Overview of methods with a focus on qualitative or soft systems methods based on kurt kreuger's workshops

Clone of IM-91683 from jacqui and vincy Summary of paper map produced by participants at the compelling case for prevention workshop 6 june 2017. 

Counterfactual views are claims or beliefs that are contrary to established facts. Such views can be extremely harmful.  An example would be the false claims made by climate-change-deniers. This simple graph of two self-reinforcing loops illustrates that there are circumstances where such false beliefs strengthen once a sufficiently large number have accepted them. The mechanism, well documented by research in cognitive psychology, is frequent repetition, which makes such false messages appear ever more familiar and to take on an air of factual truth.

An effective leverage point would be for newspapers and TV station simply to deny to authors that want to spread counterfactual views access to their platforms.  Whilst everybody has the right to express their opinion, does anybody have the right to invent their own facts in an attempt to undermine general well-being?

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cycle of climate change and how human actions designed to mitigate the effects make the change worse

This model is an attempt to map out a template for a general implementation plan or strategy for the Enabling a Better Tomorrow process for use with New Community Paradigms

Challenges in sustainability are multilevel.
This diagram attempts to summarize levels of self reinforcing destructive dynamics, authors that deal with them, and point of leverage for change.

The base of the crisis is a mechanistic rather than ecological worldview. This mechanistic worldview is based on outdated science that assumed the universe to be a large machine. In a machine there is an inside and an outside. The health of the inside is important for the machine, the outside not. In an ecological view everything is interconnected, there is no clear separation in the future of self and other. All parts influence the health of other parts. To retain health sensitivity and democracy are inherent. The sense of separation from other that keeps the mechanistic worldview dominant is duality. Being cut off from spiritual traditions due to a mechanistic view of science people need access to inter-spirituality to reconnect with the human traditions and tools around connectedness, inner discovery, and compassion. Many books on modern physics and biology deal with the system view implications. "The coming interspiritual age" deals with the need to connect spiritual traditions and science.

At the bottom for the dynamic is an individual a sense of disconnectedness leads to a dependency on spending and having rather than connecting. The connecting has become too painful and dealing with it unpopular in our culture. Joanna Macy deals with this in Active Hope. 

This affluenza and disconnection is worsened by a market that floods one with advertisements aimed at creating needs and a sense of dissatisfaction with that one has.

National economies are structured around maximising GDP which means maximising consumption and financial capital movement. This is at the cost of local economies. These same local economies are needed for balanced happiness as well as for sustainability.

Generally institutions focus on maximising consumption rather than sustaining life support systems. David Korten covers this well.

Power and wealth is confused in this worldview. In striving for wealth only power is striven for in the form of money and monopoly.

Those at the head of large banks and corporations tend to be there because they exemplify this approach. They have few scruples about enforcing this approach onto everyone through wars and disaster capitalism. Naomi Klein and David Estulin documented this.

Power has become so centralized that we need this understanding to be widespread and include many of those in power. Progress of all of these levels are needed to show them and all that another way is possible.

Draft causal loop

The succession of incidents of gun violence in the USA seems to be set to continue. This CLD explores what might be the major drivers behind these incidents and what could be leverage points of intervention. The deeply rooted believe that guns offer protection against assault with firearms has been identified as a major factor perpetuating the current situation. This false belief impedes sensible legislation to introduce tougher measures to control gun purchases. Proof of the existence of this belief is that the purchases of guns reliably increase after every mass shooting.   There have now been a number of  research papers that have shown that an increase in the access of firearms leads to an increase in gun violence. Guns kept in the home lead to children being injured or killed by guns, more suicides and killings  - the opposite of increased security. Please see the article below. Successfully challenging this cultural belief would probably reduce opposition to effective control on the acquisition of guns and in all probability the number of gun victims.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0804-hemenway-defensive-gun-home-20150730-story.html

This model is an attempt to understand the interactions within an economy in an attempt to determine where the leverage points are to stimulate an economy.

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Strategy is simply an idea as to how to move the current situation to the desired situation though it is seldom simple by any means. If the strategy is to be successful how numerous elements will be able support each other through the transition must be defined.