Get Off the Highway
Organised my first international unconference from 11 to 13 February 2015 at Loyola College, Chennai, India. Supported by Manish Jain. And Dr Fr Lazar Savari at the college. I was its official photographer too.
AIMS
Recognition of Spirituality
Recognition of the quality of human spirituality, which has been part of human cultural ethos and values from ancient times, and to understand how this quality of human spirituality is integral to living sustainably on the planet.
Critique of a-Spiritual Discourses
Critique of the prevalent a-spiritual discourses on sustainable development which emphasise materialistic logic, technological fixes and industrial solutions and instead to explore spiritually imbued or engaged alternative discourses on sustainability.
Compilation of Traditional Wisdom
Compilation of the wisdom of existing cosmological cultures of indigenous communities and to share this wisdom through various modes of communication, and especially to enable young people to contribute their creative energies towards the collective validation of these cultures.
Spaces for Healing
Creation of spaces of opportunities for holistic healing experiences which allow individuals and communities of friends to experience and to learn about the inseparability of psychological, physical and planetary ecological well-being and to use this consciousness as basis of decisions and actions.
OBJECTIVES
Main Objective
To re-cast contemporary global concerns, issues and action in the language of sustainability from a spiritual point of concern (but going beyond mere religious or New Age articulations/deliberations)
Key Supporting Objectives
>To review, unlearn and/or learn from the “business-as-usual” approach to sustainable development and its impact on human societies, nature and our common future
>To explore new conceptions of personhood, community, nature and their deep inter-connectedness: (i) to foster friendship and trust across ethnic communities, age, gender, religious affiliation and regions (ii) to go beyond the focus on the human world, and (iii)to conceive a world from deep inter-connectedness
>To exchange orientations and experiences of sustainability that are based on or that accept the spiritual point of concern
>To promote and enable the systematic study of sustainability from a spiritual point of concern
>To promote and support appropriate solutions and futures of sustainability (challenging the hegemony of mainstream technological or economic points of views/realities/solutions)
>To explore, encourage and share the development logic of Being (within a nature-oriented cosmology) countering the emphasis on the growth logic of Having (focusing on material or status possessiveness)
>To explore spirituality-based notions including gross national happiness (GNH) or well-being, spiritual quotient, spiritual capital, “green deen”, mindfulness, wakaf, interconnectedness, localisation, servant leadership and many more that have come into contemporary usage, offering spiritually-engaged sustainability new ideas, creative scenarios, novel imagination, innovative designs and an engaging language
>To promote and support the dynamic institutionalisation of spirituality-based sustainability at local and global levels (going beyond mere religious deliberations or New Age concerns)
In sharing on these thematic planetary concerns, the participants are encouraged to elaborate on their concerns in the following areas and/or topics, fleshed out in the table below. ( Note: We encourage participants to explore areas that are not mentioned in the table. These are to be seen as ‘sensitisers’ (or ‘memory joggers’) rather than firm topics. Also, concerns can be associated with or linked up with each other to make a broader area of concern. These areas can be further seen as affirmations or questions. Or ones from which new areas take birth.)
