-OUR WHY-
We are now changing our understanding of how nature evolves; we are moving from unconscious evolution through natural selection to conscious evolution by choice...
Into our hands has been given the power of codestruction or cocreation.
-Barbara Marx Hubbard, futurist, grandmother
Changemakers, activists and critical thinkers around the world are excellent at identifying what is wrong with our current oppressive systems and how they became so. In our experience with grassroots mobilizing for change, most of the general public, our own funders, investors, volunteers and staff and even us as changemakers don't actually consistently see what the vision is that we are working towards. We are sometimes more focused on dismantling current paradigms than on envisioning and building the alternatives we want. We might say we want a world without oppression, without policy brutality, without sexism, without racism, without abusive mental health services for marginalized peoples, without pollution from industries, etc., but what do those worlds actually look like then? How would these processes function instead? Could we potentially focus more of our energy on that?
We challenge you (and can support you) to envision the alternatives. What regenerative, thriving, equitable, accessible, inclusive, peaceful, dignified systems, social attitudes and behaviour are the new norm in your future vision? How does accessing certain services look like? Do we even view it anymore as "accessing services"? What does it feel like, taste like, smell like? How is food integrated into our lives? What does public education look like for our young people? What does 'work' mean now? What might a newspaper headline say now? Do we even have those anymore? What would our romantic, social & familial relationships be like? What would our spiritual, physical and mental models look like?
What does the transitionary period look like? What does the process of change and "getting to next" look like? What change-pains are occurring? What must we consider and keep in mind as we go through the transition?
We must be preemptive if we are to change the world. If we solely resist the models of the hegemony in the present, then we are still giving the hegemony more power than they already have and we are too busy with that work instead of imagining and creating alternatives. We encourage more focus on a robust vision, and we can build our own futures as the hegemony will build theirs. Yes, there will be struggle to successfully create our futures while they keep doing what they do with their power and influence, but what would happen if more and more masses around the world took our futures into our own hands? Might we build futures we truly want, and inspire upcoming generations to continue? Might we be so successful in building our futures that the current paradigms become obsolete?
Deeper into our why...
We challenge you (and can support you) to envision the alternatives. What regenerative, thriving, equitable, accessible, inclusive, peaceful, dignified systems, social attitudes and behaviour are the new norm in your future vision? How does accessing certain services look like? Do we even view it anymore as "accessing services"? What does it feel like, taste like, smell like? How is food integrated into our lives? What does public education look like for our young people? What does 'work' mean now? What might a newspaper headline say now? Do we even have those anymore? What would our romantic, social & familial relationships be like? What would our spiritual, physical and mental models look like?
What does the transitionary period look like? What does the process of change and "getting to next" look like? What change-pains are occurring? What must we consider and keep in mind as we go through the transition?
We must be preemptive if we are to change the world. If we solely resist the models of the hegemony in the present, then we are still giving the hegemony more power than they already have and we are too busy with that work instead of imagining and creating alternatives. We encourage more focus on a robust vision, and we can build our own futures as the hegemony will build theirs. Yes, there will be struggle to successfully create our futures while they keep doing what they do with their power and influence, but what would happen if more and more masses around the world took our futures into our own hands? Might we build futures we truly want, and inspire upcoming generations to continue? Might we be so successful in building our futures that the current paradigms become obsolete?
Deeper into our why...