David Suzuki and beyond

He didn't leave us with a lot of hope, and understandably. The population growth statistics, and our impact on the life support systems we depend on, are hard arguments to refute. The biggest thing I was grateful for, was to test the ideas I have been preparing to share at the Signs of Change conference on Monday. I was happy for that, and feel I am on the right track.

It was a full house and then some, at the University talk tonight. The buzz both before his talk and after it would have powered a large part of downtown Auckland if it could have been tapped. And that's the point I wanted to explore some more with him. I waited till the book signing queue had exhausted itself, and probably David too, and jumped in with my copy of "The Declaration of Interdependence" and posed my question.

In the early part of his 70 minute talk, he referred to the early days, after we were first born onto the African continent some 150,000 years ago, and suggested that the thing that set us apart from other mammals was our brain, and its capacity for memory, curiosity and inventiveness. Later he made the links between what we are made of and the four sacred elements of air, earth, fire and water, noting that we are all those things and share them with each other and all life.

My question was to find out if he thought that there was also an element that we might call a shared brain, which I see coming to life via the web. My experience of this is the online communication and sharing tools that have been embraced by the Transition community in New Zealand and which have enabled it to become a substantial self-organising, self-funding movement of people who share a world view and who are responding accordingly.

David did refer to Transition Towns in the Q&A as one of the positive movements towards a healthy relocalisation, but his response to my question was to throw his hands up and let me know that he was not one who believed in a global brain concept and that in fact he felt the internet was dumming us down.

On reflection it was a reasonable and understandable response, from someone who has probably little practical experience of the most recent developments in new media and may have only ever had people philosophise hopefully about the grand potential of the internet to save us.

I'm not suggesting that the web will save us, but I do see the potential for solutions and ideas, collaboration and innovation, to spread virally and at great speed. I like to think I can hold the disastrous future scenarios in my hand, reflecting on them from time to time and adjusting my thinking and actions accordingly. At the same time I have chosen to focus my attention on the positive examples and signs of positive change, that contain within them the seeds of possibility for birthing a new and regenerative world. I know enough to know that the future is yet to be told, but that our thoughts, visions, words, deeds, fears, desires, hopes and even our silence, are what will create the future, so let's hold to the brightest vision we can (plausibly) imagine.

Let's sing the future we want into existence.