The international Transition movement is, like Awakening the Dreamer, an organized approach to allowing communities to re-invent themselves in an energy-efficient, planet-protecting, and sustainable manner of living. There is less focus on spiritual change and more on changing of infrastructure and patterns of living, compared to Awakening the Dreamer.
This article is part of PlanetThoughts.org's goal of providing insights into grassroots movements that aim to transform the relationship of people to the planet. There will be follow-ups on this theme as well. From the Web site:
"TRANSITION UNITED STATES is a coordinating organization whose mission is to catalyze, inspire, encourage, network, support and train communities in the U.S. as they consider, adopt, adapt and implement Transition Initiatives.
The Transition approach empowers communities to squarely face the challenges of peak oil and climate change, and to unleash the collective genius of their own people to find the answers to this momentous question: For all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how are we going to:
* drastically reduce carbon emissions (in response to climate change);
* significantly rebuild resilience (in response to peak oil);
* and greatly strengthen our local economy (in response to economic instability)?"
Comment by: Greengecko (Rona) (Oct-31-2008) Web site
Good to see that the transition movement is getting going in the US. It's early days yet but a lot of groups are getting going here in the UK, too.
My lifelong pursuit, since age 18, has been to live more fully and find wisdom. This has involved studies with Zen masters, Tai Chi masters, and great psychotherapists while achieving my license as a gestalt therapist and psychoanalyst.
Along the way, I became aware of how the planet is under great stress due to the driven nature of human activity on this planet.
I believe that the advancement of human well-being will reduce societies addictive behaviors, and will thus also help preserve the environment and perhaps slow down the effects of global warming and other major threats to the health of human societies.