In the 1970s, I belonged to The World Future Society. I even toyed with the idea of becoming a ‘futurist’. I vaguely recall that there was a magazine on the subject and various intellectuals were trying to get prediction raised to the status of a science. According to Wired magazine, the Society still exists and there are people who call themselves professional futurists, but the numbers are shrinking and their status seems to be less than in the past—primarily because the future
Monthly Archives: May 2008
Ethical Wisdom
My dear friend Joanne Kellert. Ph.D., and Jack Gilbert, Ed. D., have launched a one-day, in-house workshop called Ethical Wisdom: The Heart of Leadership, Influence and Power. It is designed to support health care leaders and professionals who are on a quest to improve patient safety, quality of care, patient and employee satisfaction, and the financial health of their organizations. They promise a day full of insights and ways to strengthen the ethical health of your organization and an
Youth / Adult Partnerships and Growing Communities
By Zakia Carpenter | Unending Conversations of Hope blog
This article appeared in the April 20-26, 2008 issue of the Michigan Citizen and is reproduced here with the author’s permission. Please post your comments here.
I have noticed a breakdown in youth-adult functionality that I’m just beginning to articulate. From what I have read about the Millennial Generation (youth, like me, born between 1977 and 1998), experts predict it will be more separate from previous generations due to
Obama
I am more than happy to see Obama back on his game and in what looks like the homestretch in what has been a grueling horserace—for the candidates and the public. I am committed to Obama because I believe, along with a lot of other people, that he is sincere in his commitment to unite the nation and that he has demonstrated his capacity to stand for something beyond politics-as-usual. I have said on more than one occasion how sad it’s been to watch the fracture of our nation and our communities
The World We Want: The Big Picture II
By David Korten | Great Turning website
Read more posts in The World We Want series.
The second piece of the big picture of the human confrontation with the limits of our Mother Earth is an unraveling of the social fabric of civilization that is a consequence of extreme and growing inequality. A world divided between the profligate and the desperate cannot long endure. It intensifies competition for Earth’s resources, undermines the legitimacy of our institutions, and drives an unraveling
Growth
I remember having conversations about real estate prices 7 or 8 years ago, particularly on the West Coast. “How can prices keep rising and where does all the money come from to buy these properties?” A house I sold in 1997 resold in 2005 for four times what I sold it for! I am not an economist, but something didn’t seem right to me about this kind of never-ending upward spiral. My ex-wife sells homes and told me people were getting into million dollar properties with little or no down payment.
If You Are Afraid
By Shae Hadden | Bio
Believers in the Law of Attraction, take heed! If you are afraid, don’t try to resist your fear. If you do, then you will give more power to it and end up attracting what you are afraid of. I know. I’ve just experienced my worst fear: of being very sick, alone, and uncertain about what is happening.
The interesting thing was that, when I was most afraid, immersed in physical pain and emotional stress, I decided to surrender my fear, my pain and my life to that ‘Higher
Energy Goes Where Attention Flows
By Charles E. Smith | Bio
Of great influence in my thinking has been The Urban Shaman
by Serge Kahlili King. One of his assertions was that “energy flows
where the attention goes.” My work was always shaped by where the CEO
or the leader was putting his or her attention. My life is shaped by
where I’m putting
Home
I don’t think it is news to anyone that we experience life through its contrasts. We don’t notice or appreciate hot until we get cold; we can take kindness for granted until it goes missing; we typically put off taking care of our health until it starts to deteriorate. At this moment, I am half-way through the longest trip of my life—mostly work with some vacation thrown in around the edges. Consequently, I am very present to how important ‘home’ is to me now that I am away from it
The World We Want: The Big Picture
By David Korten | Great Turning website
Many
of us have been anticipating the day of reckoning for our reckless
human ways for decades. That day has arrived. Peak oil, climate chaos,
financial collapse, and spreading social disintegration are all
consequences of deep cultural and institutional dysfunction. The
imperative to address them presents us with an epic test of our human
intelligence and creativity.
When I was a student in business
school my professors always told us "Go for the