Whatever Happened to Civil Society?

Our experience of love, care and belonging are formed by our relationships in the civil sphere, not by the state or the market. Our lives are subsequently shaped, battered and sometimes improved by the state and the market, but the primary formation of our unique selves and our values is the work of civil society.

Is the ‘Liberal World Order’ Worth Saving?

The greatest threat to the “liberal world order” lies in its failure to reflect on its own fundamental injustices. It lacks accountability. If those who lead it can’t acknowledge its flaws – if Dr. King’s “revolution of values” can’t turn it into an engine of change for workers, the poor, refugees, and the other victims of its manifold failures – the system that Richard Haass wants to protect and improve will fail. And it will deserve to.

A Report from #CTRLshift2018

It was billed as “an emergency summit for change”, and it was a call that drew around 150 people from across the UK, and even some from further afield.  Hosted at The Edge, a community-funded church building in the centre of Wigan just round the corner from the actual Wigan Pier (yes, that one, the one with the road famously leading to it), the event, exactly a year before Brexit becomes (or doesn’t) a reality, was co-presented by at least 40 organisations.

Game Over?

In October last year, a volcano went off in the conversation around gender and power. You most likely heard it. Catalysed by courageous first person accounts of sexual harassment and assault, Harvey Weinstein – one of the biggest executives in filmmaking – was forced from his place of power in Hollywood while a wave of empathy and solidarity with those who spoke out swept across social media via the #MeToo campaign.

Indigenous Communities Carry on Berta Cacéres’ Work by Defending Nature and Health Care in Honduras

On March 2, hundreds gathered in Honduras to commemorate the life and work of the renowned Honduran activist Berta Cáceres on the second anniversary of her assassination. Carrying torches, Cáceres’ supporters marched to the city center of La Esperanza to demand justice for her 2016 assassination.

What I Learnt from the 2018 National Peace Symposium

I asked the Caliph what the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community can do about the moral issue of climate change. He said one of their auxiliary organisations is working on providing renewable energy to poor remote villages in Africa and Asia, as well as clean water projects. This group is apparently called IAAAE and I am going to ask them for an interview to learn more about their work.

Culture Shift: Redirecting Humanity’s Path to a Flourishing Future

What do all these ideas have in common—a tax on carbon, big investments in renewable energy, a livable minimum wage, and freely accessible healthcare? The answer is that we need all of them, but even taken together they’re utterly insufficient to redirect humanity away from impending catastrophe and toward a truly flourishing future.