Facilitation for Deep Adaptation: enabling loving conversations about our predicament

Carr, Katie and Bendell, Jem ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0765-4413 (2020) Facilitation for Deep Adaptation: enabling loving conversations about our predicament. Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS) Occasional Papers Volume 6. University of Cumbria, Ambleside, UK.. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

This paper supports people with designing and facilitating gatherings on Deep Adaptation, whether online or in-person. The term ‘Deep Adaptation’ describes an agenda and framework for responding to the potential, probable or inevitable collapse of industrial consumer societies, due to the direct and indirect impacts of human-caused climate change and environmental degradation (Bendell, 2018). It involves the inner and outer, personal and collective, responses to either the anticipation or experience of societal collapse. Gatherings on this topic within the Deep Adaptation Forum have given attention to how we can cultivate a state of presence, connection, and equanimity, from which engaged action may arise. A facilitator to support participants to learn collaboratively and experientially has been key to that focus.
In this paper some of the aspects of Deep Adaptation facilitation that have emerged from a community of practice of volunteer facilitators are summarised. These aspects include containment, with the intention of enabling co-responsibility for a safe-enough space for difficult conversations to occur with difficult emotions. Another key aspect is welcoming radical uncertainty in response to the anxieties people feel, as their sense of self, security and agency are challenged by the anticipation of collapse. A third aspect of this facilitation is making space for grief, which is welcomed as a natural and ongoing response to our predicament. A fourth aspect is a curiosity about processes of othering and separation. That arises due to our assessment that a seemingly innate process of imagining separation, and therefore ‘othering’ people and nature as less significant or meaningful, has been a habit in modern society that impedes responses to social and environmental crises.

Item Type:	Report
Publisher:	University of Cumbria
Departments:	Institute of Business, Industry and Leadership > Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS)
Depositing User:	Christian Stretton
Date Deposited:	23 Nov 2020 09:05
Last Modified:	13 Jan 2024 11:17
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/5792

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