Changing the Paradigm: Part 1 – Recognizing the Addiction – The Story of Stuff and Consumerism

There is a simple yet profound saying that applies to trying to solve a problem while continuing the cause, “You can’t dry off when you are still under the running shower.”  That pretty much sums up trying to become sustainable while continuing the consumer mindset.  This mindset is an addiction Read more

Sustainability, Technology, Mindfulness and Choice

“Mindfulness is observing your life right now.  Accepting your current situation without judgment or struggle.  Allowing feelings to exist without letting them driving your actions.  Noticing thoughts that occur without needing to buy into them.  Taking action based on what you feel in your heart rather than old habits or Read more

The Psychology of Sustainability – Part 6: Recognizing Mind-Lessness versus Mind-Fullness Choices.

“Mindfulness isn’t difficult.  We just need to remember to do it” Sharon Saltzberg In the last post I talked about choice as the way to create personal, social, and ecological freedom.  I want you to think for a minute now about the one singular factor that controls much of the Read more

The Psychology of Sustainability – Part 5: A New World Through the Power or Choice

“Complacency is not your friend. When you become complacent you turn yourself off. You begin to think that calmness is a way of life. You forget that the nature of life is chaotic change and then a season of calm, but then the storms kick in again. It’s not personal Read more

The Psychology of Sustainability – Part 4: Healing Ourselves to Heal the Planet – overview

“Humanity treats humanity in the same way that humanity treats nature” Michael Roads. What makes people conform to the Status Quo? – Peer Pressure and the fear of being rejected, i.e. being unlovable.  This is the pressure that so many accept in order to be liked – being a people Read more

The Psychology of Sustainability – Part 3: The Impetus to Choosing Another Path to Sustainability

I used this in an earlier post but it is worth repeating: “I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change.  I thought that with 30 years of good science we could address those problems.  I was wrong.  The top environmental problems are Read more

The Psychology of Sustainability – Part 2: Why do we keep choosing a bad path?

Conspiracies are rampant in all the information we seem to be getting at this time.  The result is an even greater polarization than ever, driven by the internet and its inherent anonymity of opinions from so many users.  It’s not that there may or may not be any conspiracies but Read more

The Psychology of Sustainability – Part 1: The root causes of systemic failure

One of the questions I always got from new students in my Sustainability Studies program was, “Why can’t everyone see the obvious need to work towards sustainability?”  That’s a question I have spent many years and much of this blog talking about.  I was, by training and many years of Read more

Recognizing that Change is now Unavoidable – Empowering Ourselves and Choosing the Future we Want Without Fear

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”  Socrates. As I read about the goings on around the world, what I see too much of is fear and anger being expressed.  There is an awakening going on Read more

Empowering ourselves to Change part 2 – A new Society through Self-integrity.

‘It is so empowering to say this isn’t serving me and then to walk peacefully away.’  Anon If there ever was a time for major change to happen, now is that time.  I’m not just talking about tweaking our current dystopic system where the 1% currently lord it over us, Read more

Vaccines Part 4 – What is in the Vaccines that WILL harm you, and Insidious Agendas.

I read the social media with interest at this time.  Especially the vitriol between vaxxers and anti-vaxxers.  The response to the Plandemic video has been ideologically polarizing.  I have been reading several commentaries, against the Plandemic video, that use Ad hominem arguments about the central figure, Dr. Mikovits – very Read more

Empowering ourselves to Change – part 1 Understanding the Cultural Story.

I have spent the past week reading a lot about Coronavirus and the official responses such as the lockdown and in some places, extreme legal lockdown.  What is becoming obvious is the incredible misinformation that is happening, and the difficulty of a lay person to figure out what the true Read more

Understanding Moral Frameworks for Effective Communication with Change

I find that wherever I look in the media at this time, there are so many people moaning and complaining about the state of the world.  Yet, a large number resist doing anything to create change that would begin the transformation from an oligarchy to a world that works better Read more

Reconditioning Ourselves: Alternative Perspectives 14 – Community Development – Part 6: Visions of an Egalitarian Society

I am but a single drop in a limitless ocean, but what is an ocean but a multitude of drops?  David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas   One of the consequences of this global lockdown is the growing awareness of how connected we all are.  Many of you will have heard of the Six Read more

Reconditioning Ourselves: Alternative Perspectives 13 – Community Development – Part 5: Beginning the Transition

As I was writing about what a future society might look like, the Coronavirus has been literally wreaking havoc on the global economy.  Just yesterday, the U.S. government set up $2 trillion (yes with a T and bigger than many small countries’ economies) for economic relief.  Of course there was Read more

Disaster Capitalism – Coronavirus and Political Sleight of Hand

“The more we’re thrown into conflict with each other through engineered distrust, the less able we are to unite against those responsible.”  DaShanne Stokes It has been less than a week since my last post and yet the whole world seems to have gone insane with fear from the Coronavirus.  Read more

Reconditioning Ourselves: Alternative Perspectives 12 – Community Development – Part 4 The Egalitarian human vs. W.E.I.R.D.

I have been emphasizing that we are as humans hard-wired to be egalitarian.  Let me explain my reasoning for this, which should also explain why I am so positive about humanity’s future if we make the choices we need to make for sustainable living.  Evolutionary Biologists, Psychologists, Sociologists, and also Read more

Reconditioning Ourselves: Alternative Perspectives 11 – Community Development – Part 3 Considering Future Trends, and the Past

I have talked at length about how sustainable living (SL) is so much more than just adapting to use green technology.  It is relearning how to live together in communities that my definition, identify as equitable, regenerative, resilient and adaptive.  If you still harbor the belief that we can reach Read more

Reconditioning Ourselves: Alternative Perspectives 10 – Part 2, Changing the Narrative about our lives

In this blog I’m trying to cover some complex issues in simpler ways.  When I mention the stakeholder issue, it is important to recognize that when it come to this planet we are ALL stakeholders because every environmental ‘insult’ will eventually affect everyone and everything on the planet.  Trying to Read more

Reconditioning Ourselves: Alternative Perspectives 9 – Community Development – Part 1 Building differently

This first part of community development deals more with business aspects involved in the technology of buildings.  For a while back in the 1960s especially, everyone went into cheap efficiency buildings – concrete blocks basically.  But buildings are where we work and live, and if they are sterile, then the Read more

Reconditioning Ourselves: Alternative Perspectives 8 – Walking the Talk of Green Business and Sustainability? Part 3

Continuing on from my last post about other frameworks that are leading the way to changes in business philosophies and practice towards sustainability.  Just to show how difficult it can be in our current business paradigm, authors Esty & Winston (Green to Gold, 2009), wrote about the problems with ethical Read more

Reconditioning Ourselves: Alternative Perspectives 7 – Walking the Talk of Green Business and Sustainability? Part 2

In this post I again have taken several comments out of my Environmental Communications Text, Chapter 20.  As we think about re-conditioning ourselves away from the consumer and profit only worldviews conditioning, a reminder that being aware that you have been conditioned to begin with, is not only necessary, but Read more

Reconditioning Ourselves: Alternative Perspectives 6 – Walking the Talk of Green Business and Sustainability? Part 1

In this post I have taken several comments out of my Environmental Communications Text, Chapter 20.  To pass outside one’s comfort zone means to embrace the unknown and face the fear of failure.  Doing the right thing is such a journey when you often have to move beyond the socially Read more

Reconditioning Ourselves: Alternative Perspectives 4 – Economics part 3

When I was visiting Eire in 2010, I spent a day with critical economist Richard Douthwaite (Book: Short Circuit; The Growth Illusion; The Ecology of Money) to probe his views.   After several hours of pleasant discussion, I asked him what he thought a feasible new economy would actually look like.  Read more