Transition Culture

Thank you Rob for this inspiring talk..all excited for 2013!and I can’t stand the suspense as well

Welcome back to you too. Excellent talk as ever!
Peter
Transition Town Letchworth

Wow, what a great start to the year, and also the next ten years. I feel energised with excitement. Thank you Rob.

Great talk. We all need inspiration wherever we are in the world. Without that the future is grim.

Happy New Year to all.

Happy New Year Rob & Transition Culture/Network! A great vision is one that is filled in with action and you offered just that bringing in 2013.

Fantastic stuff, as ever.

I love the mycorrhiza analogy – did my PhD on those many years ago! Motivating stuff – many thanks!

Rob – I enjoyed your talk. But I think you’re making a conceptual mistake in setting up cultural versus environmental/climate change perspectives – quite apart from the potential antipathy that can emerge between ‘people who should be friends’. The underlying position that we all have is that ‘economic growth forever is neither feasible nor desirable on a finite planet’. Surely, you accept that position, and if so, people for cultural change and people for environmental change are in this together.

Just the burst of inspiration I/we need to start the year – thanks Rob

I’m inclined to agree with Len. I think it would be unlikely that street groups did not mention climate change in their discussions, especially given the record breaking wet year. However, a very good, upbeat, clearly delivered talk by Rob.

I have listened/watched this a few times and really don’t think Rob is setting the two against each other intentionally – environmental change v. cultural change – I think what he really means is that cultural change is needed to go beyond the straightforward environmental sustainability initiatives – the first needs the second to achieve its full potential – this is discussed in The Transition Companion at page 74 and expanded to discuss intrinsic and extrinsic values in a culture and an individual – something I also incidentally look at in my first book, which was somewhat prescient in its message as it happened. Good talk anyway!

Eleanor – Rob not meaning to set one against the other? I’m sure that’s right. But in expressing the situation in the way he did, that conclusion might be implied – mistakenly perhaps, but nevertheless possible.

Of course our habits, our values, and therefore our culture(s) have to change. But one of the principal reasons this is the case is that our habits, our values and our cultures have developed – by setting up all of living nature and the planet to be controlled by humans – have developed to confront and deny the essential importance of nature in the formation of who/what humans are.

What Rob is contrasting is top down environmental pressure groups trying to stop something they disagree with,often with limited success, whereas the Transition approach is bottom up voluntary behavior change.

John – adding in the word ‘pressure’ tends to give a perjorative twist to the important work that environmental groups do against great odds, and is emphasising an unnecessary dichotomy between various action groups that I mentioned in earlier comments. If TC is not about the sad and getting sadder state of the planet – but providing one positive way of dealing with the degradation afoot – then what is it about? All I’m suggesting is that there shouldn’t be promoted an ‘us and them’ mentality. (And of course there are other positive ways too: ‘Prosperity without Growth’; Steady State Economics; de-growth and Simpler Way initiatives…. Vital actions at the macro-level that are as important as TC initiatives.)