\u2018Sharpen the Sword\u2019<\/strong>: Early in my social activism career I observed that our weakest link is often, if not always, ourselves. If we set out to change society, we will meet resistance, quite naturally. People don\u2019t necessarily want to change, and may obstruct efforts to inspire change. Vested interests \u2014 people who are making money or securing power within the status quo \u2014 will almost certainly resist and sabotage change. This battle requires eternal vigilance. <\/p>\n\n However, equally difficult challenges may arise from the sabotage we inflict ourselves through the insecurities of one\u2019s ego. In my 20s, more than 50 years ago, I first heard Buddhist teacher Kalu Rimpoche use the metaphor, \u201csharpen the sword before going into battle,\u201d but in this case you are the sword. Work on yourself first. Your struggles for peace, justice, and ecology will be blunted if you are compromised by unhelpful ego, desires, fears, and confusion. We sharpen the sword by paying attention to our own motivations, working on ourselves, quieting our ego, making ourselves better human beings and better agents of change.<\/p>\n\n Do the research<\/strong>: It helps to understand even those who oppose us. To understand people, their motivations and expectations, one must spend time with people. To understand nature, one must spend time in nature. Not all research is done with books or the internet. I have learned that it helps to observe individuals, groups, myself, and the natural world with curiosity, openness, and rigor. Paying attention is the beginning of knowledge. <\/p>\n\n Knowledge is its own reward. It will prove helpful to relentlessly research the issues you care about. Know the science, the way nature works. Know history. How did we arrive at this place and time? Learn the story of the universe, the evolution of life, the rise of diversity and complexity, the evolution of human culture, and the varieties of human culture. I find it helpful to discover the source of conflicts, the lineage of ideas and cultural structures that lead to conflict or to resolution. <\/p>\n\n In an interview<\/a> in September, Vandana Shiva, the great ecologist\/physicist in India said, \u201cBehind my search for science there is a desire to know the truth about the world. This is my driving force and my oxygen. When you\u2019re taking on the biggest brutal powers of the world, then your own seeking has to be on very sound ground.\u201d<\/p>\n\n Twenty-four hundred years ago, Socrates taught that \u201cAn unexamined life is not worth living.\u201d To change society, Mahatma Gandhi practiced \u201csatyagraha\u201d (holding truth), and he addresses this in his autobiography \u201cMy experiments with truth,\u201d examining his own prejudices and errors. With this commitment to truth, Gandhi defeated the most powerful empire of his time. <\/p>\n\n Beware the echo chamber<\/strong>: It may help to avoid superficial explanations that appeal to you or to your network of friends and colleagues. Even if such explanations contain some truth, you\u2019ll be more effective if you understand these truths yourself and consider counter evidence. We mock climate deniers for ignoring certain \u201cinconvenient truths,\u201d but what inconvenient truths do we ignore? We won\u2019t find an answer to this question if we do not look for it. Even well-intentioned people have led humanity down futile paths, often following some unexamined doctrine. <\/p>\n\n The internet has helped democratize information, but it has also created silos of doctrine, enticing people to locate the opinions that endorse their own view. This is called \u201cconfirmation bias,\u201d reinforcing the shared beliefs of any faction. <\/p>\n\n Deep diversity<\/strong>: Greenpeace grew out of the civil rights and peace movements of the 1960s, and has now come full circle to embrace social justice while seeking peace and ecological solutions. Our progressive social movements value a diversity of gender, culture, and life experience. We may also value a deeper diversity of ideas and perceptions about what is most important or most urgent. <\/p>\n\n In my experience, we build deep diversity by abstaining from superficial virtue signalling and abandoning the expectation that all dispute or controversy can be resolved. Part of quieting our ego is the work of shedding the desire to be correct, or to make others wrong. Building deep diversity is the art of being at peace with multiple opinions, holding contradictory ideas and ideals in our consciousness with patience and compassion. <\/p>\n\n Deep ecology<\/strong>: \u201cThe major problems in the world,\u201d my first ecology mentor Gregory Bateson would say, \u201care the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.\u201d To get a feel for how nature works, one needs to observe the natural world, the relationships, the forces, contention and cooperation, and to appreciate the long, complex run of evolution. <\/p>\n\n Sometimes we feel compelled to work at an immediate, practical level, to clean up a river, restore a forest, or reverse some industrial destruction. However, I\u2019ve learned that it is helpful to build up a deep, emotional sense of what is sacred, what is the enduring essence of the world we care about. Many Indigenous people of the western hemisphere end prayers with \u201call my relations,\u201d for good reason. We are animals too, related to all life. Humanity will be better off if we let go of notions that we will manage nature, and learn to be a partner of nature and a student of nature. <\/p>\n\n Localize<\/strong>: I suspect that most of the important solutions to our ecological dilemma are going to be local in scale. One may engage in global issues, but there may be few actual global solutions. Human society is too diverse and governments are too often corrupted, self-serving, and incompetent. By \u201clocalize,\u201d I mean protect your local ecosystems, build community cohesion, grow food, examine local energy options, practice community scale health care, recycle everything, learn how to repair everything you use, and teach all you learn to the children and to each other. <\/p>\n\n Creativity<\/strong> is one of the most important elements of effective social change, but there is no formula for creativity. We can, however, preserve and protect the conditions for creativity. We never know where the next great strategy is going to come from. Our chances of finding those great ideas are better if everyone feels welcome to express ideas, and if new ideas are taken seriously. <\/p>\n\n Meanwhile, I find that it helps to practice personal creativity, to pursue one\u2019s passions, the creative arts and deep learning in one\u2019s fields of interests. Teaching others is another way to experience creativity. Nature is infinitely creative. Even the cells in our bodies appear to experiment with new ways to express genetic messages. <\/p>\n\n The deeper crisis<\/strong>: We are in the midst of a well-documented climate crisis, but it will help our struggle if we recognize that climate disruption is a symptom of a much deeper crisis that ecologists call \u201covershoot<\/a>.\u201d Successful species in any ecosystem tend to overshoot the capacity of their habitat. Wolves will overshoot the prey in a watershed, algae will overshoot the nutrient capacity of a lake, and now humanity has overshot the resource capacity of the entire Earth. All solutions to overshoot \u2014 for any species in any habitat \u2014 involve a reduction of consumption by that species. Since we are natural animals, even with all of our advances and technologies, we will need to pay attention to the natural limits on our growth. <\/p>\n\n Understand communication<\/strong>: Greenpeace was influenced by Marshall McLuhan, who wrote in Understanding Media<\/em><\/a>, \u201cWe live mythically and integrally.\u201d He warned that reciting the facts of our crisis is not enough. Communication requires narrative, connecting at an emotional level. Like biological evolution itself, society consists of chaos, bursts of growth, transformation, collapse, disruption, randomness, and novelty. To create change, one has to disrupt the cultural myths that keep society stuck. We do this with narrative, so that people feel the message in their hearts. <\/p>\n\n A Hindu mentor once said to me many decades ago: \u201cWe are the ocean, not the waves.\u201d This reminder to see the larger context, to not get stuck in trivial events, has served me many times. <\/p>\n\n \u201cSeeking truth and saving the planet\u201d: an interview with Vandana Shiva, with Sara Furxhi, Welcome to the Jungle<\/a>, September 2, 2021<\/p>\n\n \u201cSoil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis,\u201d Vandana Shiva, North Atlantic Books<\/a>, 2015.<\/p>\n\n Gregory Bateson, \u201cMind and Nature,\u201d Random House, 1984, Thriftbooks<\/a>, and pdf<\/a>. My favorite deep ecology book, not a list of alleged solutions, but rather how to think ecologically. <\/p>\n\n \u201cThinking in Systems,\u201d Donella Meadows, Chelsea Green<\/a>, 2008. Meadows is the lead author of the 1970s ground-breaking Limits to Growth<\/a>; this book examines how change occurs in a complex system such as global society.<\/p>\n\n \u201cWhat Can We Do?\u201d Rex Weyler, Greenpeace International<\/a>, June 2018. My suggestions for ecological priorities. <\/p>\n\n Nora Bateson, \u201cSmall Arcs of Larger Circles\u201d: R. Weyler review<\/a>; book at (Triarchy Press<\/a>, 2016: Notes on how to think the way nature works. <\/p>\n\n William Catton, Overshoot<\/a>, University of Illinois, 1980. The early expression of the deeper crisis. <\/p>\n\n William Rees, \u201cThe Way Forward: Survival 2100<\/a>,\u201d Solutions Journal v.3, #3, June 2012. What would it take to actually live sustainably. <\/p>\n\n![\"Underwater](\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/static\/planet4-international-stateless\/2021\/11\/c46360a5-gp1swhqd-1024x683.jpg\")
![\"Plastic](\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/static\/planet4-international-stateless\/2021\/11\/3237368a-gp0sttyiw-1024x683.jpg\")
![\"Mural](\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/static\/planet4-international-stateless\/2021\/11\/a78eb696-gp1swd8i-1024x683.jpg\")
\n\nReferences and useful sources<\/strong>: <\/h4>\n\n