How You Can Help
The success of the ideas at Thwink.org depends on people like you. How you can help depends on what skills, contacts and interests you have. In general, Thwink.org is not setup so there is an easy, obvious place for folks to plug into. Instead, you have the responsibility (really the opportunity) of "making your own job."
The work at Thwink.org does not employ the usual techniques of
Classic Activism, such as the attention grabbing inflatable pictured above in Trafalgar Square on June 11, 2004. Instead, our approach seeks to deeply understand and then change the structure of the human system, so that its dominant social agents are working strongly
for the good of the system instead of
against it.
First study the material at Thwink.org. Then, based own your own unique strengths, figure out where you can be most productive. Here are some possible areas:
Journal article assistance
Just recently we developed a new critical need. We need assistance in writing for peer review journals. There have now been two articles rejected, mostly for lack of references to relevant literature. This is also called lack of "anchoring" on the literature. Since our analysis is based on study of the human system, we have no knowledge of vast areas of the literature. The areas we appear to need assistance in are political deception, political truth and corruption, and change resistance. The other reason for rejection appears to be that we don't think like academics. We think like engineers.
Run some experiments
You
can run some experiments.
This is needed so that various books and papers can report on some statistically
valid experimental results. All it takes to run experiment
number one is a little preparation, a group of your friends
or coworkers, and about two hours of their time. The experiment
itself takes about 30 minutes. The rest of the time is for
a good educational discussion about the experiment and the
results.
This is our second most pressing need right now. Once we have experimental proof that some of the ideas here are sound, there will at last be more than a logical reason for others to evaluate this new approach.
Since we only have one experiment designed so far, you may quickly graduate to designing your own. If so and it's a well designed experiment with a useful hypothesis, the experiment and results can be added to the collection of experiments at Thwink.org. This would be a tremendous help.
Tell others
You can watch film one, Cracking the Mystery of the Progressive Paradox, and spread the message by copying the film and giving it to your friends and colleagues.
We have two books and several articles you can give to others. The most effective seems to be the Dueling Loops paper. It's short. Print it out and give or mail it to someone you know who could benefit from it. Personal contacts like this are the best way to spread the message.
Another way is to email or write someone and in your own words say why you think they should take a look at the concepts at Thwink.org. This might be as a result of a recent article they wrote or something you read on their website. However, if this is a "cold call" then you will have such a low percentage of positive results that it will probably not be worth your time. So just contact those you already know.
Apply the concepts
Study the books, and then pick the toughest problem
you've got, and see if perhaps the tools of a formal process
that fits the problem, systems thinking, the Scientific Method,
simulation modeling, and focusing on the complete problem can
make a difference. If at all possible, use them all so that
the full power of the approach can emerge. And then, after
you have applied these tools, let us know the results and how
the tools can be improved.
Or
if you prefer, you can keep things simple and use just one
new tool. The one that can probably make the biggest difference
the fastest is focusing on the complete problematique, by including
the change resistance part of the problem. This is because
our analysis has shown again and again that the social
side is the crux of the problem.
A combination of telling others and applying the concepts
This job requires innovation. An example is how Joe Starinchak has told dozens of others, as he attempts to get them to collaborate and apply the concepts. See The Collaboration Project. Another example is the work Philip Bangerter is doing with Hatch. See The Diagnostic Project. The latest example is a suggestion by Ben Buras to set up a Truth Ratings website, as discussed in this thread.
Join the forum
Regardless of what it is you end up doing, join the forum and help us create a virtual community that is actively engaged in discussing and building better ways to solve the sustainability problem. Imagine what the environmental movement might soon be like, if we could achieve the following goal:
"Our vision is to offer the environmental community a place where mature, productive, cutting edge discussion on solving the sustainability problem can be found."
