Show Notes
Margaret (Meg) Wheatley (collapse theorist, leadership elder), after working in systems change for more than 50 years, wants to warn us that our current moment demands that we learn how to persevere. Many of us have been “struggling” to “fix” what’s going on in the world and we’re angry, sad, exhausted and despondent with all our efforting.
In this follow-up conversation to the very confronting one we recorded three years ago (in which she says when collapse will occur, and how), Meg talks us through a unique thesis for staying on the “warrior of the human spirit” path…and deriving joy and energy from it. We talk about what to do with our anger, how to handle abject stupidity from others, and techniques for staying vigilant (we go through my terrible morning routine). It’s an episode to pass around all your activist, empathetic, engaged - or otherwise just deeply human - friends.
Meg has worked with global leaders (in the US Army, business, disaster zones, etc.) for five decades, guiding them to see the world through a systems and spiritual lens. She’s published more than a dozen books on her wisdoms, including her 2010 book of consolations Perseverance: A Companion for the Journey, which has just been re-released.
SHOW NOTES Get your copy of Perseverance: A Companion for the Journey by Margaret J. Wheatley Here's the first Wild chat with Meg: An episode on civilization collapse (warning: truly confronting) Meg and I also recorded a second and even more challenging episode that can be found over at my Substack. In this extra episode, we cover how long we've got left, and how collapse will play out. Other Wild conversations with awesome elders: Stephen Jenkinson, Sister Helen Prejean, John Seed and Margaret Atwood Learn more about Meg and her work here.
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Watch on YouTube or Substack If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page For more such conversations, subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most! Let’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Indy Johar (founder of Dark Matter Labs, systems designer) closes this 12-part series on the life-enhancing “what comes next” that we need (and want) to be creating. Indy is one of the world’s most original voices on redesigning societies and he has a radical thesis that brings together most of the themes we’ve discussed so far. He calls it “civilisational optionality”. Our job is not to save civilisation or to know what comes next…. It’s to preserve or expand the capacity for life (that is, humanity and the living world) to adapt to whatever comes next.
Indy Johar (founder of Dark Matter Labs, systems designer) closes this 12-part series on the life-enhancing “what comes next” that we need (and want) to be creating. Indy is one of the world’s most original voices on redesigning societies and he has a radical thesis that brings together most of the themes we’ve discussed so far. He calls it “civilisational optionality”. Our job is not to save civilisation or to know what comes next…. It’s to preserve or expand the capacity for life (that is, humanity and the living world) to adapt to whatever comes next.
Sarah Stein Lubrano (neuroscientist, political scientist, former obituary writer!) is an expert in how to change people’s minds most effectively and for the betterment of all beings. In this chat, we talk through why the techniques that dominated the “old world” – debate, reason, bludgeoning people with facts – no longer serve us. We then go through how persuasion and change will need to work going forward, as we find ourselves needing to cooperate and communicate more effectively than ever before.
John Seed (Deep Ecology OG, global rainforest steward) says we can’t save the world. And that the planetary crisis is not a failure of information or awareness; it’s a failure of human identity. We have the story, the mindset, all wrong. And we need to change it (from human chauvinism to deep ecological connection) if we’re to keep spinning in the Earth’s embrace.
Jeremy Lent (author, systems thinker) is a leading authority on civilisations and has just created a manifesto on how to shift from the current crumbling one to what he calls an Ecocivilization. He joins me to discuss how we can actually get there, drawing on real-life, tangible examples and a bunch of concepts that tend to get people excited. In this chat, we cover: fractal flourishing, phase transition, mutually beneficial symbiosis and the Basque self-governing cooperative Mondragón.