Axiom News Podcast: Recent Episodes
Conversations with Peter Pula
This is a fascinating conversation at the intersection of culture, criminology, and recovery.
Dr. David Patton is a criminologist and recovery researcher. Most recently David has been engaged with a Recovery Pathways Research Team coming to grips with the variety of pathways people take on their road to recovery from addiction.
The effects of a culture that dislocates, fragments, and isolates people from themselves and community often manifest in addiction. Already harmed by society, people develop substitute lifestyles around addiction. Conventional approaches to 'dealing with' the effects of those lifestyles very often, rather than open a road to recovery, actually pile more harm upon harm.
A patriarchal system promises to fix things, but can't. Period.
In the meantime, the cultural milieu that creates the original harm, one of power over, domination, and oppression is overdue for revisiting and renewal.
In this episode we work through the questions of how addiction begins, the fact that many of us are addicted to something whether to a substance or not, and the pathways to a new life both for each individual and our culture as a whole.
There seem to be parallels between recovery from addiction and recovery from a culture that does harm. Lessons learned from recovery, and for social renewal, abound in this wonderful conversation.
Related Episodes
During this conversation with David Patton, we reference an earlier one with Peter Charad.
Oliver Escobar was raised in a country governed by a dictatorship. Now he is making a life work in democratic research, teaching, and advocacy. He says many or most of our democracies are very underdeveloped. They focus on just a few practices, elections and party politics, which are important but very limited aspects of democratic life. That underdevelopment may have played a role in bringing about what is now a time of great upheaval. That upheaval might in turn serve up an opportunity for renewal.
Oliver says democracy is very personal. It’s about the conditions of possibility for meaningful lives. And it’s not so new as we typically think. In this episode we talk about the indigenous nature of democracy, a practice that reaches all the way to the beginning of culture, long before the dawn of western civilization. Democracy is not a story that belongs to a few countries, it is a story that belongs to humanity.
There are people all around the world who are living in or into deeper democracy. And yet, their stories are not ones we hear. We ask and explore why. Why when there is a more whole way of life alive and well in communities all around the world, do we not hear their stories?
What would it take to go from what Oliver calls a critical mess, to a critical mass?
Peter Block says now is a time in which we can reclaim our capacity to produce our own wellbeing in our communities, workplaces, in our faith, schools, journalism, art, and architecture.
The last two years have put many of us in touch with our world differently. We have been given a fresh opportunity to revisit the ways in which, and from where, we work. Many are reconsidering the social contract. We are suddenly more in touch with people from around the world with digital gatherings having grown exponentially. New movements are shaking up old norms. Reconciliation, restoration, and the common good are calling out for our attention.
In this episode, Peter, self-proclaimed talker and typer, and author of Community: The Structure of Belonging, reflects on the power of trust, groups, rearranging the room, and being human together first. He says he “would like to have a place where ideas matter. Where doubts are valued. Where uncertainty is embraced.” This space is now emerging in the form of The Great Community Collaborative, within which we are hosting a year-long community-led dialogue with Peter to explore what we don't understand about the world we live in now and the philosophic insights that can guide us. A space he refers to as “activism with the architecture of a gathering.”
We begin the conversation in this episode, and invite you to join it’s continuation. To learn more about Reclaiming Our Freedom and Accountability visit the Great Community Collaborative to register for a free pre-launch event with Peter Block happening June 1.
Peter Block's work is in the restoration of the common good and creating a world that reclaims our humanity from the onslaught of modernism.
To find out more, see:
- www.peterblock.com
- Designed Learning, Inc. – offers training and consulting in Flawless Consulting and Leader as Convener.
- Common Good Collective — an initiative that makes accessible the foundational practices for restoring the common good.
- Restore Commons aims to curate the ways of thinking and practice towards the common good.
Jenny Finn's life has been an adventure. As a young woman she broke suddenly from addiction. She then found herself on a discovery journey into life-centred ways of interacting with the world.
She says that while we all must consider the context in which we find ourselves, we do not have to rebel or conform. Jenny and her peers have identified and refined a set of five Sourced Design principles to guide us in responding to the world's current needs and shaping regenerative culture.
As she shares her story in this episode, Jenny speaks to the primacy of direct experience and relational examples, the five principles of Sourced Design, and what life is like as one who answers to a life calling.
Jenny is co-founder of Springhouse Community School in Pilot, Virginia. Springhouse is a multi-generational community of learners courageously exploring the path to regenerative culture.
Shaun Loney is a serial social entrepreneur and the author of two books: An Army of Problem Solvers and A Beautiful Bailout. He's senior partner at Encompass Co-op through which he advocates for a revolution in the relationship between enterprising non-profits, foundations, and governments of all levels. Outcomes Purchasing is a transformative financial tool that values the outcomes non-profits deliver, saves governments money, and directly addresses social problems and possibilities.
Not one to stand still for long, Shaun has put himself forward as a mayoral candidate in his hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. His penchant for bringing people together to break down barriers and to reconfigure relationships has him drawn to cities as a nexus for social change.
In our longing for belonging have we made a deal that gives too much away? When we go along to get along, what is the cost? In this conversation with Jeff Evans, a managing partner of Designed Learning — A Peter Block Company, we explore what it would take to make a new deal and rewrite a social contract in favour of aliveness and belonging. Jeff makes the case for beginning where we are with practices like leading by convening, confronting our freedom, and welcoming dissent.
People do not need help. They need justice. That means access to the resources that affords them the same level of authority and power as those inside institutions. It’s time to bring an end to the time of ‘doing for’ and move into ‘doing with’. For Kiu Coates, that means throwing a better party.
Kiu is a facilitator with the Social Gastronomy Movement who is part of cultivating an emerging social architecture, one that creates a system for ‘doing with.’ That architecture, along with practices for convening and encouraging possibility, puts lived experience at the centre. He even makes the case that engaging and hiring people with lived experience is not a moral argument, but a practical one. Who better to engage than someone with direct, lived experience with the questions at hand?
Kiu shares insights he’s garnered along the way. He speaks with fierceness about transcending conventional institutional practices and the joy to be found in doing so.
What does it mean if our life is falling apart? What are our experiences telling us? We are at a time of great change and we have to pivot and yet there is a tendency to pivot to what is known. The cost of that tendency can be our own growth. We might die in the cocoon. Karim Alameddine has been interrogating questions he has about conventional approaches to mental health. He feels dangerous ideologies are creating a system of mental madness and keeping people stuck. Karim said he was ready to speak out. His message, while emanating from his experience in the mental health field, speaks to the changes we face and the patterns that prevent us from facing it well.
Karim is the author of an upcoming book on addiction.
Carolyn Reilly serves as the generative communications design lead at Springhouse Community School in Pilot, Virginia, USA. Springhouse is a school for regenerative culture builders. Learning is seen there as a lifelong journey that should be centred around vitality, meaning, and cultivating wholeness to better serve the world's emerging needs.
At Springhouse, they have decided that it is most important to take care of, foster, and share life. The learning journey at Springhouse starts in a very different place than conventional schooling settings. In a time calling out for more whole and life-giving ways of learning and teaching Springhouse is leading the way. If you are interested in jumping through a portal to a world where learning begins not with curriculum, books, and standardized testing, but with life, wholeness, sensing, and the courage to step towards the unknown, this conversation just might be for you.
People have been harmed by the society they grew up in.
Having been harmed by the society we grew up in, many of us take on roles that do not reflect who we really are. We live 'lives outside of ourselves.'
The gap created by that separation is filled, by many, with addiction. But the substance abuse is not actually the root problem. Living our life outside of ourselves is the root problem. Peter Charad calls this co-dependency. So, when you quit the thing you are addicted to all the 'stuff' that hasn't been contended with as a result of roles and relationships that separate you from yourself is going to come up. And that is probably going to be hard. It takes time and support. On the horizon, though, is a journey to the recovery of one's authentic self.
If recovering a deeper sense of self is of interest to you, Peter's story will offer ways forward, whether you are contending with substance abuse in your own life or not.
Peter Charad has been recovered from addiction for over 30 years.
This podcast was produced in collaboration with the Recovery Pathways Research Team and was originally published on their website. It appears here with permission.
Organizations work a certain way. Organizations home in on their mission. They focus on what they know. That means a great deal is left outside.
So, there is huge opportunity in the space between them.
However, the way we manage our organizations is not the way to host the space between them. Hosting a collaborative ecology requires the ability to lead by convening, comfort with ambiguity, power-with dynamics, and practices that suit an emergent rather than a deterministic way of working. AB Seed is discovering how.
Christine Spottiswood serves as project lead. She shares her journey with the messiness of learning how to work with organizations while leading something that is a little different, something a bit beyond the norm.
AB Seed is not a legal entity. It has the financial support of 15 organizations. It is in light and right relationship with supportive provincial government departments. It ticks all the partnership boxes. It tends to the spaces in between and is catalyzing new and natural synergies.
Ken Victor is an essayist and poet who hails from Chelsea, Quebec, Canada. He ‘opened a crack that let the darkness in’ through ongoing conversation with a small circle of compatriots called the We’re F’d Club (WFC). His arguments are reminiscent of Meg Wheatley's, "It’s not hope we need, but clarity," and Cormac Russell's, "things aren’t getting worse, they’re getting clearer." Ken goes a little further and asks, "if we accept that humanity is terminal, what are we here to save?” Does hope, false hope, stop us in our tracks, when we could instead turn to palliative care practices as a guide to living well while there is still time?
This podcast was catalyzed by a reading of Ken's latest essay, The Opposite of Hope Isn't Hopelessness.
Angela Fell has her feet in the soil of Wigan, UK. In this straight-talking conversation we name the disconnect from real life and community we see in the patterns and behaviour of our 'democratic' systems and the institutions, large and small, that reinforce those patterns to the detriment of individual, community, and ecological health.
Angela is on the ground working with her neighbours and fellow citizens to re-member and reclaim community power. Uplifting people's gifts, passions, skills, and knowledge is yielding new life and regeneration. Exploring new forms of partnership between citizens and our institutions is a next step already underway.
What Angela shares is gritty, down-to-earth, and practical. Her story shows the way to climbing together out of poverty and injustice, how to look after the planet, the ground, and each other while having loads of fun doing it.
Eighty-five per cent of what determines our health is how associative we are: Cormac Russell.
In nature, a nest is built by gathering many, many, many, many, small little bits and connecting them productively. Cormac Russell, author of Rekindling Democracy, says that at the heart of matters in our time is nesting.
Why nesting?
“What’s kind of funny, at the moment, is that whether you are a socialist, a communist, a capitalist, or a neo-liberal, you broadly all agree that institutions are the answer,” he says.
An institution is a way of organizing to get beyond self-interest and any one person’s capability and contribution. Historically, what has happened is that as we engage with one another stuff emerged that needed doing that simply wasn’t possible through individual capacity or even association.
Generative Journalism brings us together where we work.
Humans are not isolated beings. We are somewhere, in a place. We make choices about where to live and those choices bring about a set of conditions that change and shape us, says Kessels and Smit human geographer and organizational journalist, Marijke Boessenkool.
Human geography explores the relationships and connections between people and place. Marijke says people are both changed by and change the place where they choose to live. There are a variety of spaces we can consider ‘places’ including our neighbourhoods, cities, and environment.
Things are not getting worse, they are getting clearer, says Cormac Russell.
Ever since members of the human race have commenced settlements and domesticated animals as a feature of organizing society, issues like COVID-19 have been present. Cormac, author of Rekindling Democracy, says there has been at least a decade-long awareness that we would be contending with pandemics.
The encroachment on the planet has consequences. As we scale up and we cut deeper into the Amazon rainforest, etcetera, there are fallouts for all of us, he says.
“We are in a context and in a time when our awareness one way or the other is forced towards a pandemic-conscious future, the limits of what institutions can do about that, and among other things, an economically grim decade ahead,” he says.
In Rekindling Democracy, Cormac makes the case that, “if you're waiting for the ‘big man' to get his act together so he can come and save you, or do no harm to you, you're going to be disappointed. So, you’d better get organized, you’d better find your power. And you’d better find ways of keeping yourself and other people safe. It's its neighbour-to-neighbour, citizen-to-citizen, where our greatest hope is.”
Story by story we thicken the rope: Mara Spruyt.
The conversations we have, the stories we collect, one by one, thicken the rope we walk on into the future, says Mara Spruyt, organizational journalist with Kessels and Smit.
In Appreciative Inquiry it is often said that change happens one conversation, one story, at a time.
“Let’s not forget that’s how it works,” says Mara.
For Mara, that’s what generative, organizational journalism (GOJO) is about, sharing one story at a time to bring about change in our lives and organizations.
It is people who start initiatives inside their organizations. They should have a podium to give their stories back into the whole organization so other people can connect to those stories and grow together, says Derk van der Pol, organizational journalist with Kessels and Smit.
This is what Generative Organizational Journalism (GOJO) can do, really reconnect people to the people of an organization and what they, together, want to put into the world.
David LePage, managing partner of Buy Social Canada, has just written and released a new book, Marketplace Revolution — from Concentrated Wealth to Community Capital. In this well-timed and pioneering work, David makes it very clear that the pathway to a more egalitarian and healthy society is in plain view. In straightforward and practical terms he shows how the purchasing power community anchor institutions like cities, hospitals, universities, and businesses could create an entirely different kind of economy, one he calls a Social Value Marketplace.
The aim of this Marketplace Revolution is to leverage current economic transactions for social good. David outlines how social procurement could create economic demand for social enterprises. Those enterprises engage in marketplace activities for social aims. Bringing social purchasers together with social-good providers has the potential to reorient our economic system to community building rather than the concentration of wealth. The implications are far reaching. Workplaces providing services in this marketplace as well those purchasing those services would find themselves enlivened by a sense of connection, wholeness, and social purpose. Work would be more whole and egalitarian. Wealth redistribution would begin to occur in natural and healthy ways. Taxpayers would realize better value for their money as tax revenue would be better flowed to intentionally address social possibilities and less into private hands for private use. Of course this marketplace also requires social value finance and investment. David rounds out the ecology by calling on foundations and social financiers to step up their game too, to outdo each other with social goals as their yardstick of success.
In this episode of the Buy Social Canada Social Value Marketplace podcast, I first ask David to reflect on his recent digital book launch. Then we touch on each element of the Social Value Marketplace. And finally, David invites you to events and initiatives if you too would like to join this Marketplace Revolution.
Visit this link to get your copy of Marketplace Revolution — from Concentrated Wealth to Community Capital by David Lepage.
This podcast is brought to you by Buy Social Canada in collaboration with Axiom News. Learn more about Buy Social Canada through their website, and follow them on Facebook and Twitter.
Martin Loosemore is Professor of Construction Management at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia.
He has published 10 books and over 300 internationally refereed articles in the areas of risk management, innovation, social procurement, social enterprise and corporate social responsibility. His work has received numerous international awards. He serves on the international advisory committees and editorial boards of many leading internationally refereed journals and conferences.
Martin is the founding partner of a successful social business which specializes in securing work opportunities in the Australian construction and engineering industries for people who face barriers to employment.
In this Buy Social Canada Social Value Marketplace podcast, we explore the power and potential in the intersection of construction and social procurement. Martin has been integral to Connectivity Centres, centres associated with large building projects. These centres bring employment and third sector organizations into collaboration with construction companies to create social value.
Social Procurement is changing the construction industry in some countries by requiring social value creation, including social hiring, to be built into projects. Construction firms and civil society organizations alike have work to do to meet these new demands and opportunities. Relying on his experiences in Australia, Martin describes with great detail what works, what doesn’t, and how to proceed to what’s next.
Learn more about Martin here.
This podcast is brought to you by Buy Social Canada in collaboration with Axiom News. Learn more about Buy Social Canada through their website, and follow them on Facebook and Twitter.
Visit this link to get your copy of Marketplace Revolution — from Concentrated Wealth to Community Capital by David Lepage.
Shaun Loney, author of A Beautiful Bailout, has been deeply engaged in more than 12 successful social enterprises. He has also been a senior civil servant. He has been walking the walk with social entrepreneurs for decades and offers cutting edge insights into an emerging social innovation revolution. Social enterprise and civil society organizations could find themselves in a newly powerful position to change our culture for the better and by far. Could they be at the centre of What’s Next?
In this provocative podcast conversation, Shaun takes aim at Indian Agents, offers kudos to intrepreneurs, calls for non-profits to 'get up from the kid's table,' for foundations to up their game, and for governments to let go and say 'yes' to saving money.
The latest trends in social procurement, social finance, and social enterprise give life to breakthrough possibilities. They hold the promise of more deeply democratic and ennobling ways of being and working together. As we begin to consider post-pandemic restructuring we will find ways forward spoken of in this conversation.
To learn more about Shaun’s latest book visit www.beautifulbailout.com. To explore supports available to non-profits and social enterprises visit www.encompass.coop.
All of government, business, institutions, and non-profit organizations are purchasers. Every purchase they make has economic, environmental, and social value-creation power.
Social procurement leverages their existing purchasing for social value. It is a way to redirect the world’s spending to the social value marketplace and so fuel healthy communities
SAP is the world market leader in enterprise application software. It helps companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best. 77 per cent of the world’s transaction revenue touches an SAP system. SAP itself flows 24.7 billion euros in annual revenue, conducts business in 140 countries, and employs 101,150 people.
With more than five years of procurement experience and a bachelor’s degree in Sociology, Stephen Young is well placed as the global lead for SAPs Procurement with Purpose program.
The significance of SAP’s work and platforms to connect the world’s buyers to social-value producers, its partnership with Buy Social Canada and other such networks around the world, becomes apparent as our conversation unfolds.
In this episode of Buy Social Canada’s Social Value Marketplace podcast, Stephen explores an emerging global trend that could redirect existing and untold revenue into a Market Revolution.
Learn more about SAP here.
This podcast is brought to you by Buy Social Canada in collaboration with Axiom News. Learn more about Buy Social Canada through their website, and follow them on Facebook and Twitter.
Visit this link to get your copy of Marketplace Revolution — from Concentrated Wealth to Community Capital by David Lepage.
David LePage has spent a lifetime building community. Almost 20 years ago he and a small group realized social procurement was an untapped motherlode of potential. Since then, he and his colleagues have been making steady progress in bringing the practice to life.
Social procurement has made it into the mandate letters of Canada’s federal ministries. Partnerships with the federal government in which federal funds are made available will require social procurement practices to be in place.
“Every purchase has an economic, environmental and social impact, whether intended or not. Social procurement is about capturing those impacts and seeking to make intentional positive contributions to both the local economy and the overall vibrancy of the community,” says David, managing partner of Buy Social Canada.
Social procurement is a way for cities, for example, to leverage their current spending for social gains. By including social goals in requests for proposals and other spending, cities, organizations, and companies become an all-important customer to social enterprises.
Social enterprises function in the marketplace but apply their revenues and ‘profits’ to the pursuit of their social goals, rather than for the distribution of profits to investors or owners. That difference enables them to be reasonably competitive in the marketplace while supplying work environments and opportunities suited to people who experience barriers to employment.
Cities for example, can leverage their current spending on everything from pencils and office supplies, catering to mattress recycling, landscaping to land stewardship.
As a result, social procurement makes it possible to directly address local problems and possibilities at a local level and with local money. Poverty, joblessness and underemployment, even homelessness can be addressed this way. Social determinants of health will all find a home in the partnership between social procurement and social and local enterprise.
This is a big deal.
Social procurement is straightforward but not necessarily simple. Purchasers have to add social and/or green goals to their purchasing requirements. Evaluation is needed. And, social enterprises require good governance, operations skills, the ability to deliver quality goods and services, as well as show they have the supports in place to ensure the success of the people working in them.
In this podcast conversation, David shares how ‘the light went on’ around social procurement, the winding road to overcoming hurdles, and the sure-footed steps that can be taken along the road to success. He also shares stories of how purchasers enjoy exercising new-found capacity to make a difference in their community through the great work they do every day. Calgary and Edmonton are leading the way. In British Columbia 21 municipalities are working together with social procurement as a strategy for rural economic development. David has noticed that women in leadership, some of whom are mayors and purchasers, are appearing at the leading edge of the social procurement movement.
Learn more about Buy Social Canada through their website, and follow them on Facebook and Twitter.
Visit this link to get your copy of Marketplace Revolution — from Concentrated Wealth to Community Capital by David Lepage.
For over three decades Nancy Neamtan has been on the frontlines of the social economy movement in Quebec. Nancy served as CEO of Chantier de l’économie sociale from 1996 to 2015. She contributed to the creation of international networks in which she is recognized for her expertise.
In this Buy Social Canada Social Value Marketplace podcast, Nancy explores the history and state of social economy developments around the world and Canada in particular. Nancy speaks to what is happening, what the next steps are, as well as what she anticipates is possible in light of current realities. You can expect to better understand the rich soil in which social economy is growing and to be inspired by Nancy’s energy and enthusiasm for what is to come.
Nancy kicks off the Buy Social Canada Social Value Marketplace podcast series by making sense of where we have been, are, and where we could go on our journey to social economy.
Nancy is a member of the Order of Canada.
This podcast is brought to you by Buy Social Canada in collaboration with Axiom News. Learn more about Buy Social Canada through their website, and follow them on Facebook and Twitter.
Visit this link to get your copy of Marketplace Revolution — from Concentrated Wealth to Community Capital by David Lepage.