Last month I accompanied my friend Christian Forthomme, during one of his visioning seminars. Christian’s job is to help companies imagine their future and devise a plan to make their vision a reality. Makes sense. It is hard to move forward without having a clear picture of what to shoot for. As we struggle with finding solutions to the current climate crisis, we would do well to spend time visualizing what it is that we want. This is different than thinking about the problem and relying solely on our brain to come up with answers.
What I am suggesting instead is to take some quiet time alone, and slowly let a picture emerge, of the kind of world we want for ourselves, and our children. I tried it, and I was surprised with how difficult it was. Here is what I saw:
A world with lots of bikes and walking routes, and buses and trains. Cars and trucks are all electric as in the Better Place Project. Gas stations are now serving as battery recharging centers. All the energy comes from renewable sources, cultivated in solar and wind farms throughout the land. In a way, I want to go back to life as it was on my grandparents’ farm. When time was slower, and we lived with the rhythm from the seasons. Food is all grown locally and organically. Cities and suburbs are experiencing an overall greening, with many people involved in urban farming, starting with children in schools. There are trees along all the streets and the freeways. People spend most of their time working from home or very close. They work shorter hours, and they use video conference technologies such as Cisco Telepresence. There is a bustling green economy, with green collar jobs replacing lots of the retail jobs. Malls are a vestige from the past. Instead of buying things, people are consuming experiences. The obesity rate has gone down, due to people walking and biking more, and eating less junk food. Fast food places are now serving organic nutritionally healthy Happy Meals. The water crisis has been averted thanks to new technologies and smart conservation policies. Businesses have turned into social centers that help connect people in developed countries with their counterparts in developing countries. Municipalities have a no waste system, where everything gets recycled or ends up in compost. The world feels happy and at peace.
Now, your turn! What do you see?
La Marguerite 
I guess I would like to live in a similar world. Can I join ? 😀
I already have more or less some of the things you describe (the joy of rural France…) but, yeah that’s the kind of world I’d like to raise my children in one day.
To green cities, you might be interested by green roofs :
http://www.elrst.com/2007/11/02/green-roofs-and-walls-a-brilliant-idea/
Otherwise, there is one thing that is not feasible (to me): all the energy coming from renewables. I have some data on that matter. It will be in a future article.
Yes, this is exactly the kind of thinking that we need.
I’ve already spend a lot of time thinking about these things. What I find of primary importance is the attitude of people. I imagine people far less busy. Time to eat, time to prepare a meal, and time to do the dishes together. Time to spend with their kids.
I also think that once people would be less materialistic, there wouldn’t be nearly as much jobs needed to provide for people’s needs. But that wouldn’t be bad. The necessities are still there.
If people would all act as stewards of the world, contributing to the common good (like people now do with their jobs) and practicing voluntary restraint (face it: we humans have the power to destroy the environment), then I think the future wouldn’t need to have money. My vision is thus very egalitarian also.
Of course, in places where there’s still actual scarcity, this wouldn’t work.
The reason I got this vision is because of my own life. Right now, I’m trying to live as if there was no money. I don’t watch my monetary expenses, I just take what I need from stores. I try to think away the cash register. It works. Slowly, I’m trying to adjust my life in such a way that I think everyone could live like me. Basically what I’m trying to do is to live in the future, like it was the future.
I imagine our houses to just stay here, but quite likely made more energy efficient. Homeless people would be gone. There are enough empty rooms in lots of houses.
In my view, the only thing that is keeping us from living in the future is ourselves. We could do so much more with current possessions and technology. Utopia is a collective state of mind.
People who are happy at home also don’t need to go to far off vacations. It’s just so good, I’m often amazed by why it’s so hard to explain.
There’s one critical point I want to end with though. I think an utopian world would in itself be incredibly boring. Nowadays, people are kept busy by meaningless tasks, but at least, they’re busy. I think people want to be always working on something, and if they don’t have to work all the time to provide for themselves, they’re not really happy.
I’ve already thought about what I would be working on when we reach this utopian state. That would be space travel. I would be working with others on a big space ship I think. I just need the challenge.
Maybe one of my main realisations in the past years, is that working on something is just so much nicer than consuming, doing nothing. Of course, everyone needs some relaxation, but for me, it’s functional. I relax so I can get back to work later on.
So the future I see is basically this: People working either to provide each other with basic necessities, food, shelter, health care, etc, in a sustainable manner, and the rest of the people working on something bigger than themselves, a common goal. I have never been able to find another goal as big as space travel, so I think it would be space travel. Science and technology are only means to an end, in that sense.
I know that right now, this is all a long way off, but for me, it gives me a clear picture of how I’m going to enjoy myself once we have solved our silly problems on earth. That gives me a happy state to look forward too. I know that I can keep working even after the true problems are gone. I’ll just invent new ones.
Edouard, rural France, I am jealous . . .
Meryn, like you, I derive my main satisfaction from working on projects I feel passionate about and causes greater than myself. Consumption is just a way to fill in the emptiness from not having a passion to put one’s energy into.
Millions of winners and billions of losers.
Perhaps the unfair and inequitable distribution of the astounding wealth derived from the world’s human economy is resulting in some people suffering inordinately when natural disasters occur.
The way the global economy is managed and continuously grown, wealth is consolidated in the hands of a few million fortunate winners. Many too many people are the billions of unfortunate losers in the human community.
The family of humanity ‘owns’ a leviathan-like, manmade economic construction in the shape of pyramid due to the organization of the global economy as a soon to become patently unsustainable colossal ponzie scheme.
Steven, I understand your pessimism. At the same time, there is a big difference between imagining, as I suggested in my post, and predicting as you are doing in your response. The former has the positive energy of hope. The latter has the risk of immobilizing and discouraging people, if allowed to run for too long. This was the point made by Robert Redford during his speech on Earth Day. America is a country that thrives on positive ideals, and a sense of possibilities.
Do you think you could set your fears aside for just a few minutes, and indulge your dream of what you want for our world?
Dear La Marguerite,
As much as I appreciate your question, feelings are not as important and doing the right thing, whatever that may be.
What I am trying to do is report as objectively as I can the way the world appears to my eyes, as an alternative to putting my head in the sand.
I share your “sense of possibilities” but cannot see how we realize either a future for our children or “positive ideals” by keeping on with what we are relentlessly doing now. If the rich and powerful people who are operating the global political economy stay their current course, full speed ahead, as they are so adamantly choosing to do now, then I fear for our children’s wellbeing and the health of the environment. Casually rearranging the deck chairs on our “Ship of State” (and ignoring real global threats to human and environmental health), as our leaders appear to be doing now, and not changing the course of the 21st century human construction that reminds me of another Titanic, does not seem like a particularly good idea.
What positive is to come from thinking positive thoughts and feeling good if people remain in denial of the awareness necessary for constructive and timely behavior change?
Always,
Steve
I don’t think we really need any more reports on the state of the world, Steven. It’s pretty clear the way things are going.
Nor do we really need yet more people crying “doom!”
What we do need is… well, a dream. Positive change requires positive visions. A century of articles and protests about how awful lynching was somewhat reduced the rate of lynching, but it was people saying, “I have a dream” that put an end to it and segregation.
People need alternatives. For example, it’s all very well to say, as I do, “cars suck”, but if not cars, then what? Well, we need to develop public transport, walkable and bikable cities, and so on. So for example in discussing why cars suck, I really hammer at them – but then I compare them with the alternatives, and finish by saying, “Come into modern times, and get on your bike. Don’t wait for the government to do something – we’d still be living in the trees. Governments follow the people (reluctantly), they do not lead. Show the way.”
Nothing good or constructive happens unless someone imagines it first. This is as true in wider society as it is in our personal lives. Positive change requires positive visions.
It may be true that our efforts are futile; but it may be not. Either the world is doomed whatever we do, or the world is not. Making no effort makes failure certain. An effort makes success possible. I’ll take possible success over certain failure any day. We’ve nothing to lose except our despair.
Well said, Kyle . . . What we are talking about here, is putting together a collective design for the building of a new world. There are enough people willing to join the team that I feel encouraged.
“I’ll take possible success over certain failure any day. ”
I would like to go a bit further: I believe that if everyone would believe that “another world is possible” we could be there fast.
If we would only have more trust, more optimism, we could do so much more.
People who keep saying “this will never work” won’t be motivated to help towards such a goal. Instead, they jut try to make the best for themselves in light of the current circumstances: Exactly what we can’t use right now.
One of the main problems is the deeply grained believe that people are selfish. Therefore, people think they will always need to fend for themselves. It’s not that they want to be selfish, oh no, they have to, because if they won’t look after themselves, no one would. Selfishness is obviously an observable human trait, but it’s far from a good model of human nature. Selfishness is activated by certain circumstances, as is altruism.
That’s why I said that utopia is a state of mind. Our reality is a state of mind. We are up in arms because others are up in arms, and we don’t lay down our weapons because we think others won’t follow.
Now this is a quite complex equilibrium to get out off, so I think utopia can only grow through a social network, with the requirement of actual material abundance, so the people in the community wouldn’t have to fight with each other over food and the like.
Thanks to all for your comments above. Rather than try to respond to them myself, there is a point of view to which I subscribe from Lee Iacocca that might be helpful here.
Lee Iacocca Says:
Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, ‘Stay the course’
Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned ‘Titanic’.
You might think I’m getting senile, that I’ve gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up.
These are times that cry out for leadership. But when you look around, you’ve got to ask: ‘Where have all the leaders gone?’ Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage………. and common sense?
Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone’s hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn’t happen again. Now, that’s just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you’re going to do the next time.
Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening.
Hey, I’m not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I’m trying to light a fire. I’m speaking out because I have hope……………….If I’ve learned one thing, it’s this:
You don’t get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action….. It’s not too late, but it’s getting pretty close.
Sincerely yours,
Steve
Meryn said, “I would like to go a bit further: I believe that if everyone would believe that “another world is possible” we could be there fast.”
Obviously. And if everyone were nice to each-other, we’d have no more wars. But hey, let’s be realistic. Not everyone’s going to change. That’s okay. Only about 10% of Germans were members of the Nazi party, and less than that number of white Americans actively supported desegregation. Both bad and good change require only a minority to change and the rest follow along out of inertia.
I don’t wait for a Great Leader to emerge, Steven. That’s childish thinking. I just do what I reckon is good for everyone and make a noise about it.
What’s my vision of the future? Pretty much as I live now, but for everyone.
Steven, that’s a great quote from Iacocca. Can you please tell us where it’s from (book, article, speech, link on web, page number, or etc.)? What a great quote. Thanks!
It strikes me that we each have to contribute according to our own interests and personalities. There is room for people like you Steven, whose role it is to keep on reminding people and warning them of possible consequences. Also needed is another set of individuals to start imagining, and actualizing new ways to live, to prove that sustainability is indeed a possibility.
Hi Jeff,
The Iacocca remarks come from his book.
La Marguerite,
Of course, we are in complete agreement. It seems important to say that if we are going to go forward by exchanging unsustainable lifestyles for sustainable ones, something has got to change……soon.
Kiashu,
I do not know what you mean by “Great Leader” but I can assure that the human community could soon be in dire straints and would benefit from a new cadre of leaders who are not mesmerized by their idolatry of great wealth and power.
Dear Friends,
In the strongest possible terms, I want to speak out loudly and clearly by saying that there is no time like the present to begin living in new, creative, life-enhancing ways.
Is the tiptop of the human construction we call the global political economy a place from which leadership can gain a reality-oriented appreciation of what is happening on the surface of the Earth? Perhaps those of us at the top of the global economic pyramid are living in a secluded, unmaintainable material world of our own making and are willfully refusing to accept the limitations of the natural world in which the rest of the family of humanity lives.
If it turns out that the conspicuous consumption and relentless hoarding by the rich, the famous and the powerful among us are evidence of unsustainable lifestyles, what is the human community to do differently? Perhaps necessary change is in the offing.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
“Let’s be realistic. Not everyone’s going to change.”
Kyle, how can you know this is realistic? You’re talking about the future. I think we can only be realistic towards the present, and towards the outcomes of processes we fully understand. If climate science is complex, predicting the course of society is even more daunting. It’s not like scientist could have predicted something like the rise of democracy, and certainly not the speed of it. Social reality is totally on another level than our atmosphere, and for that we even have trouble knowing what exactly is going to happen.
“Both bad and good change require only a minority to change and the rest follow along out of inertia. ”
I wonder if this is the same for sustainable behavior. As I see it, you either have to convince people to not make use of their freedom (e.g. spending power) or restrict people’s freedom with extra laws and taxes. Restricting people’s freedom would require at least a majority of voters to actually want this. Personally I think that if you think you can convince 50% of a population of a new idea (as I think is necessary), you could as well go for 100%. Obviously, we would reach the 50% mark sooner than 100%, so a big part of the population would feel restricted by the laws and taxes for some time until they also want it themselves. After that, the laws and taxes won’t really matter much anymore, just like most people don’t feel restricted by the fact that the law forbids them to steal and murder.
Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Have you got some other plan in mind?
I know it because there’s simply no example in history of an entire people spontaneously changing. What happens is that some movement starts, gains momentum, gets a tenth or so of the population behind it, and then drags everyone else along.
Changing laws and regulations don’t require a majority of the population. You’re imagining that every decision is made by plebescite, and it’s simply not true. If it were, Australia for example wouldn’t have a GST or be fighting in Iraq, but we wouldn’t have a Mandatory Renewable Energy Target, either.
Decisions are made by a few dozen people who lead in parliament and business, and their decisions are influenced by their own principles and ideas and the words of the few who bother to speak to them. My local MP is not going to speak to every one of their 90,000 electors. They’ll speak to a few dozen people a year – some of them in business, some electors who take the trouble to write to them.
These decisions made by individuals and influenced by other individuals, they take place in a climate which encourages or discourages them. Even if every member of the US Congress was aware of and alarmed about climate change and peak oil, we wouldn’t see bold plans from them because the climate of public opinion in the US is against it. Or for bad change, consider that when the French Army attempted a coup d’etat in the early 1960s, almost every officer was in favour, but the soldiers were against it, so it fizzled.
So here we have two things, that real and important decisions are made by relatively few, and that they’re made or not made in the context of general public opinion. This leads to two courses of action required if you want change.
First, to make choices as a citizen, writing to your MP and so on, letting them know what you think – trying to become one of the few dozen people whose words influence their actions.
Second, to change your own life to reflect your dreams of the future – as I’m doing with the one tonne CO2 lifestyle so as to change the general climate of public opinion by your example. If we suggest something and nobody’s ever tried it, it sounds crazy and no-one wants it. If at least some people have tried it, it sounds doable. For example, I’m often told that conservation of electricity or water is impossible or extraordinarily difficult, when I reply “But I’ve done it, look -” there is only silence.
So in this way we work at both the leadership and the social level to effect change. Or more precisely, working at the leadership level affects decisions made, and working at the social level affects how they think those decisions will look.
Kyle, thanks for bringing up again, the point about making choices as a citizen. Most people are not aware of their rights and powers as simple citizens. It is the active minority that shows up at town meetings and in their representatives’ offices who end up deciding for the rest of their fellow citizens.
Oh yes! In the local newspaper I was reading someone complaining that there was a new council bylaw – each person present not on the council gets to ask one question only, of less than a hundred words, and it must relate to topics on the agenda of the present or past meeting.
Just from that bylaw we can see that the meetings are being attended by the same people talking at length again and again. If each meeting had a hundred people, a different hundred people each time, all asking different questions, there’d be no such bylaw.
“Even if every member of the US Congress was aware of and alarmed about climate change and peak oil, we wouldn’t see bold plans from them because the climate of public opinion in the US is against it.”
It’s this general climate where I was pointing at. Politicians want to get in office, and stay in office, so they’ll listen to public opinion. It’s the public who voted them in, after all.
Let’s take a simple example: a gas tax. The public doesn’t support this at this moment. In fact, some politicians are using a decrease in the tax as a lure to get in office. How on earth would you get such high gas taxes as in Europe without significantly having changed public opinion on this matter first? The politician who would propose this would commit political suicide.
And you must understand that we would really have to tax the hell out of people to make them change their behavior. For gas, it’s not about 10% or 20%: 100% or 200% might be needed. It’s either this, or voluntary restraint.
While I do think it’s possible to influence decision making on relatively marginal issues – issues where most politicians don’t really think about – you can’t convince politicians to wholly change course with letters from a small (and non-representative) part of the population. They will listen to opinion polls for that.
“to change your own life to reflect your dreams of the future”
Yes, but this is about leadership, to change people’s outlook. This is one of the most important things we can work on. To set an example.
Now I think of it, the numbers don’t really matter.
There’s much change in behavior needed, and either this happens voluntary or involuntary. Forcing people to change will at least require 50% of the population to support this force from the government, otherwise it’s gone after one election.
I think you don’t understand how public opinion can change over time, and the way in which relatively few people influence that public opinion. You ought to read up on people like Hitler, Franco, Luther, Martin Luther King, Gandhi and so on. One person, whether elected or self-appointed as a leader, can have a very strong influence on the flow of public opinion.
As I’ve said before, negative change always seems frighteningly fast, and positive change painfully slow. So it’s common to look at society and think, “nothing will ever change.”
This is expressed by such people as Francis Fukuyama, who after the fall of the Soviet Union proclaimed “the end of history”, saying that Western liberal humanist free market ideology was to be the dominant one in the world, there would be few if any wars, and so on. He was of course entirely wrong.
There can be no doubt that our societies will change. Some changes will be forced upon us by nature with the depletion of fossil fuels and other mineral resources, or by pollution, other changes will be by choice. But things will change – for better or for worse we’ve yet to see.
Meryn, I beg to differ with you on your last comment. Actually, the latest news in the American press, indicate that people are altering their behavior. Maybe not as dramatically as we would hope to, but still, some changes are taking place. People are buying smaller cars, using public transportation more, buying less stuff, including food. Yesterday, for instance there were reports that people are demanding that perishables, such as milk for instance, be packaged in smaller containers, to minimize spoilage.
This shows that the threshold is not as high as we may think.
Also, yes a majority is needed to elect the right leaders. But after that, it is the active minority that makes a difference. Back to Kyle’s point about each doing our share as empowered citizens. It would be interesting to do some research on tipping percentages in terms of change leaders. How many people in a population need to change their behavior in order for the whole to tip in the other direction? Do you guys know?
“Let’s be realistic. Not everyone’s going to change.”
I started off by questioning this statement by Kyle.
My hope is that indeed everybody is going to change, and I’m hopeful for that to happen. And indeed, strong leadership will help us with that. Only I think that leadership will be much more evenly distributed, and we won’t see such stars as King and Gandhi. But I must admit I’m secretly hoping for a “good” Hitler. I see Hitler as the best example of strong leadership, giving purpose and direction for a whole nation. Only this time, it should be an international leader.
I don’t know why you would I think I would be pessimistic about this (as Kyle seems to be) because I’m generally an optimistic person.
Maybe I’ve misunderstood what Kyle said earlier on?
This helps. Nothing like a healthy discussion to clarify one’s thoughts and to strengthen arguments.
Regarding your point about Hitler, and I will throw Bush, and also Obama in that pile as well, these are leaders who are tapping into forces from the collective unconsciousness, and happen to incarnate some powerful archetypes that are called for by the crowds at a particular point in time. Hitler as Father, Bush as Cowboy/Tough Guy, Obama as Hero/Savior. The first were/are psychopaths, unfortunately.
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Excellent post Marguerite. For years we’ve been doing ‘creative vision sessions’ with our design clients.
Each session has three parts:
1. Create the dream (what is the perfect vision that you want to achieve?)
2. Identify the hurdles (what are the obstacles that could prevent you from realizing that dream?)
3. Action Plan (what steps — with due dates and people assigned to tasks — need to be undertaken to achieve your dream?)
Let each of us imagine a sustainable future for the planet, identify the hurdles we must overcome and craft an action plan. We can’t wait around for other people to do it for us. Each of us can be a change agent in our own ways.