On Living Business

What is a ‘living business?’ Using these words both as a search term and as a mirror of our collective consciousness on the Internet offers few helpful explanations. It leaves you with a business-as-usual frame of reference that easily leads to a casual interpretation that a living business must be about profits and growth. How else could such a business be successful and remain alive? But,…

We the People of Living Earth: An Authentic Story for Our Time

For people, generally, their story of the universe and the human role in the universe is their primary source of intelligibility and value. The deepest crises experienced by any society are those moments of change when the story becomes inadequate for meeting the survival demands of a present situation. ~ Thomas Berry, Dream of the Earth We humans live by stories that express the shared values…

Earth-Based Wisdom: Learning the Original Idea from the Living Earth

Traditional cultures “are what shaped us and caused us to be what we are now,” writes Jared Diamond in The World Until Yesterday.1 All the necessities of modern living—electricity, store-bought food, pharmaceuticals, cars and planes—are relatively new. But much of yesterday is still with us, and we might take a lesson from those traditional cultures that remain indigenous to relearn how to live…

Reflections on Transformative Education: Toward Peace Learning Systems

Global Transformation through Peace Learning Systems Over the past 15 years, I have worked on peace education programs in communities in the US and abroad and have personally seen community members, teachers, and students from a diverse array of social backgrounds engage in the work of transformative education. Peace education strives to empower future generations to use “the capacity and…

Why the Will Matters Now

We are living at a time when the vision of wholeness is seeping into consciousness, upsetting all sorts of established patterns of thinking, seeing, and acting. As a species we are, perhaps for the first time in any collective sense, beginning to care about the good of the whole, noticing that the well-being of the individual unit in any system depends upon the well-being of the environment…

Towards a New Activism to Effectively Support a Transition to a Post-Growth Economy

The Broken Stories of Mainstream Activism To this day, few civil society organisations are promoting the much-needed transition to a new economic system based on the principles of ecological limits, solidarity, human well-being, and intergenerational justice, nor are many organisations embracing the complexity of systemic change in their strategies, campaigns, and projects. Many activists…

New Story Summit: Africa

The Kosmos team meets with Neema (center): left to right, Nancy Roof, Dot Maver, Rhonda Fabian, Cynthia Jurs (Kosmos author), Tara Stuart Kosmos: You came a long way, Neema. Why did you come to the New Story Summit? Neema Namadamu: I came because they tell me there is a summit about a new story and I’m proud to be part of this new story we are telling for change. Kosmos: What is that…