Life Planning In The Face of Extinction – From Horror To Hope

What will civilisation be like in 2040? What will my life be like? What will I need to navigate to get there? What kind of life plans can I realistically make? Will I be helping humanity survive? Will my loved ones survive? Will I survive?

Join us to ‘move-from-horror-to-hope’ in facing the uncertainty of the future with grounded empowerment.

Life Planning in the Face of Extinction is about working with community to develop realistic views of what is plausibly going to happen in our life time, and how that change may unfold step by step, so that we can get better insights to guide our personal decision making.

Decisions like, do I have a kid? Is this relationship right for me? What career is best? Where should I live? Which hobby should I pursue? What can I do to actually help us survive? How can I possibly enjoy this life and feel ok about it?!

Using the professionally distilled wisdom of humanity for planning for uncertain futures, we’ll work together to make sense of what is unfolding on the planet and how we can make the best decisions possible for our lives.

You’ll be introduced to some potent tools-for-thinking, and facilitated to use them to make sense of the world, what’s changing, and what the real risks and important unknowns are. From there you’ll be guided to develop a strategic pathway for your own life, based on your values, that will help you, for many years to come, to navigate the terrain of however the future unfolds.

This will be an emotionally confronting, mentally challenging yet humanely-connected process of focused discussion, discrimination and decision making. You’ll be supported to upgrade your thinking, to find new evidence of what’s really going on, and to distil your deepest values into clear priorities for how to plan and live your life in the face of extinction: the worst case scenario of total civilisational collapse.

The futures tools we’ll use include Spiral Dynamics, Trends Identification, Uncertainties Analysis, Impact Matrices, Causal Layered Analysis, Scenarios, The Futures Cone, The Futures Triangle, Backcasting, Deep Visioning and more.

The six sessions will address:

Session 1: Frameworks for Thinking about Our Situation
Session 2: Personal Values and the Problems of Life
Session 3: Future Scenario Ingredients: Making Sense of the World
Session 4: Future Scenario Creation & Backcasting to Now
Session 5: Exploring The Future Scenarios
Session 6: Pathfinding Personal Life Plans for All Scenarios

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LOGISTICS

COMMITMENT: This is a 6 session course involving up to 4 hours for each in-person (Melbourne) group session (with a live-online via zoom group too) PLUS up to 4 hours between sessions in researching / questionnaires / collaborating with other participants. It is essential to attend all sessions.

COST: $300 (waged/standard) per person or $150 (hardship/student/concession). Payment plans available (contact Chris directly). Book in below!

DATES & TIMES: 6:30pm-10:00pm Tuesdays October 8th, 15th, 22nd, 29th, (a break for Melbourne Cup Day), and November 12th and 19th – Please, arrive early to settle in and start on time and plan to leave as late as 15-30 minutes after the session (ie 10:30pm).

LOCATION: Room 2 (The Green Room) at Dance of Life Centre of Yoga and Healing, 250 George Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne Victoria Australia. OR Zoom 🙂

ONLINE PARTICIPATION: This offering will be delivered both IN PERSON in Melbourne and ONLINE via live broadcast using Zoom. As the process is intensively collaborative, the online participants will form one of the “small groups” for discussion and activity purposes, so be prepared to navigate such digital dialogues!

MISSED SESSIONS: If you miss a session you REALLY miss out. You and your participation matter. So does every step in this process. Each session’s learning and development of shared language and meaning is the foundation for the next session. So if you cannot make a session you may not be able to continue (without refund or discount), or you may need a paid catch-up session ($100 per hour).

REFUNDS: No refunds unless the event series is cancelled.

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YOUR FACILITATOR

Chris Stewart is a transformational guide offering healing, empowerment and support through deep presence. In addition to his personal healing and spiritual growth qualifications and experience that underpin his current ‘day job’ (learn more here: https://chriscstewart.com/about-chris/ and read what people experience here: https://chriscstewart.com/what-others-say/ ) in a previous ‘career-life’ Chris was a professional futurist and organisational strategy consultant on the basis of his Bachelor of Communications Majoring in Public Relations & Psychology, Masters of Science in Strategic Foresight, and being a certified Spiral Dynamics Values Consultant (Levels 1&2).

Chris Co-Founded the Centre for Australian Foresight (http://cfaf.com.au/), Consulted for the Australian Foresight Institute (https://is.gd/CNnn9P) and The National Centre for Sustainability (when at Swinburne University https://www.ncsustainability.com.au/partners/), co-initiated and project managed the inaugural Asia Pacific Foresight Conference and project managed the Australian Davos Connection’s (https://adcforum.org/) national Future Summit (eg being principle author and editor of the 2006 Future Summit Report: https://is.gd/aSfiXD). For several years he was the Co-Chair of the Australasian Node of the United Nation’s based Millennium Project (http://www.millennium-project.org/), a founding co-organiser of the Melbourne Social Forum, and was one of 50 representatives to the Australian Government’s National Youth Roundtable in 2000.

Chris’ strategic foresight consulting clients have included Westpac, EPA Victoria, Diabetes Australia-NSW, Victorian Council of Social Services, Australian Farm Institute, Land & Water Australia, South East Water, Corporate Value Associates, Ability Capital, Charter Mason, National Centre for Sustainability, among many others, and he’s had extensive engagement across the Victorian Department of Justice, it’s public safety organisations (fire, police, ambulance etc) and Department of Sustainability & Environment primarily in relation to technology and service delivery investments in the context of climate change. In addition to many commercial presentations he has also lectured at the CEO Institute, Australian Institute of Management, and in the Melbourne Business School’s Advanced Management Program.

Chris’ first published academic paper was Humanicide: A 21st Century Risk Profile For Humanity (https://is.gd/LbxTHa). Another journal article, from a series of papers, was Integral Scenarios (https://is.gd/GuH81n). Hopefully these, combined with other publicly available works (http://chriscstewart.com/blog/resources/papers/) give a touch of direct access into Chris’ background as a professional futurist (most commercial consultant reports and presentations remain commercial-in-confidence). A more detailed resume from this past career is here: https://is.gd/iKlLsA.