Global Journal of Science Frontier Research, H: Environment & Earth Science, Volume 22 Issue 5

i. People Targets for upgrading should include individual people (their standpoints, knowledge, skills) and our collective social outlooks. The question here is how can we best attend to future thinking and work “outside and ahead of convention,” while continuing conventions advantages? How can we get down to specifics and actions that make a real difference for the better? ii. Leaders and Institutions Change targets should include national and international leaders too. For example, Falk argues that our way forward is to engage globalism and whole human communities, at appropriate scale, including leaders. He says that we need to affirm that our shared collective striving for recognition and a dignified material, social, and political life is in the realm of the possible. We must reimagine a sense of our place in the universe. He argues that this can create a sense of solidarity, a kind of patriotism for human and nonhuman kind wherein all of us are contributing to an enterprise much larger than our individual lives. This is transcendence in action. Such a perspective would not blur differences among people, however, it might set up a system to view ourselves working in complementarity. Transformation is dependent on the kind of leaders we get. This, Falk says is a helpful place to start our needed transformation. Yet, as Falk notes, our current leadership and institutions(and views of ourselves), which are largely conventional will remain impervious to change toward a more cooperative, peaceful, just, and ecologically sound world. It seems currently that we are paralyzed by normalized convention (thoughtlessness). The most urgent need is for an integrated problem- oriented leadership and citizenry. There is a trend toward integrated undertakings by many people that is underway now, worldwide. Many changes are at the individual or small group level. The challenge before us is formalizing transformative education and application of integrated problem-solving in the academy? Do we have time? Another recommendation by Witter is that global mass movements present an opportunity for gains. 40 There is much needed work ahead. Perhaps most important is to make change in the world around oneself. This is the situation in which we can be most influential and constructive. There is no guarantee we will be successful in overcoming the powerful normalized convention that now dominates most everywhere. Nevertheless, there are promising avenues for constructive change that reinforces hope for the transformation needed. Global networks of activists can have influence well beyond national borders. He summarizes historic movements, such as antislavery, the labor movement, socialist movement, the peace movement, environment movement, nuclear disarmament, movement against corporate globalization, and the women’s rights movement. True, all these movements have faced furious backlash and opposition. Nevertheless, the rise of global movements seems to have come from recognition of the interconnection of all peoples around our common cause (e.g., human dignity in healthy environments). He argues that global movements need to be organized, focused, and (self-) empowered, as they seek transformative change. b) Integrated Problem Solving Perhaps the most promising way to bring about constructive change is teach and use integrative problem solving. As a key target or opportunity, this is likely the most direct, transformative way to upgrade our actions. Here are five considerations that make up integrated problem-solving. This approach is being taught successfully in the academy now and inapplied work. 41 i. Five Key Perspectives These five considerations taken together function to help us overcome limitations of only operating within convention. There are five important perspectives to take on any program or policy to understand it and ameliorate problems. By “perspective,” I mean a distinctive way to look at the program or policy in question. Each perspective is important if you want to avoid being misled by ignorance, convention, or by a promoter – a propagandist, lobbyist, or partisan promoter or salesperson, for example. These five and their foundation comes out of social and political thought and are abstracted into the policy sciences – the configurative framework. The framework consists of a logically complete set of mapping categories that can help us understand and address policy problems. This framework is a practical means of organizing our © 2022 Global Journals 1 Global Journal of Science Frontier Research Volume XXII Issue V Year 2022 6 ( H ) Version I An Inquiry into “Convention”as a Problem and what we Might do About it? Considering recommendations, Bonnett argues that we are operating now with an impoverishment of experiences and perception with nature and ourselves. We are trapped inside a conventional concern for “mastery over nature ”that insulates us from the world and knowing ourselves deeply. Convention with its doctrine and formula objectifies, materializes, and commodifies nature. Bonnett thinks this buries us in a particular form of untruth. It limits our understanding of engagement with problems –self, social, and environmental. He argues that this makes us insensitive and even dismissive of experiences of normative aspects of the natural world and our own living. In an earlier paper, Bonnett asks what a new kind of awareness looks like, as part of our moral sensitivity to nature and non-human life. 38 In the end, his recommendation is a call for a “re-awakening” in and of ourselves about our environment. 39 Changing people’s perspectives is an important change target. The academy could lead such an effort.