Compassionate Systems presentation at SCARP
This is a talk I gave at the UBC School of Community and Regional Planning. I was asked about Community Based Social Marketing and water conservation behaviour.
a Small and Delicious Life
Common Sense for the New Times
a Small and Delicious Life
Common Sense for the New Times
Tag compassionate systems
At the end of the world, there is plenty to do.
“Well, should we just give up then?” If only I had a dollar for every time I have heard this, always from well-meaning people.⊕Well, if I had a dollar for each time, I would be drinking Laphroaig right now, with…
The harsh reality of cognitive limits.
Want to Build Great New Habits?Interested in the Stunning Research that Changes Everything?How about The Brain Hack that Makes You a Winner? Clickbait like this is common, alongside more respectable Serious Yet Slightly Breathless News Items. I spent several years…
We have enough Ideas (or, No pie for you.)
Why are we not winning the fight against climate chaos? Why was Trump just elected? Why has there been a slaughter of drug addicts this year? Because we think about change wrong,⊕You can read all my past writings on this…
Free Will: we (might) use it just often enough to think it actually matters.
Our cultural veneration of free will traps us in dead-end expectations that are unsupported by reality. If we want to make effective change, the idea of free will is one of the first things we should jettison, or at least…
Forest fires show the failure of democracy.
Two days ago I awoke to an eerie, silent hellsky. It was dusky dark, even first thing in the morning. The colour and brightness of the sky was all wrong, not just overcast but unnatural. Throughout the day, people described it…
The Compassionate Systems Theory of Change
Most of our attempts to make change rely on a belief that people can change, that change is possible. Of course, this is true—but just barely. So, this is not much of a theory of change, but rather a Theory…
Language shapes our thoughts? Who cares?
Despite being regular humans with the same eyeballs as the rest of us, did you know that if a language has words that finely differentiate shades of blue and green, the speakers of that language are better able to distinguish…
Compassionate Systems—behaviour change and invasive species slidecast.
Why is changing behaviour so hard? In this slidecast I share a way of answering that question, and how Compassionate Systems can increase the effectiveness of our work. This was recorded at the Invasive Species forum in Richmond, BC, in…
Compassionate Systems
We are swamped with requests—seductions—for our attention. Most of these will fail, and if you are in the business of changing people—say you work for a government or non-profit—most of your work will fail too. This is because change hurts.…