I want to share a couple of quotes about the Ladakhi people, to give a sense of what is possible for humans outside of this soul-destroying civilisation that we find ourselves in. These are from Helena Norberg-Hodge, an anthropologist who studied the Ladakhis in the Himalayas, before the area was opened to tourism and they began interacting regularly with Westerners.

 

"The Ladakhis possess an irrepressible joie de vivre. Their sense of joy seems so firmly anchored within them that circumstances cannot shake it loose. You cannot spend any time at all in Ladakh without being won over by the contagious laughter."

 

"Even during the harvest season, when the work lasts long hours, it is done at a relaxed pace that allows an eighty-year-old as well as a young child to join in and help. People work hard, but at their own rate, accompanied by laughter and song. The distinction between work and play is not rigidly defined.

 

Remarkably, Ladahkis only work, really work, for four months of the year [the short Himalayan growing season]. In the eight winter months, they must cook, feed the animals, and carry water, but work is minimal. Most of the winter is spent at festivals and parties. Even during summer, hardly a week passes without a major festival or celebration of one sort or another, while in winter the celebration is almost nonstop."

 

I'm not suggesting we go back to a super low-tech lifestyle, however knowing that such degrees of joy, celebration, peace, health, belonging and more, are possible for humans under different systems, clarifies the potential of human fulfilment. That sense of potential makes it worth it to believe that it's possible that we can change the system - towards one which prioritises meeting human and ecological needs.

 

Believing it's possible to change the world, means I've had to work hard to find the ways to actually make it possible. Often trying things and failing, only to learn from my mistakes and try again with better strategy. I've been doing that for so long now that my ideas seem to have become quite uniquely useful. My intention is to share all that I've learned in an attempt to help people to change their own lives, and change the world. Anything is possible with the right strategies.

 

Chances are you've tried making big changes in the past, whether in your own life, or in the world, and you haven't been able to make it work. Activism, healing and radical enterprise are all really tricky and complicated endeavours. If you don't have the right strategies, tools and support you need, it's pretty understandable when it doesn't work out. I believe that most of the ideas and tools that are out there in the personal growth world and the activist world are only half solutions. They work in some ways but not others.

 

I believe that everything is like that. That there aren't any simple answers. Any given strategy or tool only works in certain contexts but not others, in certain ways but not in others. We need to mix and match all of the solutions in the right combination to make things work. That's why I've become really interested in learning from the healing world, the spiritual world and the business world, and bringing all of that to activism. As well as bringing radical ethics, understandings and practices to healing, spirituality and business.

 

We tend to take on the ideas of whatever subculture we're a part of, but then close our minds to whatever that ideology says is wrong. I did that for years with the activist/anarchist subculture's ideas and it turned out to be a massive mistake. The more we can take the good parts of everything and discard the bad parts of everything, the better. If any one ideology that was out there was completely right about everything, then everyone would think it, and that's obviously not the case. Nor is any single ideology completely wrong about everything otherwise no one would believe in it.

 

Regardless, it's really normal to engage in groupthink based thinking. It's what we've evolved to do, and it's also what we've been socialised to do. But if we want to actually get somewhere with changing our lives, or changing the world, we have to let it go…

 

It can be really scary to step outside of the norm. Even if the norms you are used to conforming to are very unconventional, like mine have been. Much of what I have to share is about the techniques you can use to determine what is right for you, and to help yourself feel safe enough to do it, regardless of what others might think, and to plan ways of making sure that what you're putting your heart and energy into, is actually likely to work​