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Connecting the Dots: A Roadmap for Critical Systemic Change

How We Got Here / What We Can Do / How We Can Do It

By David C Ewoldt

Overview

In Connecting the Dots, systems researcher and ecopsychologist Dave Ewoldt uses his wide breadth of knowledge to examine the underlying causes of our current destructive status-quo, explain how and why a shift is possible, and provide us with numerous non-hierarchical tools that will help facilitate positive, powerful systemic change. His comprehensive framework for coalition building is based on the way natural systems function–because after billions of years of remaining in balance, Nature is the ultimate resource to support and guide our efforts toward a sustainable, life-supportive paradigm.

https://attractionretreat.org/connectthedots/

Reviews for Connecting the Dots

“Dave Ewoldt had a passion for tracing connections-and that´s what leads to insight and understanding. The book he left us is full of insights about how and why we humans drove ourselves into history´s darkest cul de sac, and how we can reverse our way out. Even if you think you already know what´s happening and what needs to be done, you´ll come away from Connecting the Dots feeling more curious, more aware, and better equipped to act on behalf of Earth and future generations.”

Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute

“I can’t overstate the importance–even necessity–of this wonderful book. Connecting the Dots is a profoundly sane book, a refuge and inspiration in these difficult and destructive times, and a guide for how to co-create a sustainable future.”

Derrick Jensen, author of Endgame

Description

Dave’s working title for this book was Connecting the Dots: Reversing Our Handbasket to Hell. Our situation was dire when he passed in December 2018, and since that time our handbasket has only been accelerating toward that flaming destination at an alarming, exponential rate.

https://attractionretreat.org/connectthedots/

Recent events like the unprecedented frequency and number of monster storms, droughts and wildfires (and now wildfire induced tornadoes and double hurricanes!) as well as innovative new super bugs like Covid-19 that are providing proof that Anthropogenic Global Warming/Catastrophic Climate Destabilization is a major existential danger. At the end of the age of “cheap oil”, we’re viewing the massive global damage caused by the fossil-fueled capitalist consumption, exploitation and pollution machine and the expensive and existentially threatening global Forever Wars that feed it. We’re witnessing the dominator hierarchy’s inability to deal with our situation beyond increasing inequality which is fomenting civil unrest and enabling the “election” of a blatant symptom of the systemic disease to the “highest office in the land”. Add to all of that the fact that now we’re experiencing Great Depression level unemployment and general misery during a once in a hundred years Pandemic. We need a way to navigate out of these converging crises that are spiraling out of control and threatening life as we know it.

Connecting the Dots provides a greatly needed systemic perspective that begins to answer the most important questions demanding our attention today: “How We Got Here / What We Can Do / How We Can Do It?” In it, Dave constructs a solid, sustainable framework based on natural systems principles that is strong enough to hold a diversity of solutions and endeavors as they evolve in the future.

Many readers will be aware of some of the information in this book, but it is the integration of the “dots” that provides the potential for this synthesis to guide and support activists to make swift and long-lasting corrections away from our current trajectory toward collapse toward a sustainable future. The scope of our challenges is broad and deeply embedded in culture, so the solution is multi-faceted—but because the “key” to the framework Dave provides is grounded in how natural systems work, its essence is simple: since Nature has been sustainable for billions of years, he guides us to remember how to think and act the way the rest of nature works. The ultimate goal is for individuals and organizations who hold fundamental values in common to form a massive global coalition around a shared vision of sustainability and natural systems principles with non-hierarchical relationships of mutual support and reciprocity at the core.

About The Author

Systems researcher and ecopsychology therapist Dave Ewoldt started his diverse career as a U.S. Navy electronics technician specializing in microwave and satellite communications equipment and held a Top Secret security clearance to work on cryptographic communications equipment. After completing his service in the Navy, he spent one year at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center where he was engaged in high-energy particle physics research and computer controlled process automation.

The following three years in the Manufacturing Systems Engineering graduate department at UT Austin working in robotics and artificial intelligence resulted in him being listed in the Who's Who in Artificial Intelligence in 1985. Dave's degrees include software engineering and psychology. While at Eastern Washington University he was an elected officer in Psi Chi, the national honor society in psychology. He was completing a doctoral program in Applied Ecopsychology when he passed away.

Dave was co-founder and Sr. Analyst for the non-profits Attraction Retreat ("catalyzing personal empowerment, societal transformation, and environmental sustainability") and Coalitions of Mutual Endeavor, and he was a practitioner and researcher in the field of Ecopsychology—helping people remember how to think and act the way that nature works. He called himself a paradigm shift coach. He and his wife Allison co-founded The EcoIntegrity Center of Bellingham, WA (EcoBell), a branch of Attraction Retreat that served as a community hub for kindred spirits and a sustainable urban intentional community. Dave was a member of a national speakers' bureau on global warming and also spoke regularly and ran political campaigns based on the relationships among Peak Oil, global warming, corporatism, industrialism, the theft of the commons, dominator hierarchies and how the alternative of relocalization (the process of powering down and reconnecting with nature while utilizing steadystate economies and an Earth jurisprudence) will provide a practical, affordable process to create a sustainable future based on ecological integrity, social justice, economic equity, and participatory democracy.

His articles and essays have appeared in New Earth Rising, Culture Change, Rachel's Democracy and Health News, Energy Bulletin, Shan Newspaper, OpEd Newsas well as regional and local publications. His academic papers have appeared in the proceedings of the International Society for Chaos Theory in psychology (1992), the International Society for the Systems Sciences (2006) and the Arizona Hydrological Society (2007). Connecting the Dots: A Roadmap for Critical Systemic Change was Dave's last work—a powerful legacy for the people and planet he loved.

https://attractionretreat.org/connectthedots/