Inner work as catalyst for outer change

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“Cultural evolution now is about taking responsibility.”

How inner maturity can reshape our response to climate breakdown

In this fourth episode of the Force of Life series, Mik Aidt speaks with Andrew Gaines about a quietly radical proposition: that the outer transformation humanity urgently needs must be rooted in inner psychological maturity.

→ Transcript

We are living in an age of climate breakdown, ecological unraveling and renewed drums of war. The question raised in this conversation is simple but profound – what if new technology, louder protests and better policies are not enough? What if the decisive shift must begin inside each of us?

Andrew introduces a new social change role: Evolutionary Catalyst – someone who helps humanity “grow up” in service to life on Earth.

The crisis beneath the crisis
Throughout the episode we hear news clips of heatwaves, floods and fires. We hear warnings of nuclear escalation. We hear the language of emergency.

Andrew asserts that beneath the ecological crisis lies another crisis – a crisis of consciousness.

Modern industrial civilisation, he says, is a machine driven by devotion to economic growth. Fossil fuels and industrial production have created unprecedented prosperity. But they have also created an extractive system that destabilises the very life support systems we depend on.

Our technological success, he suggests, may now be the path of our doom.

If we do not rethink growth, affluence and the psychological drivers behind them, we will assuredly experience climate catastrophe and civilisational breakdown.

Cultural evolution – from trauma to maturity
Andrew Gaines is an Australian social innovator, systems thinker and former US Naval officer who works at the intersection of psychology, culture and ecological sustainability.

Andrew draws on the work of psychohistorian Lloyd deMause, who traced how parenting has evolved over centuries. What was once normal – abandonment, beatings, severe control – would today be considered abuse.

The good news is that parenting has gradually shifted from control to what deMause called “helping mode” – supporting a child to thrive in their own way.

This points to something hopeful: cultural evolution is real.

If parenting can mature, perhaps civilisation can mature too. But maturity does not arrive automatically. It requires conscious inner work.

The League of Evolutionary Catalysts
In response to intertwined crises of climate, war and fragmentation, Andrew and colleagues have founded the League of Evolutionary Catalysts.

Their aim is not to preach or persuade. It is to help people think better and function better emotionally.

An Evolutionary Catalyst seeks to

• Think systemically rather than in silos
• Understand the psychological drivers of consumption and militarisation
• Resolve the emotional triggers that cause conflict
• Facilitate thoughtful, non-polarising conversations

The movement is currently small – but designed to expand through practice rather than hierarchy. It is a community of practice, not a power-over system.

Inner work – cultivating the witness
At the heart of the approach lies a set of practical psychological tools.

One central idea is the “witness” – the observer self that can notice emotional triggers without immediately reacting. When grounded in the witness, we are less likely to escalate conflict or defend rigid positions.

Other tools include:

• EFT tapping techniques to process emotional triggers
• Visualisation practices to meet younger, reactive parts of ourselves

The premise is clear – as long as there is war within ourselves, there will be war in the world.

Outer work – Kitchen Table Conversations
Inner maturity must translate into cultural change. For that, the League promotes structured Kitchen Table Conversations. These are slow, thoughtful dialogues individually and in small groups – not reactive exchanges in noisy social settings.

Andrew jokes that controversial topics polarise in “3.2 seconds” when raised casually. Instead, he proposes intentional conversations where people connect the dots between

• Economic growth
• Environmental destruction
• Trauma and excess consumption
• Militarisation

The aim is not to win arguments. People persuade themselves.

If enough such conversations take place – thousands, millions – public consciousness can shift. The aim of the League of Evolutionary Catalysts is to catalyse these conversations.

Scan before you act
Andrew also draws on the Design Shop process developed by Matt Taylor. Most movements, he says, jump straight to action – protest, policy demands, renewable investment – without first scanning the wider system.

A more mature process moves from:

• Scan – understand the full landscape
• Focus – agree on a new direction
• Act – design how to implement it

Environmental activism often jumps directly to focus. The Evolutionary Catalyst approach enriches the collective mental map first.

Frugality, safety nets and systemic redesign
Andrew does not shy away from difficult implications. Meaningful change would require

• Reducing industrial production
• Embracing frugality rather than perpetual affluence – in other words: slowing the economy
• Expanding public transport and local resilience
• Significantly reducing military budgets
• Building strong social safety nets such as income floors or job guarantees

Without social protection, people struggling to survive will not have the bandwidth for inner transformation or civic engagement.

The alternative to slowing the economy – ecological collapse – would be far more devastating.

Growing up – personally and collectively
The phrase Andrew returns to repeatedly is “grow up”. Maturity means being willing to take in new ideas without immediately attacking them. It means stepping beyond passive consumption of media narratives and becoming communicators in our own right.

It can begin with something as simple as: “Hey, I’m concerned about world affairs. Can we have a conversation?”

From that seed, change can grow.

Climate action week – Sydney workshops
Andrew will be offering workshops during Climate Action Week in Sydney at UTS Startups, 3 Broadway, Ultimo.

Sessions include:

• Become an Evolutionary Catalyst – introducing communication tools that shift from silo thinking to systems thinking
• We can cool the Earth within 20 years – exploring re-greening strategies to reduce heat reradiation
• A Leaders Forum on increasing our combined influence – aligning business leaders and NGOs to mobilise thoughtful public will

All events are free.

An invitation
This episode does not offer a quick fix. It offers a practice.

Practice noticing your triggers.
Practice deeper conversations.
Practice thinking systemically.
Practice maturity.

If enough of us change ourselves – and help others develop as well – we may yet change the direction of our culture.

Force of Life continues to explore the many dimensions of what it means to live in service to life on Earth.

If you would like to respond to this episode, contact Mik Aidt at info@climatesafety.info.

Andrew can be contacted at andrew.gaines@evolutionarycatalyst.net

The episode ends with the Force of Life signature song “Return Again”:

→ More songs here

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Music in this Force of Life episode
00:00-00:17 Mik Aidt: ‘Hearth & Home (instrumental)’ (also 01:46-02:37, 10:51-13:56, 18:28-21:15, 29:23-32:31, 39:41-41:13)
00:17-01:19 Mik Aidt: ‘Force of Life (instrumental)’ (also 50:25-51:00)
02:36-02:57 Serge Pavkin: ‘Dawn’ (also 16:25-16:49, 27:51-28:20, 36:56-37:09)
03:25-04:07 Wayne Jones: ‘Connection’
04:07-05:17 ‘Breaking Light’ (also 21:19-24:16)
05:15-06:11 Twin Musicom: ‘A Dream Within a Dream’
05:21-06:02 Alex Aidt: ‘Here We Are’ (also 13:56-14:00)
06:57-08:36 Mik Aidt: ‘Force of Life (Summer Vibe)’
21:14-21:20 Alex Aidt: ‘Reboot’ (also 23:56-24:04)
32:42-34:40 Joel Cummins: ‘Looping Ascent’
34:49-34:57 Mik Aidt: ‘Awe’
35:32-36:49 Alex Aidt: ‘Icecream’
51:17-54:54 Force of Life Collective: ‘Return Again’

A big thank you to the musicians for allowing us to use this music in the podcast.

TRANSCRIPT

Jingle:
MacKenzie King, Canadian Prime Minister, recording from the 1940s: (00:05)
Unite in a national effort to save from destruction all that makes life itself worth living.

Female voice:
The Force of Life.

Star Wars – ‘A New Hope’, episode 4 – video clip:
The Force will be with you. Always.

Joseph Gelfer: (00:35)
Historically unprecedented change. That is what is required. And a phrase I like to use is ‘In service to life on Earth’. If you’re not in service to life on Earth, you don’t deserve to be in business.

Andrew Gaines: (00:52)
I call it ‘Evolutionary Catalyst’. What we’re really doing is helping people grow up and helping the culture grow up. So part of that is: how do we handle conflict in our relationships and our conversations? Now, you and I know that mature people are willing to take in new ideas, even if we don’t agree with them. Take them in, consider them, consider if… well, do they have some merit? Maybe they do!

Mik Aidt:
We live in an age of climate breakdown, ecological unraveling and drums of war, including the rising war against renewables. But what if the solutions to all this won’t just come from new technology or from a bigger or even louder protest? What if it actually comes from inside of each of us?

[Music]

In this fourth episode of the Force of Life series, Andrew Gaines is going to introduce us to the League of Evolutionary Catalysts. That’s a community dedicated to ‘helping humanity finally grow up’, as they say, by combining deep psychological inner work with systemic kitchen table conversations.

‘The real evolution of humans’, they say, ‘comes from this personal journey.’ That’s what influences everything we do. So could it be that it’s that personal journey inside each of us, which is actually the thing that has the potential to adequately change our human history?

Andrew Gaines has a roadmap to offer. So hang in there and you’ll hear all about it. A practical roadmap for moving from a world of trauma and consumption to one of compassion and sustainability.

Jingle:
Female voice:
Force of life.

Star Wars – ‘A New Hope’, episode 4 – video clip:
Learn about the force.

Arnold Schwarzenegger:
Choose life!

Monty Python movie clip: (03:02)
You seek the Holy Grail? That is our quest. Our quest is to find the Holy Grail. Yes, it is. It is, yeah. Yeah! And so we’re looking for it. Yeah! We have been for some time. Ages!

Andrew Gaines:
So what we have is: we had an industrial revolution, so fossil fuels came in. First it was coal in England, and then oil was discovered in Pennsylvania. Both the fossil fuels and the industry and the way of thinking has enabled an extraordinarily prosperous civilisation on the one hand and, and, of course, lots of cruelty on the other. People exploited and all that stuff. But our success in technology is now the path of our doom. Every new technology we make from now on, even the good ones, will contribute to our ecological unraveling as we destroy the environment.

So we have two challenges that go together, well, three. We need to reduce industrial production, and that means collectively – as a society – living frugally. So right now if your car is a bit deaded, you won’t pass inspection in Australia. Well, we need to put up with deaded cars and let them get old.

We have the expectation of economic growth and each of us becoming more affluent. We need to embrace frugality and not becoming affluent. And hopefully if we can adjust work-leisure balance, living better lives. And then underpinning that again: social certainance.

We would do well if we can to ground people in physical reality. They neglect the fact that we are destroying our environment, our life support systems. ‘Hey, we’re doing this to ourselves. These consequences, we’re all in this together.’

ABC News reporter:
Flash flooding raking havoc, closing causeways and crossings, leaving the town cut off.

Meteorologist:
The rain fall rate… So it’s not just the amount of rainfall, but the short period of time that the rain fell, was basically in the one per cent range of likelihood of occuring. So, a very unusual rainfall event.

David Littleproud MP:
The Australian people are angry, are angry with the direction of the country, and they’re looking for direction.

Joe O’Brien in ABC News on 9 February 2026:
A relentless series of storms on the Iberian Peninsula have left parts of Spain and Portugal underwater, forcing the evacuation of 11,000 people in Spain’s Andalusia region. Farmers have reported ruined crops with the damage bill expected to be in the millions.

Adam Bandt, CEO, ACF – Instagram reel:
This is not normal, Prime Minister! It hit 50°C degrees when I was picking the kids up from gymnastics last night. Meanwhile, fires in the outways are out of control. People are talking this morning about how they couldn’t sleep because of the heat. And it’s no wonder. Kids and human bodies aren’t built to cope with these kind of temperatures. This morning the wind changed and it’s a bit cooler but it’s blown smoke all over the city and we’re inhaling it.

These heat waves, fires and floods are all being fuelled by coal and gas. This is the climate crisis in action. And there’s something right here we can do about it Prime Minister. Stop approving new coal and gas mines. This is not normal. Let’s give our kids and nature and our future a fighting chance. Stop approving new coal and gas.

MacKenzie King, Canadian Prime Minister, recording from the 1940s: (07:00)
Unite in a national effort to save from destruction all that makes life itself worth living.

Mik:
Now imagine you’re sitting in a car and you can see smoke coming up from the engine there in front of you. What do you do? Do you just press the speeder and drive on without knowing what’s going to happen from this smoke? What’s going to happen next?

Or… imagine for a second that humanity is like this big messy family. And for a long time we’ve been acting like children, fighting over toys and throwing tantrums when we don’t get our way and breaking the very things that we need to survive.

And at the same time, there’s this undercurrent of movements of people who are looking for solutions and looking at how can we get humanity to finally grow up?

That’s the picture that Andrew Gaines is painting for us in this Force of Life episode with Andrew saying that just as a parent can learn to be kinder and be more helpful to a child, in the same way we can learn to become ‘evolutionary catalysts’. But hear him out! He’s got a longer story to explain…

Andrew:
There was a man named Lloyd deMause who was a psycho-historian. So he looks at the connection between people’s inner trauma and outer world events. And he did a study on the history of childhood, and what he discovered when he went through the records from Greco-Roman times to the present was that until recently, every previous generation was clinically abused by today’s standards – child abandonment, sexual abuse, routine beatings. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that mysteriously, stage by stage, parenting has been getting better. So in the 1800s, people had routine beating, that was their way of controlling kids. The more modern one was what we saw in the Dead Poet Society. The father, the lawyer who wanted his son not to be an actor, used what deMause called a socialising mode. Turns out that the stage beyond that where you no longer control your kids, but want to help them thrive in their own way. And deMause called that Helping Mode Parenting.

And Australian psychologist Robin Grill wrote a brilliant book called ‘Parenting for a Peaceful World’ that really pulls these threads together.

So we’re in a process of spontaneous healthy cultural evolution, which may or may not turn out well, because we all know the downside: climate change, and now, horribly, the drums of war.

Now the drums of war beaten primarily by one country: America. I happen to be a ex-US Naval officer, and I’m still a US citizen, so I will say that loud: my country is the rogue state.

And we’ve engaged Europe. As we know, there’s a big war in Ukraine. People don’t get the reality of war. They talk about wars, that war is ‘something’. They don’t get that the likely outcome of the present trajectory, as far as I can tell, would be a nuclear annihilation of our civilisation. All the major cities go. There are no more transport lines and everyone’s… – you know it.

So the question is, one would phrase it: how can we help people really appreciate the reality of what’s going on? Not only in terms of war, but also in terms of disastrous ecological trends.

And with this in mind, colleagues and I have set up a League of Evolutionary Catalysts. So, an Evolutionary Catalyst has a new kind of social change role. It’s based not on preaching at people or transmitting messages, but it’s based on helping people think better, grasping our system, and also function better emotionally. Let me take the second aspect first.

So, I wrote a small manual called ‘Inner Work’. It is a set of exercises people then use to, techniques actually, to resolve their neuromuscular triggers, but it’s meant as a teaching tool.

So the first tool in that book is, introduces people to the concept of the witness with the ‘observer self’. The witness is that part of our psyche that can observe what we do without judgment.

And I sometimes comment that it sits right next to the critic that sees the same things and gives us holy hell sometimes.

If we’re grounded in our witness, then we can see when our emotional triggers arise, when we’re getting plugged in. And if we catch that, we may or may not stop it for the moment. Even if we can’t, we can go back later and use… One technique is called EFT, the tapping technique. Many people know about it now.

Or we may notice, ‘Ah I’ve got something going on, I’m puzzled about what it is, but I feel uncomfortable.’ What’s driving this? So we can use a visualisation technique to meet that problematic part of ourselves. Often it’ll turn out to be a younger part in some fashion. And we can improvisationally relate to it in a way that shifts things.

So… Part of the vision of the League is that people introduce these tools to people they know, as appropriate. It doesn’t take very long and people can use the tool on themselves without paying a lot of money for training. So all that’s inner work.

The outer part is we have a tool called Kitchen Table Conversations. It’s a set of labels on beer coasters to help people connect the dots in a slow, thoughtful conversation between economic growth, environmental destruction, and also the psychological drivers – trauma as a driver of excess consumption and militarisation.

So we’re in the business of, as I sometimes put it, helping good brains work better.

The Porta Documentary – video clip:
This is a very unique time because almost every single global crisis on the planet is a human generated problem. It’s a system that’s destabilising. Is there a way through this? And it can either phase-shift up to a higher level of order in organisation, or it can phase-shift down. This is a summoning of demons. An inhabitable planet? One of those is eminent. There’s a worldwide epidemic of not seeing the beauty of what it is to be a human being.

I want to understand more about happiness.

The state of consciousness we’re in collectively, it’s a distraction. And the simple truth is killing us.

We don’t have to continue things that we’ve inherited from the past if they don’t work for us. Human beings make mistakes.

But you may only need one generation before you transform the world.

I started wondering, I think I’m ready for a change.

The biggest bottleneck in the creation of tools that can deeply support transformation and healing on the planet is the state of mind of the creators.

Right now many people don’t even know that their inner space exists. That’s what’s missing for people.

I realise that it helps you to turn the page and live your life.

I didn’t see a way out. Have you ever killed somebody? Have you ever watched human bodies? It allows you to see clearly the things you need to see clearly the most.

I was so focused on having money, control, I missed the most important part.

I want to learn to understand people better. If you’re given the opportunity to make the world a better place, say yes, I’m gonna do this! Bring it!

Jingle: (16:00)
MacKenzie King, Canadian Prime Minister, recording from the 1940s:
Unite in a national effort to save from destruction [explosion] all that makes life itself worth living.

Buckminster Fuller:
Build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

Monty Python movie clip:
I have seen the grail!
There’s no grail here!
I have seen it! I have seen it!
But there is one small problem!

Andrew: (16:34)
I’m with a group called Stable Planet of Alliance. We’ve just finished doing a first training course. So we have attracted a few colleagues from that. So we’re still very tiny. We just finished a webinar with Ashburn Wisdom. They’re connected with Ashburn Institute in Colorado and independently have a few other people who have also become evolutionary catalysts.

We’re tiny, but the important thing is we’re designed to expand.

Let me talk a little bit, Mik, about the design process. I worked with Matt Taylor, who was the co-originator with his wife of something called the DesignShop Process. DesignShops have been used for 40 years with large companies with problems so severe, they did not come up with a new approach, a new way of doing business that might go out of business.

DesignShops usually run over three days. They have all the key players in the room, so the shop foreman, advertising person, the CEO, the financial manager, the engineers. Now, typically when people are faced with challenging problems, they want to jump to solutions. ‘Hey, what about this? Let’s try that!’

But in a three-day design shop, the facilitators prevent them from doing that. Instead, they divide the group into small teams, looking at that situation from many different perspectives. So this team… Your assignment is to look at new technologies. Your team, you look at the history of the company. You guys, you look at new social trends.

So people take some time thinking about their issue and then they report back to the full group. So as a result, the whole group gets a very much enriched mental map of everything going on.

Now, some of your listeners may be aware of something called Warm Data with Nora Bateson. It’s a similar process, except it’s designed to enrich the group for purpose. And that purpose is to move from scan to focus.

What’s the new focus? They decide on something that makes sense, it’s really original to them. And importantly, they spend the final day flat out designing how to make the new focus work. They call that, in their language, Scan – focus – act, but actually act is designing what’s needed, not actually doing it.

Now this relates to the environmental progressive movement. Almost everybody jumps into focus. We jump into, let’s do this, let’s do that. So when the people in climate change, it’s, ‘Let’s protest’. ‘Let’s stop fossil fuels’. ‘Let’s invest in renewable energy’…

They don’t look at the larger system that drives our destruction. They don’t look at the psychology of it.

So the job for every catalyst is to have those conversations.

Now, I often show a diagram, which shows the economic industrial machine that the environment, natural resources coming in and fossil fuels and consumer products coming as the outcome. And that machine is driven by devotion to economic growth.

So we advocate a different goal, which is to evolve a compassionate, ecologically sustainable world. So that’s our mission, and our mission for taking it to scale is to engage the members of the established groups as evolutionary catalysts.

All of us have been to school. We sat in the classrooms and have been lectured at. Now as adults, we play the same game. The lectures are front. We’re the listeners, we absorb it…

Let’s get past that. Let’s step up. We’ve got to be leaders in our own right. We need to be communicators, not just the passive recipients. So that’s my vision of Evolutionary Catalyst.

[Music: ‘Hearth and Home’ by Mik Aidt]

Iain McGilchrist, Oxford literary scholar – video clip (21:20)
What I would like is to see a return to smaller communities where people know one another, live close to the land, share common beliefs, share their lives, share their worship.

This is a stable way in which to have a civilisational society at any rate. But the question is how do we get there from here?

And I think that we’re so in love with our comforts – and I don’t exempt myself at all here. I mean, am I prepared to, at this stage in my life, to lead a kind of life I’d need a great deal of toughness and youth and resilience to be able to lead? No, not really.

So who is willing to take enormous steps backwards technologically in order to recover?

What I think, as you think, the important relationships. My own view is that the current system won’t be rejected, as it were, by people, but will be simply proved impossible. It will start to break down. When it starts to break down, because, as I’ve said, we’re so dependent on it, it will be a disaster.

And even if it’s just cutting, which is now rather topical, cutting internet cables under the sea. I discovered the other day that apparently a quarter of all the world’s Internet traffic goes through a hub off the coast of Cornwall. But if it’s easy to cut it, all kinds of things will happen. You won’t be able to get any money out of your bank. No transactions, in fact, that now are almost entirely electronic will be able to take place. There will be no possibility for transport of fuel, we will be suddenly stuck as though in an apocalyptic situation the whole system has broken down.

And I think that when it breaks down and we find that we can’t repair it, an enormous number of people will die. It’s a terrible thing to say, but out of that, out of that crucible may come groups of resilient, intelligent, imaginative people who are willing to work hard and to create community. And there will be, once again, a finding, willy-nilly really, of what is important in life.

David Bowie: (24:04)
I think we’re actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying.

Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General:
We are all in this together.

‘Indigenous worldview can preserve our existence’ – video clip:
The Earth is suffering. Climate change, pollution, and pandemics are some of the consequences of human-created assaults on our world. According to the United Nations Biodiversity Report, one million more species face imminent extinction, including us. We must live on Earth differently, if not for ourselves, for future generations.

80 per cent of global biodiversity now exists on only 20 per cent of the Earth. It is no coincidence that this small amount of land is mostly managed by Indigenous cultures.

According to 450 multi-disciplinary scientists, extinction rates have been less severe or avoided entirely in these areas held by Indigenous people.

We can all learn to live with greater respect for our non-human life forms. This is possible if we embrace the worldview that has guided us throughout our existence on this planet. In contrast to the dominant worldview, the Indigenous one truly emphasises our relationship to the land, the environment and all its interconnected inhabitants.

Without remembering this oneness with all of life, we are doomed. Regional and global scenarios currently lack explicit considerations of the Indigenous worldview.

It is also important that we do our best to protect and support the remaining Indigenous cultures. They are fighting against all odds to protect the last of Earth’s biodiversity.

And while doing this, we can all re-embrace the worldview Indigenous peoples share. We can come to understand that human relationship with nature is a continuous two-way dialogue. That natural resources are better thought of as relatives and teachers. Gratitude is essential. The universe is constantly in flux. Time is circular.

Respect for diversity, equality and justice is crucial. Spirit is in all things. And that human knowledge must be joined by a fearless trust in the unknowable mysteries of nature.

Let us remember who we really are and reestablish our intended way of being with respect, generosity, gratitude, and of course, the happiness that comes from this. Mitakuye Oyasin said: ‘We are all related’.

Sunburnt country poem by ACF – Instagram reel: (27:04)
I love a sunburned country
a land of fragile plains
of droughts made long by warming years
and floods of record pains.
I love her scarred and burning
not just for what she’s been
but for the fight she asks of us
to keep her living green.
I love her scorched horizons
of seasons torn apart
the floods that come more furious
the fires that sear the heart
A land made hot and angry
pollution we export to burn,
the extraction of coal and gas
pollies failed for years to turn.
I love her, though betrayed now
by men who knew the cost
who sold her future cheaply
for profits gained, not lost.
While Woodside drilled her seabeds
while Santos fanned the flames
The storms grew wild, the rivers rose
and no one bore the blame.

Andrew: (27:57)
We need a passionate army who are willing to get out on a limb. In real war, soldiers get in foxholes and they get shot at and some volunteer for that for whatever caring or irrational reason.

We need to go past our fear of being ostracised or ‘People think I’m weird’ and find delicate ways, sensitive ways to initiate the conversations.

One way is to simply say, ‘Hey Jane, I’m kind of concerned about world affairs. Can I have a conversation about this with you?’ Jane is my friend, so she will say, ‘Yeah, I’ll have coffee with you.’

Experience shows that it doesn’t really work to raise controversial issues in a social setting.

I make a joke, Mik: It’s been scientifically proven that if we raise controversial topics, they will polarise in conversational problems in 3.2 seconds. So, no no, let’s sit down, have a conversation, and have time to take in the information, have different viewpoints. The conversation need not even persuade people. People persuade themselves.

So we do it by showing pictures, take them through our tools, and they’ll make of it what they will, but it’s a chance for people to reflect and perhaps change their worldviews.

Now, few conversations won’t make much difference. I get that. So the vision is to have millions of conversations. How do we do that? Maybe we can inspire the leaders of established groups to encourage their members to conduct such conversations. In Australia, I’m thinking of groups like the ACF, Australia Conservation Foundation, or GetUp!, they’re fairly large.

So that’s the dream, that’s the vision, and that’s the possibility.

[Music]

I call it ‘Evolutionary Catalyst’. What we’re really doing is helping people grow up and helping the culture grow up. So part of that is: how do we handle conflict in our relationships and our conversations? Now, you and I know that mature people are willing to take in new ideas, even if we don’t agree with them. Take them in, consider them, consider if, ‘Well, do they have some merit?’ Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t, but we think about it. And we’re not so passionate about trying to put the other person down. We don’t go into make wrong. We’re too mature for that.

So part of our job as evolutionary catalysts is to help people mature in the sense. We would do well if we can to ground people in physical reality. ‘Hey, we’re doing this to ourselves and these consequences, we’re all in this together.’

Now, there was a young, brilliant chess player who became an international master, so he went out and did tournaments. And he said, ‘So one time I took a summer off to review the games I had lost to figure out how I lost. And I noticed in time that, oh! There was a key move I missed and the reason I missed it was because it was not in my repertoire of possibilities. It wasn’t in my skill set. It wasn’t in my way of thinking.’

The thing is that if people don’t have a certain way of doing things, they won’t do it. No blame. So we can introduce people to the idea of a taking in ideas.

I once asked somebody where I could anticipate that we’re going to have a bit of conflict. I asked, me how do you respond when somebody has an idea that’s new to you? Maybe it doesn’t fit with your current way of thinking.

And he thought of it and said, ‘Well, ideally, I will reflect on it and take it in.’

Later in the conversation, the conflict I anticipated came up. I gave him the challenge and the conflict went on a bit. And then he said, ‘Well, you know, Andrew, why don’t you come back to this eco village where we were and I’ll arrange to a meeting with some people I know.’ So that was a tactic that worked, I think.

So we’re helping people grow up and there can be a whole raft of tools to do that. I wrote a book called ‘Creativity Games’ that’s got a set of improvisational games and ways of thinking creatively.

Each of those can be turned into what I call a workshop on the fly. So one of them, just to give you a feel for it, is called Rich Associations.

When I trained as Moshe Fadlentras, learning how to do balance, a method of teaching people how to move better. He would occasionally give improvised long talks. He would want to make some point memorably. So he might give a piece of scientific theory. He would crack a dirty joke. He would tell about escaping from Paris with important papers just before the Germans came in World War II.

And I thought, ‘Well, I’m watching the mind of a genius at work. What’s he doing? Ah! I think he’s doing rich associations.’

So a normal association, you go from say, cup to saucer to teaspoon, tea. A rich association goes from cup to the Melbourne cup. The cup Socrates drank hemlock from. Or Scott’s joke about selling thimbles as whiskey glasses for guests.

So I turned that into a tool.

These games, this tool in particular, you can introduce it to friends. Say, hey, let me show you this and we can play with it. And it only takes a few minutes and then it’s in their repertoire of skills. Now, people may or may not follow through with it, but it’s kind of fun to introduce it.

Chasing the present – video trailer:
You have time to make changes to your life. If enough of us change ourselves, then we will change the world.

Jingle: (34:53)
Female voice:
Force of Life.

MacKenzie:
Unite in a national effort to save from destruction [explosion] all that makes life itself worth living.

Bill McKibben, American climate activist:
This is as dark a moment as there’s ever been in our democracy and our planet is overheating fast.

They don’t know what they’re playing with. Fire. Sorry? They are playing with fire.

Donald Trump, American president:
Drill baby drill

ABC News reader: (35:23)
Ten years of inaction and climate culture wars had left Australia exposed to the effects of climate change.

Hitler’s voice in German, crowd cheering

Andrew: (35:39)
If people are struggling to get by with two jobs or whatever, plus raising a family and all that, they won’t have time for these games. So I developed another tool. It’s a set of short emails that people can assimilate quickly. And they kind of tell the story of what’s going on. And at the end, there’s an invitation to re-forward the email to people that they know. Now, some people may do that. Most won’t probably, that’s okay, some will. But it’s designed then to be a self-expanding email chain to bring people to the recognition we’re in an emergency and we do need to slow the economy. And I always add this because it’s crucial: Therefore we need adequate social safety nets, some kind of jobs guarantee, income floor, whatever it might be, cheap public transport, all those well-known things.

But the reason we have to do it is because collapsing the environment will just trash everything. It’d be horrible. Runaway global warming, you know that stuff.

ABC News reader on 1 February 2026: (36:54)
A scorching start to the year has seen temperature records tumble across three states and is one of the most significant heat events since records started. Experts are warning what was once a rare phenomenon is quickly becoming the new normal.

Andrew:
Reduce, recycle, repair. Permaculture, local gardens. All that stuff. All that would come into it. More public transport, backing off on so much personal… you know, all the cars and all that stuff. And, less international trips. Work out how to make this place paradise, not somewhere else. And yet internationally, tear back the military budget. We can’t eliminate it right away, but really tear it back. These are some of my ideas.

We’re all part of a society that operates in a way that’s self-destructing. I remember that famous Pogo cartoon. A couple of animals in a swamp with lots of tin cans and old tires and trash. And Pogo says, ‘We have met the enemy and they is us’.

So, cultural evolution now, I think we’re agreed, is about taking responsibility.

We’re changing course, and helping our kids become healthy, and all that good stuff. But it can’t be done by protests in the old ways. It has to be more intimate, I’m thinking. So the big thing again is helping kids, especially as they grow up, grow into being full human beings rather than technocrats or consumers.

So my invitation to anybody listening is: Go to the League of Evolutionary Catalyst website. Just type that in, it’s easy to find. You’ll see everything there. You’ll see descriptions of the tools. You’ll see a couple articles that show how things work. My invitation and encouragement to you is: Do become an Evolutionary Catalyst. What’s involved is you do a practice run with our tools, how to do this there, can be done online. Do it with a friend. Muck around with it. Do it imperfectly because you’re just learning.

When you become a colleague, we have a review conversation, as we call it, just to go over the ground again, help you integrate the ideas.

Once you become a colleague, nobody directs what you do. This isn’t a power over system. This is a community of practice. So how you act as a colleague, that’ll be up to you. As our numbers grow, we’re tiny at the moment, as our numbers grow, then we’ll find ways, some of us to align for certain purposes. But you’re a self-responsible colleague, and I urge you to work with us.

[Music]

Mik: (40:21)
So, here’s Andrew Gaines toolbox available for anyone who would like to join this movement of evolutionary catalysts to help us move from a world which is breaking itself apart as we’re seeing it is happening in front of our eyes to a place where we care for life, all life on this planet, and for each other. That’s a community of practice you can step into, says Andrew Gaines.

[Music]

Chris Packham opening the National Emergency Briefing in United Kingdom – Video clip (41:07)
That’s our home. That’s our one and only home. It’s the only one we’ve got. It’s where all of our species has lived and died. Everyone. Every single human. It’s where we breathe. It’s where we eat, we laugh, we cry, we love, we hate. And as far as we know, together with all the other wonderful life on Earth, we are the only known life forms in the universe and we’ve got nowhere else to go. We’re a remarkable species. We’re adaptable. We’re imaginative. We’re innovative. We’re resourceful. But most of all, we are organisms with a conscience. So do we – that’s you and I – want on our conscience that we waste everything. At this point we all need to rise above those comfortable short-term options. This is where you, our leaders, need to win your Victoria Crosses. We must set aside all of our divisions. Everything that you might think that that person sitting at your shoulder has that’s incompatible with you, that makes them different than you, you’ve got to set that aside. We are one species on one planet with one big problem – and one last chance to sort it out. We have declared war on our one and only home. We’ve set our house on fire.

I can see some great people out here, a lot of good people. But the world will be lost by a lot of good people doing nothing. So we need action. Hope comes from action. Hope comes from courage. Give us hope. Because at the moment, there’s not much of that left in the box. Thank you.

Sir David Attenborough in a video ad for Cambridge University:
It might seem like an obvious thing to say, but we need to keep saying it. Our planet is precious. The climate stability of the past 12,000 years has come to an end. And around the world, we are now suffering from the impact. At the same time, nature is declining at rates unprecedented in human history, with as many as a million species facing extinction.

Fortunately, we’re now better informed about the state of the world than ever before in the planet’s history. And those with knowledge and the ability to innovate can provide solutions to a great number of problems. There are huge opportunities to getting things right. The only way to operate is to believe we can do something about it. And I truly think we can.

Survivors Guide to Earth: ‘6 Steps – Back to Humanity’ – video clip:
We have the technology and the knowledge to feed, house, and care for all of us, ourselves, and our planet. But you have to see it to believe it. So instead, we have record levels of anxiety, depression, alienation, and our atomic scientists have their doomsday clock set at 89 seconds to midnight.

This is a survivor’s guide to Earth – in six steps.

Everything starts here. Our bodies, our hearts and minds, our parents and families, our houses, neighborhoods and communities, our countries, our continents, our world. How do we best care for this place where we live? At the bottom of a shallow ocean made of oxygen.

It’s just a 60 mile trip from here to outer space and this delicate little habitat is getting really hot. First, to reverse that trajectory, we’re going to need economics.
It’s a science, not a religion. The word originally meant ‘household management’, and its purpose remains the same, answering the question of how we best work together to take care of our whole family. What are the cutting-edge economic mechanisms that give us the best outcomes? Maximising potential, sustainability, quality of life.

And how do we apply those best practices? We need to be well organised. We organise with politics.

Right now we think of it as organising against each other in an endless battle, covered in the media like a game show, reality television, but Aristotle introduced the word politics to describe the affairs of cities.

So what are the most innovative organisational structures that most effectively support our cities and neighborhoods, regions, nations, and our global community? And what’s the engine that keeps those structures running as smoothly as possible?

The best use of the most sophisticated communications technology ever created is not selling ads, causing a mental health crisis. So what’s the functionality? What are the user experience models that are most successful connecting people at the local, regional, national, and global levels of society that inspire and incentivise accuracy, authenticity, creativity, and care?

At its core, we know for a mass media matrix to be useful at all, humanity must be its highest value. And our humanity is best understood through our culture.

The arts. In our earthly attempt to try and grasp the fundamental essence of what it means to be a human being. Our stories are our tools for living, magic portals that allow us to step into each other’s shoes and wonder at everything that ennobles our lives and enables us to be more conscious and connected. Beyond the arts, from language to fashion, cooking, education, city planning, urban design, and the most powerful stories of all, identity and history.

Why do stories so easily trap us and hold us hostage? How did we get to this point so divided with myths like East versus West? When our true story, our true culture is so much more interconnected, powerful, and freeing.

We are one human family, and that has been the underlying message of all the world’s great traditions, which brings us to the last step, the meaning of life.

So instead of using terms which can be misunderstood, let’s just use the word goodness to remind us that the highest good is not ourselves. If we take all the credit, we’re led to hubris. Which is legendary for ruining all good endeavors. How many of the world’s great teachings advise us that goodness means we should focus on our own faults?

As long as there is war within ourselves, there will be war in the world. Goodness means we’re aware of our own mortality, and that by the grace of this unfathomable universe, we appear to be chosen in each moment to continuously spark into existence by a fire we cannot see.

Let us remain in a state of wonder, humility, and reverence. Anything else is quite unreasonable. We’re here for such a short time. We’re guests. It’s pretty clear what the point is. To take care of each other, and our home. Which brings us back to 1.

MacKenzie King, Canadian Prime Minister, recording from the 1940s: (00:05)
Unite in a national effort to save from destruction all that makes life itself worth living.

Mik: (50:38)
My name is Mik Aidt, and I am someone who will continue exploring all the different aspects of life in this podcast series called Force of Life. If you want to get in touch with me, you can always reach me on the email address info@climatesafety.info.

Sir David Attenborough:
There just could be a change in moral attitude from people worldwide, politicians worldwide, to see that self-interest is for the past, common interest is for the future.

. . .

SONG: (51:33)
‘Return again’

Verse 1:
I hear you, Mother Earth, not in words
but in the silence beneath the trees
A heartbeat in the soil
a whisper carried by wind

The soil breathes
The trees remember
Tending the Earth
as she has tended us

Bridge:
We came from you
and to you, we will return
Every breath we take is a gift
Every drop of rain
is kindness of Planet Earth

Chorus:
Return again, to the land of fertility
Return again, to what we once knew
It’s how we listen, it’s how we care

Verse 2:
We are not separate
We are not above
We are the air
the birdsong
the trembling leaf

Bridge:
There is still time
To touch the ground
To touch the ground
with bare feet
To teach again
the language of kindness
of courage – of enough

Chorus:
Return again, to the land of fertility
Return again, to what we once knew
It’s how we listen, it’s how we care

. . .

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