Independent Thinking in an Uncertain World: A Mind of Ones Own [Paperback]

Any effective response to an uncertain future will require independently thinking individuals working together. Human ideas and actions have led to unprecedented changes in the relationships among humans, and between humans and the Earth. Changes in the air we breathe, the water we drink and the energy we use are evidence of Nature  which has no special interest in sustaining human life  looking out for itself. Even the evolutionary context for humans has altered. Evolutionary pressures from the digital communication revolution have been added to those from natural systems. For humans to meet these challenges requires social re-organisation that is neither simple nor easy.

Independent Thinking in an Uncertain World explores workable, field-tested strategies from the frontiers of creating a viable future for humans on Earth. Based on research results from hundreds of social learning workshops with communities worldwide, many of them part of Australian National Universitys Local Sustainability Project, authors with diverse interests explore the gap between open-minded individual thinking and closed socially defined knowledges. The multiple dimensions of individual, social and biophysical ways of thinking are combined in ways that allow open-minded individuals to learn from one another.

Foreword

Prologue: the bat cave

Part I. Ideas 

1. Thinking for oneself: outside the square 

2. Collective learning: joining the dots

3. Multiple dimensions of mind: parts and wholes

4. Celebrating difference: on not losing ones mind

5. Multiple minds: the more we are together

6. Multiple voices: so say all of us

Part II. Practice 

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