Worldchanging?
I got a very longwinded email yesterday morning peppered with an ask to buy a new book called World Changing. The appeal started with, "Our book, Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century, comes out on November 1. It offers 600 pages of insight into successful ways to build sustainability and create social change. It is intended to be, quite literally, a manual for learning to change the world."
Ah! Hope! Someone has compiled some models for successful, sustainable communities, and provided a step-by-step offering for those who feel called to lead the way. But then I kept reading... Quicky it started to sound familiar. Where had I head this voice before? "This is the answer you have been looking for. Buy this book, buy it now, buy it for yourself and buy it for all your friends and family heck it doesn’t matter who you buy it for as long as you buy it… just buy and buy lots now.” Sound familiar? Yeah it did to me, too. Immediately I was disappointed. Suddenly it seemed like just another attempt to cash in on the effect that words like sustainability and social change have on a growing number of people.
To tell ourselves that we just need to consume this one last thing (and in vast quantities) because THIS is the groundbreaking solution we have been waiting for, perpetuates one of the major ‘problems’ we have identified. And wait a minute, 600 pages? That is an awful lot of paper, recycled or not.
What would things look like if we started acknowledging and perhaps even reconciling our warped need to consume?
If the contents of this book are as important and revolutionary as its publishers saying, (which would be very exciting, indeed) How about an equally revolutionary way of disseminating its contents? If the priority truly is to get this into peoples hands so they are empowered to make change and this book truly does embody the concept of radical change, then this conversation should be about how to get people to go further than reading a book or going to a film.
Consider for a second how different it might be if the people behind this project were saying something like:
“We believe that this particular collection of information is so compelling and we feel passionately that you ought to have access to it. And after all we are talking about a brand new way of doing things - we are talking about revolution. So here's how we are being revolutionaries:
We found a way for the book to come to you
-We went to some of the country's most celebrated NPOs and showed them how important this book is and it's potential. Then we got them to agree to use their networks to help us distribute the book in PDF format via their electronic networks of supporters.
- We worked with some of the country's most progressive foundations and philanthropists, who have entirely paid for the production hard copies of 100,000 copies of the book as well as distribution costs to get the book into the hands of the people that want to read it but cant access it online.
-We are implementing a plan to meet people where they are online, too. We distilled the contents into an overview and are participating in multiple online social networks across North America offering people the opportunity to download the material.
-And here is how we are being really revolutionary: we have started a non-profit mandated to provide support for people working to make changes in their worlds.”
I sense a yearning in the people all around me to change the way we do everything. Beautiful thing. And always present wherever this is, is an equally strong rejection of change. Also a normal and beautiful thing. Yin and Yang.
What would it look like if we acknowledged and tried not to reject the fact that we want to change but are scared of it? I imagne some amazing, truly revolutionary things would be allowed to emerge in an environment where we dont have to pretend to be something we're not.
Comments
Oh. And I just learned that
Oh. And I just learned that the 600 page book 
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I like the ideas you
I like the ideas you generated in this post - in just a few minutes you asembled some good alternatives - and that's how easy it is to create some new paths - our marvellous mind can come up with new ideas almost effortlessly. All resosurces, all processes, all accomplishments first began in someone's mind, maybe as a wild idea.
This gives us hope for the future - the answers to all problems are within a thought or two of this second.
What we need to do is to encourage freedom of thought and expression - just like you are doing on this site. Just by saying lets talk about some change, it values people's expression of ideas. I think that is, in and of itself, a valueable exercise.
Peace
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Yes I've noticed that when
Yes I've noticed that when you tell someone they are a bunch of eco-terrorists, they do have a tendancy to block you out. Maybe there's a lesson for me there.
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I wonder if they are going
I wonder if they are going to do anything with your suggestions...
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Kate, I'm impressed you had
Kate, I'm impressed you had the patience to write such a response, along with some really sharp sounding suggestions for a less archaic approach to getting their message out than 'buy buy buy our book'.
I hope you get a response but I doubt it. I get blocked on that site when I suggest they're a bunch of eco-terrorists. The last time I was on there, the dialogue was about "destroying the credibility of 'non-believers'", ie anyone who challenges the science behind climate change - even those, it seemed, who challenge it for the sake of making a better argument! That was the jist I got anyway. Don't f*** with our ideology, we've already agreed upon it's truth.
I'm far more interested in participating and supporting actual change, like the changes people are making on this forum. You think stuff like resolving personal addictions, learning to let music flow, taking responsibility for behaviours and our egos and our communications, re-examining ourselves, our Selves, and our mortality, personal health and growth, care, and compassion, isn't powerful 'worldchanging' work? Think again. It's the only real work. I'm not noticing anyone declaring personal changes as a result of what some jackass who wrote a 'book' outlined them to do. (Although it's easy to spot the changes fueled by propoganda vs. the ones fueled by inner knowing and inspiration - we'll see which ones stand up over time and the challenges of life)
I'd rather read a book of poetry or good fiction, and then continue to write and listen to other people write on this blog about real changes in their real lives with their real relationships. real fears, real resistances, real struggle, real compassion, real joy. Real change and our frustrating attempts to grab onto stuff and try and make 'em stop changing! What it means to let things go, let them be as they are and change as they will. How we learn to tinker with curiosity, rather than control out of fear; sharing stories of how that actually plays out for each of us in our lives.