SIGN UP
The Inspiring Transition website is here.
We presume that you, like many others, are aware of disastrous environmental trends and you care about a positive future.
We invite you to work with us on something momentous: catalysing a movement that becomes so influential that we succeed in inspiring mainstream commitment to doing everything required to reverse our disastrous environmental trends, and transition to a life-affirming culture.
This is the opportunity of our time: building a life-affirming culture that takes care of people and the planet.
Enabling people to think better
Catalysing mass commitment to transformational change outlines our approach. It is based on conversations that enable people to think better. Specifically, we use Kitchen Table Conversations to
- Enable people to come to grips with the reality of our existential emergency, and
- Enable folks to come to grips with the profound systemic changes that are necessary to have a hope of a positive future.
This TEDX talk tells the story.
The point is to prepare people mentally and emotionally to support leadership for large-scale transformative change. Without such leadership, business as usual will grind on to its dismal conclusion.
Everything needed to conduct Kitchen Table Conversations can be downloaded here. You can purchase premade Kits here.
How might we take these conversations to scale?
The good news is that there are millions of environmental groups, progressive groups, and faith communities that care deeply about environmental and social issues. Perhaps we can make common cause through the overarching goal of transitioning to a life-affirming culture.
Choosing to align around this goal, we can reach the ‘mainstream’ through the simple expedient of inspiring the members of these groups to talk to their friends, neighbours and business colleagues about the reality of current environmental trends, and what it will take to turn things around.
So, our core strategy is inspire the members of as many groups as possible to act as citizen-educators.
Would you like to work with us on this?
Steps to Becoming a Member of the League of Evolutionary Catalysts describes our approach in more depth. The great challenge of our time is to mobilize thoughtful public will to doing everything required to pull out of our ecological nosedive. If you feel you might want to work with us on this, contact:
Andrew Gaines
[email protected]
Additional ways to communicate to shift public consciousness
Public intellectuals can talk up the goal of transitioning to a life affirming culture, and explain what’s involved. When they give lectures, they can encourage their audience to act as citizen-educators. Folks in the audience can become leaders in their own right.
Environmentally and socially responsible businesses can position what they do is a contribution to transitioning to a life-affirming culture, and promote this through plaques in their offices, and through articles on their websites and in their newsletters. This idea comes from marketers. They advise: get your brand – or in our case, our meme – seen everywhere.
The prospect of aiming to change our culture so much that we actually operate within planetary boundaries, and take care of people and the wider web of life, can seem overwhelming on the one hand, or perhaps grandiose on the other.
Why bother? Because we care, and nothing less will do.
Cultivating emotional well-being
Purely technical changes are insufficient for dealing with our ecological challenges. This is because psychological factors – especially, unresolved emotional issues – play a huge role in our individual and collective behaviour. Trauma makes many people vicious, non-empathic, and greedy. And, regretfully, trauma is widespread throughout every sector of society. And it is made worse by social conditions that keep some people stuck in poverty traps.
The good news is that over the last fifty years or so highly effective techniques for resolving trauma have been developed. Among them are techniques people can use to resolve their own emotional issues.
Books that describe such techniques include:
- Bessel van der Kolk The Body Keeps the Score: Mind Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma
- Gary Craig The Healing Power of Eft and Energy Psychology
- Jay Earley Self Therapy
- Andrew Gaines Inner Work
Bessel van der Kolk is a psychiatrist who did pioneering research using brain scans to assess the effectiveness of various experiential psychotherapy modalities. The Body Keeps the Score describes a number that really work.
The three other books are manuals of techniques that people can use for themselves.
EFT and other techniques described in Inner Work can be readily introduced to other people.
This leads to the possibility of a movement to introduce people to techniques for resolving their own emotional issues. This is an important part of the larger agenda of transitioning to a life-affirming culture. We must become the kind of people that can create and enjoy a life-affirming culture.
Who might do this? Well, there are many of us who have done deep meditation, psychotherapy, and perhaps creative visualisation. We are okay with exploring our inner worlds. Therefore we are in a position to introduce people to tools for exploring their own inner worlds, so they can resolve their own emotional issues if they are so motivated.
The techniques are fairly straightforward to introduce and to apply. In introducing people to these tools, we are not acting as psychotherapists. Rather, we are acting as trainers. The level of skill required is not high. This is a ‘barefoot doctor’ approach.
If this interests you, these resources are useful:
- EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques, the ‘tapping’ method)
- Inner Work
Our times call for an order of personal responsibility and leadership never before seen in human history. Let’s get on with it!
TO STAY IN THE LOOP, register here.
