Tag: Humanity
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How Can We Be Good Ancestors?
I just finished the book The Good Ancestor- A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking by Roman Krznaric, a philosopher who writes about the power of ideas to change the world. In this excellent review of the book, published in The Guardian in July 2020, the journalist Andrew Anthony makes salient the point that I too…
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Innocence that Heals
What’s possible as we re-emerge, and my experience in a laudromat A day after a spiritual healing retreat I attended in Feb, 2020, I was at the laundromat. As the Buddhist teacher, Jack Kornfield, says in his book, “After the Ecstasy, The Laundry”. This was about three weeks before COVID, so a pretty appropriate title.…
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A Call to Heal Together
“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out.” —Václav Havel, Czech leader Our country is hurting, and it has been for a long time. It is just now with the demonstrations that have given voice to the desperation…
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How We Make Humans Into Monsters
As our culture becomes more polarized, it becomes more tempting to label those who disagree with us as “monsters.” But what do we really mean when we say someone is being monstrous? And how willing are we to see our own monstrous tendencies? To explore this, I’m going to go where monsters originally came from:…
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An Autumn Walk
I’m on the way in to central London this morning, a short journey from home to meet someone. I’ve left in good time, and as I step out of the door the autumn sun, reflected from the windows on the other side of the street, catches me with its warmth. I’m already heading for the…
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Allowing The Mystery Back In
I recently spent a week meditating with 90 other people without talking. We ate, slept, walked and sat next to each other, the whole time in silence and avoiding eye contact, like peaceful zombies. I had no information about my fellow zombies. But by the week’s end, they each had a persona in my head,…
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Let’s end violence now
While listening recently to a recorded course called Philosophy, Religion and the Meaning of Life (yes, that’s a real title—you can check it out at The Teaching Company), I heard an amazing quote from Simone Weil: “To define force: it is that X that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing.” I…
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Change in the world is more obvious just now
It started in Tunisia, moved to Egypt, then to Bahrain, Yemen and Libya. I’m not quite sure what the “it” is—maybe the use of social media and the wider world’s lack of tolerance for brutal suppression are providing a method, an opening and support for fundamental change that will bring greater humanity, justice and possibility…