Sustainable Development: A Transformative Learning Journey

General awareness about phenomena like climate change, plastic soup, deforestation, gender inequality, poverty etc is all around. And people tend to really care. If they could, they would avoid these phenomena. So why are we not avoiding these phenomena?

The system and its complexity

The answer is pretty straightforward and familiar: it’s the system and it has always been the system. The system is why it is almost impossible for the people to change their destiny. The system is strong, complex, everywhere and always moving forward. And the system is just a gear in an endless range of interconnected systems.

Although people cannot control the total complexity of it all, people can influence the outcome or output of some of the systems, favorable or unfavorable. The so called phenomena I started this writing with are all more or less outcomes of the systems we can influence. The most important system we influence is the system called life!

According to Tim Ingold sustainability takes two steps. Understanding the way life works is step 1. Anticipating the way life works in a favorable way is step 2. And both steps are steps we can take, are within our capabilities. All we need to do is learn, learn to anticipate the fundamentals of life.

Therefor together with my dedicated colleagues I created The Sustainability Games.

Please continue reading.
Yours sincerely Thijs Struijk