Kosmos Essentials | 2023 Most-Read and More
December 4, 2023 Kosmos Community News
Dear Reader,
If, like me, you feel increasingly bewildered by behavior in the world that favors hatred and greed over healing and love, I think you will appreciate this collection. Please enjoy our five most-read articles of the year along with four videos by friends in the Kosmos ecosystem. Together, I feel they capture the tone and central concerns of our time. In essence, how unawareness and unprocessed trauma of people and nations spills over and causes avoidable harm to others and to our planetary home.
Please join me in reading and watching them. We would love to hear your thoughts. What resonated with you most? How might you apply something that you learned here? With your permission, we will share some of your thoughts in the next Kosmos newsletter. How can we, as Kosmos community, generate collective energy and action around the meaningful and helpful insights found here?
A deep bow of gratitude to the writers, video makers and participants – and to you – for your compassion and care. We know in our hearts that awareness and harmony with all Life is the raft that will carry us across the waters of transformation and on to possible futures filled with hope and light.
As the year comes to an end, I ask with humility and love, if you would consider a donation of any amount to continue the work of Kosmos.
In peace,
R.Fabian
Five Most-Read Kosmos Features of 2023
By Dougald Hine “I don’t write to announce the end of the world or to change the minds of those who are convinced that the world as we have known it can be saved or made sustainable. I write for anyone who has found themselves, as I have, needing to make sense of what is ending, how we can talk about it and what tasks are worth taking on in whatever time it turns out that we have.”
By Cash Ahenakew (Ph.D.)“In an attempt to keep us feeling individualized and separate from the land-metabolism, modernity takes away our sense of the unquestionable value of life and instead creates a fundamental void that we associate with worthlessness. To feel a temporary sense of self-worth, we are made to produce stuff that modernity recognizes as valuable. To feel a sense of completion, we are made to accumulate stuff that we believe can fill the void.”
By Geneen Marie Haugen“If we intend to participate in the world as if every presence is alive and intelligent and aware, perhaps we catch ourselves a thousand times forgetting. Yet when we remember long enough, or often enough, we might crack the doors of perception – doors that may be shut by customary psychic habits – and enter that breathing world, where everything speaks, where every presence longs to be seen and known.”
The Future of “Intelligence”
By Tam Hunt, Charles Eisenstein, and Freely
“If there are elements of reality that are fundamentally qualitative, irreducible to data, then AI will always bear limits. We may attempt to remedy its deficiencies (what the data leaves out) by collecting ever more thorough and precise data, but we will never break through to the qualitative. No amount of quantity adds up to quality.
As long as we are aware of this fundamental limit, I think we will be able to find the right role for AI. If we ignore it, we risk colonizing more and more of human experience, robbing it of its spirit, leaving us with virtual experiences that, no matter how convincing their verisimilitude, never feel real.” – Charles Eisenstein
Podcast with V (formerly Eve Ensler)
By Alnoor Ladha | Deschooling Dialogues
“V, formerly Eve Ensler, is the founder of V-Day, of One Billion Rising, of so many important organizations and non-organizations, movements in the space of social justice and beyond. She’s also the co-founder of City of Joy, which is a physical healing center and space in the Congo. She is the author of Vagina Monologues, The Apology, her latest book Reckoning just came out. We’re going to talk about that today and so much more.”
Four Videos
Katie Teague with Jonathan Rowson
LIVING IN THE METACRISIS
Jonathan Rowson is co-founder and Director of Perspectiva and author of the Joyous Struggle on Substack. He was previously Director of the Social Brain Centre at the RSA where he authored a range of influential research reports on behaviour change, climate change and spirituality. Jonathan is an applied philosopher with degrees from Oxford, Harvard and Bristol Universities. In a former life he was a chess Grandmaster.
Filmmaker Katie Teague is producing video essays with cutting-edge thinkers, philosophers, artists and writers exploring what it means to be human “in a time between worlds.” Access her series ‘In the Making’.
Charles Eisenstein with Michal Halev
When Only Love Remains
A conversation with Michal Halev, whose only son was murdered by Hamas on October 7. She tells the story of how she came to call for an end to vengeance.
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.
Jo Confino with Br Phap Dung
Courses of Note
Note: Kosmos will be participating in two courses beginning soon:
THE LIMINAL INSTITUTE with Daniel Pinchbeck
BUILDING OUR REGENERATIVE FUTURE | Begins Jan 7, 2024
We stand at a threshold moment for humanity. As multiple crises converge, the old world is crumbling. Yet seeds of the new paradigm are sprouting, and we can nurture them. How can you fulfill your highest potential as our world evolves? Join us in this six-week course to discover your role in this great transformation: Jan. 7 / Jan. 14 / Jan. 21 / Jan. 28 / Feb. 4 / Feb. 11 All sessions conducted via Zoom.
DARK OPTIMISM with Shaun Chamberlin
SURVIVING THE FUTURE: THE DEEPER DIVE 2024 | Begins Jan 8, 2024
“This now-annual tradition has become a real highlight of my year, as a new small group capped at just fifty folk gathers to reflect meaningfully on our tumultuous times, and the ways we might choose to move through them. Starting in January and running online for nine weeks, I find it the perfect complement to the reflective energies of winter.” – Shaun