Catalysing mass commitment to transformational change by Andrew Gaines

Not many authors begin by citing Donella Meadows (of Limits to Growth fame) and segue directly to body-mind scientist Moshe Feldenkrais (pp. 1-2, as numbered in the footer—which doesn’t count the front matter). So Gaines, with his comprehensive and holistic perspective and commitment to nonviolence, hooked me right away.He urges us to “shift from individualistic ‘I do my own thing’ to working together to inspire mainstream commitment to transition to a life-affirming culture.” His prescription involves training citizen-educators, framing our work that way, and bringing ordinary people into a new kind of social change movement based on helping people improve their mental and emotional functioning as together we create this new paradigm (p. 6).

For Gaines, the change requires personal lifestyle/activity changes AND organizing for wider social and environmental change.

A public stance helps, too. He urges businesses to announce “This business contributes to the evolution of a life-affirming culture…Our goal is to transition to a life-affirming culture, rather than continuing on our present course of ecological self-destruction.” (pp.10-11). I added this at the bottom of my GoingBeyondSustainability.com home page.

He asks us to enlist the army of members of national environmental groups to get much more deeply involved than signing petitions and sending money: to become advocates, educators, and conversation catalyzers for this life-affirming culture. He suggests direct invitations like “Jim, would you be willing to spend an hour with me having a deep conversation?” (p, 12). I am mixed about this approach. If someone asked me that question, I’d ask, “about what?” If the answer is climate change, a climate denier would probably choose not to have the meeting. But if the response is “on how to build a life-affirming culture,” perhaps a higher percentage would say yes—because we all want that, in some way.

The ebook provides teaching and conversation facilitation guidance, aimed at helping participants connect the dots of what they already know—making the connections among the various environmental crises and the way the system is rigged to benefit the upper elites without much regard to the environmental crises—to reach the conclusion that economic growth should certainly not be the central thing we strive for, and to look at additional factors such as the very deliberate manipulation of psychology to foster even more consumerism (e.g., “retail therapy,” p. 17). An example of Gaines’ holistic approach is the mention of “gentle birth” (p. 18).

To foster those conversations, Gaines even includes links to the slide deck that contains all the illustrations in the book (one of which in particular keeps showing up every few pages, which I found tiresome), a demo video of a sample conversation, and even a webinar (pp. 23-24) and a sample LinkedIn outreach letter (pp. 25-26). More tools for facilitating these types of conversations are at Gaines’ website, http://inspiringtransition.net .

Recognizing that we often get in our own way if we try to do deep world-changing work before working on our own areas of hurt and blockage, Gaines spends pages 28-33 giving a quick intro to several inner-healing modalities. I’ve often seen similar tools used in the personal wealth category, but much more rarely in the activist world.

Then he finishes with a section on the big sweeping social changes we need, and some clues on how to bring that about.

Obtain your no-cost copy at https://app.box.com/file/768328744375?s=lircbkap14ycjx5f28dskf4mp9tuc3ea