Raising Collective Consciousness

Economic Degrowth Requires Raised Consciousness

Those of us that recognise that equitable economic Degrowth is a necessity rather than an option, will know how difficult it is to sell that idea. The KWYRA series of videos does not attempt to sell the idea of Degrowth, but it does help the viewer to unpack all the emotional damage that is inflicted by our relentless and unforgiving model of education.

Every viewer will have a different experience. To someone who feels anguished, and feels they have failed personally in some way, I am hoping that they will find real hope surge through them as they progress through the four-parts that make up two hours of viewing altogether. If you are such a broken person, then please have courage to consider embracing some very different perspectives to those that you have been taught until now.

To someone who is aware of the mess that humanity is in, and is sceptical about the future of humanity, you might recoil from the blatant marketing techniques that are used. To these people, I urge you to put aside your scepticism, and allow yourself to be led in a new direction of thinking.

If, like me, you find that the videos resonate with your own view of the world and your place within it, then it is likely that many of your friends and relations do not share your level of awareness. In which case, you might like to share the link to the KWYRA videos to help them to navigate their own path away from coercive consumerism.

The creator of these videos is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). Like me, Jat Sahi joined the RSA after being attracted to their Design For Life project. Free learning resources to assist with the mindset shift to economic Degrowth indicates to me that the source is genuine and means well. So although the delivery style is a little spooky and cultish for someone conditioned to reject any marketing or claims that seem ideological, I forced myself to overcome my reservations and watched the whole set.

Consequently, I am recommending the KWYRA series of videos as a first step in the mindset shift towards Degrowth. If you allow yourself to surrender to the ideas that are presented, you can then free yourself from a great deal of real emotional burdens that come with family and job etc. However, you will not release yourself from worrying about the state of the planet simply by embracing the concepts in the KWYRA videos. BUT, you will take a step towards a mindset that is helpful in the collective effort to turn things around.

There are other unlearning tools that you might find appeal more to your personal taste; and enable you to get on board with the collective effort that is rapidly gaining momentum.

Travelling Beyond the KWYRA lesson

The KWYRA videos will hopefully enable you personally to break the powerful grip that was created on your mind by years of exposure to coercive consumerism, formal education, and social media that usually perpetuates all of the misleading illusions, false values, that drive economic growth. If this is the case, and you feel that you need some more guidance as to how you can help with the collective mindset shift, then you would be wise to watch this five minute animation to understand the depth of our predicament and acquire a sense of how the beginnings of global collaboration might emerge.

Having understood, from the animation, the dire predicament currently facing humanity, you may discover that feeling joy is proving challenging. Section 5 in this article about the subsequent ‘Emotional Evolution’ is intended to assist any person who wishes to help in the global mindset shift to Degrowth. Everyone needs to navigate their own path forward from varying types and degrees of negative emotions. A summary of various emotions and the desirable types of transitions is provided below:

• Arrogance can evolve into Humility once we accept the reality of ecological collapse, recognising the injustice for future generations, and those already unable to subsist.
• Self-interest can evolve into Ubuntu as we accept the need for a mindset that recognises our interconnectedness, and respects the global commons.
• Anxiety can evolve into Resolve to act wisely and collectively.
• Anger can evolve into Empowerment if a suitable mode of expression can be found.
• Hate can evolve into Respect and Understanding given a suitable relearning process.
• Guilt can evolve into Reparation if a route for reparation can be identified.
• Blame can evolve into Forgiveness if reparation is offered, and forgiveness is sought.
• Judgement can evolve into Trust in each other, given enough collective discussion and collaboration; altered behaviours from leaders, will be key to inspiring trust.

Other Resources that are Shining a Light Forward

We all have different ways of navigating our way forward in this mindset shift. I have pulled together some resources that might help you on your own journey.

• For those who prefer to navigate through stories, the Nee Nae fictional series consists of 3 dystopian science fiction stories about human overpopulation and ecosystems collapse.
• My own website and Medium publications will appeal to those who like a global perspective, rather than detail.
• Wisocracy offers participatory discussions and discussions about the detail moving forward.
• The Hopeful Realist offers a powerful running commentary on the folly unfolding in the USA.
• Stable Planet Alliance Conversations — Podcasts Very open-minded discussions concerning overconsumption and over population.
• Wellbeing Economy Alliance — these folks do not represent Degrowth, but they are doing a magnificent job of maintaining a calm process of sharing ideas within a highly aware population who aspire to achieve an economy focused on wellbeing. They also have several governments involved.

Non-fiction Book Recommendations

First steps

Awaken the Soul, Release the Spirit: Danby, Peter Gentle introduction to raised consciousness

Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World : Hickel, Jason The definitive book reflecting mainstream Degrowth thinking

Doughnut Economics | Kate Raworth Also part of mainstream Degrowth, although it does not clearly state the need for Degrowth

More Radical Thinking and Perspectives

James Morrow has been my mentor and emotional support during the painful early years from 2019 when I was developing my wordsmith skills, and struggling to learn how I might help in this mindset shift. His blog material and Twitter feed may help you. If you are mystified by his material, don’t worry, because most people are.

Values — An Economist’s Guide to Everything that Matters by Mark Carney please use the reviews to decide if this is for you. I have not read it, but James has recommended it, and the title looks promising.

Feeling and Knowing: Making Minds Conscious by Antonio Damasio Quite challenging concepts, only recommended if the write-up draws you in.

Ways of Being: Beyond Human Intelligence by James Bridle I found this book a worthwhile struggle, like the previous book ‘Feeling and Knowing’; both were recommendations from James.

Saving Us From Ourselves — Can we repair 50 years of ecological overshoot? Barbara Williams My own book presents ideas that would be feasible within a highly aware and motivated population; it is free to download from my website.

Decentralised Civilisation by Reed Kinney The language and format is a little challenging. Reed Kinney is close to the indigenous mindset. I am sure many of the ideas in this book are valuable. It is free to download.

Hopeful Realism by Robert MacNeil Christie This author’s writing resonates with the Degrowth message, and is likely to appeal very much to the American audience, once they wake up.

Do Childfree People Have Better Sex?: A Feminist’s Journey in the Childfree Movement by Verena Brunschweiger I learnt much about the sex-industry, and the problems with the patriarchal society in Germany from this book. I am not a feminist, my science paper talks a little about improving relationships in general. I hope to do further work in this area.

Surfaces and Essences — Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking by Douglas Hofstadter & Emmanual Sander This is on my ‘must read’ list since it is recommended by my friend James Morrow. The write up looks promising, I don’t think it will be as challenging as some of his other recommendations.

Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy by Henry Farrell, and Abraham Newman Another recommendation from James, I possibly won’t read it. I am guessing that it reveals the sordid financial dealings in our financial world; important for those who naively believe that countries like the USA are above corruption.

Rescuing Democracy by Paul E Smith The author of this book approached me. He has given serious thought as to how democracy might be restructured to ensure that we vote in a way that is wise for the longer term. The methods that he suggests would need to be tested to establish whether they are fit for purpose. If we ever decide that now is the time for economic Degrowth, then all this research might be helpful.

Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World by Tyson Yunkaporta The writing style is easy, but the concepts are deep into indigenous thinking, and are consequently rather inaccessible to a lower-consciousness mind like my own. Tyson confirmed my own experience of intimate relationships, when he claimed that the men only work in order to make their woman or women happy. I hope to help to heal this type of tragic misunderstanding between the genders, and help humanity to work towards a much more mutually enjoyable understanding in the future. The higher-level of consciousness is reflected in indigenous understanding. This book should help any affluent person to stretch their grasp of their surroundings, so long as they are willing to be stretched.

The Riddle of the Highest Level of Consciousness

As I explained, James Morrow has been my mentor throughout my own journey to understanding the important of the collective consciousness in the mindset shift to Degrowth. Assessing James’ pictorial nudges before they appear in Twitter (X) has somehow helped to raise my consciousness; although I don’t really know how this has happened. I trust James completely; because without his assistance I would not have acquired the understanding and the skills that I exhibit to day. Our private conversations have given me an idea of the enormous power that comes with this higher level of consciousness.

Recently another RSA Fellow, Tim Gyles, contacted me. Tim’s book is a free resource on his website. I took a long time trying to read it, but the early chapters were so alien to the way that I view the world, that it was like clawing up a mountain with no footholds. Tim is a sculptor, and I struggle with 3D challenges anyway. James sent an email trying to help me to at least understand the nature of the gap between an average level of consciousness and a very high one. The italics below are some ideas that James shared with me privately. I thought that they might be helpful to others on this journey. The clause ‘I experience, therefore I exist…’ resonated closely to the way that I personally operate. All my writing builds on my past life-experience. I seem to have very little original creative imagination to draw upon. My work is focussed on reality as I see it, past, present, future short-term and long-term.

This is what James told me about the higher-level of consciousness:

Symbolic language may be linear — such as words and sentences, paragraphs of prose, which are generally processed sequentially in time, or non-linear — such as pictures and sculptures, which are generally processed in parallel; although taking a small amount of time and seeming to be instantaneous, or using a physical ‘field of view’ to linearly explore the artwork… Both forms may be subconsciously processed once absorbed…

Dualism proposes that the mind and body are separate, yet when the body dies, the awareness disappears… Descartes famously suggested ‘I think, therefore I am;’ but there is something much deeper than this: ‘I experience, therefore I exist…’ In this language, ‘I’ doesn’t exist in the conventional sense…

When thinking in a linear language, the framework of the world model that you have built up over your lifetime through which to interact with the world produces a single stream of conscious thought — although this itself is built up dynamically ‘in real time’ through myriad strands of thought ‘beneath the surface.’ If one can express oneself and ‘think’ naturally in more than one language, the underlying language is in fact separate from these, and they are merely ‘filters,’ which convert the thought outside a particular language into the language of choice at that particular point in time…

Thus, thinking inside linear language appears to be a single train of thought… In contrast, thinking outside conventional language can support many trillions of trains of thought simultaneously… In comparison to linear symbolic — and indeed non-linear symbolic thought, it can appear to be infinite, but in fact it’s only trillions of times faster…

Awareness builds upon this massively parallel, massively interconnected framework of thought based upon the structure of the brain and body and the mapping of the mind onto it, and converts it into a sense of oneness… Yet the true framework extends far beyond the single human body and is interconnected with all life surrounding it, at all rates of processing from bacteria to lichen to lemurs and beyond… In this sense, ‘we’ are all one…

I hope that my readers found this article helpful. I have shared key material that has helped me on my own journey to a higher level of consciousness. We all need to navigate our own way. Many have not even started their journey, for they are still trapped in the illusion that growth economics can fix the problems that it creates. They still believe that their Nation, religion, family etc. is more important to them than any other. They still believe in right and wrong, but these are artificial constructs that humanity have found helpful in the past. What was ‘right’ on a thriving healthy planet, might be killing our sick exhausted Earth. We need to rethink everything.

It is hoped that the image below will help you to develop your own consciousness in a helpful direction: