Visions of a healthier world

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. … It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”— Marianne Williamson (1992, p.190–191)

Visions of a healthier world can unite communities, cultures, and humanity into collective action. They can inspire us, as we are positively moving towards a thriving, healthy and sustainable future. It is a very different motivation than fearing peak oil, economic collapse, climate change, and resource wars.

We all contribute to making the world a healthier place for all of humanity and all of life every day, if we choose to do so. Every one of us counts in making the vision of a healthier world a reality. image

There are basically three ways to respond to the complexity of interrelated problems and opportunities we — as humanity and as individuals — are currently confronted with.

• The first option is the neurotic response: a denial of the fundamental change that is already occurring and a neurotic clinging to a business as usual that is no longer an option (‘Just keep shopping!’).
• The second option is a psychotic response: it acknowledges that times are changing and sees aggressive ways of gaining power over resources and people as a way to reduce the negative effects of those changes (‘If you are not with us, you are against us’).
• The third option is a transformative response: understanding change as a healthy process of transformation to a different way of seeing and being — actively envisioning, designing and creating healthier and more appropriate systems.

Ready for Anything: Designing Resilience for a Transforming World describes Hodgson’s World System Model that provides a deceptively simple way to frame our decisions in the context of everything that is going on in the world. image

Anthony Hodgson explores ways of facilitating this transformative response in Ready for Anything — Designing Resilience for a Transforming World (Hodgson, 2011).

“Our appreciation of what a good life could be is limited by vested interests such as those of the dominant commercial and political system. This system equates the good life with factors like limitless economic growth, consumption, accumulation of monetary wealth and processed convenience foods. This means that, when confronted by the need to change these assumptions, people feel aggrieved that they are being required to give up the good life. What is actually needed is to reframe the essence of the good life in a new system of living. Evidence is accumulating that moves toward greater resilience actually enhance our experience of the good life. They are not opposing goals if tackled in the right way.” — Anthony Hodgson (2011, p.27)

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Hodgson points out that visioning for one-planet living is what we have to do to get ‘ready for anything’ and such visioning is based on three parallel endeavors:

• A creative collective response to the negative challenges in the current situation that could propel us into synchronous failure (eg: the failing of the economy, ecosystems and societies all at once)
• Co-creating a viable and equitable way of one planet living that includes all humanity and the maximum diversity of the biosphere
• Deepening and spreading our understanding of the possible innovative pathways from here to a viable future.

It is important that we learn how to start change within ourselves in order to become more effective change agents in our communities and within our culture. Creating a new vision for our own lives can be the start of a transformative response at the level of the individual.

More and more people are drawn to a culture of ‘voluntary simplicity’, ‘simple living’, or ‘radical simplicity’. Barabara Max Hubbard, of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution see that the change is primarily an interior one that will then express itself as exterior change through the way we live.

Barabara Max Hubbard is the author of numerous books on global consciousness shift, including Conscious Evolution image

“We are poised in this critical moment, facing decisions that must be made consciously if we are to avoid destroying the world as we know it, if we are instead to cocreate a future of immeasurable possibilities. Our conscious evolution is an invitation to ourselves, to open to that positive future, to see ourselves as one planet, and to learn to use our powers wisely and ethically for the enhancement of all life on Earth.”— Barbara Max Hubbard, 2012

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[This article is an excerpt from the Worldview Dimension of Gaia Education´s online programme in Design for Sustainability.] In this section we will take a look at some examples of visions of a healthier world formulated by others: Ted Trainer describes a vision of a conserver society rather than as consumer society. Donella Meadow describes what a sustainable society might look like, based on her 30 years of studying complex living systems in the context of sustainability. John Greco Jr. offers a very personal vision, sharing what his own experience has made him believe a sustainable future might hold.

The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a vision of a healthier world, and so is the Earth Charter. We will end this module on Worldview with a look at Ralph Metzners comparison of the industrial age that we are moving out of and the ecological age that we are moving into, and a reminder that Design for Sustainability is not about denying the value of any perspective but to transcend and include perspectives that no longer serve.

The conserver society

The Australian sociologist Ted Trainer has suggested that we need to shift from a society of consumers to a society of conservers. In his opinion, a sustainable society would distinguish itself through much greater self-reliance at the community and regional scale; people would live more simply, but have a higher quality of life; they would cooperate to create more equitable and participatory communities, and they would need to create a new economic system.

Ted Trainer. image

He also recognizes that for this shift to occur, a fundamental reorientation and change of value system is needed (Trainer, 1995, pp.9–15). To illustrate his vision, Trainer compiled an instructive list of design characteristics that would guide the creation and re-design of settlements in such a conserver society.

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A Vision of the ‘Conserver Society’
(After Trainer, 1995, p.73)

• Many small villages, throughout cities too.
• Highly self-sufficient communities; most things are produced locally.
• Decentralized; many small firms throughout suburbs.
• Few imports. Local sources of most food, goods, energy.
• Recycle nutrients to local soil.
• Far less need for the car. Therefore dig up many roads.
• Most functions carried out by voluntary elected boards, e.g. committee for energy, helping to care for older people, the library, the community woodlots.
• Therefore much less need for councils, governments or professional services.
• Many voluntary rosters, working groups and committees.
• Many co-ops to provide services, e.g. child-minding, mostly non-profit.
• A town bank with an electoral board, so our savings can fund desirable developments in the town.
• Local taxes, providing funds for community development.
• Plant ‘edible landscape’ everywhere; in parks, parking lots, beside railways, providing free public food.
• Much property owned by the community. Housing, gardens, farms, shops, managed by voluntary elected boards. The residents can set up those enterprises that would enrich the town.
• Most production from local craft, hobby and small firms; few factories.
• Residents support (buy from) local suppliers, even though the price could be higher.
• No unemployment; much part-time work; most people need only low cash incomes. A local work coordination committee shares work among those who need it.
• Town meetings to make important decisions, especially regarding the development and functioning of the town. Participatory democracy.
• A leisure-rich environment.
• Public rail and bus services to other settlements and to the city centre.
• Most people need to work for money only one or two days a week.
• A few standard models of refrigerators, radios, etc., build to last and to be repaired.
• Most of the real economy in the non-cash sector, including barter, free goods, home production and gifts.

While these visions of ‘conserver society’ is by now 20 years old, many of the elements are still relevant today. The transformation of society and culture is a process that test the patience of those involved in driving that transformation. Visions evolve with the culture that creates them. […]

Note: This is an excerpt from the Worldview Dimension of Gaia Education’s online course in Design for Sustainability. In 2012 I was asked to rewrite this dimension as part of a collaboration between Gaia Education and the Open University of Catalunya (UOC) and in 2016 I revised it again into this current version. The next opportunity to join the course is with the start of the Worldview Dimension on May 21st, 2018. You might also enjoy my book ‘Designing Regenerative Cultures’.