Dave Pollard retired from paid work in 2010, after 35 years as an advisor to small enterprises, with a focus on sustainability, innovation, and understanding complexity. He is a long-time student of our culture and its systems, of history and of how the world really works, and has authored the blog How to Save the World for over twelve years. His book Finding the Sweet Spot: The Natural Entrepreneur’s Guide to Responsible, Sustainable, Joyful Work, was published by Chelsea Green in 2008. He is one of the authors of Group Works: A Pattern Language for Bringing Life to Meetings and Other Gatherings, published in 2012. He is a member of the international Transition movement, the Communities movement and the Sharing Economy movement, and is a regular writer for the deep ecology magazine Shift. He is working on a collection of short stories about the world two millennia from now. He lives on Bowen Island, Canada.
Cultural Acedia: When We Can No Longer Care
By Dave Pollard, How to save the world
You probably haven’t heard of the term acedia used, and it has several definitions, so I’ll start by defining it. It is a disillusioned detachment, disengagement or dissociation that stems from an incapacity to cope with the realities of the moment.
The Power of Pattern Languages
By Dave Pollard, Shareable
Why are most meetings, conferences and other deliberative processes so bad?
Systems Thinking and Complexity 101
By Dave Pollard, How to save the world
Many of the issues we deal with in our lives involve both complicated and complex systems, and hence have both complicated and complex aspects that need to be teased apart.
How our narratives inform our hopes for change
By Dave Pollard, How to save the world
When co-founder of the Permaculture Movement David Holmgren recently suggested it might be better for the world if we were to try to precipitate global economic collapse in order to mitigate runaway climate change, he received a harsh response from Transition Movement founder Rob Hopkins, and somewhat more sympathetic responses from Dmitry Orlov and Nicole Foss. The second article (due out next month) in my series for Shift Magazine will talk more about this, but in the meantime I wanted to recommend to you Agency on Demand, a fascinating take on this debate, written by Eric Lindberg.
Food security
By Dave Pollard, How to save the world
I was recently invited to an Open Space event hosted by the Bowen (Island) Agricultural Alliance (BAA!) and facilitated by my friend Chris Corrigan. It was a small group — about two dozen — but most of the people there were farmers. With my Transition-based knowledge of permaculture and food security, it was a humbling and eye-opening experience.
The Fire This Time
By Dave Pollard, How to save the world
But there is time to imagine potential future scenarios and how we might react to them, to increase our resilience to the large-scale changes to our way of living it will bring, and to prepare ourselves for them (intellectually, emotionally, and capacity-wise that is — for the coming Long Emergency, hoarding assets and building bunkers is not a viable strategy).
Is the Sharing Economy Here Yet?
By Dave Pollard, How to save the world
Living quietly alongside the Industrial Growth Economy is another economy, an ancient one.
A Model of Identity and Community
By Dave Pollard, How to save the world
Aaron Williamson, a consultant in Toronto, recently published a fascinating model of the community aspects of identity as the first step towards developing a theory of community formation.