Thought Starters

Alliance Thought Starters are short modules that use graphics to enable people to quickly grasp important ideas without having to read too much.

You may freely download and use the modules below. They are under a Creative Commons licence that authorises you to use them in commercial or non-commercial workshops, but they may not be commercially published without permission from the producer.

You are welcome to submit modules of your own.

There is always room for improvement. None of these prototypes are very polished. You may join a forum [coming soon] to explore creating, using, critiquing and improving thought starter modules. Current modules include:

Partnership-Dominator outcomes: hope vrs despair
This diagram shows the real world consequences of the two fundamental modes of relating.

The essence of environmental sustainability
This module introduces a key thinking skill for understanding environmental sustainability: look at trends, not toxicity levels. Cumulative environmental deterioration is unsustainable.

The Great Contradiction between sustainability and economics
This module shows how the environment, economics and personal psychology work as a unified system, and shows how achieving environmental sustainability and economic increase are incompatible.

Tipping points
At a certain point irreversible changes begin to cascade. Understanding tipping points helps us see that we are in a planetary emergency. There are can be positive tipping points as well - we want goodwill to set the tone.

Inner work
Unresolved emotional disturbances cut us off from the pleasure of our own being, and tend to make us addicted to status and excess consumption. We may be reluctant to look at these.. We should know that the ’joy of our own true nature’ lies underneath.

Spectrum of healthy psychological development
A vision of health at every level.

Bridging from local issues to common cause
We tend to work in our own silos. The way forward is changing the system that we are all embedded in to positive values.

Perceiving deep structure
Perceiving structure is an important thinking skill.

The economy as a rainforest
Although understanding economics overall is complex, we can grasp the structure of the main economic flows.

Our global civilisation is undercutting itself
How ecologically we are cutting the ground from under our own feet.

Playing Russian roulette with the planet for money
A wry cartoon.

Under the blanket of economic increase lie a multitude of sins
A cartoonish way of looking at economics