I’m glad to see this discussion taking place in this way, because it is one that we have all the time amongst al lot of us working in transition. How to get more people informed, then how to get them to feel that they can actually take action to start working on their resilience and their communities’.
We basically know what we’ve got to do, but it all takes a lot of time and energy. It takes a lot of talking before you can get people to start doing stuff. There’s just no getting away from that. It can be frustrating and seem like all we do is talk, but it still seems the most acceptable way to action.

Do we have enough time? I don’t know, but what else would we do? Sit at home in solitairy despair? Wait for “them”(whoever “they” may be) to sort it for us? Every fruit tree planted, bicycle repaired, person taught how to grow food creates more resilience and will put us in a better position to weather shit hitting fans. Like Sharon, if I could see a better way of getting our communities ready, minimise the suffering and give my children a future worth living, I’d be doing that. But I don’t know of anything else that would work as fast and with as much respect for individuals and humanitairian values as the Transition process as proposed by Rob Hopkins.

I must say, as a transition trainer, I am a bit bemused by all the assumptions regarding transition training. Yes, of course we sit in a circle, duh, it is just the most practical way to see and hear everybody without getting neckache. But we don’t “hold hands”.
The main aim of the course is to get people who want to start up transtion initiatives in their locality prepared to do this in the best possible way. It’s about how to hold productive meetings, how to hold awareness raising events without banging your head on brick walls, how to give talks and presentations on the topic, how to deal with people who are scared and angry because of what you are telling them about their future and to be compassionate. We explore the transition ethos and principles so that people gain a good understanding of these. We look at what has been tried already and what worked and what didn’t, so that people don’t need to keep on making the same mistakes and can speed up the process. And yeah, sure we look at why it is so hard for people to change their ways, how we ended up on such a self destructive path and how we can keep going and not burn out. That’s the inner work that we do that seems to cause such controversy. You can get get people to change what they do without getting them willing to change their expectations, their attitudes and their thinking. To ignore that aspect of humans would just be dumb.

So that’s my twopence worth on the topic. Now I gotta go, got a lotta work to do. All the best to you all!

If I were a cynical person I’d shrug my shoulders and say that’s how the world operates. But I’m not being cynical, I’m outraged.

My main point is: Any government that makes war on others might some day make war on its own people. We should be aware of that.