• Why were we originally concerned about civic courage and heroes?

 

Why did we focus originally on awards?

 

What else could we concerned about (ie. related or more comprehensive scope)?

 

What possible scope and foci could this project have? (widening)

 

What desirable scope and foci could this project have? (narrowing)

 

How should we deal with real world complexity?

 

How can we minimise the chance that the project's or the issue's strengths will become its weaknesses?

 

How can we set up the right dynamics at the start to increase the chances that the project/its effects will evolve in a desirable way?

 

How can the project keep intimate connection with needs and issues - so that the Civic Courage process doesn't become detached and unreal

 

How can we make this project so valuable that it makes it compelling to do it? (to the point of implementation and operation)

give us hope that somebody is holding back the tide of decline or making progress towards a better future (ie. larger-than-life people are acting as our champions and acting in our interests)

provide inspirational role models ('ordinary' people like us are doing things that we wish aspire to but perhaps don''t think we are capable of - these are people to learn from in terms of their psychology or their methods)

give us a sense that we are not acting alone and so opens up the hope that there will be enough people acting to make a effective difference.

provides a sense that there are enough people acting so that our efforts are not necessarily futile and so encourages us to keep going.

to reward our champions and encourage them to keep going on our behalf (positive reinforcement)

to create a climate in which people know that exercising civic courage is valued (cultural affirmation) and hopefully therefore increase the number of people who exhibit this behaviour

to attract people's attention to stories of civic courage that give them hope

to attract people's attention to the issue so that peope can learn about how to exercise civic courage and then do it themselves for the first time or do it in more effective ways.

because environmental un-sustainability is accelerating at an alaming rate (eg. climate change, species loss, pollution/landdegradation/water shortage etc. in much of the developing world, etc.)

because the move towards democracy, civil rights, clean government, unstratified society, crime control, peace, etc. that we have come to expect seems to have been reversed dramatically in recent years and this creates a scary feeling that compassionate civilisation is on the wane.

courage in the face of threats (eg. loss of job, physical/financial threats, risk of goal, ostracism, loss of friends, etc. etc.)

courage to challenge the status quo in actions or thinking

courage to hope or aspire for a much better / ideal world

selflessness to devote time and effort for the benefit of the wider community/environment

foresight to work out what the community/environment will need

creativity

perseverance in the face difficulties, drawn out time requirements

etc.

focus on attributres (courage etc.) and NOT on issues

contextualise admired attributes in relation to the issues that specific people are/were dealing with - so it's easier to understand the emergence of the desired personal attributes (eg. courage)

study the current pressing issues and then identify the personality traits/methods that people are using effectively to tackle these issues - and also go on to anticipate what attributes might be needed given the specific issues that we face.

a tight focus, with a predetermined detailed outcome in mind

a comprehensive and exploratory approach

a combination of the above

Because of the huge challenges of unsustainability and the challenges of the erosion of the health of civil society, we need people to "go beyond the norm" in tackling these challenges.  But once the contraints of conformity are broken (....we DO need to break these constraints) it is possible for people to spin out into sometimes wild and unfounded concerns or unfounded or excessive solutions.  If we are to encourage people to challenge the 'system' then perhaps we need to support people to help them sort out fact from fancy, reasonable conjecture from unjustified paranoia.  I'm aware of two websites that offer this kind of help for certain issues: http://www.snopes.com/ http://www.realclimate.org/  I think this help is especially needed if we are to encourage people to tackle specific major challenges (rather than just encouraging civic courage generically in a way that is detached from issues).