As you are probably aware, we live in a global civilisation that is ecologically selfdestructing. To avoid the worst of the oncoming disaster we need to change the operating character of our whole society. The needed changes are so comprehensive that we speak of whole system change. We have the design skills and technical means to totally revamp how our society operates and live well within the ecological carrying capacity of the Earth. What is needed is the public will. What follows is a framework for enabling people to making sense of whole system change. It provides a basis for personal communication to help people grasp the interconnected nature of our environmental and social issues, and to see a hopeful way forward. Understanding Whole System Change is designed to cover the ground of large-scale transformative change without getting caught up in the detail. The approach is consistent with leading thinkers such as David Korten, Joanna Macy, Riane Eisler, and Paul Raskin. Although there may be differences in language or emphasis, you might assess whether overall this framework makes sense to you. We are in the midst of a Great Transition − and we need to accelerate it! There are millions of groups working for environmental and social well-being. You may be active in one or more such groups yourself. In Blessed Unrest Paul Hawken described us a ‘vast and largely unseen movement’. If things go well, historians in the future will look back and say that ours was the time of the Great Transition to a lifesustaining civilisation. Some call it the Great Turning. In my view, the key point of change for success to enable critical mass of ordinary people and influential decision-makers to grasp the need for transformative change, and passionately commit to making it happen. Therefore the most influential thing we can do is to ‘engage the unengaged’ − people who have not thought deeply about current global trends and their implications.

Whole system change The needed changes are so comprehensive  and so good-hearted  that we may speak of whole system change. They include changes in personal psychology, economics, industrial design and agriculture. Whole system change means doing everything required to actually become ecologically sustainable. Nothing less will do. The idea of whole system change can seem overwhelming to people. This article shows an approach to making it mentally manageable in a way that supports realworld changes. It uses a somewhat different logic than many of us are used to. We start with core principles and work out their applications. Although there are many ways to slice the cake, I have boiled the core operating principles down to just two: See what you think. A viable society will  Operate for community and natural wellbeing  And it will be ecologically sustainable I also include a ‘big picture’ map that highlights the major drivers of environmental destruction and therefore indicates the major elements that need to change. This map enables people to see how all the major factors are functionally interconnected, and that none of them can be neglected if we are to actually achieve sustainability. Images of whole system change What is a whole system change? It may be helpful to start with a few impressionistic images. We all changed profoundly as we moved from infancy into childhood and from childhood into adulthood. So much about us changed and yet we are ‘the same’ people. The shift from water to ice and from chrysalis to butterfly are whole system changes  as is the shift from a temperate climate to an ice age on the one hand, or to runaway global warming on the other. The shift from war to peace is a whole system change. If we make it, our metamorphosis to a healthy sustainable society will be the springtime of humanity  a new flowering of wellbeing after a millennia-long period of darkness. We the signs of this springtime everywhere … even as there are threats of war and ecological collapse. Thinking through whole system change Creating a viable society will involve millions of us forming a thoughtful understanding of what needs to change  and then getting on with making the changes. So both education and practical action are crucial. Our practical projects become more meaningful when we place them in the context of co-creating a sustainable, fair and prosperous society. What follows is an approach to making whole system change intellectually manageable in a way that supports practical real world changes. It is based on four questions: 1 What are the core values of a healthy society  and how can we embody them more in society? 2 What is the essence of ecological sustainability – and what do current ecological trends show? 3 How does the operation of our society as a whole operate tend to make environmental issues worse, and what are the crucial leverage points for change? 4 How can we catalyse a movement to shift the aspiration and practical operation of our society so that we actually become a sustainable global civilisation? A natural follow through from exploring these questions is to ask what (if anything) are you moved to do within your sphere of interest and influence to contribute to the transformative shift? Are there ways to make a bridge between what you are already doing and whole system change? I believe that when people think through these topics they will come to very similar conclusions about why and how we need to change. Why? Because these are not ideological questions but questions about how environmental and social reality work. The above four questions enable people to create a systemic framework that includes all relevant factors. Such a mental model points the way to a viable future. It equips people to intelligently assess the pronouncements of major business leaders and politicians, and to support constructive leadership. It also positions us to exert leadership ourselves within our sphere of influence. The questions can be answered using frameworks other than the ones I offer here. For example, I use ‘The Natural Step’ as a basis for understanding the essence of ecological sustainability, but the concept of ‘Ecological Footprint’ can also do the job.

Question 1: What are the core values of a healthy society? There are many ways to describe positive core values. In this section we are looking for an inclusive framework that makes them mentally manageable. Because it is so useful, I and others have adopted the framework put forward by futurist Riane Eisler. Eisler notes the distinction between what she calls partnership/respect relating and domination/control relating. In The Power of Partnership Riane Eisler observes: In the domination model, somebody has to be on top and somebody has to be on the bottom. Those on top control those below them. People learn, starting in early childhood, to obey orders without question. They learn to carry a harsh voice in their heads telling them they are no good, they don’t deserve love, they need to be punished. Families and societies are based on control that is explicitly or implicitly backed up by guilt, fear, and force. The world is divided into in-groups and out-groups, with those who are different seen as enemies to be conquered or destroyed. In contrast, the partnership model supports mutually respectful and caring relations. Because there’s no need to maintain rigid rankings of control, there is also no built-in need for abuse or violence. Partnership relations free our innate capacity to feel joy, to play. They enable us to grow mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. This is true for individuals, families, and whole societies. Conflict is an opportunity to learn and to be creative, and power is exercised in ways that empower rather than disempower others. Partnership relating is oriented towards the wellbeing of the community (as well as being mindful of one’s own self interest). Partnership values find expression in democracy, in the caring aspects of organised religion, and in the growing concern to protect ecological systems. The archetypal form is a mother working for the wellbeing of each member of her family. Dominator relating uses force and intimidation to establish one’s own advantage over others at the expense of the community. It is oriented more towards conquering than towards collaborating. The archetypal forms of dominator relating are patriarchal: fathers dominating their families and emperors dominating vast territories. This distinction is useful because it operates at every level, from human relationships through to business, education and global governance. We can look at any human institution and ask whether it is operating in a partnership mode or in a dominator mode. Eisler’s Partnership-Dominator contrast is also appealing because it describes not only values, but also ways of organising our behaviour. I believe that a healthy society will operate on partnership/respect values; this means that we can work out how to transform schools and the internal operations of businesses to embody those values. Thus we can imagine an organisation shifting from an authoritarian style to a collaborative, empowering style of management.

This operational aspect is important because there is reason to believe that our current dominator style  as expressed in the aggressive expansion of fracking, GM crops, and the American invasion of Iraq  is a major driver of ecological deterioration. Likewise, corporate lobbying and disinformation are a major impediment to transitioning to environmentally sustainable practices. The dominator pattern is also a major contributor to the inner unhappiness that produces retail therapy and other forms of excess consumption. Partnership and dominator are two contrasting approaches to life that operate on every level of human endeavour, from child-rearing to global governance. Many aspects of dominator behaviour are truly horrific, both historically and in terms of current events. Therefore it is important for people to know that in important respects some parts of humanity are becoming healthier and more balanced, and that there is a strong positive trend that may ultimately set the tone for a positive future. Different scales of the Partnership-Dominator contrast A healthy society will operate on good willed partnership/respect values at every level. It can be useful to see how both partnership and dominator play out at different levels. We have well-proven practical examples of how to apply a partnership style at the concrete levels of birth, parenting practices, education, and business operations. We also have well thought out conceptual approaches at the more abstract levels of economics and global governance. We know in principle, and to a great degree in practice, how to make partnership/respect relating work.

Two paths to the future This diagram shows real-world consequences of partnership and dominator relating. Making partnership/respect values operational If it is true that a viable society will operate on positive values, how can we embed partnership values throughout society? There are many ways. Here are some examples.  At an individual level, there are many methods of training that enable us to become more skilful at partnership relating. They include well-known disciplines such as Conflict Resolution, Non-Violent Communication and Crucial Conversations. Some that you might not ordinarily think of include the Feldenkrais method of body awareness, Aikido and improvisational acting. By acquiring these skills we can enjoy our lives more.  There are also breakthrough techniques in the new field of energy psychology that enable people to rapidly resolve emotional distress and cultivate emotional resilience. EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) is one of them (www.emofree.com). Resolving our emotional stuff makes us less prone to move into dominator mode. Cultivating emotional resilience can reduce our desire to compensate for not feeling good in ourselves by e.g. shopping. So cultivating emotional resilience is a crucial aspect of transitioning to a viable society.  Organisationally, the paper Simply the Best: Workplaces in Australia (www.cosolve.com.au/files/simply_the_best.pdf) shows that in the best performing workplaces (as identified by the Australian Business Council) managers use a partnership/respect style of relating. The connection is obvious: happier people spontaneously work better  Unconditional respect is a pre-condition for students being able to learn. John Corrigan’s Group 8 makes the concept of unconditional respect both theoretically and experientially real to the senior leadership of schools; this flows through to the way teachers in the classroom relate to their students.  Ricardo Semler’s Maverick describes how he changed his Brazilian pump manufacturing company from an authoritarian style to a style that supports individual initiative from workers. There are many other examples of highly successful companies that operate on good willed partnership/respect values.  Internationally, after World War II, the United Nations was set up to be a community of nations. The World Bank was established to help Third World countries develop. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was established to provide loans when countries got too economically out of balance. The idea behind the IMF was to reduce the stress on local populations that would tend to lead to war. So initially the World Bank and the IMF were meant to be partnership organisations. They were quickly co-opted to serve the interests of money and power (C/F The World Bank and the Poverty of Nations, Catherine Caulfield, Macmillan, London1997).

Question 2: What is the essence of environmental sustainability? The essence of environmental sustainability is that overall we do not destroy nature faster than it can regenerate, and that we do not introduce into the environment toxins that living cells cannot handle. Suppose you have a forest. And you log part of it. But an equivalent amount grows back somewhere else. As long as the amount that grows back equals the amount that was logged, in principle the forest is sustainable. You destroy part of the forest, but it can regenerate.

However, if you destroy the forest faster than it can regenerate, the forest gets thinner and thinner (or smaller and smaller) and eventually turns into grassland and then desert. The progressive reduction of the forest is unsustainable. So what we are looking at is cumulative environmental damage  damage that accrues over time. In the long run cumulative environmental damage is unsustainable.

This way of looking at the essence of environmental sustainability comes from The Natural Step, developed by Swedish scientist Karl-Henrik Robèrt. He puts it more formally, however. The Natural Step – Four System Conditions for environmental sustainability In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing… …concentrations of substances extracted from the Earth’s crust, …concentrations of substances produced by society, …degradation by physical means, and in that society …people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs. These are real-world conditions, not theoretical ideals. If we extract substances such as lead and mercury from the Earth and introduce them into the natural environment they act as poisons because living cells are not adapted to them. Similarly with substances produced by societyindustrial toxins. If we progressively reduce the physical basis for nature’s productivity we will destroy the ecological basis of our food supply. These processes are currently occurring on a large scale e.g. in the form of fracking, the release of industrial toxins into the environment and soil depletion. The requirement to meet basic human needs is not simply an idealistic wish. When basic human needs are not met people behave in ways that are environmentally damaging on a large scale. The Natural Step System Conditions provide a way of working out whether a business, a country or our global civilisation is operating in a way that is ecologically sustainable or not. For example, we may ask: are the fish in a given fishing ground repopulating as fast as we take them out, or are the fish stocks declining over time (e.g., currently tuna stocks are down 90% from former numbers). Thus, instead of arguing over absolute numbers (e.g., at what point will the fishery collapse?), for policy purposes we can simply note the trend line. Is a given environmental indicator getting worse? If so, it is time to change course. Is a critical environmental indicator getting worse faster? It is therefore time to go into emergency mode. The Centre for Integrated Sustainability Analysis at the University of Sydney works out numerically the embedded energy and material flows in entire supply chains. So we have the techniques and resources to measure whether the production of a given product is ecologically sustainable or not.

A number of businesses now do annual sustainability audits to assess how they are functioning against these criteria. Perhaps the most famous is Interface Carpets; Founder Ray Anderson tells the story in Mid-Course Correction. Two major breakthroughs occurred after Ray Anderson had Karl-Henrik Robèrt train his staff in The Natural Step principles. Interface realised that they could shift from selling carpets to selling carpet services. In practice this means they only replace worn out carpet tiles, rather than whole carpets. And they keep the used carpet tiles instead of throwing them into landfill. This is profitable, because Interface engineers invented a way to reconstitute the used carpet back into oil for manufacturing the carpet tiles  a huge economic as well as environmental gain. How are we doing? Will Steffen of Australia National University produced a set of diagrams that show how population, economic increase and environmental damage in various sectors are all rapidly increasing simultaneously. In 2008 New Scientist summarised them in a special report called The facts about overconsumption. For an expanded view of this graph, go to see graph in detail. These graphs show gradual growth in areas such as water use and species extinction accelerating hand-in-hand with increasing economic growth  the classic ‘hockey stick’ curve. The graphs tell a story. They are indicators of a dysfunctional global civilisation that must change radically if it is to survive its own success.

If we don’t, the implications are clear: even in the developed countries there will be starvation, disease and violence when there is insufficient food and water as the environment unravels. Peak Oil Peak Oil is that point in global oil production when oil prices inevitably increase because the availability of oil that is cheap to extract begins to decline. Some analysts assert that we have already reached peak oil. Our currently rising petrol prices are consistent with this view. From the perspective of climate change, Peak Oil is good news. It will reduce the amount of oil we burn. However, from the perspective of an economy unprepared for Peak Oil we are in for a rough ride. As Joseph Tainter shows in The Collapse of Complex Societies, the historical record shows that when societies reach the limit of resources they depend upon, and those resources decline, their leadership typically pushes harder to extract the remaining resources. Thus they accelerate their society’s decline by trying to amplify business as usual. Globally our current version of this is to extract oil from sources where extraction is increasingly difficult, such as coal tar sands and deep offshore drilling, and to rapidly push the expansion of coal seam gas extraction (fracking). Fracking destroys both prime farmland and aquifers, and can only provide a short-term energy respite in any case. Thus we are caught in what might be called Tainter’s Dilemma. We feel that we need both the energy and the income to keep our economy going. But the harder we push the sooner our demise will come. The way out is to accept reality and aim for a planned descent  descent by design, not by disaster. Our wake-up call In 2008 a Russian research ship discovered methane plumes bubbling up from the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. The permafrost vault that covers vast tracts of frozen methane (gas hydrates) is developing cracks. It was thought that this deep permafrost could not thaw for a long time. The prestigious United States National Science Foundation issued a warning paper about it. http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=116532&org=NSF&from=news Since methane is a potent greenhouse gas, arguably this is beginning of uncontrollable global warming. This may be still reversible. The implication for public policy is that it is no longer realistic to plan to allow atmospheric CO2 to rise. Scenarios suggesting stabilising CO2 at 450-550ppm are out of date. Merely stabilising at current concentrations of CO2 will be insufficient. A responsible policy response requires going all out to not only reduce fossil fuel emissions; but also paying farmers directly to sequester carbon into the soil  and publicising the need for this to our population at large. (Farmers can withdraw CO2 from the atmosphere through farming techniques that build up the amount of humus in the soil.) We have just considered the two core principles of a viable society. Obviously a viable society will be ecologically sustainable. It will also operate on positive values that support individual and community wellbeing, rather than on aggressively competitive values that destroy the environment, communities and individual wellbeing. Our next step is to develop a big picture map of how our society works as a whole, so that we become clear about what needs to change. It is not enough to see parts of what needs to change; we need to bring the whole picture into view, so that nothing important is neglected. Skilled practitioners in every discipline take account of the whole situation before they intervene. They don’t just jump to solutions; they take the time to work out precisely what is needed. That way they do not miss important factors, and they can identify the most effective places to intervene. This approach is especially important in terms of catalysing large-scale healthy social change. Here I will show a way of mapping the big picture that gives a systemic overview. Question 3: How does the operation of our society as a whole tend to make environmental issues worse? We are going to develop a map of the major elements that need to shift in order for our global civilisation to become ecologically sustainable. Our starting point is to ask: How does our society as a whole operate in ways that make global warming and other environmental and social issues worse? Our procedure is to develop step-by-step a diagram that maps the major elements of how our current industrial civilisation accelerating environmental decline. The Ecological Equation is our foundation. It shows the connection between consumerism and environmental degradation. Annie Leonard’s brilliant The Story of Stuff starts in the same way. The Ecological Equation The process of extracting raw materials through mining, industrial agriculture and cutting down forests produces environmental degradation. The raw materials are processed in factories, which produce their own environmental damage through chemical toxins, acid rain and the greenhouse gasses that accelerate climate change. All of these are involved in the production of the ordinary things that we use.

As this diagram shows, there is a direct connection between the amount of ‘stuff’ we produce and associated environmental damage. In the following diagram, as the red arrow on the right representing increasing consumption goes up, the red arrow on the left representing environmental deterioration goes up even more. The more stuff the more damage. So you can see how this diagram works as a visual equation. It is clear that if we are to become environmentally sustainable, we must reduce the cumulative environmental impact of the process of making and consuming things. By how much? we may ask. To what numerical value should the arrow on the left representing cumulative environmental damage fall in order to be sustainable? If we cut trees from a forest, but trees in other parts of the forest grow back at an equal rate, then in principle the forest is sustainable. However, if we cut down trees faster than they regrow, gradually the forest will get smaller and smaller until it is gone. This is an example of cumulative damage. It adds up over time. If we intend to be ecologically sustainable, our goal must be to reduce our cumulative rate of environmental degradation in key areas such as topsoil, forests, fish stocks, water and biological diversity to … (drum roll!) zero. Zero! This rigorous demand comes from the nature of reality itself. It has nothing to do with political opinions. If the overall trend is of increasing deterioration, we will end up destroying our life support systems. Integrated industrial design as a hopeful line of solution The technological hope is to reduce environmental degradation through improved design. A great deal can be done in this direction. Lovins and Hawken’s Natural Capitalism shows that in every area from agriculture to architecture and manufacturing we can reduce the amount of energy and materials we use by ninety percent or more. This is an exciting realisation, and more of us should know about it. It is crucial to our future well-being. But we may wonder if improved design will be sufficient by itself? Sometimes improved design means that things are produced more cheaply, making it easier for more people to buy more of them, so there is still a large ecological footprint. And as affluence increases, many people tend to buy more things. Reducing overall consumption Therefore I suggest that we must set as our goal reducing overall consumption. This requires a whole system change, based on profound changes in attitudes, and not just changes in specific behaviours such as recycling. Note that this is not about reducing basic necessities. Nor is it about living bleak poverty-stricken lifestyles. It is about reducing excess consumption  consumption that is wasteful through poor design (e.g. built in obsolescence), and consumption of excess stuff that we do not necessarily need or enjoy. It is about elegant design that is satisfying. Simultaneously, it is about increasing social connectedness and personal wellbeing. We can live better with less  exquisite sufficiency! Identifying factors that tend to increase consumption To understand the nature of the needed whole system change let’s consider factors that tend to increase consumption. These will generate a catalogue of things that collectively we need to change. Obviously advertising plays a major role in increasing consumption  especially excess consumption of things we don’t necessarily need or enjoy. But advertising per se does not compel us to buy things. There are psychological drivers that affect our desire to purchase things.

At a surface level, many of us are attracted by the ready availability of relatively inexpensive interesting looking things. We are attracted  and we may not be aware of the associated ecological damage. So we may include both attraction and ignorance of environmental effects as factors in excess consumption. At a deeper level, many people lack a feeling of inner wellbeing. Many of us have unresolved trauma from child abuse of various sorts, or we may have a sense of an empty hole inside of us associated with parental neglect. We may call this inner malaise. If these feelings of trauma or emptiness were to be directly experienced they would be extremely painful. Properly done, contacting and resolving such feelings is healing, and opens us to authentic pleasure and more fulfilling relationships.

However, many people avoid or compensate for painful feelings by overconsumption. Some stuff themselves with chocolates or indulge in ‘retail therapy’; others buy mansions. Excessive desire for the appearance of status can drive excess consumption. There is healthy status and pathological status. Healthy status is earned; it arises because of one’s contribution to the community based on competence and caring. Pathological status is based on attempting to feel good about oneself by appearing to be superior, or at least not inferior. This manifests as conspicuous consumption and ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. Regretfully, there are very dark psychological forces at work as well. Native Americans have a term, Wetiko, which refers to a cannibalistic spirit or thought-form driven by greed, excess and selfish consumption. It deludes it host into believing that consuming the life force of others for aggrandizement or profit is a logical and morally upright way to live. In the movie Avatar we saw a beautiful indigenous people and their environment wilfully destroyed for the sake of massive profit. We now see this playing out here on Earth with fracking, coal mining and other environmentally destructive practices. Every developed society has commerce; this is the ordinary trade in goods and services that keep things going. But what we saw in Avatar we might call commercialism. Commercialism is a form of mental disease. These psychological factors contribute to excess consumption, and hence increased environmental degradation. Let’s add them to our map.

Many people, based on their experience, hold the view that the ultimate nature of the universe is consciousness, and that the quality of this consciousness is love. Words that are sometimes used to indicate this aspect of reality include presence, divinity, God, and Being. It has been suggested that many of us, because of trauma and cultural denial, have organised our minds in ways that prevent us from experiencing the bliss and love associated with deeper levels of connection with nature, community and whatever we might experience as a spirit of the divine. We are disconnected from deeper levels of ourselves. Being disconnected from these levels of awareness is in itself painful, and we compensate with the surface pleasures of materialism. These psychological factors that drive ever-increasing industrial production, and hence environmental destruction clearing global warming, manifests as institutional arrangements. These include government policies devoted to increasing economic growth, and also the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and various Free Trade agreements. The WTO agreements, although instituted by democratic governments, actually subvert democracy. Among other things, they give countries the right to sue other governments if a new law is seen to be giving an advantage to local producers. The limit the right of the country to as environmental protection legislation. These laws were instituted by corporate interests. And many of us feel that to a great extent our governments are corrupted by money. These factors are part of the system that must change if we are to become ecologically sustainable; let’s add them to our diagram. As you know, our economic system is oriented around continual economic increase for the sake of increasing shareholder value. A great deal of financial capital is in superannuation funds, which means that ordinary people have an investment in keeping the current growth system going. However, the majority of shares are owned by a relatively small number of extremely wealthy people. So we may say that our economic system is set up to help the wealthy get wealthier. They are assisted in this through government policies that they themselves have influenced – policies that emphasise increasing the Gross National Product. Money enters the system as debt with interest, and paying off the interest requires everincreasing economic growth. Trade is the engine of growth, and organisations such as the World Trade Organisation are specifically designed to increase international trade. So let’s add two more aspects to our map: devotion to economic growth in a way that increases the wealth of the elites.

Population Population increase amplifies all the adverse trends. Even in Third World countries with really small ecological footprints, increasing population puts stress on food, fresh water supplies and other local resources. So population increase is yet another driver of environmental degradation. The map that we have developed  and the grim prognosis that goes with it  is a picture of a dominator society combined with affluence and population increase. Putting this label on the map completes our big picture orientation.

Whole system change & leverage points We have talked about inner emptiness and lack of felt wellbeing. We have also talked about responses to childhood abuse finding expression as large-scale corporate aggression. These psychological aspects, although they are rarely discussed, are actually key drivers of environmental deterioration in developed countries. It boils down to this: in the developed world environmental deterioration is driven by unhappy people. It follows that a key point of change for creating a positive future is that we should become happier in ourselves so that we are not driven to excess consumption. Ideally we should develop such an internal feeling of wellbeing that excess consumption becomes simply uninteresting. Improved parenting, strong social networks, personal development, and organising business, education and government to operate on partnership values can all contribute to genuine happiness and wellbeing. Other important points of change include improved industrial design, modifying the WTO or withdrawing from it, and reducing the advertising that fuels excess consumption.

Single-issue solutions are insufficient Now we see why single-issue solutions are insufficient. It is this entire system that must transform  starting with core values, and finding expression through the many points of change that we can identify from the diagram. We can influence some of the leverage points as individuals. For example, we can do personal development to improve our own emotional wellbeing, and hence reduce the anxiety that might lead us to buy stuff we don’t need. Perhaps we can change a school culture from authoritarian command and control to one that supports kids’ curiosity and initiative, and indeed their genius. If we are business leaders we can work out how to run the business in ways that reduce stress on employees, and hence reduce their tendency to excess consumption. We can also invest directly in industrial redesign that eliminates waste and toxins. Obviously large-scale national and global policies are not within our personal ability to directly change. But it is not that these things cannot change. The pre-condition for change is that a critical mass of people intelligently and passionately embrace the need for large-scale transformation. Since this is unlikely to be championed by mainstream media, we need ways to bypass the media. A way to bypass the media is for those of us who have become knowledgeable and who care to initiate conversations about whole system change with friends and neighbours. Two thought starter tools have been developed to facilitate such conversations: Tabletop Presentations Guide and the Kitchen Table Conversations Manual, and the Transition Leader Network has been established as a community of practice. Hosting just a few conversations will not be sufficient. We need to engage millions of people  a critical mass. Question 4: How can we catalyse a movement to shift the aspiration and practical operation of our society? outlines a strategy for working with groups to take the educational initiative to scale. However, before we go there let’s prepare the ground. Design thinking and an action path to success When people become enthusiastic about whole system change, they typically have one of two responses. Some people resonate strongly at the level of aspiration. This is what 350.org and Earth Hour are about. Other people want to jump immediately into campaigns and practical projects. Many people in the Transition Towns and permaculture movements operate at this practical level.

Both levels are valid and necessary. But in terms of whole system change they are incomplete. Neither aspiration by itself nor projects and campaigns as currently conceived are sufficient to achieve the large-scale changes we need. An extra step is necessary, and that is to think through what is actually involved in whole system change, and how to carry it out. This is the step we are engaged in now. To make whole system change work, we need to apply what some people call design thinking. This means creating a complete action path from aspiration to on the ground changes  plus, in our case, adding outreach and education components. We start with aspiration. We fill in the gap by thinking through what is involved in whole system change.

This generates a big picture understanding of what is needed for successful transformative change, and leads to a number of possibilities for contributing to the needed transformation. Some people will go to campaigns and projects. Other people will go to outreach and education. If we start with projects, we may move up to thinking about whole system change, and go on to include outreach and education as a component of our brief. From a systems point of view, among the many elements that need to change, the crucial point of change to actually achieving a viable society is mobilising informed passionate desire for change. Therefore the step of outreach and education is crucial for success. Every organisation and individual needs to develop a portion of time to this. However, it is not that everybody needs to devote themselves full-time to communicating about whole system change. We still have our own lives to lead. All that is required for most of us is to spend a small portion of our time engaging other people. One rule of thumb is to assign 95% of our time to the projects we are already doing, and 5% to championing whole system change. This mode of thinking through the whole action path from aspiration to practical results is common in architecture and engineering. You start with an initial concept, work out how to make it work, and follow through with actually doing it. This mode of thinking is less common with people trained in liberal arts, mathematics and even science, where there is not necessarily a requirement to produce a real world result that works.

If we truly want to achieve real-world results, we would do well to design a complete action path for each of our social change activities, rather than just proceeding ad hoc and hoping for the best.

Question 4: How can we catalyse a movement to shift the aspiration and practical operation of our whole society? The knowledge and skills necessary to transform to a viable society already exist. In every sphere we have the technical, economic, social and psychological techniques that will lead to a life-sustaining society. There is a powerful wave of technical innovation for sustainability. We also have potent techniques for cultivating systems thinking and creativity, resolving emotional disturbance, and improving our ability to work collaboratively with others. In short, we know in principle how to create a viable society. Our challenge is that the aspiration for transformation is not widely distributed in the population, and relatively few of us are engaged in the learning needed to change the operating style of our society. So we need a new educational movement that will ultimately engage millions of us. I call people who are actively engaged in education for whole system change ‘Transition Leaders’. I would like to think that you would consider acting as a Transition Leader yourself. Perhaps you already recognise yourself as a Transition Leader. Engaging other people need not take a lot of your time; the vision is for millions of us to each do a little bit. Educating ourselves to be Transition Leaders can be thought of as evolving in two phases.  The first phase is forming a working understanding of whole system change. That is what this article is about.  The second phase is immediately starting to ‘teach’ by engaging people in focused conversations that enable people to think through whole system change for themselves. The Inspiring Transition has an innovative teaching tool, Tabletop Presentations, for conducting such conversations. It uses physical models to enable people to keep track of the conversation. People find these models engaging. Conducting conversations about transformative change helps us to integrate the material for ourselves. We also develop the skills needed for conducting such conversations effectively. Inspiring Transition To take this idea to scale we are instigating the Inspiring Transition initiative. Inspiring Transition is conceived of as an open community of practice of people involved in communicating about whole system change to a life-sustaining society.

There are now millions of organisations working on aspects of healthy change. What if the members of such organisations  people who currently mainly pay dues and sign petitions  increase their level of engagement and begin to act as Transition Leaders? Then, by empowering the members of existing organisations we will have a way of bypassing the media and catalysing the necessary thinking in the larger society. The Inspiring Transition Launch will be throughout September 2015. Organisations around the world will simultaneously talk up the vision of a Great Transition to a lifesustaining future. They will use blogs, articles, lectures, workshops, and guerrilla marketing tactics, along with personal conversations, presentations and live workshops. Championing the Great Transition will augment what they are already doing. The purpose of the Launch is to 1 Make the idea of the Great Transition to a life-sustaining future prominent in the global sustainability conversation. 2 Cultivate an informal network of individuals and organisations championing the Great Transition. 3 Catalyse the thinking necessary for people to know what is involved in a whole system change to a life-sustaining society, and to see how they can contribute to it through their own sphere of influence. The reach of any one individual or organisation is limited. However, if thousands of us – even millions – focus on communicating through our networks about transformative change to a life-sustaining society, together we can be a potent force for affecting mainstream consciousness. After all, most of us live and do business in the context of mainstream culture. We can communicate with friends, colleagues and people in our networks. During the Inspiring Transition Launch organisations can post blogs and articles in their newsletters. They may assert that what they are doing is part of the Great Transition to a life-sustaining society. They may offer presentations and trainings to equip people as Transition Leaders. We envision a spreading ferment of informal education, analogous to the selforganised consciousness-raising groups of the feminist movement and the each-oneteach-one initiatives of the American civil rights movement. Administrative support for Inspiring Transition is provided by Be The Change Australia. When organisations agree to participate, they do not come under the Be The Change Australia ‘umbrella’. They continue to be completely autonomous; Be The Change does not direct what they do.

Teaching Tools

The ideas in this article have been translated into an innovative communication tool to support personal conversations about transformative change. It is  Tabletop Presentations Tabletop Presentations provides an integrated overview to enable people to make sense of transformative change. Obviously there is much more to learn. But it can be tempting to devote so much time to learning that we avoid the main task: talking with people about transformative change. That said, in parallel with engaging people in the whole system change conversation, it makes sense for us to deepen our own understanding in six key areas.  Economic reform  Building soil carbon  Industrial design  Organisational change to partnership/respect relating  Cultivating emotional resilience  And, darkly, seeing the many ways that the pattern of corporate injury to communities and the environment so vividly portrayed in the movie Avatar affects us all. The Pachamama Alliance (www.pachamama.org) has developed an Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium and other programs which bring people to a moving felt sense that this Earth is our Home, and we should take care of her. Be The Change Australia (www.bethechange.org.au) conducts these programs in Australia. The Transition Leader Network website (www.transitionleader.net) has links to several other communication tools as well, such as The Story of Stuff. Personal development In parallel with engaging people in the whole system change conversation, it makes sense for us to pursue our own personal development, and to encourage others to do so as well. We do well to train to become more embodied, more creative, and more emotionally resilient. As we become happier in ourselves, well, we are happier! Agree? This is a value in itself. It has the further consequence that we become less dependent on material things for our inner sense of wellbeing, and are therefore less compelled to pursue excess consumption. Through fear, intimidation, and an educational system that emphasises cognition over aliveness, dominators keep populations as subdued as they can.

The disciplines that contribute to our personal growth are sometimes derided as ‘fringe’. It is true that  like the quality of mainstream medical practitioners  the quality of personal growth practitioners varies. But overall the various personal growth disciplines are an important part of our path to a socially healthy and ecologically viable society. There is an appendix on personal development at the end of this article. It goes into more depth about readily applicable techniques for fostering creativity, collaborative communication skills and emotional resilience. To achieve sustainability, we must become collectively the kind of people who can create and enjoy a viable society. Becoming leaders The template for our modern educational systems was developed in authoritarian Prussia in the 1700s. The Prussian leadership recognised that in a developing industrial society they needed people with technical and verbal skills. However, they did not want people to connect-the-dots, to see how oppressed they were, and to potentially rebel against it, the ruling elite. So schools were intentionally designed to prevent people from connecting the dots. Academic subjects were taught as isolated disciplines, and students were indoctrinated to be subservient to authority. Today we need self-initiated citizen leadership. We need many more people to move from being passive bystanders to being active participants in creating a sustainable society. This is the promise of democracy. However, I observe that many people have what I call a ‘glass wall of participation’. It is as though the devastating environmental and social news we see on television is ‘out there’  not quite real, not something affecting us, not something we should actively respond to. Isn’t signing petitions enough? Obviously not. I have mentioned conducting Tabletop Presentations and Kitchen Table Conversations as a means of engaging other people in thinking. Some people may be interested, but also reluctant. They may have reservations such as I don’t know enough. People will think I am weird I don’t want to proselytise. Sometimes simply acknowledging and reflecting on these reservations shifts them. We do not have to be experts. We can engage in co-learning with the people we talk to; and think it through together. As you may have experienced, off-the-cuff conversations about global warming or environmental issues tend to quickly polarise. The solution is to invite people for coffee with the understanding that this is a time dedicated to a serious conversation.

Inviting people to thoughtful conversations is not proselytising. We are not enrolling people in a party line or ideology. We are inviting people to think realistically about the major issues of our time and come to their own conclusions. True, we offer frameworks, ideas, and an overall approach. But we are asking them to be responsible thinkers, not conformists. If you have engaged someone in conversations about transformative change, the next step is to ask if they would be willing to engage somebody they know in similar conversations. By doing so they are participating in catalysing the thinking necessary for our global civilisation to have a chance. They / we are part of a global initiative for healthy change, and our future depends on this initiative increasing rapidly. Conclusion We are among the most important people who ever lived. We will determine whether humankind will grow or die, evolve or perish. Jean Houston So let’s get on with it! Andrew Gaines +612 8005-8382 0416 489 809 Skype: andrewgoodhumour andrew.gaines@inspiringtransition.net www.inspiringtransition.net We are in a Great Transition to a life-sustaining society!

Appendix: Personal Development This appendix goes into more depth about emotional and mental development. I bring it in as part of a conversation about whole system change because currently most of the conversation in the sustainability space is about technical changes. Some of the ideas here may be new to you. Personal development is a crucial aspect of evolving a healthy society, because both our unresolved emotional issues and our, at times aggressive, communication patterns are part of the social malaise that drives our unsustainable society. None of us is perfect, and few of us operate at anywhere near our full capacity. Therefore we would do well to continue our own personal development. Investments we make in our own personal development now pay off later as greatly increased joy of living. They also make us more capable in our personal and business lives, and as social change agents. Likewise, to the extent that we can, we do well to champion personal development in the larger culture. We are about becoming the kind of people who can create and enjoy a viable society. There are six areas that are especially relevant:  Developing enhanced partnership relating skills  Systems thinking  Resolving emotional disturbances  Creativity and play  Body awareness  The capacity to conduct conversations about whole system change and leadership Developing enhanced partnership relating skills From a neurological point of view, all skills are functional patterns of coordination in the nervous system. This is important to note, because skills are not acquired by reading, but by experiential practice. In learning to crawl a baby is training his brain to direct his muscles. We all have the capacity for both partnership and for dominator style of relating. However, in many areas our culture emphasises dominator relating, either in the form of exerting power over other people, or in the form of being subservient to other people’s power. So, by and large, many of us are not as skilled at partnership/respect relating as we might be. Understanding Whole System Change 32 There are forms of training that can

There are forms of training that can help us increase our capacity for partnership/respect relating. Experiential training that involves movement forms ‘templates of coordination’ in the motor system of the brain. Sometimes these are applied spontaneously in other situations. Thus there can be carryover from the training to spontaneous real-life applications outside the training room. Top of the list I would put improvisational acting. Through improvisation we learn how to be in the moment, accept and build on initiatives that come from our partner, and activate our own creativity. The Japanese martial art Aikido trains us to blend with an incoming attack rather than trying to block it, while maintaining our own centre. Like improvisation acting, it is about going with rather than blocking. We help the attacker go where they are already going (while getting out of the way ourselves), but we guide them in such a way that finally the attacker falls down. Techniques such as Conflict Resolution, Non-Violent Communication, Crucial Conversations and assertiveness training also help us develop partnership-relating skills. Systems thinking and improving human functioning The Ecological Equation and our Big Picture Map are natural forms of systems thinking. They are ways of connecting the dots to see how things work. In The Fifth Discipline Peter Senge presents a form of systems thinking based on identifying feedback loops that either amplify or dampen a trend. Understanding feedback loops is important, because when restraining limits are removed from a living dynamic system the system will inevitably amplify certain behaviours to the point where the system self-destructs. This is occurring both environmentally and economically at the present, but few people are equipped to see it. Peter Senge’s work, and Donella Meadows’ Thinking in Systems, provide analytical approaches to systems thinking. This is valuable. They enable us to see patterns of connection that we might otherwise not have noticed. At quite a different level, the Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lessons developed by Moshe Feldenkrais provide a way of learning systems thinking through the body. ATM lessons look a bit like yoga, but their inner logic is different. By doing a short series of ATM lessons we discover that our body works as a whole. Releasing something in the shoulder helps the hips move better. This sensory discovery that things are interconnected creates a neurological template for seeing the world as integrated rather than as fragmented. The Feldenkrais approach goes beyond analysis. It is about improving function  making things work better. A key Feldenkrais question is how does this system operate in a way that produces the difficulty we experience? At a body level this question might show up as how does this person organise their whole body in such a way that they put painful stress on their left knee, but not on the right? We might see that it has something to do with an imbalance in the way they hold their shoulders, or what they do with their hips. The Feldenkrais practitioner then helps the client discover how to mobilise their shoulders and hips in a way that allows their overall body movement to become more coordinated, thus removing the stress from the left knee. This Feldenkrais question was the basis for our approach to the big picture map. Starting with the Ecological Equation, which shows the connections between the production of stuff and associated ecological damage, we asked how does our system operate in ways that make environmental damage worse? This translates into: what factors in our society tend to increase the amount of stuff we produce and consume? By answering these questions we are exploring one of the Senge/Meadows amplifying loops. Dampening influences, which we sorely need, are increased financial regulation, more inner wellbeing (and hence less compulsive consumption), and a culture-wide aspiration for materially modest lifestyles instead of pursuing everincreasing economic growth.

Resolving emotional disturbances Most of us have unresolved emotional issues from childhood, or from events that happened later. They affect our adult relationships both at home and in business. Regretfully, even in the world of NGOs there can be dysfunctional relationships. Emotional dysfunction is stressful and counter-productive. It reduces our effectiveness as activists, and in the larger culture it is a driver of compensatory excess consumption. Therefore both personally and culturally it serves us well to resolve any emotional baggage or reactivity we may still have. In the West the classic way to resolve emotions is through counselling and psychotherapy. Buddhism has introduced Insight Meditation, where by clearly attending to our emotional reactions we can resolve them. We observe them, but do not put any additional energy into them. In time their power diminishes or disappears. This approach is advocated by Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now. There is a new discipline of energy psychology that speeds up the process of resolving our emotional reactions. It works by rebalancing the flow of acupuncture energy (chi) in the body. One of the more accessible energy psychology techniques is Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). EFT is a do-it-yourself technique. You can go through a (free) well-crafted on-line course at http://www.garythink.com/eft/eft-tutorial.html. After the first lesson you will be equipped to try it on a minor issue and see if it works for you. Emotional insight and resilience are too important to be left to psychologists and other mental health professionals. I would like to see EFT and other techniques used widely by ordinary people. Creativity and play Creativity, play, impassioned learning, enquiry and sheer pleasure are antithetical to authoritarian rule. Authoritarians sense that it is better to keep people emotionally depressed than to allow enough enthusiasm to arise that people might wake up and rebel against their oppression. Our goal, of course, is to take the high ground and create a healthy culture. Playing with ideas creatively can take us out of silo thinking and enable us to see more patterns of connection. There are techniques that are spontaneously used by great innovators, and they are quite teachable. Two books for cultivating creative thinking skills are George Prince’s The Practice of Creativity and my own Creative Conversations. Creative Conversations gives games and exercises to teach playful thinking and communication skills. Viola Spolin’s Improvisation for the Theater and Keith Johnston’s Impro open up the playful world of improvisational acting.

Cultivating body awareness This may seem like an odd one to put on our list. But it is profound. Ultimately wellbeing is a set of pleasurable body statesinner feelings that feel good, not transiently, as with enjoying an ice cream cone, but as deeper ongoing body states that include calm aliveness, joy in life, and bliss. When people experience such feelings they no longer ask what is the meaning of life? Life is already meaningful to them. Likewise there is no need for antidepressants or other compensatory mood altering substancesor indeed for excess consumption. Hence there is a connection between body awareness and achieving environmental sustainability. At another level, when people lack a strong sense of connection to their interior life they do not have a strong sense of self. They compensate by gaining their sense of self through giving their allegiance to people and institutions outside themselves. Loyalty to such institutions or to the larger mainstream culture prevents them from initiating responsible action for change based on their own thinking and feeling. Instead they conform to authority, and at times behave mechanically towards other people and the environment. To some degree developing an interior sense of self may happen simply as a process of maturing well. Better yet it may be a result of having been loved and well nurtured in childhood. Observers comment that people who went to Summerhill, a noncoercive school in England, seem to exude quiet calm. Ideally a feeling of inner wellbeing should be our natural state. There are a number of approaches to becoming grounded in ongoing pleasurable body states. A simple beginning point is the ‘inner smile’. Just as we can send a smile outward, so we can send a smile inward to our own body. This is a direct technique for accessing what Eckhart Tolle calls our energy body. Clearing emotional disturbances through EFT, as described above, is an approach to taking ourselves out of negative states. Somatic psychotherapy can release muscular holding that impedes energy flows in the body; so can acupuncture. The Feldenkrais method of body awareness and Thomas Hannah’s Somatics, along with martial arts such as Tai Chi and Aikido, also cultivate body awareness. I find that people who have done inner work of some kind are generally more pleasurable to deal with than those who have limited access to their insides or inner self, as it were. Some people are cut off from their feelings, and therefore tend to be purely practical and even mechanical. I spent years in such a cut off condition myself; I now experience the rewards of having done the work to become embodied. Another area of personal development is developing our ‘ecological self’. Many of us are disconnected from the reality that we are part of the living Earth. Joanna Macy’s Coming Back to Life gives exercises that can help us open up to a larger experience of being connected with life.

To conclude, there is a lovely Buddhist prayer: May you be free of suffering May you know the joy of your own true nature May you be happy May you be at peace I wish this for you, and for all of us.

–Andrew Gaines

Whole system change for a viable society +612 8005-8382 0416 489 809 Skype: andrewgoodhumour andrew.gaines@transitionleader.net www.transitionleader.net www.bethechange.org.au

Pdf version of this article with added graphics:   file:///Users/macster/Documents/01%20Understanding%20Whole%20System%20Change.pdf

(Contributed by Heather Williams, H.W., M.)