Perspectives for our Times
Trump's leadership, Brexit, the proliferation of fake news, the ascendancy of nationalist populism, the rise of fundamentalism.... Recent months leave us in need of new narratives and new frameworks for understanding these times and our place in the world. Here are some perspectives we have found particularly enlivening.
(Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
|
Warriors Wanted: Why one woman is training people to defend the human spiritSeventy-five year old writer, consultant and activist Margaret Wheatley has studied the cyclical nature of civilizations throughout history and she is quite confident that the end of our civilization is closer than we might like to think. And she is doing something about it… something radical. Wheatley is building an army of 'warriors for the human spirit' with people who want to lessen the suffering in the world - whether it be from natural disasters, political strife, war, famine, or from the tyranny of daily injustices in modern life. Her warriors are trained as leaders with compassion, kindness, servitude and generosity as prime requirements listen to the CBC Tapestry interview with Mary Hynes...
|
2017—Trump—Are We Ready To Rise?by Otto Scharmer, in Huffington Post, December 27 2016
Donald Trump is to democracy what 2008 was to capitalism: a profound wake-up call reminding us that the system is broken and in urgent need of an “upgrade” that will bring it up to speed with the challenges of our time.
Has capitalism changed since 2008? Not substantially. We still face the same issues and structural disconnects – but we face them with a different consciousness. Today almost everyone knows that the economic system is rigged and cannot be sustained. In fact, that deeper knowing was part of the wave that swept Donald Trump, among others, into office and that allowed Bernie Sanders to collect more youth votes than Hillary Clinton and Trump combined. Viewed from that angle, we can see 2016 as the year of the third disruption—after 2008 and the September 11 attacks in 2001 read more... |
|
|
Something Extraordinary Is Happening in the World, And Most People Haven’t Noticedby Gustavo Tanaka, in The Blog, Huffington Post, Dec 16 2015, updated Dec 16 2016
Most of us haven’t quite realized there is something extraordinary happening. A few months ago, I freed myself from standard-procedure society. I broke the chains of fear that kept me locked up into the system. Since then, I see the world from a different perspective read more...
|
Learning to See in the Dark Amid Catastrophe: An Interview With Deep Ecologist Joanna MacyBy Dahr Jamail, in Truthout Feb 13, 2017
I attended one of [Joanna Macy's] workshops in 2006 in order to deal with the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder I was struggling with as a result of my reporting from the front lines in Iraq, and wrote about that experience here. Yet now, in 2017, a new darkness is enveloping the world. After taking some time to herself in the wake of Trump's ascendency to power, Macy emerged with an offering of a retreat in Abiqui, New Mexico, aptly titled, "In the Dark, the Eye Learns to See" read more...
|
|
|
|
The Space Between Stories--Video (26:44)with Charles Eisenstein, New Frontiers 2017, March 22, 2017
Charles Eisenstein is an philosopher and author of books such as "Sacred Economics" and "The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible". Inspired by the integration of Māori culture and language into mainstream New Zealand society, Charles speaks in this video about how humanity can move from a story of separation - from each other and the planet's natural ecosystems - into a story of inter-being and connectedness. view video...
|