vesterberg.se

Peter Senge, a well-known professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and founder of the Society for Organizational learning (SoL) was interviewed in Jakarta Post recently.

We got two curves that are creating big problems. One is the growing interdependence of the world…and a diminishing capacity to understand interdependence.The further human society drifts away from nature, the less we understand interdependence.

So if you deal with tribal cultures, prior to the agricultural revolution, many of them don’t even have a sense of themselves as separate from nature. They usually don’t have even a word for nature. You don’t have a word from something that’s not separate from you.

Agrarian societies developed a slightly different attitude, believing it was humans who initiate the “natural” systems, which were often highly religious, and that humans are separate and superior.

During the industrial revolution and the subsequent urbanization process, human beings began to ignore nature. “There’s a lot of American kids think their food comes from the grocery store and the concept of seasonality has no meaning to them whatsoever.”

The further people are from nature, the more they lost the ability to understand interdependence. “Nature is our teacher to understanding interdependence

Other posts about this subject you might want to read:
The partnership paradigm
Ishmael
The necessity of diversity
Connecting to nature

In an interesting article in Culture Change called “Living now, naturally and sustainably via relocalizing“, Dave Ewoldt traces the root of our global crisis back to a fundamental disconnection from the natural world.

He describes the dominator paradigm that our industrial civilization has been built upon.

The systemic root of our disconnection from nature can be directly traced to the dominator paradigm which started conquering and subverting egalitarian cultures 6-8,000 years ago, and was firmly ensconced by 2,000 BC. As detailed by author Riane Eisler, this paradigm consists of force-based ranking hierarchies of control (humans over nature, men over women, one race over another) that are built on and maintained by fear.

In this paradigm individualism reigns and “the others” are thought of as inferior and thus morally acceptable to exploit for personal profit. We in our civilization, even assume that we must use this control for the sake of human progress and prosperity.

The root has to be removed. A fundamental change of paradigm is needed.  The antidote is to reconnect with nature in a systemic way.

Healthy ecosystems can be looked to for providing the models and metaphors humans require for becoming sustainable and creating mutually supportive relationships.

Sustainability is a key. The author defines it as

integrating our social and economic lives into the environment in ways that tend to enhance or maintain ecosystems rather than degrade or destroy them; a moral imperative to pass on our natural inheritance, not necessarily unchanged, but undiminished in its ability to meet the needs of future generations; finding, and staying within, the balance point amongst population, consumption, and waste assimilation where bioregions, watersheds and ecosystems maintain their ability to recharge and regenerate.

The other antidote is to relocalize

In the human built environment and in the social institutions we create, the process to become sustainable — to holistically integrate our activities with the natural world — is provided by a systemic concept known as relocalization. This is the antithesis as well as the antidote to corporate globalization. Relocalization includes the concepts that we must rebuild our local economies to be self-reliant; recapture our sense of place and belonging; reclaim our sovereignty; and restore our communities of mutual support.

The author describes the need to return to local autonomy, to bio-regional networks of interdependence where production and distribution of food, goods, services and energy is as close to the point as consumption as possible. Living organisms have a strong tendency to self-organize into mutually supportive relationships. Nature is resilient and we need to build our society that way.

Using the four core Natural Systems Principles — mutual support and reciprocity, no waste, no greed, and increasing diversity — to inform the process of relocalization, we can replace the dominator paradigm with a paradigm of partnership, and we can overcome and heal our disconnection and separation from the web of life.

Reconnecting to nature and relocalizing are effective strategies for the future, according to the author. The dominator paradigm should be changed to a partnership paradigm.

Here are some more articles published by Dave Ewoldt.

I believe the main reason we have to start thinking in this direction is that we live embedded in a larger system. Our civilization is part of something bigger, whether we like it or not. We can perhaps create our own rules to a certain extent and for a period of time, but sooner or later the laws of the surrounding system will enforce themselves.

We like to look at things in small and understandable pieces and we trace simple paths from cause to effect. We see the causes of our problems as something “out there”, instead of something “in here”. In reality our band-aid solutions only creates further problems, because our perspective is too narrow. Our only real option is to see ourselves in a bigger context and find out, cooperate with and learn from the surrounding system..

How could relocalizing be expressed concretely for a country or a city? What steps could we take to realize it?

Other posts about this subject you might want to read:
Ishmael
The necessity of diversity
Connecting to nature

We have many interesting initiatives in Sweden; I have written about Tällberg Foundation earlier. We also have the Stockholm Resilience Centre, which was started in January 2007. It is an international centre that focuses on research for governance of social-ecological systems with a special emphasis on resilience. The term social-ecological means that humans  must be seen as a part of, not apart from, nature.

What is resilience? Wikipedia says:

Resilience is the property of a material to absorb energy when it is deformed elastically and then, upon unloading to have this energy recovered.

Stockholm Resilience Centre defines it this way:

Resilience refers to the capacity of a social-ecological system both to withstand perturbations from for instance climate or economic shocks and to rebuild and renew itself afterwards.

A resilient system is prepared for change and can deal with it and survive. It bounces back after challenges and shocks. Its goals are sustainability. Nature is designed this way.

Most of our man-made systems have developed in the other direction. We desire efficiency, maximized production and monetary profit. Diversity is suffocated. Healthy buffering is removed and just-in-time is what counts. The result is short-sightedness. We get fragile and nervous systems. In economical turbulence, when one fall – many others fall. We have to identify the dangerous policies and exchange them for resilient policies, whether it be in the social, economical or any area.

Stockholm Resilience Centre have a lot of interesting videos at their site, many interviews and some seminars. For example, have a look at an interview with Buzz Holling, a well-known researcher on this subject.

It seems that people has problems understanding the seriousness of global warming. We look at exponential curves in diagrams, but somehow perceive them as linear. When we have found one cause to a problem, we stop searching and we believe that by resolving that single problem everything is OK. Our common way of thinking is linear, simple cause and effect, while reality is circular dependent and complex.

We have a hard time imagining even the simplest feedback loop system. Why is it so? Because we have not been trained in this way of thinking, systems thinking. The human being is good at conceptualizing, but we have been walking on the wrong path here. I find this challenge of training people in systems thinking so interesting. From pre-schooling to university studies, this way of thinking should penetrate our conceptualization, because this is how the world works.

I came across this very interesting blog called Climate Interactive – vigorous sharing of user-friendly simulations. What a great initiative! Making climate simulators easy to understand and accessible to a larger audience. These fellows arrange workshops with decision-makers, where a key ingredient is role-playing, giving simulated but first-hand experience what will happen. The organisation behind this initiative Sustainability Institute is working on a simulator called Pangaea that will be available on-line soon as it appears.

Simulators and games are a great way to learn in an easy way. I will continue to search for more of this and give you a report. Imagine having first a thought-provoking, engaging and participative simulation/gaming-session and after that a  world cafe conversation sharing thoughts and feelings.

I and my friend Daniel Norman arranged a Green World Café last week at the Red Cross in our town. It was the first in a series of four, with the last one taking place in November at a big sustainable fair in Umeå. We had a great time with every one actively exploring the two questions of the night; they were “what is a sustainable lifestyle?” and “What is our personal responsibility?”. It is all too easy to get paralyzed or passivated concerning environmental issues, believing that it is only experts, politicians and technology that can make a change. No, we can make a change if we are many and if we begin to think together!

What is a World Café, you may ask? It is a way to have conversations in small groups and explore a given theme. It was originally “invented” by Juanita Brown and David Isaacs. They put together a number of proven principles about dialogue, creative thinking, appreciative inquiry and collective intelligence and it has been used successfully, world-wide in different contexts. The conversations in small groups build on each other as people move between groups (tables), ideas are cross-pollinated and people discover new insights into the questions that we choose to discuss. Seeing things from a broader perspective is a key.

We tried to create a relaxed and inviting café-atmosphere. The age-span was wide and we had people from all kinds of backgrounds. It is very exciting to look at diversity as strength. By having these cafés we hope to inspire people and help them to become more active to explore a sustainable lifestyle on their own. I really look forward to the next meeting, Oct 8. We have a swedish site about these meetings. You will find it here.

A few months ago, while scanning the web for interesting books, I stumbled over Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. I understood by the commotion the book has caused, that it was special. I bought it and saved it for a suitable moment. A week ago I was up trekking in the Swedish mountains and during the evenings in the tent I read it.

Ishmael

The book explores the problems of humankind. The two characters are an old gorilla and a man. The gorilla, Ishmael, has studied ecology and the human condition. He can somehow communicate telepathically. He is looking for students and through an ad in a newspaper this man becomes his student. Ishmael, little by little, mostly through challenging questions, unfolds the true nature of our culture. Slowly the man (and the reader) realizes the cause of mans destructive behaviour and what can be done about it.

Enacting a story

Our “culture” is relatively young, only some 10,000 years. Humans existed on earth for about 3 million years before that. Something entered that made the human civilization destructive, Ishmael explains.

Behind our culture there is a story. It is so familiar that few is conscious of it or questions it. The story, or really the myth, was formed long ago and is still invisibly ruling our minds. Ishmael talks about “Mother Culture” humming in the background, telling her story over and over again. We are enacting it, that is, we live so as to make the story a reality. The truth is that we are unknowingly held captive by a system of thoughts that controls our actions and puts us at odds with the world.

The takers

A key theme in story of our culture is that earth belongs to man. Everything on it is ours to use and exploit. Man is like a biological exception and the end product of the creation. As a consequence he thinks he is free to live outside the laws that keep the rest of the living community together, Ishmael tells us. Man wants to grow without limit. This is how our culture thinks: We kill off everything we can’t eat or use for our purposes. We kill off everything that eats what we eat. We kill off anything that doesn’t feed what we eat. Ishmael calls our civilization the takers.

It seems man has difficulties to live side by side with other creatures. Up until recently we believed that everything would get better and better, but now as a consequence of us breaking the laws, disaster is coming. The laws hold for everything living on earth.

It is easy to believe that something is fundamentally wrong with man and that we cannot do anything about it. This is another myth that has held us captive. We are not evil by nature, Ishmael says, we just act according to our story.

Ishmael believes that the world can be saved only through a radical mind shift. Legislation cannot do it. People have to realize the hidden story that governs our civilization and replace it with something else; we need a different story to enact.

The leavers

Ishmael also describes the alternate story, which he calls the story of the Leavers; the one we ought to listen to and learn from. The premise of the leaver story is that man belongs to earth and is a part of the world as the rest of the living creatures are. People have been living this way before our culture and is still so living today. The takers call them “the primitives”, look down on them and despise their way of living. Still their story and their attitude to life is a key to the survival of mankind, Ishmael thinks.

Ishmael does not believe that we should return to our former primitive hunter-gatherer existence, nor does he think that technology is evil in itself or that science should be rejected. What we need is to humble ourselves and reconsider our place and purpose in the living community.

Creating a world

The book really gave me much to think about. I believe Ishmael is right. We are the takers and we ought to learn from the story of the leavers. By thinking together we can disclose the false myths and find out the true story to enact. We create a world with our story, by thinking, talking and acting.

Novels

To communicate deep and challenging truths through storytelling and novels can get your thoughts going like nothing else. Why is it so? It is because in a novel you have a richer palette of expressions. Many things are hidden and you have to work and participate with the story to fully understand. The author uncovers his intentions little by little in metaphors, parables and through the characters thoughts and feelings.

When you reach the end of a good book, you want to read it again. You might have missed something. That’s precisely what I did. I immediately started to read Ishmael a second time. We need more novels like this!

Rousseau said (1754):
“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody”

There are a number of sites dedicated to Ishmael:
Friends of Ishmael Society
Read Ishmael
Ishmael.org

So, some people have begun to understand the message about sustainable living. They are stirred on the inside and want to take their responsibility. They change their lifestyle and choose products in a conscious way. But is it enough? Can their individual contributions make a change and turn the ship? Isn’t it today’s powerful global institutions, multinational companies and governments that decide the rules? How can we make our voices heard?

I have been thinking a lot lately on how to make best use of the new social tools we have these days like blogs, newsgroups, email, mobile phones, etc. As never before we can connect and coordinate. Information can be spread in a moment’s notice to millions. Media coverage is no longer governed by professionals. Coordination is no longer only possible by well-managed organizations. These tools can be a real boost to democracy.

While looking for resources on this subject I stumbled over “Here comes everybody” by Clay Shirky. I finished reading his book today. In this very interesting book these things are discussed, with many examples of how the new social tools make a difference. The success of Flickr, Twitter, MySpace, Meetup, Wikipedia and Linux are examined. The author also compares similar stories that occurred some 10 years ago and again recently. He shows how amateur journalism totally changes the landscape of information distribution. Stories that for different reasons media or organizations decide to suffocate can spread in spite of that. The open software movement shows that complex cooperation is possible.

A big question in the past has been whether a task was best dealt with by the state, directing the effort in a planned way, or by businesses competing in a market. Now there is a third way; we can have action by loosely structured groups, operating without managerial direction and not motivated by profit. Clay Shirky puts it this way: “We used to have a world where little things happen for love and big things happen for money…Now though, we can do big things for love.”

I would like to explore and discuss these social patterns and tools. I work with software development and we talk about agile development. Agile means that we are quick to create a solution and, if needed, quick to modify it. I believe that with an agile attitude we can make use of social tools with the purpose of creating public opinion in environmental issues. Yes, we write in our blogs and forums, but I believe we can stretch further. If we are aware of the potential, we can tailor the use of tools according to our purpose and audience. Social software makes possible what 10 years ago was impossible. We can make our voices heard, multiply and create landslides.

Some weeks ago I saw a report from Ecuador made by a Swedish film team. People in the rainforest are today suffering from ruined health because of oil exploitation done in the past. Between 1970 and 1990, Texaco (now Chevron) pumped 200,000 barrels of oil a day from over 400 drilling sites in the rainforest. When they left they made a half-hearted cleanup and managed to get the government to sign a document that clearance was ok. Today there is oil in rivers and canals. There are open basins with oil that contaminates the area and because of all this; people are suffering from sicknesses. A mother was interviewed in the program; both she and her daughter had cancer.

A lawsuit has been going on for many years against Texaco. The lawyer from Chevron was interviewed and showed no understanding or concern at all. He said “We have signed a legal document. This is not our business. The tribes just want to make some money on this”. Texaco earned millions of dollars, but left the place in a mess. Now they spend money on attorneys instead of taking responsibility for their exploitation.

So Chevron has a signed, legal document that says: “we are not guilty”. In business a legal document is very real. But there is something greater than the business world, something that encompasses market economy and that is life itself. Is it enough to have a signed paper? Is a legal paper the final authority? In a fragmented world view, yes, but I would say that Texaco is still guilty in a larger perspective. To have a narrow view of the world is really dangerous. The capital has its rules, but they cannot be allowed to violate the rules of life. Seeing the whole picture is the only right perspective. We have a saying in Sweden that you shouldn’t cut off the branch you’re sitting on. How true isn’t that!

I would have loved to find some email-addresses to the fighters over there; don’t give up. Your fight for your rights has echoed all the way to Sweden. What can we do?

I recently visited a meeting at the Swedish Red Cross in my home-town. The meeting was led by a group of volunteers that work with refugees. They told us about their work and how they assist the refugees in finding lost relatives, medical issues, and contact with authorities and all kinds of things. These Red Cross people are genuinely interested in the welfare of immigrants and refugees. All for free. I was touched by their concern. They include these foreigners in their own world.

Group identification

People tend to identify themselves with different kinds of groups. Belongingness is said to be one of the basic human needs. But this identification often creates a distance to people not belonging to the chosen group. I’ m male and not female. I’m a house owner and not an apartment owner. I live on the east side of town and not on the west side. I’m a Swede and not from middle Europe. I’m a technician and not a sales person. I’m a jazz guy and not one of those metal lovers. It easily becomes a us and them situation. As a result we give attention and help to those on the inside and blame those on the outside. Their problems are certainly not our problems. We are not concerned about the welfare for them. Why should we care? This is natural for us and ingrained in our thinking. Belonging to a group gives us safety and shelter.

In reality our identification with limited groups becomes a cage and a prison with walls that separate us from the others. We are deprived of fellowship and cooperation and fear and suspiciousness thrives. It is the main source of conflicts and ultimately wars. It is negative for us and for others. It is very negative for the whole and is against the very nature of life.

Human being

What would happen if we widened our identification? Our group is a system, but it is enclosed in a bigger system. What would happen if we considered ourselves as foremost human beings? Then there would be no “others” and cooperation and sharing would be possible in a different way. Their problems would become our problems and we would strive to understand each other. We have a lot of imagined boundaries and borders, but the truth is that we are in the same boat. We are humans on this earth. This doesn’t mean that we have to say goodbye to diversity of cultures and opinions. Diversification on the contrary will make us strong.

Some weeks ago I visited a large shopping centre in town. As I strolled there with my cart, I was thinking on these things and suddenly I realized how much prejudiced opinions of people that were in my mind. I saw how I kept people at a distance. It was like walls coming down in my mind. I had to stop for a while and I looked at people around me with new eyes. That experience really affected me.

Living being

We can take this widening of identification a step further. Think about our environment. Here we have a us and them situation also. We have lived disconnected from nature for centuries, believing that nature is there for us to use, spoil and degrade. Nature was seen like a machine and we were the operator, running it according to our plans. These days we try to improve on our behaviour concerning environment. We try to do a little here and a little there, but we have to go deeper than that.

The problem is that we don’t see ourselves as a part of the living world. The truth is that we are but one member of the web of life, deeply dependent on the other species. Some walls have to come down here also. The lips cannot say to the lungs, I don’t need you. This is literally true in these days and thinking something else would be very stupid.

Heart

Somehow this has to come into our hearts. It’s not enough to just speculate about it or have knowledge about it. It’s a heart-thing. We try the best we can, but not until it touches our hearts, there will be a real change and things will speed up. A mind shift is needed.

What difference would it make in your life if some walls of separation came down? How could you accelerate this process in your life? There is both a negative side and a positive side concerning sustainable living. We have to do it, or we will perish. On the positive side, what would the positive effects be in your life?

We have been taught that nature is a place of competition and that different species must struggle for existence. Darwin wrote “All nature is at war, one organism with each other or with external nature.” Man is supposed to be the one which has climbed the highest and now dominates nature. Obviously we have exerted dominion. But Darwin’s ideas were influenced by the prevalent classical, mechanical view of nature. He considered each species in isolation. Darwin’s theory was an insufficient explanation of what was going on in nature, a limited model.

Many scientists are reevaluating Darwin’s model today. It is evident that there is a lot of cooperation going on. The fact is that nature is a web of life where the species cooperate and need each other. There is no waste. Everything is reused. All organisms are dependent on the others for the completion of their life cycles. Each one has found its own niche.

During the last three decades a revolution has occurred in the life sciences that has enlarged the framework for understanding the dynamics of evolution. In this view, the relationship between parts or individual organisms is often characterized by continual cooperation, strong interaction and mutual dependence.

For example, the fossil records indicate that the temperature and composition of the Earth’s atmosphere have been continuously regulated by the whole of life during the last million years, even though the intensity of the Sun has changed quite much. The least discrepancy would have resulted in catastrophe and a sterile planet. We have millions of species interacting by complex feedback loops. Here diversity is a necessity and key to survival of life on planet earth.

We are surrounded and composed by microorganisms, bacteria, germs and they are indispensable to every known living structure on Earth today. These tiny fellows are not way down on the evolutionary ladder. They are the building blocks of life at this instant.

The more diverse a system is, the more resilient it is and the more able it is to withstand stress. This is the way the world operates. Obviously we should join its way of operating. Yet man has fought diversity through colonialism and industrialization. In the spirit of old Darwinism we spread out and conquered the world, ignorant of our true dependency of own environment.

If the Darwinian model is the ultimate model; we are at war, and our hope to stop this craziness is in vain. But the more I realize that the nature is cooperation and that diversity is actually a strength, the more hope rises in me. Life is all around us. Man ought to realize his place in the web of life and begin to cooperate.

As you can understand from my blog I am thinking and reading a lot along these lines. There is always a personal application also. As I was out walking with my dog today, I meditated over being part of the web of life. Fascinating. A responsibility.