Eleanor on 72nd Street
Eleanor on 72nd Street
Eleanor on 72nd Street
We were playing chess
On a dry stone table.
She behind us, tall white elegant
A souvenir of heart on 72nd street.
Itinerant workers eat their fish rolls on the round
Under her feet after a morning on rusty hoists.
In the playground children swing to and fro
King to bishop, then the pawns––oh the pawns!
She speaks freely, fears no one, worships no man
Her tears dry as yesterday’s rain.
Her arms look long enough to embrace 8 billion
Who else has arms like that––
As resonant as the cure in any promise?
She believed it takes four wishes,
As surely as allegory shoves history along
After centuries of red herrings.
The Rights of All Beings
The Rights of All Beings
The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, inspired by Franklin D Roosevelt’s four freedoms, outlines the rights to which humans are equally and inalienably entitled: of speech and religion, from want and fear. They are our global guiding principles for protecting humans from humans – essential in establishing the legal frameworks within which humanity can operate freely to express ourselves, move privately, own property, and gather lovingly.
Thomas Berry, the eco-spiritual visionary, found such declarations fundamentally flawed. They reserved all rights for humans and recognized none for nature. The great body of scientific inquiry uncovered a clear problem with this anthropocentric framework: there is a deep interconnectedness between all natural systems in which we humans are inseparably included. But operating freely in our own interest, disconnected from nature, we tend to pollute and disrupt the natural world.
Berry felt a new legal framework was necessary to avert the imminent collapse of natural ecosystems. He outlined the concept of “Earth Jurisprudence” that he hoped would be the guiding principle for a new ecozoic era of world history:
Every component of the Earth community, living and non-living has three rights: the right to be, the right to habitat or a place to be, and the right to fulfill its role in the ever-renewing processes of the Earth community.
Principles like these inspired the development of the United Nations’ World Charter for Nature in 1982 and the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth in 2010.
Such nature-focused guiding principles are foundational justice frameworks for the shift from the current global anthropocentric worldview to an ecocentric one. On their own however, they will do little to change human behavior. Cultural change requires much more. We need ecocentric economics, politics, education, art, spirituality, recreation, and health care. To shift our culture everyone must be a leader in making our own lives ecocentric expressions.
As a maker, forager, permaculturalist, and amateur naturalist I have been ecocentric in my approach to economics and recreation for over two decades. My wife and I grow or forage much of our own food and medicine, buy locally, build environmentally, mitigate household waste, and we are musicians and artists where nature is central to our self-expression. However for much of our lives, these various interests and behaviors lacked an organizing principle that gave them cohesion.
Something changed when we began practicing meditation and relationship yoga after our third devastating miscarriage in 2017. We made a habit of listening to secular spiritual teachers such as Adyashanti, Ram Dass, and Alan Watts. Together we became aware of our conditioning and our respective suppressed and repressed experiences and traits. We began experiencing an abiding transcendent presence and the ecstatic feeling of unitive consciousness.
I am the second youngest in a deeply Christian family of 7 children. My oldest brother is a secular Franciscan, and he also recently found abiding presence after a period of despair at the dissolution of his marriage. During the pandemic we started a book club together where we read C.G. Jung, Richard Rohr, Barbara Holmes, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robin Wall Kimmerer. The book club provided a safe space to discuss our feelings and thoughts around religion, history, spirituality, and consciousness. It operated implicitly on the four freedoms; we could say whatever we felt, needed, or feared. In that space I discovered I was consistently dismissing religious symbolism out of fear.
My own parents were deeply affected by the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, of which I became a collateral victim. Under duress of their own fears, my parents read us bedtime stories about the eternal abandonment of hell. My response was to categorically reject all things religious. What I found through our book club was the gravitational center that brought my various interests into a meaningful constellation. I learned what it was I had been missing: myth. The numinous story of what it means to be an ecocentric participant in the Great Work.
Thomas Berry knew that we’d need new myths to carry us into the ecozoic era, but I was unable to appreciate what that might look like, in part because I was viewing myth through the lens of fact and fiction which is a common cultural misconception. In an age of empiricism, the mythic mode of human thought had been denigrated the lesser form of knowledge, the dangerous or mysterious form of human decision making, a relic mentality from the dark ages. It is not without good reason; history is full of dangerous beliefs leading to violence from one community over another.
From the collective perspective, it seems undeniable that we utilize some combination of mythic storytelling, meditative practices, numinous symbols, and ritual as a gravitational force for organizing human communities. Shared beliefs dispel anxieties and allow the human imagination to lift upward toward fresh ideas and innovation.
In her writings, Karen Armstrong meditates on the push and pull of mythic belief. She outlines a history of the human imagination that utilizes myth as an organizing art form in response to technological innovation and its resulting cultural fallout. Mythic systems that worked for hunter-gatherers failed to meet the existential needs of agrarian society and new mythic systems sprung from the tension. The era of empire then created fresh conflict that birthed the world’s classical religious and philosophical traditions, resulting in our current era of science, free markets, and humanism. The stories that carried us here -myths of progress, human exceptionalism, personal salvation, and objectification of nature – resulted in ecological catastrophe. We are alone now, in danger, and the key to survival as a species is to gather and make myth.
Bill Plotkin, in Nature and the Human Soul, presents a model for ecocentric human growth, culminating in realizing everything’s “ultimate place in the world.” One cannot find oneself separate from anything. Yet we are unique in how we participate in the universe. Everything provides a connective function. The new mythic imagination utilizes this realization to ascribe sacredness to every manifestation of the universe, ourselves included. In doing so we create a sense of gratitude and service to the protection and conservation of nature. We become The Great Work.
In the new myth, the concept of faith might come to mean trusting that in a state of abiding presence the universe is acting through us on behalf of itself. As such, being present is a holy and sacred act, wherein we proceed in faith that we are the universe becoming – as opposed to acting on behalf of ego for anthropocentric ends. When we act in alignment with the universe, we are making our own unique contribution to the wholeness of it. Each cultural artifact we make adds to the growing collection of mythic expressions. Just as the universe has taught us – dust added to dust increases the gravitational pull.
Artwork: Northwest artist Sue Coccia is from Edmonds, Washington. She has a formal art background, however it is a deep love of all animals that sparks her work with a unique style. She started selling her art in 1996 as EarthArt International with a portion of her proceeds being donated to wildlife conservation organizations. Her drawings are first done in pen and ink, then meticulously painted with acrylics. The drawings depict animals from around the world. The totems reflect a deep spirituality, and when we begin to understand and respect their individual qualities and strengths, we realize we are all connected.
Caged
Caged
Caged
there……through bamboo….scrub…..palm
the tiger prowls……up/across/down
the terraced hill…..focused…..and predictable
sloughing…..anxiety off……his muscled back
off the side-to-side…..sweep……of his head
my camera waits…..waits…..waits……to catch
him in…..a slice of light……but without……a hint
he charges…..the fence……bared fangs….snarling
across the path…..to fields……where languid stripes
lounge in sun…..mother/daughter/sister/peer…..smug
and unperturbed…..posing…..for crowds charmed
by mesmerizing eyes…..awed…..by the art
of her orange/black/white…..without a chuffle
or growl…..she basks…..in reverence
I grab…..my camera…..sweep it…..side to side
from the anguish…..behind wire mesh…..to surrender
lying…..in the grass…..unnatural…..this life…..like innocents
trapped on death row…..or refugees…in border towns
they say…..Sumatrans can survive…..a decade longer
in captivity…at what cost….I shout at
the unfettered sky….who…..calculates the price
With Four Freedoms, Four Responsibilities
With Four Freedoms, Four Responsibilities
In the United States and around the world, our democratic values and institutions face direct and dire threats.
Untold millions fear persecution for their religious beliefs, their sexual orientation, their gender identity. Others simply fear for their lives. In some countries, authoritarian governments seek to stamp out democratic freedoms, like the rights to protest or to a free press. Even democratically elected governments are acting to restrict these freedoms amidst a rise of tribalism and xenophobia. The moral leadership of the United States has all but disappeared from view.
Given the grueling pace of the news —amidst constant chaos—the windows for slow and steady reflection feel few and far between. Indeed, these days, chaos has become a kind of ambient noise, and it feels hard to make sense of it all—hard to know how to move forward. After all, we are charging full steam ahead into the unknown. It is not frivolous, or naïve, to stop and contemplate the fact that democracy itself is imperiled for the first time in at least a generation.
As I write this, I am acutely aware that all these coalescing crises share a single, protean cause: inequality. They claim for themselves similar, often related victims, too: civility, empathy, and justice. And it’s not only economic inequality or racial inequality, but also geographic and cultural inequality that causes whole communities and regions to feel ignored and abandoned, if not outright persecuted.
Subject to countless historical examples, we know that the greatest danger to democracy is not terrorism, nor environmental crisis, nor nuclear proliferation, nor the results of any one election. The greatest danger to democracy is hopelessness: the hopelessness of many millions who express themselves with their ballots, and the hopelessness of many millions more who express themselves by not voting at all. This hopelessness is yet another symptom of the inequality that has eaten away at our norms and eroded the bridges of common cause—the very bonds of goodwill that ought to bring us together and help us confront our shared challenges.
Despite what feel like wholly unprecedented circumstances, however, democracy is no stranger to trials from within and without. And so, of late, I have felt reassured by how another great American generation responded to the greatest threat to democracy of the previous century: the Second World War.
Wisdom from the past
Imagine the early days of 1941, another moment when chaos abounded.
The effects of financial crisis a decade earlier continued to reverberate around the United States and afflict the American people. Across the Atlantic, a hateful demagogue came to power by democratic means, and his rise and racist policies threatened the safety of his people. The United States turned inward—many of its citizens unwilling to recognize what was happening in the world. In some corners of our nation, factions called for isolation, while others supported more virulent strains of nationalism—all as allies pleaded for American leadership and assistance.
Amidst these somewhat familiar circumstances, President Franklin D. Roosevelt crafted his annual message to the U.S. Congress. In this address, he laid out the Four Freedoms, which read:
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression—
everywhere in the world.The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world. 1
With this idea, President Roosevelt did something that, at the time, was rather remarkable—he asked Americans to implicate themselves in the struggles of their fellow human beings.
During the decades since, these Four Freedoms—and this formulation of essential democratic values—have become iconic. They inspired four of Norman Rockwell’s most famous paintings. Their influence also stretches far beyond the United States or American culture; these same freedoms open the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These Four Freedoms reflect the urgency of their particular moment in history as well as the timeless values and aspirations our society should pursue.
What appears to be implicit in Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, and necessary for our democracy today, is an understanding of our responsibilities to protect and extend these freedoms—everywhere in the world and for one another.
We know that these freedoms do not happen by themselves. In the United States, they are the product of revolution and protest, of conversation and compromise, of constant stumbling progress toward an exceptional ideal. And as citizens and participants in our society, we all have a role to play in not just exercising our own freedom, but also creating the conditions—and the country—where everyone can exercise those freedoms equally.
In other words, “We the People” means that my freedom depends on your freedom. Similarly, if freedom for one of us is removed or restricted, it jeopardizes freedom for us all—and for the larger democratic principles we all hold dear. That’s why, when we live in a free society, we are charged with protecting freedom for one another through our responsibilities to one another.
Our Four Responsibilities
In the case of the Four Freedoms, therefore, I argue that each freedom contains within it a corresponding responsibility—an action demanded of us as creators and stewards of our democratic society. These can be summarized simply:
With the freedom of speech
comes the responsibility to listen.With the freedom of belief
comes the responsibility to accept.With the freedom from want
comes the responsibility to serve.And with the freedom from fear
comes the responsibility to act.
What’s more, these four responsibilities do not exist in a vacuum or independently of one another. Just as each of the Four Freedoms has its complement, so do each of our responsibilities complement the others. If we commit ourselves to listening, we will be more likely to accept others. If we commit ourselves to accepting others, we will be more likely to serve those who need us. And if we commit ourselves to service, we will understand how we should act.
And if we’re going to act, we must act now.
It is incumbent upon each of us, as willing and humble participants in our democratic system, to maintain and expand the freedoms that enable the world’s longest-standing liberal democracy, and to ensure its success both now and in the future.
I wrote this volume for everyone: to encourage each of us to reflect on our responsibilities—the fulfillment of which our freedoms require and our democracy demands.
Excerpts from Four Essays on the Four Freedoms, by Darren Walker
With Freedom of Speech, Responsibility to Listen
“We tend to curate the information that comes our way, while social and commercial media try to give us what they think we want. We engage with stories that confirm our assumptions and biases, that do not challenge or expand our view of the world. Online monologues allow their writers to dig deeper and deeper into their own thoughts without considering the views of others. We become more entrenched in our own views. In some cases, it is almost as if we’re just talking to ourselves.
As this happens, the algorithms figure out what we want, what is comfortable, and they just keep feeding us more of the same. Our confirmation bias compounds on itself. Meanwhile, alternative media outlets sow doubt and confusion based on what they want us to believe—even if it is not true. In the process, our common ground gets eroded, and one of free speech’s most potent uses—as a check on power, often in the form of journalism—becomes undervalued.
For our freedom of speech to work—to have meaning or the power to improve our democracy—we need to listen to one another.
In fact, we have a responsibility to listen, because listening allows us to extend the freedom of speech to others. This is why the right to assemble is so closely linked to the right to free speech. They share an amendment because speech is meaningless without an audience.
Without a congregation of listeners, there’s no difference between the preacher on a Sunday morning and the subway platform. Without a jury of open-minded and engaged listeners, or an attentive judge, or proper accountability, a trial becomes less just. If our elected officials do not consider the opinions of their constituents, then our political speech does little to advance our interests. Without the backing of a country or a congress, women’s suffrage does not achieve the Nineteenth Amendment, the Civil Rights movement does not pass necessary legislation or change minds and hearts, and the movement for marriage equality is stymied. Today, without people willing to listen to the legitimate grievances of a movement like Black Lives Matter—if the country chooses only to look away or to reflexively argue—people of color will continue to die at the hands of police while the deeper structural problems remain unaddressed.
So, when we listen to each other, we do more than extend a common courtesy; we give credence and power to that first and sacred right. We say, “You are a human, too, and deserve to be heard.” We give dignity to others when we enable their voices, consider their perspectives, and thoughtfully grapple with their ideas. We participate in the ongoing exchange between people that defines our democracy, and allow ideas and actions to ripple through, even renovate, our society.”
With Freedom of Belief, Responsibility to Accept
“…When we talk about the responsibility to accept that comes with our freedom of belief, we are saying something very specific.
We have to accept that we have different beliefs. This is decidedly different from accepting the beliefs themselves. Our task is narrower, though perhaps more difficult: we just need to accept that the differences are real—and a source of strength, not weakness.
What does that look like?
It means appreciating the perspectives of immigrants and indigenous peoples, and respecting the grievances of poor people regardless of their color. It means understanding the effects of inequality on our society, the pain and anger of people who feel vulnerable—or who feel as though the world has left them behind. But it also means putting in the time to understand people who see the world through different eyes, whether that means they grew up Christian or Muslim, Republican or Democrat, in a big city or a tiny town.
It also means never shutting anyone out or shutting them down. That is a form of giving up, or giving in to the idea that America can’t succeed. If we rejected people every time we disagreed, our democracy would not—and could not—sustain itself.
Again, let me be clear: accepting others doesn’t mean denying our differences. It actually means the opposite. We know it is never solely our differences that are the problem. As one of my sheroes, the poet Audre Lorde, once wrote:
Certainly, there are very real differences between us, of race, age, and sex. But it is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to examine the distortions that result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation. 24
We need to accept that difference has always been a part of our American experiment—for better and for worse. We must make an effort to accept and understand that difference, not ignore it.
…Sometimes this work comes naturally. Sometimes it is hard. Sometimes we feel that we are learning and moving in the right direction. Sometimes it is tough to stomach that people can believe something so hateful—that they can seriously wish to divide us based on difference.
But if our nation’s history includes chapters when we have mobilized against each other, it also includes chapters when we mobilized with each other and for each other. For as Dr. King reminds us in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, ‘We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.'”‘25
With Freedom from Want, Responsibility to Serve
“When President Roosevelt defined freedom from want, he included, in part, the ability to achieve what he called “a healthy peacetime life.” That “healthy peacetime life” means security and contentment—which is precisely why so many people from around the world are drawn to live and work in the United States.
There are plenty of people across this country and around the world who do not enjoy the “healthy peacetime life” that flows out of the freedom from want. On the streets of Chicago, people yearn for an end to violence and for economic opportunity. In the mountains of Appalachia, poverty keeps families trapped, generation after generation. On tribal lands across the American West, freedom from want remains another unfulfilled promise.
Expand our view, and the same is true in places across the world—from the Kibera areas of Nairobi to the favelas of São Paulo—and for too many people forced to flee their homes throughout Latin America and Syria.
In these places, and many others, we all have the responsibility to serve. Otherwise, that grander bargain we made with one another—the social contract that lives in America’s founding documents and holds us all together—starts to unravel. As inequality grows, our agreement with ourselves and one another comes undone.
This inequality not only incites animosity and strife within communities; it threatens the very institutions of our democracy. A democratic society cannot truly flourish if the people, or any subset of the people, do not believe they have equal access to its freedoms, opportunities, and resources. To create the conditions for our democracy to be healthy and vibrant—to continue and thrive—we must root out the inequality that undermines our success. And to do that, we must first accept and embrace the responsibility we have to serve one another, to reach across society’s many gaps and aid those who are grappling with the debilitating consequences of inequity.
Given the many kinds of want and the many forms of inequality that exist in our communities, we must be prepared to remedy them with different types of service. Each of us has a responsibility to determine how we can best serve each other.
For some, this may mean volunteering in local schools and community centers, or mentoring young, at-risk children in desperate need of encouragement and inspiration. For others, it may mean directly engaging with the philanthropic work being done by countless organizations throughout the country and around the world. The service we can contribute is often directly proportional to the amount of privilege we have—be that the time, the talent, or the treasure we have to give.”
With Freedom from Fear, Responsibility to Act
“Throughout history, there has been no better guardian of the freedom from fear—no better defender of the vulnerable—than civil society: groups of compassionate, engaged citizens who continue to organize themselves and mobilize others to work on behalf of the community. They are the immune system of our democratic society against the plague of injustice.
Among the most troubling trends in the world today is the outright assault and ongoing onslaught against civil society. It is an epidemic. In the countries where the Ford Foundation works, we have seen laws that restrict NGO funding and freedom of assembly, and learned of activists and peaceful protestors being assaulted and worse.
Still, around the world, civil society organizations continue to act against fear, and fight to protect the rights and freedoms of those in need.
In the favelas of Brazil, where black men are routinely killed by police, organizations like Redes da Maré are bringing the community together to denounce the violence and raise their collective voice.
In the courtrooms of Zimbabwe, where unjustly incarcerated demonstrators face persecution and prosecution, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights is providing emergency legal support.
In the streets of Uganda, where the LGBT community has been oppressed by the government, organizations like Sexual Minorities Uganda have risen to challenge unjust laws and defend human rights, despite personal risk. It is the same with Planned Parenthood right here at home.
And after a year of increasing nuclear threats, and in the spirit of President Roosevelt’s original intention—the “world-wide reduction of armaments”—the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a group of more than one hundred civil society organizations acting against fear.
All these brave men and women speak truth to power. They forge relationships with local communities and understand their concerns. By taking action, they make people feel less vulnerable. Instead of succumbing to fear, they act in spite of it, and create the conditions so that others might be free from it.”
Access the full essays HERE. Reprinted courtesy, The Ford Foundation 
Searching for a more beautiful world, with Charles Eisenstein
Searching for a more beautiful world, with Charles Eisenstein
featured image | Alex Grichenko
This interview first appeared at Tam’s blog on Medium, where you can read it in full: HERE
From a young age, Charles Eisenstein has felt something was fundamentally wrong with our world or, more specifically, with the social and political realities we have built. My intuitions — my heart- and gut-based modes of understanding — have been cultivated by Eisenstein’s work. Yet, his work is not anti-rational. He has a strong background in analytical methods, mathematics and philosophy. We conducted the following interview by email.
Tam | Let’s start with your background and motivations for your work. You went to Yale for your undergraduate studies and focused on mathematics and philosophy. Your first major book (2007) was The Ascent of Humanity, which you suggest in that book itself was a work that took a decade or more to research and write. What inspired this effort? Who are the major thinkers you looked to in forming your ideas?
Charles | That book embodies at least a decade of study and thought, but I was actively writing it for just four years. Some key influences were Wendell Berry, Ilya Prigogine, Lewis Mumford, Marshall Sahlins, David Bohm, Helena Nordberg-Hodge, Lynn Margulis… I could name some others, but really this is not primarily a scholarly book, and the list of influences won’t help much to understand it.
Tam | You write in the introduction to your 2013 book The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible that you are an ordinary person and if you, an ordinary person, can seek and achieve these insights and these practices in your life, then almost anyone should be able to. I don’t wish to detract from your efforts to paint yourself as an ordinary guy but it seems pretty clear that you have spent an extraordinary amount of time reading, researching and writing about a vast number of topics, from spirituality, to economics, to science, to climate, to currencies, to political movements. Doesn’t the effort you’ve expended in itself make you at least a little extraordinary?
Charles | Sure, why not. My point, though, is that the insights didn’t come from a dramatic life story or unusual discipline. They are quite close at hand for ordinary people, because really what I am doing is to give voice to a new mythology that is rising in the collective consciousness.
Tam | How would you sum up the key points of your work? Despite the breadth of issues you’ve written and spoken about, there is a theme that runs through your work. You write very accessibly and your target audience seems to be anyone who wishes to listen (rather than writing for a niche field of professionals, for example). Why have you chosen to write for the “everyperson” rather than more niche audiences?
Charles | The overarching theme of all my work is the transition in civilization’s defining mythology, from a story of separation to a story of interbeing. This transition plays out in all the fields I write about, and provides a way to identify common patterns across those fields. Because I am what you might call a “generalist,” my work is accessible to laypeople. I am myself a layperson, albeit highly educated in certain fields.
Tam | You moved to Taiwan in your 20s, studied Chinese, and worked as a translator for some years. What caused your life to take this particular turn? Are you still conversant in Mandarin?
Charles | Yes, I am still fluent in Mandarin, although I seldom have opportunity to speak and have forgotten a lot in the 25 years since I lived there. I went to Taiwan right out of college, because I felt like such an alien in my home country, and I couldn’t make myself get with the program. I had no ambition whatever to become a success, build my resume, go to graduate school, or anything like that. Furthermore, living abroad gave me the opportunity to discover who I was apart from the reinforcing circumstances of my home culture.
Tam | How much does your fluency in another language and culture, quite different than US culture, influence your thinking and willingness to propose ideas that are radically different than the mainstream?
Charles | Well, there are certainly plenty of multilingual people around, and not all of them are creative thinkers. But I think in my case, immersing in a radically different language and culture prevented my intellectual programming from calcifying. I was introduced to entirely new categories of thought before the old ones had fully formed.
I also have to credit psychedelic medicines for exposing the narrowness and artificiality of what I’d until then accepted as real. They helped open my mind to different ways of conceiving and perceiving the world that local traditions of Buddhism and Taoism offered. I never studied either deeply, but they suffused the cultural atmosphere and influenced me profoundly, particularly Taoism.
One influence I can say that Chinese has had on my later work is that it helped me work more comfortably with paradox. It is in many ways a less precise language than English; the same is true of the various Taoist sciences. You don’t start with basic definitions and first principles and work your way up from those. Taoism applies a more holistic logic and employs more teleological thinking. To some extent, this is embodied in the Chinese language too. Grammar is more fluid, words can morph from one part of speech to another, and the “atoms” of the language are semantic and not alphabetic. Aphabetic languages offer a model of reality in which meaning is an illusion. Just as meaningful words are composed of meaningless letters, so also is the meaningful world composed of meaningless protons, neutrons, and electrons. Chinese is not like that: meaning in Chinese is elemental. Perhaps these feature of the Chinese language primed me to explore non-reductionistic thinking and the relationship between story and reality in my later work.
Tam | Were you always comfortable with being considered a radical? In my own experience studying various fields and finding myself coming to very different conclusions than the mainstream I’ve realized that there must be significant other factors than logic or evidence influencing whatever ideas or theories are most prominent — because so many of them just don’t make sense under scrutiny. I’ve thus found myself comfortable with being in many ways “on the fringe” but it’s not something I sought out. Have you experienced a similar dynamic in your intellectual meanderings?
Charles | I have long and frequently felt a bit of an alien here. Until recently, that has mostly meant being ignored and dismissed, a mostly benign neglect outside the corner of the culture that comprises my readers. That has changed with the pandemic, when ideas that I’ve written about for years all of a sudden attracted much more attention, much of it hostile. For example, in The Ascent of Humanity there is a section titled “The War on Germs,” in which I located conventional medicine within larger paradigms of conquest and offered quite specific critique of certain medical practices. But it was only in the last two years that such views drew public denunciation and cancelation — including by the very publisher who now carries that book. If I may flatter myself to say that my views are true, I can only hope that they exemplify Schopenhauer’s adage: “All truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
Tam | You describe in your work how you’ve had a feeling of discontent and of fundamental wrongness with modern society from an early age. When did these feelings and realizations first happen to you?
Charles | It began very early on in grade school. I couldn’t have articulated the feeling at the time, but I just couldn’t accept my situation as good and right, sitting in rows in the classroom, forced to do things I didn’t care about, filling out worksheet after worksheet, watching the clock tick slowly toward recess. I was quite timid, but I remember secretly siding with the “bad” kids and glorying in their insubordination.
As a teenager, I began encountering books that fueled my latent indignation. I read Orwell, Solzhenitsyn, Rachel Carson, Wendell Berry, and so forth. I knew then that I wasn’t crazy for believing something was fundamentally wrong in the world. I also began to suspect that the origin of the wrongness was much deeper than anyone knew. That is how I became a radical.
Tam | Shifting to less personal questions, how do you respond to the Pinkerian argument that the Enlightenment has improved the world in countless ways? Pinker has argued in two hefty books (The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now) that the Enlightenment way of thinking, led by science and reason, has indeed led to a vastly better world in numerous quantifiable ways. He presents data in dozens of categories showing that the world is far better off in terms of declining violence, longer lifespans, better standard of living, access to health care, declining child death and death of mothers during birth, etc. You of course paint a very different picture in your work, of a world on a fundamentally wrong track. So what does Pinker get wrong or leave out?
Charles | I could answer by pointing you to an essay I wrote in response to Pinker: Our New, Happy Life? The Ideology of Development. It is not possible to rebut his thesis in a few short paragraphs, when such a rebuttal requires overturning deeply held assumptions. His book was so readily celebrated by powerful people in the establishment because it feels so commonsensical to them, drawing on assumptions they take for granted.
That said, I can point to several lines of critique. First, the chosen measures of well-being are loaded with the values and assumptions of the very culture (ours) that is assessing progress and naming itself as the most advanced. So for example, Pinker talks a lot about life expectancy, but what about quality of life in those longer years? Is it any improvement to have to manage chronic disease or live in a nursing home, lonely and depressed? Other authors have also questioned Pinker’s metrics on their own terms: Is society actually less violent than it was in Medieval or pre-historic times? Or has the form of violence merely shifted? Thirdly, I and many other people who have spent time in less “developed” places on earth have witnessed levels of well-being and happiness seldom seen in modern society.
We have more and more of everything we measure, as the immeasurable, the qualitative, ebbs out of modern life. We then seek yet more of the quantitative in futile compensation for its loss.
One very concrete way this plays out is in the mania for safety that I first noticed in the wave of litigiousness in the 1980s, that accelerated after 9/11 into a national obsession, and then reached hysterical proportions in the Covid era. Each security measure makes us safer. You can measure it. Keeping kids indoors in front of screens, making borders “secure,” locking down all of society. And what does safety compensate for? A life of meaning and purpose. Cut off from that, there is nothing left but to stay alive.
Tam | You write in The Ascent of Humanity about the commodification and monetization of the world through a steady reduction of services provided by friends, family and community in favor of companies providing these services for a fee. For example, childcare, birthing, and laundry used to be performed by families and friends but now in the case of many modern families are done by paid third parties. You warn about the loss of community and family ties because of this vast commodification and monetization of the world. What practical ways do we have to reverse this trend?
Charles | I’ll answer this question on a personal and political level. On the personal level, we can look at our lives and ask what part we can reclaim from money, what we can bring back into the realm of community, self-sufficiency, or gift? Or you could approach it as a shift of dependency away from markets toward people we actually know. Some things may not make sense right now to change, but maybe you’ll recognize that the time is ripe to plant a garden, or start a homeschool co-op or babysitting co-op or play group, or to replace on-screen entertainment with regular musical gatherings with friends.
On the political level, we can reverse policies that destroy community. In many cases, because of licensing requirements, building codes, and so forth, it is actually illegal to do things we once did for each other. Regulations that protect us from unscrupulous big corporations also make it difficult for small, family-run farms and businesses to operate. Furthermore, any policy that shifts economic activity from a local to a global scale will damage community, because even when money is used to facilitate local transactions, something else happens along with money exchange.
People interact with each other locally — more at the small food co-op than at the Wal-Mart grocery story, and more at the Wal-Mart than if they order groceries online. Our system has all kinds of hidden subsidies that promote delocalization and expansion of scale. We can shift those subsidies to support localism.
Tam | Why do you focus on beauty as such an important aspect of life, and of what’s missing in our modern world, with its “uglification” and industrialization of so much around us?
Charles | Beauty is one of those things we cannot quantify, and therefore which fits poorly into conventional economic thinking. Money logic is good at maximizing efficiency, which is actually maximizing something measurable. For example, it produces large buildings cheaply.
I focus on beauty a lot because it offers such a clear example of our poverty. The beauty lens makes it obvious that financial thinking, and quantitative thinking generally, is incapable of producing certain things that the human soul requires. What does the world need most right now? Is it more?
Tam | Is it practical to suggest that performing mundane acts like laundry, yard work, or changing diapers should be viewed as sacred tasks, as ways of creating a more beautiful world, as you suggest in your work?
Charles | Well, our society little celebrates such activities, and our economy hardly rewards them. Yet, they require a lot of patience and humility. We need people to do such things with care and devotion, at least as much as we need people to invent new machines and build new organizations. Neither is more sacred than the other. However, I’m not suggesting that some people should spend their whole lives changing diapers and doing laundry. Calling such activities “sacred” is not a way to justify an unfair, exploitative division of labor. It is rather the opposite. If we as a society hold those activities as worthy, then no one will believe themselves to be above such things.
Ultimately, I am advocating a reversal of an age-old prejudice, which values the abstract over the concrete, the spirit over the flesh, and the spiritual over the material. This anti-materialism has caused tremendous harm to materiality; that is, to nature. Part of recovering from the spell of money (which is itself an abstraction of value) is to re-value the material, the soil, the flesh, the living, and the human.
Tam | Do you ever tear up at witnessing a particularly beautiful sight or moment or idea?
Charles | Yes. What affects me the most is to witness generosity, kindness, and selflessness. Like when a small child shares with another.
Tam | You mention in The More Beautiful World… how a lot of people have seemed for some time to somewhat perversely be looking forward to normal life and society breaking down, in whatever manner comes along, like an alcoholic needs to truly bottom out before seeking help, or like the necessary flames before the rebirth of the phoenix from the ashes. I wonder how much of this notion affected your attempts to discern your personal response to the pandemic and lockdowns in those early months of 2020 before you wrote the Coronation essay and established yourself as more of a Covid skeptic, at least in terms of seeing the world’s seeming over-reactions to the virus as part of a very long historic arc toward power seeking more power and control?
Charles | I think that the public’s willingness to accept lockdowns and in general the break in normal life is that they wanted liberation from normality. A lot of people in modern society feel trapped in their lives, and here was deliverance. Or so it seemed.
In fact, the hoped-for freedom did not materialize. The regime of control only intensified.
Tam | Klaus Schwab, author of The Great Reset and founder of the World Economic Forum, has a new book out called The Great Narrative, a compilation of many different authors’ ideas about how our global civilization should arise from the ashes of the pandemic. Unsurprisingly, it present a rather different “great narrative” than the Story of Interbeing that you have offered for a new Age of Reunion. Have you considered engaging with these kinds of leaders in order to seed fresh thinking, from a perspective of Reunion rather than Separation? If Schwab invited you to speak at Davos would you attend?
Charles | I have not read the book, but from what I’ve seen of the Great Reset, I think it is a mix of good and bad ideas, or at least some of the ideas come from a good motivation. For example, the idea that “you will own nothing and be happy” is actually a reference to the leasing economy, where instead of buying a washing machine you buy the use of the machine, which gives manufacturers an incentive to make it durable and reparable. The main problem in the kind of ideas that come out of the World Economic Forum is that they invariably put more power in the hands of centralized institutions and the elites that run them. Many of the ideas would be quite good if they could be liberated from that. For example, a universal basic income would be great if it didn’t come with dependency on a government that could take it away if, for example, you espouse subversive ideas.
In any case, if I were invited to speak to them I certainly would. I don’t think we should ever write someone off as irredeemably evil. On some level, these elites long for the same thing we all do, subject to their own particular blinders. I would speak to the part of them that also seeks a more beautiful world.
Tam | If you had the resources of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos what would you do?
Charles | If I had those resources, neither I nor the world would be as they are right now. I would have to be someone I am not. Or, the world that would put such resources in my hands would uphold different values than it does now. In the former case, I would probably do not much different than those two do. In the latter case, I wouldn’t need those resources to begin with.
Tam | Making it more concrete, what if one of these men (or someone similarly wealthy) was so inspired by your ideas that they decided to give you access to $1 billion and hired a team of people to work under your guidance to implement your vision?
Charles | I still question whether this would be the best use of my time; however, I’ll play along with your game. I have a vision called The Institute for Technologies of Reunion. It funds and develops various technologies that draw from and contribute to a new story. Some of them are quite mundane; for example, regenerative agriculture and ecological restoration practices. So I might fund young farmers who want to transition to regenerative farming. There are already organizations doing that, such as the Agrarian Trust. Other technologies are social, for example various kinds of conflict resolution practices. Then there is the realm of physical and emotional healing, using modalities that don’t fit into current medical paradigms or medical funding systems. Beyond that, I would host R&D on unconventional methods of energy production, mind-body technologies, and esoteric practices.
Tam | Getting a little more into the weeds, I want to ask whether you’ve considered the merits of panpsychism (see Skrbina’s Panpsychism in the West, Griffin’s Unsnarling the World-knot, or Chalmers’ The Conscious Mind) as an alternative to the return to animism you sometimes suggest in your work could/should be the basis for a new story of interbeing, a story in which all parts of the world have some degree of consciousness? Whereas animism seems to return us to a kind of prerational/romantic state, would you agree that panpsychism offers us a scientifically and philosophically defensible foundational philosophy that may perform the same spiritual function you hope for animism to achieve (I’ve argued this in my book, Mind, World, God)? Panpsychism does indeed seem to be catching on in philosophical and scientific circles in the last couple of decades.
Charles | I would say that I am a panpsychist, yes. I articulated that position quite early in my career in my first book, The Ascent of Humanity. I believe that the distinction between panpsychism and animism is mostly academic, and that the views of ancient and indigenous philosophers were and are a lot more sophisticated than we may give them credit for. I also reject the Spiral Dynamics thinking that locates our own civilization at a higher point of evolution than other cultures, and fancies itself to have “included and transcended” them. Along a certain axis of development this may be true, but it applies a cultural blindness to the many ways that a society can evolve and advance. To call animistic cultures pre-rational or romantic is a modern conceit. I suggest reading Graeber & Wengrow’s description in The Dawn of Everything of how modern notions of a liberal society such as liberty and equality originated in the critiques of North American philosophers such as Kandiaronk, who profoundly influenced Jesuit missionaries and other colonizers, and whose critiques found their way into the writings of philosophers like John Locke, Rousseau, and so forth. Anyway, I don’t think animism is essentially different from panpsychism. The latter is more a translation of animism into modern conceptual idiom.
Tam | You paint a nuanced view of technology, highlighting its ability (already realized in so many ways) to make problems worse through unwise “technofixes,” but also suggesting that there may indeed be “technologies of Reunion” that may bring us more quickly into the Age of Reunion you call for. Can you offer some rules of thumb on how to make this key kind of discernment about the role of new technologies in our lives?
Charles | The key differentiating principle is that Technologies of Reunion are not based on control. What we call technology today is a system for applying force to matter with ever greater precision. The dream is that if we could only control every atom in the world, in our own bodies and brains, etc., if we could only quantify and manipulate everything in the material and social world, we could engineer paradise. Well, no matter how far we develop our ability to control the world, paradise remains on the horizon, as far away as ever. (The same is true on the personal level when we try to control other people in our lives.)
In contrast, Technologies of Reunion draw on an understanding that the world is alive, that there are intelligences beyond the human, and that by participating in these intelligences we can co-achieve miraculous results. For example, technologies of control try to perfect agricultural yields by precisely controlling every component of the soil, eliminating weeds and pests, and so forth. Technologies of Reunion seek to support the aliveness of the soil, listening and observing it as a living being, asking what it needs, trusting that its thriving is connected to our own.
Tam | You have a rare talent of provoking reconsideration of seemingly bedrock aspects of one’s worldview. Reading your work has provoked a lot of soul-searching in me and many of your readers. I and my academic colleagues recently developed a framework that could in theory lead to the quantification of consciousness (a “psychometer”) in whatever physical structures are being considered (animals, plants, robots, stars, etc.) There are some pretty obvious benefits of having this kind of technology but also potential downsides. Would you say that having a more or less reliable psychometer would fall in the “technology of reunion” category, or not so much?
Charles | Such devices can be fun and illuminating, but we must approach them with humility. A key precept of the modern world and its scientific view is that, in principle, everything that is real can be quantified, measured and counted. According to that precept, if consciousness is real it can be measured too. (Also, whatever can be measured may also be controlled; we have subsumed it within our own system of numbers and categories; we have domesticated it.) Humility suggests that there are real things that will always escape quantification. We can work with them, we can understand them, but we can never pin them down or reduce them to number (which is a fundamental form of conquest). So whatever you are measuring with your psychometer, please understand that it won’t include everything that consciousness is. Be aware as well that whatever it leaves out may correspond to social and ecological prejudices and power relationships.
Tam | Are psychedelics a “technology of reunion”?
Charles | Yes and no. Just because something is a technology of reunion doesn’t mean that we know how to properly use it. We must learn. These technologies are powerful. In a sense, the technology is not the substance itself, it is the set of practices that includes it. By itself, a psychedelic is no more a technology than is a microchip in a hole in the ground. The word technology means a “logos of crafts.”
Tam | You argue in Climate: A New Story that even shifting to a fully renewable energy economy, while offering obvious benefits over our current mostly fossil-fueled economy, would still entail numerous ills because simply changing our power sources won’t fix the growing separation we all feel. As someone who has spent his primary career focused on the green energy transition, I’ve been guilty of advocating for this particular techno fix for some time and we are indeed on the verge of realizing a fully renewable energy economy in two to three decades in the US and globally (I make this argument in my book, Solar: Why Our Energy Future Is So Bright). That said, I find myself agreeing with you that this is far from a “mission accomplished” moment, as much as I would like to take some much-needed time off from advocacy. You seem in your work a bit torn about the merits and effects of a fully green energy economy. Would you agree that transitioning away from fossil fuels is highly desirable for many reasons, but that this alone is only one part of the overall changes we need to make in how we live?
Charles | Yes, transitioning away from fossil fuels is highly desirable for many reasons — depending on what we transition into. That is actually more important than what we transition out of. In the book I say that even if global warming is not a problem, I still want to end fracking, oil spills, tar sands excavation, and all the other ruin that accompanies fossil fuel extraction. However, I don’t want to replace it with the ruin that accompanies the electric economy, which at least at this stage requires a vast expansion of ecologically ruinous mining for silver, coltan, lithium, rare earths, etc. The ecological damage from hydro power, biofuel plantations, and nukes is also horrendous.
In my view, by far the most important transition is to see earth as alive, precious, and sacred. And then to implement this understanding with a complete moratorium on further “development” of remaining undamaged ecosystems. No more deforestation of the Amazon and Congo, no more draining wetlands, etc. Equally important is restoration of damaged ecosystems, soil, and marine environments. We should for example put at least half the oceans under marine preserves. That will give the world’s navies something useful to do.
When the organs of Gaia are strong, she will be resilient to changing levels of greenhouse gases and other challenges. If the organs (forests, wetlands, oceans, etc.) are weak, then the climate will spiral into derangement even if we cut carbon emissions to zero.
Tam | A major techno fix that is increasingly likely is space colonization, including the Moon, Mars, and other bodies in our solar system. While we won’t be seeing millions of people living in space in the next decade or two, it seems likely that by 2050 or so we probably will be. In terms of all of the many environmental, social, and spiritual ills you highlight in your work, how much, if any, of these problems will be ameliorated as we become a multiplanetary species and find untold abundance in other planets and eventually other star systems? Is your philosophy suited for a space-faring civilization?
Charles | I disagree. Space colonization is much harder than the optimists think. It will require technologies that aren’t really on the radar right now. It will in fact require the kinds of technologies that are inaccessible to the consciousness that wants to escape responsibility for earth.
Tam | I see a clear progression in your last four books with each more or less leading naturally to the next. But I can’t discern what your next one will be. Maybe a foreign policy based on love? Is it in the works already?
Charles | I’m not sure if I will write more books. Events are happening so quickly that it doesn’t make sense to spend a year or two writing a book, which is then published the year after that. Instead I can publish piecemeal on Substack.
Experimental images generated using AI application, DALL-E
'The Grab' | Conspiring to Control the World's Food and Water
‘The Grab’ | Conspiring to Control the World’s Food and Water
Editor’s note: At the invitation of Kosmos advisor and acting CEO of the Center for Investigative Reporting, (CIR), Robert Rosenthal, I met journalist Nate Halverson and saw his film The Grab at the Philadelphia Film Festival. Seven years in the making, The Grab examines the money and planning behind secretive land and water grabs by some of the world’s most powerful entities. The mix of players includes corporations and governments, farmers and mercenaries, activists and informants.
Kosmos | There was already something in my heart that was attuned to your documentary, The Grab. The Transition Town Movement in my town is also very concerned with food and water security. Thank you for your dedicated investigation. It’s really needed.
Nathan | Thank you.
Kosmos | When did you know that you wanted to be an investigative journalist?
Nathan | I was an undergrad at the University of Minnesota, and we were having a house party. There was a young college journalist there, working for the college newspaper. I began chatting with her and ended up getting a job at that college newspaper, which I knew nothing about. I didn’t realize that it was this coveted position! The annual budget for the student newspaper at that time was around $7 million and it had a daily circulation of like 70,000. But it just sounded fun and I started doing it. And you know what? It was really fun.
I think it was like my second week, and then Governor Jesse ‘the Body’ Ventura, former wrestler movie star, had announced that he was going to be decreasing expenditures to the university, which was going to result in tuition rate increases. I was going to write up that story and I thought, “Well, I guess I should call the governor’s office.” I’m still a teenager then, and you know, you don’t think you have the right to call the governor’s office, but that’s your job. And so you do. Next thing, I’m on the phone with Jesse Ventura, the Governor, who’s blustery and dismissive, but there it is.
I just kept gravitating towards more investigative work. I was never interested in being a sports reporter or any type of reporter… I gravitated quite quickly to investigative journalism.
Kosmos | How did you get on the radar of the Center for Investigative Reporting?
Nathan | I went to work for a man named Lowell Bergman, who was a former 60 Minutes producer, and who Al Pacino portrayed in The Insider. Lowell really broke open the story that the tobacco companies knew that tobacco was carcinogenic and addictive. I began working with Lowell on a PBS Frontline documentary, and they sent me to Macau for six weeks to hang out with gangsters, or what the US government would call gangsters, and get them to go on camera and talk about how millions or billions of dollars was moving out of mainland China into the Macau gambling system and into the US financial system. So, I did that.
Then when I finished that up, I went over and I was asked to work on a project for CIR that was looking into Smithfield Foods and how a Chinese meat company had purchased one in four American pigs.
Kosmos | And that’s really where this whole journey began. There are multiple lines of inquiry in the documentary. Each one of them could be a full blown investigative piece itself. When or how did it start to come together in your mind that it was all connected. What was that process like?
Nathan | As I began reporting, I reported on the Smithfield food story, and I knew nothing about the food sector. My background is in economics and as a business reporter and as an investigative reporter, but I knew nothing about that sector. Once I realized that the Chinese government was incentivized and subsidizing, orchestrating the purchase of one in four American pigs, I really wanted to know the ‘why’. Once I began to understand the why, which is that the Chinese government is focused on controlling food and water resources around the world, I began to ask if other countries are doing that. Once that became clear that other countries were doing that, it became, ‘why is that important to so many countries?’ Then it became, ‘so what does that look like on the ground?’
Once I began painting that line of inquiry, why countries are doing this, that brings me into things like the Arab Spring, Boko Haram, Somali pirates. It begins bringing me into the world of food as geopolitics; food as a weapon of war. It begins to bring me into the world of ‘what does that mean for people on their ancestral land that has water and has fertility or that is arable?’ Then it begins to make me understand how Boko Haram is now connected with the people that are being displaced from their land, how Somali pirates are connected to people who are being displaced from their food sources. Pretty soon, I have this intertwined holistic view of the world.
Exclusive Trailer | Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival
Like this weekend, the New York Times had a of couple articles, one of them was that farm prices hit an all time high in the US, and it mentions in there that Bill Gates’ family money is now the largest farmland owner in the US. These things are deeply contextualized to me. These aren’t out of the blue, and I no longer have these big questions of ‘why’. That was my hope with making the documentary – that people have a broad enough knowledge base on this subject so that these stories that they see in the news no longer feel like one-off stories, but they are contextualized in a framework of what’s going on.
So when you see a story about civil unrest in Sri Lanka, and food prices being one of the major contributing factors, or you see either local government or militia or mercenaries being called into a remote part of Africa to quell disputes with locals, you look a little deeper and you see that there’s land displacement issues, you begin to understand that these aren’t ‘radical, crazy people that have backwards beliefs’. They are people fighting for their ancestral land that have had their sustenance taken away from them and their ability to get water maybe taken away from them. You begin contextualizing these patterns. So that’s it. That was my goal in making The Grab, was to give people enough information, that all of these seemingly disparate events are now part of a larger web of knowledge.
Kosmos | Watching the film, I guess it didn’t surprise me that various global players and nations would try to maximize benefit for their own countries and import food or purchase water rights. What did surprise me was the extent of weaponization and militarization involved. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Nathan | There’s a lot in the film, but there’s even more that’s not in the film. For instance, when ISIL is marching through Iraq, they are systematically taking over dams. This has now become a common thread. Like, Russians systematically targeting grain silos or water infrastructure in Ukraine, or that Kherson is next to the Crimean water canal.
Now, there’s a town right near Kherson, which is the headwaters of that canal. When Elon Musk, who Ian Bremmer says talked directly to Putin, tweets out that there are four or five things that must happen to have peace between Russia and Ukraine, one of those is maintaining water to the Crimean Canal. You now have the world’s wealthiest man talking openly about peace only happening around one issue: water. You begin seeing how water is both an instigator of conflict and is used as a weapon in conflicts, and ultimately is going to be a key component to either finding or maintaining peace in the 21st century.
Kosmos | There is research that says where there is water cooperation between nations, there tends to be peace…
Nathan | That’s right. There is a Professor Aaron Wolf in the Department of Geosciences at Oregon State University who is often cited – that historically, cooperation around water has resulted in longer lasting peace. But the flip side of that coin is that we are no longer living in that period of water abundance. We’re living in a new era which climate change is accelerating. There are many accelerants. It’s not just climate change. It is what our diet consists of. It is people eating what some would say is higher up on the food chain, or just meaning they’re eating more meat, which requires a lot more water.
You look at the Indus River Basin in between Pakistan and India, and that water is no longer reaching the Indian Ocean. It’s no longer even reaching, as far as I understand, all the way through Pakistan. As that water continues to get depleted and those populations grow and it becomes more coveted, there is increased pressure between those two countries around that treaty. Modi has actually even cited the potential of canceling it if Pakistan weren’t to do something he wanted them to do, which is an existential threat for Pakistan.
Kosmos | Even smaller conflicts… at Standing Rock, I was shocked to see how militarized it was. The police and private security forces used rocket launchers and riot gear to subdue people peacefully demonstrating against the pipeline and tying to protect their water. But they were not referred to that way…
Nathan | Yep. ‘Rioters, terrorists, enemy combatants.’
Kosmos | I guess that goes for anyone trying to protect their land or their food supply or their water. Is that how you see it playing out?
Nathan | Yeah. The current trend line is really, really bad.
Kosmos | You guys were in some pretty tight spots. How did you take care of each other and your own fear in some of those cases?
Nathan | We have thorough protocols and preparation in place around security, whether it’s cybersecurity or physical security. We take these things seriously. But I also just think it’s really important to recognize that the people we were filming, human rights defenders, land defenders, people on the front lines, the communities that are pushing back, are putting so much more out there on the line than we ever do.
I go into places and I spend a week or two and I come back to San Francisco and I have land and there’s food in my grocery store. I turn the water on my faucet and drinking water comes out, and amazingly hot water comes out, and there’s electricity 24 hours a day. I can walk my dog safely down my street. I just can’t emphasize enough that putting myself out there for two weeks is such a small ask of the universe relative to those that are living in that space their entire lives and don’t have an easy way out. I can’t spend too much time talking about how I manage my own fear because it’s so small compared to what so many people are dealing with day to day that it just feels trite and a little self-indulgent and detached from the reality of so many.
Kosmos | How has this experience transformed you as a journalist, and also as a person?
Nathan | I’ve had to learn to live with the idea that the future might be very bleak and might not turn out very well. I’ve just had to learn to live with that. There’s a lot of time, I think, spent internally where your emotions wrestle with and push back against the idea that things are moving towards a fairly dark trendline, and it has the power to make you unhappy.
But I think at the end of the day, happiness is derived from our immediate communities, in how we foster those and from the meaning of the work that we do in the moment, day to day. I don’t know, Mark Twain gets credit for so many quotes he didn’t say, so I’ll just give him credit for this one, too. But “worrying about the future is oftentimes paying interest on a debt you have not yet accrued.”
So, I think the more important thing than feeling hopeless or helpless or sad or distraught to the point of paralysis, the more effective tool is to make sure you’re tending the garden of your community and putting yourself into a position to create meaning in the work that you do every day, because if humanity manages to pull off a healthy future, it will be through the efforts of a great many individuals, and not necessarily governments, but individuals within governments, individuals pushing governments, individuals creating the communities that the scientists say we need for the future.
It will take individuals remaining open to very hard-to-live-with information. So, I think people are going to have to, especially in the privileged, over-developed world where our lives are very comfortable, get accustomed to a greater degree of discomfort and still produce meaningful work and tend to their communities.
Kosmos | The theme of this issue of our journal is the Four Freedoms. One of them is freedom from fear – from bad political players particularly. Often, fear comes from a sense of futility. Although there’s plenty in the film to fear, I think that the power of the film comes from the bravery of certain characters that you bring forward, some of the activists and the work that they’re doing. That feels very important. Of course, just looking at The Grab, we could come to the conclusion that we are heading for a very dark time; there’s going to be a lot of suffering. But for all the darkness that seems to be rising, do you see another kind of power on the horizon?
Nathan | Absolutely. The things that are in The Grab are difficult, but they’re manageable. They can be managed. If people come together, there is no guarantee that widespread suffering has to take place. The more that people get activated, the less suffering there will be.
That all starts with being informed. As facts on the ground change, altering paths, being open to new information, being adaptable and treating each other kindly and gently, even those who have drawn different conclusions than you. If those conclusions that they drew ultimately prove to be the wrong decisions, treating them gently as we all begin to move forward and hopefully find a better path.
Kosmos | Do you think you’re going to stay focused on this area of inquiry for a while, or are you already turning your thoughts to something entirely different?
Nathan | I’ll work on this for at least another few months to put out some print pieces and some radio pieces. There’s a lot of information that’s not in the film that I think will be beneficial for the world to have in sort of a condensed, consolidated place to access. There’s already terrific amount of reporting that’s going around on this topic.
But the General Secretary of the United Nations just tweeted yesterday… Let me see what he tweeted. It’s not very good. This is what he said: “We are on the way to a raging food catastrophe, and the world appears to be indifferent.” So, I’m hoping that The Grab can be part of what makes people less indifferent, that it gives them a way to contextualize, and a framework to see this information and to understand and to push for action. Because in a representative democracy like the United States, politicians largely won’t act unless their constituents say this is a priority for them. So, I’m just hoping that people have information.
But at the end of the day, my role is just to knock on the front door and say, “Your house is on fire. You should get out.” Sometimes people say, “Well, yeah, but shouldn’t you have a plan on how to put the fire out?” I say, “Well, no. My plan is to tell people their house is on fire,” and hopefully there will be experts who know how to put the fire out.
Kosmos | That’s your work to do in the world, and you do it beautifully with your team. So, thank you very much to all of them and to you.
Why Beauty Matters
Why Beauty Matters
-A Précis revealing the heart and soul of my Studio-
The content of these writings flow from a paradigm shift in the cosmology of our culture that is happening at this time. The timeless recognition of Consciousness and its productions (the apparent world around us) is also experienced as ‘Beauty’. The old “materialist” culture is giving way to a deeper Truth; the unity of everything.
Beauty is one way into this new understanding.
Why Beauty Matters
If the experience of a work of Architecture (or any art object) is to move beyond its bare material presence then there must be some quality intended by its maker that transmits itself, invisibly, to the viewer.
Most of us, perhaps all of us, have had the experience at some point in our lives of encountering an object or a situation in which our normal sense of ‘time’ was suspended or altered. This can occur while walking in a landscape, listening to music, standing in a room or countless other situations. Often times this is referred to as; “overwhelmed by the beauty of the moment” or a similar phrase in which the mind attempts to explain the unexplainable. As we ponder our memory of these moments the flavor may linger but there is inevitably a longing to return to this realm that now seems to have been fleeting and temporary.
This is the experience of Beauty.
It is not simply a neutral alteration of waking consciousness; it is a rendezvous with our deepest nature. This is why we long for it, precisely because it is mostly veiled by the assumptions of the society we live within. Our culture has deeply conditioned us to point toward a practical and materialist belief in measurable reality. This leaves us thirsting for the recognition of our true self. A true self that is not confined by the limits of ‘mind’ but rather is open, sensitive, unlimited and not subject to time. Beauty is one word that can be used to refer to our ‘true self’ when it is provoked to step forward and revel in the joy of an expanded experience.
The Utter Practicality of Beauty
If Beauty is to play a significant role in our lives then it must be present in our direct experience. In this way, Beauty is received as a practical part of each day and can be appreciated at any time and in any place.
Because any ordinary activity such as walking through a lovely space can evoke the experience of Beauty, it is often felt as a kind of suspension of our normal sense of time and sometimes accompanied by a sense of wonder or perhaps a feeling of ‘home’ or deep truthfulness.
What is the importance of this to any of us?
It is simply this;
Happiness.
When a work of Architecture (or music, art ,etc.) has its origins in this understanding it will possess the power to nourish this hunger in all of us. Instead of a longing for this ‘food’ we so desire, suddenly, we are home in the realm of happiness itself. This is not an exotic destination, it is very simply who we really are! Of course when our conditioned mind comes back into play it immediately downgrades the experience as being just a ‘lapse’ in its otherwise busy schedule.
When this experience of Beauty is received it seems to spontaneously return us to our true nature in ways that are not found in customary activities. I remember walking into the public space at the Salk Institute by the architect Louis Kahn (see above) and suddenly noticing that I was present in the moment but I was not thinking. It would be later that day that I would recall something of the experience and decide; “that was overwhelmingly beautiful; I felt a deep silence all around”. It was the best the mind could do in an attempt to describe the indescribable.
Approaching Beauty
The architect Frank Lloyd Wright was once asked if he believed in God. He replied, “Yes and it’s spelled N-A-T-U-R-E.”
While Beauty is an undeniable natural experience, it is also sometimes the result of an arrangement of elements placed by the artist, musician or architect in such a way as to evoke a deep memory in the viewer of a sense of harmony and Truth.
Nature with its forms and geometries is a powerful reference for the creative maker. Countless systems of color and proportion take their direction from the natural world. Time and again these references will inform a human creation (music, painting, building, etc.) with a resonance that points towards its origin.
In Architecture, the use of geometries that flow from these natural principles can result in a kind of attunement with the viewer. “It took my breath away” would be an example of a direct experience of Beauty. This is not an intellectual experience, no special training or education is required. The experience bypasses the mind and goes straight to the heart of our true nature.
As an example, the Golden Section spiral (see below) , is common throughout the natural world. A golden section rectangle has the property that by removing a square from it another golden section rectangle is produced and this spiral uses that fact to create quarter arcs in each of the squares. When a space or an object takes its form from these relationships there is a natural and powerful “echo” of cosmic harmony that vibrates throughout our senses as we take in the experience.
The Color of Beauty
Color is always a direct experience that goes right to the heart of our senses. It is ,after all, always derived from ‘white’ light. The daylight, when filtered through a glass prism, divides itself into a spectrum that we perceive as individual colors. It is as if we have ‘unlocked’ this display and are then invited to place these colors around our environment as a delightful reminder of the countless variation and diversity of the natural world.
A field of wildflowers or the markings of a colorful bird are simply ‘reflections’ of the ever-present daylight expressed back to our eye at the particular vibration that we call ‘red’ or ‘green’ or ‘blue’, etc. Even beyond the phenomenon of ‘seeing’ there are other vibrational frequencies that a musician can use to create ‘sounds of color’ at the level of ‘hearing’.
In Architecture, color can be used to evoke a feeling of ‘depth’ in a room or to express a range of feelings from poignancy to playfulness. As with other aspects of Beauty, the message is delivered directly to our hearts in a way that ‘goes round’ the thinking mind and lingers as a kind of perfume in our experience. Again, our senses are the instruments that deliver to us this ‘food’ that we know as Truth but which words will fail to explain.
Natural Beauty – ‘arranging the landscape’
“The greens should be ranged together in large masses as the shades in a painting; to contrast the dark masses with the light ones, and to relieve each dark mass itself with little sprinklings of lighter greens here and there.” Henry Hoare- landscape designer
If the maker of Beauty (artist, musician, architect, etc.) is to succeed in evoking a sense of our true nature then it is sometimes necessary to ‘rearrange’ or intensify what would otherwise be a ‘found’ or natural setting. Such is the case with a landscape garden or park.
All of us, at one time or another, have had a ‘special’ experience while standing or walking in a landscape. The combination of the sun’s angle, a dramatic contour or overwhelming greenery with floral color can trigger the experience of being ‘transported’ out of time and into the realm of suspended wonder. The landscape maker takes the elements of nature and ‘rearranges’ these elements to suggest a natural ‘place’ that in reality has been composed.
Why would we do this?
For the simple reason that when this designed landscape succeeds it engenders a powerful memory of our true origins. We have an experience that ‘jumps over’ the organizations of the mind and takes us directly to a connectedness with all that is. Heading ‘home’ is the direction it takes us and we love this journey because it rings with the sound of who we truly are.
Beauty at work.
Natural Beauty and the Placed Object
“Art (architecture, music, etc.) heals the fundamental malaise of our culture, the feeling of alienation, despair, separation, the longing for love.
We do not view a work of art, we participate in it. The nature of art is to bring back the world we have rejected, the world that we have deemed other, separate, made out of dead matter…to bring it close, intimate, to realize our self as one with its very fabric.
……..The role of the artist (architect, musician, etc.) is to transmit to humanity the deepest experience of reality. Art is remembrance. It is love. It is like a sword that distinguishes between appearances and reality.
Beauty is the form of God. “
Rupert Spira, poet and teacher
We have previously looked at the ‘arranged’ natural landscape, now let us look at another approach to Beauty; the beautiful object ‘placed’ in the untouched or found landscape. As before, the maker has the same objective …. to evoke, trigger and inspire that which is often lost in our daily experience; the encounter with our deepest nature. Whether this encounter with our ‘sense’ of Beauty is caused by an object made by a trained maker or it is inspired from a native intuition the result is the same. (see below- F.L. Wright’s house in Pennsylvania, R. Meier’s house in Michigan or the tribal ‘tree-house’ from Indonesia, and even an entire city as an ‘object-in-the-desert’ in Yemen.)
So, again and again, when the maker is inspired by a calling that flows from our deepest nature the resulting ‘form’ will be saturated with this understanding and it will infiltrate our experience and leave us ‘speechless’……………. until the mind starts up again and attempts to label that which cannot be labeled.
The Form of Beauty (as Form)
When an apparent object is shaped or fashioned by a maker (artist, architect, etc.) it offers the possibility of entering a new realm. As we view or experience that object its quality arrives at the doorway of our senses as one complete perception. The mind will then rise up and begin to ‘divide and conquer’ the immediacy of the experience. We will question as to whether the object is smooth or coarse, thick or thin; or whether it belongs to this category or that category. However, if we stay close to our raw experience then the object will communicate to us the origins of its true intent…………and if the maker of the object is aligned with that essential nature then that object will enter a new realm.
This realm is Beauty.
It is surprising! It also becomes clear that although the object has so-called objective qualities (surface, shape, mass, etc.) the effect of this experience has a dissolving quality that suggests that the object is evoking this sense of Beauty while at the same time ‘giving way’ to its lack of solidness.
Whether the object is regular in shape or derived from the natural world or fashioned to depict a shocking ‘new’ form the effect is the same; it takes our senses out beyond any label and leaves us swimming in our direct experience.
The Space of Beauty (as Space)
If Space is thought of as the counterpart of Form then it presents itself to us as what Form is not. In others words, an object needs the space around it to be known as the form that we perceive.
Now let us suppose that we are going to make a beautiful space that will not require an object within it for us to have the experience of the Space itself. When the maker (artist, architect, etc.) of such a space proceeds from this premise then the resulting ‘shaped-space’ can communicate to us a profound sense of power and beauty.
The power of these spaces lies in an indescribable message that exists somewhere beyond our ability to name such a space as an object. Most of us, have at one time or another walked into a breathtaking space. In nature, it could be the Grand Canyon or in a building it can be found in a medieval cathedral. In any case, there is a shock-wave of awe that ripples through our senses as we are delivered right to the heart of Beauty……as Space.
The Painting of Beauty (as in Cézanne)
“One moment in the life of the world passes. To paint the reality of that moment and forget everything for that. To become that moment, to be the sensitive plate. To give the image of what we see, forgetting everything else that has happened before our time.”
Paul Cézanne, artist
The two-dimensional surface of the artist’s canvas can become a ‘platform’ for the expression of Beauty that can evoke the deepest connection with the core of our experience. Such is the case with the painter Paul Cézanne.
As Cézanne explores the world around him, he returns again and again to the same view or the same subject. This is not mindless repetition; it is, rather, his relentless fascination with the origin and essence of ‘seeing’ or perceiving. As his exploration deepens there is a dissolving quality of the viewed object in which the separation of pieces and parts begins to ‘melt’ into the seamless quality of oneness.
In this way, he is taking us back toward the source of our experience prior to the naming of the object. This is the territory that lies just prior to our minds rising up to explain (in words) what we are seeing. This is what we know to be true. This is the ‘gut’ feeling or the ‘heart-knowledge’ that is certain to us. This is the territory of Beauty!
The Sound of Beauty (as Music)
To ‘see’ a beautiful object or travel in a beautiful space is the experience of Beauty at the level of the visual. Now we will explore the nature of Beauty when it is experienced in the realm of ‘hearing’; that is to say, when a composer or musician embarks on the arrangement of sounds in order to evoke our deepest origins.
Music has a unique property that can be experienced as the most direct of all expressions. It is a property that vibrates immediately into our awareness. Setting aside the fact that it can be recorded and later replayed, it is an experience that comes to us, permeates us, and then it is gone! What is left behind is a kind of ‘ghost’ or lingering perfume that remains without any object-quality. This ‘quality’ has within it the source of our true nature; prior to thought or concept, and is seamlessly joined to everything it touches.
Beauty in its most subtle form.
Article and all images reprinted courtesy Scott Guyon. http://www.guyonarchitecture.com/why-beauty-matters
The Four Freedoms and Artificial Intelligence
The Four Freedoms and Artificial Intelligence
I was nine years old when, gazing at the sky, I had the first realization of my connection to the vastness of Life. I think everyone can remember a moment like that. And I am still routinely awed that the Universe exists, that Life exists, and I am somehow having an experience of the world, or as Scott Russel Sanders puts it, “the original world, the one that makes us rather than the one we make.” Recently, I read that human-made materials now outweigh Earth’s entire biomass – everything alive.
When FDR wrote the Four Freedoms, I don’t think he could have imagined the world we live in today, an increasingly fabricated world that often feels artificial and cold. I’m thinking particularly about artificial intelligence and its relationship to the theme of this Quarterly – FDR’s Four Freedoms: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Belief, Freedom from Fear, and Freedom from Want.
You have probably heard of ChatGPT by now, “a natural language processing tool driven by AI technology that allows you to have human-like conversations.” It can explain concepts, troubleshoot code and tell stories too. It could also dramatically impact Freedom of Speech.
AI could impact free speech by manipulating public opinion or discourse. For example, if an AI system were used to generate fake news or social media posts in order to influence public opinion, it could create confusion and make it more difficult for people to know what to believe or make informed decisions.
That last paragraph was totally generated by ChatGPT. I did not write it.
And so, while I worry about school children turning in essays generated by AI, my concern runs deeper. Many AI systems ‘train’ on data from the internet, already an echo chamber for bias and rampant mediocrity, and as the saying goes – ‘garbage in, garbage out’. That is a concern when much of what we regard as news and analysis will soon be mostly generated by AI.
I asked my ‘chatbot’ about AI impacts on FDR’s Freedom of Belief:
AI algorithms could be used to manipulate public opinion by spreading misinformation or propaganda. This could lead to the suppression of certain beliefs and the promotion of others, which could limit people’s ability to form their own beliefs freely.
Well-stated.
I didn’t need to consult the chatbot about FDR’s Freedom from Fear. He was speaking specifically about fear of the State. It is clear that AI will accelerate and improve all forms of surveillance, the identification and targeting of certain groups of people, and the generation of propaganda. The disruptive effects this can have on our felt sense of wellbeing, trust in government or even in what constitutes reality have yet to be felt by most of us.
FDR’s Freedom from Want for life’s necessities is also at increased risk. As workers are displaced by AI and the digital divide widens, more and more benefits will flow to the wealthy and the privileged. Supply chains and the flow of healthy foods and water can easily be diverted by AI away from those most in need. I think when you read our interview with Nathan Halverson about his documentary The Grab, examining secretive land and water grabs by some of the world’s most powerful entities, you will learn a lot about how this is already happening.
When I chose FDR’s Four Freedoms as the theme for this edition of Kosmos Quarterly, I was interested in what they mean in our changing world. Eleanor Roosevelt helped to enshrine the Four Freedoms in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and they have been incorporated into the constitutions of most countries since 1948. They are more important than ever, yet more vulnerable than ever too. Of course the Four Freedoms leave a lot out – especially the rights of the Earth, including her plants, animals and minerals, as our Keynote by Eric Krans expresses.
The editorial decision to use imagery generated by AI in some of this edition’s features was mine. I found it fascinating as an experiment, in the same way that Rorschach’s inkblots say something about the unconscious parts of ourselves and patterns of form. There is also a piece called This Feature Is Self-Generated, which talks more about how images and music are generated by AI. I hope you will view these experimental excursions in the spirit they are intended, to increase our collective awareness of these technologies and touch their nascent potentialities.
Here is what AI does not ‘know’: the transformational experience of beauty, the felt thrill of creativity, languages of the wind, the voluptuousness of the sea, the tree-ing of trees, the bee-ing of bees, the gesture of the giraffe, the voice of the beloved, scent of the lilac, lift of the seabird, laughter of women working, smell of snow, a lover’s caress, the teeming soil, moonlight’s mystery, the pain of labor and joy of birth, shamanic vision, insight, love…freedom itself.
Kosmos always stands with Life, and the world that reveals itself to us without words. We pledge ourselves to the unitive mind of Love and all that should and must be saved on our precious planet. We will not get lost in technologies or abstractions about existence, but embrace Life lovingly, with all its joys and sorrows. This doesn’t mean we reject technology, only that we recognize it can’t save us from ourselves.
In this winter edition, please read about doing wild yoga, secrets of the mugwort plant, the origins of our Universe, the power of subtle activism, the sacred nature of the food we eat, and poetry that celebrates everyday experience. I want to thank our poetry editor, Carolyn Martin, for four years of service to Kosmos. Fifty years ago she was my beloved high school English teacher and mentor. Our circle together feels complete. Read her books of poems! You will enjoy them.
The Four Freedoms and Artificial Intelligence may seem only marginally related, yet each is a litmus test for our era. How we develop and implement each of them is a measure of our commitment to ethical and responsible decision-making. Both the Four Freedoms and AI can also be seen as sources of tension and debate, as they raise complex and often competing values and interests that must be balanced. Each reflect our collective will and priorities and have the capacity for enormous impact on lives. The former is inspired by something far greater than ourselves, the latter by our reflection in a broken mirror.
I’ll close with this beautiful quote by Scott Russell Sanders:
“I hunger for contact with the shaping power that curves the comet’s path and fills the owl’s throat with song and fashions every flake of snow and carpets the hills with green. It is a prodigal, awful, magnificent power, forever casting new forms into existence then tearing them apart and starting over… That the universe exists at all, that it obeys laws, that those laws have brought forth galaxies and stars and planets and—on one planet, at least—life, and out of life, consciousness, and out of consciousness these words, this breath, is a chain of wonders. I dangle from that chain and hold on tight.”
Spotlight on Hanne Strong
Spotlight on Hanne Strong
Hanne M. Strong: serves as President of the Manitou Foundation, which she and her late husband, Maurice Strong, founded in 1988. The Foundation, based in Crestone, Colorado has granted land to spiritual, educational and environmental groups through the Manitou Foundation’s Land Grant Program and through the Strong’s personal land holdings. The Baca/Crestone Community currently houses many of the world’s wisdom traditions and is referred to as the “Refuge for World Truths”. It is the largest intentional, interreligious and sustainable living community in North America.
Mrs. Strong, has been an advocate for environmental conservation and restoration for many decades. In 1994, she established the Manitou Institute & Conservancy in partnership with Laurance Rockefeller and placed over 1,900 acres of the Foundation’s land holdings under Conservation Easements. The Manitou Habitat Conservation Program (MHCP) protects and preserves the pristine mountain range, wildlife habitats, and fragile eco-systems above the Baca Grande development zone.
She served as a Senior Advisor, organizer and lead fundraiser for the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders held at the United Nations in New York in 2000. It was the first conference of its kind ever held at the United Nations.
Excerpts from a conversation with Hanne, by Raven Burrell
Hanne is no stranger to the radical changes that can occur when we are willing to surrender ourselves to a shift in consciousness. She has put her body in the way of this kind of transformation in her personal life, which is what makes her so apt for the message she carries. When I spoke with Hanne it seemed like her small life was enveloped inside a much greater purpose that had been running the show for several years now. I was curious about her initiation on this path of purpose. In what form did her calling come and how did she make way to hear it? Although she had been a seeker from a very young age, Hanne found herself in her early adult life working as the head of a commercial design firm and living on Broadway. One ordinary night, she was walking by her apartment building when a large boulder fell off a balcony several stories above her and just barely missed her. The way she described it was like turning on a light switch. Her close encounter with the boulder was simultaneously accompanied by epiphany, there was no lapse of time between the fallen boulder and a breakthrough in her consciousness that instantly understood something in her life had to change. She told me that she immediately went upstairs to her apartment and opened the window. As she stood there looking over Broadway, she found a deep and powerful place of surrender, saying to herself, “creator, I give you my life, show me what to do.”
It wasn’t long after that fateful night that Hanne met her husband, Maurice Strong, who was working under the Secretary General of the UN at the time, mainly in charge of environmental issues. Shortly after, the couple moved to Kenya to start up The UN Environment Program (UNEP). During her time there, Hanne founded The Foundation for Social Habilitation, an NGO that worked with children who lived in squatter settlements, teaching them to plant trees in their communities. She gathered prominent leaders to serve on the board, such as Wangari Maathai and Richard Leakey. Throughout her life with Maurice, Hanne worked closely with top climate scientists, spiritual teachers, indigenous wisdom holders and world leaders.
Hanne’s initiative in Kenya foreshadowed her later work with The Earth Restoration Corps (ERC), a vision she maintains today. Hanne clarified that, all along, the question guiding these projects has been, “how do you restore the planet?” The ERC is a global environmental educational program designed to train young adults in ecosystem restoration and green livelihoods. The training is holistic and includes different kinds of non-denominational spiritual practices that teach the youth to balance their energy and ground into something deeper than what the eye can see.
Together, Hanne and Maurice founded The Manitou Foundation in 1988 to create a sustainable interfaith community in Crestone, Colorado. Hanne Strong knew that Crestone was where she needed to be as soon as she stepped off the plane. They purchased the land and Hanne moved into the Luis Maria Baca Ranch along with her mother, daughters and sister in 1978. She was just settling into her new home when an old man knocked on the door. “I have been waiting for you to arrive,” he said (I could imagine Hanne shrugging on the other side of the phone to underscore her ease with absurdity). She continued, “he was 85 at the time, so I invited him in.” Hanne and this man spent the next few days together as he related to her the prophecy of the land that had so clearly spoken to Hanne upon her arrival. Hanne described the man, “I immediately sensed his kindness and a certain light in his eyes.” His name was Glen Anderson, and he was known as “the prophet” to the locals. He proceeded to tell Hanne that she was to bring the world traditions together right there in Crestone and demonstrate to the world “how to live simply.” He further conveyed to Hanne that Crestone’s destiny was to bring forth a new civilization of evolved beings. After receiving this information, Hanne fasted in the mountains for four days and, through her own communication with Spirit, confirmed the prophecy. During her time in the mountains, Hanne also came to know that the land she was on was Hopi territory and that she must consult with the Hopi elders about this prophecy. She already had an established relationship with Hopi elders and was able to speak with them from a place of trust. After travelling to Hotevilla and attending a Kiva ceremony, the Hopi elders confirmed Glen Anderson’s prophecy and further stated that she was to build near the Eastern Mountain, “where the light comes into the world.” So, Hanne received their blessing to go forward with the project, she was told it was also part of Hopi prophecy.
Over the years, Maurice and Hanne gave away land to various religious traditions and spiritual lineages to build places of worship that would become refuge to seekers around the globe. Before the pandemic, Crestone was taking in about 20,000 people on retreat every year.
Hanne has learned to move nimbly within the world of human politics in a way that does not forget what truly matters. This invaluable place of contribution allows her to access societal resources of money and power and transform them into an offering that returns us to the genuine resources that life on this planet so abundantly provides.
This is her prowess, her valor. It is a tenacity that holds her intact enough to continue to surrender to the vision of what she cannot yet see.
A few words with Kosmos
Kosmos | So Hanne, humanity has gotten itself into quite a pickle.
Hanne | No kidding.
Kosmos | What are your thoughts at this moment in time?
Hanne | Well, I’ve been aware of this moment for 50 years. Fifty years ago, my husband organized the first environmental conference in Stockholm, Sweden, where the world was actually warned about climate change. So, the world knew 50 years ago.
This was during Nixon. Cheney put out the word that the American lifestyle was not up for grabs. We’re not going to change the lifestyle of Americans! I was on the front row of most of the meetings, and they were just not willing to give up oil and gas. And if they had done it 50 years ago, we might have had a chance.
But now one of my advisors, the Chief of the Iroquois Confederacy, Leon Shenandoah- he was the Tadodaho of the Iroquois Confederacy – said, “Hanne, now we have crossed the line of no return. It doesn’t matter what they do, it’s too late.”
And you look at it, I mean, look at what just happened at the Climate Summit in Egypt. It was a complete joke. Over 600 people from the fossil fuel industry infiltrating the conference, convincing them that there is no way we’re going to make it without the fossil fuels.
Anyway, you’re right. We’re in trouble. We’re in real big trouble.
Kosmos | Yes. We are in a polycrisis or what some call a permacrisis. We too have been aware of this at Kosmos for a long time. So now that we’re in the midst of profound change, how best can we live our lives? And what can we do to help the world yet to be? There is a world yet to be.
Hanne | That’s right. And of course, this is what I’ve been working on forever and ever and ever. The only solution that I see is that we train at least a billion young people. We stole their future – so we train millions of young people to restore their own consciousness, and when that is restored, restore the Earth.
We have already trained thousands of young people here. The first thing we do is take them into the sweat lodge, and then take them out on a vision quest where they can make connection with the elements. If you’re not in touch with the elements and you don’t have gratitude for them, which have kept life on Earth going since the beginning of time, it’s over.
Kosmos | So, the first step in your view is to inspire in young people a love of the Earth – a love of nature and direct experience of the Earth.
Hanne | When you sit out there on a vision quest – and I’ve done it myself, so I know what it’s about – you go out with nothing from this world. You go into the world of spirit and there things are very different. Very different. And unless you feel that love and gratitude for Mother Earth, you’re not going to make it. You’re going to run back home. When you do get filled with this absolute reverence for Mother Earth and gratitude for the air, and the water, for the fire, the sun, it generates powerful love energy. Almost 100% of the kids get it.
Kosmos | I think it’s a very tender time for children. They can see what is happening. They sense it, and they have a tremendous amount of suffering as a result.
Hanne | That’s right.
Kosmos | So a program like this can help them to have hope? And when I say hope, I’m not talking about false hope that everything’s going to be okay. I’m talking about a belief in the essential goodness of the human spirit, the energy of Life itself. But why should they trust us in this regard?
Hanne | The thing is, you’ve got to become a mentor. Young people don’t have all the answers. We need to mentor them. If we have knowledge that’s going to help them through this period, we have to pass it on. But it’s not just scientific knowledge, it’s indigenous knowledge, which has been around …well, millions of years, without destroying the planet, taking care of her, giving her gratitude.
I think it’s the only chance we’ve got, to restore Earth on a massive, massive scale, and that involves all of us. Even the armies are going to have to get involved. This has to be a national service. So instead of training young people to kill and bomb and blast each other, they would learn how to restore themselves and the earth.
There’s a very old Tibetan prophecy by one of the greatest saints of all times, Guru Rinpoché, that says, “the silken threads that keeps the demonic forces in bondage will be severed.” I really believe that is happening. I mean, you look at some of these leaders, they’ve got to be possessed: Putin, threatening nuclear war. North Korea. Iran and these executions.
Kosmos | Yes. It only takes one candle to illuminate the darkness.
Hanne | Right. But evil is pretty powerful these days.
Kosmos | I think that many believe or feel in their hearts that there’s going to be a lot more suffering.
Hanne | Humanity needs to get down on its knees and say, we are sorry for what we have done – the fracking and the blasting. What is outside the Earth in glass and steel, towns and industrial complexes and the cars and so on, now weighs more than Earth’s biomass – all living things. And now with the green technologies, they’re going to have to take more out; the precious metals. Can you imagine what it takes to make a windmill and set up solar plants?
And then they’re going to make another bundle of money, and that’s what it’s all about. I went to Rome one time with my adopted father, who was an old Indian Chief, and we had an audience with the Pope. I figured, well, let’s do a press conference afterwards. A reporter asked this old man, “Chief, do you have any advice for us Europeans?” He said, “Well, I do. Stop worshiping money. Start worshiping God again.”
But I don’t think all humans are going to disappear. According to the Hopi prophecies, there will definitely be people that are going to make it, and we’re planning to make it out here.
Kosmos | You’ve devoted your whole life, Hanne, to these concerns. It must feel very frustrating and sad.
Hanne | Well, I feel the pain of the Earth. I feel it. Physically, I feel it. Because in my travels, I’ve seen the worst damage and I’ve seen the most beautiful places.
Kosmos | You’re like Avalokiteshvara, who feels the pain of the Earth and transforms it in her heart, into compassion.
Hanne | I don’t know about that. But anyway, I try to be. Because in Buddhism, when you take that vow, you vow never to rest till you have tried to help every sentient being wake up.
Kosmos | Yes.
Hanne Strong | The Karmapa, when he came here – he’s one of the first spiritual leaders we gave land to – said, “Endless Mahasiddhas will come out of this place.” And also that he will bring some of the most important artifacts and texts here for safekeeping
Kosmos | What can I do to help?
Hanne Strong | What can you do to help?
Kosmos | Yes. How can I help you?
Hanne Strong | Well, come on out. We’ll sit down around the fire and see what these two minds can do together.
Kosmos | I would enjoy that. Thank you for the invitation.
Hanne Strong | We should put up a site; what are the top-notch consciousness-changing techniques? I mean, there are so many, Qigong…just with the tapping, you can get rid of negative emotions. Or the Gayatri Mantra to align yourself with the highest energy in the universe. Anybody can do that, and it doesn’t cost you anything. You can live at the highest vibration.
oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ suvaḥ
tat savitur vareṇyaṃ
bhargo devasya dhīmahi
dhiyo yo naḥ pracodayāt
– Rigveda 3.62.10
“Source of All Life, we meditate upon thy supreme splendor. May thy radiant power illuminate our minds, eliminate ignorance and guide us in the direction of enlightenment by purifying our hearts.”
Deep Adaptation | A Quartet of Videos
Deep Adaptation | A Quartet of Videos
What is Deep Adaptation?
Deep Adaptation refers to a set of ideas put forth in an academic paper written in 2018 by Professor Jem Bendell, and later expanded on with Katie Carr and others. The paper explores the personal and collective changes that help (and have helped) people to prepare for – and live with – societal disruption and collapse.
The term social or societal collapse is used here to refer to the uneven ending to our current means of sustenance, shelter, security, pleasure, identity and meaning. Others may prefer the term societal breakdown when referring to the same process. Deep Adaptation refers to certain responses, based on compassion, curiosity, and respect, to this predicament – which different people may view as likely, inevitable, or already unfolding.
There are two broad paths within Deep Adaptation:
- Inner adaptation: exploring the emotional, psychological, and spiritual implications of living in a time when societal disruption/collapse is likely, inevitable, or already happening.
- Outer adaptation: working on practical measures to support well-being and reduce harm, ahead of and during collapse (e.g. regenerative living, community-building, policy activism).
Many people spend time processing the emotional implications of the coming collapse before looking outwards to find roles on the local and global levels. Others, in the wake of their grief, turn inward and learn to trust their own hearts and emotions, which can be an invitation to others to do the same.
The Deep Adaptation Forum (DAF) offers free events and online platforms for people who are seeking and building supportive communities to face the reality of the climate crisis.
The following four films were curated by the Deep Adaptation Quarterly, Issue 12, November 2022.
Don’t Tell Me to Just Breathe
– Mental health in the context of growth-dependency and climate breakdown
A short-film animation by Swarm Dynamics in collaboration with CUSP and the Wellbeing Economy Alliance
Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth. For the last six decades the pursuit of growth has been the single most important policy goal across the world.
Yet, the economic system to which we are in thrall throws us out of balance. According to recent NHS statistics, one in four adults and one in 10 children experience mental illness, and many more of us know and care for people who do. By failing to meet our most essential needs the growth-based economy is doomed to immiserate and, ultimately, sicken us.
This timely short-film animation speaks to the spiralling levels of anxiety and depression that so many people in the UK and in other rich nations are experiencing by revealing the often silenced links between these mental health crises and the current economic system, including not only the increasing pressures upon people’s basic needs, but also the ‘capitalist realism’ that allows climate breakdown to unfold before our very eyes.
Through the eyes of a young care sector worker, the film creatively explores the interplay between the inner and outer dimensions of system change and of mental health. The second half introduces the key pillars of a Wellbeing Economy as solution set, pointing out that collective mental health can only be secured by a system that respects the boundaries of people’s wellbeing, and of nature, and where the Future is no longer sacrificed on the altar of eternal economic growth. MORE
Out of Ashes
Is THIS civilisation finished? Will it end badly, or well?
Out of Ashes is written by ecological philosopher, Rupert Read, and the writer/director of climate blockbuster The Age of Stupid, Franny Armstrong.
With animation by Martyn Pick, this impactful short film challenges us to face the unravelling of our civilisation head on and to choose a transformational future. If we dare. For more info, check out Moderate Flank, a UK-based incubator “designed to inform, identify, connect, and fund initiatives that are strategically placed to ‘tip’ our complex social system towards climate action.”
Living in the Time of Dying
– Meeting the truth of the climate crisis | a film by Michael Shaw
Living in The Time of Dying is an unflinching look at what it means to be living in the midst of climate catastrophe and finding purpose and meaning within it. Recognising the magnitude of the climate crisis we are facing, independent filmmaker Michael Shaw, sells his house to travel around the world looking for answers. Pretty soon we begin to see how deep the predicament goes along with the systems and ways of thinking that brought us here. Stan Rushworth, a Native American Elder, brings an especially enlightening viewpoint to these questions. It becomes clear that climate change is going to ruin our way of life but this then opens up a whole new set of questions: How did we get here? How do we choose to live and what actions make sense at this time? The people interviewed in the documentary, all highly regarded and well known spokespeople on the issue, argue it’s too late to stop catastrophic climate change but in no way too late to regain a renewed life giving relationship with our world.
Last Day on Earth
Award-winning short film | featuring Alan Watts
Writer/Director – Christian Eisenbarth
An old man lives alone in the depths of a Washington forest, unknowingly experiencing his last day on earth. He embarks through an enchanted forest, only to find he’s not alone. In his last moments, he discovers the meaning of his life.