New Models and Practices

This Editorial precedes Volume 16, Issue 1 of Kosmos. Scroll down to access featured content.

One cannot merely follow the timetable we have set for our influence on the world, we must also honour and respect the infinitely more complex timetable the world has set for itself. That timetable is the sum of the thousands of independent timetables of an infinite number of natural, historical, and human actions.
~ Vaclav Havel

The new normal is transformation, but what does that really mean? Colleagues at the United Nations asked me that question a short time ago. It seems that the United Nations Sustainable goals has a sub-title,”Transformation of the World,” and no one has defined ‘transformation’ as yet. My head started spinning about the years I spent at the UN lobbying for values to be recognized as the foundation of policy-making. With the help of Ambassador Somavia from Chile and many other colleagues from the NGO community, we were able to make values the foundation of the UN Social Summit in the 1990s, formed a Values Caucus, and eventually values were recognized as fundamental to policy-making throughout the UN.

Could history repeat itself? Could we help make ‘transformation’ the subject of dialogs at the UN and with the millions who identify as global citizens? Could the Kosmos community help the international community elevate the level of discussion from reforms to systemic change of consciousness, worldviews, lifestyles and institutions? Could we do more than donate hundreds of Kosmos Journals to the international community through the UN and through our Kosmos Global Ambassdors program? Could we form a Transformation Caucus at the UN and what would we stand for?

If life is the ultimate value, how can we design a new civilization aligned with all life? The answer to that question is the powerful mission of the Kosmos community. Defining the various dimensions of the transformative times we live in involves the whole world community. It affects every dimension of our lives.

Kosmos Journal Volume 16 Issue 1

Mirror Flourishing: The New Business North Star

By David Cooperrider

David Cooperrider describes how the Appreciative Inquiry Summit—multi-stakeholder planning with a thousand people in the room—brings out the best in human systems: "What we appreciate appreciates—we become what we study—so let's study the concept of [...]

Seeing Wetiko: On Capitalism, Mind Viruses, and Antidotes for a World in Transition

By Alnoor Ladha and Martin Kirk

By Alnoor Ladha What if we told you that humanity is being driven to the brink of extinction by an illness? That all the poverty, the climate devastation, the perpetual war, and consumption fetishism we see all around us have roots in a mass psychological infection?

The Enlivenment Manifesto: Politics and Poetics in the Anthropocene

By Andreas Weber

Rambunctious garden: Red plastic bags and a lone poppy turn the untended lot between two Berlin traffic lanes into a contemporary wasteland. Key Concepts The current ideology of dead matter, mechanical causality, and the exclusion of experience from [...]

Collective Presencing: Four Years Later

By Ria Baeck

Four years have passed since the first article on Collective Presencing was published in Kosmos Journal, with three more following in the next issues. At that time, the framework was ready, the outline was clear, it was coherent enough to offer into the world[...]

A Glimpse into the More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible: The Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter

By Helen Titchen Beeth

The quality of our conversations makes our world what it is. How we talk to each other determines whether we walk away from each other and prepare to fight for our separate interests, or hold fire, stay together, and open up into a future of mutual [...]

Harmony with Nature

By Robin Wall Kimmerer, PhD

Mr. President, Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am grateful to be able to join today’s fifth dialogue of the General Assembly on “Harmony with Nature” to commemorate International Mother Earth Day as I believe that [...]

Kosmos Journal publishes a diversity of voices that reflect the complexity of our time and the depth of our shared inquiry. The views expressed by individual contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Kosmos editorial team, Board of Directors, or affiliated partners. We honor the freedom of expression as a path to deeper understanding, and we strive to hold space for perspectives grounded in compassion, truth-seeking, and the well-being of all Life.I am text block.