Purpose Inspired #66
PICTURE OF THE WEEK - #PLAY
REFLECTION OF THE WEEK - #ARTS
Are we wrong to keep arguing rationally for a sustainable future? When I spoke at the climate change conference in Vaasa, Finland, in between the usual talks and panel debates, we had films, music and poetry (I read ‘Nature’s Embrace’ and ‘Change the World’). By using the arts, different voices are heard – and they tap into different parts of our brain. One of my books, This is Tomorrow, features artists with a sustainability message, including filmmakers, dance groups, singers, sculptors and others. The more we make sustainable development a cultural celebration, the better our chances of bringing everyone along.
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QUOTE OF THE WEEK - HEARTS AND MINDS
“Sustainability has won many battles, but has lost the war for the hearts and minds of the people”
Quote from Sustainable Frontiers | More quotes on social responsibility, sustainable business and transformational change
ARTICLE OF THE WEEK - CLIMATE MARCHES AND CHANGE
Public protests – like the ongoing climate strikes by young people around the world – usually register as nothing more than a blip on the radar of the daily news cycle. Some group is dissatisfied with something. They exercise their democratic right to wave a few placards and chant some clichéd slogans. It’s mildly interesting, possibly even entertaining. We shake or nod our heads. And then it’s over. We go back to our daily lives. And nothing changes. Or at least nothing usually changes. Unless, by chance, those public protests become a social movement – and the social movement results in institutional reforms. Which is exactly the historic phenomenon that what we are witnessing right now, as wave-upon-wave of climate protests sweep across Europe and the world, gaining momentum with each passing week.
PODCAST OF THE WEEK - PEAK PERFORMANCE IN WORK AND LIFE
Eddy Annys is Managing Director of Randstad Belgium and a Belgian Olympic athlete, who talks about: His experience as a world class high jumper, and how peak performance by world class athletes is only possible by having an enabling system; Why ensuring that everyone has an opportunity for meaningful work remains a challenge – even in times and places of economic prosperity; How we need to challenge historical stereotypes of difference – such as gender and ethnicity – that stand in the way of diversity and inclusion; Why resilience has become a key competence as the world gets more fast-paced and complex – and how this links to the Good Work Goals; and How cobots (collaborative human-robot interfaces) are a new, hopeful trend – and why job automation is not necessarily to be feared.
POEM OF THE WEEK - LOVE IS ...
Love is making mistakes / And fixing them together / Love is raising the stakes / And riding out the weather
We’ll conquer the heights / We’ll cross stormy seas / We’ll defend human rights / We’ll walk for the trees
Love is taking what comes / And shaping it together / Love is twiddling our thumbs / And making fun forever
We’ll face off attack / We’ll march hand in hand / We’ll fight back to back / We’ll make the last stand
Love is building our dreams / And living them together / Love is chasing sunbeams / And never saying never
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We’ll wish on the stars / We’ll camp on the moon / We’ll dance across Mars / To our own loony tune
BOOK OF THE WEEK - THIS IS TOMORROW
“The universe is made of stories, not atoms” (Muriel Rukeyser). We believe the future needs to be re-imagined. This Is Tomorrow depicts the responsible challenges of the 21st century through the words and artworks of a broad spectrum of artists (including graphic artists, filmmakers, singers, dancers and sculptors) from around the world. With art, we can articulate a positive narrative for change. Re-imagining the future one story and one artist at a time.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK - #FLYING
For centuries, we dreamed of flying, marvelling at the freedom of birds and longing to touch the clouds. Since ancient times, we were lured by the magic of flight, yet wary of its strange secrets. Always it was the gods and goddesses who possessed the power of flight. Now we, too, fly.
ARCHIVE OF THE WEEK - FUTURE IMAGES
Speculation about humanity’s recent progress (or lack thereof) are becoming ever more frequent. Even more so are whisperings that humanity might be teetering on the threshold of a new phase in its evolutionary development. Not surprisingly, a search for new images and metaphors to serve as positive visions for the future has begun in earnest. The purpose of this episode is to explore some of the more recent of these images to emerge from the outstanding research and imagination of a few pioneering individuals. A good place to start is to get the Industrial Age well behind us, for it has been a crumbling image for at least the past four decades. In its wake however, we find the explosive rise of a revolutionary successor. I am of course referring to the Information Age. One of the pioneering voices in this regard is American futurist Hazel Henderson. Henderson’s suggested alternative is what she calls a “repatterning of the exploding Information Age” into an emerging new Age of Light.
THRIVING FEATURE OF THE WEEK - ECOLOGY OF COMMERCE
The most obvious example of “bathtub thinking” (an analogy for systems thinking) is that we must decrease nonrenewable resource use—like fossil fuels, minerals, and groundwater—and switch to mainly consuming renewable resources. That’s because, in nature, everything is recycled. Paul Hawken articulated this rather elegantly in his classic book, The Ecology of Commerce, when he noted three ecological principles: 1. Waste equals food; 2. all growth is driven by solar energy; and 3. the overall well-being of the system depends on diversity and thrives of difference.
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