Do we dare to explore the hypothesis that technology shouldn't necessarily play the main role in our human future? It's time to face this discrepancy. Technology became our faith, but it is certainly not a joyful faith. With every new "solution", comes the need for new "solutions" to mitigate the previously undetected unwanted side effects. It's like an arms race, a technology race. Because unlike traditional religions, global tech religion creates matter. Even a virtual world (the metaverse) is material. The man-made mass (textile, plastic, asphalt, concrete, glass, etc.) already weighs 1.2 times the mass of all organic material on earth (all trees, animals, etc.). Every new pollution requires heavier treatment, every dike breach requires heavier dikes. It won't end until we stop leaving to “think different” (Apple) to technology. In the article it is argued that the Inner Development Goals provide a framework fthrough 5 psychological factors - being, thinking, relation to the world, collaboration and adapting - to tackle the sustainability problems.
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Regional sustainability networks in the Netherlands are rooted in regionalculture and have an emphasis on social learning and effective collaboration between multiple actors. The national ‘Duurzaam Door’ (Moving Forward Sustainably) Policy Programme regards these networks as generative governance arrangements where new knowledge, actions and relations can co-evolve together with new insights in governance and learning within sustainability transitions. In order to understand the dynamics of the learning in these networks we have monitored emergent properties of social learning between 2014 and 2016. Our focus is particularly on the interrelated role of trust, commitment, reframing and reflexivity. Our aim is to better understand the role and the dynamics of these emergent properties and to see which actors and roles can foster the effectiveness of social learning in regional transitions towards more sustainable ways of living. We used a retrospective analysis with Reflexive Monitoring in Action (RMA), which we combined with the Most Significant Change approach. We found that reflexivity in particularis a critical property at moments that can make or break the process.
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