My field is learning design – applied educational science. There are many valid explanations to the above question, ranging from lobbyism, the disempowerment of individual consumers versus producers, to group egoism, to the defense of privilege, and many more. From the perspective of conventional learning processes, our underlying model of expectations looks like this:

(1) We rationally explain to a person the consequences of ‘continuing as is’.

(2) The person is ideally insightful, understands everything we explain, and agrees with us.

(3) As a consequence of such a great learning mechanism, we logically expect a change in behavior based on the new internalized data.

However, contrary to all expectations, this learning process hardly moves anything, neither by info-events nor by activism. Neither at the national nor international level has the effort to teach sustainability produced measurable results in CO2 reduction to date. Quite the opposite. It looks like six of nine planetary tipping points have now been reached. Where are we failing?

In times of upheaval and drastic changes, two opposing force fields are confronting each other: old beliefs and the premonition that we are driving our ecosphere to the wall with a ‘business as usual’ approach. Probably for the next 10,000 years. Between these fields of force are perplexity, panic, and cynicism.

How deep do beliefs run?

I was discussing this with a friend in Berlin. “The discussion is total mumbo jumbo,” he said at one point, “because to stop climate change, you’d have to (a) abolish capitalism first and (b) abandon consumer society second. You’re not going to win people over for that.”

It’s great when friends name taboos so freely. Now we understand how deeply convictions are rooted in us. In me, in you, in all the people out there. Whether we agree on the content of everything is secondary.

To reach deeply held beliefs, we need to reconfigure the learning process in a ‘reverse engineering’. Cognitive knowledge and pragmatic skills must come together. We need to get to reflective action (head and hand) to create new experiences that reach the heart. Understanding creates insights. Action creates experiences. Only the two together can bring about behavior change by transforming deeply held beliefs through new experiences: ‘Knowledge is only rumor until it lives in your body’.

Know-How and Do-How can change See-How and Feel-How. A change of heart, perspective, deeply held beliefs, and convictions are the biggest challenges in any learning process. We now understand how debates, while very helpful in sharing perspectives, ultimately do not create change. An e-learning course, for example, does neither create community nor team spirit.

In this respect, our approach of starting with learning actions at NEXTGEN.LX has been confirmed.
For collective behavior change, we need to design completely novel learning experiences.

Featured Image: NASA