Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
environmental movement, and they have sought to communicate complicated science
to non-scientists in the public sphere. Carson did so through the use of detailed
evidence and having the social authority stemming from being a scientist. Gore does
so by visually representing scientific knowledge in stunning photographs, and video
and computer graphics. Both present a clear moral view of the human-nature
relationship as one where human action disrupts the underlying harmony and balance
of nature, and both have demonstrated how ecological damage affects our very selves.
Gore is quite personal in his discussion of his own experiences, while Carson writes
more dispassionately about the effects of DDT on our bodies. What is common to
both their lives and their commitments is passion. And passion is, in many instances,
an important aspect of leadership and a key ingredient of being taken seriously.
Both have also been criticized, but, most importantly, both initiated a widespread
and wide-ranging public dialogue and debate.
Sustainability leaders and practitioners in less visible public arenas frequently need
to persuade others to think differently. This usually means entering into a conversation
or dialogue in the community, at work, in the pub, in the home or in the classroom,
and when misunderstandings or disputes occur, the problem often lies not so much
in a failure to communicate but in a failure to learn to think together. When confronted
by novelty or the need to be creative, innovative or to 'think outside of the box',
we resolutely stay inside because of feelings of safety and familiarity and from habit.
As William Isaacs notes, we cling to and defend existing views 'as if our lives depended
on them' (1999: 6). However, for Isaacs, we can learn to go beyond this by nurturing
a conversational spirit that can penetrate and dissolve the most inflexible and
intractable of issues and problems. This can occur in close personal relationships,
at the workplace within large organizations, within government, and between
governments and peoples. Dialogue is the key and, to borrow an ecological metaphor
from David Bohm (1996), if we remove what pollutes our thinking upstream, then
we can avoid all sorts of problems and difficulties further down. 'The whole ecological
problem,' writes Bohm, 'is due to thought, because we have thought that the world
is there for us to exploit, that it is infinite, and so no matter what we did, the
pollution would all get dissolved away' (1999: 10). Similarly, our thoughts, pre-
conceived and pre-given assumptions often prevent us from talking freely, from
sharing our fears, worries, thoughts and expectations. This affects the whole meaning
of what we do, what we say and how we act. Conversation is never static. It must
always be in motion, for there are times when people will fight, contest, be polite
or nice, engage creatively or simply argue. Leaders have the responsibility to fashion
the space, or 'container', in which these conversations emerge and change, where
dialogues may embrace wider ideas and pressures, where the experience of interaction
may be enriched and enhanced, and where a variety of styles and approaches may
secure recognition and acknowledgement. Dialogue is therefore as much about learning
as communication, but it does not just happen. It is, like the creation of new
knowledge, the responsibility of everyone, a collective, community activity. Drawing
on Bohm, Isaacs identifies four fields of conversation constituting a fruitful dialogue:
•
Field one
: Instability of the field - politeness in the container. Participants do
not say what they think or feel, do not share as a result of convention, expectation,
politeness, insecurity or just a lack of familiarity with the process.
