Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
As we desire to heal the world the world truly desires to be healed, but, as Moffat found, the immensity and complexity of the mountain makes climbing it both difficult and perilous. Nevertheless the lover of the mountain accepts the challenge and, with skill, experience, tools, perseverance, and help from her friends, she reaches the summit.
Congress is back from its holiday recess. Although it’s a new year, Capitol Hill politicians are facing many of the same old problems—beginning with efforts to avoid a partial or complete federal government shutdown.
Beyond its interest for historians, Tao Te Ching has special significance for anyone trying to find a sane path in today’s world.
In this Frankly, Nate offers a personal reflection on his learnings about ‘awareness’ vs ‘focus’ and how this knowledge could be used as a guide toward more thoughtful behaviors.
Climate psychology seeks to place citizens of the West under critical scrutiny. It tries to throw light upon our complicity and inaction in the face of the climate crisis and promote greater ethical and political engagement with the issue. It sees the modern Western self as the product of three great separations or alienations – from external nature, from our own physical nature as mortal beings, and from other selves.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and helpless in the face of the increasing number of wildfires fueled by dangerous climate conditions. But we are not helpless.
While the world continues to consume paper in ever greater amounts, the idea that we can preserve all our knowledge electronically is catching hold. Is that really a good idea?
Paleoanthropologist Curtis Marean has developed a comprehensive explanation based on a synthesis of research and archaeological evidence for what propelled H. sapiens to leave Africa about 70,000 years ago and colonize every part of the world, replacing other existing hominin populations. Key to the process is “hyperprosociality,” by which Marean means the ability to cooperate with people who are not relatives.
What can be said about globalized tech when our earthly existence is consumed by viral uncertainties, urgent climatic shifts, and perpetual socio-environmental precarity and violence?
By putting it in terms of human lifetimes, which we can understand intuitively from personal experience, we can better appreciate how brief this transient behavior is.
I feel that these are the years that I — and perhaps we — have been born for. These are the moments where we need to show up. Yes, it’s not easy, and that’s exactly why we chose to be here — to be here together.
Following up last week’s Frankly outlining systemic themes for 2024, this year-end special is a reflection on 2023 with a series of clips, which together highlight the increasingly challenging world of which we are a part.
