Peer in episode #54 of the De Gebakken Peren Podcast.
1. How to start the marathon when you know how long it the race is?
What makes our climate crisis so challenging, is not merely its enormity.
The amount of CO2-reduction needed is beyond anything we have ever done.
But it also has a complexity matching its size.
We’ve created the crisis with everything we do and consume and thus need to change almost everything we do.
But, it’s also interwoven with everything else. It’s not just what we consume, but how our actions impact the rest of us and natural world.
It requires a different way of relating (and thus treating) each other and the rest of the natural world.
That makes it categorically different than fixing the ozone layer. Even though that was impressive global collaboration, it only required banning a few specific substances.
In this marathon, you also have to build new shoes during the race and agree with all other participants on the morality of life.
Let alone the fact that at its core, the treadmill we’re on is aimed toward collapse, since it requires infinite exponential growth on a finite planet.
It’s a daunting project. We get stifled. We don’t know what to do.
We cling to the hope technological innovation has the solutions.
Because then we can ignore the problem and keep the machine going by only changing the parts.
The way to start improving in a complex system is to start to take small good steps.
2. Supporting a generous leap of faith
Doing something new or taking a leap of faith is scary.
Starting a business, firing a client, or launching a new project.
And just as true for accepting a new idea.
One way is to increase the pain of the current state to get you over the hump.
Or, you can increase trust. Trust in your ability to perform or trust in your community to catch you if you fall.
Our society is heavily individualistic. Our successes and failures are seen as our own.
And thus our responsibilities (to give back when we succeed or) to take care of ourselves when we fail are up to us.
How can we extent more support for generous leaps of faith?
3. A leader hidden within
I believe very few of our characteristics are entirely innate.
Leadership - as in the act of mobilising others to bend the arc of what can happen - is not one of them.
It requires vision. But that comes easier when you’ve got the mental space to take in new ideas and the experience that you’re ideas can become reality.
It requires courage. But that comes easier when you’ve been brought up with the confidence that you can speak your mind and still be loved.
It requires empathy. But that comes easier when you you’ve got enough security to be ok with your own shit.
None of these are easy. And, none of these don’t require work when your upbringing hasn’t given you the benefits.
They can be cultivated though. And we can help others cultivate these.
