See Beyond Our Collective Blindspot

Using systems thinking to shrink problems instead of piling them up

An Attainable Dream

James Greyson says: Wouldn't it be nice if the world didn't seem so mad?
All the world's problems are pretty obvious yet things keep getting get worse.
The way that people try to tackle big ecological and social problems hasn't really changed over the decades and the 'solutions' tend to be inadequate or even counter-productive.
This tells us that ineffective solutions stand out and that potentially effective solutions are elusive, hidden in the blindspots of our perception.

The usual way to try making big problems manageable is to divide them up.
Which problem is the priority? What can we do locally?
Although this seems very practical and suits our modern way of thinking, it hasn't actually worked.
The other approach is to think about global problems globally and joined-up problems in a joined up way.
Systems thinking can allow solutions to be designed to match the scale and speed of problems.
In particular, the machinery of economics can be rejigged to prevent the problems that it's currently designed to cause.

Co-operating with nature and each other is now an achievable vision
Climate stability, international security, expansion of nature, meeting basic human needs and economic growth are an indivisible goal-set.
Curiously, this makes it easier to achieve them as a set than to try achieving any of the separately.
It also means that the long-standing obstacles to each goal are now avoidable by making fairly simple changes to the economic 'rules of the game'.
Powerful tools are now available to make sustainable development economically achievable and to use economic competitiveness as a 'weapon' for peace and security.

The Blindspot 'dream' is being developed and published in NATO Advanced Research Workshops.
Find out more with BlindSpot's 'climate briefing' at (United Nations Environment Programme) website.
How can ideas like these be used to turn things around fast?

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Looking At Blindspots