Copenhagen Seminar #4, 18-19 January 2012
Key words: Consumption, world values, human nature and consciousness, public awareness, social media, deep listening and framing
Program available here
Materials from the day
The fourth and final seminar will focus on people and mindsets, which are at the heart of determining the purpose of economic activities. They are crucially important to the issue of whether and how we can succeed in changing our present growth trajectory.
Speakers:
William S. Becker (us): The future we want
William (Bill) S. Becker is senior associate at Natural Capitalism Solutions, author of “The 100 Day Action Plan to Save the Planet” and co-founder of The Future We Want. The Future We want is a global conversation and visualization in advance of and beyond Rio+20. It is the theme of Rio+20 and was announced this November together with Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General of the UN. Bill will share the idea behind this ambitious project and the need to collect and spread positive visions of a sustainable future on a gloibal scale using social media and other communication technologies.
Karen Blincoe (dk): Sustainability utopias
Karen Blincoe is Founder and Director of The International Centre for Creativity, Innovation and Sustainability (ICIS) and Chairman of Danish Designers. From 2006-2009 she was Director of Schumacher College and headhunted to develop one of the world’s leading ‘hot spots’ for the advancement of sustainable societies. Karen is currently writing her Ph.d. thesis on sustainability utopias and will discuss whether sustainability is utopian in nature, and what we can learn from utopian societies that have been created with a sustainability bias. Karen is also a member of the Core Group of the project In100years.
Inga Gerner Nielsen (DK): Root-metaphors and rituals in a mind shift
Inga Gerner Nielsen is one of the three founders of the performance agency Fiction Pimps and a partner in House of Futures. One of our aims is to intersect different disciplines in modes of knowledge productions that open up new ways of imagining and relating to issues and visions of the future. Inga will introduce the performance theories behind ‘In 100 years – Starting Now’ pointing to how Performance Art can be used to turn a seminar event into a ritual that can facilitate and make visible the new root-metaphors of a possible mind shift.»
Hans Fink (DK): Conceptions of nature
Hans Fink is Senior associate professor and his specialities are ethics and the philosophy of nature. Our concept of nature is highly complex, allowing us to consider very different domains to be nature. Hans will talk about our modern understanding of nature highlighting six different conceptions and their relevance for issues of sustainability. Hans was trained in philosophy first at Aarhus University and then at Oxford University where he completed his D.Phil. in 1974. Since then he has been teaching philosophy in Aarhus alternating with periods as dean of the faculty of arts and as director of its Centre for Cultural Research.
Hardin Tibbs (UK): Human values at a tipping point
Hardin Tibbs is CEO of Synthesys Strategic Consulting Ltd, a business futures firm in London. Hardin will talk about the shift in global values that is underway and the need for a new perspective on what it means to be human. In 2011 he published a paper forecasting an imminent tipping point in cultural values that he believes could prove decisive in the transition to sustainability. He lectures on future-related topics at a number of business schools including the Judge Business School at Cambridge University, and helped to develop the executive education scenarios programme at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University. Before founding Synthesys, Hardin was a scenario planner with Global Business Network in California.
Dominic Balmforth (DK/UK): From consumption to ‘next-use’
Dominic Balmforth is architecht, Director in his own company Susturb and partner in the House of Futures. He will give a pep-talk about why we need ‘next-use’ to replace consumption as nearly half the CO2 emissions per capita in Denmark do not arise from energy use, but from our ongoing purchase of personal possessions.
Ole Fogh Kirkeby (dk): Mindshifting
Ole Fogh Kirkeby is Professor of Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School. He will talk about practical wisdom and give a few examples of mindshifts that have occured during the last 200 years. Ole is a member of the Core Group of the project In100years.