Society/Culture

Contents:

Articles, Resources, Videos, Recommended Reading

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

Resources

Caught in the time crunch time use leisure and culture in Canada

Videos:

Recommended Reading:

Getting a Grip 2 By Frances Moore Lappe
Why are we as societies creating a world that we as individuals abhor?
This is the question at the heart of Getting a Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want. This book shatters tired, right–versus–left dogma and affirms readers' basic sanity — their intuition that it is possible to stop grasping at straws and to grasp instead the real roots of today's crises. Drawing on the latest findings in psychology and anthropology, it addresses topics from the impact of the Obama presidency and the global financial crisis.

A World Waiting to be Born – The Search for Civility By M Scott Peck
This book offers a needed prescription for our ailing society. Our illness is incivility: destructive patterns of self-absorption, callousness, manipulativeness, and materialism so ingrained in our routine behaviour that we do not recognise them. Using examples from his own life, case histories, and dramatic scenarios, Dr. Peck demonstrates how change can be effected and how we and our organizations can be restored to health.

The End of History and the Last Man By Francis Fukuyama
Fukuyama argues that the advent of Western liberal democracy may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and the final form of human government."What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."

The Act of Creation - Arthur Koestler
It is a study of the processes of creativity and imagination in which Koestler explains that humans are most creative when rational thought is abandoned during dreams and trances. Koestler affirms that all creatures have the capacity for creative activity, frequently suppressed by the automatic routines of thought and behaviour that dominate their lives.

The Center of the Cyclone By John C Lilly, MD
John Lilly gives a sensitive and insightful overview of his work on transcendent consciousness and its ramifications for society. The book looks at the inner life of a dedicated scientist experimenting and exploring inner space - the teeming universe of the human mind!

Janus: A Summing Up By Arthur Koestler
Koestler develops his philosophical idea of the holarchy introduced in his 1967 book, The Ghost in the Machine. The holarchy provides a coherent way of organising knowledge and nature all together. The idea of the holarchy is that everything we can think of is composed of holons (simultaneously both part and whole), so that each holon is always a constituent of a larger one and yet also contains other holons that are constituents of a lower level system within. Koestler believed that everything in a healthy system is organised this way, from the human body, to chemistry to the history of philosophy.

Vision for 2010 - Planning for Extraordinary Change By John L. Peterson
In this timely and insightful treatise, Petersen explains how the world and its leaders must prepare for an onslaught of potential crises, such as rapid climate change, a tipping point in the global financial system, a pandemic, or a new level of sophistication among terrorists. At the same time, Petersen highlights the unbelievable breakthroughs in knowledge, mindsets, and scientific capabilities that demonstrate our extraordinary capacity not just to persevere, but to evolve. Provocative yet hopeful, A Vision for 2012 outlines an effective approach to the immense challenges - and opportunities - that lie ahead.”

Prolongevity II By Albert Rosenfeld
This book provides a report on the scientific discoveries now being made about aging and dying, and their promise of an extended human lifespan, without old age.

Another World is Possible By William F Fisher and Thomas Panniah
Many believe that there are no alternatives to globalisation as we know it-with its world of giant corporations in the driving seat, dominating a "free" market in reality shaped in accordance with their dictates, and elevating economics over all other human considerations and values. But there are alternatives. And the global justice movement is giving voice to them. In this remarkable collection, the compilers have brought together some of the most important themes and voices which these rapidly growing, diverse citizens' movements have expressed at the World Social Forum. Google Books Preview

This I Believe - And Other Essays By E F Schumacher
Schumacher saw the need to give societies, communities, and individuals practical tools for change. This book brings together Schumacher's ideas on a variety of subjects. Twenty-one previously unpublished articles promise to introduce a new audience to the freshness, clarity, and profundity of Schumacher's thinking.

The Discovery of the Child By Maria Montessori
Describing the nature of the child and her method, Maria Montessori explains in this text her beliefs - that once the general principles of her method have been grasped, the parts dealing with its material application are extremely simple. Gone are teachers who wear out their lungs maintaining discipline, and verbal instruction is replaced by "material for development", which affords children the opportunity of teaching themselves by their own efforts. The teacher thus becomes a director of the children's own spontaneous work.

The Child in the Family By Maria Montessori
This book explains the Montessori philosophy. Emphasising that children from birth on should be treated with respect, the same respect we would have when we have a guest in the house. She talks about the newborn period and one wishes our kids doctors would read it, then she writes about kids and teens and their relationship with their parents.

Return From Death By Margot Grey
In Return from Death, Margot Grey, a psychologist of humanistic orientation who practices psychotherapy in London, presents a report of her research into near-death experiences (NDE’s) and a discussion of their significance. The book is divided in two parts. In Part One, Grey discusses NDE phenomenology; in Part Two, she discusses after-effects of the experience. 

High Noon By J F Rischard
In this age of instant communication and biotechnology, on this ever-smaller planet, what kinds of problems have we created for ourselves? How do we tackle them in a world where the accustomed methods used by nation-states may be reaching their natural limits? In High Noon, J. F. Rischard challenges us to take a new approach to the twenty most important and urgent global problems of the twenty-first century. Rischard finds their common thread: we don't have an effective way of dealing with the problems that our increasingly crowded, interconnected world creates. Our difficulties belong to the future, but our means of solving them belong to the past.

The Constant economy By Zac Goldsmith
A constant economy is one in which resources are valued not wasted, where food is grown sustainably and goods are built to last. It is a system whose energy security is based on the use of renewable sources, and where strong communities are valued as a country’s most effective hedge against social, economic and environmental instability. The constant economy operates at the human scale and, above all, it recognises nature’s limits.
The author shows that almost everything we need to do, is already being done somewhere in the world. Where governments, communities or companies have done the right thing, they have been rewarded. Solutions exist, and they are brought together and set out in this ground-breaking book.

Person/Planet By Thomas Roszak
Roszak brings together the insights of deep ecology and humanistic psychology. The result is a powerful reassertion of Personalism, the philosophy that has most stubbornly resisted the dehumanising forces of industrial society. As bleak as the environmental fate of the Earth may seem, "Person/Planet" offers a daringly original and hopeful hypothesis: that the Earth herself is already working in the depths of the human psyche to heal our troubled urban-industrial culture. Google Books Preview

Affluenza By Oliver James
There is currently an epidemic of 'affluenza' throughout the world - an obsessive, envious, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses - that has resulted in huge increases in depression and anxiety among millions. He asks: why do so many more people want what they haven't got and want to be someone they're not, despite being richer and freer from traditional restraints? And, in so doing, uncovers the answer to how to reconnect with what really matters and learn to value what you've already got. In other words, how to be successful and stay sane.

The World is Flat By Thomas L Friedman
Friedman recounts a journey to Bangalore, India, when he realised globalisation has changed core economic concepts. In his opinion, this flattening is a product of a convergence of personal computers with fiber-optic micro cables with the rise of work flow software. He termed this period as Globalization 3.0, differentiating this period from the previous Globalization 1.0 (in which countries and governments were the main protagonists) and the Globalization 2.0 (in which multinational companies led the way in driving global integration).

Earth Pilgrim By Satish Kumar
Satish Kumar draws on his personal experience of making pilgrimages and also his understanding of the spiritual traditions of both East and West. The book takes the form of conversations about both the inner and outer aspects of pilgrimage. If we want to tread the pilgrim’s path, we need to go beyond ideas of good and evil, and to be dedicated to our quest to our natural calling. We need to shed not only our unnecessary material possessions, but also our burdens of fear, anxiety, doubt and worry. Being on a pilgrimage doesn’t necessarily mean travelling from one place to another: it means a state of mind, a state of consciousness, a state of fearlessness.