Location:
University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada
Keynote Lecture: John Ehrenfeld
Sustainability Isn’t Working: Try Flourishing Instead
Join us for an evening with John Ehrenfeld, Chief Flourishing Officer, Planet Earth.
The modernist bundle of beliefs and norms, which has powered Western societies for centuries, has begun to misfire badly in both the human and natural domains. “Sustainability” is not the answers. It lacks a proper and realistic vision. Instead, flourishing is the natural existential end for humans and the Planet. To move toward flourishing, the underlying structure of modernity must be re-designed to better reflect the highly interconnected, complex “real” real world. Recent findings from neuroscience suggest that the departure from reality may be due to an imbalance between the two brain hemispheres: the context-rich, holistic, alive world of the right vs. the abstracted, fragmented, inert world of the left. The dominance of the left, seen in the virtual hegemony of abstract, efficiency-seeking, technology and technocratic processes as the answer to all problems, has inhibited humans (and other lifeforms) from realizing their full potential, that is to flourish. To restore the right balance, leaders and designers need to acknowledge and embody right-brain perceptions of the world in their work, namely, 1) the complexity of social and large-scale technological systems and 2) the inherent relationship-based, caring behavior of humans. Pragmatic epistemological, educational, design, and management methods are necessary to capture the fundamentally unpredictable nature of the highly interconnected, non-linear, real (not abstract) world, and to reduce the appearance and severity of unintended consequences, like climate change or inequality. John will present arguments for these assertions during this engaging lecture.
Location: University of Toronto Mississauga, IMI Rotunda, 3359 Mississauga Road
Program:
- 5:30 pm: Appetizers and Networking
- View displays of sustainability initiatives undertaken as partnerships between industry corporations and MScSM Graduate Students. Companies include Fortune 500 companies, consulting firms, non-profits and start-ups.
- 6:30 pm: Keynote Address
- Located adjacent to the Rotunda, in Lecture Theatre KN137
- 7:30 pm: Q&A
- Followed by: Dessert and Networking
