Positive Deviance may be more complex than gathering influential leaders with effective marketing, but Buckminster Fuller is not the only design expert who has advised us to encourage the demise of dysfunctional systems by building a more optimized, positive, better system. Building a permacultured cooperative deep ecology is effective marketing. It is being noticed.
There are two Positive Deviance efforts that I am aware of regarding the conversion of the public sector. The Nellie Mae Education Foundation is currently implementing a strategy to inoculate Business As Usual in the field of public education with a turn toward a Deep Learning Ecology, sometimes called Creative Learning. An important part of their strategy is to contract with local models of Deep Learning pedagogy to speak directly with strategically targeted distressed urban (first priority) public School Board Directors, as well as school staff and students, and require at least 2 citizen research-type D&D events (there is also enough money to incorporate an on-line dimension to these events, to broaden participation in core iterative discernment stages).
The second is more industry-specific, in a way. I think that Permaculture Design is moving in linked-arm step with EcoVillages, cooperatively-owned businesses and residences, alternative energy technicians, natural builders, organic growers and farmers to build cooperative demonstration networks. These, in turn, are moving toward deeper cooperative network dimensions through tools like Local Economic Trading Systems (LETS), and BerkShares, community currencies, equity-as-capital-based Deep PermaCultured Ecology models of positive deviance. This emerging Transitional Generation PermaCulture “deviance” has missed opportunities to engage the public sector, while busy building our alternative universe model. I, for one, believe the permacultural emergence is mature enough to strategize more explicitly about how to engage public officials, perhaps borrowing a page from the Nellie Mae Foundation.
We would do well to participate with more mindfulness toward our friends in the media, education, philanthropy, religious leadership, and political officials. Some specific allies who are better connected to these more public sectors than the permacultured guild of positive deviance might be NCDD itself, Habitat for Humanity, AmeriCorp Volunteers, homeschool networks, Cooperative Extension Services, which I believe are associated with land-grant colleges/universities in all 50 States, and inter-religious Eco-Justice networks, with potential global networking possibilities, inclusive of UNESCO as a “Greatest Effect with Least Effort” possible participant of interest.
Perhaps the ecologically sustainable educational system of positive deviance that David Orr, the Schumacher Center for New Economics, and many others are calling for is the emerging Gaia University (www.gaiauniversity.org) [I am not affilliated other than as a consumer of services, so this is not an advertisement; just an endorsement of potential value, where I believe there is already some form of UNESCO awareness, and maybe even some level of involvement–not sure about that]. Could NCDD partner with Gaia University’s on-line pedagogy, to extend the conversation toward a global cooperative economy and ecological awareness? Maybe the Transition Network (www.transitionnetwork.org) could incarnate these global topics within their local public sectors; a resource for educating their local officials about the importance of their sustained, mindful, support, and their sense of urgency, as active facilitators for local cooperative sustainability.
gdill52 
Hi Gerald,
Your call to engage community leaders and organisations is spot on. I’m on the Board of Be The Change Australia. Our aim is to catalyse such an initiative of a global scale. We call it ‘the Great Transition initiative’.
In terms of Deliberative Democracy our thinking is not as rich as yours, because we are aiming to promote a more general overview of systemic change based on positive values as a starting point for people. But Deliberative Democracy, the Fannie May Foundation, and the other organisations that you refer to are all part of the Great Transition to a life sustaining society.
‘The Great Transition initiative’ is a label for an informal global educational movement. Participants are unified by a shared intention is to change the direction of the developed world by inspiring a critical mass of people in mainstream society to passionately commit to a whole system change to deal successfully with our environmental and social issues. There is no central control.
If things go well, as a global civilisation we will transition from sure ecological self-destruction to a life-sustaining society that operates within planetary boundaries – and create far more pleasurable and fulfilling ways of living in the process. This is ‘The Great Transition’.
The Great Transition is already underway. As Paul Hawken described in Blessed Unrest, millions of groups are arising in response to our environmental and social issues. Even major players such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and President Obama have woken up to the realities of climate change.
Nevertheless, all the major environmental indicators are out of whack: global CO2 emissions continue to increase and we are at or near irreversible tipping points. The observed increase in methane (http://tinyurl.com/o52bmx2) from gas hydrates rising from the Arctic seabed brings this home with chilling immediacy. Therefore our task is to accelerate the Great Transition at emergency speed.
The key to success is enabling a critical mass of mainstream society to connect-the-dots and see why it is in everybody’s collective interest, including their own, to transition to a life-sustaining society.
In other words, we have to help people think.
We have untapped resources.
The groups Paul Hawken refers to have huge untapped resources which can be focused to dramatically affect mainstream consciousness. For this we may have more assets than the oil companies, if we only realised it!
This is because there are millions of us who are knowledgeable and who care. We each have time, money and imagination that can be devoted to affecting how people think. Our capacities are not centralised; they are distributed. And this is also part of our power. We can penetrate every level of society without a large budget!
With an innovative approach we can mobilise our hidden assets
Designing for a miracle – innovative communication to accelerate the Great Transition outlines a flexible strategy for affecting public consciousness.
The essence of the strategy is to
1 Make the ideas of whole system change and the Great Transition the centrepiece of a massive wave of messages coming from innumerable sources, so that people see it everywhere, and
2 Follow through with personal conversations, workshops and e-courses to enable both ordinary people and influential decision makers to grasp what is really involved in a way that they can act on.
It may be that inviting people to focused personal conversations is the most effective means we have to affect mainstream consciousness. We can all talk to people we know who have not yet thought deeply about transformative change. The Transition Leader Network has imaginative communication tools for this. A Conversation Guide for Exploring the Great Transition initiative is a great place to start.
To kick-start the Great Transition initiative we are organising a global Sustainability Surprise Party. It will run from May 1 through to May 31, with organisations around the world putting on a variety of events.
I invite you to critically review Designing for a Miracle, and if it meshes with your own vision, pick it up and run with it in your own way!
If things go well, ultimately the Great Transition will displace economic increase as the accepted definition of what our times are about, and a critical mass of mainstream society will commit and take action to make the Great Transition happen.
The Great Transition initiative is open source. No organisation ‘owns’ it. Success is contingent on the millions of individuals and groups that Paul Hawken refers to embracing the goal – transforming mainstream consciousness – and imaginatively acting on it with their own resources. Be The Change Australia has catalysed the Great Transition initiative by inviting other organisations to participate. But successfully affecting mainstream consciousness is too large a project for any one organisation to hope to do on its own. It will take thousands of us – millions!
I invite you to embrace the Great Transition initiative as your own, and run with it in your own way! If we can take it to scale mass self-initiated action will be unstoppable.
Sincerely,
Andrew Gaines
Whole system change to a life-sustaining society
+61 2 8005-8382
Skype: andrewgoodhumour
andrew.gaines@transitionleader.net
http://www.transitionleader.net
http://www.sustainabilitysurpriseparty.net
http://www.bethechange.org.au
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