[Sdpg] Shared – dare I call it – WISDOM -Professor Stuart B. Hill

Sat Jun 21 08:26:45 PDT 2008

http://www.stuartbhill.com/
Shared – dare I call it – WISDOM

(these were compiled in 2005, based largely on my 
university and international development 
experience over the past 60+ years, as possible 
‘testing questions’ for all theory & practice

• Ask of all theory & practice – what is it in 
the service of? – before supporting or copying it

• Work mostly with ‘small meaningful achievable 
initiatives' vs. ‘Olympic-scale projects' (most 
of these are abandoned or fail, & have numerous negative side-effects)

• Don’t get stuck in endless ‘measuring studies’ 
(‘monitoring our extinction’) – these are often 
designed to postpone change that is perceived as 
threatening to existing power structures

• To achieve sustainable progressive change, 
focus (at least first) on enabling the ‘benign’ 
agendas of others vs. trying to impose on them your own ‘benign’ agendas

• Focus on enabling the potential of people, 
society & nature to express itself – so that 
wellbeing, social justice & sustainability can 
emerge (in integrated, synergistic ways)

• Collaborate across difference to achieve 
broadly shared goals – don’t end up isolated, alone in a ‘sandbox’

• Don’t let ‘end point’/goal differences prevent 
possibilities of early stage collaboration

• Outcomes are only as good & sustainable as the 
people creating & implementing them – so start 
with the people; & remember that we are a relational/social species!

• Use the media – let me repeat – use the media! 
– such ‘political’ communication is key to change

• Work with business & the public/community; 
government will always follow, but rarely lead!

• Celebrate publicly at every opportunity – to 
enable the good stuff to be ‘contagious’

• Keep working on & implementing – especially 
with others – your (shared) benign visions

• Most of what is remains unknown – which is what 
wise people are able to work with; so devote most 
effort to developing your wisdom vs. your 
cleverness, which is just concerned with the very 
limited pool of what is known (Einstein was clear about this!)

• Always be humble & provisional in your knowing, 
& always open to new experiences & insights

• Take small meaningful risks to enable progress, 
transformational learning & development

• Devote most effort to the design & management 
of systems that can enable wellbeing, social 
justice & sustainability, & that are 
problem-proof vs. maintaining unsustainable, 
problem-generating systems, & devoting time to 
‘problem-solving’, control, & input management

• Work sensitively with time & space, especially 
from the position of the ‘others’ (ask: who, 
what, which, where, when, how, why, if & if not?)

• Act from your core/essential self – empowered, 
aware, visionary, principled, passionate, loving, 
spontaneous, fully in the present (contextual) – 
vs. your patterned, fearful, compensatory, compromising, de-contextual selves

• See no ‘enemies’ – recognise such ‘triggers’ as 
indicators of woundedness, maldesign & 
mismanagement – everyone is always doing the best 
they can, given their potential, past experience 
& the present context – these are the three areas to work with

• Be paradoxical: ask for help & get on with the 
job (don’t postpone); give when you want to 
receive; give love when you might need it, or when you might feel hate

• Learn from everyone & everything, & seek 
mentors & collaborators at every opportunity

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  <http://pubapps.uws.edu.au/expert/expert_details.php?eid=32>Professor 
Stuart B. Hill is Foundation Chair of Social Ecology

at the University of Western Sydney

<http://www.uws.edu.au/education/soe>School of 
Education (includes previous School of Social Ecology & Lifelong Learning)
University of Western Sydney (Kingswood Campus),

Locked Bag 1797, PENRITH SOUTH DC, NSW 1797, AUSTRALIA
Phone: 61(0)2-4736-0799; Fax: 61(0)2-4736-0400; 
email <mailto:s.hill at uws.edu.au>s.hill at uws.edu.au

Co-Editor: Journal of Organic Systems 
<http://www.organic-systems.org/index.html>http://www.organic-systems.org/index.html

Co-Creator: Australian Society for Sustainable 
Business 
<http://societyforsustainablebusiness.org/>http://societyforsustainablebusiness.org/

Professor Stuart B. Hill is Foundation Chair of 
Social Ecology at the University of Western 
Sydney. At UWS he teaches units on Qualitative 
Research Methodology, Social Ecology Research, 
Transformative Learning, Leadership and Change, 
and Sustainability, Leadership and Change.

His PhD was one of the first whole ecosystem 
studies that examined community and energy 
relationships (1969); and it was the earliest 
such study conducted by a single researcher. For 
this he received the awards for Best PhD Thesis 
and Best PhD Student. In 1977 he received a 
Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal for his community and social transformation work.

In 1972, in Canada, he produced a report for the 
New Brunswick Government on Energy and 
Agriculture that detailed many of the resource, 
environment and climate issues that are at last 
being recognized today. Since then he has 
produced many more cutting edge reports, and has 
been an advisor to several ministers.

Prior to 1996 he was at McGill University, in 
Montreal, where he was responsible for the 
zoology degree, and where in 1974 he established 
Ecological Agriculture Projects, Canada’s leading 
resource centre for sustainable agriculture 
(<http://www.eap.mcgill.ca>www.eap.mcgill.ca).

His last PhD student at McGill was 
<http://www.royalroads.ca/about-rru/the-university/news-events/media-directory/d/>Ann 
Dale, who was on leave from the Privy Council 
Office, and who had played a major role in the 
establishment of the first ‘National Round Table 
for the Economy and the Environment’. Her thesis, 
which has been published as a book (At the Edge: 
Sustainable Development in the 21st Century, UBC 
Pr, 2001) examines what is needed for governments 
to deal responsibly with sustainability.

Hill has published over 350 papers and reports. 
His latest books are 
<http://books.google.com/books?id=vZ5pH6RmDDoC&pg=PA141&lpg=PA141&dq=ecological+pioneers+a+social+history+of+australian+ecological+thought+and+action+cambridge+up+2001&source=web&ots=X9WeUgooYu&sig=VsOGz9f_zEyCveXjrnwwqd7hAbU#PPP1,M1>Ecological 
Pioneers: A Social History of Australian 
Ecological Thought and Action (with Dr Martin 
Mulligan; Cambridge UP, 2001) 
and<http://www.lulu.com/content/2589181> 
<http://www.lulu.com/content/2589181>Learning for 
Sustainable Living: Psychology of Ecological 
Transformation (with Dr Werner Sattmann-Frese; Lulu, 2008).

More recently he has contributed groundbreaking 
chapters to five books: Enabling redesign for 
deep industrial ecology and personal values 
transformation, in Industrial Ecology and Spaces 
of Innovation (2006); Redesign as deep industrial 
ecology: lessons from ecological agriculture and 
social ecology, in Industrial Ecology: A Question 
of Design?(2006); Social ecology as a framework 
for understanding and working with social capital 
and sustainability within rural communities, in A 
Dynamic Balance: Social Capital and Sustainable 
Community Development (2005);Learning Ecology: A 
New Approach to Learning and Transforming 
Ecological Consciousness: Experiences from Social 
Ecology in Australia, in Learning Toward An 
Ecological Consciousness: Selected Transformative 
Practices (2004); and Autonomy, mutualistic 
relationships, sense of place, and conscious 
caring: a hopeful view of the present and future, 
in Changing Places: Re-imagining Australia (2003).

In Canada he was a member of over 30 regional, 
national and international boards and committees. 
He is currently on the editorial board of five 
international refereed journals, and until 2004 
he represented professional environmental 
educators on the NSW Council on Environmental Education.

Stuart has worked in agricultural and development 
projects in the West Indies, French West Africa, 
Indonesia, The Philippines, China, the 
Seychelles, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and 
Australia. His work in the Seychelles to make a 
whole coralline island completely self sufficient 
in food and energy is particularly significant.

His background in chemical engineering, ecology, 
soil biology, entomology, agriculture, 
psychotherapy, education, policy development and 
international development, and his experience of 
working with transformative change, has enabled 
him to be an effective facilitator in complex 
situations that demand collaboration across 
difference and a long-term co-evolutionary 
approach to situation improvement. These skills 
were used extensively in his recent role as 
Provocateur for the Victorian Government (for DPI & DSE: 2004-5).

Recent Keynotes at National Conferences include the following:
Hill, S.B. 2006. Engaging Us: Ecological Thinking 
as a Basis for Community Change. Keynote to 
Enviro 06 Conf. & Exhibn.: Building Sustainable Cities [Melbourne; 11 May]

Hill, S.B. 2006. Taking Appropriate Next Steps to 
Progressive Change: Building on the Past and 
Risking Deep Transformation Towards More 
Sustainable Communities.  Keynote to APEN ‘06 
Int. Conf.: Practice change for sustainable 
communities: exploring footprints, pathways and 
possibilities [Beechworth, VIC; 6-8 March]
[web; 18 pp: 
<http://www.regional.org.au/au/apen/2006/keynote/4003_hills.htm>www.regional.org.au/au/apen/2006/keynote/4003_hills.htm]
au

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