In this short talk, Derrick Jensen imagines what Star Wars would look like if written by environmentalists—would they file lawsuits against the Empire ... sell free-trade coffee to its citizens ... sign petitions against Darth Vader?

Now, it is a bit simplistic to characterize the messy real world of 2010 as the evil Galactic Empire. And of course I believe more in redemption/building on what is than revolution/blowing shit up. But he is right about one thing: most of us who want to change the world are thinking far too small.

I don’t say this to diss tiny choices. The decisions that we make to carry our own water and bags, eat better quality food, recycle more—all this stuff is significant. The drops in the bucket do add up, and, even more important, mindful action increases our capacity for more mindful action. Changing from the inside out is natural.

But if we see going green as no more than a collection of lifestyle changes, we’re focusing on the trees to the detriment of the forests (and oceans, and mountains).

Each of us exists in the center of a series of nested circles. The smallest one is me, my body, my day-to-day routine. Then the circles get bigger and overlap—personal relationships, communities, industries, and finally the whole world. We could debate whether spirituality is be a dot at the center or the unseeable edge of the page ... maybe both!

Anyhow, when we make changes, we tend to start with the innermost circle because that’s the sensible thing to do. We rethink our ideas and alter our daily habits. But stopping here won’t cut it. If we content ourselves with changes in the “me” circle, then—forgive my geekery!—but we’re like Jensen’s ineffectual rebels demanding sensitivity training for Stormtroopers while Alderaan burns. We need solutions in all the circles, even the big scary ones. Especially the big scary ones. Here are a few examples of wider-circle ideas:

• Worldchanging founder Alex Steffen recently challenged Seattle to become the world’s first carbon-neutral city. Citizens are already debating what that means and how to get there.
• Dawn Danby is updating one of the major tools of her trade—Autodesk—to help architects and designers make greener decisions throughout the design process.
• John Fetterman, mayor of Braddock, PA, and his team are working to create jobs and community in the ashes of what was once a bustling town just outside of Pittsburgh. They are in it for the long haul, but so far there’s already an urban farm, a bio-diesel company, and a growing artist community taking shape.

Of course, massive worldchanging ideas don’t conk us on the head all the time. We can’t snap our fingers and become genius politicians and architects and scientists. But!—we can think bigger today than we did yesterday.

And there are a lot of ways this can play out. Maybe you dream up an idea to push your business in a greener direction, or you consolidate all the smart technologies in your niche to make them more accessible to everyone else. Maybe you share an amazing idea with an important person in a passionate way, or you start a group to bring players together behind a unified vision. Maybe an apple falls and you figure out cold fusion. Who knows? The point is to be aware, to look for opportunities to impact every circle you’re a part of.

Thinking big isn’t something that we do all the time. We’re not used to taking a stand for something publicly, and it’s easy to feel impotent as the circles get wider and less familiar. It’s a stretch, and stretching can be painful, though it usually ends up being in that “hurts so good” kind of way. Thinking bigger than what we’re used to causes us to grow into the kind of people who can solve bigger problems and implement bigger ideas. And that’s exactly what the world needs us to become.

And there is this upside: thinking big is a lot more fun than thinking small. Dunno about you but I get way more excited to work on something with unknown-but-possibly-huge potential than I do to tinker with my own habits. Not that my own habits aren’t important—they certainly are!—but they are not the only or even the most important thing.

My goal for 2010 is to constantly be thinking about how to play for bigger stakes, how to connect more brilliant people for maximum impact, and how to leverage everything I’ve got to bring about the changes I want to see.

What’s yours? Pump it up and make it big and tell us all about it!

(spirograph image courtesy of chefranden)