Yesterday I watched a pretty astounding webinar from Yes! Magazine, “The Pandemic Portal, How This Moment Changes Everything”. If you’re not familiar with Yes! this is your introduction to a world of pragmatic hope based on purposeful action. Please check them out at the link above.
The webinar really was astounding. I tuned in because David Korten was there and he’s written some great things, but his role here was to back up Nafeez Ahmed, who’s pretty much awesome.
AMAZING QUESTIONS ANSWERED:
- What role did viruses play in the evolution of life on planet earth?
- Is it possible to create systems that address our terrible race and social inequalities?
- Is it true that GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is the best way to measure progress? How about well-being?
- GDP is just the way things are. What are the alternatives?
- Has it only been 5000 years since the authoritarian system began?
- Is it really possible that our deepest nature is to love, cooperate and share?
- This was only the beginning
I really hope the webinar itself is posted for you to see next week. I’ll share it when it is, so please check back to find out. But Omni people need an introduction to Nafeez Ahmed. Two articles by him, and a brief one by David Korten are linked right here.
Nafeez Ahmed from “White Supremicism and the Earth System”
Juicy Tidbits:
“… The ultimate hidden driver (of the current economy) is a way of living and being premised on self-maximization through plunder of the ‘Other’”
… and (racism’s) not just about race: it’s about the Earth, and how American racism represents our broken relationship with our own planet.
“… Until we begin developing the capacity to see and adapt to the complex interconnections between human systems and the wider natural systems in which they are embedded, we will be unable to move off a trajectory of accelerating societal collapse.”
To change the systems “… We have to start by recognizing this structural racism for what it is — the extension and legacy of a global imperial system, premised on ecological plunder: A system of accelerating resource extraction and wealth centralization premised on imperial violence that is literally destroying the ecosystems on which all life on Earth depends.”
“… recognize that we didn’t see this coming, and know that this is because our current way of seeing the world largely misses the true, interconnected complexity of what’s really going on.”
“… many structures we see around us at this moment are destined to disappear, one way or another. Many of them are already experiencing interlocking, cascading failures. We need to accept the demise of those systems which, through their own brittleness, stubbornness, and narcissism, are incapable of change. There will be terrible fallout from this process and we need to do all we can to mitigate the impacts.”
“… Where does your allegiance belong? To that which is already doomed, or to an emerging life-world of possibility?”
Nafeez Ahmed – “The Light at the End”
— The pandemic is remaking who we are. It is an opening to a new world where our capacity to love each other is integral to our survival. https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/coronavirus-community-power/2020/05/11/coronavirus-community-power-survival/
David Korten – “Wellbeing versus GDP: The Challenge and Opportunity of Human Development in the 21st Century”
(David Korten speaking to the International Science Council) — Is humanity’s defining economic goal to grow GDP or to secure the wellbeing of people and the living Earth?
The panel that spoke included moderator Zenobia Jeffries Warfield, who’s the Executive Editor of Yes; David Korten, who co-founded the magazine with his wife Fran and several other awesome women, taught at Harvard and was an economist for USAID into the 1990s; and a newcomer to the magazine’s body of excellent writers, Nafeez Ahmed, who’s a Yes contributor, executive director of the System Shift Lab, editor of the crowdfunded platform INSURGE intelligence, and research fellow at the Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems and other astounding things.