The Metta group chats with our guest from Institute of Noetic Sciences about healthcare and peace, education and worldview literacy.

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Recorded February 27, 2009

Nonviolence, Strategic and Principled. Also environmentalism and our culture’s relationship with energy. Please pardon the (un)usual amount of noise; the discussion was too good not to post!

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Recorded February 20, 2009

Forward-looking thinkers who are — for now — on the ‘prophetic’ fringe of mainstream economics have been saying for some time that the shocking fragility of our fiscal system, and our economy generally, is an ‘opportunity’ as well as a ‘crisis.’ In the words of David Korten of the Positive Futures Network, what we should be doing is “not fixing the system, but replacing it.” While they are not against short-term measures or protecting the vulnerable, they are urging us not to go back to sleep after we’ve done that, but to realize that the present system is inherently fragile, unfair, and in the end an obstacle to real human progress. What we need instead is an economy that is locally based, simple, and closer to real human needs; and such a system could be built up from the innumerable experiments in barter, local currencies, and other imaginative ‘innovations’ that are already happening (for the most part, they’re actually based on systems of yesteryear that worked fine until the craze for wealth, driven by the materialistic worldview and materialistic values of the modern age, sent them the way of the electric car).

I have a strange comment to make about this wildly ambitious scheme: it’s not enough.

Continue Reading Silver Linings»

Matter, energy, and changing our consciousness. Also, where will we find our next nonviolent leader?

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Recorded February 13, 2009