Avatar and making all the difference in the world….

I want to highlight new developments that have come to light concerning one part of my Jan 27 piece “Avatar is stimulating some very juicy conversation…”
http://bit.ly/AvatarJuicy
which, it turns out, was read by leaders of the Pachamama* Alliance
http://bit.ly/PachAvatar

The Pachamama Alliance
http://pachamama.org — a co-creative initiative between Western activists and Ecuadorean rainforest peoples — bussed a hundred Indigenous folks from the jungles and highlands down to a theater Quito to see Avatar in 3D, an event covered here:
http://bit.ly/PacAvatar2
Some had never seen a movie before. Their reactions were striking: “That’s what’s happening to us” … “We are prepared” … “Of course they need a White Savior; this is Hollywood!” … “This movie acts like violence is the only option”. One said that people who want to exploit petroleum should see the film.

Well, THAT almost happened. In addition to running remarkable “Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream” symposia around the world, Pachamama does consciousness-raising tours to the Amazon rainforest. One of the top ad men in the world was profoundly impacted by a recent tour he was on. He decided that doing pro bono work for the Pachamama Alliance could help make up for a lifetime of selling people things they don’t need. His ad agency, which has created campaigns like Nike’s “Just Do It” and Coke’s “It’s the Real Thing”, is now working on videos to kick off Pachamama’s new FourYearsGo campaign.
http://fouryearsgo.org This visionary effort aims to redirect the story of civilization from self-destruction to a better world in four years. Pachamama co-founder Lynne Twist describes the campaign and its history in a very inspiring 30 minute video
http://www.dynamicvideos.net/FourYears.html

Her talk includes an inspiring short promotional video by the ad agency. Also included is a story about some of the world’s leading mainstream scenario scientists at Shell’s pioneering global modeling lab. They spend their days developing scenarios of what would probably happen if this or that event occurred or if this or that trend becomes big or small, to inform major CEOs and heads of state. Lately they had become very concerned over the troubling prospects showing up in their scenarios; the future was looking more and more like collapse. Then during a Pachamama program, several of them realized that human transformation was not in any of their scenarios — and that that’s where hope lies. Pachamama is now working with them to create realistic scenarios that include transformation.

So I’m slowly getting it that this outrageously ambitious FourYearsGo program has a chance to actually work. Perhaps most importantly, it isn’t run from the top according to some big master plan that everyone is supposed to work on. It aims to spark a self-organizing movement, inviting all NGOs, companies, communities, and people to choose their most potent and visionary social improvement projects to do within the next four years — in the context of thousands and millions of others making the same decision. (It makes me think of Open Space, a self-organizing approach to conferencing in which the guiding principle is “Take responsibility for what you love as an act of service.”) FourYearsGo seeks to catalyze a newly vibrant world of wildly diverse and inspired initiatives to co-create a better tomorrow. (I hope they provide online spaces for initiatives to share experience and vision and to collaborate and learn from each other, which will greatly facilitate co-intelligent self-organization.)

Many people use the term “trimtab” to describe such an effort. A trimtab is the small rudder that is part of a giant rudder on a big ship. The trimtab turns the rudder and the rudder turns the ship. The next four years are a trimtab for this century, whose energies will probably shape the nature of life on earth for thousands of years to come. FourYearsGo is a trimtab for the consciousness and energy of individuals, groups, networks and nations around the world, who have the power to alter the course of the vast earthship called civilization that we are all part of.

This remarkable initiative is getting set to launch on Valentine’s Day, February 14, this coming Sunday. Organizations that sign up by today (Feb 12) will be part of the launch. http://signup.fouryearsgo.org
The Co-Intelligence Institute has decided to join in — and we encourage you to do so, as well.

I hope James Cameron joins and helps fuel this rocket. A Pachamama board member apparently talked with him after the Quito showing. I don’t know what transpired, but I can’t get a particular image out of my mind: Na’vi calling on humanity to undertake the most possible, necessary, and awe-inspiring transformations of life on Earth, right there in some of the ad videos that will come out in just a few months….

Waking the dreamer, changing the dream…

Coheartedly,
Tom

*Pachamama is an indigenous Andean name for the world, for reality as a sacred being and context for life. It is like the term Mother Earth, expanding to include the universe and all time. Pachamama is something for awake people to be aware of, to care for, to learn from, to appreciate, to celebrate — in its greatest and most local manifestations — for it carries Life. The Pachamama Alliance promotes that kind of sacred but grounded life-mindfulness and planetary stewardship.

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