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Authentic Sustainability Workshop

At some point, every one of us has contemplated more sustainable ways of living and working, from simple acts like recycling a soda can to bigger changes in business strategy and public policy. However, when we try to have a conversation about our ideas, someone has branded us as a “holier than thou” jerk, or we have refrained from speaking or acting because we worry they might. We get stuck and only maybe later notice that we had a choice in the matter. 

We face a recurring problem of  “preaching to the choir” – a stark division between people concerned about global sustainability and those with other concerns top of mind. Building a broader coalition requires having effective conversations capable of inspiring and empowering others to join in the pursuit. 

This work explores various pitfalls of sustainability, or recurring conversations in the sustainability discourse that correlate with the experience of being stuck. It explores why we get stuck in pitfalls and how we can escape them. It points out how advocates for the “flourishing of human and other life forever” undermine that flourishing in the way we engage with people every day. It reveals some persistent tensions and ambivalences we all experience that generate paradoxes of sustainability beneath the pitfalls. When we distinguish these pitfalls and underlying paradoxes, we can identify them in our lives and our conversations, and are then free to explore pathways out of and around what would otherwise remain latent traps. Our intention is for these pathways to lead to greater freedom, volition, authenticity, integrity, and effectiveness and that they will contribute toward a transformation of the sustainability “movement” or dialogue – to support the flourishing of our lives in the pursuit of the flourishing of all life.

Registration is required for this workshop.

Photo credit: Kwong Yee Cheng
 
 

Speakers

Gabriel Grant

Founding Partner at Human Partners
PhD in Environmental Management 2017

Jason Jay

Senior Lecturer and Research Scholar at MIT Sloan School of Management