Spring | Summer 2012
What Does it Mean to be a Global Citizen?
Article
At The Global Citizens’ Initiative we say that a “global citizen is someone who identifies with being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this community’s values and practices.”
Occupy the US: Musings on Horizontal Decision-Making and Bureaucracy
Article
The year 2011 has breathed new life into horizontal models of democratic decision-making. With the rise of the 15 May movement and the Occupy movement horizontal decision-making became one of the key political structures for organising responses to the current global economic crisis. While this decision-making process has arguably never been as widely practiced as it is today, it has also never seemed as difficult and complicated as it does today. At its height there were 5,000 people at the general assemblies in Placa Catalunya in Barcelona and even more in Madrid. It is no longer just activists trying to use and teach each other these decision-making processes but it is hundreds of thousands of people who have a far greater disparity in terms of backgrounds, starting assumptions, aims and discursive styles. This is incredibly good news, but it is not easy.
Collective Presencing: A New Human Capacity
Article
This is the first in a series of articles introducing the phenomenon and practice of Collective Presencing, a new capacity evolving in humanity at this time. Great thinkers have foreseen its coming—we recognise it in Aurobindo’s descent of the supramental and Teil-hard de Chardin’s noosphere. But what exactly do those terms mean? Where these gifted individuals intuited and envisioned the birth of this new collective capacity at the dawn of the last century, we are now starting to be able to describe it from experience. While many might recognise the phenomenon from transpersonal group work and other such practices, so far as we are aware, this is the first attempt to articulate it as a path and a set of capacities that can be intentionally developed.
What Does it Mean to be a Global Citizen? (Serbian Translation)
Article
U našoj organizaciji 'Pokret gradjana sveta' (The Global Citizens' Initiative – u daljem tekstu se koristi engleska skraćenica: GCI), mi obično kažemo da je 'gradjanin sveta «neko ko sebe doživljava pripadnikom jedne svetske zajednice u zečetku, čije delovanje doprinosi onim vrednostima i delovanju za koje se opredelila ova nastajuća svetska zajednica.»
Transformational Leadership in the Arab Region
Article
On November 26, 2010, HE Mr. Joseph Diess, the President of the 65th session of the UN General Assembly, delivered to me the world renowned 3rd Annual Global South-South Development Award for the CHAHAMA initiative (Network of Multi-Faith Based Organizations in response to HIV). Receiving this award affirmed to me that large scale change in the Arab region depended on the active engagement of religious leaders, the guardians of values and cultural norms.
Bridging the Feminine and Masculine in Business: One Woman’s Journey
Article
The journey began with a dream. In it I am running away from a burning city, clutching a candle, looking back, wanting to desperately return to what was once familiar, safe and comfortable. But I cannot. As I run, I come to the edge of a cliff. Too terrified to jump, I find myself gently pushed off by an unseen hand, spiraling slowly through the air and—in slow motion—landing on a soft grassy knoll. A voice speaks to me from the depths of my awareness. “Amber, you have arrived in a new kingdom. Here the rules are different. Here we live and breathe from a place of love. The old kingdom you came from burned from fear and greed.”
Greenkeeping Governance: Toward a Law of the Ecological Commons
Article
At least since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, we have known about humankind’s squandering of nonrenewable resources, its careless disregard of precious life species, and its overall contamination and degradation of delicate ecosystems. In recent decades, these defilements have assumed a systemic dimension. Lately we have come to realize the shocking extent to which our atmospheric emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threatens Planet Earth.
Toward A Common Theory of Value | Part Two: Common Trust
Article
This series of articles examines the meaning of value in economics. Through the lens of the commons, we hope to stimulate a rethinking of the goals, methods and conceptual structures of economic theory and its modes of action.
Explosive Wisdom: What Landmines Teach Us About Liberation and Leadership
Article
I had never thought much about landmines until I stepped on one in 1984, when I was twenty years old. I was camping in northern Israel with two friends and suddenly the earth exploded around me. I looked down at my shredded bloody legs in confused horror, wanting to know where my right foot had gone. Our hike had led us through an unmarked minefield left from the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
The Great Coming Together
Article
I was already working on the final draft of Kosmos when a last minute book review came in, so compelling that I literally stopped production.
Contemporary Leaders of Courage and Compassion: Competencies and Inner Capacities
Article
Nothing short of a new level of worldwide leadership and commitment for sustainable and equitable change will suffice to create a better world today and for future generations. For the first time technologies and resources exist to transform our situation and generate lasting results. The choice is ours.
My Experience in the Slums of Kibera, Nairobi
Article
Several years ago I made a critical decision in my life to leave my comfortable home in the suburbs of New York City and travel to Kenya with an organization called Cross Cultural Thresholds for a five-day work trip in the slums of Nairobi.