LEONARDO S VISION. A guide to collective thinking and action. Valerie A. Brown

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2 LEONARDO S VISION A guide to collective thinking and action Valerie A. Brown

3 A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN (paperback) ISBN (hardback) Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands Judith Wright: Eve to Her Daughters and Fission and Fusion from A Human Pattern: Selected Poems (ETT Imprint, Sydney 1996). Illustrations Photo SCALA, Florence 2006 Cover design and chapter headings based on ImageAnthroposX.jpg Wikimedia Book design: Kim Tatnell, Big Island Graphics Printed on acid-free paper All rights reserved 2008 Sense Publishers No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

4 To Robin Wallace Brown, with love

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6 Contents Foreword Prologue: in the steps of Leonardo da Vinci vii ix 1. The case for synthesis 1 2. Utopia revisited Parallel worlds Collective decisions Thinking for oneself Community engagement Commonsense inquiry Integrative management A holistic focus A just, secure and sustainable future 167 Bibliography 191 Figures and boxes 205 Index 209

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8 Foreword Valerie Brown, as an inspirational educator and trailblazing social change agent for decades, has written a book on social learning for transforming society. This requires society covering all knowledge bases so to speak. All forms of knowledge and cultures have to be conscientiously covered in society for sustainability to have a chance. Valerie s book has good examples of the processes by which this can occur based on extended practical experience. From now on in society, she is arguing, each generation will need to learn to become more empathetic and competent with each of the know ledge cultures. Eventually society as a whole will have to have some kinds of formal processes and dedicated places to enable this to occur. Valerie s book is about transforming society from within by transforming the ways we think and act in the human, and the more than human world. It is an ideal. It is full of hope and optimism. It is Leonardo s gift or his inspiration that is also at the heart of this book. Valerie has shared how she was (and is) so much inspired by Leonardo da Vinci and his successors that she decided to write the book. This personalises the book for the reader and enables Valerie to incorporate her own experience into the book. She has devoted much of her life to breaking down barriers to learning and living by building up dialogue skills between people in order for them to learn to share their knowledge and understanding. It has been Valerie s way of empowering people, increasing their capacity to learn, be heard and act responsible as individuals and as members of a social group, local community, and the wider society. Once learning is empowered in people (often after a dis-empowering formal education) they become more ready, willing and able to work things out for themselves and to take appropriate action. The long-term goal in the book is for a just, secure and sustainable future. It is not a realistic goal in the current socio-political context but a felt necessity and a necessary statement of hope for many of us. Could global climate change be the catalyst for setting out on Valerie s way ahead? Then Valerie s emphasis on social learning for transforming society could be off and running. Here is a handbook for implementing transformative learning throughout the whole of society by acknowledging that there is a different way ahead. It seems that Leonardo s vision is about learning to share the space we have claimed for ourselves as individuals, members of knowledge cultures, national governments, etc. Further, the more of humanity there are, the less space there is for others including our fellow life travelers on Earth. This is what a just, secure and sustainable future is all about too: how do we share our planet? It requires the socially transformative kinds of learning which are offered in Leonardo s vision. John A. Harris BSc, PhD, Ecologist. Coordinator, Master of Community Environmental Studies University of Canberra, Australia, 2006

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10 Prologue: in the steps of Leonardo Leonardo da Vinci, , a true Renaissance man, whose habit of rigorous enquiry, observation, and experiment, grounded in a philosophic system, led him to conceive of the universe as an organized cosmos corresponding to a work of art. - Kenneth Clark, Introduction Leonardo da Vinci London Penguin. This book has been written in the belief that learnintg to act collectively with a shared understanding of the whole is the major challenge of our time. Our society and our lives have become structured in ways that actively prevent us working together towards common goals. Institutionalised barriers block collaborative action on crucial matters of economic and environmental management, health and future community well-being. A strong antidote is needed in order to access the immense capabilities hidden behind the socially-embedded divisions and oppositions that limit much of what we do. As individuals, competing personal, professional and organisational loyalties can fragment our everyday lives. Concentrating on specialised skills restricts the development of the full set of our abilities. Communities struggle to maintain a shared identity in the face of constant social change. Organisations have licence to bypass the public good and work only for their private ends. Governments seek to reconcile competing economic, social and environmental interests. Globally, a humane future for Earth requires a concerted response to the planet s disintegrating life support systems. We need to ask whether it is possible to re-order these powerful divisive systems into a different pattern, one based on collective decisions and collaborative action. A positive answer lies right under our noses, and is well within our existing capabilities. Successful resolutions of the complex issues surrounding the future of both people and planet are already available. Some of them make up the content of this book. But the difficulties should not be underestimated. Collective thought and action requires a two-fold transformation in our current ways of thinking and acting. First, as individuals we need to bring together our mutual learning from the many facets of a changing world, while maintaining our personal integrity. Second, as a society we need the tools and the courage to overcome the social divisions that stand in the way of a humane and sustainable future, while building on our learning from the past. To take either of these actions requires significant change in how we acquire our knowledge and make our decisions. Our approved mode of thinking has been to reduce issues into their component parts and focus on one aspect at a time. Our social institu-

11 LEONARDO S VISION tions then ensure that our lives are lived within the restrictive limits set by that thinking. The task before us is not to reject the previous thinking out of hand, but to re-position it within a wider perspective that connects the parts and throws light on the whole. Such ground-breaking shifts have happened several times in history, although never over a canvas as wide as the future of the planet. One such shift, the innovative era of the 15th century Renaissance, grew out of a simultaneous openness to learning in all branches of knowledge. This same human capacity to think and act across boundaries is available to address the complexity of the issues that face the 21st century, even though under very different circumstances. One of the pathfinders of the Renaissance, and an icon of our own time, Leonardo da Vinci offers a bridge between the two eras. He was a person whose world was not divided. His paintings carry strong political messages as well as being superbly beautiful (think of The last supper). His inventions helped open up whole new worlds of human experience (the aeroplane, the diving suit, irrigation canals and the bicycle). His journals foretold the discovery of unifying threads of thought, such as chaos theory and the double helix of DNA. Even in his scribbling he bridges the boundaries we have erected between interpretations of the physical and social worlds, between accuracy and imagination (as in the figure below). He continually faced disapproval and even rejection by the institutional forms of his day, at the same time as being the object of adulation in his own community. To 21st century minds trained to keep their thinking in different compartments, Leonardo s ability to combine diverse capacities in understanding the whole can seem beyond their grasp. Yet the events reported in this book confirm that each human being is born with the same potential for integrative thinking as Leonardo and his contemporaries. Each community holds the same inherent capacity to bring all its capacities to bear on moving towards a better future. An increasing number of people are making their contribution towards a more united world. This may be through being a Renaissance thinker and writer; in a formal role as negotiator, strategic planner, knowledge broker, advocate, or team-builder; or as a personal choice. From whatever starting point, finding the connecting patterns in today s world is no straightforward task. My own experience of the difficulties began after I completed one of the earliest ecology courses in the 1950s. I had learnt to regard the world as a dynamic living system. In my first job, I was one of a team conserving the natural systems of a sub-tropical rainforest. I soon found that any success lay in combining good science and strong skills in the socio-political arena. After realising that both fields are part of the one dynamic system, I also learnt the difficulty of finding a meeting-place between the two. x