A free online course to advance “meaningful discourse” is being promoted by the community group Imagine Bermuda, with an information session to be held tomorrow at the Chewstick Foundation on Front Street.

Glenn Fubler, head of the group, said the course offered through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had engaged thousands of people around the world, with the aim of fostering collaboration.

Mr Fubler said that diverse incidents ranging from the vitriolic presidential campaign of Donald Trump, a recent fight among players during a St David’s cricket match and the political “malaise” gripping the Island had the common element of inbuilt adversity.

He described it as a zero-sum paradigm: a situation in which whatever is gained by one side is lost by the other.

“For instance, the Westminster system’s winner-take-all model simply encourages players to block each other in the scramble for power,” Mr Fubler said.

“The purpose of this free MIT course is to gain clarity on how we may all inadvertently be a part of the problem.

“The goal is to conduct a mindful assessment of circumstances and to foster solidarity throughout communities, in order to facilitate real progress.”

The course, provided through the online network edX, is entitled “Transforming Business, Society and Self’’.

Imagine Bermuda, Mr Fubler said, is creating a hub so that residents can “participate collectively in this breakthrough approach, involving shifting the conversation to what we want — rather than what we don’t want”.

Trump’s tactics of “unchecked attack” undermined meaningful discourse while boosting his popularity as a candidate, Mr Fubler said, while the latest cricket altercation reflected a prevailing sense of “powerlessness and a frayed social fabric, arguably related to the protracted recession”.

“Bermuda’s economic crisis has resulted in interest payments of over $2 million per week and unprecedented unemployment,” he added.

“Rather than pulling together for solutions, we are experiencing extensive polarisation.”

The online course will also encourage participants to look for “seeds of transformation within a society”.

Residents can register online through edX for the six-week course. Tomorrow’s introductory session at Chewstick will run from 12.30pm to 1.30pm.