INTERVIEW WITH KOSHA JOUBERT OF THE GLOBAL ECOVILLAGE NETWORK (EUROPE) ABOUT DRAGON DREAMING
Kosha: Why is the dreaming circle called 'dreaming circle' and not 'visionary circle'. Aren't dreams too fleeting and personal to build projects on?
John: Australian Aboriginal Culture knew that our dreams access the collective consciousness of humankind, an idea later developed by C.G.Jung. We tend to view dreams as fleeting, ephemeral, individual subjective phenomenon, and we look at our linear view of time as if it is objective reality. Quantum mechanics, and the New Physics teaches us that this old Newtonian view of time is obsolete, but by continuing to look at time as if it were money, and defining "efficiency" as "saving time", our culture is accelerating to kill our communities, and our ecosystems, and with the rise of cancers, allergies and auto-immune diseases, it is now killing our bodies. Dreaming accesses a timeless "everywhen" and thus creates a more leisured and creative space, necessary for us if we are to find the solutions to the huge and growing problems of climate change, resource depletion, population and consumption pressure, biodiversity loss and rising levels of violence.
Kosha: How can the process of Dragon Dreaming be a support to the community movement?
John: The Great Turning of our Culture away from the socially divisive, competitive, ecologically destructive, violent and ignorant cancerous growth at any price industrial society, towards the inclusive and pluralistic, cooperative, ecologically enhancing, wise and resilient life sustaining cultures of the future, is the greatest transition our world has seen since the extinction of the Dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. To successfully make this transition that Gaia, the living Earth itself is wanting us to make, is going to require unleashing the creative potential of every person on the planet, and require us to start living out of our full potential as human beings, or rather, as humane becomings. How do we unleash this creativity on a massive never before attempted scale? The contribution of Dragon Dreaming is that it can help to show how, through building community, living simply, living non-violently preserving knowledge and building inclusive earth
caring spiritualities, this creativity can be liberated.
Kosha: What is the connection between Dragon Dreaming and the Town Transition Movement?
John: The Transition Town Movement looks at the problems we face as a culture, with peak oil resource depletion, climate change, weakened ecosystems and loss of biodiversity, and unsustainable energy intensive monocultural industrial food systems, and rather than seeing these as insurmountable problems that must be resisted, it looks at these as stimuli and opportunities for personal, community and planetary growth. It stimulates our curiosity, our enthusiasm, and our rediscovery of our collective powers as people who wish to make a positive contribution to the future. Where Dragon Dreaming contributes to the Transition Town movement is that it provides important tools that assist people, once they have committed themselves to making these differences, with the tools to run outrageously successful community projects.
Kosha: What impact can this have on the broader society?
John: I remember years ago seeing a cartoon with a person saying, I am only one individual, what can I do. The second frame showed about ten or fifteen people all saying "I am only one person....", and in the third frame there were thousands all saying "I am only one person...". This is the myth of how we live our lives, a myth of personal disempowerment, that enables people to be controlled and accept unfaviousable and destructive working lives. If just one person were to make the difference and could equip just one person a day to do the same, and they pass on their skills each to one person a day it is just 33 days before we reach every man, woman and child on the planet. Just over a month to change the world. This impact is incalculable, but it is clear that such a planetary mobilisation is becoming necessary to end the wars that are spreading, to solve the climate and resource crises, to rebuild our self destructive economies and to work for the preservation of complex life on this planet. As Margaret Mead said "Never doubt for a single instant that a small group of dedicated, committed people cannot change the world, indeed, it is the only thing that ever has". The proliferation of Dragon Dreaming projects everywhere, in many countries, is one of the most hopeful signs of our times.
