Call for Essays | In Harmony with All Life
Dear Friends of Kosmos,
Twice a year Kosmos invites our readers to submit an essay up to 830 words. We choose two or three essays to publish in our hard copy Kosmos Journal and several others in Kosmos Online and on our website.
We are preparing the next issue of Kosmos Journal and hope you will participate. Your essay can be on any dimension of the Kosmos mission: Global Transformation in…
Reader’s Essay | Service Great and Small
By Fay Loomis
In the early ‘90s I met a woman of similar age. She could no longer live in her home and moved into a nursing home where she was challenged by an imposed daily routine and diet that served the needs of the healthcare center, not her own.
She accepted her decision and focused on what she could do to be of service in her small and greater worlds. She meditated for a major…
Seeing Wetiko: Through the Eyes of a Seventh Generation Algonquin
By Marcus Grignon
Posoh mawaw niwak. Nekataw manawich kikitem. (Hello everyone. I am going to speak.)
The injustice we witness every day, whether it be environmental, societal, and even economic, has a root cause. Nobody sees it because it has been invisible since the genocide committed against the cultures who lost their voice to speak its name. This being is not one sole individual, but a…
#SeeingWetiko and Beyond
Dear Reader,
If you have been following the #SeeingWetiko Campaign set in motion by our friends at The Rules, you may have struggled with a sense of aversion. Images of violence and depravity bombard us daily. Do we really need to ‘see’ more?
Wetiko is a concept expressed in some indigenous traditions to signify a kind of cannibalistic psychosis. In the most recent issue of Kosmos Journal,…
The Cultural Sickness Needs to be Named
By Joe Brewer, The Rules
All over the world there is a feeling that something is deeply wrong. It is often felt more than seen, an unnamed darkness that keeps millions (even billions) of people disconnected from the reality of authentic life-affirming experience. Too many of our so-called leaders are asleep at the wheel — they talk about economic growth at all costs as the only viable solution…
Dreaming Beyond Capitalism: A Culture Without Fear
By Martin Winiecki
In the 1990s an unusual encounter took place in the Ecuadorian Amazon. In plant rituals, shamans of the Achuar, a tribe living in pristine forest that had never been in touch with Western civilization, received the warning that the “white man” would try to invade their lands, cut down the forest and exploit the resources. Deeply shaken, they called out to the Spirits for…
Essay | Wetiko and Cultural Assimilation
By Myk Estrada,
Mexican farm worker
As my grandmother grows older in age, I’ve made sure to ask her as many questions as possible so I don’t miss out on the vast wealth of family history she holds in her mind. “What jobs did you have growing up?” Her answer; everything from school custodian to cotton picker (her least favorite). “What was it like when The Beatles came out?” “They were…
Poem | The Sea Choir
Rising Damp | Molly Crawford
The Sea Choir
by Charlotte Baldwin
Sixty miles from last salat
a sort of daylight. I float
the ship long sunk. No sound
but the sea choir:
Over many shoulders it storytells
of deserts crossed; cracked hulls.
We waded to our necks
and wedged aboard while a full moon
watched us fools who fell
for Zuwara and her fishing sloops. We sailed
for…
Grafitti | Kamukunji Youth Congress
Kamukunji Youth Congress | Seeing Wetiko from a Grassroots Point of View
Kamukunji Youth Congress (KYC) is an open and voluntary membership youth social movement founded in 2007 by agitated youth leaders. Situated and with a physical community office in Pumwani slums, Kamukunji Sub-County, Nairobi County-Kenya. The founding mission of the youth congress was and still remains “to provide a shared…
Wetiko | Toxic Media Environment
Blogger, via Conscious Use of Technology
Our media environment has become toxic. I don’t mean by this, simply, that the content of the media has become toxic (has become superficial, petty, mean-spirited, over-stimulating, unthoughtful, pandering, or divisive, though it trends these ways). I mean that technological change in the media - the rise of social media and the smart phone most…