Adam Kahane helped bring peace to Colombia, but says ending our climate stalemate may be harder. “That’s because in Colombia, in South Africa, in Thailand, in Sudan, everybody agreed that [their situation] wasn’t working and if they kept going the way they were going they were in real danger. The thing that makes [resolving] issues, […]
Forget the Anthropocene: we’ve entered the synthetic age
An Anthropocene epoch requires one kind of psychological adjustment. A synthetic age demands something considerably more. One fact about our time is becoming increasingly well-known. No matter how far you travel, no matter in which direction you point, there is nowhere on Earth that remains free from the traces of human activity. The chemical and […]
STUDIES IN HUMAN-THING ENTANGLEMENT
The rich will make temples for Shiva What should I, a poor man, do My legs are pillars The body the shrine The head the cupola of gold Listen O Lord of the Meeting Rivers Things standing shall fall But the moving ever shall stay Basavanna, 12th century AD Indian philosopher and poet premises of […]
The simple but ingenious system Taiwan uses to crowdsource its laws
Taiwan is a promising experiment in participatory governance. But politics is blocking it from getting greater traction. It was late in 2015, and things were at an impasse. Some four years earlier, Taiwan’s finance ministry had decided to legalize online sales of alcohol. To help it shape the new rules, the ministry had kicked off […]
Human Beings Are Wired For Morality
A human being growing up in isolation would never arrive at moral reasoning. Such a [person] would lack the experience to be sensitive to others’ interests, hence lack the ability to look at the world from any perspective other than his or her own. I thus agree with Darwin and Smith that social interaction must be […]