Yorkston/Thorne/Khan

"We all have our own subjective beliefs in the band, but the music unifies us regardless. There are certainly moments when we are playing together when I feel genuine elevation, a sense of ecstasy, and a deep feeling of connectivity. That’s magical and it’s a joy to experience. That’s the edge, not found in practice, but always sought in performance. Sometimes it happens, but you can’t force it.…

The New Story in Higher Education

Higher education is my playing field. And it is a field in which the rules of play are rigid, but unwritten, coherent, yet concealed, understood by all but unacknowledged. The unspoken rules are those that perpetuate a story. And the story goes something like this: Follow this prescription and you will succeed - get an education, get good grades, get a degree, get a good job, get married, buy a…

Soul of the Earth: A Manifesto

Garden design by Marko Pogačnik Humanity is married to Gaia, the Earth soul. We are embedded in her stream of manifested life. In a sense, we share the same bed with her. But we are not conscious of this sacred relationship; we do not acknowledge this intimate connection; we do not express or cultivate our love for and with her. Might not this be the reason behind the multiple natural…

Liminal Leadership

“We live in a world in which distrust and greed and violence masquerade as common sense, and in which the pathways of distrust and greed and violence are rapidly becoming self-validating. By following those pathways, we create the social and international structures, the premises upon which we must live. By choosing the ‘common sense’ of distrust, we choose also the progressive truth of distrust.…

We Are Bio-Cosmic Beings Learning to Live in a Living Universe1

“We are pilgrims together, wending through unknown country, home.” ~ Father Giovanni (1513) Humanity’s Most Urgent Challenge Evening sun in the Andes, Chile | photography ©Yuri Beletsky For at least 50,000 years, humanity has been on a journey of separation—pulling back from nature and becoming ever more differentiated, individuated, and empowered. In recent decades, we have become so…

The role of artists in the emerging transformative paradigm

In recent years, my frustration, my curiosity and, yes, pure serendipity gave me a privileged access to high level scientific conferences on system analysis and complexity, where I was systemically the only policymaker. Indeed, our result-oriented policies do not deliver their intended outcomes. They are biased by our self-centered, linear, reductionist and mechanical Western worldview. And they…