Climate Change, International Co-operation and Environmental Education.
I lead a one-day workshop called, “Personal and Cultural Evolution” which describes various aspects of personal growth and relates them to cultural change.
In that workshop I share the perspective that the global problematique calls for a different type of education than sharing information. Call it consciousness-raising or evolutionary education.
90% of culture is unconscious. That is 90% of culture is a set of habits and assumptions shared by a group of people. This is illustrated by the model, Four Stages of Learning a Skill: stage
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Unconscious and incompetent
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Conscious and incompetent
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Conscious and competent
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Unconscious and competent
or:
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You have not tried it and don’t know how difficult it is.
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You have tried it and feel overwhelmed, needing support, encouragement and determination to move ahead.
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You have practiced a lot and can do it competently if you give it all your attention.
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After lots more practice you can do it without thinking.
This model, applied to cultural change, shows the role of consciousness in cultural change:
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Old dysfunctional culture
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Dawning awareness of problems
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Replacing old habits with new skills
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The new skills become habitual, creating a new, functional culture.
Some of the dysfunctional habits of our culture are traditional, such as the co-dependent nature of relationships between the sexes. Other habits are relatively new, such as consumerism which has been inculcated by mass advertizing in the last century.
The model explains why information, received via traditional education, news media or books, only takes us to stage two: aware of problems but overwhelmed. Information without support is dis-empowering. The typical coping strategy, itself an unconscious habit, is to go into denial. In my view this is the state of most people in the western world, bombarded by prophesies of doom in the media yet clinging to the habits by which we are collectively wrecking the planet.
What does support look like? We need to understand that letting go of old habits, of old culture, entails a grieving process in which denial is the first stage. Before reaching acceptance people go through anger and sorrow. Without support people get stuck in these first three stages. In support the monologue of imposition of information is replaced by dialogue, where the first skill is listening. The feelings which inevitably arise are acknowledged and validated. This helps people move on from these feelings towards acceptance of the situation. Acceptance liberates the creativity we need to adapt to new challenges.
This historical process is already happening. A significant minority is becoming conscious and starting to respond creatively. It is just that, if the goals are environmental education and global co-operation, we need to understand that information is only part of the solution and can be counterproductive without support.
Edward Butterworth 2016
The decline of tradition 