Editor’s note: In this article Pella Thiel introduces us to the Common Cause report and related psychology and linguistics research on how values work. This research shows that the way we talk about the issues we care about is, in fact, very important. A version of this article was originally published in the Swedish magazine effect, nr 1 2013.

The “value” of solar panels

Finally putting up solar panels on our house last year rendered a lot of questions on numbers. Neighbors, friends and family asked: How much did it cost? How much electricity will you produce? And primarily: is it profitable?  It was easy to respond to those questions and give answers in money and kilowatt hours, but something felt odd about that. It took a while before I realized what.

Money wasn´t our motivation when we put up those panels. We wanted to be part of the energy transition, to take some responsibility for our own consumption of electricity. Now you might argue – what does it matter, as long as the solar panels go up? What effect does a difference in motive really have? A lot, in fact. The values underlying our actions and attitudes may be game-changing when it comes to creating a society that is more sustainable, more just, and more meaningful.

How values work

One of the pioneers in value related research, social psychologist Milton Rokeach, stated that: “The value concept, more than any other, should occupy a central position … [it is] able to unify the apparently diverse interests of all the sciences concerned with human behavior.” In other words, what we deem important explains a lot about how we act. There is quite a bit of empirical evidence about how values work. A great synthesis aimed at increasing the awareness of civil society organizations of the importance of values in how they communicate their message, is the report Common Cause – The case for working with our cultural values” written by Tom Crompton at World Wildlife Fund (WWF) UK.

This research reveals some important patterns. First, values are universal. We value more or less the same things around the world but we prioritize values differently depending on factors such as culture, education, family and friends, as well as how our workplaces are structured and social norms.

Global Values, Source: Common Cause

Second, values are organized in dynamic and integrated systems: they influence each other. Some values are easily held simultaneously while others are opposed. Two groups are interesting from a sustainability point of view and we can think about them as a seesaw. On one side of the seesaw sits extrinsic values – status, wealth or achievement, for example. On the opposite side sits intrinsic values such as equality, community and connection with nature. Intrinsic values are clearly associated with sustainable and just behavior and related attitudes.

Source: Common Cause

People with strong intrinsic values such as freedom, creativity and self-respect (self-direction values), or equality and unity with nature (universalism values) are more politically engaged, concerned about social justice, exhibit more environmentally-friendly behavior, and lower levels of prejudice. In contrast, placing more importance on extrinsic values is generally associated with higher levels of prejudice, less concern about the environment, weak (or absent) concern about human rights, more manipulative behavior and less helpfulness. (It’s important to emphasize that the research shows that all humans share similar values, both intrinsic and extrinsic: the differences lie in what we prioritize on a daily basis.)

What motivates us value-wise also seems to affect our levels of well-being. Extrinsic values tend to undermine our levels of personal well-being. In general, the esteem of others or pursuit of material goods seem to be unreliable sources of satisfaction in life.

Intrinsic & Extrinsic Values, Source: Common Cause

How values are shaped and strengthened

Our values are constantly shaped, strengthened and weakened by influences from the world around us. All forms of communication are laden with values. Think about what assumptions you are met with about motives for your actions and choices (like in the solar panel example above). What is important? What is worth acting upon and why? What is normal and healthy and what isn’t? When we are approached as though we are primarily driven by profit and self-interest, values associated with self-interest are activated and strengthened. We then tend to act more selfishly and competitively.

The Swedish government’s ”Future Commission” recently released its´ final report. It focuses on four areas: 1. demographic development, 2. sustainable growth, 3. integration, equality, democracy and participation and 4. justice and unity. The report has received a lot of critique for the lack of concrete measures to handle the challenges identified, but let’s have a look at how the report’s message is framed.

A progress report has been written for each of the focus areas. ”Towards a greener future – challenges and opportunities” is the title of the report dealing with climate, ecosystems and biodiversity, or ”sustainable growth”. In its 184 pages it mentions growth close to 200 times. Minister of Business Annie Lööf states in the introduction that:

Growth requires sustainability, but let´s not forget that sustainability also requires growth. If we are to continue to lift people from poverty, extinguish hunger and at the same time save the environment, we need to create a green economy where people are given conditions to change their lives, earn money, invest and be entrepreneurs.

In other words, in the current political frame it’s commonplace to talk about sustainability (which is needed) by emphasizing economic growth and money (which we are presumed to value). The problem is that this rhetoric further shapes our understanding about what is important. If we are repeatedly told we can financially benefit from acting for a healthy environment, a stable climate, and other species– then our extrinsic values will be strengthened at the expense of intrinsic values. If the Future Commission is serious about calling for integration, equality, democracy, participation, justice and unity, then a focus on economic growth is worse than a distraction – it is a barrier. It undermines our motivation to act on these issues.

A language for the future

Perhaps we need a new language, suggests Jonathan Dawson from Schumacher College in an article in the Guardian. He writes:

This moment of history calls on us to rewrite the dictionary and create new stories, much as the generations following on from Copernicus did to reflect the new world-view that emerged from his astronomical insights. The new language and stories that we need will emerge from the language of ecology and will speak of connection in place of separation; networks in place of nodes; synergy in place of win:lose or cut-throat competition.

It still feels a bit awkward to explain that my motivation for installing solar panels has to do with my desire to take responsibility for my energy consumption and my role as part of the earth’s ecosystem, rather than to save money. But I am practicing!

Resources on values

To learn more about the role that values play in social change check out these resources:

1. Common Cause report – a summary of relevant research on values contextualized for civil society organizations

2. The Practice of Common Cause Casper ter Kuile – a great video workshop on how to apply these concepts

3. Tom Crompton keynote – a talk by the author of the Common Cause report

4. George Lakoff lecture – an engaging talk by one of the foremost researchers on values & frames in the context of of US politics

5. World in Transition: A Social Contract for Sustainability – a report which, via a wide review of values surveys, found that ”a significant majority of the German population … views growth and capitalism with skepticism and ‘does not believe in the resilience of market-driven economic systems’.”

Related posts:

1. Motivating Sustainable Behaviour
2. Looking To The Future
3. Ode to Empathy

Many books with post growth themes require some perseverance and more than one cup of coffee to read through!   This month we asked for recommendations of post growth fiction for a change: books that deal with complex economic, ecological and social issues in a different form. Here are two in-depth reviews.

The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver

I am a big fan of systems thinking and thus very much appreciate it when an author can give us a holistic view of a story from multiple perspectives, on different levels and with the complexity that we face in our day-to-day lives.  Kingsolver gives us just this in The Poisonwood Bible.

The story is set in the early 1960s and depicts the challenges that an American missionary, his wife and four daughters face when they move to a village in the Congo in an attempt to save the “savage” locals from eternal damnation by converting them to Christianity.  Each of them reacts differently, learning disparate lessons from the huge change in their lives.  But as I alluded to before, the way this story is told is just as important as the plot itself.  Kingsolver does an enthralling job of telling the story by weaving together the first-person narratives of all of the female characters.

This book does a fantastic job of highlighting, on the larger level, the failure and misdirection of the West’s quest to dominate and change the people of the global South; the impact that Protestant Christianity has had on Western civilization’s idea of progress; as well as the value of the wisdom of indigenous cultures.  Kingsolver skillfully demonstrates the value of this wisdom without romanticizing the indigenous culture of the village she depicts, moving beyond simplistic dualities.

Another way in which Kingsolver overcomes dualities is by telling the story from multiple perspectives.  The narrators range in age from 5 years old to 40-something.  Switching between these different perspectives brings into focus just how subjective storytelling and, thus, the recording and retelling of history really are.

I think post growth readers will thoroughly enjoy the way this book deals with the themes of development, colonialism, racism, gender issues, materialism and ecology.

-Jen

Long Life, Honey in the Heart - Martin Prechtel

I picked up this book one rainy summer day with the intention of reading a few pages. Soon I was enthralled. Technically non-fiction Prechtel’s delicate words and storytelling draw the reader in. The second in a series of memoirs Long Life, Honey in the Heart continues the story of the author’s many years living as part of the Tzutujil Maya of Santiago Atitlan in Guatemala. Prechtel, of Native American and European ancestry, grew up on reservation in New Mexico, but later found his home in the village he describes where he married, became initiated as a shaman, and deeply connected with the community.

Though the story is not without difficultly and heartbreak, Prechtel describes with loving and careful detail the joy of living in a beautiful way, connected strongly with other people and a particular place on earth. From the perspective of outside society this would be seen as a very “poor” place, yet the book subtly asks the reader to question: what is true wealth?

Martin Prechtel’s work is powerful in two ways in relation to a post growth perspective. First, his stories raise deep questions about what the mainstream, growth-oriented culture may be lacking. In Long Life, Honey in the Heart he describes the power and purpose of initiation among the Tzutujil Maya. Rather than seeming far away, his words awaken a longing that all youth would have the opportunity to participate in such a ceremony and in community. In other words, instead of working so hard to keep “things as they are” at all costs, Prechtel’s words ask us to consider what we might be missing out on –  and that what we’re missing perhaps doesn’t have much to do with money or material wealth.

Second, Long Life, Honey in the Heart gives one view of what a post growth future could look like. Of course, where each reader lives may be quite different from the community and landscape described in the book. Yet, the book provides inspiration to begin to imagine how deep connections might be created and re-created in many places. Prechtel’s stories awaken questions like: What are the beautiful spots where you live? What stories do they have? How might initiation be revived or strengthened in your community in a way that makes sense for your culture? What would your food be if it came from the land close to where you live, and how would you grow and prepare it beautifully?

I’d highly recommend checking out both this book and the author’s other work.

-Amelia

Additional suggestions for fiction or narrative non-fiction with post growth themes included the zombie novel Warm Bodies by Issac Marion – the moral is that love will triumph over the dystopian future, James Howard Kunstler’s World Made By Hand, Coyote Medicine by Lewis Mehl Madrona, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, and the Ringing Cedar series associated with the permaculture movement in Russia.

Do you have other recommendations? Let us know in the comments!

Related posts:

1. What We’re Reading (and Watching!) – May 2012
2. What We’re Reading (And Watching)! January 2013
3. What We’re Reading (and Watching!) March 2013

The creators of the award-winning documentary Mother: Caring for 7 Billion, Tiroir A Films, have made a ‘Director’s Cut’ of the film available, streaming free on the internet in honour of Earth Day (22 April).

From 19 April until the end of May, the film can be accessed for viewing on YouTube.

The documentary follows the learning journey of Beth, a children’s rights activist and mother who grew up in a family of twelve.

The cultural, economic and personal complexities of the population issue are examined through the stories of women like Ethiopia’s courageous Zinet, who refused an offer of marriage and went to work in the Population Media Center’s Ethiopian office, changing the culture of her family in the process, as well as the lives of many women through her work.

Looking back to the emerging concern about overpopulation in the 1960s, the film recalls how population was identified as an environmental issue on the first Earth Day in 1970 – yet contemporary interviews reveal a startling lack of awareness of what the global population is now, how rapidly it has grown (it has almost doubled since the first Earth Day from 3.7 billion to 7 billion) and how it is a factor in many environmental concerns.

‘Mother’ rightly calls out the environmental movement for generally shying away from speaking out on population, and for not recognising that it is a driver for many of the issues the environmental/sustainability movement is seeking to address.

The film also includes interviews with Esraa Bani of Population Action International; biologist and author of The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich; founder of population and women’s health nonprofit Venture Strategies, Dr Martha Campbell; founder of the Global Footprint Network, Mathis Wackernagel; and Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute.

Subtitles are available in English and Spanish, with French and Portuguese to come (click the icon on the left hand side of the group of icons at bottom right on the YouTube clip to access captions).

Related posts:

1. Heads Count: Global Population Speak Out, February 2010
2. The Bomb is Still Ticking…
3. Sharing is Caring

How do we resolve this dilemma: the human spirit is tremendously expansive, potentially vast, greatly powerful–and yet the chorus of environmental consciousness these days is that growth is not good. That the concern with prosperity is flawed. That riches are bad.

Well, then, what must we do with this immense power and capacity and the imagination to dream that is a part of being human? What is the evolutionary purpose of our capacity? Certainly, it’s not laying waste, being idle, and singing songs of good times. These amusements have their purpose, time, and place, but these are certainly not the sole tasks we as a species are charged with.

So what is the matter? Why have we become, despite ourselves, such a terrifying source of violence and destruction? Or of creativity that is often inevitably tied with economic capacity and all the evil that comes on the heels of this concern with economic growth, such as the need to build and wield and thereafter sustain military power?

These may be simple questions, but these are not reductionist questions. Rather, this is a simple questioning of the construct we are dealing with, and the ways in which it has skewed and failed. Simple questions may lead to simple insights, and simple insights may be seeds for powerful ideas and actions.

It occurred to me one day that growth, which is held as such a concern and metric of well-being that we cannot even imagine considering an alternative, may be redefined. Why is growth only economic growth or monetary prosperity? Why are the capacities, contribution, and the work of people not considered in other-than-economic terms? Why is the definition of Growth a portfolio with its investment in only one metric–why are there not more dimensions such that growth is not a linear, mono-metric thing, but rather a lively, complex, and organic virtual entity that can shift its shape around the well-being of humans (and of societies) at any given time? Why is growth only MORE and FORWARD and BIGGER? Why is growth not, sometimes, defined as pausing and taking a breath? As holding hands and playing (literally or metaphorically)? As exhaling a sigh of relief after a great accomplishment? As giving someone or something else an opportunity to be active while one takes time out?

Why are nations, for instance, afraid to put a pause on their space missions and geographic expansion, and take time out to care for their own people, while letting another nation take up the task of imagining and inventing? Why are we afraid to make a necessary life shift, and humiliated with the prospect of doing the right thing at the right moment in our life just because it is not the thing that we have done for the past few years? Why do people get insane with fear and anger if their leaders determine, for instance, that for the next four or five years they will shift the focus from creating economic-military franchises around the globe, to simply taking care of the household? Why do we suddenly have nothing to do when a project for building and construction has been completed–why do we instantly feel the urge to do and make more, rather than realize that the natural and most simple human thing to do is to relax at the end of such accomplishment, and that in the age of nations and groups, this rest may take years or even a century?

Why, in short, are we holding on to one construct, a single construct, that happens to have only one dimension, too? Can we, for a start, rethink this very construct?

There is a deeper thing to be concerned with than just Growth. However, while we are on this terrain, can we at least re-imagine this?

I think we can. I propose that we should. Here is a poem that I was inspired with while I first wrangled with this question. Your thoughts are welcome (though as a poet who’s usually inspired, I cannot defend or explain what I write). Presented as is.

Growth Is Not Just One Thing
a poem ~

Growth is not just one thing.
It is not merely
chopping down whatever apple tree
occurs on your path
and turning it into jam and firewood.
Growth is also to plant the seed,
and to have the patience to cultivate it,
to watch it grow.

Growth is not merely
turning your life into dollars
and then attempt to turn the dollars back into
semblances and mere ghosts of life.
Growth is also to step beyond this idea
of necessarily putting the jingle of coins and pennies
into each and every rhythm of your life.
Growth is a kiss.
It is impregnation with the first child you’ll ever have,
it is to kindle the fire in the house,
and put a loving pot of soup to boil.
Staying quietly with it.
Inhaling its wafting smells and spice.

Growth is not just rushing onwards from your youth
and staying forever repelled from the old age that creeps upon you
when you are too busy to notice it,
submerged in your paper and red black ink.
Growth is to notice the hair you begin to grow in interesting places
and the fine wrinkles that shall begin to grace
your face one transitional winter morning.
Growth is that too.

Growth is not merely to constantly vie with your friend and neighbor,
or fear that they vie with you.
Growth is loyalty, too. It is to be with the weak in their sickness
and their wretchedness. It is to allow the heart to expand
and pour out as much love–as much love–as it always wanted to give.
Growth is to allow your heart the freedom it always wished
before it became trapped in the preconditions to joy
that you learned from dead books and sad people.
Growth is that. It is that expansion.

Growth is not — absolutely not! — your increasing ability
to quash your dreams so that you may
continue to feed the illusions of growth.
Growth is the ability to gently or firmly
put away the tendrils of pestilent ideas
that come to reside upon your soul.
Growth is that.

Growth is not simply your ability to walk and walk and walk
the earth. Growth is also your ability to stand firm,
hold your place, take roots, and grow branches. To touch the sky.
Growth is vertical. It is horizontal. It is diagonal, too.
It is more than you imagine, and less than you imprint.

Growth is not plainly
your relentless ability to conquer the Earth.
And its species and people and molecules.
Growth is also your ability to be fascinated.
Quiet, simply, fascinated.
It is your ability to wonder, to marvel, to rest.
To give the earth and its inhabitants –
your fellows souls and molecules –
their due. As they have, for eons and eons,
given you yours. More than.
Growth is that acknowledgement.

Growth is not your pomposity. Your ability to
bellow so frighteningly, your temptation to
walk with such arrogance and fury,
as if the earth will split open under your hands and feet.
Growth is your ability to heal the wound. To stitch together
that which is rended apart
from your countless centuries of plundering.

Growth is your ability to withhold, to be in peace,
to watch, reflect, know, and be in awe.
To open your mind such that
you will understand that growth is
beyond — far beyond — the limits
of your
hungry needs.

Growth is that understanding
that you are no longer that hungry, frightened, cold,
thunder-struck, hollering ape that you once were.
Growth is your awareness that you have travelled hundreds of thousands of miles
for millennia and millennia
to overcome your penury
only to know that you are, ever, confined in a relationship –
a loving, nurturing relationship, the love of existence for you –
that you cannot ever escape from.

Growth is not just to leave home, O human!
It is to come home too. It is to come home, too.

~ramla akhtar

A note on the image: Trees are what have inspired me to reconsider what growth means. I think even the tree gets to travel: it stands in one place on earth, and from that, it looks up into entire constellations towards which its branches ever reach out. It maintains a relationship of love and awe with the cosmos, ever conversing with the Sun and the stars while we humans, apparently smarter beings, frantically search for love and real peace.

Peace!

Related posts:

1. In Asia, New Questions About Growth Emerge
2. Into The Blue – Post Growth Farewells a Friend
3. About Post Growth

I recently had the marvellous privilege of attending The Economics of Happiness Conference in Byron Bay, Australia (15-17 March 2013).

This event was convened by Helena Norberg-Hodge, director (along with Steven Gorelick, and John Page) of the 2011 documentary film of the same name, produced by the International Society for Ecology and Culture.

The intent of these gatherings, the first of which was held in Berkeley, California in 2012, is to develop and strengthen the localisation movement internationally.

Key thinkers and activists from around the world, Australian activists and change agents and Byron locals convened to learn from each other, share stories and build connections between their work.

Highlights were many, but included a live Skype presentation and Q&A with Bill McKibben, climate campaigner and 350.org founder, and keynote presentations by:

• Adebayo Akomolafe of Nigeria who, along with his wife EJ and others, co-founded Koru, a trans-local network of cultural creatives who believe another world is possible
• Michael Shuman, director of research and economic development of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, who spoke about the possibilities for community-based economic development
• Junko Edahiro, founder of Japan for Sustainability and founder and President of the Institute for Studies in Happiness, Economy and Society, who presented on how we can move to happiness-based rather than growth-based societies
• Nicole Foss, who explains the links between peak oil, the financial crisis, and climate change (currently travelling around Australia on a speaking tour presented by Sustainability Showcase)
• Benjamin Villegas, chef and business owner of the Wok restaurants in Colombia, which are widely recognised throughout Colombia for their responsible business practices and developing healthy relationships with small communities, relying on hundreds of local farmers and suppliers.

Bayo delivering his keynote speech – image by The Economics of Happiness

One of the memorable experiences for me was the talk and workshop delivered by Charles Eisenstein, someone whose thinking and speaking style has resonated with me for a long time. Charles has the ability to touch and move people on an emotional level. Here is a short clip (12 mins) in which he speaks about the ideas that underpin his book, Sacred Economics:

There were also a plethora of workshops on a range of topics, all with a localisation theme, including food and farming, place-making, education, energy, and money systems.

My Post Growth Institute colleague Donnie Maclurcan was a workshop facilitator as well as a plenary speaker.

Donnie facilitating his workshop, which was attended by several dozen people

His workshop ‘Strengthening the Localisation Movement: Making the Most of our Abilities’ was participatory and offered attendees practical approaches they could take back into their communities – how to use an assets-based approach (starting with what is working, instead of diagnosing problems that need to be ‘fixed’), and how to quickly resource a movement by tapping into people’s passions, skills and knowledge. This can unlock energy in groups expressing the all-too-common lament of ‘we don’t have money and resources’:

Harnessed fully, there are more talents and resources within any small group of passionate citizens than are actually needed to manifest deep social change. It is just a matter of how willing we are to step back and see things through a lens of strengths and possibilities, and how creatively we can bring our multitude of capabilities to light.

- Donnie Maclurcan

The plenary talks were recorded, and will gradually be made available over the coming weeks, at The Economics of Happiness Vimeo channel. The first, a three part vid on the plenary ‘Localisation – The Solution Multiplier?’ is already available:

One of the recurring issues raised at this event was ‘how do we talk to people who don’t ‘get this’? How do we talk to our family, friends and colleagues?’

I believe we need to be paying a LOT more attention to how we frame messages and how we communicate, and equipping changemakers with the communication, leadership and personal skills they need to be able to do this effectively.

Here is a short overview of the event (9 mins) created by Echonetdaily, the NSW North Coast’s independent news service:

I particularly enjoyed some very rare in-person time with people I work with virtually, and the joy of meeting those I had not yet encountered in person.

Sometimes, it can feel like the challenges we are working on seem so insurmountable, and it is easy to become overwhelmed by things that aren’t going right in the world.

It is a tonic for the soul and spirit of change agents to spend some time with others who are engaged in creating these shifts, and be reminded of what is already happening, and what is possible.

This post was originally published at Cruxcatalyst – The Heart of Change.

Related posts:

1. Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth
2. Challenging the Happiness Argument
3. At U.N. Happiness Summit, A Coal Pile in the Ballroom

Editor’s note: Bayo Akomolafe of Nigeria delivered this talk at the 2013 Economics of Happiness Conference on March 16th in Byron Bay, NSW, Australia.  In it he discusses the use of trans-local networks created via social media and other initiatives as one possible way to create a trans-local movement which can help to shift the paradigm.

Words cannot fully express how deeply grateful I am for being here; I almost couldn’t make it. If any of you live on the continent of Africa, or at least have come from afar to these magical terrains, then you know it takes more than a visa and jumping three planes to get here. It takes much more: it takes grit, an unwavering sense of direction, patience, and good friends who won’t let well enough alone. It also takes a skillful mastery of your bladder.

Being a child of a distant African moment, and having had the privilege of speaking in many compelling contexts, I have come to understand that just before I start speaking the politically correct thing to do is to say ‘I bring greetings from Africa’. The problem with saying this at this time lies in the question: ‘Which Africa do we speak of?’, for there are many Africas.

There is the romanticized Africa of Hollywood fame – the one with feverish dances, painted faces, exotic tribes and stories that have the nerve to insist that the gods must be crazy. Then there is the Africa of steel and asphalt and landscapes darkened by cascading towers of smoke; the one cordoned off by Wall Street, animated by glittery shopping malls, and legitimized by the ‘golden arches’.

In these Africas, we send our children to little boxes we call schools, and use thinly compressed pieces of fibre to create value; we sit round an enchanted glow-box that brings no heat, but tells us stories about how we are never enough; and during Christmas, more out of the compulsion to do so than any sense of hope, we sing “Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!” And when we get angry with our governments, we listen to indigenous tunes from home-grown bands like ‘The Beatles’ encouraging us to ‘let it be’.

These are the storied places of identity I contend with as a ‘son of the continent’, the Africas I live in, but not necessarily where I come from.

You know these lands I speak of – for they are like your own. But there is a difference. For instance, unlike your streets, ours are often broken and left in a state of brokenness; in the lands specifically defined by the nation-state called Nigeria, electricity supply is so epileptic that we scream in the pain of heightened suspense when our bulbs come to life. Our streets are littered with the promises of the normal in the siren songs of political candidates who do not know us; our farmers are slaves to totalitarian systems that promise ‘food for all’ as a pretext for cheap publicity and the perpetuation of the golden profit imperative.

Year after year, our governments and conventional religious institutions tell us things will get better, to keep calm and be positive; so we hold ourselves, calloused hand in calloused hand, awaiting something better…feeding our hope. But our unflattering landscapes moan under the weight of our hope. They whisper to us a shocking tune: they tell us that this is the time to lose hope.

So I am here to speak about hope, and – more specifically – losing it.

Sometime early this year I sat with strange looking men, who live and practice their art on the edges of social acceptability, in the borderlands of despair. As a clinical psychologist, I had quickly grown disenchanted with my practice, which seemed to me a commoditized, tongue-in-cheek, legitimization of modern civilization and its discontents – a way of entrenching the status quo by patronisingly pathologizing the exception…a way of taming possibility. Bursting with a restless quest for alternatives, I sought out these Yoruba traditional healers – to learn their stories, to understand what we have collectively forgotten, and perhaps to recognize faint tunes about my own journeys which I had not yet danced to.

In their strange abodes, I saw bottles, countless bottles with sticks and strange smells, dusty amulets hanging on cobwebbed threads, the horns of cows, and calabashes half-filled with viscous red palm oil and floating cowrie shells. They had all been trained informally, under the strict and sacred supervision of their fathers. They were shamans – conjurers of other worlds, scribes of songs only plants could sing. In one of my sessions, I asked the question that I had been struggling to articulate for some time: “What do you know”, I muttered through my interpreter, ashamed I could not speak my own language “that we in the West-inspired world seem to have forgotten? How can we live healthier lives?”

Here, in essence, is what he said to me: “You have forgotten that everything is alive, and you have rested in your faith that your pills will solve all your problems. Your modern projects have chased away the spirits – so we have to go deep into the forests to find them again. But you will find them again, you will find new ways of living when you find the courage to embrace the dark and lose your way.”

Ladies and gentlemen, the Africa I come from, the one I poetically and ironically identify with, is the Dark Continent – but this darkness is not the darkness of inadequacy and incompetence; it is the darkness of a mother’s womb, wherein the swoosh of blood and shadow conspire to create a new dance of life.

We do not recognize it, but our disenchantments are our greatest treasures, our most faithful allies.

By our disenchantments, I refer to our collective pain that is often borne by apparently negative, all-too-familiar feelings of despair, of disgust, anger, boredom, failure, irritation, rank cynicism, and depression. Most of the time, we are taught through our cultural conditioning that we must treat these feelings as militant viruses that must be spotted quickly and disarmed. We are told that there is something wrong with us if we become ‘too negative’, if we forget our place, if we cannot see that people are working hard to give us the ‘good life’, and we are offered easy ways we can deal with these feelings through pills, through the adoption of labels, through feeding off the glamour of celebrity culture, and, most of all, through the spectacle of hope.

But other traditions – such as those of the shamans I met – suggest to us that the universe is fragile, indeterminate, playful, arbitrary and connected; our pains are creative aspects of being, invitations to transform our experiences and emerge from the reality grids we are currently trapped in.

Across the world, there is an awakening to, and general yearning today for, these indigenous stories. Thanks to shamanic arts and local voices from the fringes, trans-local communities are seeing a revitalization of the feminine, a rejuvenation of our multidimensionality and a penetration of the politics of the normal.

On the continent of Africa, however, this ‘awakening’ has been slow; we still haven’t learned the wisdoms of our own traditions. We still ache for more universities, more foreign investment, and prouder stretches of paved roads divided by cute white lines, and boundaried by yellow ones. We have learned to pacify the revolutionary exception by speaking about poverty eradication, democratic education, and infinite growth.

For me, trying to eradicate poverty is like trying to get rid of a fever. In both cases, the real culprit often escapes detection. Poverty is a parenthetical remark in a sentence that is hidden between the lines – a singular story that has come to define how we see – and this is the modern idea that we are alone. It is this narrative that has spurned our anxious constructions of prosperity, of property, of health, of dominance over the earth, of superiority, of salvation, of virtue, and of the good life. At the moment, I think we might as well be grateful for poverty (and fevers!) – for without it, we would have thought all was well.

And, yes, where many Nigerians would see our dangerous roads as death-traps riddled with potholes, I and a few others prefer to see the potholes as life-portals riddled with roads, our unspoken resistance of the tyranny of asphalt.

Our disenchantments and failures are truly the portals to new unprecedented worlds; the only way we can power alternative futures is through the energy of disenchantment. We must pierce through the membranes of the familiar, of the approved – only by losing our coordinates and getting generously lost. Our hope for new landscapes will not lie in the centre of the circle to which everyone has turned, but beyond its circumference – in the wilds beyond our fences.

Koru: the trans-local network.

And so my life-nectar (who, though invited, could not make it with me for reasons I shall share with you later), Ej, myself, and friends from across the world came together with a dream of building a trans-local network of re-enchantment through disenchantment.

We called it Koru. Koru, derived the Maori of New Zealand, says ‘life is playful, reality is multiple, there are no facts…only stories – come to a field of magic!’ We ‘conceived’ Koru as a celebration of failure, as a way of tapping into our disenchantment with the industrial-academic-consumerist complex. Recognizing that the paradigmatic shift we need today are small changes in how we relate with each other, the co-creators of Koru are right now concretizing a beautiful experiment of localization.

Koru is an awakening from a cultural crisis – a call for cultural renewal, a call to transcend the linearity of conventional leadership and disciplinarity – a way of addressing the crises of hunger and schooling, the crises of people losing their jobs, the crises of poverty, the crises of GMOs, mental wellbeing and economic stability.

Koru hopes to connect what we call ‘transition tribes’ or small collectives together into the tapestry of a politics of disorientation. Using social networking platforms and other creative initiatives, we hope to spur the spontaneous evolution of decolonisation zones and help nurture a trans-local movement that undercuts the rationality of today’s systems. In Koru groups, a revolutionary forgetfulness is induced; we come together on the paths of our disenchantment, and celebrate those narratives as evocations of powerful possibilities lurking on the edges of our collective consciousness.

The next few months will prove critical in this attempt to paint new landscapes. I suspect that the global community is on the bleeding threshold of a painfully dramatic shift – spurred by earth changes and hotspot socio-political events. We may not have the luxury of conferences such as these in the foreseeable future.

Disenchantment spurs courage.

I suppose all this talk about wounds and disenchantments and future upheavals is very likely to leave a sour taste in your mouths. I am sorry. I am not particularly a stellar example of an absolute optimist; I am not here to tell you things will get ‘better’ – I actually hope they don’t. Neither am I here to tell you that things will get worse. But I do hope things get ‘different’. And that is the hope I have and share with my wife, with a growing number of friends, and with pockets of cultural resistance emerging around the world.

So let us hope…and despair…freely – knowing that the end of hope is not a hellish bottomless pit from whence evil proceeds, but a new field once stained by our fear, awaiting our courage. This is the story of Koru, this is the story of Africa, and this is the story of many of you – that through our scars we tell our own stories; we can paint a radical cultural renewal, and re-story our lands out of the effulgence and magnanimity of being.

I promised I would tell why Ej, my forever partner, was unable to join us. Some months after we received invitation to Byron Bay, we learned that we will soon be blessed with our first child. We were understandably thrilled about this news, and Ej had to commence ante-natal visits to the hospital. We hope the coming months will bring us a girl that hopefully bears little resemblance to me! I have however – in moments of reflection – worried about the kind of world we would be bringing her in to. I have also had epiphanic moments of clarity when it seemed I was able to sidestep the frozenness of the present and touch the future. In closing, I would like to gift you with words from those moments of subversive hope:

When my children alight upon terra firma, I will gather them close and teach them a conspiracy; I will whisper to them a subversive tale under the nodding approval of many moons: I will stare into their starry eyes, and tell them that the world is intensely abundant – so utterly full of everything we need, that we do not need to compete with each other to thrive.

I will tell them that there is more than enough for everyone – and that the idea that we need a money system based on scarcity is a ‘lie’. I will jump up and down – wildly – to get them to see that they are already ‘relevant’, that they do not need to be ‘pretty’, and that they do not need to be great or important or successful or famous to be accepted and embraced.

I will tell them that it is good to learn, but that learning could never be graded or certificated – and that in my time, we were forced to sit on chairs for hours to memorize what was approved for us to know – in the approved ways of knowing it. When they laugh at my misfortune, I will draw them close and tell them that everything is alive – and that we once used to treat the earth as a ‘resource’ and humans as nails on a wheel.

When they start to fall asleep, I will stroke their curly mulatto hair-locks, and sing to them about the bravery of the ant, the haughtiness of a rock, and the beauty of their mother. As I tuck them into bed, I will smile – and leave the fairies that attend them smiling in my wake.

Thank you very much for listening.

Related posts:

1. The Power of Stories, and the Need for New Ones
2. 1001 Stories of Hope
3. Post Growth Futures Are Here

Fossil fuel divestment has been featured in the news a lot recently.  Often discussed as yet another push towards a more sustainable energy system and economy, fossil fuel divestment is, essentially, a notably public, economic boycott.  While 350.org and partners at gofossilfree.org have campaign resources and ideas for community groups, religious institutions, and local governments, the big push for divestment in the U.S. has been coming from colleges and universities–largely due to students backing the movement.  While the push for divestment is not simply about affecting the bottom line of the fossil fuel companies (since the fossil fuel investments are profitable and they’re often bought back up by others once groups divest), it is useful in turning the attention to yet another way in which our economic system is geared towards unsustainable practices.  The purpose of divestment is not, primarily, to financially tank fossil fuel companies, as it is unlikely to do so, but to make them a socially (and thus economically) unpalatable choice.

Having attended a university for undergraduate studies which has a very active student body, one which independently and within college programs focuses on environmental sustainability in both small (banning the sale of bottled water on campus) and large (divestment of funds from fossil fuel stocks) ways, I’ve kept an eye on the course of divestment at the university and college levels.  This past year it seems to have received a huge push, with 256 universities and colleges, or rather their students and faculty, joining the campaign to divest.  I was excited to hear that several students I personally know at my current university in Southern Oregon had taken up the cause at our university.

At the Oregon Higher Education Sustainability Conference (OHESC) for 2013, research by Shaun Franks was presented noting that together $1.53 billion in investments by schools in the Oregon University System currently exist, and the manner in which these funds are invested can have a huge impact (it is important to note, though, that often no more than 2% of a school’s investments will be in fossil fuel stocks).  The question is: Will schools which often tout their forward thinking, environmental consciousness, and willingness to listen to students actually live up to these ideals?  Southern Oregon University is a pretty small school.  Still the students here have some great gumption.  While best known for its theatre school and association with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, various smaller departments with a focus on environmental/eco studies and sustainability, both social and environmental, are growing in popularity and strength.  The exciting part about the students at SOU is how focused and progressive their plans are for options of investment outside of fossil fuels. 

This is not entirely surprising as, somewhat true to the stereotype of Oregon, “hippies”, the eco-conscious, and others who have chosen environmentally friendly lifestyles due to either deep-seated beliefs or the trendiness of it, abound.  For instance, Portland, Oregon is one of the cities leading the municipal level push for divestment.  However, it’s not just Oregon and it’s not just small schools with uniquely driven students.  It’s also not just schools in eco-friendly communities with hearty idealists.  This trend of a student and faculty backed push for divestment is happening at schools all over the nation, from well-known Ivy League schools, such as Yale and Harvard, to state schools both large and small across the U.S., to smaller private colleges.  The map of currently up-and-running school campaigns at gofossilfree.org is, encouragingly, peppered with markers for universities and colleges participating.  To date, colleges which have fully divested include Unity College in Maine, Hampshire College in Massachusetts, and Sterling College in Vermont, as well as the city of Seattle, divesting their pension fund of fossil fuels.

Why Does Divestment Matter?

If divestment won’t take down fossil fuel companies, which it won’t at this point, why so much attention?  Several reasons come to mind.  First, for schools, city and state governments, and other institutions and organizations which may want to start (or already are) trying to be more environmentally conscious and aware of their impact, there is this discord when these groups start programs to encourage less consumption, more walking and biking, better recycling habits, etc., and yet they still invest in fossil fuel stocks.  Secondly, the awareness of how we buy and otherwise support unsustainable economic practices is important.  Reducing consumption, staying local, supporting environmentally sound practices in daily life is good, great actually.  But those practices end up being futile if we continue to engage in larger economic practices which are anything but environmentally sound.  Divestment is about more than the public image of a university or city government claiming environmental awareness and sustainable practices.  It’s about more than idealistic and spirited students, faculty, and other community members pushing for an action that might directly affect some of the companies represented by those fossil fuel stocks.

Ultimately, divestment from fossil fuels is about a widening recognition of how important it is to do more than sort out the recycling from the trash.  Rather than keep the system as it always has been, built around this refusal to acknowledge not only the limited resources, but also the environmental impact of the use of carbon based energy resources, divestment forces us to confront how, at every level, we’re going to have to address the impact our choices have.  It’s great that the universities I’ve attended thus far have comprehensive recycling programs.  It’s great that both students and faculty push through actions like the banning of selling bottled water on campus.  Still, the system itself needs to be reworked.  We need to divest not to negatively affect companies via their stocks (although, admittedly I’m not against that), but to show that we want an economic system which acknowledges the environmental constraints, the reality of our environment, and the effects which come from having an economic system wantonly ignoring this.

While divestment is not a route to forcing fossil fuel companies out of business through economic impact, it is a route to widening the awareness of how damaging and dangerous the continuing use of fossil fuels is.  Even economically, as a piece in Yale’s “environment360″ publication noted, “analysis earlier this month by the credit rating agency Standard and Poor’s and the non-profit Carbon Tracker Initiative warned that oil companies are likely to become much riskier investments in the future.”  It is more likely that companies dealing in fossil fuels will force themselves out of business, but rather than take the risk of the environmental destruction inherent in that, there is the choice to cause a social shift which refocuses the discussion to less consumptive uses of safer forms of energy.  Amidst the discussion of peak oil, tar sands, issues with coal, from the detriments of mining to the air pollution caused by its use, divestment is one way to make voices heard a bit better.  On campuses across the U.S., the rallying cry is to divest fossil fuels so that students studying for their futures will actually have one to graduate out into.  Divesting fossil fuels is yet another step in guaranteeing that we all have a future ahead of us.

If you’d like to know more about divestment of fossil fuels check out gofossilfree.org and 350.org

Related posts:

1. Notes on a Greener Economy
2. Resetting, Not Offsetting
3. The Fallacy Of Growth

We recently ran our first Post Growth Challenge: offering US$100, free consultancy and  promotional support for an idea our team judged as most likely to help advance the world(view) beyond economic growth.

What a fascinating range of ideas emerged! From Paul Greathead’s ‘off-the shelf domestic solar’; to Nicky Guy’s suggested distribution of seeds to create food banks; Alex Barker’s artist’s community ‘Ramp Up’; Katharine Stavrinous’ low carbon local fashion cooperative ‘denne lille jord’ (this little earth); Arianne Stam’s idea to support ‘give away shops’ in Holland; Simon JM’s proposed energy, resource and finance co-operative; Andrew Mount’s stewardship-oriented association: The Chamber of Commons; and Rob Dietz’s idea to deliver his book ‘Enough is Enough’ to a selected set of young and upcoming U.S. Congressional Representatives and follow up by email and phone.

Please do get in touch with these changemakers using the links above if you want to support their work further.

And so, to the selected entrant: we’ve awarded $100, support and promotion to Correy Allen Kowall and his ‘self replication and ubiquitous resources’ project. Correy is designing a low-cost, accessible manufacturing process by creating a con-focal planar Fresnel lens using a manufactured original lens, recycled polylactide, and a bed of plaster or clay. He’ll push an original lens into a mold and then use that same lens to focus sunlight onto a crucible filled with recycled low temperature transparent polymer (milk jugs) which can then be poured into the mold. In plain language: he’s using an existing lens and renewable resources to create another lens that can focus light and be used as the basis for manufacturing. Correy goes on to explain:

This process has been selected because it constitutes the first step in any number of more elaborate processes that result in the production of useful goods or energy. A nearly identical process can be jump started using the first process but instead use sand to produce a glass Fresnel lens which can span a greater distance and consequently can generate more heat for casting objects, including similar glass lenses. The armatures that hold such a lens can be manufactured using the same technique simply by impressing them into a mold bed and heating and melting materials into the cavities left behind.

Ultimately, Correy hopes to develop a cast-able centrifuge, sieves to sort sands, and eventually a cowling and magnetic apparatus that can use mass-charge separation in conjunction with sunlight to crack hydrogen and oxygen from water. And that’s all before lunch time, of course

We’ve also decided to provide a runners-up prize of $25, support and promotion for Chris Baulman’s plan to create a free and intuitive template for collaborative cooperative processes.

Thanks to everyone who participated or spread the word. For general help with establishing world-changing projects you may want to check-out: Idealist (USA); IdeaEncore (USA); SI Consulting (Australia); the Unreasonable Institute (Global); or the Awesome Foundation (global).

Image Credits:
By Almazi (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
By Rotor DB at en.wikipedia [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

Related posts:

1. The Post Growth Challenge: $100 to Change the World(view)
2. Post Growth News Roundup – August
3. Toward a Post Growth Society