We need to understand our feelings first, before we can deal with the fears of moderates or conservatives. The field of Emotional Intelligence seems good for some of that along with a little Cognitive Therapy information. That is that emotions have ideas behind them that, if wrong, can be changed with reason, if we get to the thoughts. Then tested intuition guides us in how to proceed an get what is best for ourselves and the environment.
A lot of the power of the forces in this world is that they know how to control us with emotions. It’s better that we should know also, or we are not at the helm and become a subject and a victim.
Intuition and knowledge can guide us through the most complex situations and the intuition can tell us where to get the knowledge or solve depression mostly automatically, if trained.

Rulers have alway yielded to the people. Louis XVI and Nicholas II for instance, but the people didn’t change that much and there is the problem. It has to be a global mind shift, not just on issues, but perhaps more importantly on the mind part.

I can’t say much more except that switching from judgmental words to accurate descriptive ones causes a mind shift that won’t quite and compassion comes with it. I think we need that kind of mind shift most of all.

The BBC could hardly have made a more shallow attempt to engage with contemporary environmental crises. It does led one to wonder if in the upper echelons of the BBC they make strategic decisions to circumvent important public debate by putting the least sympathetic individuals into important roles. From a perspective that acknowledges that all media is political, the show certainly does a good job of reinforcing conservative and elitist politics.

Justin Rowlatt can ignore his own role in perpetuating a deeply unsustainable practice because his is the dominant ideology - so it seems ‘natural’. Nevertheless, these hegemonic ideological assumptions are deeply problematic - environmentally and socially. Individuals such as Rowlatt can carve out a good career for themselves by aligning themselves with elites against all those troublesome environments who want social change as well as lower carbon emissions. What is shocking is that this is given a platform on public radio. It strikes me that the ‘ethical man’ is some kind of ironic joke, that’s not funny.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006slnx

We are engaging in some of the most fundamentally important work confronting humanity. By seeking to understand human behavior at a systemic level, our hope is to help align the institutions of society (including marketing and media) with the needs of human beings in a time of great strife. While the people at Futerra continue to disingenuously paint us in false colors to advance their agenda, we’ll continue developing the tools and insights that are needed to create solutions.

But this will only work, as Shilpa suggests, if we collaborate with one another and create synergies among us.

Best,

Joe

There’s no magic wand! It’s too big to take on? Head under the duvet? Easier to concentrate on marginal, tinkering, yet money - making solutions within the current mad paradigm? OK. But lashing out at Identity campaigning won’t help.

To the writers on this site and to everyone who recognises that we need to be a bit cleverer and work a bit deeper than we have been doing, can I suggest something? If we let ourselves, we can work together in better and better ways - we have the potential to be transformational.
Let’s focus our energy on the positive work we do getting out and engaging with people. On being non-judgemental, honest, creative and alive. On bringing joy and magic into our work. On being in the present moment. On talking about happiness and quality of life, not just x% by 2020/2050. On being more effective and strong as a movement.

Let’s side step the kind of criticisms above and get on with it?

Why else would the ‘easily led’ be making fools of themselves in SUVs?

“BuyLease a bigger, wider, higher more expensive car and you’ll feel like the king of the road, looking down on your fellow man.”. Appeals to the shallow base instincts that inspires the ‘white van man’ behaviour.

Poor sops bought the marketing wholesale and now are laughed at by those who are able to think for themselves.

The consumer culture paradigm reigns supreme! It’s normal so it must be OK.

It’s good old fashioned journo trick. Set up the straw man, conflate lots of ideas and different people’s work behind it and deliver your own value laden conclusions as if you were taking the only rational position possible. Front it with apparently concerned and objective people to sum it all up.

At no point does he approach the issue, that the huge changes required and many changes we cannot avoid, require political response and many of us are just honestly trying to address that rather than pretending it’s about individual shopping choices.

His narrow thinking is frustrating but of no surprise when you see his conclusion for the lowest carbon form of transport. . . . the car! And that planes are equatable to forms of transport such as buses and trains.

Justin Rowlatt suffers the same blinkered way of seeing everything through the eyes of the individual consumer, rather than the need for collective agreement and demand for the best available choices and restrictions on those which are unsustainable. We need the latter and it seems fanciful in the extreme to believe we can ’sell’ those changes on the basis of self esteem and greed AND insulting to suggest that we all need to be changed into different types of people to want to act in such a manner.

Yes disingenuous but that’s the way this type of journalism works.