The Center for Wise Democracy (CWD), a non-profit organization headquartered in Port Townsend, WA, has developed a process to ensure that the wisdom of all the people—We The People— can affect powerful change on society’s biggest issues, including climate change. Two members of the Center, along with its founder, Jim Rough, will bring their message to the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Conference in Chicago, December 11-16. A generous donation from the estate of Ned Crosby, inventor of the Citizens Jury Process, made it possible for CWD to rent a booth at the AGU conference and offer scientists new strategies for putting their research into action.
In our society we have reached the end of mindless growth. CWD believes that a global, We the People conversation can bring about a new level of collective intelligence. This ongoing conversation will facilitate shifts where people transcend their usual differences and collective inaction to wise and coherent action on climate change. Rough calls this large-scale facilitation strategy the Wisdom Council Process. It was first described in his book, Society’s Breakthrough: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People. And now over the past 30 years a number of experiments in Port Townsend have sparked institutional change overseas. This approach has been adopted in all nine states of Austria and into the constitutions of two of them: Salzburg and Voralberg. It’s use has consistently resulted in collective unity on creative options to address shared civic problems.
Joining Rough at AGU 2022 are two members of the Center for Wise Democracy: Robert Holden, a consultant and former climate scientist who quit when he realized that without collective and unified social change his scientific endeavors would be under-utilized, and Markus Goetsch, a consultant and lecturer from Bregenz. Austria who has facilitated many Wisdom Councils. In an earlier role as a videographer, Goetsch worked on a documentary of his state’s Wisdom Council Process (in German, the “Bürgerat”). After observing how the process evoked creative thinking and authentic unity across people with different perspectives, life circumstances, and belief systems, he traveled to the United States to learn more with Rough at the Center for Wise Democracy. Goetsch now teaches seminars in Dynamic Facilitation, an essential component for ensuring the Wisdom Council Process can reliably lead to unified, positive actions at large scale.
Rough, Goetsch, and Holden are available for interviews. To request an interview, contact them at jim@WiseDemocracy.org, mgoetsch@gmail.com, and rdh501@gmail.com. To learn more about the Wisdom Council Process and its underpinning philosophy and structure, visit www.WiseDemocracy.org.