Open Group Practice: Eight Social Selves

In 2012, after retiring from my professional career, I was eager to participate in some of the practices I had read about that facilitated group practices aimed at realizing emergent capacities. My working hypothesis was that it could be possible for people to participate in ways that would catalyze new cognitive and conative capacities such as multi-perspectival awareness, sensory clarity,…

The Predicament of Knowledge: A Challenge for Culture Design

Imagine if we collectively knew all that is needed to solve the hardest social problems in the world. Whether it’s political corruption or mass poverty, ecological devastation or terrorism, the refugee crisis or structural racism, the root causes for all of these issues are deeply and systemically cultural. So what if we already knew how to design changes in culture and solve problems like…

The Power of Wetiko: Looking in the Mirror to Solve the Global Crisis

In the last edition of Kosmos Journal, my brother-in-arms and I wrote about the Algonquin concept of wetiko.1 It was part of a campaign we were preparing at /TheRules2 to introduce the idea to a wider audience, a campaign that Kosmos has been graciously supporting by publishing that original article, then a wetiko themed newsletter, and now this piece. The idea behind the campaign was to offer…

Imago Integralis: The Aesthetics of Integral Life

I. Longing for the Integral Life This article introduces a new integral perspective on life and provides clues of what it might mean to live life as a contribution to the cultural renewal, aesthetic unfolding, and holistic development of self and society, community and institutions, people and planet. It is rooted in over a decade of developing, together with Ronnie Lessem and a growing…

Theatre of Transformation

Time for a Paradigm Change We aren’t here just to make a little noise. We’re here to change the paradigm. – Neema Namadamu, peacemaker, DR Congo Today, the world appears to hurtle towards irreversible manmade disaster on all fronts. However, breakdowns are being accompanied by breakthroughs. Since 2000, as crises have multiplied, decision-makers have persisted in buttressing dysfunctional…

Conscious Evolution: A Metaphysical Task

The worldwide transformational movement has gained enough critical mass to ensure meaningful impact on our future. But conscious evolution doesn’t come by way of just transforming thoughts and behaviors. It emerges through cultural transfiguration—through metaphysically changing our very ground of being by setting a paradigmatically new fulcrum point for the pendulum of time and space. There is…

Can We Harness Conflict?

Notice that the question in the title is not can we ‘end’ conflict, or even ‘manage’ or ‘contain’ it. These are old and usually unproductive approaches. The more useful question about conflict today is: Can we harness it? After studying and working directly with conflict around the world for the last quarter century, and now witnessing my home country of America bitterly divided, this question…

Francis Jansen

Francis Jansen was born in 1946 in a small fishing village in the North of Holland. Her father, who was part of the Resistance Movement in war torn Europe, chose to emigrate with his family to Australia when she was 6 years old, settling in Wollongong, N.S.W. Francis completed her formal education in Australia and then, as an adult, moved back to Europe with her family in 1964. After working…

Susan Eirich

Susan B. Eirich, Ph.D. is Founder and Executive Director of Earthfire Institute, a wildlife sanctuary with a mission to change how humans see and therefore treat wildlife, for all our sakes. The sanctuary lies just west of Grand Teton National Park, where she lives with rescued bears, wolves, bison and other animals native to the Rocky Mountains. She uses her background as a biologist and…

Rama Mani

Dr. Rama Mani is a transformative performance artist, and an artisan of integral peace, justice and education, who is passionate about nurturing an inclusive and regenerative future for all life on Earth. Dr. Mani is the Co-Founder of Home for Humanity movement for planetary regeneration, together with Professor Alexander Schieffer, her husband. Both are also co-initiators of the new One Home…