No Resilience without Transformation

Paul Hawken came to Portland, Oregon, to deliver a “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful” commencement address at the University of Portland (pdf).

“Civilization needs a new operating system,” he said, “you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.”

Hawken’s metaphor of transformation — along with its ascription of agency, charge of responsibility, and invitation to opportunity — fit perfectly the tone I sought for the Ecotrust publication “Resilience & Transformation: A Regional Approach,” and we used it as a pull-quote with the introduction (pdf or magazine).