How I became a committed optimist

We know in principle that we can become environmentally sustainable. Yet the betting odds are against it, and it is likely that our global civilisation will fail through ecological collapse and war. At the same time, as Paul Hawkins points out, there are millions of people working for positive change. We are in a race between good will and dementia.

The question is, then, how do we position ourselves mentally in this situation? My own answer is to choose to be a committed optimist. Here is how I came to this position.

For years I was a pessimistic idealist, readily reciting a list of imminent disasters. As it happened I did a workshop with Jean Houston. She gave an exercise that changed my attitude.

Jean began by talking about how everyone in the world is only a few contacts – perhaps six – from anybody else in the world. The 'you know someone who know someone who knows Bill Clinton' sort of thing. Then she dimmed the lights (it was a fairly large hall) and asked us to "walk backward into the world of our ancestors." I walked backwards with my eyes half shut, feeling bored as I usually do at the beginning of such exercises. Then my perception changed, and I experienced myself standing in a field of grain outside a village in Turkey. I was the village headman, and my abdomen felt like a martial artist's belly. I was proud of my village. It was orderly and well run.

I wondered what it would be like to experience being the headman's wife. Immediately I experienced myself as having a belly dancer's abdomen – not a sexy show off kind, but a personal one that loved the tides of life. I too loved the village. I loved the life in it – the grandmothers and babies, the cooking and the cats...

Jean said, "Now walk forward... and imagine that someone from 400 years or so in the future is calling back to you as an ancestor for support."

Well, it is different to read about it than to do it, and we all come to change in our own way. Half the room broke out in tears, and I was among them. I felt connected to future generations.

With that I shifted from being a pessimistic idealist to being a committed optimist. I now maintain what I call the 'optimistic stance' – a willingness to work for the good without regard for the apparent odds. As part of this stance I am always on the lookout for ideas that can contribute to making the world work.

When I ask, "Why do I persevere?" my answer is that to opt out would be to surrender my sense of connection to life.

There were several steps that led me to form The Alliance for Sustainable Wellbeing. Some years ago I joined EcoSTEPS, a sustainability consultancy, and I trained in The Natural Step. The Natural Step is a scientifically based approached to working out in realistic terms whether a company, a nation or our entire global civilisation is sustainable or not. So I became acutely aware of our environmental situation.

One of our colleagues introduced me to the term Corporate Social Responsibility. I was intrigued, and I thought that before I found out what other people meant by the term I should think it through for myself.

I concluded that CSR should mean corporations taking responsibility for the well being of the whole society.

I did not find this to be a significant part of mainstream discussions. And since I had the insight, I took it on myself to carry the idea forward.

I am now a point where I think that achieving ecological sustainability is up to all of us, and thus I came to form the Alliance for Sustainable Wellbeing.

My academic background is in philosophy and engineering. I spent years in the area of personal development as a Feldenkrais practitioner, psychotherapist and creativity trainer. I have the honour of being an international thought leader in the Creative Leadership Forum.

I am a big picture systems thinker; I look at the connections between ecology, economics, industrial production, consumerism, personal psychology and people's core values. These all work as a unified system. I have been reading omnivorously for years to develop an integrated map of how it all works.

Mastering the detail is beyond any one person. But the main structural elements on which our society runs are not that hard to identify.

Since few people have the time to do omnivorous reading, I have devised an approach to making short systems diagrams to enable people to see connections.

Through years of personal development, including working on my own psychological issues, I am often in states of pleasurable inner wellbeing. I wish this for everybody. May you know the joy of your own true nature.

Andrew Gaines