Accidental Gods

How do we re-democratise democracy?  Understanding that our current system is broken is the first step, but then we need to find ways to gather voices and give agency to those with wisdom, so that we re-create our systems of governance from the ground up. 

At the start of Lockdown, Eva and Justin set out to interview 100 people in Scotland - deep, wide, broad interviews across the widest range of opinions.  Now, they are bringing those together, creating the foundations for a consultative democracy that really listens to people’s cares and concerns.  If it can happen in Scotland, it can happen all around the world.  We need new structures.  This podcast, and the Medium article that led to it, aim to be the absolute foundation resources for those wanting to create whole, healing institutions based on the best of human Being. 

About Eva and Justin: 
Eva Schonveld is a climate activist, process designer and facilitator, supporting sociocratic system development, decision-making and facilitation in a range of contexts including XR Scotland. After many years working in the arts, she went on to co-found Scotland’s first Transition town and city, networked to inspire the Transition movement across Scotland, and was commissioned by the Scottish Government to establish and manage Transition Scotland Support.  More recently she has co-founded Starter Culture, which is developing a range of projects to tackle the marginalisation of the inner dimension at different levels of scale including working on supporting more relational ways of doing politics in Scotland. She is also co-founder of Heartpolitics which exists to address the interconnected social and environmental threats that arise from dividing humans from the wider ecology, and from dividing our minds from our hearts, which is currently working on a fractal Grassroots to Global process which aims to connect open-hearted listening and creative culture re-design processes with a global citizens assembly. 

Justin Kenrick is an anthropologist and Senior Policy Advisor at Forest Peoples Programme where he works for community land rights in Kenya and Congo. He is a director of Life Mosaic, and also works on land reform in Scotland. He lives in Portobello, Edinburgh, where he chairs Action Porty which undertook the first successful urban community right to buy in Scotland. He writes in many contexts is active in the XR UK and XR Scotland Political Strategy circles, and is on the Stewarding Group of the Scottish Government’s Climate Citizens Assembly which XR Scotland campaigned for.  He has a PhD in anthropology from Edinburgh University, draws on a four year Buddhist psychotherapy training, co-founded Heartpolitics, is a Quaker, and has been imprisoned several times for peaceful direct action. His work focuses on enabling people to safely risk taking the steps needed to restore trust in themselves, their community, society and the world.


Links

The original Medium article:  Politics, Trauma and Empathy: breakthrough to a politics of the heart? https://medium.com/@evaschonveld/politics-trauma-and-empathy-breakthrough-to-a-politics-of-the-heart-8591d8dce628

Sue Gerhardt 'Why Love Matters' https://www.academia.edu/4198318/Why_love_matters_By_Sue_Gerhardt_Abingdon_Oxfordshire_Brunner_Routledge_2004_Pp_256_9_99_ISBN_1583918175

Sociocracy: https://sociocracy.co.uk

Grassroots to Global: https://www.grassroots2global.org

The Alternative: https://alternativet.dk/en

What is Accidental Gods ?

Another World is still Possible. The old system was never fit for purpose and now it has gone - it is never coming back.

We have the power of gods to destroy our home. But we also have the chance to become something we cannot yet imagine,
and by doing so, create a future we would be proud to leave to the generations yet unborn.

What happens if we commit to a world based on the values we care about: compassion, courage, integrity?

What happens if we let go of the race for meaningless money and commit instead to the things that matter: clean air, clean water, clean soil - and clean, clear, courageous connections between all parts of ourselves (so we have to do the inner work of healing individually and collectively), between ourselves and each other (so we have to do the outer work of relearning how to build generative communities) and between ourselves and the Web of Life (so we have to reclaim our birthright as conscious nodes in the web of life)?

We can do this - and every week on Accidental Gods we speak with the people who are living this world into being. We have all the answers, we just lack the visions to weave them into a future that works. We can make this happen. We will. Join us.

Accidental Gods is a podcast and membership program devoted to exploring the ways we can create a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations yet to come.

If we're going to emerge into a just, equitable - and above all regenerative - future, we need to get to know the people who are already living, working, thinking and believing at the leading edge of inter-becoming transformation.
Accidental Gods exists to bring these voices to the world so that we can work together to lay the foundations of a world we'd be proud to leave to the generations that come after us.
We have the choice now - we can choose to transform…or we can face the chaos of a failing system.
Our Choice. Our Chance. Our Future.

Find the membership and the podcast pages here: https://accidentalgods.life
Find Manda's Thrutopian novel, Any Human Power here: https://mandascott.co.uk
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