Alan: Thanks to Arthur Clark M.D. for bringing Wordsworth to mind.
Nature Deficit Disorder
Wikipedia
The 2020 Vision for Humanity Symposium
March 31 through April 2, 2016
Some Messages to Take Home
http://www.2020visionforhumanity.com/symposium.html
Compared to the crowds you might see going to a football game, attendance at the 2020 Vision for Humanity Symposium was modest indeed. Let’s say it was less than one percent of attendance you might expect at a football game.
Compared to the significance of what happens at a football game, the significance of what happened at the Symposium remains to be seen. If the small audience in attendance have taken home something as significant as what I took home from the event, there is a good chance that – for at least a few of them – there will be a levitation and a clairvoyance in their lives from this time forward. Their life and work will be enhanced and there will be a butterfly effect rippling outward from the blessed unrest at the Symposium, through those few participants, through their influence, forward in time.
So there is the possibility that the significance of what happened at the Symposium will – let’s say ten years from now – be more than one hundred times the significance of what happens at a football game. I write this to suggest the outlines of that possibility. If you did not attend the Symposium but would like to amplify its butterfly effects, then you can read this essay and try to put some part of it into action.
The First Day
The purview of the Symposium is human security worldwide, not just in Brussels or Paris. If you do not care about human security worldwide – for example if you don’t care whether there will be a terrorist attack at the Calgary international airport sometime in the near future or if you don’t care or didn’t care about the deaths of several hundred thousand Iraqi children as a result of economic sanctions imposed on Iraq – then I assume you would not have been interested in the Symposium even if you had attended it.
Even if you do care about such things, you might not be able to see how the presentations at the Symposium have anything to do with human security or with you or your family or with the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. Take the keynote address for example. Mark Anielski’s topic was “Building a New Economy of Well-being for Alberta.” How (on Earth) could a new economy of well-being have anything to do with human security? What does it have to do with human security to define Genuine Wealth as being based on human well-being and healthy human relationships and a harmonious relationship with the Earth itself?
In his life and work, Mark has shown how an awareness of Genuine Wealth can obviate a lot of the dead ends we encounter in our day-to-day affairs and in megaprojects launched with good intentions. People in our materialistic society fall into a particular kind of trap again and again, and yet the next time they encounter the trap they fail to recognize it. It’s like a trap for wasps, baited with something sweet, and the wasps go into the trap and cannot find their way out. Of five sources of genuine wealth that Mark has emphasized, it is the fifth (money) and the fourth (property) that we too often think of, to the exclusion of the first three. But without the first three, the fourth and fifth will only lead to disaster. We will never find our way out of the trap.
That failure to be aware of those first three sources of genuine wealth eventually produces paralysis and death in individual lives and in communities. If you attended the Symposium you had a wonderful opportunity to talk with Mark and envision ways to put his holistic approach to genuine wealth into practice in your own life and work.
After Mark’s keynote, Daniel had a question for him. He was having personal financial challenges right now, real time, and he asked how Mark’s ideas could help him with his down-to-earth immediate challenges. Daniel’s question was not just the usual Q and A offering, but a specific case coming to my attention, and it evoked for me those specific cases that had been the bread and butter of my day-to-day work as a medical professional before I retired. Okay, here it is, you’re the professional and you are on call. It is the specific cases that put you on the spot and give you the chance to intervene and to learn and thus to benefit the patient and to learn from the case. That was reason enough to make my professional experience endlessly rewarding. With Daniel’s question that night at Mark’s keynote in the John Dutton Theatre, I realized another dividend from the 2020 Vision for Humanity Symposium. From now on each case would be an opportunity, building my capacity for global citizenship.
The Second Day
This year the theme of the Symposium was “building a new model.” It refers to an opportunity that has opened up for all of us here in Calgary. We can begin to think of Calgary as a microcosm of the world, and – by working together right here on Treaty 7 land – start building a new model of global citizenship based on trust and empathy, to replace the old model of greed and competition carried far beyond the point of diminishing returns. We can be fairly certain that, if we are successful, this Calgary Model will be self-validating, sustainable, and self-supporting. Unlike militant nationalism (to take one example of an old Us-versus-Them model that is obviously failing), the Calgary Model will wake people up to better human options for the future.
It’s an opportunity and a choice. We have to see it if we are going to actualize it. The Symposium made that opportunity visible and the choice clear.
Friday morning at Parkdale United Church, the poster presentations were on display as registrants enjoyed a continental breakfast and then sat down to learn more about this economics of happiness thing. What’s that all about? Economics was supposed to be the “dismal science” and now economists are waking up to the idea that to have a healthy economy, you need healthy human relationships. Now that’s a breakthrough for your breakfast!
On Friday afternoon at Folk Tree Lodge there was first a walk in the forest. Naomi invited everyone to look for something in the forest they could pick up and bring back with them, and put it on display together with some thought (to be written on a small card) that had occurred to them during the Symposium. Spencer provided an introduction to the natural setting of the Folk Tree Lodge, and the plans for developing the learning centre. Then the participants gathered to share ideas on ways forward toward a shared human identity worldwide.
And that was when something truly extraordinary happened, something I will never forget. Perhaps it was because two dozen people were sitting in a circle, outdoors, and the evening sunlight of a spring day was gilding the poplars and the evergreens. The air was fresh and if at that moment you had mentioned to those in the circle the concept of a “nature deficit disorder”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
“The world is too much with us; late and soon;
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; -
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”
- they would not just have understood what was meant – they would have felt it. I think at that moment among the poplars they felt the restorative effect of the Earth holding them, ever so gently. Mark Anielski was there and authors who would present at the session the next day, and a few children and various participants, in a circle, facing Naomi, who stood on a bench beside a poplar.
Naomi explained the need for children and all of us to have a better way of thinking about our well-being. Like Mark Anielski, she was talking about Genuine Wealth, a new model. Naomi is fully engaged in implementing this new model, with others on the team at Folk Tree Lodge.
Then Manuel Rozental responded to this, and reminded us of what was happening to people he has worked with in the Americas, including the example of Berta Cáceres, an indigenous leader of Honduras murdered on March 3 because of her leadership in protection of the natural environment (for example stopping a hydro dam project that would have yielded big profits for corporations but ruined a river’s ecosystem). The Symposium was dedicated to the memory and in honor of Berta’s life and work.
There was a bit of excitement as Manuel and Naomi each enunciated their perspective. It was as if I were seeing two oncologists (cancer physicians), each of them passionate about their field of cancer research. One is very passionate not only about cancer prevention but also about opening up possibilities we cannot even imagine in a world afflicted with cancer; and the other is equally passionate about finding a cure, emphasizing that cancer is a reality, that countless people are succumbing to cancer day after day, and we must find a cure, not just work on prevention.
Naomi, radiating a joyousness that one seldom sees in our lavish consumer society (isn’t that odd?!), was advocating a new model that would gradually change the very conditions causing the cancer we humans are inflicting on ourselves, and open up new possibilities we cannot yet even imagine.
Manuel, tall, soft-spoken, empathic, emphatic, called our attention to a process of destruction of the Earth and its inhabitants. This is a “Death Project,” Manuel insisted. “A storm is coming,” a friend of his had said, and when it comes it will sweep away every one of us including the billionaires who thought that they would be spared - even as millions of their fellow human beings were in despair and dying because of this ravaging of the Earth for profit, this cancer we are inflicting on our future. We must take responsibility for finding a cure.
The two perspectives became one, both Naomi and Manuel recognizing an awareness of the urgent need for all of us to restore harmony with Earth, with each other, and within ourselves. The cancer is afflicting the Earth itself, and Naomi’s work is not just about prevention; it is also about a cure – at the level of natural systems, communities, and individuals.
Manuel’s words had broken through a barrier of complacency in my mind. It was an unforgettable exchange. I will never be quite the same after that afternoon among the poplars. I have attended various academic conferences organized by mainstream cultural institutions, but I don’t remember any that achieved the level of wisdom and outside-the-prison-of-our-
And the third day of the Symposium was yet to come.
The Third Day
It began with Naumana Amjad’s workshop on conflict transformation in the workplace. She and her team had been asked to transform a conflict in Pakistan in which utilities customers were becoming angry at the service provider, and expressing their anger at service representatives. Naumana’s intervention included obtaining participation and consent of those involved in the conflict; a “needs analysis” to understand the conflict situation; information from multiple perspectives and identifying the goals; translating goals into activities; assessing efficacy; and a follow up to ensure continuity of change.
Her presentation beautifully illustrated how the specific case enriches the practice of global citizenship. The Big Picture of human security worldwide is made up of pixels. The Big Picture is constantly changing because the pixels are constantly changing. We are the pixels. The workshop on Saturday morning gave us a dose of pragmatic realism, a better sense of how to transform a conflict. We are better pixels in the Big Picture and better players on the playing field of future possibilities because of that coaching we received at the workshop.
Of eleven abstracts submitted for poster sessions, nine were for team projects for the Social Capital Tournament. The poster discussion sessions connected participants with team leaders who have initiated projects to build a new model of trust and respect connecting Calgarians, and connecting Calgary with other communities in places as far away as the Mesopotamian marshes (Architect Jorg Ostrowski’s Mesopotamian biosphere and peace park project), Syria (Sam Nammoura and Saima Jamal’s Syrian Refugee Support Group project) and Ecuador (Cancer surgeon Walley Temple’s low-cost, life-saving screening program for cervical cancer in Ecuador).
Immediately after a good lunch, participants were introduced to the Calgary Social Capital Tournament, to be an annual event of projects created by Calgarians to build the new model. Projects that have a game structure would have the effect of expanding awareness of possibilities for the future. In effect these are “infinite games” as described by James Carse, very different from the familiar “finite game” that defines winners and losers. Each year this Tournament of infinite games will provide a playing field of human options for the future.
Judie Bopp moderated the panel on “Weaving Voices and Paths” in which a master flautist from the Lakota nation, Kevin Locke, came together with Manuel Rozental, to provide us with lessons from the experience of indigenous communities, ancient and recent. “Weaving Voices and Paths” was an epiphany with its darkness of gathering storm clouds, of which Manuel reminded us; and with Kevin’s sunlight breaking through the clouds to the music of his flute, and his lessons of child centredness, of the spiritual origin of everything, of unity and of gratitude in our orientation toward the Earth and toward each other.
Naomi Terner then presented the conceptual frame for the new learning centre at Folk Tree Lodge in Bragg Creek. Based on the observation that natural systems flourish because of their intrinsic harmony, this way of thinking emphasizes harmony in human relationships as the central value. The pursuit of material things is recognized as necessary within limits; and as dysfunctional if carried beyond the point of basic needs, in much the way that it would be dysfunctional to gorge yourself on food at every hour of the day. This way of thinking has informed a movement in India that is transforming politics, education, and economics; and enhancing the health of individuals and communities. It is the basis for a course in human values and professional ethics that has diminished violence on college campuses. It has eased tensions in villages and in interpersonal relationships.
Naomi is on the team that has established the first North American centre for this system, just 45 minutes from Calgary, in Bragg Creek. As she described this at the Symposium, her four year old son was frolicking around her feet, as if to animate the presentation. Devam’s playfulness added value to an already generous gift of wisdom and opportunity from Naomi.
Of course there would be many who would see all this and see nothing. They might hear all that transpired and hear nothing, or read this description and understand nothing, perhaps because they have a deeply impoverished imagination. I believe I know some people like that, including some who by financial measures are very “wealthy.”
I think Mark Anielski would include imagination within that first source of genuine wealth, or perhaps within the second, for imagination does arise as a function of human relationships. The reader will recall what Einstein said about imagination; I need not repeat it here, except to emphasize its importance.
It is exactly because there are many who will not and cannot understand such things that the final presentation of the Symposium was essential to the whole. Salima Stanley-Bhanji showed us how acceptance can be a tool for change. “The art of fighting without fighting” Bruce Lee might have called it. Attempting to force a change often produces something contrary to the change that had been envisioned. Accepting things as they are, including oneself, can be the opening that leads by an unanticipated road to the change that we would have hoped for.
Accepting the startling lack of imagination in people we may meet, accepting them for what they are, with gratitude, thus became for me one of the take-home messages of the Symposium. Through that acceptance we may create an opening that leads to discoveries of epochal importance. By the time “Breakthrough Listen” and “Breakthrough Starshot” http://www.cbc.ca/news/
The New Model
The Symposium made this opportunity a little clearer, even to me, and I have been aware of it for years. The timing and the circumstances could not be better. The conventional economy is in a tailspin, so it’s the perfect time to build social capital. We have a Mayor who basically “gets it.” We have a refugee crisis, and a crisis is also an opportunity. We have everything we need right here in Calgary, even the Calgarians whose poverty of imagination will help us learn acceptance.
We can build this new model right here, on Treaty 7 land, together. We cannot do it alone, and we cannot do it by fighting among ourselves. It’s a choice. It’s the Calgary model of global citizenship based on trust, and it has the potential to make the old model obsolete.
If we build it, they will come.
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