Common Cause Case Studies

Just a quick note to say it's worth keeping an eye out for the Case Studies that the Common Cause guys are pulling together: http://valuesandframes.org/casestudies/

The High Price of Materialism

Alongside 'Psychology and Consumer Culture' and his work on Common Cause, Tim Kasser's 2002 book The High Price of Materialism has had a powerful impact on the sustainability movement. The Center for a new American dream has just released this five minute summary of Kasser's work; it is a great starting point for getting people interested in this most important debate:

The Accidental Environmentalists - #1 Alain de Botton

A couple of years back I interviewed a few people on the subject of 'accidental environmentalism' exploring with them whether, in educating FOR sustainability, we actually need to talk about environmental issues at all. Sustainable lifestyles are made up of a vast collection of sustainable behaviours. They are all underpinned by a set of values such as kindness, empathy and respect. The argument is that to build sustainable lifestyles we need to work from values. I'm fortunate now to be working at a charity that truly understands this. The sustainability movement in general seems to be waking up to it too.

These interviews were intended to become some sort of coherent book on the subject. Maybe one day they will become that, but judging by how busy I currently am, it won't be anytime soon. Therefore I feel that I should no longer sit on them, waiting for a rainy day. Over the next few weeks I'm going to publish some of the transcripts here.

The first one features the philosopher and School of Life founder: Alain de Botton.

Alain De Botton (London, 21/08/09)

I started off by asking him how engaged he is in sustainability issues.

I think it seems to me to be part of a broader thing that no thinking being can be unconcerned about, which is really the position of man in a very advanced technological age in relation to nature and natural forces and the balance between the human man-made world and nature, which includes things like nuclear weapons as much as it includes global warming. I think it is part of a broader thing; it encompasses lots of different things and is perhaps over and above everything else. So, it almost encompasses war as well. It is about human beings as agents of destruction, rather than as respecters of life, or givers of life. Yes, it is hard to be human and not to have come across those issues in some form.

I explained the traditional structure of education about and through the environment and their overall aim of being for, and that there is a limit to this in terms of changing people’s behaviour.

Well the point is that if you talked to them about kindness; that might have as much of an impact on their attitude to the environment, because I think a lot of it is about aggression in its broadest form and the opposite to aggression is kindness.

I wondered if people are consciously aggressive towards the environment?

Well they could be consciously aggressive, or they could just be heedlessly destructive of it, like we are with people.

I explained to him how I view his work as being education for sustainability despite it not talking too much about the environment at all. I asked him if he sees his work in any way as a sort of education for sustainability.

You are right in that people can care about certain values that do not immediately seem connected, or not directly connected to a particular issue, but values don’t have to be. So if you are interested in a value like tolerance, let’s say, tolerance is an application to how you discuss a recipe with a friend to how you run your immigration policy as a country to whatever. In other words one can say that a book or a theory can be discussing something, or be relevant to something without discussing it. It’s like if you read a Jane Austen novel, you come away looking at your world through Jane Austen’s eyes and so it weirdly seems as though Jane Austen is telling you about office politics in the 21^st century. Even though that’s not what she was writing about. It has a relevance that stretches beyond. So you know you could find that Greek tragedy is about environmentalism or whatever and it’s not implausible to say that. So yes I think the amount of people who may be relevant to the discussion might be much larger than traditionally understood by people who are trying to define an ‘eco’ literature or eco-philosophy, or whatever.

I explained that that is where I am coming from and that there is a lot of accidental environmentalism going on. My argument is that if this ‘accidental’ education can be aligned with understanding’s of why (from a purely environmental perspective) it is important to use low energy light bulbs, recycle, compost and save water, then we might start to get somewhere. Rather than telling people to ‘stop doing this...’ and ‘give up that....’ and so on. Especially when there is so much education against sustainability going on around us all the time.

I think you are right, but I think one might need to make that connection explicit sometimes and to say ‘you know about this... and you know in theory that you should do that, well there is a bridge between the two.’ You might need to make that bridge explicit, that would be invaluable, maybe.

I said that this is what I am trying to dig out and whether we can integrate other forms of education. I went on to ask him about The School of Life (TSOL) and how he thinks that might fit into Education FOR sustainability.

[Chuckles] I don’t know. Again, perhaps not directly, immediately. I guess it’s one of those things that if you really took the message of many of the things that TSOL does, you would be unlikely to end up as a sort of ‘eco-destroyer’ as a destroyer of the environment. It is not that there is a direct course in how to save the environment, but if you take it seriously, if you engage with almost anything that it does, there would be a serious incompatibility if you then emerged as a logger of the Amazon rainforest. So again, it is not that it is explicit, but it is implicit. You know, ‘if you take ‘x’ seriously, you are almost by definition going to be quite sympathetic towards ‘y’.’

I spoke about realigning our value systems and working out how to meet our emotional needs in authentic, non-material ways and how The School Of Life can help us to do that.

I suppose it raises the question of what a concerned citizen should do... In modest ways TSOL is trying to change the mindset, but it is a very tiny thing next to ‘The Sun’ (the newspaper, the Sun). It is an incredibly tiny thing. I do think in our society opinions are shaped by the media, it is a cliché, but it is true. The reason why people start to worry about things, or know about things, or think about things it is because disseminated through organs. Which explains why there are people like PR companies etc. The problem is that it is incredibly difficult to get some of the more complicated or awkward[m1] messages through for any length of time and TSOL can try, but on a bad day, in terms of a global problem, you could say that it is just appealing to the converted. It is appealing to people who are basically pretty nice anyway and they need to get together and that would be very nice for them, but its lacking power in a serious sense, in the way that The Sun has power.

I said that it has the potential to be a leading example, or a prototype of this sort of approach and people are already starting to copy it, people are recognising the need for this sort of thing and this approach can build.

For me, one of the questions is what do you do if you care about things? Traditionally for me the response is you write a book and that helps things. But I also recognise that a ‘pilot project’ can in a way can be a good thing and that is why I see TSOL as a pilot project in the sense that it’s a model for how one might do things that could then spread out. We haven’t got the resources or energy to do that, but it is a small thing that could grow. So in that sense it is the equivalent of the single issue campaigner: ‘I’m not going to change the whole mentality, but if I manage to stop this sewerage works from being built, or I manage to stop thatfactory polluting.’ Maybe that’s as good as writing 100 editorials saying ‘shouldn’t we all... whatever’. So it’s trying to get ‘local’ and do one thing.

I then discussed my time at TSOL and how I wanted to get involved because I could see the FOR sustainability potential. I said that I felt that they didn’t want to engage with sustainability, or have that tag and I asked him whether he thought that was a conscience decision.

Personally speaking I think one has to find one’s own way to an issue and the thing about environmentalism and sustainability etc is that these are things which are words often made up by others to describe a problem, which sometimes you have to find your own way to before it actually becomes something you feel and understand deep inside. I think there is a real distinction between an academic intellectual understanding and a sort of emotional understanding. I’ve seen this with lots of topics you know, I remember sort of ten years ago or something when I was writing much more about the personal. Someone said to me ‘have you ever thought about writing about the workplace, or politics or whatever?’ I would say that of course these are things I have thought about, but I have not found a way of writing about it in a way that would feel personal, in a way that would be my own, rather than just a newspaper editorial or something. And for me it is slightly the same with the environment and I think that I am on the edge of finding my way towards a more authentic way of speaking about these things, but I’m not quite there yet, but I can feel it, I can feel it’s coming because I think you just need a topic to sit with you. [m2] I think that teaches me that if I’m feeling that, then probably lots of people are feeling that. You know, we are told by the media to worry and be concerned about a lot of things and a lot of time we are not actually concerned, because we don’t have the experience and we’re not at the right life stage. I know, as a man who has children, before I had children, I didn’t really understand.... For example I’d read in the newspaper headlines that a childs been run over and I’d think ‘oh dear’, you know... I didn’t really understand it, you know now I understand what that means, in a way that a media account would never prepare me for. Likewise there are many people in the environment movement who feel at a very deeper sense what this means and I think that is something that one has to realise takes some time. It’s like, racism, we live in a world where to be racist is considered immediately to be absolutely terrible and that’s it! So you don’t even allow anyone one second of thought that they might have a racist view or racist feeling and not be the antichrist. So for many people it takes actually quite a while for people to discover what it might actually really mean not to be racist, rather than to bullied into not being racist. It might take a trip abroad and it might take contact with people from different races until actually really they think ‘OK, I am going to stop faking that not-racist thing and I actually live it now, I actually believe it fully, I sense it with all my being.’ I think the same thing is true of environmentalism, I think it is unacceptable not be concerned about the environment and because of that strong pressure many people are simply too sort of scared to talk about it.

I asked him if he thought that it leads people to do ‘green’ things, to be seen to be doing green things, to be ‘conspicuously green’. I asked whether before a person has that deeper understanding and realise that it is not just about climate change, it’s not just about turning your taps off and that it is about re-evaluating all of your value systems and all of your decisions, being green just becomes another status symbol.

Well obviously there are horrifying sort of fake versions, just like there are fake versions of everything good. Like people who fake that they are interested in art. That can happen with anything that is good, anything good is open to fakery. So I don’t think it is unique. But I think you are right there is always a heart felt way of doing things that is better. If I was an advertising agency and was thinking ‘how can we sell concern for the environment?’ ‘What would be the best way into this topic?’ You could do a lot of research, perhaps you have done already... into... ‘When’s the moment when somebody feels an issue personally?’ As opposed to feeling it intellectually. I mean intellectually it is simple enough, you tell someone the ice sheet is melting and they go ‘ooh gosh!’ What moment might they... it might be a way of connecting, I mean this is normally this is the way it is done, you connect something that does happen to everyone and you try and show how that thing is connected to a bigger more abstract picture, so you say ‘that playing field that used to be near your house is now being concreted over, it is being concreted over by all sorts of forces and these are the forces blah, blah, blah.’ Then you zoom out from a particular and you hold on to people’s emotional connection.

I agreed that there is strength to that sort of approach of putting it in people’s back yard. I then discussed how it is possible to engage people in conversations about climate change when extreme things have happened, for example the floods in Cheltenham. I went on to pose whether it is more important to talk about things in people’s every day lives, like why did they go to Primark, why did they buy three shirts instead of one, what forces brought them there and what is the impact of that? I then said, this is why I felt that maybe we don’t need to talk about the environmental issues.

Yes it is a more general conversation about thoughtfulness, empathy, kindness and so on. I think there are some people that I’ve met from within the environmental movement, who in a previous age would have been saving people’s souls, I don’t mean that in a bad way... They are more broadly interested in kindness and a certain kind of redemption, salvation and so on, all these kinds of things, which obviously, they sit on religious topics but that is not to say environmentalism is the new religion as though that is immediately a bad thing, or a crazy thing. I think there is a very strong impulse in human beings to, obviously to kill, but also to nurture and it is part of that nurturing instinct which, at some points in history, has led one way and at some points it has led towards Buddhism and at others to other things... It is a way of worrying about human selfishness and greed which has always been a concern for a certain percentage... you know 15% of the population [m3] has always been acutely troubled by our impulses towards greed and thoughtlessness and have tried, in whatever way the age offered them, to channel those energies.

I wondered whether the survival of the fittest thing, could be modified with intelligence, in that we need to work together if we are going to help the species survive.

So it is the co-operative versus the individualistic drives in human nature battling it out[m4]

Next, I brought the conversation onto travel and explained how it is probably the hardest thing for environmentalists to talk about... I discussed the NEF five ways to wellbeing and how most of them can be done and coincidentally done well in environmentally responsible ways. But, travel is a harder one because it can be so valuable to people. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to talk to him about so I talked about escapism and how travel can be so much about escaping physical surroundings, certain people and so on, but it is harder to escape emotions.

There is one view that we never need to change our locations because we can do everything through our minds, so there is a disembodied view of human nature that everything you do, you can do in your mind. Then there is another view which is to say that we are embodied beings and we live through our senses, all of us not just our reason and that we are influenced by such things as the weather, the texture of the carpet and how high the ceiling is. And these are all awkward thoughts, because it signals a loss of control. It’s worse to think that your life might depend on the height of the ceiling, you ‘ooh how awkward, I might have to buy a new ceiling and that’s a major investment, or I might be dependent on the weather and it is only nice 3 months of the year.’ There is an incentive to deny that I think. I juggle with this, but I think that on the whole we remain awkwardly dependent on the external environment for our moods, happiness etc, state of mind and we may sometimes need to travel. I think one of the deepest reasons to travel is in order to cement an inner change, to somehow mark a change and help that change. If you think about how pilgrimages used to work. The whole idea of a pilgrimage was that it was an unpleasant long journey which provides a demonstration or commitment to some idea. And in a way the more unpleasant and long it is the better, because that will lend solidity to the idea. So you know you will walk to Jerusalem, you don’t need to walk there, you could take a boat, but you say ‘let’s walk it!’ you know. I think that is still bubbling away in us. For example, you might get a couple saying, we need a holiday, to get away from it, to mark a step or to re-charge our batteries. Or someone might say ‘I’m looking forward to the flight because when I’m on the plane I can look at my life in a different way.’ We need distance and perspective, etc, etc. I think that that will never go away. If there is a hopeful thing for environmentalism in relation to air travel for example, it’s that I think that that pilgrimage point plays right into an argument for making air travel more limited and more of a treat as it used to be you know 30 years ago, we might do it, but not that often, you’re not going to fly to Paris kind of thing.

I then discussed the concept or habit of ‘throwaway travel’ using a £30 trip to Berlin as an example and saying that one might not put as much effort into it.

Imagine if it cost £3000 people wouldn’t enjoy it any less, they might enjoy it more. If you were only allowed two trips to New York in your life time, ‘that’s it two trips!’ When are you going to take them and how are you going to think about it? Boy oh boy would people think about it. And if they cost 18 times as much the airline would still make money. The argument would then be that only the rich people would keep flying. Ok, but, it only goes some of the way... other people could fly as well, they would just have to save up for it more. You could tax it, according to income tax, or whatever. Anyway, there would be other ways of structuring it.

I discussed the travel experiences of people like James Cracknell and Ben Fogle and how they can inspire people to do similar things and to put themselves into a situation of forced reflection on their lives and priorities. I also discussed ‘slow travel’, but finished by saying not all flying is bad.

No, no, it just has to be limited to a certain level.

I told him I thought of him as a commentator on ‘life’ and asked whether he has ambitions greater than just commentary and whether his involvement in TSOL is an attempt to change things.

Yes I think that [TSOL] is an attempt to change the world rather than comment on it! I’ve always been troubled by this and the role of a commentator. That is why I have always had a vulgar interest, vulgar as in a desire to popularise and vulgarise ideas, which has got me into trouble with people who don’t like that, people who are professionally invested in things being as they are, but I think that, yes, I’d rather a bit of vulgarity I guess at the end of the day. I do think we live in a world where the idea of the artist, thinker, and philosopher is associated with irrelevance, you sit and you knit while bigger things are happening. Again to come back to religion, I’m always attracted to people like the Jesuits who understood the need to engage with power and to engage with the real world; if they wanted to do stuff they might have to sit down to dinner with someone they didn’t particularly like and butter them up and try and get some money off them, you know, whatever it was and that is actually part of life, it’s not some horrendous thing, it’s part of life. I’ve always understood that and felt open to that and a need for that, so TSOL is a first step in a way.

I asked him if one year on it is going the way he expected it to be.

Yes, I mean it is incredibly fiddly, we are now just doing an audit into how the money will work etc etc. I was speaking to a friend the other day who said ‘what you are doing is really original and on a normal business plan it should be like that [uses hands to express growth] or there is something terribly wrong.’ And they were saying that it might just take a bit more time for it to really catch on. You know, things are building up really well for the Autumn, courses are building up well. There are signs that things are getting incrementally better but it shows me new respect for the practical world, you know just to get anything, to organise a payroll for four people is a major operation. It is very very difficult and it is not surprising that the people who have been able to do the thinking and the commentating, on the whole, have not been the ones who’ve been able to organise the other stuff because it is almost another side of the brain, it requires such patience. But, at least unlike some writer colleagues, I’m at least sympathetic to that discipline even if I do tire in front of the Excel spreadsheet. At least I deeply respect its role in trying to get to things that are valuable.

I suggested that his last book [on work] made him appreciate the mundane things people have to go through every day.

Yes, but also that the mundane can be in service of the not mundane and that if you can get the two aligned then you’ve got something to build from.

I asked him whether he ever considers the impact that his work and other things like it might have on people in terms of leading them into an existential crisis.

I suppose because I live it myself, these are journeys that I go through and they involve disruption but also growth, I don’t know, it never occurs to me. My feeling is that people pick up things and read things and get disturbed by things when they are ready to be. It may not always be a comfortable experience, but basically they are ready for it and they want to do it. No one is forcing them, you just shut the book if you don’t like it, or you don’t even pick it up. So by the time someone’s picked up a book or engaged with a film or something it is because they were ready to do so. So even if there is disturbance it is something they are inviting in.

I suggested that a lot of people are not willing to listen to it.

The majority

‘I get this all the time, I talk to my friends about these kind of things and they are like ‘oh shut up, can we not just talk about football?!’ and I reply ‘[sigh] well I guess we can!

And it is very frustrating because people are ready at different points.

‘You kind of feel like shaking them’

It is one of the great tragedies of friendship that, you know.... Of course these people might in twenty years time go: ‘oh my god I’m so concerned, I’d like to have a conversation with you.’ But, by this time you’re living in a different country, they’re doing something else and that moment’s not aligned. It is very hard to get people in a room who feel the same way, who want to, at that moment, talk about the same thing. I suppose that is why people read books, to make sure that they can find somebody, at that time, be it a writer who died a hundred years ago, who feels the same way.

How about the internet?

Well the internet can connect you, at that moment I guess.

I told him what I was up to with Global Footsteps, EcoActive, doing these interviews and so on...

Well, I feel for you. We’ve all got a limited lifespan and the whole problem is, if one cares about these things, what is one to do? How is one to attack the problem? Do you go into here, or do you go into there, this is something I ask myself every day, every day! Am I attacking the right area you know? I am perennially troubled by this I don’t know?

I told him I thought he was doing some good!

Yes, some good, but you just think... I always think the powerful forces in this world can feel so powerful. For example at the moment I am writing this book about Heathrow, I don’t know if you read about it, but anyway.... it’s a nice idea for me and it has enabled me to get all sorts of ideas across, so I have slightly gone to bed with the devil a little bit, but it is interesting. But I’m aware that to get certain ideas across you can get on the Today programme like that [clicks fingers] and to get other ideas across that actually feel totally important and valuable they would say ‘oh goodbye, that’s not for us.’ It is censorship basically and there is censorship in our society and you cannot get certain messages across.

Any examples?

Well some of the more: how are we living? So I was on the Today programme the other day talking about this Heathrow baggage system and it is totally computerised and automated and everyone is terribly excited about it and I said to the presenter: ‘you do wonder why it is automated, we have coming up to 3 million people unemployed, why have we automated it? What is so good about automating it? Why do we always want to do this, to put machines everywhere, chuck people out of work then pay them unemployment benefit, so that they can sit at home?’ We’ve got too little work on for people and yet we are obsessed by automation. Anyway, it is a big point about the role of machines and the role of humans, of course it has got completely cut for reasons that it was not quite ‘on the message’. We don’t live in a Stalinist dictatorship, it is a self censorship, people kind of know what is acceptable and what is not and you can’t really question the economic system. There is a moment at which it gets... you know, people will kind of say ‘oh that’s a bit too strident’ or something, they don’t see themselves as censors, but that is exactly what they are. People sometimes say things like ‘I wonder what it would be like live under communism, everyone would be whispering and so on’. And I think ‘you don’t have to imagine so hard you know, look at your own society and look at the way people naturally censor themselves!’ In work, when they are talking to the media etc, people naturally do it and they don’t even notice it and that is exactly how it would have been in communist society. People wouldn’t have gone ‘ooh I can’t say this’ they would have done it exactly how we do it. But we play up this enormous difference, ‘oh it was so un-free then!’

Ah well!

Tricky stuff!

Thanks very much!

---

[m1]Interesting choice of word

[m2]Maybe this is the stage we are at collectively? This topic is currently sitting with people... they are thinking about it and maybe they will soon ‘get it’.

[m3]This is a big point, we are never going to make everyone concerened, maybe the 15% need to stop trying to make others concerned and ‘like them’ they need to change the behaviour of others, in other ways?

[m4]Is this all it is, is it like he says, the environment, just a vehicle for those who rally against individualism to sit in?

Which Amazon do we most value?

The profits of Amazon.com have fallen this year, but this is only because they are making huge investments in their infrastructure, so as a business they can continue to grow and grow. Although their profits have fallen, they are still pretty huge; they made £116m last year.

"Low prices, expanding selection, fast delivery and innovation are driving the fastest growth we've seen in over a decade," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon's chief executive.

So, while one Amazon grows and expands, that other Amazon continues to catastrophically shrink and disintegrate. You may have received a nudge to sign an Avaaz petition today. The petition is calling on the Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to veto changes to forest protection laws; have you signed it?

At the time of writing, 976,000 people have signed the petition to save the Amazon rainforests, while Amazon.com makes over 2 million sales every day.

What does this parable say about what we have come to value most in the world? Is it stuff, or the stuff of life?

£30bn for the UK's natural spaces

Assume somebody wanted to buy all of the UK's natural space and cover it in tarmac and concrete, what would they need to pay? In their UK National Ecosystem Assessment (UK NEA), DEFRA today revealed what they have calculated to be the value of the UK's ecosystem's. Far from being a financial burden the UK NEA proves that the annual benefit to the economy of our green and blue spaces is somewhere around the £30bn mark. So, does this mean that if I wanted to buy all of this natural space I would need to compensate the Government to the tune of £30bn? Well, no, not quite. If looked at in purely financial and economic terms, I would need to ensure that I contribute at least £30bn a year to the economy as a result of changing the use of this land and water. If I couldn't guarantee that, I would assumedly need to pay 100 x £30bn plus interest at the rate of inflation to cover 100 years worth of loss, or maybe it should be 200 years, or 300? I'd also need to buy the land and a competitive market rate, that is likely to be loads more than £30bn. However, by throwing up a load of luxury apartments on say Hyde Park and Regent's Park, I could probably charge rents totaling more than enough in London alone. Or how about I buy Hyde Park, keep it as it is, but charge an entry fee to the public? Luckily I don't think DEFRA are looking at it this way, I'm confident that they recognise that some things truly are priceless. Then again, we have to pay an entry fee to get onto some National Trust land.

Possible streams of effort to carry Common Cause forward within the education sector

Please feedback by commenting below or by emailing

Morgan Phillips: mail@becominggreen.co.uk

It is my strong personal belief that the sustainability sector¹ is too small and too powerless to create a mainstream shift towards sustainable lifestyles on its own. Such a shift would require a dramatic modification of the values of the entire population and the sustainability movement is only a very tiny shaper of those values. The forces that drive and embed self-interest and therefore consumerism in our society are numerous, complexly interrelated and self reinforcing. This is not to say they can't be challenged, they are and can be; I'll discuss how a little later.

Following on from discussions on March 11^th, 19^th, 20^th and 21^st that I’ve been having in various ‘Common Cause’ meetings I want to suggest two streams of effort that those interested might want to join together to pursue. They are related and mutually reinforcing but need not be pursued in any particular order, I am therefore naming them the RED and BLUE streams.

RED stream - Getting our own house in order

As a sector¹, and as Common Cause points out, what we absolutely must not do is be complicit in reinforcing damaging self-enhancing values. Heaven knows they are reinforced enough elsewhere! So, no longer, for example, should we encourage environmental behaviours by preying on cost and time saving motivators, however tempting such short-cuts can be. There is a very real need for us to get our own houses in order. No matter how difficult and challenging it might be, this must be the path we set out on. We must do this for several reasons, one not least of which being that if we are playing on self-interest to further our agendas, we are in effect - as respected ‘universalists’ - further legitimizing hyper-individualism².

The first task in getting our houses in order is to communicate to the sector as a whole the necessity of actually doing this. Waste Watch’s collaborative Sustainable Lifestyles framework and its initial discussion paper 'Working from values'³ provides a very useful starting point for us. The 'next steps' of that project will explore the issues in more depth and contribute further advice, through research and best practice case studies, to help the sector as a whole to modify its approach. Tim has called for others to come forward to help him develop these next steps; it is up to us to respond to that call.

However, dissemination, I feel, must not be restricted to PDF files and online forums. Face-to-face contact in the form of one-to-one conversations, workshops, action research and ‘work experience’⁴ need to happen as budgets allow. Several networks⁵ exist to make dissemination possible, we should use as many as possible to ensure we reach all corners of the sector.

The shift in practice called for will not happen overnight, there are many obstacles⁶ to overcome. As advocates and consultants⁷ we can catalyse a change in practice - the shift is already in motion, we need to help it gather speed until it snowballs.

Getting our own house in order is crucial not only to improving the efficacy and long term impacts of our own work, but will also allow us to carry out the BLUE stream more effectively.

BLUE stream – Engaging the wider education sector

Formal education in the UK is beset with many difficulties⁸; many argue that it is not fit for purpose. Schools are filled with disengaged students, frustrated teachers and worried parents. The formal education system is ripe for transformation and we need to get along side those calling for change, find common ground and combine with them to become a powerful and irresistible voice.

I may be a bit naive here, but I believe that if you ask teachers and parents what they want their children to grow up to be, they don’t say: image and celebrity obsessed, infantalised, hyper-hedonistic, dependent, conformist, selfish capitalist consumers. They are probably more likely to want them to be: creative, kind, independent, community spirited, mature, intelligent, caring and selfless young citizens. If they do want them to be the latter they have an enormous role to play in nurturing them and making it possible⁹.

As we know children and adults are surrounded by self-enhancing values. Adam Curtis called the 20^th Century the Century of the Self ¹⁰; the 21^st Century shows no sign of being any different. We are taught to look out for number one, to buy large houses and fast cars, expensive holidays and designer clothes. We have status anxiety, debt and boring jobs. Consumerism, for many, is an escape, a temporary relief and a way of life. Self-enhancing values are reinforced constantly, by celebrities, public figures, script writers, musicians, academics, teachers, parents, brothers, sisters and friends. Often it is done inadvertently, it is so embedded in our culture that our ‘natural’ behaviour unwittingly reinforces self-enhancing values.

But, every time we hold a door open for someone, lend an ear to a friend in need, give our family members a lift to the shops or organise a birthday party for someone close to us we reinforce self-transcendent values, all is not lost! Our learning institutions have a very important role to play in helping children and young people to decipher the world around them. Teachers can help children to celebrate the joy of giving and caring for others. Teachers can help children to understand their emotions and basic material and non-material needs. They can help them to think critically about the things that influence their values. They can marvel at the wonders of nature, science and art with them. They can nurture their creativity and bring stories of self-transcendence, rather than self-enhancement to life. They can do all this through books, films, poetry, photography, field trips, music, art, sport and history. The point is they can do it within their chosen subject, it really is not that hard and it is probably what the majority of them would actually like to do¹¹.

The conversations I have been having with those with several years more experience of working in and around the formal education sector have led me to the following premise: Lasting change in education is more likely to happen from the bottom up. Education ministers come and go; schools and teachers stick around a lot longer (and believe or not do have some autonomy, creativity and pride in their work). Although the thinning out of the curriculum will present challenges¹², it also presents opportunities. Teachers beyond the core subjects of English, Maths and Science will be freed up to express their self-direction and their creativity. They will have more freedom to decide what they teach and the resources they use. We need help them curate these and encourage them to facilitate and celebrate creativity in children. In doing so, we can hope they produce young people who are creative and caring, rather than creative and selfish! ¹³

If change does happen from the bottom up, we need to work out ways to engage teachers, parents and children (and perhaps civil servants). Can we go into schools and ask some fundamental questions? Why are you a teacher? Is the current education system fit for purpose? How can you change it? Are children leaving school with the skills, aptitudes and values that will help them flourish as adults in the 21^st Century? What do we want our children to grow up to be?

The BLUE stream will require us to get alongside other groups who are also interested in asking these sorts of questions. Those in the arts and creative sector, those interested in children’s wellbeing, those interested in bringing New Economics into schools, those interested in introducing philosophy to children, those interested in reclaiming Sport as an environmentally benign and community building pastime. We need to identify these groups and link with them. There are workshops, weekend retreats for teachers and parents, discussion papers, books, documentaries and so on to be made. What will these look like? How can we modify existing approaches and create new ones?

****

I hope this is useful and helps focus efforts. I am keen to hear your feedback, tell me if I am being unrealistic or idealistic! The RED stream may well be the easiest one to navigate, but the BLUE stream is where the real opportunity for change seems to lie, I recommend doing both.

If you can think of a GREEN or indeed YELLOW stream to add to this, please offer it up! I look forward to hearing from you.

Notes

1. The sector I’m referring to here includes all those working in education for sustainable development, development education and environmental education. Most specifically those who engage with schools in the UK.

2. ‘Hyper-Individualism’ is a phrase I am borrowing here from Bill McKibben’s (2007) book ‘Deep Economy’.

3. ‘Working from values’ available from: http://wastewatch.ning.com/group/workingfromvalues I’m sure you can also contact Tim Burns directly tim.burns@wastewatch.org.uk to request a copy.

4. There is no better way to learn about a new approach than to witness it firsthand. I hope organisations pioneering this approach will open their doors to fellow practioners.

5. Networks: Sustainable Schools Alliance, SHED, PRISM, Compass Network, Common Cause, LEEF, HEEN, Project Dirt, Sustainable Lifestyles, IES, The Green Party, NEF etc, etc. [Please add to this list].

6. Obstacles to change within sector: Funding hoops to jump through, Culturally embedded practice, Audience expectations, Time, Resources, Ignorance of funders/educators(!), Heavy emphasis on actions, desperation and impatience.... (I researched this during my PhD studies)

7. As momentum for a shift begins to occur, there is likely to be a role for advocates and consultants who can help organisations and individuals to modify their work. Advocates and consultants will need to be trained and resourced to do this.

8. Problems with formal education sector. For a brief summary just watch Sir Ken Robinson’s RSA Animate: http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2010/10/14/rsa-animate-changing-education-paradigms/ Please feedback to me with other good critiques.

9. I argue this more fully, but from a Higher Education perspective here: http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/6065/Emotional-Wellbeing.pdf

10. Adam Curtis’ BBC Century of the Self documentary series details the rise of Public Relations and is well worth watching, you should be able to find it here and you can often get DVDs of it on EBay.

11. My personal website: www.becominggreen.co.uk is a collection of resources and ideas to be used by teachers of all subjects who wish to explore values, wellbeing and sustainability; it hopefully demonstrates how wide education for sustainability actually is / could be.

12. The core concern I heard raised at the recent launch of the Sustainable Schools Alliance is that schools will become preoccupied in achieving success in the small range of core subjects, therefore lessening the emphasis they put on more peripheral subjects, especially sustainability.

13. I have just written a piece titled: Creative and Caring, or Creative and Selfish: http://becominggreenblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/creative-and-caring-or-creative-and.html

Creative and Caring, or Creative and Selfish? A challenge for Sir Ken

I'm going to do something that is perhaps slighty unwise, I'm going to offer up a criticism of Sir Ken Robinson. 'Really?' I hear him chuckle. 'Well, frankly, Sir Ken, yes I am'. Its not just a criticism though, it is a challenge.

But, I'm starting with a disclaimer. A problem in any criticism we might offer up against academic superstars is that it can be misinterpreted as a dismissal of everything that they say and believe. So I'm starting by saying that I agree with Sir Ken Robinson in very many ways. Most especially, his critique of current formal education and how it homogenizes young people on factory like production lines, is spot on and vital to arguments for educational transformation. Like millions/billions of others I had my creativity passively contained during my years of formal academia, I know what he means. I wonder what I would have become if I hadn't been so consumed with the fear of failing the next test, essay or exam.

So, I agree with Sir Ken, it is of course very important for one to be allowed to flourish, to find one's passion and lead a fulfilling life. To state that this is good for people's wellbeing, is to state the bleeding obvious! But I'm glad Sir Ken is out there doing it because a lot of powerful people in education seem to disagree. Like Sir Ken I would argue for an agricultural model of education that nurtures individual students helping them to flourish and grow. And against industrial models that breeds conformity, standardization and control.

However, individual (individualist?) pursuit of a passion - the finding of our element - is not always necessarily going to be a good thing for wider society and the environment. In the same way that a 'cradle to cradle' designed oil pipe is not necessarily a good thing for the environment. In encouraging people to find their element, do we not need to ensure we are aligning this 'self direction' with a healthy wedge of 'self transcendence'? Tim Kasser posited this at a recent WWF Common Cause weekend I attended and it has hugely significant implications for education. Especially if you believe, as I do, that all education should ultimately be education for sustainability.



Now I don't believe that Sir Ken is indifferent to sustainability, he quipped in the second of his very famous TED talks: 'there is a major climate crisis, obviously, and if people don't believe it they should get out more!' But, in the many examples of people finding their 'element' he uses on stage and in his book, very few (eg. the firefighter he cites at 9m30 here) are working on what Tom Crompton, in Common Cause, calls 'Bigger than Self' issues. He does not choose examples of people who are great humanitarians, environmentalists or simple loyal companions. People who forgo personal gain, and sometimes even safety and comfort, to help others and address issues that transcend them. Where are the generous, kind, selfless, mature people with strong universalist and benevolence values? People like Greg Mortenson and Mohammed Yunus. There are many examples of people out there who are self-directed but also deeply care about bigger than self issues, they need to be championed!

Instead, the majority of examples Sir Ken presents (and the ones that stick in the mind) are fantastically successful and financially wealthy individuals. People like Paul McCartney, Bill Gates, Matt Groening etc etc; the Business and Cultural Elite. These people have risen above the shackles of industrialist education systems to fully exploit their talent and creativity in the field they love, I don't have any major problems with these people they make me laugh, sing and write lengthy blog posts. But, I do have problems with other historical and fantastically successful people, who, in their element, have achieved huge prominence, like military dictators, CEOs of arms manufacturing business, heads of petrochemical firms, bosses of pharmaceutical companies and George Bush junior. Indeed, I'm sure Dr Robert Oppenheimer was in his element when he was developing the atomic bomb. It is not always necessarily a good thing to encourage self-direction in people, you don't know what they might end up creating! However, this is not the main point I want to make and fear of what we might be unleashing should definitely not inhibit us from developing and celebrating creativity, critical thinking and self-direction.

My major concern is this: Sir Ken cites role models who are fantastically wealthy and/or successful. I understand why he does it, it is because audiences can relate to them, look up to them, respect them and even daydream of being like them. Not all of them are hugely famous and therefore instantly recognizable outside of their specific field though. For example, he talks about a female world champion pool player, it does not matter whether we know her name or not, we understand what a 'world champion' is and can appreciate the financial success, power, status and glory that comes with being one. In the same way we can imagine what a Nobel prize winner is and what the lives of FTSE 100 CEO's look like. What his examples do is play with our perceptions of what a fulfilling and meaningful life looks like. This is my criticism, by citing these examples he is reinforcing our self enhancing values. These people have found their element, but they are also often fantastically wealthy, popular, hugely respected, attractive and quite possibly world famous. They have designer clothes, big houses, fast cars, expensive holidays, thousands of air-miles and their own private swimming pools (probably). Sir Ken holds them up as exemplars of a creative life well lived and something to aspire to. In doing this he also, inadvertently, holds up all the luxurious trappings that surround such luminaries as something unquestionably OK. He doesn't question whether material wealth brings happiness or whether the selfish pursuit of one's goals is necessarily good for one's personal relationships and ecological footprint. The emphasis is on the 'self'; find 'your' element and 'you' will be happy.

The high value individuals have come to place on power, status, achievement, hedonism and financial success in modern western culture promotes hyper-individualism and selfish consumer capitalism. But, people who place a high priority on the self are far less likely to care about bigger than self issues like climate change, biodiversity loss and global inequality. That's not just a theory, the evidence can be found in the Common Cause report if you want to look it up. When self-enhancing values are strong, so too is materialism. So not only do people care less about bigger than self issues when they are overly concerned with enhancing the self, they are also the people who are most likely to over consume the world's resources as they buy status symbol after status symbol in their attempts to assert their identity.

The consequences of reinforcing self-enhancing values are not just global and environmental, they are very personal too. Tim Kasser discusses the High Price of Materialism for our emotional wellbeing as do Hamilton and Dennis, De Graff et al., and Oliver James who have all released books under the heading 'Affluenza'. The imperative for individuals and society is clear, lessen the emphasis placed on self-enhancing values, don't expect them to disappear completely, just lower their influence a little in favour of self-transcendence.

Common Cause argues strongly that when Civil Society Organisations inadvertently reinforce self-enhancing values they have a counter-productive impact on the bigger than self issues they are trying to solve. So here is the challenge for Sir Ken and for a transformed education system:

Please do promote self-direction, creativity and critical thinking in education but frame it within the values of self-transcendence and a critique of the cultural reinforcement of self- enhancing values. If we want children to grow up to be creative, kind, generous, community spirited, mature young adults; rather than creative, infantalised, image and celebrity obsessed, selfish consumer capitalists we need to be very careful about how we transform education and which values we promote in doing it.

Follow Sir Ken Robinson on Twitter

Check out his website: http://sirkenrobinson.com/skr/

And his latest book: Out of Our Minds

Pseudo satisfiers and Sustainability Non-sense

Reflections on: ‘Sustainability Sense: Creating value in an economic downturn’ PP4SD conference, 23^rd February 2010, Thistle Hotel, Victoria, London.

Responding to our values: Pseudo satisfiers and Sustainability Non-sense

Morgan Phillips

When talking about values, the things we as social actors place a value on, love, status, trust, fast cars, fun, houses, education, compassion and so on, we must also talk about emotions and the power of them. When does a human being have emotional wellbeing, when are they emotionally stable or high? I would argue that it is when they are able to live their lives in ways that allow them to have, protect or feel the benefit of the things they value. So if someone wants status symbols, enjoys regular big nights out, likes smoking cigarettes, cherishes Costa coffee mornings, loves clothes from Primark and a dozen other 'unsustainable' things and is able to get/experience them, they will have emotional wellbeing. It may not be continuous but they are able, thanks to credit cards, stable employment, overdrafts and so on, to sustain frequent enough waves of hedonistic highs to make the lows or boredom in between bearable. They're on the hedonic treadmill¹.

The argument from many environmentalists, myself included², is that we need to understand better what brings us stable sustained emotional wellbeing, which has occasional highs, but does not collapse into painful lows of confusion, regret, shame and anger. The New Economics Foundation³ ask in their edited book 'Do Good Lives Have To Cost The Earth?' Most of the chapters in that book argue 'no' and this is crucially important to sustainability.

Often the reasons we behave in unsustainable ways are more to do with our misunderstandings about how to protect, have or enjoy the things we value and there seems to be a hierarchy of values. We value one thing because we value another and we value that because we value something else; something more profound. It is not a simple linear thing however. We may value something like a bicycle for many different reasons, health benefits, time saving, exhilaration, etc, which all align, eventually, with our deeper values. We might however, place high value on an expensive gift from our partner as we see it as a measure of how much we are loved (valued) by them. The expensive gift may or may not have a large environmental or social justice impact, but its impact is likely to be more than something less tangible and arguably more loving: a hug, a kiss, a sacrifice, a poem etc. Loving someone means spending time with them, taking a selfless act to make their day a bit nicer, being loyal and understanding when and when not to bring up sensitive issues. Buying expensive gifts to compensate for not being able to do these things because of other commitments (work, leisure, etc) is not, in my opinion, the wisest way to show someone that you value them.

So, if emotional wellbeing is indeed linked to how congruent our values are with our lives, we are likely to get upset/ angry/ dissatisfied/ jealous when they are not. For example we might experience status anxiety⁴ if we feel our neighbours house, car, holiday, sofa, partner even, is more glamorous than our own. Emotions like anger, frustration and jealousy, when stirred up, are powerful drivers of behaviour change. The urge we get to 'kick out' at others or ourselves to try to change the conditions that are disrupting our emotional wellbeing intensifies as we get more angry, upset etc, so the more fierce the emotion, the more likely the change is. On a more positive note, we are also likely to modify our behaviour in ways that we believe will enhance our wellbeing. We shape our lives in ways that are likely to increase our chances of having and protecting the things we value, whatever they may be. We may not always change our behaviour in the right ways, we may fall back on old habits and lead ourselves back into the frustration we’re trying to escape and this is where education can help.

Discussions of values and proxy values are therefore very important. If after a discussion about status symbols an individual begins to get frustrated with the false promises of advertising and then, because of a realisation, or perhaps an admission, that material wealth does not guarantee happiness, they may get sufficiently emotional to strive for change. This change could be personal or at the sub - systemic level of an organisation they are a stakeholder in, or at the systemic level of a consumerism based economy. The vast majority of people, if you ask them, will value core things like love, happiness, friendship, tolerance, equality, health, compassion, openness, liberty, respect, generosity, empathy and kindness, among other things as Paul Murray showed us yesterday. Given this, a discussion of how we seek to observe these in, or have them facilitated by, other social actors is as important, if not more important than a discussion about how we can be kind, tolerant, etc to others and not impinge on their freedom, health etc. When we feel we need to change, we need to learn how to change.

I value nature, I get upset, angry and frustrated when I learn about the innumerable ways in which it is exploited by business, individuals and governments. I feel uncomfortable when I engage with social actors who are not doing their upmost to lessen their unsustainable behaviours. Ideally I support more sustainable competitors to send out market signals and fill out feedback forms like this one (http://www.thistlefeedback.com/) with constructive criticism and offers of help and advice. Beyond that, there is not much else I can do as an individual; it is out of my sphere of control. But these actions are enough for me to maintain my emotional wellbeing.

Paul Maiteny taught us yesterday about the importance of emotion; our emotional drives as educators and the importance of exploring, even challenging the emotions of others. An exploration of our emotional wellbeing and the reasons why we value the things we do is very important. When the things we value appear under threat we get emotional and feel moved to act. It is a crude thing to say but a lot of people still believe (or at least behave as if they do) that material wealth = happiness, they therefore value the ‘wrong’ things environmentally and, if you agree with the Affluenza^5,6,7,8 hypothesis, the ‘wrong’ things emotionally. The consequence is a ‘take, make, waste’ economy with an infantalised⁹ population that is constantly in need of external stimulation and consequent gradual but persistent environmental degradation. As educators, in whatever capacity, we need to help people unpick the material wealth = happiness paradigm at personal, sub-systemic and systemic levels. And, importantly, we need to help them to truly connect with the values that are inherent within us all. We need to help them discover true satisfiers and protectors of the things they value to replace their cravings for the pseudo-satisfiers, which keep them locked on the hedonic treadmill¹.

What does this do at the systemic level, within business? I don’t know. If a business recognises that its future success is tied up in some direct or indirect way with the persistence of the material wealth = happiness paradigm, they may be resistant to ‘training’ that encourages its employees and customers to question it. If it truly wants to be sustainable, it may recognise the long term benefits of a wellbeing based economy and seek to change itself to be at the forefront of making it happen. To do this it will need an employee base that understands and values this approach; workers who feel proud to be an employee, customer and advocate.

People value ‘unsustainable’ things not because they hate the environment, but because they believe that these things will protect or enhance the deeper things they value like love, happiness and respect. It is the value we place on pseudo-satisfiers that needs to be explored, not our underlying, core values. Is it possible to find and access the people we need to explore it with?

1. Easterlin, R.A. (1974) Does economic growth improve the human lot? Some empirical evidence, In: David, R. and Reder, R. (Eds.), Nations and Households in Economic Growth: Essays in Honor of Moses Abramovitz. New York, USA, Academic Press
2. Phillips, M. (2009) Emotional Wellbeing In: Stibbe, A. (Ed), The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy, UK, Green Books
3. Simms, A. & Smith, J. (eds.) Do good lives have to cost the earth? UK, Constable and Robinson Ltd.
4. De Botton, A. (2004) Status Anxiety, UK, Penguin
5. De Graff, J., Wann, D., and Naylor, T.H. (2002) Affluenza. The all consuming epidemic, USA, Berret-Koehler Publishers
6. Hamilton, C. and Denniss, R. (2005) Affluenza. When too much is never enough, Australia, Allen and Unwin
7. James, O. (2007) Affluenza, UK, Vermilion
8. James, O. (2008) The Selfish Capitalist, UK, Vermilion
9. Barber, B.R. (2007) Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, New York, W.W. Norton and Company