Can We Create A Future We Want? #1

Can we create a future we want? You know, not to be a downer or anything, but at this point, I'm thinking it's going to be like really, really hard.

Last week The Silwood Group published a paper in the journal Sustainability Science by SpingerNature called “Improving conservation practice with principles and tools from systems thinking and evaluation.” It’s pretty good. It offers up useful tools and methods from systems thinking and evaluation and introduces some novel ideas about designing a conservation and sustainability praxis that is fit for purpose.

(Disclaimer: I am a founder and coordinator of The Silwood Group. I feel okay about promoting Silwood and this paper because we worked hard to create something of quality, value and significance for ourselves and others. Besides that, some of what I’m about to share are highlights of my most sucky performances.)

The authors of this paper - known as The Silwood Group because it’s such a rad name - are amazing people. We met up for the first time about five years ago...a group of evaluators, conservation biologists, systems thinkers and negroni-drinkers deeply concerned about the persistence of life on Earth.

Like I said, extraordinary folks. Gracious, kind, compassionate, brilliant, ambitious, productive, effective, creative, curious, patient, courageous, generous. No one is all of that in equal measure mind you. I mean, no one is up for sainthood or anything, yet. But my point is that, as a group, these are the kind of people we want working to create that future of well-being. And that is what they are doing every day. Glenda Eoyang. Beverly Parsons. Carly Cook. Alex Ortega Argueta. Kent Redford. Martin Reynolds. Claudia Romero. Cameron Norman. Duan Biggs. Andrew Knight. Allison Catalano.

Right, so about five years ago we got together to work on creating a future we want. Relatively early in our work, seems early now anyway, we decided that we were designing a praxis. I'm pretty sure only a few of us knew what that meant, much less whether we were capable of designing one. But I thought it sounded so cool. I mean how many words have x's in them? Well, there are 6,832 English ones but most are not so catchy. My point is that the word "praxis" was new and cool and shiny and, well...I'm so in. Aristotle was too so how great is that?

(Hot tip: if you read the paper, you'll learn a bit more about praxis)

Generally, after lots of talking it over, we were all pretty convinced that our praxis showed tremendous promise for someone, somewhere. So, we decided to take it out into the world and show our colleagues at a big international conference and what else? Duh. Write a paper about it...because, well, obviously.

So years later and not much resembling the starting point, a paper was published! I think all of us picked up a few scars and personality disorders along the way, but, as I say, it turned out. But was it worth it? Did or will anything of significance come of it? Says who? How could or should the process have been different? Should all of us have been doing something else with our time and tears? What came from all of that doing and thinking, thinking and doing? What should we do next? Why does it matter?

Though evidence abounds, I’m not sure there are satisfying answers to any of these questions. But I did chuckle while writing them. After 11 years as a Social Scientist and Evaluator in the Administrator's Office at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, I’ve asked these sorts of questions before…and it’s always the start of a great adventure!

(Note: I strongly believe that civilization itself may be transformed for the better if we said and wrote the words "chuckle" and "chortle" more often.)

Follow the next few posts under this title - “Can We Create a Future We Want?” - to learn a little something about how a few people with some common fundamental values went from nothing to something. I'll share some stories and thoughts about the evolution of a small group with relatively few connections into a wicked messy process that created this one paper...and an infinitely nuanced and expanding universe of living relationships that, as a whole, is the design and emergence of a praxis for creating a future we want. 

Whoa, that sounds nuts! Who writes this stuff?

Please read, or at least share, the paper. Its pretty good.

Matt