Those who have been familiar with the 7th Generation Initiative for some time will know about the Canada Well-Being Measurement Act project to bring a Genuine Progress Index to Canada.  It ran from 1998 to 2003 at which point the Canadian Parliament past a motion supporting such an index.

http://www.sustainwellbeing.net/hansard_june2-03.html

Details about the intent of that effort are available around: http://www.sustainwellbeing.net/well_being.html

 

On April 2, at least two of the people who were active in that effort participated in a United Nations effort with similar aims.  The progress on the international level is exciting.

From an article in Asia Times:  http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ND12Df02.html

Bhutan’s happiness index goes global
By Raja Murthy

MUMBAI – The United Nations on April 2 hosted a conference with a more unusual topic than most: the global spread of Bhutan’s gross national happiness (GNH) index. The GNH is a long overdue, upgraded version of the gross domestic product (GDP) level conventionally used to measure a nation’s growth.

More than 600 governmental and social leaders attended the meeting in New York, including British Prime Minister David Cameron and Laura Chinchilla, president of Costa Rica and environmental activist. Their attendance is seen as part of growing global realization that growth means more than merely fatter paychecks.

.   .   . (much additional information ending with)

Bhutan’s GNH is a simple reminder that if money, power and prestige alone are all what is needed for the highest standard of living, then school children might be now learning not about the Buddha, but about Emperor Siddhartha Gotama, Jesus Christ might have owned a chain of furniture stores in the Middle East, and millions across millennia would be paying deep reverence to Saint Donald Trump and undertaking sacred pilgrimages to Wall Street.

————

Well worth a read.

Yours, Mike N.

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“This could be our revolution:

To love what is plentiful
as much as what is scarce.”

Alice Walker

*     -     *     -     *     -     *     -     *     -     *     -     *

Greetings:

While drafting a letter recently I came up with the sentence:
“The hope and enthusiasm needed to create a viable world are only as far away as a shared recognition of the challenge that we face and of the goal that can lead us toward long-term well-being.”

“Shared recognition”
There is an entire psychology behind this phrase. It is explained in clear and humorous detail in this 11 min. RSAnimate piece titled Language as a Window into Human Nature.

The short story is that until people know something to be different from what had been believed and everyone knows that everyone else knows, the old notion can remain dominant and nothing will change. It is the dynamic illustrated by the story: “The Emperor Has No Clothes.” Until the obvious was stated in a way that everyone knew that everyone had heard, the illusion was maintained. Our future depends on cultivating a shared recognition that the perpetual growth goal, presently dominating public policy, is not appropriate for a civilization that is stretching its planet’s limits. Enough people know this at one level that even large corporations go to lengths to paint themselves “green.” Some times their efforts are sincere, sometimes it is just green-wash. Who is fooled by the ozone friendly cruise missile?

While there is a broad consensus that we need to adapt to our full planet, until the public sentiment is known to be known, we will be unable shift society’s efforts toward the new direction. Hundreds of times I have heard people say that they understand but they doubt that “the public” knows. Once the shared recognition is achieved, however, humankind can take up the new goal with all of our intelligence and creativity. It would then be possible to enable secure and satisfying lives for the generations following us. (I acknowledge that we are late achieving this shared recognition and that the transformation will not take place before some unfortunate repercussions are experienced by many. For those who remain this is reason for more diligence, not less.)

I’ve found this ‘knowing that people know that everyone else knows’ idea hard to explain. That is why the RSAnimate piece is such a delight. Take the time to watch it and then see how the shared recognition needed for transformation might be advanced by offering an outline of sustainability and encouraging people to pick it apart.

The outline [here] can serve this purpose.

Is this what sustainability means to you?
If not, on what point or points do we differ?
For what reasons?
Is there anything missing?

For 20 years we’ve asked these questions. Many people have expressed agreement. One edit was made and a number of people have voiced annoyance that we should be asking them to look closely at what this critical goal requires.

The educational process involved is explained at:

http://www.sustainwellbeing.net/strategy.html

If we are to continue the age old responsibility each generation owes to the generations following them, it is critical that we know the criteria within which a secure future can be found. It will be some time before the mass media helps communicate this, dependent as it is on consumerism. That leaves it up to us to advance the conversation.

Change Begins with a Conversation is the message of the first installment of our free Mini-Course on Shifting Society’s Goals.

We need to have the conversation within our familiar circles, and further, we need to step outside our comfort zones and raise the topic with people in other circles. The sustainability cards mentioned in Seeds for Change make this much easier.

Many of you have projects underway that advance the overall goal in some way. There is much we can learn from each other. Please share your experiences by commenting below. If you’d like to do more, ask for some free samples of the sustainability cards to try out. Just handing one for someone as “food for thought” can be enough to get them thinking about the challenge of our times.

Change begins with conversations. Try to start one every week, if not every day.

Hoping to hear from you.

Yours, Mike Nickerson

Greetings:

Whatever we have to look forward to in 2012, it is clear from the rapid spread of Transition Initiatives and the Occupy movement that the will for change, if not the pace, is accelerating.

Below is a plan for contributing to the process.

Raymond William said “To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing.“  When people can picture a way out of difficulties, they can rise above denial or despair and take action for a better future.  Response to the “Living on Earth as if we want to stay” discussions suggest that they are truly radical.  Outlined here are the essential messages that inform the those discussions.  The goal is to produce a quality video and discussion kit that anyone can use to help advance the conversation in their communities.   Change Begins With a Conversation.

Described below are the four component messages with links to video and/or audio examples of the various stories that deliver those messages.  We need imagery to accompany the stories and creative production help.  I am hoping that some of you who have been enthused by the message will apply your imaginations and perhaps, contribute to the costs of producing a functional discussion kit to be made freely available on-line.

In the face of shorter days and deepening cold, this season’s festivities speak of hope.  Solstice offers hope that the Sun will return with warmth and a new growing season.  Christmas speaks of hope for peace attainable by treating each other as we like to be treated ourselves and Giftsmas encourages spending with the hope that it will keep the economy afloat.

Hopefully, together, we can spread the vision of an order that can celebrate living within our planets means for countless generations to come.

Looking forward to a new era.

Yours, Mike N.

Speaking of Transformation

A series of stories to encourage a new order.

Over the last few centuries, business as usual, has produced immense abundance.  In the early industrialized countries, human need was overcome by the end of the 1800s and has grown on to encourage material accumulation well beyond need.  Today many products are made to be thrown away after a single use or to become obsolete in short order.  While ever more waste is required to keep the system expanding, natural resources are being depleted and polluting wastes are causing serious problems.

This economic model cannot endure, yet it is all that most people have ever known.  A new vision has to be nurtured of a model that will not overwhelm our planet.

“Living on Earth as if we want to stay” is a collection of stories that stimulate thought and discussion about an order that respects the Earth’s limits and lives within them.

The basic elements are these:

1)  A fundamental change has come about in the relationship between people and the Earth

Throughout the human experience, until recently, there were vast new frontiers for the human family to move into when more resources were needed or waste became annoying.  This has changed.  Most “new frontiers” are now being exploited and our waste is accumulating toward intolerable levels.

A clear illustration from the Canadian experience is this country’s East Coast fishery:  Audio file 1.2

The bottom line is that the amount of fish we can catch no longer depends on how much we invest in fishing.  It depends on how many fish there are in the sea.  This fundamental change is also occurring with forests, fossil fuels, fresh water, soil fertility and the Earth’s ability to absorb our waste.  Accumulating capital to invest in providing these things is no longer as important as keeping our demands within the Earth’s ability to provide them.  This fundamental change requires an equally fundamental change in how we manage ourselves.

2)  Economic growth is not essential

This detail is not  part of the vision of the new order; it is a prerequisite understanding.  Belief that economic growth is essential to well-being obstructs the ability to see how we can endure on this finite planet.  Once understood, it is far easier for people to imagine and start to create a sustainable future.  I present this story early in my talks so that people realize that the apparent “need” to grow is a custom that can be changed, not a fact of life.  If story telling were not linear, this story would be in a parallel space, distinct from the narrative about possibilities.

The basic message is that “charging interest on the use of money is a growth hormone that the human family has outgrown.”  It is told in audio files 1.6 and 1.7 aand Video #7.

3)  Life is not hard to maintain

This is the exciting promise that awaits humankind when we accept that we are now mature as a species and leave the compulsion for growth behind.

Making the case that it doesn’t take much to live is Jean Baptiste Van Helmont’s experiment showing that the vast majority of what it takes to grow a plant comes from air and water that are available almost everywhere on Earth.

Video #4.

and audio files 2.3 & 2.4.

The other story in this section is that of Pattern Integrity.  Even the materials that are soil bound and do not float to us in the air can be maintained in cycles that have operated effectively since life began.  This is video #5.

 and audio files 2.5 & 2.6 at:

Once we acknowledge that our planet is finite and reintegrate our activities with natural processes, we can sustain well-being for as long as the Sun is viable.  Key for this adaptation is seeking satisfaction from what our lives offer, rather than from acquiring material things.  Acquiring things does not fill the longing at our core.  We are, after all, human beings not human havings.

4) Legitimacy

To accomplish the transformation to a sustainable world requires shifting legitimacy from the growth model to a model based on the perspective described above.

Two stories make this point.

One story explains how shared values provides what might be called our “Cultural DNA.”  Societies grow into different forms depending on the values shared by their people.  For the last several hundred years, the values of economic growth have created the materialistic society that we have today.  Now that we are pressing our planet’s limits, new values of minimizing our impacts on the material world, gathering satisfaction from life and an approach to natural resources that respects the needs of the children and grandchildren will evolve a civilization that can endure.

The second story is about a caterpillar becoming a butterfly and how that sihift in form illustrates the change in form that has already begun for our civilization.

Both these stories are presented in audio file 2.8.

The caterpillar story is the topic of videos #8 & #9.

Note also, where #12 would be on that page, a third observation about this story that we didn’t know when we had help to produce those videos.

After presenting this set of stories I have often found my audiences feeling positive and excited about working to create a new order.  I don’t want to downplay the gravity of the human predicament.  We face the greatest set of challenge that humankind has ever faced.  Rather than freezing in the headlights of the bad news, however, our prospects increase with each person who grasps the vision of what can be, and starts taking actions to spread the vision and bring it into reality.

You can help stimulate creative action toward a secure future by learning to tell the stories and doing so wherever you can.  (Look for more on our site about how to tell the stories as the winter progresses.)  You can also make a donation to the production fund for the video.  In Canada, charitable receipts are available for contributions to this educational work.

More on Shifting Society’s Goals and our program to advance the change can be found via: www.sustainwellbeing.net/invite.html 

Occupy the Conventional Wisdom !

In the words of historian R. H. Tawney:
“The impetus to reform . . . springs in every age from the realization of the contrast between the external order of society and the moral standards recognized as valid by the conscience or reason of the individual.”

That contrast, in this age, is the difference between the views of the 1% and the 99%.

This seven minute video was taken from a recent talk at Occupy Ottawa:

The Media person at the Occupy site put this comment with the video above:  ”Mike Nickerson spoke to the occupiers at Confederation Park on November 8, 2011. This video is shortened to include the details particularly relevant to the Occupy vision.  The full 35 minute video is at:
http://vimeo.com/32022255  ”

Time for a New Game

The tents on the ground of the Occupy movement are the tip of a cultural transformation iceberg.

The game Monopoly was invented a century ago to model our economic system.  Anyone who has played knows that at a certain point it becomes clear who is going to win.  Few play after that.  According to the rules, however, the game is not over until all the properties gathered by other players earlier in the game have been mortgaged and lost to the winner.

In today’s Global equivalent, we have reached the point where we know who has won.  They are the 1%.  Austerity measures and the privatization of public resources are the mopping up stage.  Unfortunately, it is not a game!

The Occupy movement is the passion emerging as we see our communities and the natural environment being liquidated to produce continued winnings for an order that has past its “best before date.”  Because of the growing inequalities and serious damage being done to the environment, maximizing monetary wealth has lost its legitimacy as a primary goal.  If humankind is to secure its future, the fair treatment and long-term well-being of all peoples and other living things has to become the new goal.

Occupying the sense of legitimacy, will lay the foundation for a new order.  How societies change on the leverage of legitimacy is detailed here:

http://www.sustainwellbeing.net/legitimacy.html

“To be truly radical is to make hope possible,
rather than despair convincing.”
Raymond Henry Williams

——————————————————

http://www.sustainwellbeing.net/invite.html

The Global Monopoly Game has played out to where the 99% recognize that the 1% has won.

Congratulations to them.

Now it is time for a new game.

Occupy the conventional wisdom.

The “Occupy” movement is about shifting society’s goals.  We need to occupy the conventional wisdom (that which is understood to be true and proper).   Our occupation asserts that legitimacy has moved from the goal of maximizing monetary wealth, to a new order based on fair treatment and the long-term well-being of all peoples and other living things.

Societies change on the leverage of legitimacy.

An early detail coming out of the “Occupy” movement was about its apparent lack of demands.  The sense was that a demand requires an authority that might grant it.  The order of the 1% has lost its legitimacy due to the damage it has caused to communities and the environment.  By occupying the sense of legitimacy, we lay the foundation for a new order.

How shifting legitimacy can change the course of Civilization.

A free on-line mini-course on Shifting Society’s Goals is available here.

If you think this notion has merit, please pass it on.

If you Twitter, please tweet:

Occupy the growth paradigm, replace it with respect for the Earth’s limits and the needs of all. #occupywallstreet #OSW http://bit.ly/i8PTto

“To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing.”

Raymond Henry Williams

For the transformation,

Mike N.

Quotes from the beginning and the end of the article:
The Peak Oil Crisis: An Announcement
BY Tom Whipple

“The major step forward, however, is the official and semi-public recognition by a major government that global oil supplies will fall behind demand in as little as five years. After years of official denial this is indeed a breakthrough worthy of note.”
. . .

“What is obvious, however, is the faster people and their governments recognize the real nature of the problem and start working on real solutions the better off we and succeeding generations will be.”

See the full article at:

http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/9335-the-peak-oil-crisis-an-announcement.html

—–

How might the greatest civilization ever to inhabit this planet deal with such a challenge if we were to make it a priority while its resource capabilities are still near their peak?

Three potent steps that could be taken are familiar to many receiving our mini-course on Shifting Society’s Goals. That article is posted at:

http://www.sustainwellbeing.net/3potentsteps.html

Shifting our focus individually and as societies toward greeting the future before it arrives is our purpose. Let’s see how soon we can bring about that shift.

Looking forward.

Yours, Mike N.
————————————————

“The age of cheap oil is over,”

“We think that the crude oil production has already peaked, in 2006.”

Fatih Birol
Chief economist of the International Energy Agency,

How much will we pay?

———————–

http://www.SustainWellBeing.net

Sustainability Project – 7th Generation Initiative
2799 McDonald’s Corners Rd.
RR #3 Lanark, Ontario
K0G 1K0

phone (613) 482-1208
e-mail: sustain5@web.ca

The age of economic expansion is over!

This short video (6.5 min.) by Richard Heinberg clearly explaining why.     I recommend it highly.

Who Killed Economic Growth?
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/who-killed-economic-growthIf you recognize the need for a new direction, you may be interested in our free mini-course on

Shifting Society’s Goals.
http://www.sustainwellbeing.net/minicourse.html
It is ten short articles or videos, delivered one a week, containing insights into how humankind might shift from our long period of childhood and adolescent growth to a mature state.Every day, news items draw attention to the need for change and new materials, explaining what that change needs to be, come to our attention.  Keep doing your part and the Grandchildren will have cause to thank us.

For a sustainable future,

Mike N.

*   -   *   -   *   -   *   -   *   -   *   -   *   -   *   -   *

“There is a tradition in some societies,
whenever decisions are being made, to consider
the interests of the next seven generations.

For the modern world to do the same
would mark our passage to maturity.”

*   -   *   -   *   -   *   -   *   -   *   -   *   -   *   -   *

http://www.SustainWellBeing.net

Sustainability Project / 7th Generation Initiative
2799 McDonalds Corners Rd.
RR #3
Lanark, Ontario
K0G 1K0

phone: (613) 482-1208
e-mail:  sustain5@web.ca

A Fundamental Choice

At the root of this effort to Shift Society’s Goals is a fundamental choice.  What are we trying to accomplish together as societies?  Is our purpose to perpetually expand human activity (grow until we drop), or is it now time to acknowledge that we are stretching the limits of our finite planet, accept responsibility for the problems that causes and set our collective sights on finding a sustainable balance with the Earth?  When the answer to this question becomes a conscious part of the conventional wisdom, the full power and creativity of civilization will turn to address the challenge.

The answer is clear to any informed person that thinks about it, yet most political ‘leaders’ still work hard to make economies grow, as fast as possible.  Much work needs to be done informing people and getting them thinking.

The task, however, is not so easy.  We humans tend to be attached to our world views.  For people educated in the Growth ideology, it is an article of faith that growth is an ultimate good.  That faith is reinforced when growth falters and recessions bring hard times.

How do we catch the attention of such people for long enough to explain that growth is essential only because we use debt based money.  By using money that is loaned into existence, we are always compelled to grow, that is, to borrow at least enough new money into existence each year to cover the interest required to pay for the money already borrowed into circulation.  The basic process is exlained in this 5 min. video.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLB9xiYujow  Once the compulsion for growth that is built into conventional money is understood, people need to understand further that there are other sorts of currency that don’t require growth.  http://www.sustainwellbeing.net/different_money.html

The present Shifting Society’s Goals strategy aims to get around the problem of fixed world views by stimulating curiosity around a question containing the essential dichotomy of growth and sustainability.  By asking, rather than telling, the sense that one’s world view is being challenged is diminished and people are far more likely to consider the issue.  If they do consider it, the chances are good that they will come to the same conclusion that many of us would like to tell them.  With a response originating in their own minds, however, they may soon be spreading the word themselves.

The Growth or Sustainability choice we call a “Question of Direction.”  When things are named, it becomes much easier to draw attention to them.  The Question of Direction could be called anything and it would still point to the same problems and solution.  If you know of a more descriptive handle, we’d be interested in considering it.  By any other name, however, the details would include the points introduced here:

http://www.sustainwellbeing.net/question.html

Change begins with a conversation

http://www.sustainwellbeing.net/conversation.html

We encourage you to help initiate the conversation wherever you have contacts.  If through our cooperative effort we are able to penetrate the barriers that guard the public agenda and get the Question of Direction on the table, we would be a big step closer to actually recognizing the challenge of having grown to fill our planet.

Please pass the links to this discussion on to others who might be interested:

Mini-course on Shifting Society’s Goals at:   http://www.sustainwellbeing.net/minicourse.html

Shifting Society’s Goals Think Tank discussion at:  http://ssgthinktank.wordpress.com/

For a sustainable future,

Mike Nickerson

Welcome:

For thousands of years humans have experienced a huge planet with lots of territory to grow into.  Today, our impacts are felt practically everywhere.

Our biggest problems are now because of our size and further expansion is making them worse.

We do not have to grow until we drop.

This Think Tank is an opportunity for people who realize that civilization is now physically grown up to share ideas, action plans, reports on actions and any other details by which we can better equip each other and our communities to move into the new era.  The new era will see human impacts stabilize safely within the Earth’s carrying capacity and will enable countless generations to thrive under the sun.

The 7th Generation Initiative is dedicated to this task.  It is a Question of Direction

Looking forward to getting to know you.

Yours, Mike Nickerson, from the 7th Generation Initiative