Director’s Report: The Self-Imposed Atrocity of Climate Change: The Human Factor

Our traditional sponsoring organisations generously supported us in this project: DPV, DPG and IPS, for which we thank them. This much appreciated financial support enabled us to lower the fee and to give generous bursaries so that the fee would not be a barrier to participation.

The Sponsoring and supporting organisations allowed us to use their logos and actively promoted the conference to their members: IPA, TIHR, OFEK, and OPUS. We thank them as well.

Thirty-five members from 14 countries and 18 nationalities attended the conference, ranging from the West Coast of the USA to Singapore and South Africa. There were 29 women and only 6 men. The age tended to be in the upper range, with 6 members under 45, 10 between 45 and 65, and 18 members above 65.

15 members received bursaries of different amounts, 15 paid the early bird fee, and 5 paid the regular fee.

Finally, the conference opened with 34 members. One participant announced her withdrawal for personal reasons.

The in-person conference had been designed with 13 staff members. The online transformation and the date change reduced the staff to 8, including 5 Israelis and 3 from the UK.

Considering that PCCA was created by a German-Israeli initiative and that  PCCA is a German entity, it is worth mentioning that this was the first PCCA conference in which no German staff member was present.

Directorate:
Director: Oren Kaplan (Israeli); Associate Director: Olya Khaleelee (UK); Associate Directors and pre-conference Administrator: Leila Djemal (Israel); Administrator: Galia Schutz               (Israel)

Consultants:
Leslie Brissett (UK); Shmuel Erlich (Israel); Mira Erlich-Ginor (Israel); Carlos Remotti-Breton (UK, Argentina)

The staff that originally approved agreed to participate in the face-to-face conference but could not  for different reasons, participate in the final format were Louisa Diana Brunner (Italy), Christoph Freytag (Germany), Zahid Hoosein Gangjee (India), Nadine Tchelebi (Germany), Dorothee von Tippelskirch-Eissing (Germany).

Gratitude
I would like to express my deep appreciation and gratitude to the whole staff of the conference – for their engagement, support, and excellent proficiency. It was a privilege to work with such an experienced and devoted group.

Special thanks to my associates, Olya Khaleelee and Leila Djemal, who teamed with me on this long journey. To Olya, who didn’t hesitate for a moment when I asked her to join and brought her wisdom and rich experience, to Leila that this conference would never have worked so well without her superb qualities of integration and containment.

The transformation from in-person to Zoom demanded a change in the conference’s architecture. From our previous experience, it was clear that the 4-day, 12-hour structure could not work in such an environment. In addition, the small-group and large-group designs were also questioned. The Directorate decided, therefore, to build a more structured system, which would leave less space for regression but would enhance the processes, the work and the dynamics. The small group and RAG (Review and Application) group were transformed into an Entry, 2 Reviews, and an Exit group; the Large group was transformed into the Social Dreaming Matrix, and a great deal of space was given to the Climate Change Event.

Thus, the conference was designed to have 6 hours of meetings on 3 consecutive days, composed of 2 Plenaries (Opening and Closing); Entry, Review, and Exit Groups (about 7 participants in each sub-group); 2 morning Social Dreaming Matrix sessions; and 7 “Climate Event” sessions.

A follow-up questionnaire was sent to the members a few weeks after the end of the conference. The following sample of thoughts and reactions might represent the impact of the conference on its participants. The main themes were as follows:

What influenced your decision to register for this conference?

• Interested in experiencing PCCA conference methodology
• The online setting made it easy
• Interested in climate change as the topic
• The fear of the future
• Good past experience with PCCA conferences

What were some of your hopes and expectations from the conference?

• Learn more about unconscious dynamics in relation to climate change and understand more about our collective denial of the climate crisis.
• To understand more about our collective denial of the climate crisis and our collective inability to act in the face of an urgent and real existential threat
• To understand how and why human unconsciousness leads to things “being stuck” for climate action, collective inability to act, recognising one’s own parts and developing ideas for change
• To learn how the traditional GR could address societal issues like climate disaster.
• To learn and to be challenged.
• Talk with people across the world.
• To feel in a position to experiment with the level of risk I take at GRCs

In what ways did the Conference meet / did not meet your expectations?

• There were significant learnings and challenges.
• I could experience our collective denial of the climate crisis and its consequences in an inability to act.
• I met others who also had similar interests.
• There was a collective inability and unwillingness to recognise and explore the structural and systemic causes and manifestations of the climate crisis.
• I hold questions about the capacity of traditional group relations methodologies to address our current context of deep crisis.

How would you describe your experience and learning during the conference? What was the impact of the conference on you?

• Powerful experience in working in lateral leadership in the event
• My experience was overwhelmingly positive. I am still feeling the impact now
• My learning was mostly related to the here-and-now experience of the difficulties of mobilising a group to act collectively to address atrocities.
• I learned a tremendous amount and have more clarity now about how I want to continue my climate action work; My attitude to taking personal action to limit climate change is shifting towards being more active and engaged.
• I felt rather sad – people did not want to engage; from a different point of view, in our small groups, we wanted to be together, cooperate, and help each other.
• I learned how difficult it is to deal with this topic, how strong the regressive forces are, and how difficult it is to stay workable
• I love watching very experienced GR consultants work – I always learn something for myself about the ‘consulting process’.

Was there a specific experience during any part of the conference which had a particular meaning or had special importance for you?

• I am pleased with my ability to come and talk with management with clarity and some confidence (growth for me), not having to give up my individuality.
• The intergroup small group I was part of which allowed me to take risks and experiment. That personal relatedness helped me stay workable; I appreciated supporting and learning with my colleagues.
• Taking up different roles to see if and how I/we could agitate/mobilise the system into taking collective action to confront atrocity.
• When one leader was so strong, loud, and “typically activist” that I realised, “Wow, that really doesn’t work.”
• When I realised that the psychoanalysts with whom I worked closely at the climate event were interested in the spiritual dimension of climate change.
• The tension between ‘doing’ and ‘reflecting’ in my practice with social justice organisations where we consult remains a major puzzle for me –
• Seeing the tension(s) again and again is instructive.

At any time during the conference, were you surprised about yourself, about others, about the dynamics, and about the role you took up?

• I was surprised at the difficulties in a hierarchical structure of negotiating change
• Feeling encouraged by others to retain my individuality and take up an outlier role, nevertheless, feeling welcomed by others.
• I was suprised at my own ability to engage with the staff of the conference as equals.
• I didn’t expect to be so gentle and to inspire some, but not all, others to choose gentleness as a way to create positive climate change; I was surprised at the level of interest/ engagement/ agreement from psychoanalysts in particular when I ‘showed my hand’ regarding my spiritual perspective on climate change.
• I was surprised at the difficulties of the membership to think systemically; I was surprised that everybody can experience the role of the aggressor, even if there are “good” aims in the background.
• I think group relations are a powerful tool for understanding unconscious dynamics related to authority and role. I am questioning using group relations as a tool to explore social issues as its structure reproduces the relations that require change rather than opening members to other ways of knowing and working that may create new possibilities for change. Would welcome a conversation about this.
• I felt (and still feel, to some degree) disappointed that the PCCA organising committee changed the initial proposition of an in-person Conference – though I am also conflicted in that I believe flying to a GRC is questionable from the point of view of climate change impact.

One participant summarised the conference’s primary task in retrospect: “The conference itself – the fact that it took place – acted as a refuge for the conference question as such: the human factor of climate change. It was the question, not a possible answer, that this conference stood for and held for a greater system. Probably it is not the time for answers now, so urgently as they are needed”.

The conference existed on two parallel tracks, inspired by the split embedded in the conference title: “the self-imposed atrocity of climate change” and “the human factor”. The combination between them, although so obvious, is not seen in the reality of the outer world; Institutes and organisations try to impact governments and other macro entities to act. The human factor, however, continues to pollute, on the one hand, and demonstrate, on the other hand, but remains a bystander.

Group relations has to do with the connection between the human factor and organisations and societies. In that sense, this conference was an exciting laboratory to test both the climate issue and the capacity of the PCCA group relations methodology to touch concrete severe societal dilemmas.

As mentioned above, the feedback and the here and now experience of staff and members showed that this experiment was successful. People were engaged and left the conference with insights, learnings, and a general feeling of content. But did it fulfil its objectives from the PCCA point of view of confronting collective atrocities and from the climate crisis point of view of deepening our understanding of the human factor and its role in this self-imposed atrocity? The answers to these questions are more complicated and not straightforward.

One systemic element in the conference had to do with the demographic bias of age, which was mentioned above. Age is probably correlated with the experience of and the attitudes towards climate issues. The younger generation was born into the climate crisis notion; climate change had been embedded in its DNA. In contrast, the older generation was more hesitant and found engaging in this realm more challenging. The “climate” regarding the climate issue was not as hot as expected at the conference. Though people felt engaged and committed to the topic, it was less enthusiastic and passionate than the spirit frequently felt in group relations leadership and authority workshops.

In addition, most of the staff and the members were not experts in climate issues. Some of the members expressed interest and worries about climate change, but a minority of them dealt with it professionally or intensively in their lives. In the staff group, only the relatively younger conference administrator dealt with sustainability in her day job.

An open question, therefore, is whether the “human factor”, which was part of the title of this conference, had to do essentially with the climate change problem or maybe the human factor was used more as an indirect, friendly way to bring the group relations community to focus on climate change. Anyway, whether climate change was the core interest of the members or whether it was a mediating casestudy for looking at PCCA’s core issues, the experience and reactions of the participants demonstrated a high level of engagement and connectedness to the issues raised in the conference and the learning, both experiential and cognitive, was considerable.

Nevertheless, it should be emphasised that a sense of urgency regarding climate change was present throughout the whole conference. For example,  at the opening of the conference, one of the members shared her worries about a fire near her house and her preparedness to evacuate immediately if needed. She also reported about frequent failures in the electricity supply. Such remarks reminded us in the here and now that real danger already threatens some areas, and the urgency was not just a metaphor.

For PCCA, as an organisation with a focused primary task and history, this conference was an innovative experience. The topic of this conference was a significant deviation from the traditional contents of PCCA that dealt with past and present atrocities, from the holocaust to wars and even COVID, to the prevention of a future (self-imposed) atrocity of climate change. A pre-conference survey of the PCCA mailing list revealed that most respondents perceived the title and the conference’s topic as relevant and appropriate to the PCCA primary task.

Another systemic issue was mentioned above regarding the transformation of the conference from an in-person format, characterised by a considerable effort of money, time, and mileage, to a Zoom format, associated with efficiency (of money, time, and mileage). As mentioned earlier, we suspected that despite the importance of the climate change issue, paying the amount needed to participate in such a conference was too high. However, this did not end with the change to a digital format. Due to the need to change the format, the Directorate  probably felt an obligation to be efficient and not to stretch the resources of the participants too much. The evidence for this was present, for example, in the short breaks of 15 minutes the Directorate designed after each session, which made the day condensed and “efficient” but did not leave enough time for staff meetings and elaboration. This raises, of course, interesting questions regarding the world and its systemic avoidance of devoting enough resources to confront the climate crisis.

The decision to transform from an in-person to Zoom also raised additional associations and dynamics. For example, issues of leadership and trust. Could you trust our leaders? What alternative is there if not? Political issues worldwide question these trust issues in general and the climate crisis in particular. However, authority and competition issues were present at this conference not only because of the topics and the processes within the conference but probably also because of a rare composition of a relatively high number of participants with impressive and rich experience in group relations. The staff also consisted of many former directors and senior group relations experts. Was this in favour of learning, or was it an obstacle? Probably in some ways. However, one hypothesis we had regarding it was that a secondary aim of many members to participate in this specific conference was to experience the PCCA model unrelated to the climate notions. In this context, it is worth mentioning a movement that was interpreted in the Climate Event between two Basic Assumptions – the “oneness”: we are all in favour of climate change, and we are all the same, and the “me-ness”, which is a state of not caring, concentrating in our individual needs.

Some other issues were also raised:

Thoughts about male dominance in the world by leaders and rich people and the gap between it and the dominance of female membership in the present conference. Is female leadership part of the solution to the climate crisis and other problems in the world?

The planet is not in danger. The planet will survive any of the human factors acts. The humans are those who will be extinct. Therefore, It is questionable why the terminology of climate activists deals with empathy for the planet, not the human factor.

At the Climate Event, one group was initiated in the name of hope. No one joined this group except for the member who initiated it. In Greek mythology, Hope remained the only thing left in Pandora’s Box. Does hope represent an illusive promise that will lead to disappointments? or should hope be held as the light at the end of the tunnel?

The conference experience and feedback mentioned above leave us with a careful optimistic hope, not necessarily to solve the climate change crisis, but at least that the PCCA group relations methodology could touch and trigger processes in the outer world that deal with urgent, contemporary issues for the sake of learning, of individuals, groups, and societies, and to build partnerships to confront and prevent collective atrocities.

Oren Kaplan, Director

December 4, 2024