Mike Kauschke in Dialogue with Rob Hopkins

In the midst of our many crises, the future can look like something to avoid or to fear. But Rob Hopkins sees the future as a field of possibility. The co-founder of the Transition Town Movement, which brings change to the concrete, local human level, sees his work for change rooted in our power of imagination. When we can imagine a new future and long for it, it will be the strongest motivator to act.

He created podcasts and trainings in which he travels into the future with his guests or participants to the world people want to live in. For him this changed his attitude as an activist and made him investigate the power of a love for the future, that he explores in his new book “How to Fall in Love with the Future”

Rob Hopkins says, “In my work I try to help people to imagine what a low carbon future could be like, if we take the fear out of it and cultivate a longing for it. Imagination allows us to generate longing. Longing is one of the most powerful and precious things that we have right now. As activists we often think, we just need to give people a sufficiently terrifying report and they're going to change the world. But that’s delusional. We're only going to create a different future if we long for it first.”

To awaken people to this power of imagination Rob Hopkins runs “Imagination Catalyst” trainings for organizations as diverse as Balenciaga, London Marathon Group, local councils and Museum Booster. He says about this work:

“We need to be able to fill people's imagination with possibility, stories, longing, desire and a belief that is about moving towards a future that's so irresistible and delicious that we have no choice. If it feels like we're being dragged away from something irreplaceable, we're not going to do it. So, we have to create that kind of longing. And that's the work of imagination, music, poetry, storytelling and art.“

In this inspiring conversation, Rob Hopkins explores the power of imagination, community, and collective vision in shaping a sustainable and hopeful future. He shares insights on how time travel, art, and diverse voices can ignite collective longing and action to address climate change and societal challenges.

www.robhopkins.net

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“Confucianism is a learning civilization rather than a missionary one. The Analects by Confucius opens not with commandments or conversion, but with the delight of learning: ‘To learn and practice constantly—is this not a pleasure?’ Learning is seen as an inner fulfillment rather than a rule imposed on others. Moral influence arises from ongoing self-cultivation, allowing character itself to become a quiet source of resonance.

Therefore, Confucianism is a dialogical rather than dialectical civilization. It aims for understanding rather than victory, resonance rather than domination. This outlook makes it an inclusive civilization, not a closed one, capable of coexisting with differences without erasing them”, says Jianbao Wang, Director of the Center for the Humanities and Business Ethics at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business and student of the renowned philosopher Tu Weiming.

In this Radio evolve we will speak with Prof. Jianbao Wang about the ethics and spiritualty of Modern Confucianism, and the relationship and differences of Western and Chinese philosophy and spiritual thinking.

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Ecovillages have been around for some decades, giving rise to many different communities around the world and in Europe. In many ways they provided fertile ground for new experiments in ecological farming, in living together, in decision making and dialogue and how to deal with human diversity. But many of the hopes for ecological and social change that fueled the founding of Ecovillages have not been manifested in the way many people hoped for. It seems there are various backlashes in social and ecological dimensions of Western societies. How do Ecovillages respond to this dynamic? How does this change their approach or self-understanding? What are the challenges and potentials for Ecovillages in these difficult times we are in? How can Ecovillages be places of building trust together?

In Radio evolve we speak about these questions with Dario Ferraro, a project manager, facilitator, and filmmaker who divides his time between Vilnius, Lithuania, and the Torri Superiore Ecovillage in Italy. Dario is active in the European Ecovillage Network, whose annual gathering is taking place this year at the Nature Community near Regensburg with the theme “To Dare to Trust”.

More information: www.ecovillagegathering.org

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A Practical Vision of a Regenerative Cooperative Future

Jeremy Lent, described by Guardian journalist George Monbiot as “one of the greatest thinkers of our age,” is an author and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilization’s existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affirming future.

In his new book Ecocivilization: Making a World that Works for All, he explores “a practical opportunity that is available to us as humanity to reorganize the basis of our world system”, he told us in an interview for our upcoming issue of evolve. “Our world system is based on exploitation, extraction and separation between people and from the rest of life. That's not what most of us as human beings want from the world. So, I explore what the world could look like if we would set the conditions for all beings to thrive on a regenerated earth.”

In Radio evolve, Elizabeth Debold speaks with Jeremy Lent about a possible world, in which cooperation, regeneration and deep connectedness to Life become guiding principles of organizing human society.

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Being brave together to meet the surges of ICE

Reverend Jane Field is Executive Director of the Maine Council of Churches and an ordained Presbyterian (PCUSA) minister who has served Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist, and Lutheran churches in New York City, Connecticut, and Maine. She is part of the resistance movement against the surges of the ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Like in Minneapolis, in Maine and all over the United States immigrant citizens became targets of violence. In this challenge for the communities, a resistance movement flourished. At the forefront there were also faith leaders and communities from different religious backgrounds. Jane Field is one of them. She says:

“The Faith Community here in Maine was at the vanguard and the forefront of resistance efforts. We helped to push back against the activities of the ICE agents while they were here and against the federal government and Department of Homeland Security. We also worked at the forefront of aiding and assisting our immigrant neighbors who were under threat and being harmed. Many of them lived in lockdown in their homes or hiding in other people's homes. They were afraid to go to work, to let their kids go to school because those were places where ICE were waiting to snatch people. They would even snatch people out of their cars.”

Jane Field speaks with great determination and hope about the emergence of this networks of trust: “There was a network through a hotline of volunteers who were walking kids to school, driving people to work, getting groceries for people who were in hiding and delivering them to them so that they didn't have to go out of their homes. That was all grassroots and decentralized. That was all mutual aid. It was not done through the government, not even at the state or municipal level. It was all just volunteers.”

In an interview for upcoming issue of evolve magazine, Elizabeth Debold speaks with Jane Field about resistance out of love and deep faith.

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How can we confront collapse with care and compassion?

Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti is the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria. She is a former Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities and Global Change and a former David Lam Chair in Critical Multicultural Education. Vanessa has worked extensively across sectors internationally in areas of education related to global justice, global citizenship, critical literacies, Indigenous knowledge systems and the climate and nature emergency. Vanessa is the author of “Hospicing Modernity: Facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism” and “Outgrowing Modernity: Navigating Complexity, Complicity, and Collapse with Accountability and Compassion”.

She says in an interview with evolve: “Modernity is a living story with several characteristics. It's a story that inhabits us, it's a singular story of progress, development and civilization. It is so powerful that it conditions the ways that we relate to the world, the ways that we think, imagine, hope, process both emotions and trauma, and the possibilities that we have for relating to each other and creating or enabling different futures.”

In Radio evolve we share a recording from an evolve LIVE! Event with Vanessa in 2024, in which she speaks about the process of hospicing a worldview that no longer serves us and how we can usher into a new way of seeing and inhabiting the world.

evolve World recently opened the Interbeing Monastery, an online space for spiritual and cultural practice. At a time with so many crises, it is particularly important to meet in a shared intention and longing to connect to the sacred depth of existence in order to be able to respond in conscious and loving ways to what is happening in the world. Inner and outer transformation go hand in hand.

The Interbeing Monastery is a space to come together in practices like meditation, Lectio Devina (a sacred reading practice), Emergent Dialogue, the Interbeing Tea Dialogues and other practices. People can become a free community member and join practices in their own rhythm. These practices can form an ecology of practice that strengthens each other and offers a way for deep transformation of self and culture.

In this episode of Radio evolve, we speak about the role of spiritual practice in the transformation of culture, the power of shared intention, about the shared global presence that is possible in online spaces, and the invitation that the Interbeing Monastery offers.

More info: www.evolve-world.org/interbeing-monastery/

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Kitt Johnson is a dancer and choreographer from Denmark who works worldwide with solo performances and site-specific projects. Her repertoire also includes ensemble works, New Circus, and productions designed for children. In her solo performances she addresses existential themes of the human condition, and in her site-specific works as the artistic director of the company X-act she explores the hidden secrets and potential of neighborhoods in many parts of the world.

Kitt Johnson says about her work: “I highly believe that the things that we are occupied with as private people in our private life, have a lot of energy. If there's something really urgent and interesting for you, there's a lot of energy there. To create a performance from that point of departure has a huge potential to also be valuable for other people. In a way, my job is to transform what is urgent for me as a private person into something that can be hopefully universal to all times and cultures. That's very ambitious. Or at least to be relevant for other people because these themes are existential. The themes themselves are relevant to everyone, because there's a lot of power where it burns.”

In Radio evolve we speak about the power of an embodied investigation of our shared human condition.
More Info: https://kittjohnson.dk/en/

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