How to Save the World (version 0.9)

What You Can Do: A Framework for Personal Action

Selected excerpts from a 2009 article by Dave Pollard

It’s been a couple of years since I tried to provide a comprehensive answer to the question of many of my readers: “What can I do?” in light of all the suffering in this world, and the looming collapse, some time in this century, of our unsustainable, teetering civilization. Past versions of What You Can Do have been mostly checklists, and I thought this time I’d try to provide a model, a process that each individual can tailor to her or his own capacities, abilities and passions. It’s illustrated below, and it’s fairly ambitious, but I think it makes sense. It draws heavily on the work of Joanna Macy (and)…on the work of Richard Moss, Otto Scharmer, and my book Finding the Sweet Spot.

Here’s a walkthrough of the process, which to some extent I’ve applied in my own life. I won’t pretend I did any of this in this order, or with this much focus or rigour, but if I knew then what I know now perhaps I would have. Here we go.

STEP 1: APPRECIATE
“Joanna Macy describes gratitude as a revolutionary act — it contradicts the relentless message of the industrial growth society that we, and what we have, are never enough, so we are made to be perpetually dissatisfied. Gratitude breaks this hold on us, showing us that we are sufficient, and hence liberates us from industrial growth society’s propaganda, mindset and entrenched behaviours.”

STEP 2: BE PRESENT
“You’re going to have to bring all your attention to this journey, all your focus. Changing the world in any meaningful way doesn’t lend itself to multitasking, distraction, or living inside your head, or in your dreams.”

STEP 3: LET YOUR HEART BE BROKEN
“When we are disconnected from our feelings, our senses, and our instincts, and live in our heads, we act (intellectually) as if everything is all right, while we know (emotionally, viscerally) that something is terribly wrong. It is as if there are two highly dissonant people inside us: an active one that goes about our daily work, engaging in normal relationships; and a passive one that suffers silently from a profound, unnamed and unexpressed grief and a deep but unexplored sense of anxiety…Show the world your broken heart.”

STEP 4: UNDERSTAND HOW THE WORLD REALLY WORKS
“The reason so many of our modern crises are so wicked and intractable is that they are not problems, but predicaments, unintended consequences of (mostly) well-intended human actions. To understand how the world really works, and how we can start to learn to adapt to our modern predicaments, we need to understand complexity.” (See Dave Pollard’s suggested book list)

STEP 5: KNOW YOURSELF; DISCOVER THE COURAGE TO ACT
“This involves self-exploration to discover (a) your Gifts (what you are uniquely good at doing), your Passions (what you love doing), and your Purpose (what is needed in the world that you care about, and which resonates with who you are). Where these three things intersect lies what you are meant to do.”

STEP 6: BUILD PERSONAL AND COLLECTIVE CAPACITY AND COMPETENCY
“These are the ‘head’ actions, the ones rooted mostly in intellectual (thinking and learning) activity. Knowing who you are, and what you know and need to know, will direct and inform these types of actions, at the personal level. You may conclude that some of the things you believe to be in your sweet spot are not currently Gifts (distinctive competencies) of yours, or you may be lacking the capacity to do them, so you’ll need to open space and time, and study and practice, until they are.”

STEP 7: DISMANTLE CIVILIZATION

“Civilization is complex and delicate: it depends on everything running smoothly and also depends upon people having faith in its goodness. Global ecological systems are changing in unpredictable and major ways; natural resources are running out rapidly; the population is growing, particularly the population of urban areas; there is considerable political and civil unrest developing throughout the world: any combination of these factors are likely to lead to a sudden and catastrophic collapse of civilization during the 21st century.”

STEP 8: CREATE NEW, NATURAL STRUCTURES AND MODELS
“These are the ‘heart’ actions, the ones rooted mostly in creative activity. The most notable right now are the Transition Network, Permaculture, Unschooling, and Intentional Communities movements. Each proposes a radically new way to live, and models this behaviour through real-world activities, networks and communities. There are some who hope and believe that such models will serve, eventually, to render those of the industrial growth society obsolete and cause them to crumble. There are others who believe that these new models will only scale and flourish once industrial civilization has collapsed. Regardless of which you believe, these natural, alternative models are the future, and the more work done to make them more resilient, adaptable and diverse, the better our chances of mitigating the suffering that will come with the collapse of industrial civilization, and providing options for new beginnings once that occurs.”

STEP 9: BE A MODEL; BE (NOBODY-BUT-)YOURSELF
“There’s one kind of model that doesn’t fit in step 8, and that’s the model of you. By modeling all the things you have learned in this process: appreciation, presence, openness, knowledge of how things work, self-knowledge, courage, unique capacities and competencies, radical activism, responsibility and creativity — you show others who may be ready to take action themselves the way. That’s far more powerful and effective than writing or teaching. Don’t tell, show.”

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