessary changes to become ecologically sustainable and socially just, are manifesting a dominator value set. Given our increasing rate of environmental degradation, it is fair to say that the fate of the world depends on the partnership value set coming to set the tone. This is the fundamental social issue of our time. It transcends politics.
As you doubtless know newspapers and television do not educate us about the reality of our current situation and the need for whole system change, because this would profoundly disrupt the current power system. On the contrary, the moneyed interests fund think tanks and spin doctors who continuously produce articles and commentary that support economic rationalism. The importance of maintaining ‘shareholder value’ is especially reiterated. They avow that increasing economic throughput (GDP) will raise people's level of well-being. The reality, however, is that the policies based on economic rationalism have led to reduced tax rates for the wealthy, an increasing rich poor split, the dismantling of social safety nets, casualisation driving wages below levels necessary for living plus a pattern of professionals and managers working excessively long hours, and an increase in youth suicide, mental illness drug use and crime. Ordinary people do not understand this. Therefore the majority of the population – in America the 80% whose overall assets have declined over the last 20 years of prosperity – do not actually know where their best interest lies. It is not represented by either of the major political parties.
If is the case, what can we do?
Well, those of us who care are far from helpless. There are a multitude of us, and we are already more of a force for change than we recognize. We can become more effective if we become clear about our positive goals, and if we can help other people understand these goals. I believe our primary goal should be to evoke a change in Australian consciousness such that people adopt wellbeing rather than sheer economic growth as a personal and national priority. Democracy is a sleeping giant, and we need to wake up and make it work properly.
We can imagine many strategies that will contribute to this goal. Several essential ones include:
Helping people understand the core difference between partnership/respect relating and domination/control relating – and how this affects everybody's lives as well as our environment. This is also the difference between democratic community self regulation and authoritarianism. We need to make democracy so real to people that we cut through cynicism and move people to want to make democracy actually work. It is in their best interest to do so.
Everything we do takes place in some larger context. Without a lot of research, it is difficult for anyone to understand how the environment, our economy, our psychology and our modes of government work together. Therefore it is difficult to recognize the full adverse consequences of our current system, and it is likewise difficult to identify the constructive points of change that will enable us to create a positive future. So people need a means to gain some sort of grasp of the big picture. One useful tool for this has already been developed.
The Briefing for A World That Works is a set of pictures and diagrams that show how our ecology and economy work together. The idea is to develop a team who will present the Briefing to senior decision makers who otherwise would not have time to pull all of this together. It can also be presented to neighbourhood groups, of course.
This leads us to our most fundamental change strategy. We need a grassroots large-scale education program that bypasses the media and provides a way for people to think realistically about what it will take to create a positive future. There are thousands of people throughout Australia who are active in disciplines such as yoga, Aikido, the Feldenkrais method of body education, bush care, renewable energy, ecological architecture and alternative health modalities. They are a potential resource because they embody partnership values. Many of them think of themselves as clients or students. Perhaps they can rise to another level and see themselves as local leaders.
The vision is to inspire people in alternative networks to invite friends, neighbours and business colleagues to thoughtful discussions of the issues and trends we are considering here. Whereas revolutions in the past have often been violent, to be a radical today means to talk to your neighbours about serious things. We can bypass the mass media and get people thinking for themselves.
One outcome we would like to see from these discussions is many more people investing themselves in personal growth. We all can profit from training to develop the creativity and advanced partnership relating skills necessary to evolve a positive future.
Another outcome we would like to see is that people of influence begin to consciously redesign our institutions to operate on partnership values for the sake of community well-being.
A third outcome is that people everywhere begin to consciously use visionary terms such as partnership and dominator, wellbeing, and a world that works to define and remind us of the direction we need to be going towards. We also need to expressly repudiate dominator policies in whatever guise they may appear.
We can imagine many other things that will contribute to this culture shift. How about an ABC section on a par with the science section that is devoted to different aspects of achieving community well-being? It would be exciting to produce a documentary,
Planet of Hope, that presents patterns and hopeful points of change through flowing graphics that make comprehension almost instant. The Australian Bureau of Statistics could create a graphics program that shows how money flows in Australia and overseas. Outdoor adventure guides could lead short meditations or creativity exercises that connect participants more consciously to the land. NASA has a free graphics program (World Wind) that enables the viewer to literally fly over a virtual three-dimensional map of the globe; making this available in public places such as malls and train stations as well as in schools would increase people's sense of connection to the whole Earth. AGM’s and business meetings could open with short rituals to remind us to keep well-being at the forefront of our agenda. Many more imaginative ideas will come forward as we consciously focus on creating a cultural shift for a world that works.
Ricardo Semler tells the story of a man who visited a building site. He asked the first man what he was doing. “I cut stones,” the man replied. The second man said, “I have special technique for making arches.” The third man said, "I build cathedrals!”
My cathedral building statement is: I am committed to contributing to Australia becoming a leading country in the world for ecological and social wellbeing.
Bob Nadeau, an advanced Aikido teacher in San Francisco, would come onto the mat for his class and ask, "What's needed now?" Tuning in, he would say, “We need to work on centring…” or turning, or extending ki, and he would create the class based on what he saw was appropriate for the moment.
Now that the Australian-US free trade agreement has been passed, and a government has been re-elected in Australia that represents transnational corporate interests, and is manifestly antagonistic to labour unions, human rights and the environment, those of us who care need to orient ourselves constructively towards the future. Like Bob Nadeau, we need to ask at this point in human evolution what's needed now?
One of the hopeful trends of our era is that there are increasing numbers of people who care for community well-being. We also have design strategies that can make us ecologically sustainable surprisingly quickly – while simultaneously eliminating the need to go to war for oil. In addition we have well proven personal growth strategies that help people become more centred, creative and happier themselves – thus becoming the kind of people who can create and enjoy a positive future.
The two major negative trends are time are our increasing rate of ecological destruction, and the increasing global grip of transnational corporations, who now subvert not only local economies but the democratic process itself.
These two sets of trends are mutually incompatible. Corporate greed can never lead to community well-being. The aggressive dominator mentality that drives the leadership of the transnational corporations directly drives our environmental deterioration. Put simply, relentlessly producing, marketing and consuming goods which are not actually needed – the apparent basis of modern prosperity – destroys forests, poisons rivers and estuaries with acid runoff from the mines, introduces toxic chemicals in the environment which affect every life form on earth including ourselves, and is driving global warming.
We are at a conscious tipping point where either positive values or the current destructive values will shape the future. Either we will create an extraordinarily wonderful humane civilization, or by extending the present negative trends we will destroy the basis of our wellbeing. The future for our granddaughters will be magnificent or miserable. Utopia or oblivion, as Buckminster Fuller put it. Let's go for utopia!
While many people hope to have their cake and eat it by the making small environmental changes without taking into account how the whole economic system works, there is no plausible scenario for becoming ecologically sustainable through only small changes. No longer can economic increase be a prime social goal. We need to commit ourselves to a whole system change towards health and wellbeing that will affect every aspect of our lives including personal relationships, industrial design, advertising and economics, education and governance. The nature of these changes needs be thought through in detail, imaginatively drawing on resources we already have.
Futurist Riane Eisler discusses at length the difference between partnership/respect relating and domination/control relating (The Chalice and the Blade, 1987). Put simply, people who work for community well-being are manifesting a partnership value set. People who willingly create large-scale environmental degradation for the sake of profit, and who resist making the necessary changes to become ecologically sustainable and socially just, are manifesting a dominator value set. Given our increasing rate of environmental degradation, it is fair to say that the fate of the world depends on the partnership value set coming to set the tone. This is the fundamental social issue of our time. It transcends politics.
As you doubtless know newspapers and television do not educate us about the reality of our current situation and the need for whole system change, because this would profoundly disrupt the current power system. On the contrary, the moneyed interests fund think tanks and spin doctors who continuously produce articles and commentary that support economic rationalism. The importance of maintaining ‘shareholder value’ is especially reiterated. They avow that increasing economic throughput (GDP) will raise people's level of well-being. The reality, however, is that the policies based on economic rationalism have led to reduced tax rates for the wealthy, an increasing rich poor split, the dismantling of social safety nets, casualisation driving wages below levels necessary for living plus a pattern of professionals and managers working excessively long hours, and an increase in youth suicide, mental illness drug use and crime. Ordinary people do not understand this. Therefore the majority of the population – in America the 80% whose overall assets have declined over the last 20 years of prosperity – do not actually know where their best interest lies. It is not represented by either of the major political parties.
If is the case, what can we do?
Well, those of us who care are far from helpless. There are a multitude of us, and we are already more of a force for change than we recognize. We can become more effective if we become clear about our positive goals, and if we can help other people understand these goals. I believe our primary goal should be to evoke a change in Australian consciousness such that people adopt wellbeing rather than sheer economic growth as a personal and national priority. Democracy is a sleeping giant, and we need to wake up and make it work properly.
We can imagine many strategies that will contribute to this goal. Several essential ones include:
Helping people understand the core difference between partnership/respect relating and domination/control relating – and how this affects everybody's lives as well as our environment. This is also the difference between democratic community self regulation and authoritarianism. We need to make democracy so real to people that we cut through cynicism and move people to want to make democracy actually work. It is in their best interest to do so.
Everything we do takes place in some larger context. Without a lot of research, it is difficult for anyone to understand how the environment, our economy, our psychology and our modes of government work together. Therefore it is difficult to recognize the full adverse consequences of our current system, and it is likewise difficult to identify the constructive points of change that will enable us to create a positive future. So people need a means to gain some sort of grasp of the big picture. One useful tool for this has already been developed.
The Briefing for A World That Works is a set of pictures and diagrams that show how our ecology and economy work together. The idea is to develop a team who will present the Briefing to senior decision makers who otherwise would not have time to pull all of this together. It can also be presented to neighbourhood groups, of course.
This leads us to our most fundamental change strategy. We need a grassroots large-scale education program that bypasses the media and provides a way for people to think realistically about what it will take to create a positive future. There are thousands of people throughout Australia who are active in disciplines such as yoga, Aikido, the Feldenkrais method of body education, bush care, renewable energy, ecological architecture and alternative health modalities. They are a potential resource because they embody partnership values. Many of them think of themselves as clients or students. Perhaps they can rise to another level and see themselves as local leaders.
The vision is to inspire people in alternative networks to invite friends, neighbours and business colleagues to thoughtful discussions of the issues and trends we are considering here. Whereas revolutions in the past have often been violent, to be a radical today means to talk to your neighbours about serious things. We can bypass the mass media and get people thinking for themselves.
One outcome we would like to see from these discussions is many more people investing themselves in personal growth. We all can profit from training to develop the creativity and advanced partnership relating skills necessary to evolve a positive future.
Another outcome we would like to see is that people of influence begin to consciously redesign our institutions to operate on partnership values for the sake of community well-being.
A third outcome is that people everywhere begin to consciously use visionary terms such as partnership and dominator, wellbeing, and a world that works to define and remind us of the direction we need to be going towards. We also need to expressly repudiate dominator policies in whatever guise they may appear.
We can imagine many other things that will contribute to this culture shift. How about an ABC section on a par with the science section that is devoted to different aspects of achieving community well-being? It would be exciting to produce a documentary,
Planet of Hope, that presents patterns and hopeful points of change through flowing graphics that make comprehension almost instant. The Australian Bureau of Statistics could create a graphics program that shows how money flows in Australia and overseas. Outdoor adventure guides could lead short meditations or creativity exercises that connect participants more consciously to the land. NASA has a free graphics program (World Wind) that enables the viewer to literally fly over a virtual three-dimensional map of the globe; making this available in public places such as malls and train stations as well as in schools would increase people's sense of connection to the whole Earth. AGM’s and business meetings could open with short rituals to remind us to keep well-being at the forefront of our agenda. Many more imaginative ideas will come forward as we consciously focus on creating a cultural shift for a world that works.
Ricardo Semler tells the story of a man who visited a building site. He asked the first man what he was doing. “I cut stones,” the man replied. The second man said, “I have special technique for making arches.” The third man said, "I build cathedrals!”
My cathedral building statement is: I am committed to contributing to Australia becoming a leading country in the world for ecological and social wellbeing.
Sunday, July 25, 2004
Catching up with the Buddha
In Ancient Futures Helena Norberg-Hodge discusses the Buddhist doctrine that just as a tree depends on soil, air and water for its existence, so we as individual bodies do not have an existence separate from the world that sustains us. Indeed, if we extend aware of necessary connections far enough, they include the whole of evolution this point.
This perception of interconnectedness is arising in Western thinking through the work of the evolution biologist on the one hand and the quantum physicists on the other.
Our ordinary experience shows that we are profoundly connected to other people, if we would but notice it. If a shopkeeper scowls and is in a bad mood, we feel different than if a shopkeeper gives us a friendly and cheerful greeting. If politicians make policies that result in our health been damaged, we are affected by their consciousness. We ourselves would be happier if everyone in our world were cheerful, imaginative, good-hearted and working for the good of the whole.
The ‘commons’ includes those resources that are important to all of us but owned by no one of us. From this point of view, we ourselves are part of everybody else's commons, and they are part of ours. There is a feng shui of the mind, where everybody else is part of how we ourselves are situated. Therefore it behoves us to be actively concerned for their well-being. Even though we may feel that our sphere of influence is limited, our attitude makes a difference to ourselves and to others. We become a conscious part of humanity's journey to a positive future.
In Ancient Futures Helena Norberg-Hodge discusses the Buddhist doctrine that just as a tree depends on soil, air and water for its existence, so we as individual bodies do not have an existence separate from the world that sustains us. Indeed, if we extend aware of necessary connections far enough, they include the whole of evolution this point.
This perception of interconnectedness is arising in Western thinking through the work of the evolution biologist on the one hand and the quantum physicists on the other.
Our ordinary experience shows that we are profoundly connected to other people, if we would but notice it. If a shopkeeper scowls and is in a bad mood, we feel different than if a shopkeeper gives us a friendly and cheerful greeting. If politicians make policies that result in our health been damaged, we are affected by their consciousness. We ourselves would be happier if everyone in our world were cheerful, imaginative, good-hearted and working for the good of the whole.
The ‘commons’ includes those resources that are important to all of us but owned by no one of us. From this point of view, we ourselves are part of everybody else's commons, and they are part of ours. There is a feng shui of the mind, where everybody else is part of how we ourselves are situated. Therefore it behoves us to be actively concerned for their well-being. Even though we may feel that our sphere of influence is limited, our attitude makes a difference to ourselves and to others. We become a conscious part of humanity's journey to a positive future.
Saturday, July 17, 2004
Fear of Greatness
Not once, but twice during the on-court interview immediately after defeating world champion Venus Williams at Wimbledon, Maria Sharapova said, "I'm sorry I beat you." Given that she obviously wanted to become Wimbledon champion, her comment seems odd.
Marianne Williamson, in a justly famous quote, said, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
What's going on here? Why are some people afraid to be powerful? Why are some people afraid to stand out?
Sometimes it works like this. As you know, at times young women consciously get pregnant in order to have a baby who will love them. That is the baby's job, so to speak. For this reason many mothers implicitly demand that their children stay tied to them. While it is never spoken about, the child knows this. Consequently, the prospect of becoming independent of the mother arouses fear of the mother’s anger. In the extreme, some women are irrationally terrified of being killed when they give birth to their first child, because that birth means they are truly separate from the mother.
So the fear is not of greatness, although it seems so. The fear is that by exercising our true power as autonomous individuals we will incur our mothers rage. Obviously Venus Williams is not Maria Sharapova’s mother. But the unconscious is not that discriminating; the feeling can be attached to any senior powerful woman, which Venus Williams certainly is. Maria wanted to win. But then she felt the need to placate.
Marianne Williamson is indeed correct in her observation. The fear of the consequences of being powerful leads many people to hold back.
Despite psychodynamics, or even sometimes driven by them, people do do great things. A few people are moved by what we might call rational compassion. For example, John Woolman, a Quaker who lived in the 1700s, came to understand that the indigo used to dye wool suits was produced by slaves in Haiti. He was a tailor, and from then on he made his suits out of undyed wool. Woolman looked very odd to the people of Philadelphia walking around in his undyed suits.
Sometimes the ‘divine’ whispers to people, and they are moved to go against the customs of their time and do great things. The question can arise: does our motivation for great things come from our ego, or from the divine? How would you know?
The Quaker answer to this is to question yourself carefully, and let others do so as well. John Woolman himself was well aware of the distinction between the ego and the divine. In his autobiography he reports with chagrin that the first time he stood up in meeting to speak he began to speak with divine wisdom, but ended speaking from worldly wisdom. He was so embarrassed by this that he did not speak in meeting again for another year.
In time, however, he felt moved to do something about slavery. He felt that the institution of slavery was fundamentally morally wrong. He felt called to travel to Quaker slave owners up and down the East Coast of America and converse with them about the ethics of slaveholding. Ultimately he did this with some success. Many Quaker slaveholders agreed to set their slaves free in their will. But before he set off on these journeys he spent many hours in consultation with other members of his Quaker community examining whether his prompting was actually God' s will or not. They decided that it was, and the community gave him it's blessing for the project.
We can have mixed motives. I was active in a spiritual community in Washington DC called the Path. Our brief was to become conscious of our psychological distortions, understanding that if we cleared these up we would increase our capacity to love. One of our ways of working was to explore the connections between the outer worldly issues we became concerned about and our inner dynamics.
During one session Beth, a lawyer, reported that she was initiating a project to guarantee legal rights for abused kids. The project itself is good-hearted, but one member of our group astutely picked up a certain tone in Beth's voice that suggested that there was some distortion in Beth's attitude as well. Beth was willing to explore this. The discussion led back to early childhood memories, and indeed to a memory where Beth had been hit. She had not recalled this before; it was a surprise. One of the group members commented: “That was child abuse.” Ah. We had discovered the unconscious driver of Beth's project.
What was the implication of this? Not that Beth should not do the project. By discovering and releasing the unconscious distorted motivation for the project, Beth was free to pursue the project wholeheartedly in present-day reality without the forcing current that would come from an unconscious desire to make the world safe for her child in the past.
Today, in response to our and social environmental issues, there are people who feel moved to drop out of good jobs in order to find a way to contribute to the future well-being of the world. I have met some, and their motivation seems genuine to me. Such people go beyond what might be called ‘crass self-interest’ and identify with the larger long-term needs of the community of which they are a part. We know great figures who have done this – Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi. Their colleagues and followers are also great; they suffered a lot in the service of a higher ideal. And, as I said, there are people who are moved to make a contribution from their own initiative. The more people do this the more hopeful our future will be.
Not once, but twice during the on-court interview immediately after defeating world champion Venus Williams at Wimbledon, Maria Sharapova said, "I'm sorry I beat you." Given that she obviously wanted to become Wimbledon champion, her comment seems odd.
Marianne Williamson, in a justly famous quote, said, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
What's going on here? Why are some people afraid to be powerful? Why are some people afraid to stand out?
Sometimes it works like this. As you know, at times young women consciously get pregnant in order to have a baby who will love them. That is the baby's job, so to speak. For this reason many mothers implicitly demand that their children stay tied to them. While it is never spoken about, the child knows this. Consequently, the prospect of becoming independent of the mother arouses fear of the mother’s anger. In the extreme, some women are irrationally terrified of being killed when they give birth to their first child, because that birth means they are truly separate from the mother.
So the fear is not of greatness, although it seems so. The fear is that by exercising our true power as autonomous individuals we will incur our mothers rage. Obviously Venus Williams is not Maria Sharapova’s mother. But the unconscious is not that discriminating; the feeling can be attached to any senior powerful woman, which Venus Williams certainly is. Maria wanted to win. But then she felt the need to placate.
Marianne Williamson is indeed correct in her observation. The fear of the consequences of being powerful leads many people to hold back.
Despite psychodynamics, or even sometimes driven by them, people do do great things. A few people are moved by what we might call rational compassion. For example, John Woolman, a Quaker who lived in the 1700s, came to understand that the indigo used to dye wool suits was produced by slaves in Haiti. He was a tailor, and from then on he made his suits out of undyed wool. Woolman looked very odd to the people of Philadelphia walking around in his undyed suits.
Sometimes the ‘divine’ whispers to people, and they are moved to go against the customs of their time and do great things. The question can arise: does our motivation for great things come from our ego, or from the divine? How would you know?
The Quaker answer to this is to question yourself carefully, and let others do so as well. John Woolman himself was well aware of the distinction between the ego and the divine. In his autobiography he reports with chagrin that the first time he stood up in meeting to speak he began to speak with divine wisdom, but ended speaking from worldly wisdom. He was so embarrassed by this that he did not speak in meeting again for another year.
In time, however, he felt moved to do something about slavery. He felt that the institution of slavery was fundamentally morally wrong. He felt called to travel to Quaker slave owners up and down the East Coast of America and converse with them about the ethics of slaveholding. Ultimately he did this with some success. Many Quaker slaveholders agreed to set their slaves free in their will. But before he set off on these journeys he spent many hours in consultation with other members of his Quaker community examining whether his prompting was actually God' s will or not. They decided that it was, and the community gave him it's blessing for the project.
We can have mixed motives. I was active in a spiritual community in Washington DC called the Path. Our brief was to become conscious of our psychological distortions, understanding that if we cleared these up we would increase our capacity to love. One of our ways of working was to explore the connections between the outer worldly issues we became concerned about and our inner dynamics.
During one session Beth, a lawyer, reported that she was initiating a project to guarantee legal rights for abused kids. The project itself is good-hearted, but one member of our group astutely picked up a certain tone in Beth's voice that suggested that there was some distortion in Beth's attitude as well. Beth was willing to explore this. The discussion led back to early childhood memories, and indeed to a memory where Beth had been hit. She had not recalled this before; it was a surprise. One of the group members commented: “That was child abuse.” Ah. We had discovered the unconscious driver of Beth's project.
What was the implication of this? Not that Beth should not do the project. By discovering and releasing the unconscious distorted motivation for the project, Beth was free to pursue the project wholeheartedly in present-day reality without the forcing current that would come from an unconscious desire to make the world safe for her child in the past.
Today, in response to our and social environmental issues, there are people who feel moved to drop out of good jobs in order to find a way to contribute to the future well-being of the world. I have met some, and their motivation seems genuine to me. Such people go beyond what might be called ‘crass self-interest’ and identify with the larger long-term needs of the community of which they are a part. We know great figures who have done this – Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi. Their colleagues and followers are also great; they suffered a lot in the service of a higher ideal. And, as I said, there are people who are moved to make a contribution from their own initiative. The more people do this the more hopeful our future will be.
Thursday, July 08, 2004
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
I wrote this description of myself for a speakers bureau recently. It seems like a pretty good summary of what I'm on about these days.
My primary commitment is to contribute to the evolution of a world that works. In my view this will be a world that is ecologically sustainable and humane. I believe that we are at a tipping point in human evolution where either we commit ourselves to social and ecological well-being or we will do ourselves in as a global civilization. We are the first human generation to consciously face that choice, although many previous civilizations have destroyed their resource base and collapsed.
This is a strong stuff, but it succinctly captures the need of our time. And I suspect that many people feel it, even though it is not reflected in the mass media and public policy.
The implication is that we must create a wonderful society rather than a miserable one. The themes I want to talk about relate to this:
What will it take to evolve a world that works?
Creativity and innovation
Creating high-performance work units through improved communication
How personal development is essential for a healthy society
How a focus on wellbeing enhances the bottom line
Corporate social responsibility.
My background:
I have a BA in philosophy from Princeton University.
I am an experienced creativity trainer, using modalities such as Synectics and Innovative Conversation. I have presented workshops on innovative thinking through the NSW Department of State and Regional Development and the Australia Innovation Festival. I am the author of Creativity Games and Advanced Thinking and Communication Skills.
I have a rich understanding of sustainability. I am trained in the Natural Step and was a member of EcoSTEPS for five years. My special area is the social & psychological aspects of becoming sustainable.
I am also the most senior Feldenkrais practitioner in Australia, and have powerful insights into both the neurology and the practice of improving human performance.
Although I do very little of it now, I also been a psychotherapist and a psychotherapy trainer with the Australia Association of Somatic Psychotherapists.
I am an integrative thinker. My Briefing for a World That Works is a set of about 60 diagrams that shows connections between ecology, our economy, psychology and personal development. The idea of the pictures is to talk through the patterns with people who normally wouldn't read that much, so that they can get a clear idea of the direction we need to be moving in for long-term well-being. The Briefing enables people to identify constructive points of change that over time can help us shift towards a positive future, and it helps people see where their activities fit into the bigger picture.
Under the auspices of the Futures Foundation I have initiated the Project to make Wellbeing a National Goal for Australia.
A positive future will be based on partnership/respect values rather than on domination/control values – if we get that far. This is what the tipping point is about: will we mature as a species or remain rambunctiously adolescent? I led a workshop on Partnership Relating – the key to workplace innovation as part of the Australia Innovation Festival, and I have published articles on partnership relating in the Journal of Corporate Citizenship and the CSIRO Sustainability Netletter.
My primary commitment is to contribute to the evolution of a world that works. In my view this will be a world that is ecologically sustainable and humane. I believe that we are at a tipping point in human evolution where either we commit ourselves to social and ecological well-being or we will do ourselves in as a global civilization. We are the first human generation to consciously face that choice, although many previous civilizations have destroyed their resource base and collapsed.
This is a strong stuff, but it succinctly captures the need of our time. And I suspect that many people feel it, even though it is not reflected in the mass media and public policy.
The implication is that we must create a wonderful society rather than a miserable one. The themes I want to talk about relate to this:
What will it take to evolve a world that works?
Creativity and innovation
Creating high-performance work units through improved communication
How personal development is essential for a healthy society
How a focus on wellbeing enhances the bottom line
Corporate social responsibility.
My background:
I have a BA in philosophy from Princeton University.
I am an experienced creativity trainer, using modalities such as Synectics and Innovative Conversation. I have presented workshops on innovative thinking through the NSW Department of State and Regional Development and the Australia Innovation Festival. I am the author of Creativity Games and Advanced Thinking and Communication Skills.
I have a rich understanding of sustainability. I am trained in the Natural Step and was a member of EcoSTEPS for five years. My special area is the social & psychological aspects of becoming sustainable.
I am also the most senior Feldenkrais practitioner in Australia, and have powerful insights into both the neurology and the practice of improving human performance.
Although I do very little of it now, I also been a psychotherapist and a psychotherapy trainer with the Australia Association of Somatic Psychotherapists.
I am an integrative thinker. My Briefing for a World That Works is a set of about 60 diagrams that shows connections between ecology, our economy, psychology and personal development. The idea of the pictures is to talk through the patterns with people who normally wouldn't read that much, so that they can get a clear idea of the direction we need to be moving in for long-term well-being. The Briefing enables people to identify constructive points of change that over time can help us shift towards a positive future, and it helps people see where their activities fit into the bigger picture.
Under the auspices of the Futures Foundation I have initiated the Project to make Wellbeing a National Goal for Australia.
A positive future will be based on partnership/respect values rather than on domination/control values – if we get that far. This is what the tipping point is about: will we mature as a species or remain rambunctiously adolescent? I led a workshop on Partnership Relating – the key to workplace innovation as part of the Australia Innovation Festival, and I have published articles on partnership relating in the Journal of Corporate Citizenship and the CSIRO Sustainability Netletter.
