Consensus Archives - Mark Goldthorpe

December 17, 2018

msb ~099 A war on simplicity?

A war on simplicity?

Kate Yoder was surprised to find her language getting violent when she started reporting climate change. “Some ancient spirit took hold of me, and I found myself deploying the narrative of war … of the climate movement’s leaders who’d gone all out with the wartime cliches. The only way to overcome climate change inaction, environmentalist Bill McKibben once wrote, ‘is to adopt a wartime mentality, rewriting the old mindset that stands in the way of victory’.”

Oppositional vocabulary is attractive, powerful, often necessary. But focusing on conflict “limits our collective imagination about what we can do to fix complex problems.” Wars on poverty, drugs, terror? None has been won. Can you wage war on a predicament? Continue reading “msb ~099 A war on simplicity?”

November 1, 2018

msb ~067 Expertise

Expertise

When I was looking into boundaries between ‘experts’ and ‘public’ on local coastal change, I explored ways to classify expertise. One typology, proposed by Michael Carolan, suggests that most of us can usually contribute abstract (e.g. scientific) or practical (e.g. local) knowledge. He described this as ‘contributory expertise’, but also identified an additional category: ‘interactional expertise’. Individuals use this to help bring together those with different forms of knowledge: essential when the issues are contentious and the debate can be confrontational. Continue reading “msb ~067 Expertise”

October 18, 2018

msb ~057 Creativity: a bright idea

Creativity: a bright idea

At The Conversation, Gareth Loudon argues for education for greater creativity as a bridge between silos of knowledge. This includes that famous ‘two cultures’ gap identified by CP Snow decades ago: the separation of sciences and humanities. Specialisation, of course, involves people becoming more expert in smaller areas (that unkind old joke: you learn more and more about less and less until you end up knowing everything about nothing). The separation is then reinforced in how we’re taught, how we expect the world to work and be managed. Continue reading “msb ~057 Creativity: a bright idea”

October 9, 2018October 11, 2018

msb ~050 Truth and story

Truth and story

A few years back, I helped novelist Clare George with some of her public writing workshops, Imagine There’s a Future. Speakers shared their climate change work, writers discussed scenarios and wrote new stories. For me, this was a powerful introduction to the value of creative work on our climate predicament, for writers and readers. Clare describes how the stories came from very diverse authors working together. “Climate change campaigners sat next to climate change sceptics and openly discussed their most heartfelt fears and dreams in ways that would not have been possible without the help of fiction.” Continue reading “msb ~050 Truth and story”

September 25, 2018October 11, 2018

msb ~040 Making sense of weak signals

Making sense of weak signals

In this 2009 article, Paul Schoemaker and George Day identify biases we unconsciously apply to our worldviews, blinding us to important but weak signals of change. Once we “lock in on a certain picture [we] often reshape reality to fit into that particular frame. Humans tend to judge too quickly when presented with ambiguous data; we have to work extra hard to consider less familiar scenarios.”

Such biases render reality as familiar, expected: reducing the scope to consider different perspectives. We become overconfident in our way of seeing: filtering what we see according to our mental model; rationalising it to sustain our belief in the model as reality; seeking evidence to bolster this. Continue reading “msb ~040 Making sense of weak signals”

September 18, 2018October 11, 2018

msb ~035 Ecosystems and Boundary Objects

Ecosystems and Boundary Objects

I wasn’t able to attend GroundWork Gallery’s Restore? Conserve? Rewild? but enjoyed ClimateCultures’ review. This exploration of different responses to environmental predicaments included contentious Ecosystem Services approaches. Although it’s common ground that ‘nature’ provides benefits to ‘society’, which government, business and populations undervalue and undermine, controversy arises when we’re asked to translate these into a common value: cash. Continue reading “msb ~035 Ecosystems and Boundary Objects”