Moving from gridlock to dialogue

Editor’s note:

What’s the technology with the highest EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested)?  

I would say: learning how to work in groups.

All our great ideas about climate change, peak oil and re-localization are worthless if we can’t communicate with other people.  It’s easy to get into gridlock and name-calling even with people who should be our allies.

Several other Resilience contributors like Vera Bradova, Cecile Andrews and George Lakey have been writing on the subject, and I suspect it will grow in importance.

The video below is a light-hearted introduction. It’s produced by a group that includes Kathy McMahon, a long-time contributor to Resilience. As "Peak Shrink," Kathy wrote extensively on the psychological traumas of peak oil.

"This one has it all: fighting couples, tigers, Russell Crowe, monkeys, statistics," she says.

This particular video is focused on couples, but the techniques apply equally to groups.  

The content starts at 0:35 in, if you want to skip the titles.

-Bart Anderson, Resilience co-editor

Image: Patchwork Girl Arguing with The Bear King. From "The Lost Princess of Oz" by L. Frank Baum, Illustrated by John. R Neill (1917). Via Wikimedia Commons.