Who are the Shapers?

Shapers are the people who embody “shapership.
Shapers have been around as long as we can remember! They appear in every country, social groups, fields of activity, age-brackets, genders, races and contexts.
They have "changed the world", at least part of it.
They have opened new paths - in Education, Justice, Philosophy, Management, Health, etc. - which were previously invisible and perceived as “impossible.
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If Shapers change the world, it is because they make alternative Futures visible.
Shapers make the Future the cause of the Present.
They make the impossible possible.
They change the story people tell themselves, what they believe is possible or impossible.
Hence, they change people’s lives!

In our interconnected world, you don’t have to be a Leader or to have a “title” to do something important and have an impact.
You don't have to be someone “important” to take a stand and reshape things.
Anyone with a strong Vision for improving Society and/or their Community can become a Shaper.

We focus on the way the Shapers perceive the world, i.e. on their way of seeing, being and acting.

Shapers usually are "Maverick Souls", determined to serve the World by bringing significant, seemingly impossible and durable changes.
They face Reality in creative, visionary and sometimes revolutionary ways.
They think big and creative.
They are not prisoners of facts and appearances.
They are not captured by the dominant stories, taken for granted ideas and worldviews of their time.
They are not under the pressure to conform.
They have transformative Visions of a radically different Future – sometimes a Utopia - which open up space for Hopes and desire. They have a "Dream" to enhance the Dignity and the Meaning of human Life and, even if others think it is "impossible", they make the "impossible" possible. They put the world upside down and adopt unconventional Wisdom.
They create new forms of collaboration. Whether through a mouvement, a company, a community, shapers unite people around shared Purposes.

They see things from an Eco-System Consciousness of Reality, way beyond any Ego-System Awareness.
The Essence of Shapership is Hope.
Hope made visible because it is displayed!
Shapers are “Eye-Openers”, “Eye Hopeners” and “High Openers” because they open Visions and new reasons for hoping!
Shapers open meaningful and progress-generating trails for the whole human “Eco-system”, trails that people may desire to follow.

But their road is often paved with obstacles and difficulties.
So, the “success” of their story is not measured by the smoothness of their path, nor by the quantitative and short-term results they obtain, but by the importance – sometimes the irreversibility – of the transformations they bring to Society and to the world, during their lifetime and beyond.

Even if, in the meantime, Shapers have died or “accidentally” lost their reputation or their Freedom, they generate “Cultural Revolutions”.
Shapers are History Makers.

Although it often starts at the individual level, since Shapers create ”movements”, Shapership can become a collective capacity as it did with “The Equitable Pioneers of Rochdale”, one of the first consumers cooperatives founded in 1844 in England by 28 Lancashire weavers or, more recently, the Transition Town Movement.

They all practice the Altitude Attitude.