Post by the Scribe on Oct 29, 2021 6:39:50 GMT
www.thwink.org/
Thwink.org Inc. is a domestic nonprofit corporation organized pursuant to the Georgia Nonprofit Corporation Code, in the United States. We are a strictly non-partisan research organization.
Introduction
Thwink consists of a small band of innovators out to change the way modern activism works.
We believe that root cause analysis is necessary to solve difficult social problems. We also believe that deep, correct root cause analysis of insanely difficult social problems like sustainability is possible. All this site is trying to do is show how this can be done.
There is no need for public interest activists to continue using tools that don't work because all that leads to is frustration, burn out, and an opportunity lost. That's why the Death of Environmentalism memo appeared in 2004. This shook environmentalism to its very core, because on page 10 it declared point blank that "We have become convinced that modern environmentalism, with all of its unexamined assumptions, outdated concepts and exhausted strategies, must die so that something new can live."
That "something new" is is what this page is all About.
Our goal is to help solve the complete sustainability problem using the most efficient and effective methods of analysis available. That requires the reinvention of modern activism so that activists change from using antiquated tools that don't work to ones that do. This can be done by switching to Root Cause Analysis, which will lead to Environmentalism 2.0.
This is necessarily ambitious because traditional activism is simply not working and there are pressing problems to be solved. They need to be proactively solved now to avoid catastrophe later.
It can be done because it's been done before.
"The renaissance enabled a scientific revolution which let scholars look at the world in a different light. Religion, superstition, and fear were replaced by reason and knowledge." ~ John Desmond Bernal, the “Sage” of Cambridge
Like the way scientists changed during the Scientific Revolution, activists need to undergo their own revolution. Activists need to change how they breathe, think, and work so they can solve the world's most difficult common good problems. Above all, they need to change their core problem solving process, just as all of science changed to the Scientific Method in the 17th century.
Here's how you can help reinvent modern activism:
The Core Argument
A sustainable world requires all three pillars of sustainability to be strong. Weakness in any one pillar causes weakness in the others and determines a system's overall sustainability, just as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Let's consider a simple argument. It consists of three premises and a single conclusion:
Three pillars of sustainabilityPremise 1 - Too many areas of the world have these problems:
Environmental unsustainability - Environmental Pillar
Food shortages - Environmental and Economic Pillar
Recurring large recessions or depressions - Economic Pillar
Excessive unemployment - Economic Pillar
Excessive income inequality - Social Pillar
Excessive poverty - Social Pillar
Recurring wars - Social Pillar
Endemic political corruption - Social Pillar
Premise 2 - Millions of dedicated activists, scholars, community leaders, politicians, and concerned citizens have worked on the above problems for generations or longer. Despite that effort, no comprehensive credible solution is in sight for any of the above problems.
Premise 3 - All problems arise from their root causes. (This is the key principle.)
Conclusion - It follows that the only possible reason these problems remain unsolved is that popular solutions do not resolve root causes. Therefore the above problems are not a permanent part of the human condition. They are solvable. They are just as solvable as the autocratic ruler problem, the slavery problem, the universal suffrage problem, and the civil rights problem.
There was a reason Einstein stressed that "A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels." If we cannot break out of old patterns of thinking, we cannot move to the higher level needed to solve the sustainability problem. This higher level of thinking begins with the argument outlined above.