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

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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 is an architect and Professor of Planetary Civics at Melbourne’s RMIT and the University of Sheffield. He has advised organisations including the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, and governments across Europe and the UK, helping them solve all kinds of complex, entangled problems.

In this very wild conversation, Indy returns to Wild to loop together many of the themes of this series – emergence, fascism, steering AI to a pro-human future and, importantly, wrestling with what it means to be human. An expansive, fun and very real finale, to be sure!

SHOW NOTES

• You can listen to our previous conversation: The Starkest Collapse Prognosis I’ve Heard
• We discuss game theory, and I point to a former Wild interview that explains this, specifically “Moloch”. Catch up here.
• I reference Indy’s Substack essay on the collapse of the self.

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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.

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.

We cover the role of third spaces, why fascist governments always want to shut down cafes, the “gateway” rituals, practices and spaces that get people to open into change as well as how to talk about collapse with people still stuck in a linear mindset (essentially the content of her new book Don’t Talk About Politics, How to Change 21st Century Minds).

Sarah is the head of research for The Future Narratives Lab, which focuses on narratives about social and political change, and serves on the Institute of Imagination’s Global Imagination Board. She was previously the head of content at Alain de Botton’s School of Life.

SHOW NOTES

• You can get your copy of Sarah’s book Don’t Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds here. You can also follow her work on socials.
• Here’s the Substack post that Sarah mentions toward the end: "Don't Talk About Politics"
• Alain de Botton was also a Wild guest, and you can listen to his episode 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.