Eco Social Desgin (Diseño Eco-Social)
Eco Social Desgin (Diseño Eco-Social)
Andrew Langford
This book is for sale at http://leanpub.com/ESD
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
Introduction
Much of the content in the chapters that follow, has been gathered
from a wide range of informal sources in the movements that might
be called (to use an Arturo Escobar¹ term) transition dialogues
These include, amongst others, the intersecting worlds of perma-
culture design, ecovillage development, transition initiatives, and
bioregional congresses, although this collection is not pretending
to be a complete representation of all these dialogues.
Further, the participatory fields of open conferencing and world
cafés, the clearing fields of compassionate communication and
re-evaluation counseling also play a part. Add to these ways of
thinking the modified ideas of spiral dynamics, of integral theory,
of the value of experiential learning, of story-telling of the auto-
ethnographic variety, pluralism and complexity theory to round out
the boundless package and we have almost defined the scope of the
big picture thinking in these transition dialogues. These dialogues
are seeking to articulate a functional and inspirational worldview
suited to the new conditions of certain climate disruption and the
inevitable ensuing social chaos.
It is a wide-ranging curriculum that assumes, as a kind of prerequi-
site, a practitioner level knowledge of permaculture design. Practic-
ing permaculture is our favored method for reconnecting ourselves
with nature especially as it holds to so-called deep green ethics
- Care of the Earth, Care of People and Limits to Consumption
and Population. These essential ethics go past an anthropocentric
viewpoint in favor of a web-of-life perspective: humans are part of
¹Active processes include the Gaia U ArCEA reading and critiquing method (see Scholar
Skills in this book), being part of a learning and unlearning community that has liberation of
intelligences on the agenda, developing a more informed consciousness around the Patrix and
using tools like Re-evaluation Counseling to accurately and effectively seek out Patrix patterns
and strip them of their power.
Introduction 2
this web of life, not separate from it, and so, if immediate human
interests clash with ecosystem interests, we strive to give the latter
priority. If you don’t have a grounded knowledge of permaculture
design find a permaculture design course and get it now and start
practicing it.
However, the topics are chosen to extend beyond the more common
Care of the Earth focus of the now-classic permaculture design
course (PDC). Our principle contributors (see Acknowledgments
for details) have all taken their permaculture design training out
into the world and designed, consulted, practiced, transitioned and
taught the field extensively. From this experience they have noted
the ‘what’s needed to expand the range of actions’ beyond the land
use focus of the classic PDC and, that’s what you’ll find outlined
in this eBook. There is more to it, of course, and yet this collection
goes far and wide.
We have been using this curriculum for our Gaia U Certificate
in Ecosocial Design (Cert.ESD) for about 8 years now. It shifts
and flexes every time, sometimes through gentle tweaking and
sometimes by more radical excisions and inclusions. Our two
cohorts per year of student associates see to it that we continue
to be relevant and also conscious of unintended Patrix intrusions.
The Patrix is a Gaia U term coined as a shorthand for the patriarchal
matrix of oppressions dominant in many of our cultures). And, as
much of the content is to do with how to do world change, we
continue to do world change work ourselves to stay sharp.
Most recently, due to our partnership with the Transition Network
out of the UK, our content has been thoroughly reviewed by
Tom Henfrey of the Schumacher Institute in Bristol, England. Tom
describes himself as a ‘recovering academic,’ and we are grateful to
have had his skilled academic eye rove over our efforts (we pass).
Tom notes that the content is dense, to the point and generally
without fluff. Thus the content does not divert the reader from
taking intelligent action to change the world by swamping them
with unfeasible amounts of reading and references that, more often
Introduction 3
Time Allocation
for those inevitable and rare 4-hour contingency weeks when the
rest of life presses in. You will need to actively defend your ’study
time’ against other people and projects that demand your time and,
possibly, your own patterns of creating diversion dramas in your
life.
This allocation of time/defense of space issue is, we note, a key
area of un/learning for most world changers, and we address it
continuously throughout the course by asking you to renew your
promises around engagement from time to time.
Un/Learning
Digital Competency
A Summary of Promises
An Ecology of Websites
For us, the authors, it is the easiest form to edit and update. That
allows us the keep the content fresh, to add in thinking from
new and relevant developments and, importantly, to throw out old
materials that no longer work well.
For you, the reader, it has a similar advantage - it is easy to scan
( a form of ‘editing ’). Scanning allows you to pick out the parts
you want to spend more time with and reject the parts you don’t
find interesting (maybe you already know enough about that part
of the topic or, you don’t want to delve into the detail at this time).
You have a lot of power to be selective. Selecting and scanning are
much harder with audio and video.
And, because we work worldwide, many of our student associates
are using mobile phones with data plans to access our content - in
many countries this way of connecting to the internet is expensive
and one 20 minute video might soak up a month’s worth of data.
Text as a graphic
This means that being able to * read for the purposes of gathering
and critiquing information * is an important skill for you to develop.
However, you do not have to be fluent from the beginning as we
provide you with plenty of opportunities to practice.
To this effect we promote an approach we call ArCeA which stands
for Active reading, Critical examination, and imaging Action. You
do need to be willing to engage with this skill-building process.
Some people would prefer to watch video for content and maybe
claim that this is appropriate because they are ‘visual’ learners for
whom text is difficult.
Still others lay claim to being ‘kinesthetic’ learners, who must
approach new learning through embodied action, by doing things
and, for them, text is inadequate, and videos are only a little better.
The first thing to know is that the idea that learners are ‘visual’ or
‘auditory’ or ‘kinesthetic’ (sometimes known as the VAK theory) is
just that, an idea (or, we could say, if we were using more formal
language, a conjecture). It is not an undisputed theory. Indeed there
is plenty of evidence to show that it is not true ***.
Introduction 12
A question for you: are you willing to invest significant effort into
becoming a fluent user of ArCeA for processing illustrated text-
based materials?
Disbelieve!
It is potent and important for you to hold an attitude of healthy
skepticism (disbelief) regarding any of the materials, content, opin-
ions, thinking styles and resources we put into our eLearning
courses at Gaia U.
Whilst we do our very best to be carefully critical, thoughtfully
analytical, true to our own experience, aware of how things go
for other people and so on, we may accidentally (and, who knows,
deliberately: -))) deliver misinformation and propaganda.
Crosscheck!
Introduction 13
Therefore check it out! If our way of thinking does not tally with
yours or with the way of thinking of people you trust then let’s
discuss it. We can decide to differ and hold to a creative tension if
that helps!
But relax!
Oh, and then there is the question of ’does it really matter’. By
which we mean that there are differences that do matter and
some that don’t. Together we’ll do our best not to spend a good
deal of energy on debating differences that don’t make much of a
difference.
The idea
Permaculture design proposes that any system that allows animals
and/or people to collect their food from the source themselves is a
system that is likely to be energetically efficient.
Examples are grass-fed beef rather than stall/grain fed and ’Pick-
your-Own’ fruit farms.
In these approaches, the animals and people are ”self-foraging”.
That is, they harvest their own food in situ.
We’d like you to practice self-foraging as an un/learner.
How to practice
For example, if ever we use ideas, concepts and words you don’t
understand please do the following: -
self-forage for explanations and word-meanings,
take a think and listen with another person to tease out what you
do and don’t understand ready to ask focused questions of your
advisors during webinars and
guess - it is quite all right to allow meanings to emerge over time,
so it is not necessary to understand everything, all of the time.
Introduction 14
• Acknowledgements
Course Navigation
This Course, along with all others, is organized into Lessons. Each
Lesson is broken up into Topics usually one page long. The online
version includes activities designed to give you practice using the
constructs whilst giving your colleagues and us the opportunity to
offer you some feedback and riff off your contributions.
The following graphic shows the basic structure of the course,
which is designed around our version of a model from Integral
Theory. We will learn more about this model later, which consists
of four quadrants, but for now you can note that this first Course
focuses on the top two quadrants: UL (upper left, or the individual
interior - what we call ‘inner qualities’) and UR (upper right, or the
individual exterior - what we call ‘Pro[fessional] Skills).
Chapter 1: Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 2
Don’t worry too much about what all that means if this is the first
time you’re coming across this model. For now, have a quick look
at the structure, so you know what to expect:
AQ model
of the activities. This way everybody can see the action without
needing to sign into a website. Slack also enables all participants to
direct message each other for any purpose including finding think
and listen buddies.
It is through the use of Slack, the webinars and the Gaia U website
that we build the learning (and unlearning) community. A great
deal of extra value emerges through these interactions.
Inner Qualities
Growth vs. Fixed mindset. Image: Nigel Holmes, used with permission.
Acquiring Beliefs
People acquire their beliefs about their intelligences through all
manner of conditioning including the feedback they receive from
mentors.
According to Dweck feedback that affirms a person’s “smartness”
as in: “wow, you’re really smart” is not so good as it reinforces the
fixed mindset. Feedback that acknowledges effort and application,
⁴http://mindsetonline.com
Chapter 1: Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 6
The last point made, that fixed mindset beliefs are deliberately
created to limit the capacity of many people to participate fully
in steering their culture, does not appear in Carol Dweck’s book.
Whilst she does show how teachers and parents unwittingly prop-
agate these beliefs in young people she does not then extend the
analysis to propose that parents and teachers are co-opted as agents
of the dominant culture in this respect.
However, our Gaia U understanding, informed by our knowledge
of the Patrix (the patriarchal matrix), is that the school and the
family are primary locations in which young people are actively
⁵http://www.institute4learning.com/resources/articles/multiple-intelligences/
Chapter 1: Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 7
can get some practice thinking about what went well and, if we’d
have been in charge, what we would have done differently) AND
they have their downsides, too.
One downside is that cases studies are contextual. That means,
for example, they are focused on a particular enterprise (or en-
trepreneur) at a particular time of life for those parties, in a
particular period of history affected by the social, political and
cultural issues of both the time and place. Gender, age, race, class
and other aspects of the identities of our subjects are also aspects
of the context that will have affected the story.
Therefore, you, the reader need to be alert to the possibility that
the case study might be wildly irrelevant to your current situation
and/or that contextual issues that were strong at the time of the
case study are no longer an issue today.
Likewise, you will need to parse the stories to test for idiosyncrasies
that show up as a result of the identities of any human subjects
described, again in order to notice if the case has any lessons for a
person with your identities.
Also, most enterprise case studies choose either well-known and
large companies (Apple, Amazon, AirBnB, Procter and Gamble…)
or the sparkly, new, rapid growth companies that appear in maga-
zines like Fast Company.
A common goal amongst these enterprises is to grow as much
power and influence in the market as possible along with high
returns to the stakeholders. Some of these enterprises are built
specifically for resale. Then the original owners can cash-out the
hard work they applied bringing a start-up to viability. They
convert so-called sweat-equity into money.
This case study is different as it deals with a business that grew from
nothing (boot-strapped), was ecologically and socially regenerative
in design and execution, developed for the long-haul and was not
designed to be sold. Our assumption is that this is much more likely
Chapter 1: Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 9
The Mermaid Forge was a good concept, but I had no idea that I
hadn’t a clue as to how to go about it. I vaguely imagined that my
charismatic partner might know how to run a business. (He said he
did, but I did not know what questions to ask to make sure and was
not even aware that some due diligence might have been required).
We hit cash-flow problems early on (meaning that we spent all the
capital I borrowed⁷ before we started to generate any income. We
upset the local zoning folk because we failed to apply for appropri-
ate permissions, annoyed the neighbors by making a lot of noise
at night, and in almost all other ways failed to act with any sense
of prudence. Effective mentoring from experienced entrepreneurs
was not available and, even if it had been, it is quite possible our
arrogance might have meant we would not have benefited from it.
The business crashed and burned, leaving in its wake pissed local
creditors, angry artisans, and an embarrassed family. Shortly after
the crash, I married Verity Swan, my high school sweetheart, and
we left town to seek a restart of some sort.
This disaster (which, of course, I can now reframe as a transforma-
tive action un/learning experience!) was, in my case, largely due
to not knowing that there was anything to know about being in
business. I came from a family of salaried public servants (school
teachers) who had no experience of any other way of making a
living. They did this with excellence and commitment, but they did
not have to trade in any way. Trading was not part of our family
culture. Indeed, there was even a hint in the way my family thought
that suggested that being in business (especially small business) was
a) risky⁸ and b) somehow less worthy a way to make a living than
having a proper job and career.
Trading skills are critical!
⁷My partner, who later turned out to be ‘dodgy,’ always had some cash due to come to him
anytime now. But, hey, what do you know, it never turned up.
⁸My maternal grandfather was an entrepreneur who went bankrupt in the early 1930s
during the Great Depression—even though the family knew that the world situation played
a big part in this disaster—there was always an underlying (and unfair) suspicion that it was
somehow his fault.
Chapter 1: Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 13
What I discovered was that I had been schooled in the concepts and
tools used in a scale of business that might have twenty-thousand
employees and turnover in the 10’s of millions. Many of these
concepts and tools were dangerously inappropriate for our chosen
path.¹⁰
This is a general truth about business schools, that they are mostly
geared towards providing competent servants to large enterprises
and are not much focused on supporting people who want to
make an independent living for themselves. A second issue is that,
just like any other conventional school, they have no interest in
providing sustained mentoring and support.
In our case, we planned to return home to Totnes to bootstrap
(meaning to start with almost no capital ¹¹) a cooperative, small-
scale shoe-making venture. It was inspired, in part, by a book
by another Schumacher — Fritz, author of Small is Beautiful. His
seminal book was published in 1973. Our other influence was Ivan
Illich, whose significant and congruent book, Tools for Conviviality,
was also published in the same year. Donald, my father-in-law
and an accomplished artisan himself, was also a constant source
of encouragement.
¹⁰By this time Verity and I were parents to 2-year-old Amy, and Joseph was on the way —
family considerations were a big factor in determining our choice to return to Totnes. Verity
clearly understood that the conventional route in which a well-qualified husband would get a
managerial job in a city far from grandparents and other family members was not a supportive
scenario for raising a young family. This insight coincided with my own growing passion for
regenerating rural areas by deconstructing industrial manufacturing and bringing it home to
provide local artisans with livelihoods. These ideas were kindled by, amongst other inspirations,
early exposure to the local Dartington Hall experiments.
¹¹I am explaining any enterprise/business language just in case you are not familiar with it.
Learning the language takes you a long way down the path of awareness regarding what you
know and what you don’t know. One thing leads to another by which I mean that starting a
business without much capital (we had about $700) means that having a product to sell early
is very helpful. The income from these early sales provides some cash for the next round of
development. Reinvesting retained income (or profit) is one formal name for this commonly
used feedback loop. You can see how apt the term bootstrapping is, derived as it is from the
apparently impossible idea of lifting yourself off the ground by pulling on your own bootstraps.
Chapter 1: Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 15
with in order to ‘prove’ our market was there then borrowed from
my brother to raise to the next level (the working capital needed
for hand stitching is very little, so we could get started without
borrowing).
However once we knew we had a good product (improved through
suggestions gleaned from early adopters) it became essential that
we tooled up with various machines in order that we could make
shoes fast enough (and well enough) to sell them at a price that our
customers would pay and at which we could make a living. We also
needed to invest in bigger raw material stocks.
All in all, we needed to quintuple the money invested in the
business, that is, the working capital. My brother’s ‘soft’ loan’ was
very helpful at this stage (soft in this context means ‘pay it back
when you can’ and ‘make me some shoes instead of paying interest’
— loans like this are a delight).
Buen Vivir
Ability 1 – Casinoistic
For this ability, they had to invent a name and yet it is central. It
is an ability to cheerfully assess risk. We might ask questions like,
“what are the chances that I will make/lose money if I choose this
strategy”? We do this in situations in which the odds either cannot
²⁰We propose that, in our Gaia-centric context, it is best to think of an enterprise as
consisting of a mix of ecological, sociological and technical systems. Therefore we need to know
about more than just the technical aspects of trading skills.
²¹Different entrepreneurs have different levels of access to working capital, that essential
cash and credit needed to finance a start-up. This is often determined by social class and
inheritance. Working class and lower-middle-class people are more likely to need to work harder
and leaner in order to accumulate these resources in the first place. A micro-enterprise (less than
four people working in it), especially one that maximizes the leverage of other forms of wealth
besides financial capital is the most appropriate scale of enterprise to initiate when working
capital is hard to get.
Chapter 1: Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 21
Ability 2 – Sensate
Ability 3 – Empirical
This is the most technical aspect of trading skills and one that may
seem alien to many. It involves math (simple), and some of us might
find that off-putting. However it is crucial that we understand how
the ‘Books’ (also known as The Books of Account or, simply, The
Accounts) of a business work and what they can tell us, and it is
even better if we cultivate a sense of thrill and delight (zest is best!)
whenever we look at our own ‘Books’ or the ‘Books’ of another
business.
There are three core reports (or scorecards) to understand.
The Balance Sheet – this shows a snapshot in time of how much
capital is ‘tied up’ in the business including what it owes to who
(liabilities) and what it owns (assets). It is helpful to compare a
series of Balance Sheets (often one for each trading year) to see
how the level of assets and liabilities change over time.
The Income and Expenditure Account (also known as the Profit
and Loss Account) – if income is more than expenditure for the
last three months or for the last year then our business has made
a profit. This will make the value of our Balance Sheet grow. If it’s
the other way around and expenditure is bigger than income then
we have made a loss and this will make the value of our Balance
Sheet shrink (we can probably absorb some short-term losses by
shrinking the Balance Sheet but, at some stage, it will shrink to
nothing in which case we’ll need to stop trading.
The Cash Flow Forecast - tells us when money can be expected to
come into the business (and how much), when money needs to be
paid out (and how much). By charting the flows in and the flows
out (often month by month) and setting these against the balances,
we start with we can see if and when we’ll run out of money.
It is common for small businesses to run into cash-flow issues
Chapter 1: Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 24
The ‘Books’ enable a key function. That is, they hold information
captured during trading (historical data) that we can use to test out
whether decisions we made about the selling prices for our products
(goods or services) were sound. Did we make a profit or not being
one critical question? Do we need to adjust prices being another?
But there is a problem. What if we are a startup with no history?
What if we are working in the field in which we are novices and
for which we have no knowledge about how all the costs³⁰ of
the business stack up? In these situations estimating becomes an
essential skill. Estimating is greatly assisted if we have some rules
of thumb to go by.
³⁰Costs come in categories. For example, in my shoe-making business, the categories are: i)
Materials, ii) Labor, iii) Overheads (a category that can include rent for the workshop, heating
and lighting, administration efforts, marketing and more).
Chapter 1: Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 27
Note these are guidelines only and if you are first out of the gate
with a new product your margin³¹ can be substantially bigger than
this. Likewise, if you are working in gold, your materials portion
might be greater. However, having these guidelines is spectacularly
useful. Now it becomes possible to estimate an approximate selling
price knowing only one figure.³² For example, use the cost of ma-
terials, a cost that can be discovered well in advance of operations
by measurement and desk research.
For services, such as design consultancy, the rule of thumb looks
like this:
³¹Capitalism has a typical product life-cycle. For new, innovative products where there is
not yet any competition, the margin can be big. This is why companies ‘innovate.’ They are
seeking to be in the lead in a market, at least for a while, so that they can charge high prices and
make big margins (patents and other restrictive practices are designed to maximize this period
of time).
³²Ever seen that T-shirt that says “another week gone past and I still haven’t used algebra?”
Well, here it is in real life – if we know materials = $30 we can then estimate the unknowns as
follows: L = labor also = $30, Oh = overheads = $30 and P = profit = $30. Rough but useful!
Chapter 1: Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 28
Activities
Use the concepts in the Inner Qualities section (beliefs and mind
flex) and the Pro skills section (trading skills) as tools for shaping
two small pieces.
The first, a mini Life and Career Review (a look backward to
your life so far), is a response to the question: In what aspects of
³³http://www.samplewords.com/profit-and-loss-statement-template/
Chapter 1: Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 30
Lean Canvas
Use the Lean Canvas from Lean Stack to outline a project, just so
far as you are able. Notice where the process flows easily and where
it seems a struggle (refer back to Activity 1 to make sure you have
a remedy for this struggle listed in your mini LIPD). This process
requires that you open a free account with Lean Stack.
Chapter 1: Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 31
Instructions:
Go to LeanStack.com³⁴
Click on ‘Create Your First Canvas’ button
Sign up for a free account
Click ‘Create New Product’ button
Click ‘Create New Canvas’ button
Fill out canvas as far as you can
Click ‘Export to PDF’ button to the right of the canvas
Attach this PDF to the Comment in the Activities section
Reflection
Many of us know the idea that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’
and now we can also see that ‘it takes a community to develop a
livelihood,’ especially if bootstrapping is involved. Bootstrapping
involves creating a business with only minimal amounts of money
(called ‘working capital), creating early sales, then using the money
from these early sales to provide the funds to keep going. Bootstrap-
ping nearly always calls on multiple forms of capital. Family and
community³⁵ are often the go-to sources of these capitals.
However, these are not necessarily reliable sources. Many of our
‘original’ networks have been broken apart by historic disruptions
like land enclosures, the associated need to ‘emigrate’ for work;
some of us are from families and communities that are so short
of hope and resource themselves that they are unable to help.
Other families and communities do not have the generosity of spirit
required, and others are abusive in some way, and we are better off
distancing ourselves from these.
³⁵I will use family and community interchangeably here. This is to promote the idea that
we can develop relationships of considerable mutuality beyond the boundaries of the biological
family if we choose to. This is in contradiction to the more common idea that ‘blood is thicker
than water’ meaning that ties of mutuality are more likely to exist in family, rather than in
community.
Chapter 2 Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 2 33
Income Solidarity
Andrew joined an income solidarity group operating from England
and Wales in 2004. Each month members declare their income
which is then compared to the common standard. Our spreadsheet
calculates the difference.
This difference is multiplied by the percentage each person is ‘in at.’
Andrew is currently in at 10%. This means any surplus or shortfall
(common standard ± actual earnings) is multiplied by the % he is
in at (10%) and the result of the calculation determines how much
Andrew either draws out from the pool (if he earns less than the
⁴⁶http://neweconomics.org
⁴⁷http://complementarycurrency.org/cc-research-group-shared-timeline-project/
Chapter 2 Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 2 37
The ‘Books’
Most of the names have been changed for privacy although Andrew
and Woody (the architect of the scheme) are identified because that
way they are available for answering questions. Note numbers are
in pounds sterling, the currency of Britain.
Origins
The scheme was originated to support the continued existence of
a new bookshop selling counterculture literature. The bookshop
could not pay enough in wages to keep it going (the income was
less than the expenditure meaning that the business was making a
regular loss) although it was hoped that it could develop enough
turnover (sell enough books) to change that into a small profit
instead. The members undertook to ‘top up’ the wages of the staff
for the time being by contributing what they could afford according
to the formula above.
The bookshop did thrive for a while, but then lost traction when the
digital age came about and so it was closed. However, the income
solidarity scheme proved a success, and so it lives on.
Surprises
Contrary to what we might imagine, it does not require that people
are close friends in order for the scheme to work. Most of us
don’t know each other very well although there are some good
friends with longstanding relationships involved. Woody, however,
does know everybody and his integrity in recruiting people and
administering the system is an important element of the sense
of safety although, as Woody keeps reminding us, a member can
use their percentage-in commitment to manage their own comfort
levels.
Next steps
Minor complications exist when self-employed people mix with
wage earners or pensioners. A self-employed person would report
their monthly drawings although, if these are too large to allow
their enterprise to make a profit then they are encouraged to report
the profit (or loss).
The scheme is small (but not insignificant). It has easily risen to
the challenge of being more supportive of members who want to
take up specific projects. That would be easier still if the scheme
Chapter 2 Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 2 40
Capital Sharing
student loans to a manageable size, and she has since paid these off
in full.
A pre-approved bridging loan from a bank required to cover the
purchase of one property while selling another fell through last
minute and threatened to abort the project. Icefall stepped in to pro-
vide some of the bridging finance and enable the deal to go through.
Both properties were owned by Housing Cooperatives, and the
scheme was designed to transfer long-term capital resources from
a group of Cooperating Elders to a group of Cooperating Young
Adults.
During the property sales, Icefall acquired a two-story brick-built
workshop and office space and rented this to our administrator,
Woody, to enable him to continue working as a jobbing plumber,
electrician and community organizer. The purchase is both an asset
for Icefall and a secure place of trading for an ecosocially active
member.
An associated carpooling group (Rusty Car Share) has taken a loan
from the pool to purchase their first electric vehicle.
These are all modest outcomes. Yet, they are quite remarkable for
a fund that stands at a mere $75k. And the level of enablement
is way beyond the value of the loans and drawings. For example,
what value could we assign to ensuring that Gaia U continues for
another decade? And how about that cooperative house purchase
for the young cooperators?
There is a lot of power to be found through relatively small acts of
cooperation like this.
This is another project designed by Woody, and it has a small, close
membership. Andrew is in as is Liora. Otherwise, there are two
more members.
Here are the withdrawing rules (Icefall is a Limited Liability
Partnership, similar to an LLC in the USA and has a set of rules
filed with UK Companies House):
Chapter 2 Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 2 42
18. Drawings
Slicing Pie
Slicing Pie involves the use of clear rules of how to value certain
inputs of various forms of capital. It looks as if it should easily adjust
in order to value all the Eight Forms we are familiar with, but that
remains to be seen. At convenient intervals (monthly or quarterly)
the theoretical value[^foot28] of the company is calculated along
with the share belonging to the contributors. The percentage of a
share attributed to any one contributor will vary from period to
period, depending on what the person has put in.
To get an overview of how this system works download the spread-
sheet here⁵⁰, look at the video here⁵¹, and see if you can follow the
essentials of the approach. It is a complex system largely due to the
idea that certain inputs are multiplied by factors to compensate for
the risks being taken. For example, a person taking out $15 per hour
in a role that is valued at $25 per hour is in effect, contributing $10
per hour of equity into the business ($25 – $15 = $10). This equity is
‘at risk’ (if the business flops, as many of them do, there will be no
money to pay out the extra, so the worker is at risk of never being
paid this portion).
According to the Slicing Pie logic, the business adds it into the
theoretical equity at twice that face value (that is, at $20 per hour)
to compensate for that risk.
It is a fascinating design, and it answers many of the previously
intractable issues facing start-ups that need to find at least some of
their working capital ‘in kind’ from coworkers. It is also completely
flexible in that we could adjust the factors for risk-taking if we
chose to.
To my mind, this is the kind of innovative system that is worth
studying just enough to follow the general concepts whilst not
sweating over the details (unless we need to bring it into use right
away!).
The next challenge is to see how to use Slicing Pie concepts with a
⁵⁰http://slicingpie.com/the-grunt-fund-calculator/
⁵¹http://slicingpie.com/slicing-pie-for-the-small-business-centr/
Chapter 2 Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 2 45
mutual ethic…??
World Context
extracting and exporting low-value raw materials that are then con-
verted into added value products elsewhere (often by Corporations
owned in Core Countries using cheap labor in Semi-peripheral
Countries). These added value goods may then be sold back at high
prices to the countries that provide the cheap raw materials and the
low-cost labor.
It is, according to this theory, deeply challenging for Semi-peripheral
and Peripheral countries to reformat their economies in order to be-
come more self-determined and self-resilient as the Core frequently
reacts with deadly hostility whenever such attempts are made⁶⁴. So-
called Trade Agreements such as NAFTA⁶⁵ (North American Free
Trade Agreement) and the proposed TTIP⁶⁶ (Transatlantic Trade
and Investment Partnership) are examples of how the Core uses
institutional powers (violence) to suppress dissent and promote
increasing power.
We might just as well be looking at a social class system here
in which the roles and functions available to a person are often
determined (if not in whole, at least in part) by the social class⁶⁷
in which they are born and raised. And, with a little imagination
(and some awareness of the fractal nature of patterns that has them
showing up at many levels) we could also notice that the class
system patterns and the (deeply connected) World Systems patterns
also show up inside countries.
That is, under the logic of the existing World System, rural parts of a
country are ascribed peripheral functions by the larger cities whilst
market towns show up as semi-peripheral elements. This means
⁶⁴https://ellenbrown.com/2016/03/13/exposing-the-libyan-agenda-a-closer-look-at-
hillarys-emails/
⁶⁵https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement
⁶⁶https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership
⁶⁷There are other factors too, like gender, race, immigration status and many more. The
argument here is that the class system is the parent system for constraint and discrimination
whilst gender and race, for example, subtend from the class system. All of these factors need
eliminating (the Gaia U brand of this work is called ‘Seeing off The Patrix’) as we go forward.
Together they constitute a significant barrier to the emergence of intelligent, eco-socially
regenerative (and non-oppressive) cultures.
Chapter 2 Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 2 49
that rural areas and market towns do not have a great deal of power
to determine their future unless they can muster the sustained
energy to contradict and resist their dominant, larger neighbors.
Likewise, Counties, States, Cantons and other local geopolitical
boundaries divide countries up into Core, Semi-peripheral and
Peripheral zones.
every other state than North Dakota), it clearly shows how the
Periphery finances the Core.
The author of the piece is Ellen Brown, an attorney and founder of
the Public Banking Institute.⁷⁶ She is the author of twelve books,
including the best-selling Web of Debt,⁷⁷ and her latest book, The
Public Bank Solution,⁷⁸ which explores successful public banking
models historically and globally. Ellen uses the article to propose a
similar bank for California where she stood as State Accountant in
2014. Add her to your list of people to follow by signing up to her
blog⁷⁹ and keep up with the Public Banks campaign.
After a political reconstruction that lumped Totnes into a ‘District’
with other towns and in the interests of ‘modernization’ of the
Livestock Market along with upgrading the ‘quality’ of the town
as a tourist attraction, the Livestock Market was first moved to a
peripheral industrial zone where it failed within five years (cold,
drafty, isolated and unpopular with the users) and was thus moved
to the next largest town. It failed there, too, and moved to the
County seat where, in 2009, it closed for good.
Whilst the beginning process was controversial, significant num-
bers of the town’s people supported the moves (cleaning up the
town for tourism) due, I think, to an internalized sense of inferi-
ority. That is, they felt hurt by the imagined (and real) projection
from visiting city folk that Totnesians were somehow backward due
to their connection to the land. (There is also the possibility that
some local landowners supported the changes as they then would
benefit from the development opportunities arising from the now
redundant real estate previously occupied by the Livestock Market).
Both the internalized oppressions (of being thought to be hicks, red-
necks and otherwise mentally challenged by an essentially urbanist
society) and the culturally approved avarice of the landowning few
⁷⁶http://www.publicbankinginstitute.org
⁷⁷http://www.webofdebt.com
⁷⁸https://ellenbrown.com/books/the-public-bank-solution/
⁷⁹https://ellenbrown.com
Chapter 2 Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 2 53
other parts of the world, but still remains unique. It helps make
Alaska the most egalitarian among USA states.
pairs a week⁸⁶ the demand could provide livings for 20+ shoemakers
full time (working 48 weeks in a year). A 20+ person workshop is
a delight to work in. The positions are all additional, regenerative
and convivial livelihoods that add significant resilience to the local
area by replacing previously imported goods.
See also this extraordinary project at Open Source Ecology⁸⁷ where,
amongst other experiments, prototype tractors (The LifeTrac, see
below) suited to small-scale workshop production, are designed and
built. Imagine the potential of this project to replace imports.
would be sufficient. But, also note that if there is not enough work
to keep busy making LifeTracs the same workshop could also build
Africars for a while.
This is a crucial point. All of the data used by professional plan-
ners in all of the government offices of the world doing regional
planning assumes conventional, centralized forms of production.
No-one at that level imagines that food production, shoemaking,
vehicle manufacture and any other form of production can be
rescaled to work at a more local level.
Consequently, the locations on the maps for facilities plus the
transport and logistics infrastructure are all planned in such a way
as to more or less force the conventional scales. This we need
to change – the next step is to write the Permaculture Regional
Planning Handbook!
This type of manufacture could divert 50% of the value of building
vehicles into local economies whereas the current situation only
allows local economies the retail margins on the sale on interna-
tionally produce vehicles. A fresh look at this project using modern
lithium batteries and electric powered drive trains is in order.
Activities
Descriptions and Links
Examples of world system-scale changes towards ecosocial regen-
eration are in short supply (although the agreements at COP 21 in
Paris may well prove to be significant). There is usually more joy
to be had by looking for working examples at a more local level.
This activity involves each of us posting brief descriptions and links
to projects that we know of or find are significant beyond their
immediate locales.
The Two Challenges
Chapter 2 Creating Regenerative Livelihoods 2 59
Patterns, distresses…
A liberation perspective
On our privileges to scope out the future:
It appears as if the whole process of visioning, working out the next
steps, developing projects, bringing dreams into reality, choosing a
life’s path…that Gaia U is promoting is only available to people
who have managed to escape the most intense oppressions in our
cultures. That is, large numbers of people in our cultures are unable
to think and act in visionary terms because they are convinced (by
a process known as internalized oppression) that they neither have
the intelligence to do so, nor the permission.
It is thus part of our job to find out how to become good allies to
people submerged by internalized oppression and to support them
to become powerful actors with choices to make. It helps that some
of this (disempowerment) may be (it always is) true for us too.
Even though we might have our heads above the water in this wide
ocean of disempowerment, and can, therefore, see the blue and the
stars in the sky, we are also still in the liberation process ourselves
and might have some way to go before we are completely willing
to take full charge of the future. Whatever helps us continue with
our own liberation can also be what helps others to work on their
liberation too. We simply need to notice and document our own
successful liberation processes and then support other people to
find and sustain theirs.
Chapter 3: Managing Time, Managing Promises 65
Our intention
Some of these are to do with the times we live in, some to do with
the patterns of our cultures and communities and some to do with
our individual approaches.
Contradiction
situation is so urgent, and we are the only ones that can see this;
we can’t rest until we have fixed it all up (ha, ha!!!). What the world
really needs is for us/you to be well-rested, much-loved, fully-
supported, well-fed, well-organized, well-exercised and well-able
to collaborate with other people.
Contradictions, oppressions…
⁹⁶http://www.xmind.net/m/tNJ8/
Chapter 3: Managing Time, Managing Promises 74
There are two core and connected routes for improving our capacity
to Manage Time and Manage Promises.
One is the cognitive route that has to do with learning new tools
and new attitudes.
The other is an affective route (affects = feelings) that involves
unlearning or releasing any dysfunctional patterns that rob us of
our ability to think well and flexibly.
We sometimes summarize these two overlapping routes or condi-
tions as Competence and Attention.
- Competence is to do with the ability to acquire and use knowl-
edge and skills
- Attention is to do with having the emotional calm to be able to
put your mind to the task on hand (to be in the present).
Both are required in order to be effective.
Chapter 3: Managing Time, Managing Promises 75
Attitudes to cultivate - 1
Please click on this link⁹⁷ to go to the original of the map below and
then you can edit the map for your own purposes. The notes on the
map are reproduced on this page.
⁹⁷http://www.xmind.net/m/9Su8/
Chapter 3: Managing Time, Managing Promises 77
This is an approach that might once have been called ‘quick and
dirty’ and which proposes that it can be really effective to create
a fast, informal and more or less complete version of something
and then go back and ‘edit it’ for better quality later (after some
reflection).
This way we avoid getting blocked by perfectionism (e.g., laboring
to get that first sentence exactly right and not being able to proceed
until that’s done). Also, we are much more free to throw out whole
chunks and ideas that didn’t really work as the relative investment
is light enough for this not to be a big sacrifice.
XM*nd mapping helps a great deal with this.
“Perfection is the enemy of the good”
As we are working in the digital world, we can make good use of the
learnings of agile programmers. They like to test a concept design
out by working through a whole approach once or twice in a crude
way. They like to expend as little effort as possible in the detail until
they are more or less certain that the overall approach will work.
So, for example, we might try creating a deliberately rough and
ready Output Packet (OP) at the beginning of the OP cycle using
lorem ipsum text and a single placeholder image just to see how the
whole things works. This way we will understand it enough to be
confident that the technicals will not get in the way when we come
to do the real thing.
Ask yourself at the beginning of every project: where are the rapid
prototype opportunities here?
This is, we find, one of the strategies with the most leverage and,
of course, you get to iron out a bunch of bugs before going public
(very good for your credibility in some circles)
Chapter 3: Managing Time, Managing Promises 78
Attitudes to cultivate - 2
long, restful recovery periods work better than climbing all the
time… try it!
Attitudes to cultivate - 3
This is a potent quote from Liora. It means that you can afford to
leave some projects for later when you have the time and resources
to hand.
Chapter 3: Managing Time, Managing Promises 80
Tools of value-1
and
Tools of value-2
Wheel of Life
1. List all aspects of your life that you would like to pay attention
to.
3. Then make another blob diagram that shows how you would
like the situation to be in the future. So, for example, if you
would like to be gardening all day give that a big blob and, if
you want to shorten your work week drastically, give that a
small blob. Adjust until it feels right.
4. Notice the differences. The first is ‘a realistic appraisal of the
current situation’ the second is your ‘long-term vision and
goals.’
Can you think of some next achievable steps towards the vision?
See if you can add these to your ePortfolio under Content/Plans.
We have already met Now, Sooner and Later. This simple system of
allocating priority is very user-friendly, quick to use and flexible.
Therefore it is a hundred times more useful than classic, engineer-
ing style systems that require accurate knowledge of the duration
of a project or part of a project.
Now you can add Small, Medium and Large to the mix in order to
estimate the scale of the job. This is flexible too — for example, a
project that has work content estimated as less than a day’s work
Chapter 3: Managing Time, Managing Promises 85
= Small. A project that is estimated at least a day but less than two
is a Medium project, and one that extends into a week or more is
Large.
Or, in another example, small might be less than a month, large
more than a year, and everything else is medium.
You get to choose your timescales.
Estimating is a matter of experience of recording the actual time a
project took against the time you estimated originally. Make a note
of why there is a variance (if there is) and ask more experienced
people to help you estimate. All good estimators add safety margins
to their figures. The less experience you have, the bigger the
margins.
Jennifer English multiplies her first estimates by three.
A technique, called Analytical Estimating, proposes that you can
divide any project up into smallish elements (probably hours, not
days) and then estimate each of these. You will surely under and
over-estimate. The idea is that the unders and overs balance out if
you use enough smallish elements.
Developing good estimating skills is valuable for anyone and
essential for people who earn by contracting.
Using a free account on an online time tracking system like Harvest
(https://www.getharvest.com/)¹⁰¹ is also very useful.
Tools of value-3
Tools of value-4
Restimulation
Contradictions
A little note here – during the online orientation the nature of this
flexibility is different. For example, whilst we have the flexibility
to do the readings anytime we like from delivery day onwards we
have promised (by default) to have done them by the next webinar
day and be ready for discussion and questions.
Support…
Liberating structures
Just do it!
Do it now!
Who can you call now, email now, visit now, to set up a think and
listen? If there is no-one on your support list that you can call now,
make re-building that list a priority.
Activate that support network!
Chapter 3: Managing Time, Managing Promises 93
that interest you. Read these, check some references to discern if the
material presented is in a form you can handle. Many textbooks use
language that’s too dense and too specialized for the general reader.
Ask yourself if reading this is time well spent.
Choose to read it or reject it or save it for a less busy time.
Note that being picky is much harder with video and audio ma-
terial. That’s why many folks prefer written material for learning.
You have much more control over what passes before your eyes and
ears.
Reading for information is a harvesting and thinking process. This
little book is intended to help you get more skilled at that.
The proposal is that you, the learner/unlearner become skilled at
harvesting information and critiquing it, whatever the medium
or source by developing a lifelong skill using ArCeA.
Text marking
Text marking means all those ’forbidden’ activities around reading
books such as:
- folding down corners of pages,
- underlining key words and phrases,
- drawing lines down the sides of important paragraphs and
- writing your own notes and observations in the margins.
Well, here’s the latest thinking:
These ’bad behaviors’¹⁰⁶ considerably increase our ability to har-
vest the good thinking the author has put into the material AND
allow us to start the process of making good meaning for ourselves
by relating the material to our own thinking.
And making meaning is essential to building our intelligences.
¹⁰⁶’bad’ having been instilled in many of us on the basis that books were rare and precious
(as they were in the post-WWII austerity years in Europe and for public schools working on
slim budgets).
Chapter 3: Managing Time, Managing Promises 95
From - Living for Change, an autobiography. 1998, Grace Lee Boggs, Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, USA
turning down a corner, and making a note on the dog-ear. Good job,
Ethan!
Chapter 3: Managing Time, Managing Promises 98
and outlines the topic; the last paragraph summarizes the content
of the chapter and all the intervening paragraphs fill in the detail.
Try making sidebars down the margins of the first and last para-
graphs of a chapter, read only those and see if you can glean the
essence of the chapter without needing to read it all.
You can also see if the introduction of a book, the first chapter, and
the concluding final chapter work to give you a good take on the
bulk of the contents.
These first and last strategies can help you move through a lot of
material fast. The idea is to preview material and only choose to
read what you need to.
Text Reconstruction
Now comes the time to actively reconstruct the text, as if you were
explaining what you have just read to another person.
Indeed, verbally explaining what you understand from reading a
section to another person is a great, informal way to reconstruct
the text. Try using a five minutes each way think and listen for this
purpose. This way you get to hear what your partner makes of the
same or another piece).
Additionally, it helps to have made (by actively using your mind/hand-
s/body) a physical record of keywords and phrases and maybe a
diagram or two. XM*ndmaps are a great help here and becoming
familiar with how to do these is a big advantage (see next pages).
(The asterisk in Mnd Map avoids any trademark issues as with the
i, Mnd Map is a trademarked term).
Here’s an example also from Ethan Roland who made the hand-
written diagram below. Once more the book is The Starship and
the Spider. Note that it is quick and effective.
Chapter 3: Managing Time, Managing Promises 100
Resilient Documentation
The operating systems you use (Windows, Mac OS, Linux, So-
lari…), the authoring software (MS Word, Pages ) and the media
(remember 5-1/4 inch floppy disks, anybody?) are bound to change
over time and not every change will be backward compatible. That
Chapter 3: Managing Time, Managing Promises 103
is, the technology of today may not work with the technology of
yesterday, nor will you necessarily have the functioning hardware
and cables necessary to run obsolete storage devices (like floppy
disks) on your new machine.
Many folk are, for example, right now struggling with compatibility
issues between early version Microsoft Office files (.doc, .xls, .ppt
and so on) and the latest version MS.Office files labeled .docx, xlsx,
.pptx and so on.
And that’s just between versions of the same, proprietary brand
of software. Add in media changes and OS (operating systems)
modifications, and you can see that maintaining long-term access
to your work will become an issue.
A second issue is that, over time, you will likely want to reform, re-
use, re-purpose, edit and mash-up your material at will. Your ways
of thinking will change; your insights will develop; and you may
want to broadcast or narrowcast these changes by producing new
editions of your material and publishing them via blogs, Facebook
pages, Wikipedia articles, forums, or papers you can email in the
form of formatted .pdfs, websites and more.
If your materials are only available as, for example, fully formatted
and illustrated Word* (97) documents, it is hard to extract bits and
re-purpose them. It is much better to have them in raw, simple,
update-able formats so that you can draw on them at will and easily
push them to any publishing platform.
Simple formats include text as .txt, .rtf, .odt files and images
(resized for purpose) as .png files (more on images later).
- A special note about MS Word here. MSWord has been around a
long time. It uses a non-standard form of markup language (which
you hardly ever see) to format content. You may get to see it (as
gobbledegook) when you cut and paste Word-generated content
Chapter 3: Managing Time, Managing Promises 104
Back-ups
Self-foraging means that you can follow your nose and sample
those bits that most interest you first, take a snooze at any time
to reflect on the material, follow up leads at will, come back to
anything you are not clear on as many times as you like and
otherwise remember that you are in charge of how to use your
energies and intelligences.
In this section you will find the following pages:
- a summary mind-map made in XMind, that outlines the topic of
resilient documentation
- tips for using the expanded XMnd map that comes next
- the expanded XMnd map which develops each arm of the topic
more thoroughly
It is essential that you download the free version of the software,
XMind¹¹², used to make these maps, onto your own computer. We
will be using it a lot during the Orientation so learning how to use
it now is important.
Having XMind installed enables you to download original XM*ndmaps,
open them in your copy of XMind, edit them, print them, add your
own notes and so on.
That’s great for active learning!
We will touch on anything that is unclear to you in the webinar.
Extended Mindmap
Either view the XM*nd map below or (better option) click this
link¹¹³ to go to original on XMind server and download.
¹¹²http://www.xmind.net/download
¹¹³https://www.xmind.net/m/G7sp/
Chapter 3: Managing Time, Managing Promises 106
You need to schedule the time for study and, if necessary, push
other things in your life to one side for the duration. Getting up
extra early for study time is an option, as is working weekends and
evenings.
You also need to develop a study pattern that fits the workload (8 to
12 hours a week in 90-minute sessions is ideal) AND your lifestyle.
Create spaces
You will also benefit from creating a study situation that inspires
and supports you.
This might include:
- a well-lit reading space,
- a secluded set-up with your computer that is uncluttered and
comfortable,
- a ready supply of drinking water to hand,
- baroque music playing in the background,
- candles flickering,
- plants in view
- an accessible view of nature,
- another willing person who will listen to you as you review the
material out loud (make it reciprocal using think and listens),
- a whiteboard or similar on the wall to dash off quick maps of your
latest thinking
a pace-around space,
- other features…
Chapter 3: Managing Time, Managing Promises 108
The results
It will help you plan if you make a clear list of the steps you need
to complete for each element of the online course.
Each element lasts two weeks and consists of three phases.
Phase 1. Reading (first week)
Reading and making sense of the materials. This essential activity
can start as early as 9:00 am Pacific Time on the first day. Make sure
you have made a start within 12 hours of that time.
First day:
Orientations that start in February or March (02 and 03 Orienta-
tions) start on Tuesdays
Orientations that start in September or October (09 and 10 Orien-
tations) start on Thursdays
Phase 2. Webinar
Chapter 3: Managing Time, Managing Promises 109
Plan for a minimum of eight study hours per week. You may have
to work quite intensely during this time and/or leave out some of
the self-foraging opportunities.
Twelve hours per week is even better and highly recommended.
These extra hours will enhance your ability to apply the thinking
in practice and navigate the Gaia U online ecology.
Of course, you will have contingency weeks when external events
force you to miss your commitments. In these weeks, aim for a
minimum of four study hours. And don’t let these thin weeks
happen more often than one in six.
Chapter 3: Managing Time, Managing Promises 110
If this is going to be tough for you, now is the time to butt out, take
a rain check, retire from the fray.
You can come back for another orientation in six or twelve months’
time. There is no rush.
1. Make a survey
In the activities section at the bottom of the course page, you can
find a link to a very plain scheduling chart. It is in the form of a
“Google Doc” spreadsheet. Using your free Google account, you
can download a copy of the spreadsheet to your own computer.
Edit the spreadsheet at will; make it your own. Print a copy or
maybe several.
Using hand tools (pencils, felt-tips …) and this spreadsheet, block
out your existing commitments. Use different colors for different
categories of time: family time, social time, making a living time,
resting time, meal times, sleeping time, exercise time and so on.
Note: We are also interested in adapting Gaia U to suit you more.
Let us know how we can do that, and we’ll see what’s possible.
2. Make an analysis
Next, fit in your study time. Can you find those 12 premium hours?
Can you achieve an 8-hour average? What about getting on the case
close to 9:00 am, PT, on the day we release the next element?
Is it a struggle to make the space? Will you be out in the remote
back-country too often to connect to the internet enough (no less
than three times a week)?
Does it make sense for you to join us now, or do you need to change
your life patterns first to make the space?
Chapter 3: Managing Time, Managing Promises 111
As a last thing, write and share your reflections about this element
as a comment below.
Chapter 4: Learning and
Unlearning
At this point, we step into a style of work that has a little more
theory attached.
It is common for many of us to be scared of theory, to think it
is a tool for people who are more intelligent and more educated
than us. This is not true! Good theory, theory to change the world,
needs to be understood by the many (the hoy polloi). Indeed, that’s a
Chapter 4: Learning and Unlearning 114
To do this, you will need to call on and hone up your skills around
what is called “abstract conceptualization”.
Abstract conceptualization is the process of making sense of the
world through strong references to our own and other people’s
thinking, theories, models, research, data, and metaphors. We find
these in the literature and/or through conversation with other
¹¹⁵http://infed.org/mobi/kurt-lewin-groups-experiential-learning-and-action-research/
Chapter 4: Learning and Unlearning 115
The ArCEA process need not be a heavy drain on our time. Using
keywords and XMndmaps it is possible to go from start to finish
of reading this five-page chapter (approximately 5500 words) to
¹¹⁶You should make it a rule to check your own theory/models/thinking against that of other
people, preferably people you know have a good reputation for thinking well in the field you
are working in. This is what peer review means. If you find yourself thinking very differently
than others do be prepared to justify why you diverge and what evidence you have for being so
bold (but don’t shy away from being bold!).
Chapter 4: Learning and Unlearning 116
Patrix intrusions
Leverage
knowledge is made. See if you agree at the end of this next few
pages.
For example, consider cultures that are in “forgetting mode” such
as Britain after World War II (or the USA after the Korean War and
the war in Vietnam). A political and social practice of resolutely
looking forward came into being (and still exists) that made it very
difficult for veterans to process their trauma; for researchers to
analyze events leading up to the war that did/do not correspond
to the political positions of the time; and for policymakers to learn
from the errors of their pre-war international policies.
Cultures in denial like this don’t often support knowledge making
unless it glorifies or otherwise validates their primary way of
thinking.
So, for us to work at taking charge of our own knowledge making
and the methods we use is a powerful liberation strategy. This
allows us to imagine that another, ecosocial culture, is possible.
Notes on know-how…
Notes on know-what….
would likely be low tech, low cost and yet super-effective and,
most likely, permacultural. That is, the know-what would be very
different. Incidentally, the book was republished and updated in
2009.
The IDS diplomatically describe their “Farmer First” mode as com-
plementary and not intended to eliminate conventional research,
but the inferences are clear. If small-scale farmers were in charge
of at least some part of the research pie, and, if that research
effort focused on validating and communicating their existing and
developing knowledge, then the future direction of agriculture
would change towards sustainable and regenerative practices.
Meanwhile, the status of farmers (mostly women) themselves
would upgrade to world leaders in an essential, complex field
(farming to mitigate climate change, create food security and com-
munity resilience…). This elevated status would come with better
security around land access, an increased income, and enhanced
self-esteem.
Notes on who-knows….
Notes on what-for…
For the most part, we are operating inside complex (and tending-
to-chaotic) situations.
In these situations cause and effect cannot be readily established, if
at all. In complex situations, we must use our capacities for sensing
in order to notice positive and negative emergent properties. Then
we can choose how and when to intervene, and at this point, we
still cannot predict the outcomes. We will discuss this more in an
element on Design in the chapters ahead.
Therefore, useful knowledge is knowledge that helps us to think
well about and navigate these challenging realms (of complexity
and tending-to-chaos).
Knowledge gained from reductionist laboratory experiments in
which all variables except one are removed from the situation
with the goal of demonstrating clear causality (that this much
adjustment of this isolated variable has this type and magnitude of
effect) is much less likely to be useful. Yet this paradigm (positivist
science) is still the dominant knowledge creation paradigm in use
despite legions of social scientists making very able attempts to
transcend it for their purposes.
The Patrix Conjecture may be helpful in explaining the continued
dominance of this paradigm.
This conjecture would suggest that the positivist science philosophy
is, itself, derived from the thinking and interests of the dominant
Chapter 4: Learning and Unlearning 130
Citations
Works Cited
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in
the Age of Colorblindness. New York, NY: New, 2012. Print.
Diana Leafe Christian. Why I Now Believe Consensus-with-Unanimity
Causes Conflict in Ecovillages & Other Intentional Communities:
and What Seems to Work Better Instead. Earthaven Ecovillage,
Asheville, North Carolina, USA. 2012. Find it online here¹²².
Hess, Charlotte, and Elinor Ostrum, Eds. Understanding Knowl-
edge as a Commons: from theory to practice Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 2007. Print.
Lawson, Tony. “Economics and Critical Realism.” in George Stein-
metz, Ed. The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences: Positivism
and Its Epistemological Others. Durham: Duke UP, 2005. 368. Print.
Rubinstein, Ariel. Economic Fables. Cambridge: Open Book, 2012.
Print.
Ruz, Alberto (Coyote). Fear of Change in Long-Term Intentional
Communities and Ecovillages. Huehuecoyotl Ecovillage, Tepoztlan,
Mexico. 2012 – Click to find it online here¹²³ (Note that this paper
is bundled with the Diana Leafe Christian paper quoted above.)
illnesses. The Miasmatic position was that diseases were the product
of environmental factors such as contaminated water, foul air, and
poor hygienic conditions. Such infection was not passed between
individuals but would affect individuals who resided within the
particular locale that gave rise to such vapors. It was identifiable
by its foul smell.“
Whilst this theory was finally replaced by current germ theory
(which accounts for disease proliferation both by physical contact
and by other means of germ distribution) at least the miasmatic
theory provided early sanitary engineers with a clear motive and
theory to use when designing sewage systems that prevented
foul smells refluxing back into dwellings and otherwise avoided
exposed, un-drained, and contaminated collection of water.
So whilst the theory has moved on (and will move on again), the
actions that it sponsored (in many cases) were positive (although
there were also examples of the theory being used to avoid taking
action to improve the conditions that caused contagion).
Therefore, be alert to the possibility that you might currently be
working from theory that may later prove to be incorrect (or,
unbeknownst to you, has already been declared invalid) and yet
may still yield useful results.
Please skim over the whole next chapter and drill down where you
feel attracted (or repulsed). Look at the chapters in sequence or
at random. They are arranged in a roughly chronological timeline
with the oldest material first. Use any other reading strategy you
choose or invent that works for your schedule and commitments.
Chapter 4: Learning and Unlearning 137
Action learning
A favorite source of inspiration for Gaia U actionists is action
learning, apparently first codified by Reg Revans from England
in the 1960s.
Complex situations
Social collaboration
for a day and taking an hour each for the Four Questions – (i)
what’s going well, (ii) what’s challenging, (iii) what are my long-
term visions and goals, (iv) what are my next achievable steps – is
a great pattern and could readily be done online.
Collaboration (or colleagues working together) is still a relatively
uncommon activity. Some of us live in cultures that have strong
“individualistic” imperatives of competition that are hard to dis-
solve.
Yet, because of the increasing complexity arising in our global con-
text (not the least of which is the pressing need to resolve different
worldviews into action for ecosocial regeneration), dissolve them
we must.
Your challenge
Formula
Experiential Learning
David Kolb is very well known for his 1980’s analysis of the
qualitatively different activities and approaches required of well-
rounded experiential learners.
His descriptions of the four dimensions of experiential learning
allow us to do some powerful reflection on our own skill-flexes
¹³²http://www.williamrtorbert.com/action-inquiry/
Chapter 4: Learning and Unlearning 143
This is a sign of good theory. If you can push and pull it to work in
multiple situations and it is still helpful, you can tell it is resilient
and based on good observation.
It is through the manipulation of models like this that I get to
understand them and appreciate their value…
The Gaia U addition is to do with our understanding of distresses.
Distresses are installed patterns of non-thinking that accumulate
in a person’s psyche. Over time these occupy a large portion
of our minds rendering us less and less capable of being in the
world in an open and flexible way. We become more rigid and
fixed in our thinking as we accumulate more distresses. Significant
distresses arise early in life and can interfere with our confidence
and flexibility in learning and unlearning.
Some of us even grow up to believe we are stupid, that we can’t
understand ‘theory’ and that, therefore, we have no right to think
about creative ways in which our cultures could be different. By
this means we are encouraged to give our power away to ‘experts’
who we are taught ‘know better than us’ even when these ‘experts’
are clearly partisan and hold worldviews that are hostile to our
surthrival.
Hence we embed the Kolb model in a background context that
acknowledges that these distresses exist while also acknowledging
that these distresses, having been installed, can also be de-installed
- eliminating these and restoring our full, flexible intelligences is
one of our Gaia U goals.
Meanwhile Here are some of the hooks I like to pull on and some
short descriptions of the sense I derive from them:
some of our attention available for noticing how things are going
(sensing), ready to call a time-out if pauses and adjustments are
called for.
Questions I ask when doing are:
- Am I able to fully engage? (sometimes my attention is being pulled
elsewhere…)
- Are my senses, including spatial awareness, working well? (This
is a long-term question and, in my case, I have worked to over-
come a severe case of tunnel-vision, common amongst men, that
previously interfered with my capacity to see the “whole” field.)
- Am I making things go better for everybody (including myself) in
some ways?
- How is my stamina, hunger, hydration, strength, and self-care?
I need to avoid exhausting myself these days as the quality of my
thinking/doing deteriorates fast when I am tired.
- How am I feeling and how do others seem to be feeling? It is best
to check-in and find out…
- Is my neck free? (I am an Alexander Technique¹³⁶ fan, and this
is always a critical question Alexander Technique folk ask when
engaged in doing).
What questions come up for you when reflecting on doing?!
Take a moment to note these ready to use in your Life and Career
Review (comes much later).
Sensing
This “hook” has been the most difficult for me to get a grip on.
Abstract conceptualization, what on earth is that!
But I think I understand it enough for it to be useful these days.
It has to do with being able to handle models, theories, data,
make sense of research and find metaphors to make abstract ideas
concrete enough to be useful.
It includes a capacity to know my own worldview and biases and to
be able to identify the worldview and biases of people whose work
I want to explore. I have a strong sense these days that everybody
has a valuable part of the picture that I want to incorporate whilst,
at the same time, they are just as likely as me to show distress in
some of their thinking. I need to be able to spot their distresses AND
acknowledge their valid and valuable insights.
Questions I ask when abstractly conceptualizing are:
- What theories, models, metaphors, research, and data can I find
and draw on to help me widen the conceptual framework for
making sense and meaning of my experiences?
- Is my worldview coherent, flexible and capable of absorbing new
thinking?
- How are my perspectives contaminated by my distress patterns
(The Patrix)?
- What are the likely distress patterns of any sources I am using
(who are these people and whose agendas do they support)? What
Chapter 4: Learning and Unlearning 148
Transformative Learning
Remembering
Reviewing is key
and knowing. The chart shows that happening around the fourth
review.
Demonstration
Here are two maps of the ArCEA process. The first was taken down
during a skim read. The second has been reorganized and expanded,
24 hours later, as if in the second review. Note that your maps could
look quite different.
ArCEA stands for Active reading, Critique, Expand and Act.
Chapter 4: Learning and Unlearning 166
First map
Second map
Third review
Fourth review
Organization
You can see that the review approach advocated here involves a
level of organization around studying that you might not have
Chapter 4: Learning and Unlearning 169
However the meme concept is making sense for many people (it
passes the plausibility test for some of us) and, depending on your
worldview, you’d be happy to use it (although careful about how
far you stretch the gene/meme analogy), or you’d reject its use and
declare it pseudoscience.
Andrew, the author of this piece, is in the “use it carefully” camp
and likes to imagine an order that goes: theme, meme, and seme.
Here, theme is the meta level (e.g., sexism), meme is the middle
level (e.g., women are less intelligent than men – and then there
are a bunch more memes at this level) and seme (from semantic) is
the level of actions and words on the ground. An example of this is:
“Hi Guys!” used to address a mixed gender group – and there are
many more semes. You’ll need to make up your own mind. See this
website¹⁵⁶ for a short, elegant introduction to memetics.
We describe The Patrix and strategies for its elimination more fully
later in this element.
We choose to use “The Patrix” (so far) as it is easy to say and under-
stand, whereas kyriatrix is less of a sound-bite and, as Andrew likes
to emphasize, “The Patrix” reminds men especially that they have a
lot of essential work to do in letting go of their power and privilege
whilst seeking their own liberation from oppression. This parallels
the idea that it is white people who, in the theme of racism, are the
oppressors who have to unlearn the false identity of being white
as much as (and if not more) than people of color need to unlearn
their internalized oppression. See Thandeka’s 2001 book Learning
to be White for more on the problems of white identity.
Project Worldview
The warning:
Since we started to use this site six years ago, the manager/owner
(Stephen P. Cook) has worked hard to redesign it for ease of use.
It is a site handwritten in html and has a very basic aesthetic. It
contains a considerable amount of information including links to
hundreds of back-up documents.
Therefore, you will need to approach it with a designed attitude
that allows you to learn enough of the site and, meanwhile, let go
of (unlearn) any demands that it should be more “user-friendly.”
Go there for frequent short visits to start with until you get the hang
of its structure. The Project Worldview blog posts show how to use
the constructs to analyze current affairs.
Chapter 5: Thinking about Worldviews 179
But, before you go there, try the “suggested activity” later in this
section…
Using the four playing card meta themes, or aspects, and, before
going to the Project Worldview website, think about how you
would characterize yourself in these areas and make some modest
notes to refer to later. See if these correlate to what you turn up
after exploring the site.
Chapter 5: Thinking about Worldviews 181
The Patrix
Pluralistic relativism
One possible reason for this is that the flexible, open attitude of the
author (an openness and flexibility of which we generally approve)
could easily slip over a border into something called “pluralistic
relativism.”
This is a syndrome that, at its most unhelpful, insists that we
cannot make judgments about how appropriate is another person’s
or culture’s value and belief systems, that every set of values and
beliefs is just as valid as any other worldview.
From the point of view of pluralistic relativism, for example, it
is not legitimate to critique USA culture for its rapidly growing
wealth gap between the rich and the poor because it is entirely
appropriate that this should happen given the cultures’ strong belief
in individual opportunity. This is a belief that says that everybody
has the chance to make it big in the society, and if they don’t it is
their fault for being lazy and stupid.
(See this video for income inequality data:http://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM¹⁶²)
Or, in another example, pluralistic relativism makes it illegitimate
to critique cultures that mutilate the genitals of girls and boys
without their consent on the grounds that these practices are
culturally appropriate and, therefore, none of our business.
See this site for people unafraid to speak out against genital muti-
lation in the USA: http://www.intactamerica.org/¹⁶³
Please note that this critique does NOT suggest the Project World-
view authors approve of either of the two “patterns” above (income
inequality and the genital mutilation of babies), rather that along
with many of us, they may be wary of being seen to be “judgmen-
tal” and/or culturally inappropriate.
¹⁶²http://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM
¹⁶³http://www.intactamerica.org
Chapter 5: Thinking about Worldviews 183
Discernment
Knowing that attenuating The Patrix (we can turn it down to start
with) and eliminating it (we can finally turn it off altogether) are
possible, and, that willing people can, with appropriate effort and
method, re-emerge towards their full, oppression-free humanity, is
crucially important.
Why?
¹⁶⁴http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/index-cf.html
¹⁶⁵https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Discrimination
Chapter 5: Thinking about Worldviews 184
Normalized Oppression
can attest to the fact that many of these projects, designed with
every intention to transcend The Patrix and to leave it behind,
are prone to unconsciously re-enacting these deeply dysfunctional
ways of thinking as time goes on.
Unless projects maintain an energetic program of focus and action
on patrix-busting The Patrix returns, often in sly, hard-to-see, and
hard-to-eradicate forms.
Other significant participant/observers note the same syndrome
(see the paper Why I Now Believe Consensus-with-Unanimity Causes
Conflict by Diane Leaf Christian (click to download)).
Thus many of our most progressive ‘demonstrations’ of intention-
ally ecosocial communities fail, in the long-term, to demonstrate
much of deep significance in regard to patrix-free social and
economic themes.
Miners’ Canaries
Conclusion
Warning
A Seven-thread Patrix
Chapter 5: Thinking about Worldviews 188
The graphic above shows some of the most common themes (op-
pressions) in the assembly/system we call The Patrix. There are
several more.
A brief description of each of these is as follows:
Classism: Probably (although not certainly) the senior and most
ancient thread (came into being first, possibly around 15,000 years
Before Present – BP). What it does is divide people in society into
a range of social/economic classes, each of which has involuntary
different access to wealth/poverty and privilege/prohibitions.
These differences in access are generally intergenerational, mean-
ing a person identified with a particular class is likely to have an-
cestors and descendants with a similar class background. Inherited
wealth adds more power to these intergenerational effects.
It is held in place partially by the myth that people with wealth
deserve their hoards because of their greater effort, intelligence,
worthiness, and, for post-Calvinist Protestants, closeness to God.
Racism: Invented (as a concept) as a means to separate African
people bonded in slavery in the Americas from their allies amongst
the indentured landless classes (Irish people escaping from famine
were a significant group). Conditions for the indentured landless
were deliberately and fractionally differentiated from those of
Africans held in slavery so that they, the landless would learn
to think of themselves as superior enough to become agents of
oppression on behalf of the owning classes. Racism was/is also
used to justify European colonization of the Americas through
displacing indigenous populations. Eduardo Galeano’s¹⁶⁸ classic
book The Open Veins of Latin America contains many details.
Sexism: Likely as old as classism (some say older) - acts on a
collection of memes and semes that gender determines intelligence,
capacity for leadership, rights to property, and self-determination.
It insists that males are superior in all these attributes (and more)
¹⁶⁸https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduardo_Galeano
Chapter 5: Thinking about Worldviews 189
to females.
Homophobia: is a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward
homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or Queer (LGBTQ). Evident
since at least Biblical times.
Separation from and dominion over nature/other species: in
which humans consider nature and other species less deserving of
rights than humans. Noticeable with the onset of agriculture 15000
years BP? It was codified in the Christian Bible.
Able-bodied-ism: directed at people with disabilities and suppos-
ing that they are mentally impaired, undeserving of self-determination,
are asexual, and that they do not suffer from the physical isolation
they experience due to lack of access.
Men’s oppression: included in a smaller font to indicate that this
oppression (in which one effect is that boys and young men are
systematically prepared for the military by separating them from
their capacity for compassion) is not yet well enough acknowl-
edged, especially when we consider that it is heavily implicated
in warfare. Not acknowledging this oppression is a Patrix effect.
Intersectionality
Now, the point here is not to compare the psychological and social
challenges that each one of these two good people faces as a result
of their overall challenge (including the fallout of able-bodied-ism).
Instead to note that, because of the intersection of their disability
with their class backgrounds and the associated access to wealth,
their capacities to mediate some of the practical aspects of their
mobility and lifestyle are quite different.
This is a simple example of how the particular intersection, in this
case of class and physical challenge, is unique for each person and
¹⁷²Coordinator class– a term coined by Michael Albert of the Z-Net Community to describe
the layer of professional people who fulfill the coordination, management, and knowledge-
making roles that control a working class in a society run to meet the interests of an owning
class.
Chapter 5: Thinking about Worldviews 192
Internalized Oppression
Everyone is affected
A common interest
Simple/Complex Paradox
Client as focus
No interpretation
Free
Grass-roots
Accessing RC
There are two primary routes to learning RC and accessing the peer
networks that organize RC communities.
That’s plenty to be going with for now. From the above, my readers
would be able to identify several possible themes of The Patrix that
might be operating for me.
Forearmed with this knowledge, they may more readily think
critically about my work and check for likely biases.
Spiral Dynamics
A summary
Write a Patrix-revealing blurb for your next book jacket! Note that
by doing so you are not convicting yourself of crimes but just letting
other people know that, due to your identities, you may just have
some particular residual Patrix patterns on board (which are, of
course, not your fault and, in any case, you would like to be rid of
them).
Choose four memes from the Project Worldview Cards that seem
to you to contain gobbets of Patrix-derived distress. Explain why
you think this and how you think these distress patterns made their
way into these memes.
Chapter 6 Growing
Resilient Communities
Introduction to Community Focus
Functions of Leadership
How a culture thinks and acts around leadership has a great deal
of influence on at least the following cultural themes:
- how that culture is shaped and structured (we’d say designed,
whether or not consciously). Some examples of shapes and struc-
¹⁸⁷http://www.flatpackdemocracy.co.uk
¹⁸⁸http://edventurefrome.org/courses/edventure/
Chapter 6 Growing Resilient Communities 213
Organizing
At a more prosaic level (common or garden level) we would say
that a core function of leadership is to organize people to make
something happen.
Our observation (drawn from extensive participation in “leader-
less” groups and communities) is that without someone making the
effort to organize and initiate activity, nothing changes, nothing
happens. Folks just go about their daily lives with the usual amount
of ease and/or struggle without much commitment to generating
change, at least not at the systemic level.
Leadership, from this perspective, is the frequently missing in-
gredient. There is no end of change required, if only to adapt to
the rapidly changing external environment and, therefore, there is
no end to the need for innovative, creative, and flexible leadership.
However, our appraising view of the current human cultures soon
reveals that there is:
- a critical shortage of people ready to take leadership, to gather
and organize other people around common causes (although see
this example¹⁹⁰– one amongst many- for inspiration, and
- an insufficient understanding of leadership processes that work
and that really do empower people.
In this element, we are going to be so bold as to propose that a
leaderful culture organized with Patrix elimination at the core
and using adapted principles and processes of sociocracy/holoc-
racy may be a way forward.
But first, a quick look at the obstacles to progress in this area.
¹⁹⁰https://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/brooklyn-women-make-their-building-theirs/
Chapter 6 Growing Resilient Communities 215
Abreaction
Noting that our current cultures are collapsing under acute internal
contradictions, and that our task is to have viable ecosocial alter-
natives at the ready. Otherwise, other options, most of which don’t
look at all healthy (Neo-Fascist “Libertarianism,” for example), will
continue to emerge to fill the vacuum.
people are hostile to the very concept of leadership as, they say,
it implies hierarchy, and we have had more than enough of that
(hierarchy). Witness the class system, racism and, indeed, the whole
of the Patrix.
This is an understandable (but, Gaia U proposes, not helpful)
reaction to the domineering, authoritarian leaders, skewed systems,
and dis-empowering processes that make up the current destructo-
culture.
Derailed by distress
Masquerading vMemes
Result
Vulnerability to attacks
Fenced in by consensus
So, the very least we should do, if we can’t avoid our groups adopt-
ing consensus, is to have an agreement that this is an experiment
with a limited shelf-life. Once the time is up, the consensus period
is over unless there is a unanimous consensus to renew it.
This important idea of limited life agreements is drawn from
sociocracy – see below.
The 1 in 6 myth
A masquerade story
Beck noted, amongst other things, the obligatory heart and grat-
itude circles at the commencement of all gatherings; mandatory
attunements and the use of other ritual tools as divination processes
for decision-making; lengthy and costly initiations for potential
new members with no guarantee of success, and more…
The presence of these operational features led him to suggest that
whilst the community was espousing a vMeme-plex of GREEN/yel-
low/turquoise, it was more realistically acting from a purple/BLUE/-
green center.
(Note that we can use lower case and upper case spellings to indi-
cate the relative strength of vMemes: purple/BLUE/green meaning
a person/culture with ways of thinking framed by clear purple
elements but with a center of gravity in BLUE and with tinges of
green at the leading edge).
This hidden masquerade was interfering with the community’s
perception of itself and blocking its attempts to strategically and
thoroughly transition into second-tier.
According to Beck, not only was the community at a much earlier
stage of evolution than it thought, but it was also missing almost
any representation of the warm color vMemes. Indeed it was
actively hostile to Orange ways of thinking (strive-drive-success) as
it associated these with neo-liberal, materialist corporate cultures
which, in turn, were identified as the enemy.
People engaged in enterprises inside the community, for example,
were not considered “spiritual” enough to be on policy-making
bodies for the community and were actively excluded from having
influence despite their role in generating most of the available
livelihoods.
Similarly, Red was considered primitive and worthy only of out-
right rejection.
Consequently, people with healthy Red/Orange/Yellow capacities
were rejected (not spiritual or communitarian enough) meaning
Chapter 6 Growing Resilient Communities 227
- People enjoy doing the work which fits who they are naturally
(and who they are, is dynamic as they re-emerge from the effects
of the Patrix) AND, they are ready to do their share of any grunt
work that needs doing.
- We all have easy access to the information, tools, materials, and
resources (and may well become intra-preneurs: people who create
enterprises inside of larger organizations/networks making use of
Chapter 6 Growing Resilient Communities 230
For the first time in the spiral, users can “see” their own path
of evolution, can appreciate the value of their passage through
vMemes and acknowledge the relevance of specific vMeme think-
ing to specific circumstances.
Up until now, in first tier, each vMeme sees itself as being the “right
one” and all others as, to an extent, “wrong”. And, if a culture is
prepared to acknowledge its history at all (usually it refuses to be
honest about this), the earlier phases are thought to be unfortunate
mistakes: false, primitive steps on the path of progress.
It is this first tier conviction, that “now we have got it right at last,”
that allows these vMemes to seek to destroy any others that they
might come across (as mistakes that need to be obliterated so that
everyone can benefit from the indisputable gains of progress).
At second tier the view of leadership willingly includes (and
transcends) the views of leadership found throughout the spiral as
it has unfolded so far rather than considering them unfortunate
errors.
That is, each manifestation of leadership is/was appropriate to the
life-conditions at the time and is/was appropriate for selective use
now.
This flexible way of thinking allows the user to call on, for ex-
ample, Blue leadership memes when working in a Blue set of
life-conditions. Orange and Green leadership memes are likewise
available in appropriate situations (note that in the case of Green,
leadership is more likely to be re-languaged to something like “fo-
calizing,” “stewarding,” “curating,” or some other less re-stimulative
(to Green users) term/concept).
Chapter 6 Growing Resilient Communities 233
Reversion
the same axis. The axes are either about self-direction (warm colors)
or other-direction (cool colors).
The response to stress may go through an initial phase in which
people reach into their “better” humanity and respond from an
“other” oriented, altruistic way of thinking. However, as the stress
conditions persist (for example, during famines), these memes give
way to increasingly self-oriented ways of thinking and/or the
expression of the core vMemes becomes increasingly distressed and
unhealthy.
Many of you will have read Naomi Klein’s book Shock Doctrine –
The rise of Disaster Capitalism¹⁹⁷, and you will recall the thesis:
*“The shock doctrine”: [means] using the public’s disorientation
following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or
natural disasters — to achieve control by imposing economic shock
therapy. [Some of which may be deliberately generated to deliver
more shock.]
Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-
the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly
shows how disaster capitalism – the rapid-fire corporate re-engineering
of societies still reeling from shock – did not begin with September
11, 2001. The book traces its origins back fifty years, to the Uni-
versity of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many
¹⁹⁷http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/
Chapter 6 Growing Resilient Communities 236
The story
Psychopathy
For example, we have only the vaguest ideas of how to deal with
people governed by psychopathic distresses. People with extreme
psychopathic distress patterns are capable of profound indifference
regarding the suffering of others and have very little difficulty com-
mitting to one action (promises made in speeches at election time
are examples) and then doing the very opposite shortly thereafter,
without any sense of irony or remorse.
According to Kevin Dutton, author of the recent (2012) book,
The Wisdom of Psychopaths (see this summary article)¹⁹⁹ people
with especially strong psychopathic distress patterns are great as
fearless, swashbuckling adventurers, hard men/women without
consciences, and ideal power politicians as they are without re-
morse and can easily say one thing and do another without even
noticing the contradiction.
Thus, people with highly active psychopathic patterns are able to
serve the dirty needs of disaster capitalism without experiencing
any disabling dissonance and are much in demand – just so long as
they are not too extreme.
Note that we are taking the view that we all have some level of psy-
chopathic patterns. This is contrary to the common understanding
that there are people who are psychopaths and then there is the rest
of us.
This binary (psychopath or not) option is old thinking from the
¹⁹⁹http://www.kevindutton.co.uk/books/the-wisdom-of-psychopaths/
Chapter 6 Growing Resilient Communities 238
This “we all have some of it” view is helpful for the reason that,
while you and I are active in discharging our own tendencies to
indifference and to speaking with a forked tongue (saying one
thing and doing another), we are gaining valuable insight into the
necessary steps a person with more severe expressions of these
unhealthy memes would need to take. Thus we are gaining the
capacity to be their allies in a healing process.
By healing ourselves and then transferring the knowledge of how
to do this, we can work towards the goal of healing the whole spiral.
We can contradict and mitigate this isolation and, at the same time,
train new leaders by:
- making sure our leaders do not get overwhelmed and isolated by
providing them with live support
and
- searching out people ready to develop their leadership abilities
who get training by providing this support.
(a worthwhile question to ask in any group situation, almost surely
not out-loud is, “is the leadership here supported well enough as far
as I can see?” If the answer is no, think what you can do yourself
to add in additional support?
went well” and “what could have been different” and then to speak
to these themes themselves
- to be available at any time in the event to provide think and
listen space for the lead person to take time for themselves, and/or
to think about the project (discreetly if in a group without any
significant RC experience or in public when the group is RC trained
and therefore understands that leaders need to take “sessions” to
keep thinking well)
- to anticipate and do any work they can that will relieve the lead
person from having to pay attention to various details
- to head-off (interrupt) any attacks that are directed towards the
lead person and ensure that people with complaints and criticisms
understand that they (the complainant) should deal with any
possible re-stimulation first and then consider if their feedback is
still relevant
- to pass on any legitimate feedback to the lead person in a calm,
private way and invite the lead person to think how they would
like to deal with it and then to assist the lead person to do so.
- to maintain a warm, affectionate, and confident attitude regards
the lead person at all times and to avoid being pulled into acting
from their own or anyone else’s re-stimulation.
Because of the way gender roles intersect with support and lead-
ership, it may well be that women need to do less supporting and
more leading whilst men focus on learning how to be good support
persons, especially for women.
Roles:
(Minimum two people in each area please – lead person and support
person)
Access
Ensure the fullest possible participation in a workshop for those
who have identified physical problems, so that their needs are as
well met as can be done.
Set up the room with this in mind. Mark gangways, allocate
sufficient mattresses and label them as well as special chairs.
At the beginning, introduce your team briefly and say what you
will be doing and what you expect.
Ask as yet unidentified people with particular needs to make
themselves known to you.
Be firm throughout the workshop about keeping gangways clear
and mattresses and chairs reserved for those who need them.
Make further announcements as needed, but keep them creative,
cheerful, effective, and brief.
Check in regularly with the people in question, and when problems
arise if you can’t see how to solve, offer to counsel where appropri-
ate and think together with the person about what can be done.
Chapter 6 Growing Resilient Communities 246
Bring a few lovely and inspiring things to put on the walls and make
the room look like ours.
Remind people to take responsibility for their own mess.
Liaise with access concerning gangways and where to put shoes,
bags, and coats.
Tidy up as needed, but keep asking for help and reminding others
to do it.
You are not servants, you are leaders.
Folders
Buy folders for the content, have the material photocopied that the
Leader’s Support Person will discuss or send. Then put it in the
folders and bring them along.
Give them to Registration. The Leader’s Support Person will discuss
this when the details of the folder contents are confirmed.
Food liaison, diets and snacks
SNACKS: Buy fruit for 63 people, allowing six pieces each. Go
for good value, seasonal, and good quality rather than organic.
Bananas and plums are liked. Unripe fruit is a waste.
Buy very basic snacks: oatcakes, crackers, peanut butter, jam and/or
honey, nuts? Chips? Whatever you think.
The snacks will only be put out at night since the evening meal is
early. Keep the snacks area clean and tidy. It can be in one of the
subsidiary meeting rooms.
Bring a plastic sheet to put on the carpet and lots of paper napkins
or plates.
Chapter 6 Growing Resilient Communities 248
DIETS: Buy soy milk, rice milk, and gluten-free bread. Label clearly
who can use it, and remove it and look after it after meals. Make
sure the buyer has the food needs list, so that person can judge
amounts. Liaise with the kitchen as needed over diets.
Literature
Set up the projector (provided) and your own laptop, and service
the typing team. Select a female apprentice or two and teach them
how to be techies.
Chapter 6 Growing Resilient Communities 249
Think of ways of being playful within the main room that are not
threatening to people in wheelchairs, and take initiatives.
Set up a play area or a wrestling area in one of the other rooms and
invite people to join you. Offer things to do in the longer break well
in advance.
Make an early announcement asking people to write up what they
can offer. Decide what to accept. Then write up details of what
will be offered by whom (where to meet, when), so there isn’t that
boring period of people milling around wasting the break.
It is fine if most people want to rest or go for walks, but it is good
to offer games, skipping, yoga, pilates, dance, etc… or wrestling as
well. Remember inclusion.
Be the creativity team for the culture share. Recruit any help you
want.
Be the MC for the culture share.
Bring with you hats or little bits of costumes, Frisbees, skipping
ropes, a ball – whatever you think.
Problem solving
Decide when to help the person bringing you the problem think
it through and act and when to refer it to some other team or the
organizer.
Punctuality
Registration
Scribes
Shabbat
Buy and bring materials for Shabbat (claim expenses from registra-
tion). Explain and share Shabbat, using Gentile allies however you
like. Maybe allies can support beforehand for getting materials, for
time, or just solidarity.
(Editor: in RC there is a strong commitment to contradicting the
anti-semitism that has made it unsafe for Jews to be visible)
Chapter 6 Growing Resilient Communities 251
Singing
Skype
Travel Liaison
Please take charge of ensuring that there is parking for people with
mobility problems – ring the hostel to book it.
Groups of co-counselors in the same area or region should be able
to liaise their own travel, but if people want your help with meeting
up with people halfway or offering lifts, I will ask them to contact
you.
At the workshop, put up a sheet of paper at the end for people
wanting lifts to the station or wanting or offering longer distance
lifts.
Typing
Gaia U Associates:
Art of Mentoring
NE – First Light
This same qualitative cycle can be perceived over the course of a
year:
E – Spring
S – Summer
W – Fall
N – Winter
…with the intermediate directions carrying the energy of transi-
tions between those seasons.
Now, the life cycle of an annual plant:
E – Sprouting
SE – Rapid growth
S – Reaching full size, flowering
SW – Internal hardening, fruit developing
W – Seed matures
NW – Seed dispersing, plant dying
N – Seed lies dormant
NE – Germination
And, the life cycle of a human:
E – Birth through young childhood (∼0-5)
SE – Childhood (∼6-11)
S – Adolescence (∼12-17)
SW – Young adulthood (∼18-25)
W – Mature adulthood, child-rearing (∼25-45)
NW – Past physical prime, aging (∼45-65)
N – Elderhood (∼65+)
Chapter 6 Growing Resilient Communities 256
NE – Death/Conception
Again, these examples are by no means set in stone; rather, they
are presented as an aid in perceiving a cycle present throughout the
natural and human world. One way to summarize these archetypes
in the language of human experience might be:
E – Inspiration
SE – Motivation
S – Perspiration
SW – Internalization
W – Celebration
NW – Gathering/re-evaluation
N – Integration
NE – Transition/mystery
Other layers that have been placed over an 8 Shields template by
the cultural mentoring community have included:
- Organizational roles (including the roles of a support group called,
in Art of Mentoring circles, an Acorn.)
- Knowledge-of-place “curricular” elements
- Stages of long- and short-term learning processes
- Facilitation flows of an event or course
- Stages of rites of passage and initiations
- Skill flexes for being in service in community*
***
Gaia U Associates
Read here, on the next page, the handout prepared for people taking
support roles in an Art of Mentoring gathering.
What vMeme-plex would you use to characterize this approach?
Chapter 6 Growing Resilient Communities 257
Acorn Roles
and
3. those that look out for the whole organism making sure that
everything is well regulated, integrated and working together.
This one consists of three distinct sub-systems making five in
all (labeled M for Management in the chart).
10 Faces of Innovation
The four remaining personas are building roles that apply insights
from the learning roles and channel the empowerment from the
organizing roles to make innovation happen.
The Experience Architect is that person relentlessly focused on
creating remarkable individual experiences. This person facilitates
positive encounters with your organization through products, ser-
vices, digital interactions, spaces, or events.
The Set Designer looks at every day as a chance to liven up their
workspace. They promote energetic, inspired cultures by creating
work environments that celebrate the individual and stimulate
creativity.
The Storyteller captures our imagination with compelling nar-
ratives of initiative, hard work, and innovation. This person goes
beyond oral tradition to work in whatever medium best fits their
skills and message: video, narrative, animation, even comic strips.
The Caregiver is the foundation of human-powered innovation.
Through empathy, they work to understand each individual cus-
tomer and create a relationship.
World Cafe
World Café is a lively and popular process suited for use with large
numbers of people. Many tables are set up for five or six people, café
style with music, tea…covered with write-on paper and supplied
with color crayons. This is the essential kit. People move from table
to table on a timed rotation speaking and drawing their answers to
a set of questions posed by the organizers. Each table is staffed by
a conversation leader.
Here are the 7 World Café design principles and the website is
here:²⁰⁶
²⁰⁶http://www.theworldcafe.com/key-concepts-resources/design-principles/
Chapter 6 Growing Resilient Communities 269
6 Thinking Hats
The latest release of XMind includes a 6 Thinking Hats template:
This template was made famous by Edward de Bono, developer of
lateral thinking. The 6 Thinking Hats, a parallel thinking process,
disciplines a group to be “on the same page at the same time” during
a design process or problem-solving session. Link here.²⁰⁷
The idea is that, whilst, for example, it is crucial that the team
spends time quite vigorously critiquing an approach to resolving a
²⁰⁷http://www.debonogroup.com/six_thinking_hats.php/
Chapter 6 Growing Resilient Communities 271
Future Search
months or years.
Future searches have been run in every part of the world and sector
of society.
Dragon Dreaming
The “Fire in the Barn” story tells the tale of a leaderful event that
moves through several phases with different vMeme characteris-
tics. Tell a story from your own life that illustrates a dynamic flow
Chapter 6 Growing Resilient Communities 277
Cynefin model
(in that order), and we can apply best practice solutions. Sense
means to notice the character of the context. In this case, it’s simple.
We can clearly identify cause/effect relationships, and best practice
strategies will work.
We do need to categorize the situation correctly. Using a permacul-
ture example, we could look at waterlogged ground and, by pushing
a meter long stick into the soil to see if it goes in a) just a little or b)
sinks right down, and categorize the situation as a) surface water
that has overwhelmed the soils ability to absorb the water (stick
goes in a little way) or b) the water table rising up from below (stick
goes in deep). These two scenarios require quite different solutions
and best practice solutions are already known.
Complicated, in which the relationship between cause and effect
requires extended analysis or some other form of investigation
and/or the application of expert knowledge. The pattern of ap-
proach is to Sense – Analyze – Respond. We can apply good
practice solutions but only after careful, extended, and expert
analysis.
weather disturbances, and so on; and, beyond this, how the chicken-
tractor integrates to the whole system (including the connection to
orchards, vegetable gardens, domestic housing and so on), we can
reasonably say the context becomes Complex. The possible range
and type of connections within the whole system cannot be fully
known and predicted.
The insight is this: just so long as we design the Simple elements
for connectivity to at least three other simple systems thereby
assembling them into a flexible web, we are very likely to find
that our designs can elegantly handle (and generate) much more
complexity than we could easily conceive of at the outset.
This phenomenon is known amongst some permaculture designers
as the simple/complex paradox and might also extend to include
the chaordic²¹⁵²¹⁶ way of thinking.
The simple/complex paradox is very helpful because it allows us to
confidently design in complex situations by becoming, in the first
place, capable designers of open simple systems. That’s a much
less challenging goal than becoming a complex systems designer all
in one go. Gather multiple designers with experience of designing
workable, open and simple systems to create a collective with
complex capabilities!
Once more then, the design foundations we are laying in are
directly connected with our long-term goals of developing our/your
abilities to act with thoughtfulness and good attention across
the full range of systems and domains (contexts). Following the
Cynefin model we’ll call these contexts simple, complicated, com-
plex, chaotic and disordered.
²¹⁵https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Chaordic_Organizations_-_Characteristics
²¹⁶Chaordic thinking was something of a hot topic amongst systems thinkers six or seven
years ago, and since then it has almost disappeared. Why that is, is a mystery and if you can
shed light on this vanishing trick, please let us know.
Chapter 7: Project and Design Thinking 284
Project design is a hot field these days. This is partly because old
forms of planning, that require adherence to a fixed plan and are
focused on tightly defined goals, are just not doing the job for
people working in complex contexts. Indeed, it is often said that
plans (in complex contexts) are out of date even before they are
written.
Consequently, many people are doing their very best to transition
out of traditional methods that use logical frameworks (often called
“log-frames” when used in large-scale contexts) towards successive
approximation methods (SAM’s).
However, it is important to know about log-frames as they are in
common use. Indeed, when we get to the topic “Some Permaculture
and Ecosocial Design Processes” you’ll find a classic log-frame for
smaller projects known as GaSADIE, outlined there.
And, it is worth remembering that a designer with a flexible,
systemic worldview (yellow in spiral dynamics) can operate a log
frame as if it were a successive approximation method whilst a
designer with a worldview containing “one right way” thinking
(blue in spiral dynamics) will convert a successive approximation
method back into a log-frame. It is all about the way you think!
No system at all
Agile Systems
The transition is towards more fluid and flexible approaches such
as Outcome Mapping and SAM (Successive Approximation Method).
²¹⁷http://www.brighthubpm.com/templates-forms/99404-example-of-a-logframe-matrix/
²¹⁸https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADDIE_Model
Chapter 7: Project and Design Thinking 286
to make a wish-list that has all sorts of bells and whistles included
that have very little practical value (in the software design field
it is sometimes claimed that custom built programs have 80%
superfluous features).
The results of these problems (using overly specific predetermined
plans in complex situations) are at least twofold. Firstly, project
designers will attempt to write high sounding project goals which
are actually superficial (and therefore “achievable”), and which
sound good so that they can tick the outcome boxes at the end of the
funding period (and maybe, therefore, get funding to run another
cycle). And/or, secondly, they get on with the real work using open,
improvisational techniques and meanwhile fudge the data (creative
accounting) to pretend that they are getting the results that justified
the funding.
Few people like participating in these pretenses and fictions, espe-
cially as they lead to enormous stress and the wasting of resources
and so the search for project design and management tools that can
cope with complexity is on.
See this excellent blog post²²² that describes a doctor working in
chaotic conditions coming to understand the need to transition
from log-frames to, in this case, Outcome Mapping.
Making this type of change is not an easy job as many people are
inclined to stay with familiar methods, even when those don’t work
well, rather than face the challenge of migrating to something new.
That is, people are often addicted to or stuck in one way of thinking.
This inertia is a major problem in all organizations and requires
the organization to foster a long-term commitment to change and
development. Each of us can contradict this by cultivating an
attitude of mind-flex, of always being up for learning new things
²²²http://www.unpredictable.co/news/2016/10/26/a-complex-story
Chapter 7: Project and Design Thinking 289
Conception 1
In Bill’s case he shifts (over time) from cutting a “hole in the forest”
retreat for himself (operational – becoming more self-reliant and
taking a rest from activism) to creating a permaculture design
course that he can teach that will enable hundreds of thousands
of people to use his (and David Holmgren’s) paradigm-shifting
thinking to:
Conception 2
Conception 3
Andrew writes:
Drawing from a lifetime of experience as a conscious designer in
multiple fields (furniture design, work-place and production line
layouts, boot and shoe design, organization and relationship design,
designing permaculture gardens and farms, designing support net-
works and communities of practice and now, designing a new form
of University), I suggest the following benefits are likely to arise
through developing permaculture and ecosocial design skills:
Your ability to design (with support from your allies) your own
situation, that of your community, and of human societies in
general towards ecological regeneration is of primary importance
at this time in human history.
Climate disruption, peak-oil (and peak-water, peak-soils…) are
upon us due to our past ecological destruction and use of fossil fuels.
By your un/learning to become a competent, self-replicating, pro-
actionist, ecosocial designer you choose to focus your attention on
the restoration of ecological systems together with the transforma-
tion of human societies for the benefit of all life on the planet.
For making a living
There is a distinct possibility that your ecosocial design skills,
evidenced in your ePortfolio, will be the skill-flex through which
you can make a living. How good is that - to have the potential to
make a living through ecosocial regeneration!
Conclusion
In summary, developing active and broad abilities as an ecosocial
designer and actionist²³⁰ is one of the most potent world-change
routes open to you.
Learning to Design
Why?
In effect, Bill and David brought into view the complex methodolo-
gies and philosophies from (what might be called) the background
Chapter 7: Project and Design Thinking 301
Bill Mollison was also clear that it takes at least 10 cycles working
through conscious design processes to begin to feel competent. This
guideline has since proved accurate for hundreds of folk, and it is
the basis for evidence in various Diplomas of Applied Permaculture
Design operating around the world (including the Diploma offered
by Gaia U).
What it means is that we all need to practice: that is, work at using
the processes described in this element until we have a sense of
mastery.
We will be making reference to permaculture design as a core
process throughout this element.
Permaculture+++ (a term introduced by Nodo Espiral²³¹ that uses
the Integral Matrix of Ken Wilber.
²³¹http://www.permaculturaintegral.org
Chapter 7: Project and Design Thinking 302
Introduction
This chapter and the next²³³ are designed to give you an introduc-
tion to the topic of permaculture and ecosocial design. They are not
intended to be a complete design course. However, what you find
²³²https://www.ideo.com/post/design-kit
²³³These two books are a design in themselves. They are based on the permaculture design
maxim, Design from Patterns to Details, articulated nicely by David Holmgren, co-originator
with Bill Mollison of the permaculture design concept. In this case, the pattern is the design
process represented by GADIE, O’Bredimet and GoSADIMET – three cousins you will meet
later. Then the detail(s) are design methods, some of which are described in these two books.
Chapter 7: Project and Design Thinking 304
There are a lot of chapters in these books. Many of them are pictures
with just a few words. Please skim the whole offering to analyze
and assess before deciding what to spend your time on (this is
designed reading!). Then do it (implementation) and see what you
think (evaluation).
Chapter 7: Project and Design Thinking 305
Pro intuition
Pro analysis
Both/And?
Common pitfalls (of which there are many) include, for the analyti-
cal way, a tendency to always think inside the box, to apply known
solutions irrespective of appropriateness, and to insist on following
plans even when they have become irrelevant.
For the intuitive way, pitfalls include the possibility that the de-
signer’s intuition is clouded by unresolved emotional issues that
give rise to misdirections, a tendency to generate whimsical designs
that are impractical, and to conflate mystery with quality. “If I can’t
explain it then it must be good…”
Once we have help to apply some focus to the topic, we are likely
to discover that we do indeed use a process and, most excitingly,
now that it is raised into consciousness, we can tweak it for better
results or even radically alter it for more drastic effect (thereby we
learn to design our design processes). This also means we can help
(teach/facilitate) other folk to do the same.
The Pattern
However, it is often the case that each field is ignorant of the models
used by others and may even propose that any other model than
their own is a travesty. Such is absolutism!
This is a shame as the multiple existences of such cycles, processes,
templates, and models across fields might alert designers to the
possibility that there is common ground between them after all and
that maybe they could integrate their thinking.
Breaking down the walls of these habitual silos (which we also find
big time in government departmentalization, conventional univer-
sity departments, schools, and in other large-scale bureaucracies) is
no simple matter.
As permaculture and ecosocial designers, we have the chance to
integrate and eclecticize (integrate from many sources) before the
silo habit has become institutionalized in our organizations, but we
need to watch out for it as the separation tendency is deep-coded in
us through the Patrix. It is just possible that we might unwittingly
reproduce the same old patterns of dis-integration.
A Family of Processes
GADIE in a graphic
The stages/phases/modalities:
G= Articulate Goals or, as some folks prefer,
Goals Articulation
A= Analyze and Assess
D= Design
I= Implement
E= Evaluate
Note that the stages are arranged in a cycle or spiral so that the
process never ends. What is implemented is evaluated which then
leads to the emergence of fresh goals. And note the intricate web
Chapter 7: Project and Design Thinking 313
Scope
One additional layer around doing designs that we have not ad-
dressed here is the intended scope of the design.
By scope we mean: is the design intended to provide the client with
a stimulating package of sketches from which they can choose a
concept or two that they would like to have you work up in more
detail? This is a common requirement, and the scope of this type of
design is to present a menu of possible approaches…
This is a Concept Design and it might be quite cheap and cheerful
(for example you may well deliver this face-to-face over the kitchen
table, sketching as you go, before you leave from doing a site visit
and a modest survey).
²³⁸https://emergentbydesign.com/2010/01/14/what-is-design-thinking-really/
Chapter 7: Project and Design Thinking 314
G = Goals Articulation
Chapter 7: Project and Design Thinking 315
A process designed to help all the people in the client group speak
out their goals and visions for the design site.
It may use methods like brainstorming sessions, story-telling, and
back-casting (telling stories as if from the future), generating user
scenarios, using forms to stimulate thinking. (The PASER sheet be-
low encourages people to think of the Plants, Animals, Structures,
Events and Resources that come to mind when thinking about land-
use situations and is used by permaculture designers – the question
asked is “what specific varieties of each category do you want to see
in the final design”).
PASER Sheet instructions: Please pin this to the wall in the common
room and invite everybody to fill it in.
Thanks to Lea Harrison – pioneer permaculture designer of Aus-
tralia
Recently popular with ecosocial designers is the holistic goals
process embedded in Holistic Management.²³⁹
It is not always easy to have people talk about their long-term goals
and visions. For many people, this type of activity feels somehow
illegal, as if they are not allowed to dream. Part of the designer’s
work may be to assist people to reclaim their power in this respect.
²³⁹http://www.purplepitchfork.com/uploads/4/2/5/9/42595701/doc_goal_formation_packet.
pdf
Chapter 7: Project and Design Thinking 316
There are tons of methods for analyzing and assessing the situa-
tions we find ourselves designing in, and you will need to analyze
and assess the methods themselves to see if they are suitable.
Working in a wide range of contexts and working with experienced
designers is very helpful for extending the range of methods we
Chapter 7: Project and Design Thinking 318
know about. We are free to design our own adapted to the context
and the information we are seeking to uncover.
D = Design
Now we get to work out options for what goes where, how each
element in the design connects and relates to others, how the
dynamic flows of resources passing through the situation will be
handled and harvested, and so on.
Preparation is 9/10s of the job
The proposal is that the design phase is made very much more
straightforward when it’s preceded with thorough preparation. In
that respect design work has a lot in common with painting and
decorating. As Andrew’s dad (father) used to say (irritatingly as
Andrew thought then!) when we were contemplating changing the
decor in our house “preparation is 9/10ths of the job”. He was right
of course, and it’s the same with design work.
The preparation we do in goals articulation and analysis and
assessment makes a big difference as then the design starts to show
itself without us needing to “come up with it.”
See this example of a piece of land, analyzed and assessed according
to, amongst other things, soil type.
This was a design job for a public agency client who was looking for
extensive horticultural gardens, a common house, an access road,
and an approach to productive use of the significant quantities of
water that ran over the surface of the land during the wet season.
Here’s what the analysis showed:
Chapter 7: Project and Design Thinking 322
Given a little more information (nearest public road) you can see
that the site “designs” itself in general terms as follows:
Chapter 7: Project and Design Thinking 323
See this article about the Bauhaus²⁴¹ for more on this topic.
It is certainly true that we would want to contradict the obsessive
tidiness disease that afflicts some people around gardens and yards.
It sometimes seems that these wealthier folk arrange for a ready
supply of cheap immigrant labor just so they can have people work
for hours. Blowing leaves about into piles or raking bare soil to
make pretty patterns or mowing grass in elegant stripes, all of
which activities decrease the capacity for soils to recover and for
gardens to produce anything practically worthwhile.
Mind you, there is a strange phenomenon around changing per-
ceptions of beauty and order that pops up here. Andrew remembers
that as a teenager on the farm, for example, he loved the appearance
of a seven-acre field after spending a couple of days roaring up and
down with the tractor, turning the soil over with a three furrow
steel plow. He could really get into making a tidy job of it. Now
that he knows more about soil life he sees the same sight as a raw
wound in Mother Earth and much prefers to see deep mulches and
covered soils (which, of course, function much better).
What this means is that we all need to adjust our perception of
beauty over time so as to appreciate the loveliness of systems that
are functioning well rather than those that conform to a standard
of good looks that is derived from the endless, time and energy
consuming, activities of constant grooming.
Anyway, the design stage is all about testing and prototyping ideas
on paper, taking walks in the woods and allowing inspirations
to come, imagining how proposals will work by using them in
our heads, making adjustments to placements and connections,
refreshing whole lines of thinking entirely and drawing, mind-
mapping, drawing, diagramming, drawing, and drawing.
²⁴¹http://www.archdaily.com/225792/the-bauhaus/
Chapter 7: Project and Design Thinking 325
We emphasize drawing here for several reasons. One is that the act
of drawing involves the whole person and so all of our intelligences
are able to integrate whilst we are putting pencil to paper.
A second reason is that it forces us to pay attention to scale. From
this, we can see where we are making unreasonable assumptions
about space.
Thirdly we can use simple drawings to communicate ideas to
clients. It is even better when the client and the designer do
drawings together, however basic, as a form of brainstorming and
concept clarification.
We can also build models, take sticks and string out onto sites to
mock-up possibilities for ourselves and clients to see (for pathways,
to frame views out of possible windows, mark where dams and
spillways might go…), make 3D drawings using computer programs
and do fly-throughs, birds-eye views and more.
Much can be learned about design through looking at illustrative
images of design principles. The next several sections contain such
images, some with a little explanation, drawn from the permacul-
ture design field. Enjoy!
Chapter 7: Project and Design Thinking 326
This chart from the original by P.A. Yeomans, Water for Every Farm,
the book that introduced Keyline Design²⁴² to the world in 1965, and
since modified by many a permaculture designer.
The designer uses this list as a potent reminder of how easy or
difficult it is to change certain aspects of the site. Another use of
the list is to cause the designer to focus most of their energy on
prioritizing good designs that work within the constraints of the
high permanence items first.
For example, designing around item three, water (which has high
relative permanence), should take place very early in the design
process as it is very likely that the elements (swales, dams, diversion
ditches, bridges, etc…) included in a water design will lay down
strong patterns and shapes on the landscape that will strongly
influence the placement of elements with less relative permanence
(such as buildings).
Conversely, if we locate an element of relatively low permanence,
for example, a house or barn, without paying attention to a water
²⁴²https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyline_design
Chapter 7: Project and Design Thinking 336
design first, we might site the house in the only location on the
property that is suitable for an earth dam. Indeed this is a common
conflict because very often good house sites and good dam sites
look the same. The scale of permanence tells us we should hold off
making a choice between water and house until such times as our
water design is, more or less fully developed, and then the choice
(dam or house) might very well have been made for us.
Our next job is to develop a scale of permanence for social/commu-
nity design situations. Your thoughts about this topic are sought!
I = Implement
Improv again
Methods
Practice please!
E = evaluation
The first two questions (of our famous four), “what went well” and
“what was difficult and/or challenging” are very useful here. We
can modify their form a little (re-design) to have them be exactly
relevant.
Goals
and indicators – into the design at the design stage. If these loops
can operate for a number of years, so much the better, as many
of the outcomes and yields of our design work are unexpected.
The unexpected yields are often more significant than the ones we
planned for.
employees.
- it gave direct rise to LetsLink UK, an association of LETSystems
and their allies who took the concept viral and, with the new NLets
software, had 400+ systems operating by 1990.
So that’s a small attempt around the long-term mapping of out-
comes arising, directly and indirectly, from our little “failure” in
Totnes. It was a very worthwhile venture in retrospect, and that’s
even without counting the individual un/learnings, the collective
capacity building, and the installation of the complementary cur-
rency meme in the UK psyche.
O’Bredimet
GaSADIMET
The previous models have focused on land use design. With at-
tention to creative iteration, they can approximate to agile design
approaches such as the Successive Approximation Method. Land
use might be considered a “hard systems” field.
However social contexts (where people and communities are in-
volved) may need different frameworks.
Chapter 7: Project and Design Thinking 345
Other Delights
Pattern Languages
Appreciative Inquiry
We hope you can see that the design field is full of wonders and
full of interest.
We have really only scratched the surface here in this chapter
(although the collection here is much broader and more diverse
than most design professionals would see). There is much more to
learn and know about, mostly arising from doing design (see here
for an engaging read²⁵⁶. However, as we said at the outset of this
section, given that nine-tenths of the designer’s skill resides in being
able to work confidently through a chosen framework like GADIE
(thus allowing the design to emerge, almost without effort) you will
make significant gains from applying the fresh knowledge you have
acquired through this chapter.
Activities
Use the SWOT analysis XMind template (find this in the XMind
program on your desktop by going to File/New and selecting
the template from those offered) to explore your strengths and
weaknesses, opportunities and threats as regards project doing and
design skills.
Use the Lean Canvas (or the Gaia U version) to outline a project
you expect to work on in the coming year.
Consider a project you are thinking to do. Can you describe the
system that this project is part of and, using the Dona Meadows
leverage points, can you articulate which leverage points this
project will affect? Has the process of thinking about the project
from the leverage points perspective altered the way you would
design the project?
Chapter 8: Tracking Your
Un/Learning Journey
Essential Documentation
way to go. Indeed most of us proceed in this way for most of our
life’s journey and only now and again do we give ourselves the
luxury of generating organized gobs of documentation and have
our work peer and professionally reviewed.
The second group has opted for a Gaia U program, perhaps as a
means of supporting an exploration that emerges a new “career” or
as a means of telling the stories of a soon to be ended life phase by
reviewing its effectiveness and moving onto something new.
Either way we encourage you to develop a documentation practice.
We hope it is a practice that has you at least take the time to reflect
on what’s going well and what’s challenging²⁵⁸ at frequent intervals
and that has you record these sessions in some way.
The bones
- Have another person listen to you, think and listen style (you
return the favor) whilst taking notes for you on Skype/WhatsApp
or in the flesh for 20 minutes each, once a week would likely serve
the purpose as a minimum.
- Add to that the gathering of images that record your progress
(original photos, photos of tickets to events, programs, handouts,
and so on) stored on your phone or collected in Google Photos
/Photobucket/Flickr²⁵⁹, and we already have the bones of a system
sufficient to return to when it does become time to work up more
comprehensive pieces of descriptive and reflective documentation.
- Extra traction can come from keeping a five-year diary. For all
of us interested to know when fruit is likely to be ripe enough for
picking, soils to be warm enough before planting seeds and noticing
other seasonal, time-related phenomena, a five-year diary offers
²⁵⁸What’s going well? And what’s challenging? Are the first two questions of the much loved
(but often adapted) Gaia U Questions Quartet. Questions 3 and 4 are: What are my long-term
goals and visions? And what are my next achievable steps? Going for all four makes for even
better value than doing just the first two.
²⁵⁹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_image-sharing_websites
Chapter 8: Tracking Your Un/Learning Journey 356
Contradicting non-documentation
syndrome
Resilient Documentation
Not so!
A second issue is that, over time, you will likely want to reform, re-
use, re-purpose, edit, and mash-up your material at will. Your ways
of thinking will change, your insights will develop, and you may
want to broadcast or narrowcast these changes by producing new
editions of your material and publishing them via blogs, Facebook
pages, Wikipedia articles, forums, papers you can email in the form
of formatted .pdfs, websites, and more.
If your materials are only available as, for example, fully formatted
and illustrated Word* (97) documents, it is hard to extract bits and
re-purpose them. It is much better to have the content stored in
raw, unassembled (text and images separate), update-able formats
Chapter 8: Tracking Your Un/Learning Journey 360
so that you can draw on them at will and easily push them to any
publishing platform (digital or print).
Back-ups
Time outs
Many websites (including the Gaia U site) knock you out of the site
if you are inactive for a period of time. Twenty minutes is typical.
That means, if you leave your desk for lunch whilst you have work
in progress (an incomplete comment for example) it will be lost by
the time you get back. This can be very frustrating!
Strategies to deal with this include writing your posts without
stopping for too long or writing them either on your desktop using
a word or text processor, so they are independent of the website
or using an online service which has an autosave feature (Google
Drive, for example).
You can do a belt and braces/suspenders job (double level of safety)
by saving the original on a file on your desktop too.
Change Models
the world over who also want to change focus towards ecological
regeneration and well being (buen vivir).
There are many change models in the literature of which the
’Unfreeze, Change and Freeze’²⁶⁵ generated by Kurt Lewin in 1947
could be considered the “original.” Lewin, by the way, is a constant
source of reference for us in Gaia U so getting to know his work is
worthwhile. You can see a Kurt Lewin appreciation and synopsis
here.²⁶⁶
A most useful summary (and reconfiguration) of many change
models, appears in this 2010 book The Power of Sustainable Think-
ing: How to Create a Positive Future for the Climate, the Planet,
Your Organization and Your Life²⁶⁷ Bob Doppelt (Author), Hunter
Lovins (Foreword).
The XM*nd map below draws out the key concepts of the Doppelt
model that sees change progress through five stages.
²⁶⁵https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_94.htm
²⁶⁶http://infed.org/mobi/kurt-lewin-groups-experiential-learning-and-action-research/
²⁶⁷http://www.me-to-we.org/the_power_of_sustainable_thinking__how_to_create_a_
positive_future_for_the_clima_107233.htm
Chapter 8: Tracking Your Un/Learning Journey 364
Doppelt’s 5 D’s
A Focus on Transition
Open that up and add your content to the boxes, so they say what
you want them to say. This will produce an outline of the transition
stories you’d like to tell at some stage (a Life and Career Review is
a great place to tell these).
Here is an example:
When you have time, you can come back and add in more details
to fill it out, and you can also add notes to any of the nodes. You
will see there is one such transition node with a note icon.
Chapter 8: Tracking Your Un/Learning Journey 370