Taking cheerful responsibility for the whole

Many of us who are environmental and social activists operate from a one-down position. We do our bit through our local efforts, but we do not expect the whole system to change to become healthy and viable. Indeed, it appears that we generally do not even contemplate the possibility.

As a result, we operate within a 'glass ceiling of possibility' that unnecessarily constrains our influence. What if we are potentially far more influential than we realise? How might we get past our taken for granted limits?

One possibility comes from Ihaleakala Len, a Hawaiian healer. He takes the position that “I am responsible for everything I see - good and bad. It is all inside of me.” Responsibility in this context does not imply guilt or blame. It simply means that I observe that something is out of balance, and I choose to use my influence to correct it.

My influence has limits, of course. But the constraints may be less than I suppose. A physical metaphor from Aikido (a Japanese martial art) may be in order here.

Suppose an attacker grasps my arm with a powerful grip. If I struggle against him I may get nowhere.

However, I am stuck only because I struggle against the constraint. The constraint is real - he has my arm - but I need not allow him to control the rest of me. I can relax my arm and allow the rest of my body to move around my shoulder joint. Indeed, I can turn my body in a way that enables me to put my free arm around his shoulder and take him down.

So - in some ways we are constrained, and in other ways we are free to move.

Systems thinking comes in here as well. As I often say (following Donella Meadows) the most influential point of change in any human system is in people's thinking. Action follows. If we can catalyse a commitment to sustainable wellbeing as our national priority in Australia, many practical on the ground activities will become far easier. In addition, we will discover fresh possibilities for creating a healthy and viable society that never occurred to us before. So a commitment to whole system change and a passion for on-the-ground activity go together.

My suggestion, then, is that

· We each choose to take personal responsibility for evolving a viable society
· We think through what such an evolution entails
· And we publicly state and act upon our commitment

We shift from being intimidated by the system to accepting that we are responsible for the system and we are changing it. And we enlist others to join us.

Don't scare the kiddies

Green activists have long been advised to not scare people with doomsday scenarios. People's eyes will glaze over and they will tune out, the activists are told. We may call this the Don't scare the kiddies syndrome.

At one level, the advice is realistic. People don't want to hear bad news, much less have it shouted at them.

Our question is: how can we engage people in coming to grips with the fact that we are in an ecological crisis and things are getting worse?

One tip comes from an instructor at the Institute of foreign affairs in Washington, DC. He observed that if a group was practising conversational French or German in a circle, and the instructor made a correction from across the circle, people experienced the correction as criticism, and responded defensively. He discovered, however, that if the instructor went around the circle and gently whispered the correction in the person's ear, the correction was received as helpful coaching.

Perhaps the principle here is friendly intimacy versus confrontation. It is true that people do not want to be lectured at. Perhaps if we can create conversational spaces in a context of mutual regard people will come to grips with the enormity of our situation, and begin to think proactively about how to deal with it instead of tuning out.

Two major gaps

The primary gap is that people do not get that global warming is now a global emergency with a short timeframe, and that in terms of trends this also true of other ecological issues.

Climate scientists such as James Hanson assert that we are in a global emergency is because we have already reached tipping points, such as the warming of Siberian lakes (which are now releasing methane) where natural processes will accelerate planetary heating independent of human activity.

So a crucial point of change is to devise vehicles whereby people will realise that we are in a global emergency, and we should respond accordingly.

The second gap is that few people realise - or are willing to accept - that our whole economic system is organised to make global warming worse. Advertising promotes excess consumption of things people don't necessarily need or even enjoy. Increasing production requires more energy - most of which comes from power plants that release greenhouse gases. As economist Ross Garnaut is reported to have said, "Economic increase would be a good thing if it were not for its effects on the environment.”

So we have a Great Contradiction between economic increase and ecological sustainability. It is true that energy use can be dramatically reduced by applying advanced methods of integrated industrial design as described in Amory Lovins Natural Capitalism. However energy increase, not energy use reduction, is currently the major policy thrust, and policy in this regard is driven by the perceived need for increased commercial activity.

So the point of change here is for people to understand how our whole system is currently organised to increase global warming. Chapter 4 of Evolving a World That Works has a set of diagrams that a facilitator can go through step-by-step to enable people to see the connections.

Given our debt loads, concern for mortgage repayments and economic aspirations, the prospect of slowing the economy is really threatening to many people. Indeed, it is not even mentioned in major policy considerations. Reference is always made to the importance of maintaining a thriving economy. Hence the relevance of my joke in the previous post.

A third knowledge gap, more optimistically, is that there is reason to believe that advanced methods of organic farming, combined with 'biochar’, a method of producing and burying charcoal, have the potential to rapidly pull CO2 out of the atmosphere, and thus pull us back from the brink of global warming.

For this to work would require in a national commitment and investment on a scale similar to what happens when nations go to war. In other words, governments do not rely on market forces such as carbon credits, but pay farmers directly to have the work done.

Your money or your life

I like jokes that illustrate deeper points.

Robber: Your money or your life!

Scotsman: Take my life, I'm saving my money for my old age.

Social change for a viable society

Many people think that humanity is at a critical point, where things will unravel horribly, or through some miracle of good will and committed action take an extraordinary turn for the better.

The purpose of this essay is to outline a vision of how to accelerate our evolution to a viable society. Our proper intention is not to just ‘move towards’ being viable, but to actually succeed. There are many positive initiatives already.

While the technical side of sustainability is crucial - renewable energy, highly efficient industrial design, etc - the mental side is even more important, since our values, intentions and ways of thinking direct all of our behaviours. Our mindsets, not our technology per se, will determine whether we create a viable future or not.

This essay is in two parts. Part One gives a broad brush overview of what's involved in a viable society, giving special attention to the core values of a healthy society. I discuss experiential methods of personal development that can help us become the kind of people who can create and enjoy a sustainable society. Finally I comment on how the healthy values of a sustainable society can be embedded in organizations.

It is one thing to have great ideas well articulated in books and articles. But ideas are useless unless we use them to change our personal behaviour - and on a larger scale the organisation of our institutions.

So Part Two of this essay outlines a national educational movement that will engage people in thinking through what is needed to create a healthy and viable society. As an outcome we intend to inspire people to do the necessary personal training and organisational change to evolve a wonderful society. Our vehicle to catalyse this movement is the Alliance for Sustainable Wellbeing.
Part One: What it will take to evolve a viable society

Our whole system is involved

Global warming has become our great environmental wake-up call. If we ask, "What factors tend to increase global warming," we see that virtually our entire economic and social system is involved. At the most basic level, increasing consumption requires increased energy, most of which currently comes from fossil fuel. Then we note that advertising increases demand, and people’s emotional discontent (expressed in retail therapy, aggressively seeking the symbols of wealthy status, and war) make them vulnerable to advertising. Overall our economy and our personal lifestyles are organised to increase GDP; this is inconsistent with achieving ecological sustainability. The task of this century is do develop vastly more ecologically benign technologies, and we already have the design strategies to do so. But given the way our society currently works, Ross Garnaut was right when he said, "Economic growth would be a good thing, if it weren't for its effects on the environment."

It would appear that few people have thought this through. Many of us 'think in silos', with most of our thinking focused on our professional specialties. Or perhaps we just do our jobs, get by as best we can, and relax with beer and barbecue on the weekends. We don't see the big picture and the deep core drivers, even though we are worried. She'll be right mate, and I’ve got to take care of me. And yet, just as termites gnaw away the foundations of a grand old house, whether we take note of it or not our ecological foundations are eroding away rapidly.

The big question: What will it take to evolve a viable society?

For some years I have explored the question of what will it take to create a viable society - a society that is ecologically sustainable, socially healthy and pleasurable to live in. I have found that there are well worked out ideas for constructive change in every sphere from economics to personal psychology. We know in principle how to create a wonderful society.

Our challenge is to find ways to make the possible real.

The most influential leverage point is in people's thinking

Systems thinker Donella Meadows points out that the most influential point of change in any human system is in people's thinking. We may take 'thinking' in a broad sense to mean people's understanding of the world, their strategies for achieving their goals, their goals themselves, their feelings and their core values. We should also include people's unconscious mental drives as well.

The way people think determines their personal behaviour. It also affects how groups and whole societies operate. For example, as people have come to appreciate the value of organic food, the organic farming sector is growing rapidly, and the larger grocery chains now have an organic section. Schools are being pressured to provide more nutritious lunches.

This change did not come through top down mandate, but through grass roots excitement. One flow-on effect will be healthier children, which is just the kind of cultural evolution we want.

In a democracy ‘leadership’ cannot usually get too far ahead of the people. If this is true, then we may say that healthy political change emerges from an informed and caring populace. The key point of change is not the government, although political leadership is important, but the population at large.

Partnership or dominator - which value system will shape our future?

I believe that the most significant driver that shapes both individual relationships and society is people's core values. And, while there are many flavours, nuances and mixtures, at root there are just two fundamentally contrasting core values. The brilliant systems thinker Riane Eisler calls them partnership/respect values and domination/control values.

In The Power of Partnership Riane Eisler observes:

In the domination model, somebody has to be on top and somebody has to be on the bottom. Those on top control those below them. People learn, starting in early childhood, to obey orders without question. They learn to carry a harsh voice in their heads telling them they are no good, they don't deserve love, they need to be punished. Families and societies are based on control that is explicitly or implicitly backed up by guilt, fear, and force. The world is divided into in-groups and out-groups, with those who are different seen as enemies to be conquered or destroyed.

In contrast, the partnership model supports mutually respectful and caring relations. Because there's no need to maintain rigid rankings of control, there is also no built-in need for abuse or violence. Partnership relations free our innate capacity to feel joy, to play. They enable us to grow mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. This is true for individuals, families, and whole societies. Conflict is an opportunity to learn and to be creative, and power is exercised in ways that empower rather than disempower others.

Partnership relating is oriented towards the wellbeing of the community (as well as being mindful of one’s own self interest). Partnership values find expression in democracy, in the caring aspects of organised religion, and in the growing concern to protect ecological systems. The archetypal form is a mother working for the wellbeing of each member of her family.

Dominator relating uses force and intimidation to establish one’s own advantage over others at the expense of the community. It is orientated more towards conquering than towards collaborating. The archetypal forms of this are patriarchal: fathers dominating their families and emperors conquering vast territories.

Partnership and dominator are two contrasting approaches to life that operate on every level of human endeavour from childrearing to global governance. Many aspects of dominator behaviour are truly horrific, both historically and in terms of current events. Therefore it is important to know that in important respects humanity is overall becoming healthier and more balanced, and that there is a strong positive trend that may ultimately set the tone for a positive future.

In my view Eisler’s insight is as important in the social sphere as Einstein's E = MC² is in physics. It enables us to be clear about the deep attitudes and resulting behaviour that will lead either to a sustainable society that is pleasurable to live in, or to the miserable doomsday scenarios that some ecologists predict. Our core values are even more important than technology for dealing with global warming, because they affect the kind of technology we choose and our overall commitment to make the changes necessary for us to become ecologically sustainable.

Dominator values are in the ascendancy

Dominator values have been in the ascendancy since the rise of the first city-states in the Middle East. The city-states evolved into empires, complete with armies, slaves and subjugated colonies. Women were subjugated as well.

We might call this ‘the pattern of empires’. The society and economic system is organised so that wealth and material goods flow from the periphery to the centre (all roads lead to Rome) and also from the bottom up, so that massive wealth accumulates at the top.

We may take this as ‘normal’, since we are so used to it. But in fact it is only one way of organising society. Our thesis is that this particular road is inherently self-destructive. The drive to maximise profit at the expense of individuals, communities and the earth itself is an unsustainable basis on which to organise a society or a global civilisation.

Obviously promoting community wellbeing and the wellbeing of all individuals within our society is not a predominate mainstream value. Instead we have competitive individualism and an emphasis on increasing our Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

There is a strong partnership movement going on

Shifting to community wellbeing is the basis for a hopeful future. David Korten spells this out clearly in The Great Turning: from Empire to Earth Community.

Western civilisation has had a partnership counter trend for more than two millennia. The rise of democracy in Greece, Christianity, and the inception of the United Nations are all expressions of a partnership current, however flawed. At more personal levels, today in many respects women have gained equality with men. Many parents are raising their children with less violence and more empathic respect, and some schools are giving students more autonomy. Unprecedentedly, millions of people around the world protested prior to the invasion of Iraq. Environmental activist Paul Hawken notes that there are now hundreds of thousands of NGOs around the world springing up to deal with social and ecological issues.

In short, there is a strong movement of people with partnership values going on. It is not centrally organised, which is fitting, and it is not remarked upon in the mainstream press. The good news is that it exists. The bad news is that it does not yet set the tone in most institutions, or in larger social policy. It should, if we are to evolve to a viable society.

Intention organises behaviour. If a society has dysfunctional goals, then those of us who care should advocate healthy goals. The merging term for a healthy goal is wellbeing. We should be aiming for wellbeing rather than sheer economic increase as our national priority.

A society devoted to wellbeing for its citizens will reorganise for ecological sustainability, social health and, I always add, creating a society that is pleasurable to live in. Pure utilitarianism falls far short of our potential for a joy, love, wonder and delight, and only a crass mentality would demand less in this regard rather than more.

If we were to shift to a national focus on furthering wellbeing, practical actions at a number of different levels would follow.

First, we would launch programs to enable people to understand the difference between partnership and dominator relating, and the real-world consequences that follow from each style of behaviour. In today's language, we would make the business case from a society wide point of view for partnership values setting the tone. The business case is strong: continuing the dominator mode will destroy the conditions of business itself.

Second, we would encourage programs to increase people's understanding and capacity for partnership relating. Many techniques that are useful for this already exist. They includes Conflict Resolution, interpersonal communication training, facilitation training, Crucial Conversations, yielding martial arts such as Tai Chi and Aikido, the Feldenkrais method of body awareness, Synectics, and improvisational acting, among others.

These all serve to develop the skills of partnership relating as functional patterns in the central nervous system.

It is not common to talk about the nervous system in the context of social change. But thinking about the nervous system adds a crucial perspective.

Both partnership and dominator are ways of 'operating’ our brains. That is, they are ways of processing information and organising behaviour that are mediated by the central nervous system. Functionally, they are patterns of coordination between large groups of nerves. These patterns are developed experientially through trial and error.

The important point here is that partnership skills are not developed through words. We cannot learn to ride a bicycle from a manual or a philosophical tract; we have to get on the bike and try. We have to train if we are to learn martial arts. So if we want people to embody the skills of partnership relating, we must create vehicles where people can develop the skills experientially. Books won't do it.

Aiming for emotional balance

A major block to partnership relating is our unresolved psychological issues. They manifest as anger, hostility, resentment, low self-esteem, fears and anxiety. Child abuse, domestic violence, prescriptions for tranquillizers and antidepressants - along with alcoholism and retail therapy - are all indicators of mental imbalance in our society.

Less remarked upon, we might also include the behaviour of corporate leaders who knowingly make ecologically destructive decisions, and who oppose needed reform for ecological sustainability.

So there is reason to think that emotional imbalances drive both big time dominator behaviour (with war being the extreme) and compulsive consumerism.

Obviously many people would prefer to act out or avoid their psychological issues rather than go inside and confront their demons. This is to be regretted on their behalf as well as society’s. They have no way of knowing about the inner pleasure they might come to, or the new orders of profoundly moving sexual connection that could open up with their partners as they become more open and authentic.

There are many forms of psychotherapy and counseling. Probably all of them prove useful to different people at different times. Much depends on the skill of the counselor.

Recently new forms of ‘energy psychology’ have been developed that can greatly accelerate the process of emotional rebalancing. It has been discovered that emotional upsets are correlated with imbalances in our acupuncture energy system, and that simple techniques of stimulating acupressure points can rapidly rebalance the energy flow and restore emotional calm. Two of the best known methods are Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and its progenitor Thought Field Therapy (TFT). Importantly, they are excellent do-it-yourself techniques, although the assistance of a skilled practitioner can greatly aid at the beginning.

Inner work in its many forms can contribute to our evolution to sanity. People used to be stigmatised for ‘needing’ psychotherapy. However, if our goal is a healthy society, then we should honour people (and ourselves) for doing the inner work to become saner, more balanced, less violent and happier inside. Since other people's presence affects us directly - as ours also affects them - and the quality of their thinking and behaviour collectively affects our culture, we should encourage as much inner work as we can.

Preventing emotional damage

No parenting is perfect, and children can process well-intentioned acts in negative ways. Nevertheless, overall love is better than punishment, and prolonged threat damages the brain.

The most powerful prevention is simple: arrange for all new mothers (and fathers) who want it to be regularly visited and supported by caring parents who have some experience. This help can enable new parents to bring out more of their nurturing side, and rely less on violence. This has been tried in various places around the world. In a community in Colorado it lead to dramatic drops in teenage crime a decade after its inception. So the best way to develop partnership values is to be raised by loving respectful parents who can support you in your own passionate interests. Nice work if you can get it!

At quite a different level, supplying adequate nutrition - vitamins, minerals amino acids and so forth (ideally through organic food) - is relevant to both prevention and ‘cure’ of emotional imbalance. Many mood disorders are the result of inadequate nutrition. Give the developing brain what it needs and it will thrive. Some scientists who study food mechanically assert that there is no significant difference between organic food and food produced by industrial agriculture. But orthomolecular psychologists and nutritionists who work with disturbed children and adults are convinced that food produced by industrial agriculture is nutritionally deficient. They compensate for the deficiency with supplements, and find their theories confirmed by positive changes in mood and behaviour in their clients.

The ideas we have just introduced for accelerating a cultural change to a viable society all operate at a personal level. We looked at teaching people the difference between partnership and dominator relating (and the real world consequences of each style); modes of training the nervous system to operate in a partnership mode; and the importance to us individually and to society as a whole of resolving inner emotional issues.

Now let's go beyond the personal and look at organizations.

Changing organisations to operate on partnership values

If we want a partnership culture we will need to evolve partnership organisations. We are profoundly affected by the style of the institutions we participate in. Prolonged experience in authoritarian organisations tends to make us either dominators or people who acquiesce subserviently, although there are many exceptions. And organisations themselves affect the world in ways that are either life-positive or destructive.

It can be shown at every level that partnership values work ‘better’, in the sense of fostering pleasurable human relationships, more prosperous business units and peaceful international relationships.

Businesses that operate with a partnership culture tend to thrive. Research sponsored by the business Council of Australia shows that the managers of the best performing Australian work units operate with partnership values. When the researchers went on site often it was difficult at first to distinguish the managers from everybody else. The managers did not play up their status, and they clearly treated their workers with friendly respect.

Internationally, companies like Ricardo Semler's Semco in Brazil and Bill Gore’s (Goretec) group of companies in America demonstrate that companies with partnership values can thrive. Both companies give their workers enormous latitude for self-regulation. This inspires both innovation and commitment; people want to do a good job, and will do so when they can work out the best way on their own terms.

All of this is good news. It is an indication that after 5000 years of patriarchy, parts of our culture are evolving a healthy direction.

But citing particular instances of 'partnership being better’ is not the deepest point. I am espousing the view that our whole society needs to reorganise to operate on partnership values – a whole system change. Partnership relating must become our cultural style and aspiration, because the continuation of dominator values will destroy us as a viable civilisation. A healthy cultural tone must come to pervade everything. It must become 'the way we do things around here'.

The global economic system

The next scale up is to look at the global economic system. While this is clearly beyond the reach of ordinary people, there are aspects of it that affect us all.

Presently there are three main positions about how the global economic order should run.

The dominant one is a world with minimal trade barriers that increases trade. Most of the trade is conducted by large transnational organizations.

A modification of this supports open trade, but with rules that stringently protect the environment and workers rights. This might be regarded as a vision of a ‘positive evolution’ of the WTO.

The third vision is just the opposite. It calls for national governments to resist further steps to complete the open global economy, or to even withdrawal from some of the international agreements whereby governments have surrendered key aspects of legislative autonomy (such as the right to set higher at environmental standards than the WTO supports).

It is important for business leaders, think tanks and policymakers to think these issues through in the context of ecological sustainability and healthy societies - especially since increasing global trade increases greenhouse emissions.

Shock or personal development as the driver of social change?

Some people think that only an overwhelming disaster will move people sufficiently to shift the course of global civilization. This may be the case. However, if runaway global warming, our most imminent disaster, runs its predicted course, then it is simply all over for global civilization. Once the genie is out of the bottle - and the stopper is obviously seriously leaking- it cannot be put back on a human time scale.

Perhaps there is something to the ‘shock’ theory of change. On one view leaders of the United States and Britain were shocked by the World War II following so close on World War I., and they attributed the war is to economic stress. So they established three institutions to reduce the likelihood of war: United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. Even though the IMF and the World Bank have operated as dominator institutions, there was something good in the impulse.

Psychologist Claire Graves developed a theory that both individuals and cultures progress through shocks, and his theory was the genesis of a discipline known as Spiral Dynamics. I have seen individuals make positive shifts in their development prompted by shocks in their life. Shocks can be a wake-up call.

However, cultural development proceeds in another way as well. The shock that induces positive personal change only has that effect if the person or group involved uses it to make constructive internal changes. And today, using various personal growth vehicles as the means, many people are making profoundly positive personal changes without necessarily being driven by large shocks. They are motivated by a drive for inner wholeness and wellbeing,

On a much larger historical scale, psychohistorian Lloyd deMause cites evidence to show that in Western civilisation positive cultural changes have arisen because, mysteriously, mothers (and more recently fathers as well) have improved the nurturing quality of their childrearing. With less violence children grow up happier, and positive cultural evolution follows.

So we are faced with the question can we mobilise enough latent goodwill and perceptive intelligence to make the necessary changes without being traumatised by disaster?

Disasters are occurring right now. And things will get worse as environmental deficits already built into the system increasingly hit home. So we are really asking: can we in the developed world turn it around enough, in time, so that much that is good is preserved for the coming generations?

Obviously nobody knows the answer to this. We are testing whether there is enough latent goodwill to turn the tide.

While there is ample cause for despair I choose to be a committed optimist, and work for the good. I'm encouraged by my awareness of the many other people and groups who are working proactively in the same direction. I believe that the key point of change for evolving a viable society is that individuals, businesses, countries and indeed our global civilisation should consciously commit to individual and community wellbeing as our goal. Intention organises behaviour. This goal, no longer utopian but essential, should replace the goal of increasing gross national product and international trade.

Let's return to our starting premise: The most influential point of change in any human system is in people's thinking.

How can we improve people's thinking on a mass scale? In the next section I will describe a vehicle for doing this. It is called the Alliance for Sustainable Wellbeing.

Part Two: The Alliance for Sustainable Wellbeing

The Alliance goal is to facilitate a thoughtfully informed national movement in Australia that will shift Australian culture to ecological sustainability and social wellbeing.

As previously illustrated, as we as individuals change, the necessary social changes will follow. Therefore we offer tools and encourage leadership to help people

· Train personally to develop partnership relating skills and emotional balance

· Develop a big picture understanding of how our environment and social system currently interact, and identify positive points of change

· Form a positive intent to create a viable society

· Effect changes within organisations to operate on partnership values.

· Be prepared to support leadership for larger legislative and global governance changes.

These changes will improve our capacity to make the necessary technical changes to restore ecological systems, withdrawal atmospheric CO2 and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Our organising model

We will work through established organisations with positive values to establish engaged learning programs that affect the larger community.

There are many networks of people who have positive values and whose work is already contributing to the evolution of a healthy and sustainable society. They tend to operate in their own silos; they are potentially a hugely under-utilised resource for social change. They include environmental educators, organic farmers, union activists for workers rights, city planners, paediatricians and parent groups who care about children's health, psychotherapists, yoga teachers, alternative energy providers, and eco-architects.

Hopefully some members of these groups will reach out to friends and neighbours and start local discussions about the way forward to a viable society. If we succeed in this outreach model we will have found a way to get past preaching to the converted. We will also have found a way to bypass the mainstream media.

We will also offer short presentations, and personal development workshops (see below).

The idea of transitioning to a viable society needs to become as prominent. It needs to appear everywhere, and become part of the fabric of our worldview.

Therefore we hope to inspire people who are already trainers, speakers and writers to integrate a vision of transitioning to a healthy society into work they already do.

We also hope to inspire businesses to take a public stand along these lines:

[This business] is committed to evolving a viable society - a society that is ecologically sustainable, socially healthy and pleasurable to live in.

I look forward to the day when we regularly hear people in the media talking about various aspects of creating a viable society.

Support material

We have developed presentations, training materials, and a discussion group manual. They include:

• Orienting to a Hopeful Future - a PowerPoint presentation that uses dynamic graphics to help people understand key systems connections and identify the points of change that will enable us to become sustainable.

• Friendly Solutions - a workshop that helps people grasp the difference between domination/control relating and partnership respect relating. The workshop introduces personal development skills that enable us to become more emotionally centred and creative, and better able to relate in a ’partnership’ mode. It also gives participants a quick overview of cutting-edge technical changes necessary for civilisation to become viable.

The Friendly Solutions workshop is designed so that people from different disciplines can insert their own experiential material. It should be a springboard for participants to go further on their own.

• Evolving a World That Works - a discussion group manual for exploring the connections between ecology, industrial design, economics, personal psychology and the core values that will shape either a positive or a negative future. It can be downloaded from the Alliance website www.alliance4swb.com.au .

Funding

The Alliance will generate funds through memberships, in-house presentations and training for businesses, public workshops, and special projects.

Hopefully facilitators across Australia will generate substantial income by organising presentations and workshops through the Alliance.

Whether you are practitioner, businessperson, policy maker or concerned citizen, I invite you to join us in an endeavour few high civilisations have ever attempted: creating an ecologically sustainable, socially healthy society that is pleasurable to live in.

Future generations will thank us for it.