Collective Awakening | ‘Aliveness’
May 8, 2018 Kosmos Community News
How can we hasten our collective awakening and begin reversing the great harms done to our planet and its beings? Such an awakening requires transformation in ourselves, our communities, institutions and systems. This is the work of Kosmos, yet always begins with the Self. It begins when the superficial, material things that mattered before, start to lose their luster and when the habit energies that impelled us in the past no longer serve our evolution.
When we tune-in to the immeasurable, the sacred gifts in and around us; when we take each step with conscious awareness and lean into every beauty and sorrow we encounter; when we recognize our interconnection with all beings – we are awake – living in reciprocity with all Life.
A collective awakening such as this can save our planet, and ensure a future for our children’s children.
VIDEO | The Loss of the Immeasurable
a ‘gift to humanity’ by Chris and Dawn Agnos, spoken by Charles Eisenstein
“Our society has definitely become masters at increasing the amount of things we can measure – more and more money, more and more floor space per capita, more and more GDP, and less and less of the things that we can’t measure – how happy we are, levels of intimacy, the authenticity of our communication, aesthetic pleasure, how much beauty there is in our environment, fulfillment.” – Charles Eisenstein READ MORE
In the Light | Kosmos Thought-Partner, Schumacher Center for a New Economics
Founded in 1980 the Schumacher Center for a New Economics has a three-part strategy for promoting a new, just, and sustainable economy: first, by envisioning an economics based on universal principles of cooperation as well as respect for the Earth and for one another; then, applying these concepts in our home region of the Berkshires in western Massachusetts as a testing ground; and finally, developing the educational programs to share the results more broadly and thus encourage replication nationally and internationally.
Schumacher Center recognizes that the environmental and equity crises we now face have their roots in the current economic system.
Core beliefs:
- a fair and sustainable economy is possible and that citizens working for the common interest can build systems to achieve it
- our natural commons are best held by the regional community
- money issue can be democratized
- ownership should be more diversified and that labor should have a part in the ownership structure
“We favor the face-to-face relationships fostered in local economies. We deliberately focus on transformative systems and the principles that guide them.” – Schumacher Center
EVENT | Aliveness as the Heart of Economics, Ecology and Commoning
This event is cosponsored by: Good Work Institute, Kosmos Journal, The Myrin Institute, and Orion Magazine.
Please join on Friday, May 18th at 7:30 PM for a public talk by Andreas Weber, German biologist and eco-philosopher, at St. James Place in Great Barrington, MA, followed by a Q&A and book signing. Weber will give a talk as part of the Schumacher Center’s Reinventing the Commons Program.
In his talk, titled Aliveness as the Heart of Economics, Ecology and Commoning, Weber will ask a radical question: “Why is our economy still destroying the environment and creating inequality?” He believes that the culprit might rest on an image of life where the strongest wins and fitness grants success. Biological life, however, is never about winning, but rather an endless celebration of reciprocity. Ecosystems are ways to organize giving that allows for the whole system to flourish and for the individuals to take what they need. Weber argues that only when we understand that this desire for mutuality is inherent in the living world will we be able to tailor an economic culture that does not destroy life but that mimics ecology, enacting what may be seen as a practice of love.
Weber is the author of Matter and Desire, amongst other works. His book will be available for sale at the event. Admission is free. To pre-register, email schumacher@centerforneweconomics.org or call (413) 528-1737.
Wonderful news! We have decided to offer the new Kosmos Journal Quarterly ‘in the gift’ – that is, on a sliding scale that reflects your ability to pay and to decide what Kosmos means to you.
“…I am convinced that every living being is able to understand on a very basic level what it means to be alive and that’s being alive as a sentient and feeling body… We need to look at the history of our idea of making a better world, of dominating that which is not human in order to grant humans or humanness a better place.” – Andreas Weber