empathy

2
Sustainability
and empathy

About global understanding

We are facing extensive challenges and necessary changes in societies all over the world in the coming decades. It's always demanding for a young person to take responsibility for the processes of life and community, and this challenge will grow in the coming years. We must help each other toward a future where respect for life and its processes becomes the primary agenda.

Both the Danish and global society find themselves in a period of flux, where many old ways of thinking, structures, and systems have to be phased out and replaced. In many ways, in many areas, we are bogged down, and many of our institutions and organizations are at a loss as to their future; we are groping - not blindly, but in a gray area where we have to orient ourselves more toward opportunities and potentialities than to the answers and limitations of the past. What this new situation is, what it looks like, how it will function, which concepts and models it will be explained and described by, is as yet unclear.

Less than fifty years ago a distinction was made in textbooks between free goods and scarce goods. Free goods could be used without restraint; they were in unlimited supply. The textbooks stated: "Examples of free goods are water and air." These sentences have been removed from contemporary textbooks. The world is different today.

Over the past fifty years the world has changed completely and dramatically - and not only for the better. Our planet is several billion years old; humans have existed for approximately two hundred thousand years. Fifty years is a miniscule part of human history (0.00025%). But in the past fifty years we have behaved as if we were the last of our species. Human influence on our planet during this time has been so indescribably enormous that we who are now alive must stop and try to see clearly what we have done to it - and to ourselves. The very first thing we must do is look and listen. Then understand and act. Otherwise the question is if textbooks will even exist fifty years from now.

In the past fifty years, with the backing and support of some few chosen branches of science such as economy, and management strategies such as scientific management and management science, we have so ruthlessly exploited nature and humans that both are suffering. We dominate and master more and more of it all. But much of nature is threatened. Many people are not doing well. Many children are not happy. Every fifth child in Denmark doesn't receive an education. Our society is experiencing a human cooling. Many people in the world are sick, either from eating and drinking too much or from having nothing to eat or drink. It is believed that app. 80% of all illness in the world is caused by human behavior - lifestyle.

If we continue this short-sighted exploitation of nature and humans for another fifty years, one thing is certain: the consequences will be disastrous. We simply cannot continue the directions of progress we have been taking, where our methods and tools for short-term material and economic optimization and growth have been honed to utmost perfection. We are clever. We optimize to the decimal point. But we can't manage a number of decisive social, health, and societal problems, neither in our own country nor worldwide. We haven't been able to create acceptable conditions of life for many of our children. Again, this goes for both our country and, to an extreme extent, for the rest of the world. One of the explanations is that there are other sciences than those currently prevalent, there is other knowledge than the predominant, that we suppress and don't respect, and therefore we don't avail ourselves of them.

There are other and better paths than those we are now on. We have great assets we ignore that can help us forward if we wish; we have dreams and longings that, if correctly perceived, contain a wisdom we don't listen to enough. We have a wide ranging scientific, organizational, managerial, and political knowledge and experience that can help us describe and solve many of the problems we ourselves have caused and are now confronted with.

We can't describe and solve the problems with the tools and frames of reference that caused them. Albert Einstein told us this, back when. And we can see it with our own eyes, because that is what in many ways and areas we are now trying unsuccessfully to do. Because it can't be done. We have to think outside and above the present and find new paths. Which doesn't mean that the knowledge and science we do have must be abandoned. On the contrary, it's indispensable. But possibly it will have to be used in much different contexts.

The public has two often-expressed opinions about the relationship between time and the global crises. One of them goes something like this: "Why should we concern ourselves so much for the past when we can't do anything about it." The other is: "There's no reason to worry so much about the future. It will come no matter what, we just have to adjust to whatever conditions arise."

We are in a time of flux, as a society and as a world, and we can only progress constructively and creatively if we do the opposite of these two assertions, that is:

1. take an interest in the past, and, 2. take an interest in our future.

Two neurobiologists, Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana, once said, "We exist in the now; the past and the future are ways of being now." The psychiatrist Daniel Stern put it this way: "If the present moment isn't well-grounded in a past and future, it will float away ... like a meaningless speck." These sentences and perceptions are very important. Our understanding of and feelings about the past have a huge influence on our presence in our society here and now - as citizens, parents, researchers, mediators - and which roles we play.

In the same way, our scenario for the future determines how we are present, how we feel, think, decide, and act. Knowledge obligates us. What does the future bring out in us - right here and now? What are our roles, what is your role, what is the local government's role, what is Denmark's role - not only with regard to grabbing all we can and optimizing our own circumstances here and now, but with the world's future.

The English-American educational and creativity researcher, Sir Kenneth Robinson, said in one of his lectures: "A reform is an attempt to repair a 'broken model." We carry out a lot of reforms - and we talk about even more. And very many of these reforms accomplish almost nothing. They affect one problem in one place and lead to new problems and symptoms other places. Why?

Because we try to solve today's problems with solutions from the past, but these very solutions have caused the problems in the first place.

We don't notice it, however, because we don't listen to the feedback trying to break through to us. We don't listen to children; we don't listen to inspiration from any cultures other than our own; we don't listen to the large groups of colleagues who really do want to contribute more, show more than they currently are allowed to.

Innovative thinking is thinking on the other side of habit. Habits are downloading. All of us are acquainted with habits, and some habits are so strong that we don't see them. We are the habit. Sometimes we experience it, sense it - and we're perhaps embarrassed. But often it goes unnoticed. That is, until we find ourselves in a totally new situation, see ourselves in something new, hear something new, are confronted with something new or different. One of the great challenges confronting us, in our country and around the globe, is feeling the world. To feel for, sense.

The sustainability of living systems is maintained through feedback, both from within and without. A human, a business, a school, a daycare center, a family, and a society are all examples of living systems for which feedback is vital (Steen Hildebrandt &

Michael Stubberup: Sustainable Leadership, Gyldendal Business, 2010).

These mechanisms require shifting gears, including pauses. Relaxation and regeneration always follow activity and movement. If you listen, it's quiet after all the words and thoughts are over. It's this organic breathing, this shifting of gears, between sleep and rest, work and free time, performance and regeneration that ensures that the implicit, self-organizing processes in humans and in nature are allowed to live, to work and be sustainable. The living system senses the world and itself in this way. And it interacts with the world in switching between rest and activity.

The strategy proposed in this book and articulated by the pentagon is a method to ensure contact to ourselves and others, to make possible this interaction.

Some might believe that it's unclear or provocative to point out the significance of the pause, the shifting of gears, of breathing in a situation and time when pressure from competition, budgets, and productivity is breaking apart local government, businesses, and society, when some believe therefore that we need to go even faster, we need even more change, even more growth. But...