Bringing About Meaningful Change

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Bringing About Meaningful Change
Professor Stuart B. Hill University of Western
Sydney s.hill_at_uws.edu.au
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Bringing About Meaningful Change Ground Rules

• very first (uncensored) thoughts

• focus on 2 or 3 things (versus a long list)

• in pairs take turns to think listen equal
  (adequate)
• time if in threes, then third person can
  keep notes

• express in words (/or drawings, sounds)

• note all associated thoughts, feelings, images,
• memories

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Bringing About Meaningful Change

• What issue do you most want to focus on at this
  moment?

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Upper levels affect lower levels
Our species with its rich cultural diversity
Planet Earth
Industrialised Western world population
Zoogeograhical region (Australiasia)
Country state population
Country, state bioregion
Community, interest, work, church professional
groups
Catchment, town, suburb, village
Family, friends, and workmates
Work play places
Self
Home
Lower levels affect upper levels
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Bringing About Meaningful Change (cont.)

• What do you most love about.?
• (whatever it is)

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Levels of consideration for better action
action
planning
imagination creativity
feelings passions
worldviews, values beliefs
Top two overemphasised
(modified from John Herron, 1992. Feeling and
Personhood. Sage, London)
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Our cultural evolution
Higher values driven
Enablement
Network society driven
Demand driven
Socialisation
Sustainability Equity/Social justice
Supply driven
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Psychosocial evolution transformative institutio
nal structural change

• Socialising

• Exclusionary
• Social
• Institutions

• Problem Focus

• Enabling

• Participatory
• Social
• Institutions

• Redesign/Design

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Bringing About Meaningful Change (cont.)

• Boldly lie about how you have made your whole
  system completely.
• (eg, sustainable, healthy)
• /or how you solved

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One radical way to progress our thinking
action is paradoxically (in a workshop context)
to boldly 'lie' about changes that you have
already brought about (that you have actually not
brought about!)
This enables us to vision in relation to our
benign potential, rather than settle for
tinkering with the status quo
By daring to engage in such 'deep' reflection
implementation of meaningful doable initiatives,
we can significantly contribute to changing the
world for the better
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Bringing About Meaningful Change (cont.)

• What have you already done, or are currently
  doing, to.?
• (eg, care for makesustainable, healthy)
  
• related to, or compatible with, your bold
  lie(s)

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Bringing About Meaningful Change (cont.)

• Whats one thing you have wondered about
  doing/would really like to do next to address the
  issue?

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Appropriate next steps are

• deeply personal

• highly context specific

This is why

• formulaic,
• centrally-directed
• imposed change

• always fails to achieve its stated aims

• invariably causes more problems than it solves

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Consequently the collaborative task is to
design implement institutional
community structures processes
that can enable those of us involved
to take those appropriate next steps,
to evaluate, celebrate learn our way forwards
as we go
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Bringing About Meaningful Change (cont.)

• What would you need to have access to in order to
  be able to do this? (particular information,
  skills, resources, supports)

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Bringing About Meaningful Change (cont.)

• How might/could you get these things that you
  would need?

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Bringing About Meaningful Change (cont.)

• What might stop you (barriers) external
• (eg, judgements by others) internal
• (eg, fears, feeling incapable, lack of
  confidence, postponement pattern)

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Limiting factors for change

• information access to it, misinformation,
• knowledge, skills, competencies

• resources renewable, non-renewable,
  technologies, money, time

• institutional supports policies, programs,
  structures, services, legislation, regulations

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Limiting factors for change (cont.)

• family community support

• empowerment/disempowerment
• (feelings of helplessness/hopelessness)

• awareness

• vision imagination

• values, worldviews, paradigms, beliefs

• persistent denial, procrastination
  distractive/compensatory activities

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Bringing About Meaningful Change (cont.)

• How might/could you get around/overcome these
  external internal barriers? (eg, reducing the
  size of the initiative to make it doable)

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Kurt Lewins Force Field Analysis
add strengthen
Driving forces
Restraining forces (barriers)
external internal
remove weaken
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Bringing About Meaningful Change (cont.)

•  What small meaningful, doable initiative are
• you willing to absolutely commit to?
• Over what time frame?

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Framework for planning change
Strategic questions What would it take
to.? What gets in the way what would
remove these barriers?
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Bringing About Meaningful Change (cont.)

• Who will you ask to be an ally to you, or to
• collaborate with you, in this project
  what
• specifically will you ask them to do to
  support
• you?

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Bringing About Meaningful Change (cont.)

• How will you celebrate your progress
• outcomes? so that others may learn from
• your initiative experience? (to make such
  
• progressive change become contagious)

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Testing questions for evaluating initiatives
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Does it support?
Personal (capital sustainability)

• spontaneity, curiosity engagement

• empowerment, awareness, respect of the unknown

• creative visioning, values worldviews
  clarification

• acquisition of essential literacies
  competencies

• building maintaining vitality, health
  wellbeing

• caring, loving, responsible, negentropic
  relationships

• lifelong personal development responsibility

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Does it support? (cont.)
Socio-political / cultural (capital
sustainability)

• building maintaining trust, access,
  collaborative,
• life-affirming community structures processes

• reflexive, critical, imaginative, celebrational
  attitudes

• cultural diversity respectful, mutualistic
• relationships

• cultural development psychosocial co-evolution

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Does it support? (cont.)
Environmental/natural (capital sustainability)

• enabling life-supporting ecological processes

• conserving habitats functional high
  biodiversity

• ecosystem development co-evolutionary change

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Does it support? (cont.)
General foci

• proactive, whole system design/redesign
• for wellbeing

• small/doable, meaningful, collaborative
  initiatives

• windows of change use of integrator-indicators

• attentive to all outcomes feedback

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Decisions to make re change

• what to stop doing

• what to reduce/de-emphasise

• what to do differently

• what to increase/expand

• what to start doing (new)

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Decisions to make re change (cont.)

• what will it take to do this?

• what are the barriers
• what will remove them?

• what resources are needed
• available (particularly locally) how to get
  them?

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Some Pre-prerequisites for Sustainability

• awareness consciousness

• dreams, hopes, visions imagination

• values clarification, commitment courage

• understanding collaboration across difference

• new kinds of community, political, business
  academic leadership ( support)

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Decisions to make re-change (cont.)

• prioritise activities aportion resources

• brainstorm, set long-, mid- short-term goals

• breakdown into meaningful doable actions

• do, reflect celebrate, do reflect celebrate
  

• evaluate redesign programs activities
• (as indicated)

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F

• lat outstretched upon a mound of
  earth I lie I Press my ear against its surface
  and I hear far off and deep, the measured sound
  of heart that beats within the ground. And with
  it pounds in harmony with the swift, familiar
  heart in me. They pulse as one, together swell,
  together fall I cannot tell my sound from
  Earths, for I am part of rhythmic, universal
  heart.
• - Elizabeth Odell

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We need to recognise the degree to which
psychological processes influence everything (as
barriers enablers)
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outside inside out !
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Why do so many of us keep making the same
mistakes?
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Assumption
At every moment we are all always doing the best
we can, given

• what we inherited (genetics plus)

• our past experiences, adaptations to them

• present contexts conditions

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Person
Values Morals Ethics
Actions
Past Environments/Experiences
Present Environment/Conditions
Supportive
Oppressive
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Establishment of maladaptive compensatory selves
Hurt Oppression
Adaptation (maladaptation)
Core healthy self/essence
Hurt Oppression
Multiple Selves

• Core
• Healthy
• spontaneous
• aware
• empowered
• loving
• informed action

• Maladaptive Compensatory
• patterned
• unaware
• disempowered
• fearful
• acting out

Distorted potentially healthy behaviour
Superimposed unhealthy behaviour
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The way I look at it, for what I lose in freedom
I gain in security
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Most of the time we behave as if we were
hypnotised twice
firstly into accepting pseudoreality as reality,
secondly into believing we were not hypnotised
R. D. Laing 1971 The Politics of the Family
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REDUCE REUSE RECYCLE
REPAIR REFRAIN REFUSE RESCUE REGENERATE REDESIG
N REFLECT REVIEW RE-EVALUATE READ RISK REGIS
TER RULES RESPONSIBILITY RECOVER REVOLT
REBEL RECONSIDER REFUTE REBUKE REGULATE
Etc, etc, AND all other letters alphabets
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• For ecological and cultural
• sustainability both the soil
• and people will need more
• fibre!
• Stuart Hill 1998

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The current state of the world, with its
environmental degradation, conflicts,
inequities, prejudices, other negative
characteristics, is the collective result of all
of these maladaptive compensatory expressions
of our thinking acting
So the challenge in relation to any area is to
reflect on the ways in which our thinking
acting express our benign potential, ( also
how they might be maladaptive compensatory)
then enable the former to be expressed the
latter to be healed addressed
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We must also recognise that we are evolving
psychosocially
plan for better futures rather than more
efficient controlled pasts
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Psychosocial evolution of child development (de
Mause 1982 Foundations of Psychohistory, Creative
Roots, New York)
Enabling
Enabling recognises all humans as social,
potentially benign beings, capable of developing
their own agendas it is supportive of this
All other stages impose adult agendas on
children others, so undermine their
potential development
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'Socialising', like all previous stages in our
psychosocial evolution, involves the excessive
imposition by adults, society in general, of
foreign agendas (invariably inappropriate in
content with respect to time space) on
children who (if not wounded) have their own
benign, uniquely personal contextually
fine-tuned agendas
This oppressive process results in young peoples
disempowerment, loss of awareness, the
development of adaptive non-benign thoughts
behaviours, a sense of disconnectedness, both
from their external internal worlds most
choose either to conform or rebel
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In contrast to this, 'enabling' approaches to
child-rearing education have the potential to
support the development of individuals who are
empowered, aware, loving, caring, responsible,
creative, visionary, knowledgeable, competent,
wise, with a zest for life
Such individuals are likely to be much more
capable of acting alone, in collaboration with
others, to radically transform redesign our
institutional structures process, our
lifestyles, to make the world a better place for
all
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In whatever ways that we have been raised, we all
retain a capacity for benign action , in our
own ways, are always endeavouring to do our best
to act on this capacity
But, too often, for most of us, because our
efforts to do this have repeatedly been
thwarted, because the dominant cultural
pressures make this difficult, we commonly settle
for going along with things postponing such
action, for substituting 'adaptive'
'compensatory' behaviours
These involve compromising our values, seeking
stimulation to feel 'alive', consumptive
lifestyles, obsession with appearance
impressing others, loss of purpose direction,
fears denial concerning all of this
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10 Common Mistakes to Avoid Needs to
Meet, When Seeking to Create a Better World
Professor Stuart B. Hill University of Western
Sydney s.hill_at_uws.edu.au
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Getting the usual experts (mostly older males)
together to talk plan

• always leads to tinkering with existing (flawed)
  plans being trapped in dominant paradigms

• excludes most, including those affected by
• such plans their fresh ideas

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Need

• involve mostly different people

• start by focusing not on plans, but on values,
• beliefs, worldviews paradigms

then feelings passions
then, emergent from these, hopes, dreams,
visions, imaginings, creative thoughts
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Need (cont.)
only then can design/redesign-based plans
be enabled to emerge (these proactively enable
systems structures processes to meet
long-term to short-term, broad to specific,
goals make systems as problem-proof as
possible)
then critically analyse, integrate, flesh
these out, etc
detail participatory opportunities,
responsibilities, time lines, resource support
needs, means for monitoring outcomes,
tracking progress, for ongoing redesigning
fine tuning
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Emphasising problem-solving approaches (back-end,
reactive/responsive, curative)

• these tend to focus on symptom management
• neglect the need to address the underlying
  maldesign
• mismanagement roots of all problems

• they typically over-focus on measuring problems
• (a main strategy used for postponing action -
  by those
• who benefit from the status quo)

• over-focus on efficiency substitution
  strategies,
• eg, improved application of pesticides, on
  finding
• less disruptive (but still purchased)
  substitutes, such as
• biological controls genetically modified
  organisms

same story in other areas medicine, energy, etc

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Need

• redesign existing systems ( design new
• systems) to make them as problem-proof
• as possible

• to enable effective change from flawed
• /defective systems to significantly more
• improved ones

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Getting stuck in activities pathologically
designed to postpone (feared) change

• particularly measuring problems
• (monitoring our extinction)

• endless over-collection of data (often
  justified by
• a need for evidence-based vs. responsible
  approaches)

• hearings, committee meetings, report-writing,
  etc

• most have NO follow-through, usually only lead
  
• to more of the same

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Need

• postponing pathologies must be recognised,
• exposed, contradicted addressed by taking
• responsible, timely, appropriate,
  collaborative action

• access to relevant data is needed to make
• responsible decisions however, adequate data
• are often already available from other places,
  in
• other languages etc

• globally, billions of dollars are wasted
  annually
• unnecessarily repeating studies in new
  locations
• or with mischievous intentions (often related
  to
• perceived threats to existing commercial
  advantage)

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Trying to solve problems within the discipline or
area responsible for creating them

• or with multidisciplinary teams of selected
• experts/authorities from favoured disciplines,
  
• with others excluded

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Need

• genuine transdisciplinary, multi-competency
• multi-experience teams, able to access
• disciplinary specialised knowledge as needed

• include competencies relating to holistic
• approaches to design, sustainability,
  wellbeing,
• meaning effective change processes

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Patriarchal (them doing things to/for us, us
doing things to/for them) driven do-good
approaches are rarely exactly what is needed

• these are generally not sustained
• or embraced by those being helped

• also, they invariably have diverse negative
• unexpected consequences

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Need

• inclusion of those most affected by proposed
• improvements as primary collaborators in
• change processes from beginning to end

• enables ownership, relevance, achievability,
• ongoing improvement openness to
• unforseen/surprise benefits

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Planning Olympic/mega-scale, heroic initiatives
(from hearings to projects), with no
follow-through or provision for ongoing support
(more than just funding)

• these invariably only reach the analysis,
• planning preliminary stages (then are
  abandoned)

• most have unforseen, numerous, long-term
• widespread harmful side-effects

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Need

• diverse, mutually supportive, doable initiatives
  
• that have long-term support

• consideration of opportunities for ongoing
• improvement learning our ways forward
• collaboratively towards improved futures

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Over focus on knowledge data, neglect of
wisdom experience

• most wisdom cannot be supported by data
• it involves working with the unknown most
  of
• what is not just the limited known often
  in
• ways that rely on intuition gut feelings etc

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Need

• to be much better at recognising, valuing
• involving the wisest most experienced in our
  
• society not be so obsessed with
  cleverness
• (whereas wisdom enables us to work with the
• unknown know, cleverness is limited to
  working
• with the miniscule known)

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Over focus on productivity, profit, quick
dramatic results

• predictably leads to burn-out, only short-term,
• limited benefits, often unexpected
  disbenefits
• (additional problems that are often initially
  unrecognised)

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Need

• much more focus on maintenance activities

• caring for one another
• ( other species the environment)

• celebration

• venting feelings, access to healing support,
  etc

• prioritise time resources for these activities
  

• sustained productivity is emergent from the
• effective maintenance of whole systems

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Homogenisation tendencies

• these tend to result in construction of favoured
  
• norms (for people, structures, processes, etc)

• failure to consider diversity

• creation of in-groups out-groups

• also, inclusion, exclusion blaming

• failure to benefit from the creativity that
  resides
• at the margins in the borderlands of society

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Need

• openness to appreciation of the value
• of hererogeneity functional diversity
• within all systems
• with its opportunities for synergy, mutualism

• lateral paradoxical thinking acting

• extension beyond the usual competencies

• relevance to core needs possibilities

• sense of inclusion, ownership, sense of place,
  etc

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Neglect of the arts, or only token involvement

• over-focus on the sciences, technologies,
• business, politics, the professions, the
  media,
• the other major institutions in our society

• as a result, the arts are poorly supported,
• regarded as a luxury or optional extra,
• an afterthought, or even irrelevant

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Need

• recognition of the arts, in its broadest sense,
• as being an essential part of both the
  foundation
• means for implementation of all efforts to
• achieve genuine sustainable improvement

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Plus many other mistakes needs What are
the ones that come to mind for you?
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Levels of Ecological-Self Consciousness
1. manipulated eco-self behaviourism
2. learned eco-self cognitive
3. participative eco-self deconstructionist
postmodern
4. deep eco-self depth
5. holistic eco-self holistic psychosomatic
6. person-planet ( body-mind) unity
transpersonal