Reflections on the Transition Story: Yoav Egozi
By rob hopkins 14th December 2015
Continuing our exploration of the Transition Story project, we asked different National Hubs for their reflections on the blog that opened our theme on the Transition Story. Today Yoav Egozi of the Transition Israel Hub shares his thoughts:
“I think the some of the parts that attracted me to Transition in the first place were the positive perspective, the pro-action attitude and the focus on community (with localism and resilience as part of it). These elements are still strong and important in our work. But other then that more than being a new way to frame peak oil or climate change, Transition is a story about hope and inspiration. And the Transition Network helps in holding the very important perspective that we are not alone in the work we do. That is a very important thing to know because when swimming against the stream, as we do, people tend to feel alone, weak or helpless. We might feel so personally or as a group. Being part of an international network helps in holding the wide perspective that what we do matters, as it adds up with what others are doing as well. And it gives us hope to go on and also to share our knowledge, because someone else might benefit from it in their work.
And especially in these days, holding the flag of hope is extremely important, not to say radical. I also find that the framing of our story as a response to different disasters weakens the positive and proactive sides of the story. Building ourselves and waiting for disasters to come makes us passive in looking for opportunities to change reality. It is a matter of state of mind. And I am very proud to be part of a network that is constantly looking into creating new alternatives and diving deeper and deeper into how we should live in a better way.
If we take that one step farther, we need to understand that big changes can happen slowly, and sometimes even without the struggle of a classic revolution. There are windows of opportunity to embed our ideas into the existing regime. And we already see ideas from Transition and other change movements being adopted. We just need to ‘read the map’ well, look for those windows of opportunity and make sure we keep our core values, beliefs and practices.