Friday Opening (8:30am): "NEW NORMAL: Cohousing on the Cusp of Change" with Dave Wann

Featuring Dave Wann

David Wann Saturday Morning Keynote from Indie Media: The New Journalism on Vimeo.

The Cohousing Association of the US National Conference featured David Wann, author of "Affluenza" as the Saturday morning keynote speaker. Wann resides in a Golden, Colorado cohousing community.

Dave’s presentation, “NEW NORMAL: Cohousing on the Cusp of Change,” explores how only “social software” can steer humanity toward a more sustainable future. The challenges we face are not just technical – they are also social, biological, political, and even spiritual. Only when we re-program this software – based on timeless core values like security, meaning, and social connection – can we expect technologies, policies, and behavior to move in the right direction.

Dave argues that we can’t change the realities of resource scarcity and population increase, so we need to change our way of life instead. We are a social species that uses status to organize the group, but there are many other ways of awarding status besides material acquisition. These methods include trustworthiness, knowledge, kindness, and integrity. The “new normal” reminds us that a leaner way of life is healthier.

We are choosing not just products, he says, but whole new ways of thinking and designing. We’re choosing not just hybrid cars but also hybrid systems that provide food, mobility, wellness, shelter, energy, and employment synergistically. The overall goal is not arbitrary, anything-goes growth – often burdened with dysfunction, illness, and waste – but growth/improvements that meet essential needs fully. We don’t need growth but improvement – like a well-practiced concerto or basketball play.

Major historical shifts occur, he observes, when a majority of the population understand that the old system isn’t working and that it is easier to adopt a new way of life than prop up the broken one. Therefore, the “bad news” we’ve heard over the past few decades – that many have called alarmist – is not really negative but rather useful evidence that system change is necessary.

Dave's presentation is commentary about cohousing’s role in this mega-change that is now unfolding. He says, “The ball’s in our court, and that ball is the Earth itself.”

Dave is an author, filmmaker, and speaker about sustainability. He’s now authored or edited ten books. His most recent one, New Normal: Creating an Affordable Civilization, will be published in fall 2010. This book and Simple Prosperity: Finding Real Wealth in a Sustainable Lifestyle are sequels to the best-selling book he coauthored, Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, which is now available in nine languages. Dave is also the author of Reinventing Community: Stories from the Walkways of Cohousing. In addition, he has produced 20 videos and TV programs, including the award-winning TV documentary “Designing a Great Neighborhood” and “Building Livable Communities,” for then-Vice President Al Gore.

Dave is the father of two children, president of the Sustainable Futures Society, and a fellow of the national Simplicity Forum. He co-designed the cohousing neighborhood where he’s now lived for 12 years – Harmony Village in Golden, Colorado. He’s taught at the college level, worked more than a decade for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and worked as a freelancer for the last 13 years.

To learn more about Dave, visit his website and read an interview with him.