Economics is the mother tongue of public policy. It dominates our decision-making for the future, guides multi-billion-dollar investments, and shapes our responses to climate change, inequality, and other environmental and social challenges that define our times.
Pity then, or more like disaster, that its fundamental ideas are centuries out of date yet are still taught in college courses worldwide and still used to address critical issues in government and business alike.
That’s why it is time, says renegade economist Kate Raworth, to revise our economic thinking for the 21st century. In Doughnut Economics, she sets out seven key ways to fundamentally reframe our understanding of what economics is and does. Along the way, she points out how we can break our addiction to growth; redesign money, finance, and business to be in service to people; and create economies that are regenerative and distributive by design.
Named after the now-iconic “doughnut” image that Raworth first drew to depict a sweet spot of human prosperity (an image that appealed to the Occupy Movement, the United Nations, eco-activists, and business leaders alike), Doughnut Economics offers a radically new compass for guiding global development, government policy, and corporate strategy, and sets new standards for what economic success looks like.
Raworth handpicks the best emergent ideas―from ecological, behavioral, feminist, and institutional economics to complexity thinking and Earth-systems science―to address this question: How can we turn economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive, into economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow?
Simple, playful, and eloquent, Doughnut Economics offers game-changing analysis and inspiration for a new generation of economic thinkers.
Beyond the Basin achieves what has rarely been attempted before – to reconcile the ineffable ego-dissolving experience of psychedelic drugs with written language, all the while maintaining the pace and structure of a more traditional novel.
Whole Earth Discipline, an eye-opening book by the legendary author of the National Book Award-winning Whole Earth Catalog, persuasively details a new approach to our stewardship of the planet. Lifelong ecologist and futurist Stewart Brand relies on scientific rigor to shatter myths concerning nuclear energy, urbanization, genetic engineering, and other controversial subjects, showing exactly where the sources of our dilemmas lie and offering a bold, inventive set of policies and design- based solutions for shaping a more sustainable society. Thought- provoking and passionately argued, this is a pioneering book on one of the hottest issues facing humanity today.
The first part of the book justifies it’s positioning as being about politics, although the substance of his conception of a new politics comes in Book Two. But Hanzi also breaks new ground in this first volume by proposing an enhanced – and very compelling – model of human development. Those familiar with Spiral Dynamics, other stages models and the states and stages ideas from Integral Theory will be delighted/dismayed/incensed or otherwise emotionally impacted by his critiques and his new model. (But be warned – you need to get through the barriers he throws up in the early parts of the book.)
As we move from the industrial age and its nation state to an internet age with a globalized postindustrial market a question presents itself: What is the next major developmental stage of society after the liberal democracy with a balance between capitalism and welfare state?
In this book Hanzi Freinacht offers a compelling answer to this question. We are reaching the limits of modern society and we must work to achieve a metamodern society, that is, a society which goes beyond modern life and its institutions. The metamodern society of the future is a listening society; a society more sensitive to the inner dimensions of human beings.
Drawing upon an elaborate weaving of psychology, sociology, political science and philosophy this book lands in a positive vision for the future. It shows how a clear description of human psychological growth – how we grow as human beings – can also offer us key insights into how global society can and should evolve in the internet age. A politics that can help humans grow to the later stages of psychological development is also one that can be capable of meeting the staggering challenges of our time.
In the first part of the book Hanzi examines the politics and culture of the Nordic countries and shows how these progressive societies offer a fertile ground for metamodern politics. The basis of such metamodern politics is also described. In the second part of the book he turns to developmental psychology, describing how humans evolve through a series of stages – and how this matters immensely for the happiness and survival of us all.
As this story unfolds – in a uniquely provocative genre breaking manner – you will also glean insight into your own developmental stage and those of people around you.
Read with caution.
None of the four old philosophies about sex is sufficient to inspire us or even hold us in our sexuality. Sex is not merely negative or positive. Sex is not just neutral, nor is it merely sacred because it creates babies.
Erotic Mystics from the hidden tradition of Solomon’s temple taught a secret doctrine. Sex is the source of all wisdom. Sex is an expression of the erotic impulse of existence itself alive in us-the yearning for contact, pleasure, and aliveness. The Sexual, however, is not the sum total of the erotic. Rather, the sexual models the Erotic. The sexual teaches us how to live an Erotic life in all dimension of our existence.
It is these secret doctrines that were later taught by Mary Magdalene and that sparked excitement around bestselling novels such as The Da Vinci Code.
Deep understanding of the sexual becomes the portal to accessing aliveness in every dimension of our reality. This realization demands that you live sexually without shame and shows you how to re-eroticize all areas of your life.
A Return to Eros reveals the radical secret tenets of relationship between the sexual, the erotic, and the holy. They reveal what Eros actually means and share the ten core qualities of the Erotic, which are modelled by the sexual. These include being on the inside, the fullness of presence, yearning, allurement, fantasy, surrender, creativity, pleasure, and more.
Underlying the vision behind democracy is the recognition that every individual has dignity, adequacy and worth. This democratic understanding of the worth and standing of the individual lies at the core of what the West calls enlightenment. The Western idea of enlightenment, rooted in the great vision of the Biblical prophets, is generally understood to have entered mainstream consciousness through the political democratic movements of the mid 18th century. Western enlightenment is primarily concerned with the democratization of political power. Classical enlightenment, sometimes called Eastern enlightenment because it was greatly emphasized in the East, is about the individual merging into the greater one. The appearance of a separate self is an illusion, which must be overcome as the individual realizes that one is really not separate at all but part of the one. The goal of Eastern enlightenment is moving beyond the grasping ego and desperately seeking separate self by attaining a state of consciousness in which the illusion of separateness was dissolved in the greater one. This path of classical enlightenment is seen as the path beyond suffering. Unique Self-enlightenment brings the Eastern and Western understandings about enlightenment together, into a higher Integral World Spirituality embrace. Unique Self-enlightenment is based on your commitment to transcend separate self into the one, even as you realize that that essence sees through your unique perspective. Unique Self opens the door to the potential democratization of enlightenment. To awaken to Your Unique Self is to be lived as God, which, in truth, means to be lived as love.
Flipping the script on climate change, Eisenstein makes a case for a wholesale reimagining of the framing, tactics, and goals we employ in our journey to heal from ecological destruction.
With research and insight, Charles Eisenstein details how the quantification of the natural world leads to a lack of integration and our “fight” mentality. With an entire chapter unpacking the climate change denier’s point of view, he advocates for expanding our exclusive focus on carbon emissions to see the broader picture beyond our short-sighted and incomplete approach. The rivers, forests, and creatures of the natural and material world are sacred and valuable in their own right, not simply for carbon credits or preventing the extinction of one species versus another. After all, when you ask someone why they first became an environmentalist, they’re likely to point to the river they played in, the ocean they visited, the wild animals they observed, or the trees they climbed when they were a kid. This refocusing away from impending catastrophe and our inevitable doom cultivates meaningful emotional and psychological connections and provides real, actionable steps to caring for the earth. Freeing ourselves from a war mentality and seeing the bigger picture of how everything from prison reform to saving the whales can contribute to our planetary ecological health, we resist reflexive postures of solution and blame and reach toward the deep place where commitment lives.
In the 21st century we face innumerable material and existential challenges both now and in the future, from religious fanaticism, mass migration, unfettered corporate power, to inequality, big data and climate change. Ahead of these global threats and tragedies is a common barrier to their solution—it is the spirit that has defined the age we live in: competition. The Simultaneous Policy Solution, the ‘SIMPOL Solution’ shows us how we must all come to terms with the crippling effect of global competition. Only through simultaneous action, through cooperation, can we overcome these problems.
Why is the gap so great between our hopes, our intentions, even our decisions-and what we are actually able to bring about? Even when we are able to make important changes-in our own lives or the groups we lead at work-why are the changes are so frequently short-lived and we are soon back to business as usual? What can we do to transform this troubling reality?
In this intensely practical book, Harvard psychologists Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey take us on a carefully guided journey designed to help us answer these very questions. And not just generally, or in the abstract. They help each of us arrive at our own particular answers that can solve the puzzling gap between what we intend and what we are able to accomplish. How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work provides you with the tools to create a powerful new build-it-yourself mental technology.
The Zen of You and Me explains how to deal with interpersonal conflict–from a Zen perspective.
The people who get under your skin the most can, in fact, be your greatest teachers. It’s not a matter of overlooking differences, as is often taught, but of regarding those difficult aspects of the relationship with curiosity and compassion–for those very differences offer a path to profound connection. Diane Hamilton’s practical, reality-based guide to living harmoniously with even your most irritating fellow humans—spouses, partners, colleagues, parents, children–shows that “getting along” is really a matter of discovering that our differences are nothing other than an expression of our even deeper shared unity.
It’s worth noting that Whole Earth Discipline only discusses the lower-right quadrant (external, collective) of Wilber’s four-quadrant model . Issues such as consciousness and culture (left quadrants) are outside its scope. Also, inasmuch as there is any form of consensus of viewpoints about proposed solution, some of the proposed solutions in this book might be considered to be outliers.