Top Tips for Inclusive Community Engagement

by Leslie Wright, Community Heart and Soul: https://www.orton.org/top-tips-for-inclusive-community-engagement/

#1 There is no such thing as the “general public”.
Know who your community is (demographics, stakeholders, networks) and how they get their information - this knowledge is the foundation for how you will design community engagement activities and communicate about your project.

#2 Keep your “promise” to community members. 
Be clear about how resident input will be used and show how that information shaped project results.

#3 Go to the people.
Change up how you gather community input. Go to where people hang out whether it is a physical gathering space, like a coffee shop or community center, as well as online spaces.

#4 Spread the word.
Create a communications strategy that includes project branding, messaging and tactics for talking about your project effectively.

#5 Ask for people’s personal story.
Encourage people to express their experiences and opinions in their own words first. Don’t expect them to understand "plannerese" or technical jargon.

#6 Understand local power dynamics.
Design project activities in a way that provides dignity to everyone and where people feel safe talking about their concerns.

#7 Engage around interests.
Sometimes you have to participate in community issues that matter to others before making a connection to your own project.

#8 Think about the details.
When you hold a community event think through how you can make it more inclusive (e.g. time, location, child care, transportation, food, translators, facilitators, etc.).

#9 Use technology … if it’s a fit.
There are many great high tech and low tech ways to engage people so pick strategies that are a fit with who you are trying to reach.

#10 Make it fun!
When you bring people together for a project discussion think about how you can make it a social opportunity too.

Loneliness is Contagious – and here's how to beat it

by Olivia Remes, University of Cambridge

Is anybody there? Shutterstock

Loneliness is a common condition affecting around one in three adults. It damages your brain, immune system, and can lead to depression and suicide. Loneliness can also increase your risk of dying prematurely as much as smoking can – and even more so than obesity. If you feel lonely, you tend to feel more stressed in situations that others cope better in, and even though you might get sufficient sleep, you don’t feel rested during the day.

Loneliness has also increased over the past few decades. Compared to the 1980s, the number of people living alone in the US has increased by about one-third. When Americans were asked about the number of people that they can confide in, the number dropped from three in 1985 to two in 2004.
In the UK, 21% to 31% of people report that they feel lonely some of the time, and surveys in other parts of the world report similarly high estimates. And it’s not just adults who feel lonely. Over a tenth of kindergarteners and first graders report feeling lonely in the school environment.

Loneliness is common among children, too. Shutterstock

So many people feel lonely these days. But loneliness is a tricky condition, because it doesn’t necessarily refer to the number of people you talk to or the number of acquaintances you have. You can have many people around you and still feel lonely. As the comedian Robin Williams put it in the film World’s Greatest Dad:

I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone.

What is loneliness?

Loneliness refers to the discrepancy between the number and quality of the relationships that you desire and those you actually have. You can have only two friends, but if you get along really well with them and feel that they meet your needs, you’re not lonely. Or you can be in a crowd and feel all alone.

But loneliness is not just about how you feel. Being in this state can make you behave differently too, because you have less control over yourself – for example, you’re more likely to eat that chocolate cake for lunch instead of a meal or order take-out for dinner and you will also feel less motivated to exercise, which is important for mental and physical health. You’re also more likely to act aggressively towards others.

Sometimes people think that the only way out of loneliness is to simply talk to a few more people. But while that can help, loneliness is less about the number of contacts that you make and more about how you see the world. When you become lonely, you start to act and see the world differently. 

You begin noticing the threats in your environment more readily, you expect to be rejected more often, and become more judgemental of the people you interact with. People that you talk to can feel this, and as a result, start moving away from you, which perpetuates your loneliness cycle.

Studies have shown that (non-lonely) people who hang out with lonely people are more likely to become lonely themselves. So loneliness is contagious, just as happiness is – when you hang out with happy people, you are more likely to become happy.

There is also a loneliness gene that can be passed down and, while inheriting this gene doesn’t mean you will end up alone, it does affect how distressed you feel from social disconnection. If you have this gene, you are more likely to feel the pain of not having the kinds of relationships that you want.

It’s particularly bad news for men. Loneliness more often results in death for men than for women. Lonely men are also less resilient and tend to be more depressed than lonely women. This is because men are typically discouraged from expressing their emotions in society and if they do they are judged harshly for it. As such, they might not even admit it to themselves that they’re feeling lonely and tend to wait a long time before seeking help. This can have serious consequences for their mental health.

How to escape it

Look at being alone in a new light. Shutterstock

To overcome loneliness and improve our mental health, there are certain things we can do. Research has looked at the different ways of combating this condition, such as increasing the number of people you talk to, improving your social skills, and learning how to compliment others. But it seems the number one thing is to change your perceptions of the world around you.

It’s realising that sometimes people aren’t able to meet up with you, not because there is something inherently wrong with you, but because of other things going on in their lives. Maybe the person that you wanted to have dinner with wasn’t able to accept your invitation because it was too short notice for them and they had already promised someone else they would have drinks. People who aren’t lonely realise this and, as a consequence, don’t get down or start beating themselves up when someone says no to their invitations. When you don’t attribute “failures” to yourself, but rather to circumstances, you become much more resilient in life and can keep going.

Getting rid of loneliness is also about letting go of cynicism and mistrust of others. So next time you meet someone new, try to lose that protective shield and really allow them in, even though you don’t know what the outcome will be.

Olivia Remes, PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Everybody Needs Good Neighbours: Melbourne moves into community-led housing

Members of Urban Coup (Image: Thomson Reuters Foundation/Handout/Urban Coup)

by Michael Taylor, This Is Place: http://www.thisisplace.org/i/?id=c27114d0-1598-4a0c-94be-be56fba3dbd3KUALA LUMPUR - In an ideal world, Alex Fearnside would cycle home from work, park his bike in the basement of his apartment complex in Melbourne city centre, then jog upstairs through a beautiful courtyard to his flat, stopping only for a quick chat with other residents in the shared dining area.Later, Fearnside and his wife would head down to the communal kitchen to eat a meal cooked by their neighbours.Fearnside's ten-year-old dream for life in the Australian city is nearing reality as it awaits planning approval. It is shared by 50 other Melbourne residents who belong to Urban Coup, a collective that wants to turn a disused button factory in an old industrial area into a co-housing community by 2020.

"What is driving us is we want to know our neighbours," said the 38-year-old environmental scientist. "We want to know that as we're growing old, we have people around us who have similar values to who we are and what we bring."

Urban Coup is one of five innovative housing initiatives that put community at their heart.

The projects are supported with expertise and networks mobilised by Resilient Melbourne, part of 100 Resilient Cities, a network backed by The Rockefeller Foundation to help cities deal with modern-day pressures.

This year, more than half of Asia-Pacific's population will be urban, and that figure will increase to two-thirds by 2050, the United Nations estimates.

But as the region's cities continue to expand, services and infrastructure are struggling to keep pace with rising populations and economic growth, while the effects of climate change have created additional challenges.

The Melbourne projects aim to help find solutions to the city's expanding urban sprawl, worsening traffic congestion and growing social isolation - all of which can contribute to problems like alcoholism and domestic violence.

And by building stronger community bonds, Melbourne should be better placed to recover from potential shocks and stresses, such as rising temperatures and droughts, infrastructure failures and potential pandemics, the schemes' proponents say.

"Many of the people who started Urban Coup remember growing up on streets where they knew everybody on that street," said Fearnside. "We wanted a building that would enable us to know our neighbours and allow us to support each other."

URBAN SPRAWL

In the past decade, Melbourne has topped various polls as the world's most liveable city, attracting new residents to Australia's second-biggest city.

Just under 5 million people live there, and the population is expected to double over the next 30 years, putting increased strain on infrastructure and housing.

As more estates have been built on greenfield sites outside the centre, the rise in urban sprawl has brought problems.

Housing developments have outpaced infrastructure, leading to dormitory suburbs, whose residents commute daily but enjoy few services, amenities and transport links.

That causes traffic congestion and longer commute times, as well as a lack of interaction between neighbours, experts say.

"We live in a really beautiful part of Melbourne but we don't really know our neighbours," said Fearnside, who currently lives with his wife in a townhouse 5 km (3 miles) north of the central business district.

In Melbourne's central areas, high-rise blocks have become more common in recent years. But as in many other Australian cities, first-time buyers and families have struggled to afford steeper prices stoked by overseas property investors.

And much new construction has been driven by developers, which tend to put profit before the provision of leisure or communal facilities.

On average, Melbourne property prices have doubled over the last decade, said Clinton Baxter, state director at Savills property agency in the city, and this trend is set to continue.

Central government efforts to help first-time buyers include a grant for deposits and stamp duty concessions, while state governments have sought to open up more land and fast-track approval processes for developments.

Despite this, the supply of new and affordable housing in Melbourne has struggled to keep up with demand. It is not uncommon to see would-be buyers camping out overnight ahead of a land sale to be front of the queue for their own building plot.

"The state government has struggled to keep up with the infrastructure requirements for such a rapidly growing city," Baxter said.

LIVING EXPERIMENT

The five projects supported by Resilient Melbourne will bring together developers, city and state government agencies, service providers and potential buyers and renters.

Each project is crafted around different community-focused models - some based on renewal of the inner-city and others starting from scratch on greenfield sites.

The projects will also be part of an academic study.

"We want this to be a genuine living experiment so that we can understand in deep ways what works and what doesn't work - and record it so the successes can be replicated in Melbourne but also internationally," said Toby Kent, the city's chief resilience officer.

The projects backed by Resilient Melbourne include a greenfield site for about 5,000 homes led by developer Mirvac.

It is working with local authorities to incorporate community aspects from an early stage.

Besides at least one new school, there will be a town centre with shops and a supermarket, and a hub to house programmes and events run by the council or residents, with a community-managed cafe and playground, said Anne Jolic, a director at Mirvac.

"Often people who move to some of these ... new housing (developments) will feel very isolated," she said.

Melbourne developer Assemble, meanwhile, plans to turn an old CD and DVD factory near the city centre into 73 flats.

The property will include communal spaces like a cafe, a co-working space, crèche and grocery store, and is consulting with potential residents and existing neighbours on the design.

When the final plans are drawn up, residents will pay a refundable 1 percent deposit to secure a place, said Kris Daff, managing director of Assemble.

Once built, they will move in and start a five-year lease with an option to buy at a pre-agreed price, or exit the lease and leave at any time.

Services and events on offer will include dry cleaning, apartment cleaning, dog walking, community dinners, walking groups and film nights in a communal room.

"There is a huge amount of research that shows that when acute shocks have struck in cities, communities where there are existing connections are better able to bounce back," said Kent, Melbourne's resilience chief.

How Modern Life Became Disconnected from Nature

BY SELIN KESEBIR, PELIN KESEBIR, GREATER GOOD MAGAZINE: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_modern_life_became_disconnected_from_nature

It’s hard to overstate how much good nature does for our well-being: Study after study documents the psychological and physical benefits of connecting with nature. People who are more connected with nature are happier, feel more vital, and have more meaning in their lives.

Even in small doses, nature is a potent elixir: When their hospital room had flowers and foliage, post-surgery patients needed less painkillers and reported less fatigue. And merely looking at pictures of nature does speed up mental restoration and improves cognitive functioning.

These studies, along with hundreds of others, all point to the same conclusion: We stand to benefit tremendously from nurturing a strong connection with nature. Yet our connection to nature seems more tenuous than ever today—a time when our children can name more Pokémon characters than wildlife species.

It is widely accepted that we are more disconnected from nature today than we were a century ago, but is that actually true? A recent study we conducted suggests that it is—and that may be bad news not only for our well-being but also for the environment.

Our growing disconnection from nature

To find out how the human relation to nature has changed over time, we asked ourselves: How can we define and measure all the various ways in which people connect with nature? How can we count all the times people stop to watch a sunset or listen to birds chirping, or how long they spend walking tree-lined streets? We could certainly ask these questions to living people, but we couldn’t ask people who lived a hundred years ago.

Instead, we turned to the cultural products they created. Works of popular culture, we reasoned, should reflect the extent to which nature occupies our collective consciousness. If novelists, songwriters, or filmmakers have fewer encounters with nature these days than before, or if these encounters make less of an impression on them, or if they don’t expect their audiences to respond to it, nature should feature less frequently in their works.

We created a list of 186 nature-related words belonging to four categories: general words related to nature (e.g., autumn, cloud, lake, moonlight), names of flowers (e.g., bluebell, edelweiss, foxglove, rose), names of trees (e.g., cedar, laburnum, whitebeam, willow), and names of birds (e.g., finch, hummingbird, meadowlark, spoonbill).

Next, we checked how frequently these 186 words appeared in works of popular culture over time, including English fiction books written between 1901 and 2000, songs listed as the top 100 between 1950 and 2011, and storylines of movies made between 1930 and 2014.

Across millions of fiction books, thousands of songs, and hundreds of thousands of movie and documentary storylines, our analyses revealed a clear and consistent trend: Nature features significantly less in popular culture today than it did in the first half of the 20th century, with a steady decline after the 1950s. For every three nature-related words in the popular songs of the 1950s, for example, there is only slightly more than one 50 years later.

Percentage of nature-related words in song lyrics

A look at some of the hit titles from 1957 makes clear how things have changed over time: They include “Butterfly,” “Moonlight Gambler,” “White Silver Sands,” “Rainbow,” “Honeycomb,” “In the Middle of an Island,” “Over the Mountain, Across the Sea,” “Blueberry Hill,” and “Dark Moon.” In these songs, nature often provides the backdrop to and imagery of love, as in “Star Dust” by Billy Ward and His Dominoes, which starts with:

And now the purple dusk of twilight time 

Steals across the meadows of my heart

High up in the sky the little stars climb

Always reminding me that we’re apart

You wander down the lane and far away

Leaving me a song that will not die

Love is now the stardust of yesterday.

Fifty years later in 2007, there are only four nature-related hit titles: “Snow (Hey Oh),” “Cyclone,” “Summer Love,” and “Make It Rain.” 


This pattern of decline didn’t hold for another group of words we tested—nouns related to human-made environments, such as bed, bowl, brick, and hall—suggesting that nature is a unique case.

The source of our nature deficit

How can we explain this shrinking of nature in our collective imagination and cultural conversation? A closer look at the data yields an interesting clue: References to nature declined after, but not before, the 1950s.

The trend of urbanization—which swallows up natural areas and cuts people off from natural surroundings—is typically used to explain the weakening human connection to nature, but our findings are not consistent with that account. Urbanization rates did not change from the first half of the 20th century to the second in the U.S. and U.K., where most works we studied originated.

Instead, our findings point to a different explanation for our disconnection from nature: technological change, and in particular the burgeoning of indoor and virtual recreation options. The 1950s saw the rapid rise of television as the most popular medium of entertainment. Video games first appeared in the 1970s and have since been a popular pastime, while the Internet has been claiming more and more leisure time since the late 1990s. It stands to reason that these technologies partially substituted for nature as a source of recreation and entertainment. Classic paintings such as Winslow Homer’s Snap the Whip (1872) or Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1886) point to a time when children played in wide open green fields and adults spent their Sunday afternoons in nature.

Winslow Homer’s Snap the Whip

To the extent that the disappearance of nature vocabulary from the cultural conversation reflects an actual distancing from nature, our findings are cause for concern. Aside from its well-being benefits, a connection to nature strongly predicts pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. Such a love for nature is often born from exposure to nature as a child. This is what made author Richard Louv write, “As the care of nature increasingly becomes an intellectual concept severed from the joyful experience of the outdoors, you have to wonder: Where will future environmentalists come from?”


It’s worth remembering that cultural products such as songs and films not only reflect the prevailing culture—they also shape it. Modern artists have the opportunity to send the message that nature is worth paying attention to and to help awaken curiosity, appreciation, and respect for nature, as some did back in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Artistic creations that help us connect with nature are crucial at a time like this, when nature seems to need our attention and care more than ever.

On Transition

clipartpanda.com

by Erik Lindberg, Resilience: 
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-07/on-transition/

I have just returned from the first Transition US National Gathering and then a subsequent Leadership Retreat and I have Transition on my mind.  Despite the demands of my work life and a multi-year home restoration project that gets delayed a tiny bit more with every word I put down, I’m going to try to write a series about Transition over the next couple of months.

My primary impression leaving the main conference and the retreat was the extraordinary quality of the people I met and came to know.  I witnessed levels of thoughtfulness, compassion, creativity, commitment and, most of all, astounding examples of emotional intelligence that I rarely see in any other facets of my life.  True, people are on their best behavior when in a Transition setting (in the way they aren’t at academic conferences or staff meetings, as one example); but this only suggests to me that Transition brings out the best in people and that we would be wise to look to the ethos of engagement that it inspires.

I am equally impressed with the leadership of the movement, both the small paid staff and directors and the regional leaders (and to be a regional leader, there is no test beyond a willingness to commit and engage).  Although I will suggest in this series that the Transition Movement needs to rethink itself in ways more radical (to the root) than it may recognize, this is not a problem of leadership, even if it may be a problem for leadership and everyone else who cares.

Before going any further, I need to be absolutely clear that these are my opinions, concerns, and beliefs.  Some people, I know, share some of them, but the majority may (or may not) see me as completely off-base.  I hope that they will respond to what I say if they read any of this.  I do not speak on behalf of the organization, but on behalf of my own love and concern for it.  These may be the rantings of a lunatic—I’ll let you decide for yourself.

The main problem, as I see, it is the difficulty of engaging enough people in long-term Transition projects and local initiatives to create a critical mass large and active enough to get our story and models out there with the force and consistency they deserve.  There is, I believe, a considerable drop-off from the deeply and fully committed cohort, many of whom were present at the conference, on the one hand, and the necessary (but small in number) “mass” of substantially committed people who have a primary identification with the Transition Movement, on the other.   If I may be pardoned the metaphor, it is as if we have bishops and cardinals aplenty, and some monks, and nuns, but hardly anyone else willing to show up once a week, attend committee meetings, rehearse with the choir, maintain the facility, host the potlucks, teach Sunday school, and give what they can when the hat is passed.  It is not so much that the pews are empty (for with that image the metaphor of Transition involvement entirely breaks down), but that it has failed to become a mini-mass movement in a way hopefully forecasted by the Transition Handbook—the sort of movement that might provide (and share widely) a legitimate alternative to perilous practices of industrial society.  This is not to fault the many people who have engaged with Transition a few times or for a few years before drifting away.  Transition did not provide what they wanted and needed.  And that is where my concern lies.

One of the chief arguments against this focus on the organization itself is that although Transition Initiatives have a habit of dissolving or going into hibernation, a lot of invaluable transitioning nevertheless keeps happening—some of it inspired by a Transition moment in the sun, some inspired by entirely other organizations or experiences.   This is certainly true in Milwaukee, which is full of transitioners—the vibrant food movement with its farmers and chefs and farmers’ markets, the victory gardeners and front yard permaculturalists, the local and sustainable businesses, the study groups, the healers and the healing groups, the dancers, singers, foragers, and tree-worshipers.

So why do we need an official Transition Movement?  Maybe it was meant to light the sky like a flare in the dark and then fade away leaving only the inspiring retinal afterimages.  Maybe the movement doesn’t need an organization.  Maybe it isn’t really a movement at all?

Perhaps.  But here’s why I think we need Transition as an organization: Transition brings together all sorts of transitional, sustainable, and resilient acts into a unified movement with a definable identity–or at least it might.  Transition with a capital T is what might provide a narrative and a set of unifying principles to all sorts of isolated acts that may help us power-down or build local resilience, and in so doing might also multiply their significance.  More important in my mind, Transition is one of the few organizations (outside a few underfunded think-tanks) that tells the truth about climate, energy, and our ecology, while at the same time connecting these truths to issues of social justice, economic inequality, a peace movement, and an understanding of complex international geo-politics, while at the same time yet again, rolling up its sleeves and building things.

Its message, in short, is that we need to power-down, rather than maintain our current way of life by plugging into an alternative power source while hoping for some new and magical levels of efficiency that are more or less mathematically and thermodynamically impossible.  It is the truth-telling organization that can remind those engaged in social justice, healing, or the protection of nature that unless we stop consuming at our current rate, any other kind of progress is temporary at best.  It is the truth-telling organization that can show, not just by charts and graphs but by models for a new culture, the interconnection between economic displacement and our changing climate, between inner turmoil and a colonial mindset, between our cultural traumas and our addictive consumerism.

Although it has not managed to cross the racial divide—something that leadership is painfully and actively aware of—Transitions principles of Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share situate it in a place where it can begin meaningful work on white privilege while it renews the invitation to those who, I believe, will never feel invited to the table of the Sierra Club or 350.org or the Nature Conservancy—the sort of traditional environmentalism that has white privilege written into its DNA.  Not only does Transition understand the recent rise of nationalism, moreover, it might provide concrete ways of building institutions of acceptance and understanding in our very neighborhoods.  The yard-signs and protests are a start, but Transition is committed to building concrete alternatives that are at once practical yet tethered to a very unique kind of whole-system thinking.  It is to this message and its practical manifestation that I am most committed.

One of my main suggestions, in light of my perceptions of Transition’s problems as well as its importance will strike many as heresy itself and as an affront to many of the stated principles of Transition and Permaculture.  But I nevertheless want to offer-up the proposition that Transition should remake itself closer to the model of a political party or a church (or temple or mosque)[i].  I hope that by the end of this series this proposal will either make more sense or that it will have been revised into something more palatable to those who might have a visceral reaction to this suggestion at the outset.

I’m going to leave off here for now, though with some parting thoughts about the concept of a “movement,” a concept whose assumptions are quite different than those found in political parties and communities of love and faith.  A movement, as historian Richard J. Evans suggests, implies “dynamism and unceasing forward motion.”  “It also more than . . . [hints] at an ultimate goal, an absolute object to work towards that was grander and more final” than the goals either of a political party or a faith-based community.  A movement transcends politics and culture and has an implied teleology.[ii]  If this teleology remains unrealized, the movement might be deemed a failure.

There was a time in which the Transition Movement maintained this sort of grand and final goal.  Now, it seems to me, the credibility of this goal has either been lost, or has been suspended on a timeline far longer than the brief one necessary to incite the urgent goal-based commitment upon which many Transition initiatives were born and then floundered.   A political party, in contrast, provides identity, holds space (over the long haul), and articulates interests in a way that Transition might, especially if we consider the holding of space and the promoting of interests in a rather figurative way that is at least partially removed from the crude struggles of politics.

Likewise, in some ways, is what I am perhaps misleadingly referring to as a “church”–a community that is focused on love, support, and spiritual nurture, that is committed to acts of kindness and love, and that bears witness and mourns on one day, and celebrates on the next.  Such a “church” may aspire to bring about a vast cultural change; but its being-in-the-world makes complete sense even if it does not precipitate this change.  Transition as a church doesn’t need to “succeed” in order to be successful and fulfill its mission.   It thrives in static and dynamic historical moments, alike, with or without progress towards its goals.  It provides us vulnerable, frightened, and flawed human being with some of what we need to survive great and uncontrollable changes.[iii]  As the great literary critic Kenneth Burke once said of poetry, Transition might also provide “equipment for living.”

I hope that readers will keep in mind that I am at this point using the concepts of political party and church mainly as metaphors and that I am offering them as possibilities for discussion rather than dogmatic conclusions that I am working towards.  In my next installment, either way, I will put on my critical thinking cap and perform a difficult analysis of the narrative that the Transition Movement has been using in order to define itself as a movement, with all the qualities of a movement that Evans describes.

Endnotes

[i] Part, but not all, of my reasoning comes from this:  that work, church, and politics are three of the things that many, many people identify with and attend regularly and attentively.  Religion, moreover, is one of the few forces behind any voluntary relinquishment of consumption or privilege (which isn’t to say that it does this reliably).  Transition has worked valiantly at work, and should continue to do so.  But many of us will need a great deal of time and assistance to meaningfully untether ourselves from the growth economy.  Thanks also to Vicki Robins for her forceful articulation of this.  See also, my http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-09-06/earth-church-2/

[ii] Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), p. 173.  Don’t read anything into the fact that this is drawn from a history of the Third Reich.  It was just the most accessible (i.e. I could find the right page) definition of a movement from books I’ve recently read.

[iii] Shaun Chamberlain’s excellent talk at the Transition Conference (webcast from England) poignantly makes a point similar to this.

Erik Lindberg received his Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature in 1998, with a focus on cultural theory. After completing his degree, Lindberg began his career as a carpenter, and now owns a small, award-winning company that specializes in historical restoration. In 2008 he started Milwaukee’s first rooftop farm, and was a co-founder of the...

To Thrive, We Must Be In Touch With Each Other

by Sarah van Gelder, Yes! magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/to-thrive-we-must-be-in-touch-with-each-other-20160817

Imagine that instead of reading these words on a screen, you are sitting across from me over a cup of coffee.

You’re sharing your stories, and I’m sharing mine. As we talk, we notice many things about each other, because our words are just a small part of what we communicate. I watch your eyes, which may be focused or may be darting to a cell phone. The corners of your mouth might turn up slightly, or you might raise your eyebrows when you’re provoked. You might hear my breath change or notice a subtle shift in the pitch of my voice.

As we learn about another person in these many ways, we have a harder time dismissing them, because even when they say something we disagree with, we have these other indications that we are with a living, breathing, flawed yet miraculous being who struggles and falls short, just as we do.

On my road trip last year, I realized when I listened to the conversations I’d recorded how often they took place over coffee or a meal.

I stopped at a harvest festival at a small farm outside Louisville, Kentucky, about halfway through my trip, arriving just as people were lining up for a sumptuous meal of tamales, salads, and beans. Most of the ingredients had been grown just a few feet away from the front yard of the farmhouse, where we sat on hay bales as we ate and talked. A band played on the front porch, and couples got up to dance. Nearby, kids and adults picked up a game of soccer. Newcomers kept on arriving, filling their plates with food.

Nelson Escobar, an immigrant from El Salvador, and Elmer Zavala, originally from Honduras, started the farm. A dozen people of many backgrounds till the land, each raising three crops, each sharing their harvest with the others in the collective so all can have a varied local diet.

The food is great, but for Escobar and Zavala, the sense of community is key. “What I really love about this is the collective,” Zavala said when I asked why he helped start this farm. “I love sharing the harvest. And when we grow it ourselves, we don’t have to worry that our food was grown in conditions that exploit workers. Because we’re humans, doing work together is really satisfying,” Escobar added.

Collectives can have their disputes. Sometimes conflicts tear groups apart. Still, we learn deeply when we tune into how others see the world, and that can help us make sense of the world and of ourselves.

When we try to work together at a large scale, it’s much more difficult: Issues get too abstract, and we fall into oversimplification. We stereotype each other, turning unique human beings into “illegals,” “soccer moms,” “thugs,” “suits.” And ideas become rigid ideologies. Nuance, tolerance, and empathy get lost. Fear of the unfamiliar creates the conditions for a mob mentality, racism, and violence.

Likewise, we’re more likely to feel isolated, powerless, disengaged, and worse - we’re more likely to die early. Isolation is as dangerous to our health as smoking, Judith Shulevitz wrote in The New Republic in 2013. Lonely people are more likely to get Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and cancer.

In order to thrive, we have to be “in touch” with others, to internalize their humanity. Otherwise, we spiral into illness, selfishness, self-aggrandizement, and a “me first” ideology, becoming insatiable consumers and second-rate citizens.

We evolved to live in community, and that seems to be the scale where we can best navigate the complexities of life - the experiences of people not like us, the fragility and resilience of the web of life that surrounds us.

When we live connected to a community, we are more likely to become champions for one another, not just for ourselves. It’s a small step from there to becoming advocates for the larger community, even for the community of all life. From there, the idea of the common good is not so hard to grasp.

Sarah van Gelder wrote this article for YES! Magazine. Sarah is co-founder and editor at large of YES! Magazine. Sarah writes articles and conducts interviews for YES!, and she speaks regularly about solutions journalism, grassroots innovations, and social change movements. She is the editor of several books and is writing another. Follow her on Twitter @sarahvangelder.

Concluding Lifetime of Dedicated Activism, Grace Lee Boggs Dies at Age 100

Grace Lee Boggs in 2012 (Photo: Kyle McDonald/cc/flickr)

by Lauren McCauley, staff writer, Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/10/05/concluding-lifetime-dedicated-activism-grace-lee-boggs-dies-age-100

Longtime activist, educator, and philosopher Grace Lee Boggs passed early Monday at the age of 100.

Friends and caregivers Shay Howell and Alice Jennings said in a statement about her passing that Boggs "left this life as she lived it: surrounded by books, politics, people and ideas." Boggs died peacefully in her sleep in her Detroit home.

Born in Rhode Island in 1915, the daughter of Chinese immigrants studied at Barnard College and Bryn Mawr, where she received Ph.D. in philosophy in 1940. These studies led to a lifetime of activism, starting in Chicago with the movement for tenants’ rights and the Workers Party. In the 1960s, Grace moved to Detroit, where she became known for her work, along with her late husband, author and activist James Boggs.

Over the past 70 years, she was involved with the civil rights, Black Power, labor, environmental justice, and feminist movements. In 1992, she co-founded the Detroit Summer youth program, "a multi-racial, inter-generational collective" that serves as a training ground for youth activists. She once stated, "you cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it."

"Grace Lee Boggs embraces a philosophy of constant questioning - not just of who we are as individuals, but of how we relate to those in our community and country, to those in other countries, and to the local and global environment," notes a biography of Boggs, which accompanies of portrait of her painted by artist Robert Shetterly.

Throughout her life, Boggs' speeches and essays frequently made connections between the suffering experienced by poor and marginalized communities with humanity's overall lack of vision, exemplified by the demand for "endless growth."

During a 2012 talk given in San Francisco, Boggs spoke alternately of the need to "grow our souls." She said: "We need to find that balance of life that respects each other, that thinks that the most important thing at this time on the clock of the world is not our accumulation of things, is not economic growth which threatens and imperils all life on this planet including ourselves, that the time has come to grow our souls, to grow our relationships with one another, to create families that are loving and communities that are loving, to bring the neighbor back into the hood."

And in an essay written in 2010 explaining why she did not partake in a commemoration of the August 28, 1963 March on Washington, Boggs boldly questioned the value of "encouraging democratic illusions" while there was still such pervasive injustice and inequity in the U.S. Instead, she reiterated Dr. Martin Luther King's call for a "Radical Revolution of Values," which she said not only disparages racism, but also "Materialism and Militarism."

In her final post on the Boggs Center website, written in August 2014, she wrote, "I want my life to challenge people to think philosophically. I want people to ask themselves and each other what time it is on the clock of the world."

From the Sparks of Hope and Frustration: Towards a New Sustainable Economy

by Michael Townsend, Founder and CEO of Earthshine, business transformation leader, writer, speaker and lecturer

When I set out on a journey in search of Capitalism 2.0, a few years ago, I was surprised at what I found - not just in terms of the range of possibilities for a more sustainable system, nor the level of radical change that will be required to deliver a real shift in our economies and our lives. The real surprise was the extent to which many of the potential solutions are already available.

The more I looked, the more I found - and, viewing the scene through a wider lens of sustainable economics, it became possible to see the pieces of a very interesting jigsaw come together, bringing into focus an attractive picture of a new, vibrant, attractive, and sustainable economic operating system.

Another important insight came from reflecting on the scope of the changes needed. If we do what is truly required, if we no longer seek to exploit people and resources, in the name of accumulating and concentrating wealth - if we no longer focus on the primary interests of financial capital alone, can we still call it Capitalism?

If what we are left with is a new and sustainable system that no longer resembles Capitalism - what would we call it? Sustainable Economy just seemed like a more appropriate working title - although, I am sure the debate will rumble on.

I also found something important for the soul - genuine cause for hope, generated by the very real sense that a new system is already manifesting - an economy within which people and businesses are able to prosper, within planetary limits. A quiet revolution is already under way - if we could just allow it to flourish.

Hope often travels hand-in-hand with frustration. I could also see that, while a new system is desirable and possible, and that change is already under way, we are currently nowhere near a tipping point, whereby the new system takes over from the old, rendering it obsolete, and transforming into a new (sustainable) mainstream. There is still a very long way to go.

These sparks of hope and frustration led to further insights and a realization that it might be possible to help accelerate the transition, by promoting greater awareness of the issues and the very real possibilities - ultimately, to enable more conscious choices by people, businesses, and our civic leaders, to start the migration towards a better system.

And so, the Sustainable Economy Project was born, out of a desire to create a better economic system - coupled with a passion to encourage a progressive form of economic activism that will help achieve this aim (for further information on the Sustainable Economy Project please visit www.the-sustainable-economy.org).

Our initial agenda for change focuses on a number of key leverage points - from changing the goals and mechanics of our system of economy, to new models of business success and investing, new financial and banking systems, new institutions and greater systemic resilience, re-localized economies, to new education curricula and models for learning. There is much work to be done.

We have been quietly establishing the infrastructure to help amplify our efforts around the world in support of accelerating the tipping point in the transition towards a sustainable economy.

A key part of this picture is a growing network of progressive business schools and universities, from around the world; they can play a major role in forming the new economy. By expanding their remit, they can act as catalysts in each region, shifting the conversation and creating a shared agenda for change within their respective business and political communities.

The next step on this life-affirming journey is what we have published today - Reframing the Game, a Sustainable Economy Special Edition of the Building Sustainable Legacies Journal.

Reframing the Game has been devised to generate a real melting pot of progressive thinking, from some of the leading players in the often separate worlds of business and academia. Enabling collaboration across these boundaries will be so important in making real change happen in our world.

Each of the contributions in this Journal helps to challenge our views on what is possible and also provides us with concrete actions on how we can make genuine progress. Many of the themes also align with the Sustainable Economy Project's agenda for change.

Paul Polman - the pioneering CEO with Unilever - sets the pace, with inspirational views on the instrumental role of business in generating a radical shift in our economies. With 2015 seen as a pivotal year, Polman reminds us that businesses have a major impact - not just in terms of their sustainability footprint - but, also in their ability to influence change at scale. By harnessing their energy, expertise and resources they can drive transformational change at a systemic level. He urges businesses to be more radical.

That we need to be playing a different game is becoming increasingly recognized. Even mainstream commentators like the FT's Martin Woolf are calling for new and radical approaches in the running of our economies.

Isabel Sebastian picks up this challenge with great gusto, and makes a great case for promoting Wellbeing Economics as a means of re-framing the game of economy and commerce. She includes practical proposals for the business and policy agendas - and how we can look beyond CSR to create the dynamic space for genuine business and economic transformation.

Transformation necessarily requires us to rethink our institutions, including our legal frameworks - do they adequately support our aims, or do they hinder the changes we need to make?

Business law is not usually included in the discourse on how to achieve a sustainable future and, thankfully, Beate Sjafjell helps us to redress the balance. Sjafjell recognizes that neither the voluntary contribution of business, nor the current regulatory framework is sufficient in driving the level of change that is needed.

She puts forward an elegant argument for reforming company law - what she refers to as the regulatory ecology of companies - including duties for the board to draw up a long-term, life-cycle based business plan. Radical, yet good business sense, when you think about it.

Another key enabler for radical change is, of course, leadership - and transformational leadership requires the right mindset. Jeanrenaud and her colleagues offer us the 'One Planet' mindset, as a powerful lever for transforming self, business and society, in the contested transition towards a sustainable economy. They help us to understand what a 'one planet' mindset is and how this state of being provides an essential condition, if we are to frame business and economics in a way that will truly enable a sustainable future.

Leaders, of course, need roadmaps and models - to help them communicate the nature of their journeys, and how they will be made. Which models work best: should we create top-down mandates, or should we try to shape more organic and grassroots oriented movements for change, from the bottom-up?

Jill Bamburg helps us to see that we should waste little time on this sterile debate, and through her work on change models, facilitated by her 2x2 to change the world, she helps us to see that it is, indeed, all good work.

In developing all the new approaches required for change, we start to gain a deeper appreciation of the value and the instrumental role of education. If we don't research and teach the right things, how can we hope to gain the skills and insights that will enable us to change the world in a robust manner?

Notwithstanding the trailblazing efforts of a few leading lights, Suzanne Benn and her colleagues note that business schools are often lagging other sectors in recognizing the growing importance of sustainability concerns in business decision-making.

As a result, emergent themes such as cooperative capitalism or new business models are neglected in business school curricula. Through the lens of the boundary objects Benn and her colleagues propose that both educators and their students should transcend disciplinary boundaries, and engage with knowledge from different disciplinary areas, to facilitate a systematic and integrated approach to sustainability.

Going further into the mechanics of transformation, Katrin Muff introduces the Collaboratory - a methodology that provides an exciting template for radical re-imagination and redesign of business schools, in finding a mission that is relevant to the challenges of our time and which makes a meaningful contribution to society.

Her approach is engaging and deep - and can be deployed as an influential alternative vehicle for wider public debate and problem solving. This approach will surely become the new normal for transformation management.

A key theme, right through this edition concerns the fundamental question, what is the purpose of business? So, it is fitting that we round off this collection with a living example of a major global business that is reinventing itself - to put real purpose at the heart of its business strategy.

Gabi Zedlmayer, Chief Living Progress Officer with HP, shares how her business is integrating 'purpose' at the very heart of strategy - to reach beyond incremental improvements, to create innovative and transformative solutions that connect customer needs with human, economic and environmental impacts. As Zedlmayer describes, the results can be game-changing.

Change we must - if we are to make the necessary transition to a sustainable world. By collaborating across boundaries, and joining up the dots across the many great works that already taking shape, we can all help accelerate a much needed tipping point. I hope you find something of real interest in this collection, and perhaps something you can take with you into your own realm of influence, towards a sustainable economy.
_________ Reframing the Game: The Transition to a New Sustainable Economy is out now, published by Greenleaf. Follow Michael Townsend on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mike_earthshine