Psychopolitics and Mind Management: The Way for Responsible Decision-making in a Multi-actor, Multilevel and Territorial Approach

The concept of sustainability, in the original sense of the Brundtland Report, and the concept of social responsibility, in the sense of a multi-actor and multilevel social responsibility in a territorial scope, as Ashley (2011) reframes ¹ the concept, have the same key-challenge: the actor, that wants to be sustainable and responsible, needs to work with a psychopolitical perspective (Ouriques 2006, 2007, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c, 2011) to overcome, through Mind Management (Ouriques 2009c), the presence of the mindset of the modern West ² in its mental territory ³ ( Ouriques 2009b). The modern West mindset is here considered a delusion, ‘a massive epistemicide [that] has been underway for the past five centuries, whereby an immense wealth of [sustainable, responsible and collaborative] cognitive experiences has been wasted’ (Boaventura 2006, p. 26). If the critical self of West (Nandy 2011) recommends a call for action (Brundtland 1987), ⁴ Mind Management is the way to action, that produces the psychopolitical competence of responsible and therefore non-violent ⁵ (Galtung 2003) redescription of individuals, networks, projects and organizations in front of economic-political domination, drives and desires. The chapter presents the eight modules of Mind Management, as developed by Ouriques, as a collective, transdisciplinary, non-dualist and transcultural epistemic perspective, considered as a necessary decision-making competence for mental territories of multi-actor and multilevel social responsibility.