Need for Culture to Change with Andrew Gaines of Inspiring Transition

Hello and welcome to this episode of Conscious Design. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, and author of Conscious Design book. And I'm excited to have today with me Andrew Gaines. He's the instigator or founder of Inspiring Transition. They're an organization helping to transition our culture into a more life-affirming, rather than just economy-based culture. And he's also the author of the book Inner Work, which is not his first. He's written a couple other books we may get into. He's also a Feldenkrais practitioner, psychotherapist, and a creativity trainer. Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Yeah, so really good to have you here. And I kind of wanted to start out first, 'cause everybody loves a little bit of an origin story. And how did you come into doing this work? Obviously, it's a great life-affirming culture. That is something we should have, but I'm assuming you didn't just jump into this when you're, you know, 10 years old and decide that this is what you're going to do. So I'd love to have you share a little bit of the story of how, how you got here and started to, you know, instigate the inspiring transition.

I did an exercise with a great teacher, Jean Houston. She asked the group to walk backwards into the world of our ancestors. Big hall, lights down. So I'm walking backwards, feeling bored. Then suddenly, Ian, it's as though I am the headman of a village in Turkey 6,000 years ago, 4,000 BC. I've got a martial arts belly. I'm proud of my village. It's well run, orderly, waving fields of grain. Then I think, what would it be like to be the village headman's wife? So I take a step sideways and instantly I've got a belly dancer's belly, tidal, alive. And as a wife, I love the life of the village. And then Jean says, all right, everybody. Now I would like you to walk forward as though And as you walk forward, imagine that somebody from, say, 400 years in the future is looking back to you as an ancestor. And with that, I burst out crying, as did about half the group. For me, it was because I felt connected to coming generations. And I shifted from being a pessimistic idealist to being a committed optimist. But I didn't know what to do with it. Yeah, some years later, I was put in contact with a group that does sustainability coaching. I learned a system called the Natural Step. And while I was in that training, somebody mentioned a term that was new to me, corporate social responsibility.

Now it's a buzzword.

Yep. My academic background is in philosophy. So I thought, oh, sounds important. Before I find out what other people mean by it, I should think it through for myself, which I did. And I said, oh, well, the world of ecological emergency, it should mean corporations taking responsibility for the well-being of the whole society. As you might imagine, I didn't find any corporation doing that. Now, I happen to be a Feldenkrais practitioner. And as Feldenkrais practitioners, we help people move better. So if somebody comes to me and says, Andrew, I've got pain in my left knee, I don't try to fix the left knee. I say, hmm, what's going on with the ankles, the shoulders, their hips such that they strain the left knee but not the right?

Hmm.

And we intervene to help the whole system, if you will, the whole body move in a more integrated way. So we start with what I call a systems analysis. So taking that idea of how does the system work, I looked at the whole culture. How does our culture make the environmental issues worse? How does it make global warming worse?

Hmm.

And so I thought, well, there are some people who think deeply about that. I've learned from them, but they have no delivery system. There are people with massive networks, but they're not systems thinkers. So I said, well, I guess it's on me to bring it together. So that's what led me to found, if you will, or instigate Inspiring transition.

Amazing. So, and looking, I think we talked about the whole systems approach, right, is something that there's a lot of, there's a lot of focus on the doing, right? The, oh, you need to have a sustainable material, or you need to recycle, or you need to do those. And some of them are a little bit cultural, but It's a very kind of limited, it's very small action rather than this entire wide culture base. And when you're looking at, looking at this, obviously this, it at least feels like a huge shift to be able to change from, you know, a few little things to the entire culture changing. Is that How do you approach that with your background and how you think about how do you change an entire culture relatively quickly, right? If we want to make impact sooner, how are you— how do you think about how do you approach how to change an entire culture intentionally and not just kind of how we, how we have, which is haphazardly and without— I feel like without thinking things through.

There are several layers to that. Let me just show an image, which I'll describe. This is a cartoon that shows a giant industrial machine that sucks up resources, natural resources, and also, in effect, slave labor, produces all sorts of goods, and also all sorts of pollution. So this is the system we need to change. So the next question asks, well, what drives the system? And it turns out there's no one thing that drives it, as I'm sure you're well aware, Ian, but—

Right.

We could ask, what are the things that make the amount of stuff we have go up? Because it's the more stuff, then the more other kinds of environmental damage that go with the manufacture of them. raw materials and all of that. So what makes stuff go up? Well, that's advertising. It's its job, increase consumption. And then looking bigger, we have the big trade agreements. Not everybody knows about that, but the international trade agreements, their purpose is to increase trade. Right.

Makes sense.

If we look at who profits from the system, All affluent people profit to some degree from it. That's just the reality. But the top 0.1% really profit. The system is devoted to economic growth. So economic growth drives our destruction, which is a, for some people, absolutely obvious. And for other people, that's something they have to get their head around because understandably, we have some investment in economic growth.

Right. We measure our success by GDP, not— Yeah.

Then there's also population growth. But there are also psychological factors. People buy excess stuff because they're unhappy inside. At least this is one of the reasons. So that can show up as retail therapy, just a little shopping to feel better. Or it can show up as, I've got to look important. So now we're talking about mansions and Learjets. So I have a little tool. It's called Kitchen Table Conversations. Let's see, you're on screen, but people can't see me. I'm just a little window.

Oh yeah, we can, we can see both.

Okay, so it's a tool for those things I just mentioned as labels on beer coasters. So the idea is to have a lot of people conducting kitchen table conversations, as we call it, kitchen table conversations, to help people develop a mental map of the things we need to change, which are all the things I just said.

Right.

Now, the payoff for that isn't immediate practical change. There's lots of practical change going on, and we need more of it, and this will amplify it. But the other level is it will prepare people to accept changes to the economics.

Okay.

Now, the question is, okay, but how do we take it to scale? A few conversations won't make much difference.

Right.

So my idea about how to take it to scale is to inspire the members of the millions of groups that care, because there are millions of groups that care about environmental well-being or social justice.

Yeah, I recently heard it's 80% of Americans finally agree there's climate change.

Yeah, so if people stepped up and began to have these conversations with people they know, very simple, Jane, would you have a spend coffee with me and want to talk in depth about something serious? Sure, you're my friend.

I'll do that.

If we get millions of people doing it and public intellectuals doing it and da da da, we change the conversation and the thinking such that people are prepared to support leadership and exert leadership for a new goal, which is to transition to a life-affirming culture. Rather than continuing with ecological self-destruction.

Right. And what is— you define what a life-affirming culture, like, what is— what does that mean when you say that? Obviously there's certain things that come to mind, but what— how would you define that?

Well, let me kick it back to you. What comes to your mind just with the phrase?

Well, it's definitely something where You know, life, whether it's in plants, vegetables, humans, animals, those are preferred over potential economic benefits, where it's— you're measuring your success on the state of life rather than just a financial model.

That's the sort of thing I mean. So it means caring for life, caring for community, I regard it as an umbrella term that includes the aspirations and practical actions of the means of groups that I mentioned. They all fit under this umbrella. Conceptually, they do. And there's a marketing idea here. The greatest marketers in the world today are the folks who talk about economic growth. We hear it on the news, celebrated when the stock market goes up. It's bad news if it goes down. The politicians all argue for it.

Right.

So a counter-meme is the goal of a life-affirming culture. So that's the idea is for people to use that meme to talk it up. And again, more deeply, help people explore in depth what's involved, because if we don't change the system, I won't use a swear word, but you know where we're going.

Nowhere good, that's for sure. Well, so on this path, right, shifting— this is a pretty big shift to make. Are there— obviously starting with conversations is always good, right? If you don't talk about it, if you're not aware about it, don't accept it, you can't You can't change anything about that or anything really. So what are, what are your next steps, right? You have, you have the conversations and if, if you're looking down the road a bit, we want to have those conversations, facilitate them. And then what are some of the ways that you think we can begin to move or think about even business in changing from such an economic driven model to life-driven model?

Oh, well, let's stay with business for a moment. Businesses can— one thing that businesses, some businesses are already doing is they're following something called the Natural Step Framework for Sustainability. So what that framework says is very clever. It was developed by a Swedish cancer researcher. And he defined the system conditions, fancy word, system conditions.

Right.

Sustainability in the negative. So it's not sustainable if we fill in estuaries or cut down forests faster than they can regenerate. That's easy to grasp.

Right.

Destroy this stuff, you can't grow anything. It's not sustainable if we Introduce industrial toxins, because we'll die from it.

Right.

Many people are already getting sick. That's why cancer is going up. It's not sustainable if, to put it very technically, we introduce substances from the Earth's crust faster than they normally flow. In other words, we have more lead and mercury, which is in the environment, and we get sick. So, Right. So what businesses have done is say, okay, let's look at where we resource our materials and let's look at our industrial processes and measure how they fit within this framework. And businesses that have done that, that have trained their staff in that, they discovered to their surprise all sorts of waste they hadn't noticed.

Makes sense.

A famous one, Interface Carpets. They said, oh, we sell our carpets to go to the landfill. What if we lease them and take them back? You know, we can reprocess the raw material and that's a profit for us and it's better for the environment. So that sort of thing, businesses can adopt the natural step principles. But there's one more thing they can do, which is Accept responsibility for the whole society, and they can do that by saying on their website or in their offices, "This business supports the transition to a life-affirming culture," and have a little flyer there or a video in the waiting room, whatever. Simply as this business contributing to the shift in consciousness that's going to pull us out of our nose job. Now, there's some tough spots here. Big one is a fair number of businesses are based on junk products.

Yeah.

Folks are going to go out of business. And then it's really tough. We've got robots coming in, people worried about their jobs, even professionals, all of that. No simple solution to that. And I do not have a simple solution. But we can know that either we're going to have a Divided society with a few really wealthy people and technicians and managers and lots of proles, low-level unemployed or whatever. Or we're going to involve it in some other way with more mainstream society and more local production and good things like that. Again, the key thing to have the healthy future is people begin to think about this stuff. And realize that business as usual is disastrous.

Hey, it's Ian here. So glad you're enjoying this episode of Conscious Design. If you want the full scoop on Conscious Design— what it is, how we do it, how you can do it— then check out our book. We wrote it so creative entrepreneurs like you can code social and environmental responsibility right into your brand's DNA. You can download the first chapter for free. Link is in the description. Enjoy the rest of the episode. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share. Well, and it's, I think it's a great point you brought up, um, that people just don't, because even when I talk to clients, potential clients, and then we're talking about projects, there's still a lot of kind of fear or concern around, well, sustainable is expensive, sustainable, it's just not, you know, it's not cost effective. And yet there's examples like what you gave us. Well, there's inefficiency, and I think it's such an interesting tie that usually when you start to actually go be more efficient and reduce waste, you typically become more sustainable. And the same is true the other way.

Yes, sure.

You try to become more sustainable, you start to realize all of the waste that you accepted before, and you go, well, Let's not waste that. Let's reduce waste. And it's, I find it so interesting that there's all those companies and people that realize it, it clicks and they go, oh yeah, well, we started being more efficient and more sustainable at the same time. Now we make more money, better margins, happier employees. But there's still a lot of people that are convinced that it's too hard or too expensive to do. For those people that are still trying to— they haven't quite figured it out that it is better. Because one of the things people are like, oh, well, if we go away from focusing on money, won't we all just become poor and collapse? And that's not the case. But do you have anything that you— for people that have that concern, is there anything that you share, have that helps kind of just showcase this, how possible it is? Because I feel like that's something that people are still just not quite sure if it's possible.

Oh, sure. There's a great book called The Natural Step for Business by Brian Matros. It goes in depth with the thinking and a number of case studies. Interface carpets. IKEA was one of the first ones in Sweden. That's where the natural step originated.

Ah, okay.

But I think there's something real in people's fear. We have an overblown economic system and it's destroying the Earth, as we keep saying.

Right.

So the things that are necessary to, for this culture as a large, in large, to reduce consumption and therefore preserve the environment, it's going to mean economic slowdown. It's the same logic that you just used. We're going to suffer. The thing is, either way, whatever happens, we're going to suffer. It's better to suffer with a more stringent or more maturely modest lifestyle than to suffer because we have, as we had in Australia 2 years ago, even more catastrophic fires coming through.

Mm-hmm.

Global warming is real. These catastrophes are going to escalate. It's not just a one-off 100-year event. No, it's the new terrible normal. So lots of suffering is built in.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. At this point, it's not escapable. It's happening.

So what some people advocate, and to me, this makes sense, is build community connections, invest in community businesses, community power. Those kinds of local things are one line for the future. But then beyond that, government policies could change. Here in Australia, the major parties have long supported fossil fuels.

Right.

With political will, we can— I don't think we can immediately get out of fossil fuels, but we can Indeed, reduce them as is happening. I don't think, again, just to get around ideas together, I don't believe that going 100% renewable is feasible in a short time. Feasible in the sense of doing that and keeping our lifestyle going. It's not going to happen that fast. It's going to happen. It is happening. But So my message is for any business person, make your own business sustainable and of real value to people.

Right.

And if you're not— it's not that, if you're selling junk stuff, then if you suffer, well, that's just how it's going to happen.

Well, you can always start changing your business, right? You can choose to shift it. Yeah.

Are you—

when you're looking at this, right, there's obviously this huge culture, psychological, social aspect, and then there's also technology and things like that. Do you see one or the other being more like— are we behind on one, or is there kind of— how do you— which one do you think We need to put more effort into in order to make, make a shift?

You're asking me an either-or question. How about that, Ian? Really? Well, you can say both. I will answer the question. The piece I'm putting my effort into is the idea of helping people understand that we need to change the system. So that's very outer. It's not psychological primarily. But I happen to be a psychotherapist. And as a human being, I happen to know that there is an enormous amount of trauma in the culture.

Yep.

And the good news is there are also now very effective, what I call experiential techniques, effective things people can do to resolve their Unresolved issues. One of them is known as the tapping technique. It's called EFT, the Emotional Freedom Technique. It's a method of tapping on acupressure points to resolve emotional upsets. Easy to teach, easy to do, and sometimes extremely fast. So I wrote a book called Inner Work. It teaches this technique or introduces, and there's stuff on the web to reinforce it, another technique for using visualization to meet problematic parts of ourselves. And by doing that, resolve some issues. And there's some other things, but these are the main ones. So the vision that goes with the outer kitchen table conversations idea is that people have done inner work, deep meditation, psychotherapy as clients, people who know something about, quote, going inside, can pick up these psychological tools and teach them to other people. That's appropriate. Make the offer. If people pick it up, that's good. If not, That's their choice.

Right.

But to the extent that people pick it up, then we now have another kind of movement to improve emotional health in society at large. That directly relates to both a life-affirming culture, but to sustainability, because people do damaging things or callous things because they've lost their sense of compassion. The compassion is still there. As we clear emotional stuff, our innate compassion, curiosity, creativity, courage, all those qualities of our inner nature just begin to come to the fore. So doing inner work is a critical component, yes, and to this project of evolving a healthy society.

It sounds like, and I feel like this is what Coaches and, you know, a lot of people do, therapists, is helping this inner, you know, your mental state, your psychological state, improving that, and it then rippling out to what you do and decisions you make and things like that. And there seems, at least from what I've seen, there seems to be a pretty strong tie between, you know, people who meditate a lot and are really focused on Making themselves better are often also the same people that recycle more and are more sustainable focused and, and are more trying to create social good with what they do. And there's, there's that tie-in. Is it— is there like a critical— do you think there's a critical mass where there's enough, like we've done enough inner work to help speed up, or is it, is it just a— Does it feel more like a real balance where you just have to do both? And there's no— everyone does both, and then we are able to have the benefits of—

Now, just make a little step backwards here. So yes, there are many coaches, many psychotherapists. The new idea is that they, but also people who have been clients, Become leaders in their own right and teach these tools. And in doing it, they're not acting as psychotherapists; they're acting as trainers. Much lower bar. So this is a Chinese concept called the barefoot doctor. They said, "Oh, we need more medical facilities in rural China." Rather than train up everybody who might be a doctor at great expense, let's train up a lot of people at low-level emergency stuff or ordinary stuff. How do you treat a wound? What do you do with this kind of standard sickness? What do you do with that? So they call them barefoot doctors. The ones who got trained and then became or seemed to be very adept, some of them went on to more advanced training. So I'm encouraging everybody at an ordinary intelligence and some caring to step up and say, hey, these are these tools. We can all be leaders in some fashion, and it's not hard.

More of democratizing in a way. Yeah, this level of education. So there's a, there's an entry point at least, rather than only a few specialists that know The whole spectrum.

An entry point. We're getting beginning steps with people. That's what we're good at. Yeah. Critical mass. Some people say that the critical mass is 3.5%. I have no idea. I have my doubts that it's that low. It seems low. Because people are really invested in economic growth, and the prospect of leaving that is scary for people, understandably. So I don't know, but I'm committed with others to doing my best.

Absolutely. Well, that's always— that's as most as you— that you can do, right? Commit and do your best. And there's not anything better than that.

Yes, but our best as we might imagine now is probably far short of what we could actually do if we thought big and went for big goals.

Yeah, I feel like best, best is always changing. Your best today— well, it should be, right? Your best today should not be as good as your best tomorrow. So it should always be— it should always be improving. That's, that's at least the goal anyway.

So, and that's a fun way to live. Keep learning, keep trying stuff. Sure.

Exactly. Um, something I wanted to make sure— mention, you said you have a weekly drop-in group for people who are interested and want to talk about this kind of thing, correct?

I do, yes. Every Tuesday morning at 9 o'clock Sydney time. Of course, depending on the changing times, this might be around 6 o'clock New York time. And it's an awkward time for people in Europe, but that's what I'm doing at the moment. So 9 o'clock Tuesday mornings Sydney time. Anybody's welcome to drop in.

I think you'll put the Zoom in the link in the chat box or the Yeah, we'll put that, we'll put that in the description for everyone who wants to, wants to join in and have a, have a conversation.

I'd love to see you there, folks. Anybody listening to this, we have common cause.

Absolutely. Is there, just to, to wrap up here, this has been really great and I appreciate you sharing. Is there any last thoughts, words you want to leave anyone listening or watching with?

I have a tagline: Greta Thunberg would have reason to hope when she sees that mainstream society is committed to turning things around. Let's make it happen.

Awesome. Yeah, let's, let's make it happen. It's definitely needed. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for, for taking time out of your day to chat and share what you're doing and Uh, for anyone who's interested, we'll make sure there's a link to your website if you want to check out your books and things like that. But yeah, I really appreciate your, your time and getting on this episode with me.

A pleasure to do it with you, Ian. Very good.

Thanks, Andrew.

Okay, bye.