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Shared – dare I call it – WISDOM(these were compiled in 2005, based largely on my university and international development experience over the past 60+ years, as possible ‘testing questions’ for all theory & practice
• Ask of all theory & practice – what is it in the service of? – before supporting or copying it • Work mostly with ‘small meaningful achievable initiatives' vs. ‘Olympic-scale projects' (most of these are abandoned or fail, & have numerous negative side-effects) • Don’t get stuck in endless ‘measuring studies’ (‘monitoring our extinction’) – these are often designed to postpone change that is perceived as threatening to existing power structures • To achieve sustainable progressive change, focus (at least first) on enabling the ‘benign’ agendas of others vs. trying to impose on them your own ‘benign’ agendas • Focus on enabling the potential of people, society & nature to express itself – so that wellbeing, social justice & sustainability can emerge (in integrated, synergistic ways) • Collaborate across difference to achieve broadly shared goals – don’t end up isolated, alone in a ‘sandbox’ • Don’t let ‘end point’/goal differences prevent possibilities of early stage collaboration • Outcomes are only as good & sustainable as the people creating & implementing them – so start with the people; & remember that we are a relational/social species! • Use the media – let me repeat – use the media! – such ‘political’ communication is key to change • Work with business & the public/community; government will always follow, but rarely lead! • Celebrate publicly at every opportunity – to enable the good stuff to be ‘contagious’ • Keep working on & implementing – especially with others – your (shared) benign visions • Most of what is remains unknown – which is what wise people are able to work with; so devote most effort to developing your wisdom vs. your cleverness, which is just concerned with the very limited pool of what is known (Einstein was clear about this!) • Always be humble & provisional in your knowing, & always open to new experiences & insights
• Take small meaningful risks to enable progress, transformational learning & development • Devote most effort to the design & management of systems that can enable wellbeing, social justice & sustainability, & that are problem-proof vs. maintaining unsustainable, problem-generating systems, & devoting time to ‘problem-solving’, control, & input management • Work sensitively with time & space, especially from the position of the ‘others’ (ask: who, what, which, where, when, how, why, if & if not?) • Act from your core/essential self – empowered, aware, visionary, principled, passionate, loving, spontaneous, fully in the present (contextual) – vs. your patterned, fearful, compensatory, compromising, de-contextual selves • See no ‘enemies’ – recognise such ‘triggers’ as indicators of woundedness, maldesign & mismanagement – everyone is always doing the best they can, given their potential, past experience & the present context – these are the three areas to work with • Be paradoxical: ask for help & get on with the job (don’t postpone); give when you want to receive; give love when you might need it, or when you might feel hate • Learn from everyone & everything, & seek mentors & collaborators at every opportunity
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SEE THE
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Underground Ecosystems and the Subconscious: (presented in honour of leading soil scientist and humanitarian Professor Fred Bentley at the University of Alberta, Canada; 18 October 2007. Fred and his extended family attended the lecture; he died on 12 April 2008, aged 94)
Too often it is ‘the bits that we don’t see’, and are unaware of, that enable most systems to function. Yet society tends to focus just on the most attractive visible bits, neglects the rest, and is frequently surprised by the increasingly common expressions of system breakdown. This may be recognized at every level, from the individual to the biosphere, and from the local to the global. Examples of soil within terrestrial ecosystems and the subconscious within the human mind, and the complex interrelationships between them, are used here to illustrate this. Because such neglected resources (in fact, most of what is!) offer enormous opportunities for improved use, the future may be much more hopeful than is generally imagined. This potential may only be realized, however, through a radical paradigm shift in our thinking – indeed, only by taking the next step in our psychosocial evolution as a species: from an economics-obsessed, socializing (manipulative, controlling) culture to a higher values-based, life-enabling one. The late Australian farmer P.A. Yeomans’ ability to ‘create an inch of topsoil in three years’ is used here to illustrate the potential of such a change. Benefits may include genuinely sustainable managed ecosystems, conservation of biodiversity and maintenance of ecosystem services, wellbeing and meaning, non-violence and peace, and climate amelioration. The challenge facing us all at this time is how to best enable such a cultural transformation: from the ‘letting go’ of the fateful familiar, to the ‘letting come’ of the emerging new unfamiliar and often paradoxical ways of understanding and acting. This presentation covers the theory and practice of such a cultural transformation, with special reference to soil and psyche. It focuses on the processes involved in change, from the personal (psychology), to the environmental (ecology), to the socio-political (human, social and cultural ecology); and on small, meaningful initiatives that each of us can take in our various areas of influence in support of such a cultural transformation.
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Taking Appropriate Next Steps to Progressive Change:
In most 'modern' societies environmental governance (for responsible 'environmental maintenance’) remains a minor concern, an add-on, or minimalist, 'shallow' (green-wash) program, designed to avoid litigation and voter disquiet. It is the poor cousin of economic governance (for ongoing growth in productivity, profit, and associated inequitable access to power by the few).
The roots of this situation may be traced to our history of collective personal distress and oppression, associated compensatory behaviours, institutional accommodation of and support for this, and beliefs in futures based on extrapolation, substitution, control and curative product- and service-based responses to crises. This defensive, reactive, expert-based, back-end, problem-solving focus contrasts with our need for imaginative, proactive, front-end, design and redesign approaches to personal to planetary health and wellbeing.
Social ecology (Australian version), with its focus on the interrelationships between the personal, social, ecological and the 'unknown' (for some, the 'spiritual'), and sustainability, wellbeing and change, provides an effective, inclusive, evolving framework for reconceptualising our political structures and processes for enabling improved futures, and for supporting the ongoing psychosocial evolution of our species.
Appropriate next steps are deeply personal and highly context specific. This is why formulaic, centrally-directed and imposed change always fails to achieve its stated aims and invariably causes more problems than it solves. Consequently, the collaborative task is to design and implement institutional and community structures and processes that can enable all of us to take those appropriate next steps, and to evaluate, celebrate and learn our way forwards as we go. This presentation was designed to support this process through challenge, inspiration and the sharing of relevant stories, theory and practice.
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Psychological Roots of Sustainability: (presented to McGill University and John Abbott College in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC, Canada; 25 October 2007)
We must recognise that the numerous crises and challenges facing the planet, our communities, businesses, families and ourselves are interrelated; and that the dominant fragmented and curative (back-end) problem-solving approaches must give way to integrated, proactive (front-end) approaches that aim to design and manage systems to enable wellbeing at all levels; and our ongoing psychosocial evolution as a species.
To achieve this we must expand the boundaries of our habitual thinking and acting, and be open to major paradigm shifts and the transformation of all of our institutional structures and processes (particularly in relation to business, government, and our health and education systems). Achieving this as a species, and within our nations, communities and families, will require us to engage in profound personal change. This, in turn, will require the provision of more opportunities for transformative learning, and access to healing therapies, supportive spaces and initiatives that enable us to act on our potential.
P.A. Yeomans’ ‘Keyline’ approach to sustainable landscape design and management provides a powerful example of the kind of creative and courageous thinking that is required. The needed changes can be achieved by gaining a better understanding of the processes involved, by engaging in doable meaningful initiatives, and by celebrating the outcomes so that we may be inspired by and learn from one another.
This presentation provides relevant maps, models and case studies from over 40 years of experience by the presenter in over a dozen countries.
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Youth Creating Sustainable, Meaningful Futures
Our young people are our hope for the future. Youth that have rebelled, because they have rejected the status quo, are paradoxically the ones most likely to be both open to the much needed new ideas, and most committed to implementing the change required to achieve wellbeing for all; and to take the next step in our psychosocial evolution as a species. But our youth need to know this, and to have access to relevant programs and supports to enable them to rise to this challenge and opportunity. This will require a radical reframing of those aspects of youth work that have been over-focussed on problems and on having our young fit-in and go along with the flawed systems that have got us into our present problems.
This challenge is presented in relation to alternative visions for the future, root-level understanding of present systems and future possibilities (from the psychological to the political), and particularly with regard to the effective enabling of sustainable progressive change.
The Peckham Experiment in the UK provides an example of what can be achieved with this sort of thinking and acting: over 1,000 families having access to a particular kind of community centre over a 12-year period, with no bullying, little interest in competition, and high levels of wellness, creativity and caring. This gave us a glimpse of the next stage in our own psychosocial evolution as a species.
This presentation provides a framework for designing similarly progressive projects here and now.
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Professor Stuart B. Hill is Foundation Chair of Social Ecology at the University of Western Sydney
Locked Bag 1797, PENRITH SOUTH DC, NSW 1797, AUSTRALIA Co-Creator: Australian Society for Sustainable Business http://societyforsustainablebusiness.org/
Professor Stuart B. Hill is Foundation Chair of Social Ecology at the University of Western Sydney. At UWS he teaches units on Qualitative Research Methodology, Social Ecology Research, Transformative Learning, Leadership and Change, and Sustainability, Leadership and Change.
His PhD was one of the first whole ecosystem studies that examined community and energy relationships (1969); and it was the earliest such study conducted by a single researcher. For this he received the awards for Best PhD Thesis and Best PhD Student. In 1977 he received a Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal for his community and social transformation work.
In 1972, in Canada, he produced a report for the New Brunswick Government on Energy and Agriculture that detailed many of the resource, environment and climate issues that are at last being recognized today. Since then he has produced many more cutting edge reports, and has been an advisor to several ministers.
Prior to 1996 he was at McGill University, in Montreal, where he was responsible for the zoology degree, and where in 1974 he established Ecological Agriculture Projects, Canada’s leading resource centre for sustainable agriculture (www.eap.mcgill.ca).
His last PhD student at McGill was Ann Dale, who was on leave from the Privy Council Office, and who had played a major role in the establishment of the first ‘National Round Table for the Economy and the Environment’. Her thesis, which has been published as a book (At the Edge: Sustainable Development in the 21st Century, UBC Pr, 2001) examines what is needed for governments to deal responsibly with sustainability.
Hill has published over 350 papers and reports. His latest books are Ecological Pioneers: A Social History of Australian Ecological Thought and Action (with Dr Martin Mulligan; Cambridge UP, 2001) and Learning for Sustainable Living: Psychology of Ecological Transformation (with Dr Werner Sattmann-Frese; Lulu, 2008).
More recently he has contributed groundbreaking chapters to five books: Enabling redesign for deep industrial ecology and personal values transformation, in Industrial Ecology and Spaces of Innovation (2006); Redesign as deep industrial ecology: lessons from ecological agriculture and social ecology, in Industrial Ecology: A Question of Design?(2006); Social ecology as a framework for understanding and working with social capital and sustainability within rural communities, in A Dynamic Balance: Social Capital and Sustainable Community Development (2005);Learning Ecology: A New Approach to Learning and Transforming Ecological Consciousness: Experiences from Social Ecology in Australia, in Learning Toward An Ecological Consciousness: Selected Transformative Practices (2004); and Autonomy, mutualistic relationships, sense of place, and conscious caring: a hopeful view of the present and future, in Changing Places: Re-imagining Australia (2003).
In Canada he was a member of over 30 regional, national and international boards and committees. He is currently on the editorial board of five international refereed journals, and until 2004 he represented professional environmental educators on the NSW Council on Environmental Education.
Stuart has worked in agricultural and development projects in the West Indies, French West Africa, Indonesia, The Philippines, China, the Seychelles, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. His work in the Seychelles to make a whole coralline island completely self sufficient in food and energy is particularly significant.
His background in chemical engineering, ecology, soil biology, entomology, agriculture, psychotherapy, education, policy development and international development, and his experience of working with transformative change, has enabled him to be an effective facilitator in complex situations that demand collaboration across difference and a long-term co-evolutionary approach to situation improvement. These skills were used extensively in his recent role as Provocateur for the Victorian Government (for DPI & DSE: 2004-5).
Recent Keynotes at National Conferences include the following:
Hill, S.B. 2006. Taking Appropriate Next Steps to Progressive Change: Building on the Past and Risking Deep Transformation Towards More Sustainable Communities. Keynote to APEN ‘06 Int. Conf.: Practice change for sustainable communities: exploring footprints, pathways and possibilities [Beechworth, VIC; 6-8 March]
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