 Welcome to a deep adaptation Q&A with me, Jim Bendell. These are independently organized dialogues about various aspects of the theme of deep adaptation, which we're going to hear quite a bit more of today. Our guest, who we're going to explore this topic with today is Kat Suarez. Kat Suarez is the core team coordinator of the deep adaptation forum, which is also something we're going to hear about today. And Kat has been involved in the various networks that make up the forum, initially as a volunteer since early 2019, and then over time then did a number of roles and then became the coordinator. I myself left the deep adaptation forum in about I think October 2020. So I'm actually quite interested in hearing how things have evolved as well since then. Kat came at this job with a background in sustainability. And that's also interesting to me because that's how I came to the perspective that was my background too. So I think we're going to talk quite a bit about that how it might be a help or a hindrance as we try and meet the predicament and find positive ways forward. Kat, thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you, Jim. And thank you everybody for showing up. It's lovely to see so many faces on the screen. Yes, and I'm looking forward to hearing questions from you all. Well, maybe in about half an hour. I'm going to hog the mic for about half an hour and ask Kat some questions. But Kat, first up for those people who don't know what the deep adaptation forum is in your own words, because I know, you know, I know what we said it was when we started it but in your own words for now, what is the deep adaptation forum about. How does it feel to do what it does? How does it feel in the deep adaptation forum as well? Give us a sense of that. Thanks, Jim. I'm glad you said in your own words. Because as everyone can imagine, it's a question that's asked often. And my response historically is if you were to ask any one of the 12, 14, 15,000 members, they would all give you their own reality of what the deep adaptation forum is. It makes it magical, I suspect, and appealing to people. So from my perspective, it's a predominantly online global community of people who share a perspective that the predicaments we're facing into climate change principle amongst those is already or will ultimately lead to interruptions in our normal ways of living. So some may say societal collapse, some societal interruption. But yeah, so essentially a group of people who share a perspective about the realities of where we find ourselves now as a global population. And in terms of what do we do, well, we've tried in the last 18 months to be, we don't prescribe anything. So as a core team, we try not to make prescriptions about welcome here's step one, here's step two, here are the things you should know. So it's quite organic and it's evolving and shifting and changing all of the time. So as a core team, what we try to do is to facilitate and enable relationship and relationships. So we have some core offerings and some things that we take responsibility for around communications internally and increasingly some outward facing communications. We coordinate various activities, including online events, some of those are related to dialogue and discussion, some related to meditation and inner workings, some somatic practices. So there's a real diversity of offerings and then there's also groups that come together to form work teams or crews or whatever language you like to use who are very focused on very particular outcomes. So looking at policies to take into business around how the companies adapt around education, how does education respond. Yeah, it's difficult to pin down and really difficult to define eloquently, but it's a space where anybody who holds this consciousness and awareness has the ability to pursue their own aspirations in relation to deep adaptation be that very personal, very local, very global or very attached to a theme or a particular endeavor. And it's, it's wonderful hearing you describe it that way because also it helps me remember the early days when I thought well well how could it be any different than that, because the disruptions break down collapse even will affect everything in very different ways and the responses will be very personal to people depending on where where where they're at in their lives, responsibilities right now and, and what their priorities will be so it's really good to hear that I'd like to just hear some before I ask you a little bit more about how you got to this point, something about the ethos then of the forum, because I think it's still quite a dominant thing. When people think about all a bad future, like a societal breakdown, they think then, well that will mean prepping in the Mad Max way or I'll mean dictators or I'll mean, sort of religious fundamentalism, or hedonism. It's almost like there are these tropes or stories in our culture already, which aren't the deep adaptation story on the east actually responding in in a very different way to those I've just described so how does it. What is the ethos and how does it feel being in the deep adaptation forum. I want to start by acknowledging all of the responses that you just mentioned Jim, because to some extent the culture in which we're predominantly white and Western northern hemisphere membership, and the cultures in which we are raised in doctorate us to respond in those ways we're very self set with we're trained to be very selfish self motivated self preserving deep adaptation differs from all of those other responses in that it's. We don't advocate any particular things to do. So we don't say here are the right things to do it's a very open space. Fundamentally still underpinned by the original ambition which holds as true today as it did when you and your then core team conceived of this so this is about enabling loving responses to our predicament so it's it's about self in this. It's about relationship, and that and people interpret relationship in multiple ways for me there are three elements so there's the relationship I have to myself. There's a relationship I have with my peers my fellow humans and a relationship to nature, and that underpins everything within the deep adaptation for it really is ethos is around compassion curiosity and respect, and trying to remain open when everything around you is encouraging you to close down to to to clam up to armor to to to become tight and rigid that compassion curiosity and respect are opening and enabling loving responses to to our collapse is all about it's about remaining open, finding comfort with the discomfort and and centering ourselves in in our relationships, not in our self. So is that nourishing and enlivening, or do you find it overwhelming and heavy, because this is such a big and tough topic. You know I find the topic heavy and overwhelming gem, as I suspect do many of the people who are here today with us and who watch this video later. I can hand on my heart say that I have never felt heavy or oppressed or overwhelmed within the community or when participating within deep adaptation in quite in fact quite the opposite. There's this sense of opening and of spaciousness and I feel like my capacity is massively enhanced through engagement with this incredible community of people and that's not to say there aren't challenges of course there are where people so we rub up against but somehow the ethos on which we're founded means that we have new ways of dealing with tension and with conflict and with there's this wonderful lightness. It's a relief of this community. My understanding is you, I want to go back a bit in a moment but my understanding is, you have quite a lot of experience in facilitation of processes and of communities and organizations. Is this different. In some way, this your experience within the deep adaptation forum, or is it drawing upon things that you know about and that you believe in. Sorry, Jen. It's very different. So I've experienced flavors of this in little pieces of work that I've done over the last 30 years. And it's difficult to describe it like a momentary flash or an insight or an epiphany of a fashion. Deep adaptation, my experience since being in the deep adaptation forum is that all of those insights have coalesced and so it's really quite different. It's really quite different. So some of the structure some of the format some of the process work that I've done is helpful in this context, quite a lot of it is not helpful at all. Because we're meeting in a different ideological space I suppose or a different level of a different piece of consciousness I'm not sure what the point of difference is but it's very different within the form to anything I've experienced anywhere else. I'd like I'd like to explore that a bit more but then to put put it in context about what you've experienced before. Yes, how, where we could you pinpoint something that was important in your journey towards the work you do now, because I know in terms of you worked in environmental sustainability for some decades before. Could you tell us a little bit about that so what what did you do in the past in on sustainability and why do you still do some of it today. Just so we get that context and then we can see how the deep adaptation work fits with that. I can give you a little part of history and try not to take too much time. A long time ago. I was very idealistic. I was gifted with some intelligence and some academic skill. So I studied applied sciences and then environmental sciences and ecology and then sustainability. And I started my career working in government as a researcher. I'm predominantly rivers and wetlands that as everybody here understands rivers and wetlands are merely an expression of the entire landscape so it's covered quite broad area. And I suppose at the age of 21 22 I imagined that being the best scientist in the world was all it would take to interrupt this trajectory that we were on. And after a few years realizing actually the best science in the world wasn't changing anything maybe it was about policy and legislation so I migrated sideways and I worked around drafting new legislative frameworks in West Australian government. And then when I realized legislation was rubbish I thought well maybe it's all about enforcement maybe what we really need is to just have bigger teeth maybe we can stop people from messing stuff up and of course I dallyed in licensing and regulation for a while and realize that didn't work and returned to my first love which was science and investigations. At which time, all the budgets for such things had been decimated they've been reduced to, you know, by orders of magnitude so that necessitated starting to work with communities and practicing community science and for me that was a massive revelation. Because I began to understand that what really makes a difference is supporting people in accessing information which has meaning and value for them in the context in which they operate. So it's very easy to stand on the outside as an environmentalist pointing fingers and saying, you're doing the wrong thing and you shouldn't be farming that way and here are the things you should be doing and here's the license and here's the protocols and but none of that matters a dot because it's, you need to be connecting with people where they are and responding to their to their needs so that was the first big shift and at that point in my career I transitioned into more of a very sensitive role, supporting dialogue when I left the government and went to work in private enterprise I worked as a sustainability consultant, and we worked on incredible initiatives. We built a potato reactor to deal with waste from from a dioxide metal plant that had been killing water killing fish and turning the best rate red we built the first entirely passive wastewater treatment system in the year. We, we built we did incredible projects they were exciting, they were leading cutting edge. But in that context I was missing that contact with people. And so again a return back to more of a focus on facilitating an enabling conversation. And when I moved back to the UK from Australia. 14 years ago I made the decision that I would only do that type of work that I would leave the sustainability stuff behind it wasn't satisfying for me and I would only do facilitation and working with communities around realizing their own ambitions for resilience and and strength and sustainability. I also made a decision that I'd only work just enough to pay my way in the world and the rest of my time I would give away for free. And that's what I still try to do, because there are lots of people who benefit from the kind of language and fluency that I have around those matters that can't afford to pay for it. So that's, that's neither here nor there but my commitment went from being to to the science proper to people and the planet. So at some point you discovered. Oh, actually, I don't know this cat. I'll tell you where where where yeah when, when did you discover the work I did and were you already on the same page. So I was already on the same page, and lots of people who are watching this video and listening in will know this already but at about the age of 14. Someone asked me what did I want to be when I grew up and I said sustainable self sufficient and she said I don't know what you mean by that and I said I want an acre of land with a little wooden house where I can meet all my requirements for life. And she said I still not understanding where does that come from and I said well I know that when the shit hits the fan I want to be in a position to close the gate and let it unravel and not be caught up in all of that and my mom sent me away for therapy because she was very distraught this was 1984. So I'd somehow have absorbed the potential for that in my youth got distracted as we all do because our world is full of delightful distractions. So your paper came to my attention I think it was the end of August in the year that you wrote it which was what 2018 and I suspect it came to my attention because I was still moving very much within the sustainability field. So in my personal and personal contacts. I read your paper. I picked it up to read thinking it was just another one of those papers that would take me a month to get through. I was gripped and read it start to finish. And I wrote to you, and I will have been one of those millions of emails that you had in those early days saying, thank God, someone said it out loud. How do I get involved. Right. And did someone reply. So I joined the forum. Very early in 2019. I have to go to your PA. So I joined the name platform not being much of a social media user and Dorian bless him in his welcome email said would you like to volunteer and not knowing any better I said yes of course I would. I would like to join a dance which is still underway. I see. Thank you for that story. I'm going to search my emails to try and find that historic first email problem, unless it's been archived. I still find it good night. Everything's kept forever these days isn't it, if not by me by someone else. So, I'm wondering, then it sounds like you were fine with this, because of your own journey. So was there, were there any was your background in sustainability and you've done your background kind of includes the various elements of sustainability, the science, the natural science, the conservation, the policy and regulation, the innovation, the technology the excitement there, then also the focus on people and communities and also participation facilitation ways of organizing community resilience. So the full range of what what people understand is under the sustainability umbrella. Is it helpful in what way or was it was a hindrance in in your ongoing adjustment to anticipating and accepting a breakdown of life as we know it. It's such a good question. The curious thing is that I mean as an environmentalist I guess I was formally educated and so with that education comes a sort of, I don't know it's unwritten or unspoken, an expectation that you have the answers that you can do this that you know you have all the knowledge look up, you're standing on the shoulders of people who've gone before you and you know you have you have this you are the solution. I've had such a good life, and I've had so many incredible experiences. I suppose, starting out as a young person aware that we were fragile or at least far more fragile than was being spoken about openly supported me, I would suggest that it's more of a hindrance than a help. Personally I've benefited from the things that I know and they're helpful now as I change my life in another direction. But the structures, the formality the indoctrination into a way of thinking in a way of engaging with the world is largely unhelpful, not being very articulate I hope that that's kind of clear to people. You mentioned the word indoctrination. Sorry go on. You mentioned the word indoctrination. So it's a particular way of thinking about the world and about being an agent of change and being professional that we learn within the environmental sector is that so it's particular to that you mean. I think it's it's present within that perhaps it's particular to our way of educating in that we, there's a there's a separation isn't there we as an environmental science student I was always looking at the environment at the ecology from the outside. So there was always a there's always a distance we're trained to to perceive and observe in that way from the outside. There's a separation that's built into that and I think that's unhelpful. I think that's really unhelpful. And I don't think it's unique to environmental sciences, particularly, or sustainability particularly but it was very marked for me. Jim there's something else about. I can share with you a parallel story so I was trained, formerly as a musician as a child, so I can read music, they can play various instruments, and then at about the age of 20 I was invited to a jam session in a great beat in a blues club. And I went along and I couldn't jam for the life of me. And my friends who knew that I could play music and was fluent were astonished, but somehow the rigor of my training meant that I didn't have the freedom to let go. And so there's a parallel for me between that and being educated in the natural sciences and sustainability, and being able to engage in the world in ways that are fulfilling and that feed you and that are life affirming. The same it's almost like that same sort of rigor creates a barrier between you and the thing of passion. Yes, wow. There's some, I think, so I'm, I'm a professor meaning then I've, I've had to work super hard and spend half my life in front of a computer. And I think it does switch off certain possibilities for knowing. Because you think that the only valid way of saying anything about anything is if you've read 50 papers on it, and you're very clear on your methodology. And also it means you're really tired from staring at papers all the time that maybe you're not myself and other people perhaps not as quite widely read and reflect is on on all manner of issues as we could be. Right, so for me taking a sabbatical for you just off completely massive, really massive in my ability to rethink. I think also I was so part of and proud of being part of this, what we called third wave solutions environmentalism from the 90s, where governments weren't doing much so well NGOs, ethical consumers, charismatic CEOs and ethical businesses we're going to we're going to sort it all out ourselves, that story. And therefore, let's not talk about doom and fear and any of that let's talk about, you know, how do this and it'll improve your life and we can achieve all this that and the other. So yeah for me I was. And so yeah environmentalism very therefore closely aligned with entrepreneurship finance globalizing capital and all that stuff too. And if you think it's all failing, then in my case that was quite challenging. And I'm, it's why I should be more forgiving of all those people who keep criticizing, which brings me to the question of the criticism is cat you and I we've given up. I mean, that's what the criticism is. That's it. Yes. Represents you giving up me giving up. So, have you given up. Yes or no, and you can challenge the question as well. But that's the thing we hear. I notice I feel quite affronted at the idea that I've given up. So I'm going to have to spend a bit of time with that later on, I suspect. Okay. I haven't given up. I mean I still, I still run part of my working life is I still run a small not for profit in the UK that works around ecological restoration and recollecting communities with their local environments and increasingly around community resilience. As a result of those other efforts. So I'm still committed. I'm more frustrated than I used to be by the bureaucracy and by the, I get I find the process of doing good in the world really irritating I feel like I fight continuously to just to make a tiny difference that that really is exhausting. But no, I haven't given up and actually I probably guess and I'm looking at some of the faces on the screen who know me well. I'm probably contributing more towards change now than I have any other point in my career it just looks different. I'm not tying myself to trees or waving placards in the streets I'm not petitioning parliaments or trying to persuade and coerce the heads of multinational organizations as I did during my career. It's softer and more gentle and more local and more intimate now just looks through. Yeah, so I'll reframe the question what are you not giving up on and won't give up on. The first thing that came into my body was loving humanity. And by humanity as in the whole of the human population, the best of people. I'm not giving up on that. I'm not giving up on our capacity to care to look after one another. I'm not giving up on our capacity for generosity. I'm not giving up on our capacity to work really bloody hard when we need to not giving up on those things and I won't. Generosity, the belief in the best of humanity. I have a question for me not anybody else now, what would you tell me I get a bit stressed and down, not just about criticisms of me or my work but criticisms of anyone who's really taking seriously some of the worst case scenarios, talking about it publicly and changing their lives accordingly in their own ways. I get down stressed, angry, and down when I see that being happening and it is the typical way mass media corporate media will touch on this topic they label it do mism in a way where it's a narrative term. And also it's, it's the way that I'm establishment environmentalists and climate scientists many of them will will speak as well when when asked to speak on it. And I think it might occupy too much of my reality, you know that disappointment frustration, sometimes anger. You've probably come across other people is it just me felt it yourself or come across other people like how do we, how do we, how do we love ourselves in that context and I have come across it myself, Jim, as has probably everybody on the screen. Someone very wise one said to me, what other people think of you is none of your business, which is really helpful in terms of not taking things personally what we move through a world of mirrors. And I expect was the things we may not like so much about ourselves. And this is really difficult to say because it doesn't apply across the board, but for a large part, at least for us in white, in our white Western realities with all deeply traumatized we're harmed and have been harmed by this very systems that seem to be benefiting us. And we're not good at dealing with trauma. And we, we, we push it away. We. So, I would suggest that if you're provoking that kind of response from people, that's great because they're feeling that discomfort, and not knowing how to deal with that discomfort they have to separate themselves from it and make you responsible make me responsible make the people on this screen responsible. We can, we can love it better. That's a bit naive isn't it, a bit of a hippie statement but appreciate that it's not all about you it's not all about me. Sometimes it's just them and they are just a reflection of the system in which they operate. They'll, they'll learn. If they're lucky, I hope they do. Yes. You just reminded me how I used to feel. Let's have a conversation about that later then. Yeah, yeah. Definitely I felt that way, but I don't know what's happened recently. Thank you to our guests. Hello everyone and please send questions. If you have them to Stuart, because I'm going to come to you in just a few minutes. Before we do that. I'm going to ask Stuart, actually, Maria, Stuart, I will come to Maria first I'm just have just seen a few questions coming in here. I'll just get that one lined up and I'll have a look at the other questions later. Kat. I read another opinion survey. Bath University. I think it was more than half of all young people and so younger than 24 or younger polls are young adults 18 to 24. Anticipate societal breakdown are distressed about it it is affecting whether they want to have kids. So properly internalizing this. And yet, we see still very little. We actually see very little allowed to be talked about these possible or likely futures. And how what's already being experienced as you know, societal breakdown in many parts of the world, you know, how that's going to be spreading. It's still taboo it seems and so the criticism and the reasons for that we've just covered and so where are people going to turn because there are some of us who are fortunate enough to discover what is still quite a niche community and network, the deep adaptation ethos and forum. Most people, yeah, they'll. Where will they turn, I'm hearing many more people talking about how their Christian communities are talking about it's the end times with something of a little bit of a fatalism and, and therefore we just pray, wait and don't change. Yeah, so I'd be interested to know, is there a role, should we be doing, could, could we should we be doing more in outreach. Are we doing more, I'm doing, I'm doing a little bit more than I used to on that I didn't want to do any outreach. It was heavy, it was a heavy thing to do to bring this acting consciously actively to bring my view of the world to other people beyond the initial viral paper. So I focused on just networking the people who already heard about it and got it. And then just trusted that they'll do have conversations in their own ways in their own communities and families and organizations. Yeah, I'm changing what you know I've changed the past year I thought how what can we do that's a little bit more out there. So what are your thoughts on this. I think I speak on behalf of the forum. We are gently taking we're making ourselves more visible so I'm not sure I would call that outreach exactly. But we now have a presence on on multiple social media platforms that we didn't have historically so we have an Instagram account boys had linked in Facebook, Twitter, etc. Many people here will be aware that we are looking to launch a new platform for the forum, which migrates as a way from the vulnerabilities and the peculiarities of Facebook and allows a alternative to the original professions network which was always a little bit clunky and counterintuitive to use. There are more and more affiliated groups emerging and there are moves afoot from within the forum, the core team proper and the holding group to be writing more publicly talking more openly about deep adaptation. The thing that keeps coming into my mind. I have seen. Gosh, I would have to hate to hazard a guess, literally thousands of initiatives put forward by someone who had an answer, and then put a lot of energy and effort into selling that answer and persuading people it was absolutely right. And invariably as humans we're not very good at that right we push we we automatically there's automatically pushed back if someone is telling you what's right for you what's good what's proper. So something much or something much more invitational feels appropriate. And I strongly suspect that outreach within the deep adaptation forum is happening. It's happening in time, but it's happening informally it's happening because Maria has a conversation with a neighbor. It's happening because iris has discussed it with her mom last time I had a telephone call it's happening because Lisa's talking about it with the chat who grumbles about the weather and the grocery store. I think it's happening all the time. And, and I would suggest that that kind of organic growth, if for one of a better word is far more powerful. And it's, it's hidden, because you can't point at it, but my strong suspicion is it's happening all the time. And as people find their strength and their resilience within the forum, they'll be more and more willing to, to step out they'll feel strong enough to engage in those conversations. They'll feel strong enough to be inviting more consideration and yes I noticed some tension in my body about not quick enough. But it's, yeah, who's to say what's quick enough. Thank you, Kat, we're going to invite the questions now says first. Maria, please unmute and also be lovely to hear whenever you and the next person to ask a question say what where you are. Okay, can you hear me. Yes, well, yes. Okay. I'm talking to you from a balcony near Stockholm, Sweden. It's a warm summer evening here. So that's why I'm sitting outside during your conversation. I started to wonder how you actually define environmentalism. It sounded like, as if it automatically include for you the idea that if you are an environmentalist, you must be positive and feeling that things can still be changed, as opposed to having given up. And the way I think about it is way more, you can accept that, you know, it's all going to go to hell, but you can still be an environmentalist. So that's my question. Kat, how, yeah, it's been the issue for your whole life or at least since 14 cat, what is environmentalism in general to you right now. What do you want to become. I wanted to giggle when Maria raised that question and I hope that Ben's having a chuckle to himself because he posed that exact question on the Facebook thread what is how are we defining environmentalism. I don't think that being an environmentalist means always maintaining a positive framing or positive outlook so I must be more conscious about how I communicate Maria because clearly that's what came across for you in that conversation. I would call myself an environmentalist but I'd have called myself an environmentalist long before I went to college and then university to study the natural sciences. And for me that association that association with environmentalism was feeling a deep connection and appreciation of the natural world. I don't think it's enough to want to do something about it to support it to look after it to petition on behalf of endangered species to give a voice to things which were voiceless in out within our system. And I don't think you have to be hopeful of saving everything in order to take action. If you save one thing that's still a positive impact. And what what I'm doing here so I've rearranged my we've rearranged our entire lives thank heavens for my husband John who's listening in on this video recording. But we've changed our lives and a lot of what we do here is about supporting nature. Reintroducing local endemic species helping plants to migrate providing food for native animals by creating an environment which had been largely sterilized monocultured as we are wanting to do so. But knowing I can't say that all doesn't make me want to not do that bit does that answer the question. Yeah, I was just can I if I, I'm interested then is is what's the environmentalism that's true for you and animates you excites you drives you right now then. I'm going to say that word again relationship. As a youngster, I probably did have I was imbued in the same way as many of us with that. Or just notice myself so abstract with that idea of dominion nature is for us it's for us to take what you know it feeds us it's for it provides us with what we need but actually there's not a, there's not a reciprocal respectful relationship with nature. That's definitely shifted for me so environmentalism for me now is about that respectful reciprocal accountable relationship with the natural world. Thank you so we're going to have another question on that topic actually a Brigitte, if you unmute over to you and ask a question also say where you are, that'd be great to know. Hi, I'm in Montreal, and back Canada. So it's great to be with you all. Thank you for doing this. My question cat came from when you were discussing being in relationship with oneself, but then centering a relation yourself in relationship with others. And that really intrigues me because I understand what you're saying but I at the same time I completely don't understand what you're saying so I wondered if you could say how does one center themselves in relationship as opposed to themselves. But you guys are asking great questions. Brigitte. I'm looking to Matthew on the screen because Matthew, Matthew described this to me. Everyone on the screen will have had an experience where you're engaging and interacting with someone but they're not really with you. They're absent. So they're physically present in front of you. Everyone is preoccupied. They might have been answering messages on their telephone. They're clearly not. They're not emotionally present with you. And that's it. It hurts. That's a lonely place to be. And I'm as guilty of it as anyone else. I have to hold my own hand up. Something about being committed to being in relationship with the other which is about really being with the other. Hearing them. Sensing them bringing all of your attention not just listening with your ears but with your whole body. You have some practices that are offered routinely within deep adaptation forum called deep listening and deep relating to different modalities. The relating is about building a familiarity with yourself so that you start to understand where your triggers are and what sensations emerging your body in response to particular triggers deep listening is about turning your attention to being with the other person in their reality. And so that is a practice which has really helped me to transform my relationships in the last few years and not just my relationship with myself. And with other people but the relationship with this beautiful piece of the earth that I have the privilege of stewarding. Because I bring my presence to that too. Does that answer the question. Thank you. I think so but I guess because I already do what you're saying so when when I heard you speak at first I thought you meant anchoring ourselves in relationships, but I guess it's not what you meant. So I'll think about it. But thank you for helping me understand. Thank you. Iris. If you could unmute say where you are and. That's hi. Hi, I'm, I'm in not so sunny Bristol in the UK. It's quite windy actually. So, yeah, my question is. And I read this down earlier. It's basically that sometimes I feel the best word I could come up with with arrogant but some of it might actually be impatience that I feel quite impatient with other people sometimes in the sense that I'm, I feel that I'm looking at a very different future for as we have to discuss this is the sort of deep adaptation, sort of understanding that we share with each other and that you share in the forum and I find that if people haven't arrived at that, at that point in a sort of natural organic way in the same way that can't be described. It's very difficult to make people arrive at it unless they are ready to. And so in terms of the environmental work that we do and the sort of trying to sort of get other people to maybe see the world in a slightly different way in the way that we might be at least there's some common features that we probably see the world in, even if they're quite diverse still is cut pointed out there's still some common features, as in it's probably not going to go very well. I might be the common feature. No, I think I've heard the question there which is that do we yourself, but also because I relate to this Iris is that risk becoming a bit arrogant thing. And maybe there is. Yeah, I'm just wondering you've helped me think that maybe I do. Give up myself in terms of the, the possibilities of having conversations about this with with anyone. No. And I think I do. I think I, I, I don't. Yeah. I can feel somewhat alienating if that if not arrogant. Yeah, we risk, we do we risk just accepting that we were, we were aliens. But I thought actually maybe. you're aliens. But I thought actually maybe my question was more so do we in a way just hold the deep adaptation principles inside ourselves and don't try and communicate the principles themselves out to people who might not be ready and just concentrate on the work with people that you know the local work the connecting with people without the principles worded without them being phrased in particular ways that might people might not be ready for so it's almost a parallel. Yes the principles then the bigger picture stuff about yes that's what I mean which makes us what doesn't now realize it doesn't make us so strange if these opinion polls are correct Kat any thoughts on this? Yeah it's a question which comes up often I think and I I absolutely resonate as you Gem said I find myself guilty of this yes me too Iris but I guess I've arrived at a place where I recognise not everybody has to perceive the world the way I perceive it in order to be better So I love the four questions that Gem originally postulated of three in the paper and the one which came later because you don't have to believe in societal collapse and an ending to life as we know it in order for those questions to add value to your life. We've just well I'd say emerging from a pandemic the government will have us believing that we are emerging from a pandemic all the narrative will have us believing but in the context of what we've all just experienced in the last two years those questions are relevant in the face of the death of a loved one those questions are relevant in the face of a change of career or a transition in education those questions are relevant and so inspire them Iris they don't have to think the way you think to be the way you are. Yes thank you thank you I think I want to watch this video later because I've had a few a ha's and actually a few reminders of the way of being that felt very natural and instinctive to me when I was fully involved in the deep adaptation forum which will be coming up to two years ago now. Come back Gem. Well it's interesting to me it's like this all this stuff it feels right true loving kind to myself it feels calm and patient allowing there's a fluidity to it rather than enforcing and yeah interesting indeed I've really valued the question we have a question from Terry but Terry needs to go so I'm going to put it it's just waving goodbye so I will put it but in a slightly different way which is community building is extremely important to you and deep adaptation forum has been mainly online community building not entirely of course and many people take these ideas and implement them in their own face-to-face groups what what from your experience as coordinator and also in the deep adaptation forum from before that what has been really important that you have actually then also been able to integrate outside the DA world in your other work your other voluntary work or professional paid work is there what is it that's is there a sort of skills transfer and as I say that I think oh well there's the whole guides and facilitators and there's the facilitators group which is the guidance database there's a facilitators group so I guess there's quite a bit of skill sharing that's going on and maybe a DA ethos and modalities that you like the cup of the you mentioned which are which are appearing elsewhere is there anything you could say about that yeah there is more than three years since I found the forum and and I you've heard me say this before Jim has have others on this screen I had an experience of coming home finding my people when I joined the forum that has been transformative for me I was in terms of my career in my in terms of my commitment to my community in terms of my energy I was done so tired so disheartened just exhausted by the whole thing being part of the deep adaptation forum never mind now holding some responsibility for its ongoing development and and sustenance has been personally transformative there isn't an aspect of my life that has not been touched by this and in the first 12 months that I was a member of the forum I joined my local government I became a town councillor I worked with others in my small community around community food growing in the shape of allotments and an orchard we started a repair cafe to reduce waste going to landfill and to reconnect older members of the community with incredible skills with youngsters with broken bicycles and clocks and so that was an incredible initiative through the pandemic we fed 120 local aged people who were isolated and alone and we set up a buddy system on the telephone so that people were getting regular telephone calls from other community members now none of those things really apart from perhaps growing food has anything to do with societal collapse but they all have an incredible benefit in terms of building community so it we don't have to be wedded to the end is night chicken little the sky is falling all of that storytelling we can contribute to building community without having to have the whole community agree with where we are through tapping into existing initiatives and my resilience my enthusiasm my strength to do those things is only enhanced through being part of this community where I can turn up almost every day and go oh and I can be heard and I can be held and I can be my I can be thoroughly myself and I don't underestimate the power of that this is not about deep adaptation forum as an entity changing the world this is about deep adaptation forum supporting the people who individually are transforming their worlds yeah thank you cat um what an awful doomist inactivist you sound like a rubbish isn't it get out there on the barricades and all right thank you for sharing an hour I'm really looking forward to not only watching this again but sharing this video online on my youtube channel and odyssey channel and then people please you'll get an email with a link to it those of you who are on this call and then please do share it and maybe use this as a very gentle way of talking about these issues with people who you feel already or just put it out there and see if anyone wants to talk to you to know more thanks to you as well for doing the tech cheers cat bye bye everyone see you next time thank you so much everybody see you soon