Overview
People’s behavior is based on their mental maps and emotional functioning. Evolutionary Catalysts aim to improve both of these.
We Evolutionary Catalyst’s are committed to catalyzing a movement to profoundly shift mainstream thinking, with a view to evolving a compassionate life-affirming culture.
Within this, some of us act as citizen-educators. We talk with people we know about the terrible reality of current ecological trends, the system that drives them, and what it will take to change the system. Our intention is to develop thoughtful public will for transformative leadership.
Always there is the question of scale. Just a few of us conducting conversations won’t amount to much. However, there are millions of groups that care about environmental and social well-being. Our vision is to inspire many of them to act as citizen educators. We provide innovative tools, including Kitchen Table Conversations, to make communicating succinct and effective.
All of this is described in
And there is more. There is reason to suppose that none of the commonly accepted solutions to climate change, such as reducing emissions, will work in the near term – and we are in a climate emergency now!
However, there is a straightforward solution to climate change (assuming it’s not too late… and collectively we should certainly try!). it is to restore the animal-vegetation-atmospheric water cycle, which is the Earth’s natural cooling system. Walter Jehne’s video explains this in detail. It is very hopeful!
Yet we do need to reduce emissions and sequester carbon… as well as reduce population. Our huge population numbers and massive fossil fuel use are devouring the Earth and destroying our ecological life support systems.
Communication tools for citizen-educators
A majority of people recognize the reality of climate change. Not because anybody has persuaded them (although Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth brought it to the forefront of public conversation), but because of the fires and floods they have seen in the news or experienced themselves.
That noted, collectively we have not accepted how devastating climate mayhem will become. If we did, we would be acting at emergency speed to do something about it.
In addition, climate change is not the only issue that will cause our globalized civilization to painfully unravel. We are in a condition of overshoot, temporarily using resources faster than they can regenerate. Falling freshwater tables and topsoil loss will in time severely reduce food supplies.
Escalating Disasters is a communication tool to bring this home to people. You can adapt it to your own use.
Escalating Disasters slide deck https://app.box.com/s/56x84tfpbjrff6xzggtckuhjbw0s3j96
PEscalating Disasters pages for printing (PDF file) https://app.box.com/s/xol87t59b31dcftv72r0iwango7v7t7n
(Technical note: Printing these pages on card stock (180gsm) makes it handy for conducting one-to-one conversations.)
Restoring Earth’s natural cooling system https://app.box.com/s/g6ak3aj8y81joxqhlua85yp5ocuqypu9
There are additional dimensions of planetary health.
Planetary Health
https://app.box.com/s/74q5uocbgtvtraluj5trmqzt2cazxsnu
- TEDX talk on Transitioning to a life-affirming culture
- Catalysing mass commitment to transformational change
Describes our strategy for reaching a mainstream audience, and introduces Kitchen Table Conversations.
You can download the slide deck here.
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Introducing a new paradigm for social change
Introduces a number of ways of thinking that can make the environmental progressive movement vastly more effective.
Applying experiential techniques for improving brain functioning to healthy cultural evolution.
An informal tool for bringing home to people the reality of our existential emergency.
Kitchen Table Conversations
Our primary tool for personal conversations is Kitchen Table Conversations. It is purpose-built to enable people to connect-the-dots and grasp the big picture as quickly as possible.
- Catalysing mass commitment to transformational change describes Kitchen Table Conversations.
- Kitchen Table Conversations training video.
- Big Picture Drivers draggable Icon for Zoom conversations.
- Templates to make the pieces are here.
- Premade kits can be purchased here.
- Another way of conducting Kitchen Table Conversations
Digging deeper
Our Kitchen Table Conversations model is intentionally abstract. For example, we mention ‘economic growth’ but do not go into detail about it. This is because we want to help people connect the dots and form a rough overview of our system as a system in one go – hopefully in less than one hour. We don’t want to overload folks.
Here are list resources that are helpful in digging deeper.
Economic growth
Patel and Moore A History of the World in 7 Cheap Things
Like water, money in moderate amounts money is helpful. However, when it surges globally without restraint it is environmentally and socially destructive. This book, filled with vivid examples, shifts our perception of capitalism from being a ‘thing’ or ideology to be applauded or critiqued to seeing it as a dynamic process.
Pope Francis Laudato Si‘
This book clearly shows how devotion to economic growth erodes well-being both socially and environmentally.
David Korten Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth
Makes a fundamental distinction between a ‘Main Street’ economy and a financially exploitive ‘Wall Street’ economy, and shows practical policy changes to support local economies.
Population growth
Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb
This classic book spells out the implications of overpopulation.
Emotional disturbance
Bessel van der Kolk The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Cites research that shows shocking amounts of child abuse, and beautifully describes a variety of highly effective healing techniques. Human, readable, and authoritative.
Industrial design
Amory Lovins et al Natural Capitalism
Describes design techniques in every field from agriculture to architecture (including retrofitting buildings) that greatly reduce energy requirements.
Green scepticism
Siebert and Rees Through the Eye of a Needle
A very clear analysis of why we cannot realistically expect renewable energies to power our current high consumption lifestyles.
Leverage points
Donella Meadows Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System
Meadows’ original article asserting that improving people’s paradigms and goals are high leverage points for systems change.
Partnership-respect relating
Riane Eisler The Chalice and the Blade
The original book that introduces the Partnership-Dominator contrast.
Riane Eisler The Partnership Way
Applications of partnership-respect thinking at different levels from child rearing to global governance.
Feldenkrais
Gisele St. Hilaire A Feldenkrais lesson
An example of a Feldenkrais individual lesson. It demonstrates the process of improving the coordination of the whole body, rather than just focusing on the area of pain.
Andrew Gaines Creativity and High-Performance Team Collaboration
Introduces Feldenkrais neurological theory, and shows innovative applications.
Resolving doubts
Many of us have doubts when presented with the prospect of becoming Evolutionary Catalysts /citizen-educators. It is not hard to be a citizen-educator. Our tools such as Kitchen Table Conversations (see below) make it easy to communicate about the big trends and issues of our time. The tools themselves carry the conversation.
Our doubts may be related to our own emotional issues. If so, recognizing our doubts provides an opportunity to resolve them!
There are ways to resolve such doubts as ‘I don’t know enough’ or ‘People will think I’m weird’.
Here are three techniques that can be really helpful:
- EFT (the tapping technique)
EFT is an aspect of energy psychology. It was discovered that tapping on acupressure points with our fingers can elicit a mental/emotional shift that symptoms surprisingly rapidly resolves specific psychological issues.
- St Francis Process
In the St Francis process we visualise meeting the (unknown) part of us that carries doubt, phobias or other psychological issues.
- Option Process
Starting with an issue on the surface, such as doubt, we can ask a series of Zen -like questions that take us to deeper layers of the psyche. At some point we may realise that our concerns are quite unrealistic in terms of current reality, and laugh and let them go.
These techniques are described in Inner Work. You can download it here.